 Episode 170 - Strike A Pose
The Thursday Thesis - 26/9/2019 Let’s play a little game – I promise you’ll like it – it’s the fastest mind hack you’ll ever have, so let’s play! Stand up and remember a time in your life when you knew you’d triumphed – you made a plan and did the work, and you won that major prize... Remember how that felt? Stand the way you stood, breathe the way you breathed, hear what you heard...hold it for 30 seconds Notice how your feelings change... Chances are that you are in what is known as the “Victory Pose”, also known as “Pride” - a universal human behaviour which is seen in all cultures around the world – even among people who have been blind from birth. You’ve seen it in pictures of winning athletes, children playing, politicians celebrating winning an election - it’s the arms thrown up and outward into a V shape, torso erect, chin lifted and eyes looking up. Researcher Amy Cuddy has measured what happens to your body when you adopt this posture, and it’s amazing. Just two minutes of Victory Pose can spike your testosterone levels by up to 20% whilst sinking your cortisol levels by 25% at the same time. Testosterone is the dominance hormone, so more of this is good: Cortisol is the stress hormone, and less of this is good. Boom, Boom!! More of the good stuff, less of the bad – how cool is that? Now, if the Victory pose is too extravagant for you, try the “Wonder Woman” pose for size: stand erect, shoulders wide and put your hands on your hips (no, we’re not doing The Timewarp!). This is a high-power, high-status stance which produces similar effects to the Victory pose. Had enough of feeling good? Let’s play at being depressed... just let your head sag forward, gather your arms toward your centre and slump your shoulders as you begin to look down... Notice how your feelings change... Cuddy’s work shows a reduction in testosterone of up to 10% in just two minutes of this low-power posture, whilst bad cortisol levels jump up by as much as 25%. Sick. Can it really be that easy to influence your biochemistry? Test it for yourself: whilst you’re in this weak and miserable state, just try to feel good...notice you can’t do it. Now jump back into the Victory pose and hold it for 30 seconds...hold it and try to feel bad... notice you can’t do it? Can it be that easy? You just proved it works, didn’t you – why do you want anything more complicated? There’s a conceit amongst “Smart People” that simple ideas are not good enough; that for an idea or technique to be intellectually valid it has to be complicated. It’s the same kind of nonsense we tell ourselves all the time, usually about things only being of value if they are hard to do – like work, or learning to play guitar for instance. So we have a choice: do simple stuff that works, don’t waste your time looking for a more difficult solution that does the same thing. To paraphrase the 14th Century English philosopher, William of Ockham, “All else being equal, the simplest solution is usually the best solution”. Want to lose weight - Just stop eating. Want to save money – stop buying crap you don’t need, with money you don’t have. So if changing your mood is as simple as moving your meat-suit, when do you want to start feeling more positive, more powerful, less stressed and more confident? How about Now? © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Info@NeilCowmeadow.com
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 Episode 169 - Brainwashed
The Thursday Thesis - 19/9/2019 Happiness is a choice, made in the face of a toxic sea of negativity. Modern life’s turbulent dark waters engulf us in wave after wave of bad news, advertisements torment us with images of a life made good by products, without which we are nothing. Now we are online 24/7 the onslaught has no let-up: our minds are under siege and nobody is coming to the rescue. Continuously updated with all the latest bad news, celebrity wankfesting and the propaganda masquerading as news, we are herded – willingly – into a state of anxiety and given a sense of powerlessness, and from there we seek escape into more of the very entertainments (definition) that got us into this bloody mess. This is reality, and failing to recognise it is to delude oneself – and that is the first step toward insanity. Governments (to regulate and control), business interests, media, and the many agencies identified by their abbreviations are happy to provide us with the soundtracks and storyboards of our lives, based upon their agendas for us. Make no mistake – their agenda for you and for me will in no way have our best interest at heart: recognise this and deal with it. Only a fool would believe that other people are more interested in what we want than what they want – this is the great lie of the Communist ideal, even in its watered-down form we call Socialism. For Socialism/Communism to function the individual must surrender their freedom of choice and submit completely to the power of the state; in recognising this simple reality the deceit of “the common good” falls on its self-righteous arse. Politics aside, what can you do about it? Make a choice: either one chooses to bathe in the sewer of negativity or one chooses to extract oneself from it. You can’t swim in a shitstream without getting whiffy.
I’m advocating positively brainwashing yourself in a way that’s positive and meaningful for you. Given the choice between hearing bad news all day long, of constant disturbances and distractions leaving you in an anxious and powerless state, and being exposed to good news and inspiring ideas all day – leading you to feel happy, optimistic and positive – which would you choose, knowing that you had the choice? It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? But how many people that you know have made that choice – how many of your friends, family and colleagues even know they are making that choice every single day of their lives? So now you know, what are you going to choose to focus on, what are you going to allow into your life? You get to choose. Choose well, choose wisely. © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Info@NeilCowmeadow.com  Episode 168 - The Art of Looking Sideways
The Thursday Thesis - 12/9/2019 I can’t remember when I first heard the phrase “a sideways look”, but I do remember that it was in a story of a wise woman facing down a villager who accused her of witchcraft. In the story that Sideways Look was all suspicion and contempt as the wise woman cowed her accuser. And it’s such a funny idea, looking sideways, that it stuck with me. Tumbled by time and stained by my ribald life it’s acquired a new meaning for me, no longer is it haughty contempt – not in my sense of the phrase, anyway. No, for me it’s become a look of deep curiosity, this sideways look. Maybe it’s like the look of romantic interest, sudden curiosity and potential passion, and maybe it is charged with suspicion; but whatever it is, you know a sideways look when you get one. Time freezes briefly when someone looks at you that way. We feel our souls are being scrutinised by a sideways look, our very essence assayed and examined. And it all happens in an instant. That Sideways Look takes nothing at Face Value, it asks questions and weighs things up. When you Look Sideways you don’t just begin to think about what was said – you begin to factor-in who said it, how they said it, the context in which it was said, and what they did not say. Whatever the delivery media - Speech, book, video, commercial, print ad, radio or TV show - you begin to probe the speaker’s motives, their choice of words, their body language and posture, vocal nuances and rate of speech. Looking Sideways isn’t just about face-to-face encounters with real people, and it definitely applies to advertising, marketing, mainstream media, social media, music and the Arts A sideways look is really critical thinking, looking beyond and around, as well as into and through, the surface of events, messages, conversations. It squints at what is being shown, listens intently for what is said, hears the creaking of distortion and the sly whisper of Spin – moreover, it reaches into the dark silences of what is being left out. © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Info@NeilCowmeadow.com  On the boards at Manchester Velodrome: terrifying, exhilarating...just before crashing. The Thursday Thesis - 05/09/2019 Comfort will drain your life of all meaning. Comfort will make you irrelevant. Comfort is your sworn enemy. Comfort will kill you, Stone dead. I was talking to a lady a couple of days ago - you know, all about life and stuff. She’d had a successful career and was looking forward to a “comfortable retirement” in a few years. That seems such an old-fashioned image: drifting off into a quiet life of pottering around, fading by degrees into invisibility, a thirty-year waiting room before the last, long, lie-in. There’s something deeply offensive about the word “comfortable”, at least to me. There’s a suggestion of irrelevance, of ineffectuality about it. Humans are built to strive, learn and grow – it’s what really makes us tick. If life is comfortable we are likely to become unhappy as we lack obstacles to overcome, challenges to meet, dreams to capture and dragons to slay. There seems something disturbing about being comfortable – a curious sense of drifting and lack of purpose. It’s probably just me, projecting my own hang-ups onto the word. But I would hate to be comfortable. In fact, I shudder when I imagine having no reason to get out of bed. Reason tells me that if I’m not busy growing I’m probably shrinking, because only making a demand on our bodies will stimulate growth and repair. Without stress, without challenge, we may not even maintain our status quo. I’m not ready to shuffle off into someone else’s dream of a comfortable retirement – are you? That’s an old dream, peddled by people who were sold it themselves, only to find it hollow when they got there. Get uncomfortable. Do something that takes you outside of your comfort zone. Push your boundaries, because they are shrinking in on you every single day, whether you like it or not. If you don’t push back, you’ll shrink and fade away. Keep pushing back. Get busy doing that thing you’ve always wanted to do – you know which one I mean, don’t you? It’s the thing that scares the living crap out of you: maybe it’s learning to play guitar, run a marathon, start a business, leave your job. You know I’m talking to you, in particular, don’t you? The time is now. This is your moment. This is your life ticking away. Only you are standing in your way, because The Universe is too big, cold and indifferent to care about you, one way or the other. In fact, The Universe really doesn’t give a fuck about you, so get over it and get uncomfortable doing that scary big thing. Get out of your own way and do it. Don’t get comfortable. © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Remember to Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net |
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