Stage 4 Thor

You may have noticed in some of my pictures that I have a bump on my chest. This bump, or port, is how they have administered chemotherapy and checked my blood over the past 3 years. While it might look painful it is actually a luxury to have one. The number of pokes in the arm that they would have to do over the years while receiving various treatments would be far too many, and my veins would eventually be damaged.  It is painful to have put in and removed, but the alternative was 1000 pokes.  The port connects a direct line through my chest up to the main artery in my neck.  Literally a direct line! Yesterday I had it taken out.  I was awake for the procedure both times. Both when it went in and yesterday when it came out. While you are numb and the doctors do everything they can to make it painless, there is this tug in your neck.  It feels awkward and you know they are pulling on some pretty important stuff in there but ultimately no pain.  Just pressu...

I am still determining where most of the world's problems lie, but if I had to take a guess, my first choice would be the breakdown of interpersonal communication.   Ineffective communication has hampered me throughout my life, and while my intentions were often good, the way I communicated them to others fell short.  I would be willing to bet that if you consider any argument or disagreement you have had with an employer, spouse, or friend, you would find that the breakdown of interpersonal communication was likely the crux of the issue.   Ironically, before I reevaluated this, I would have considered myself a good, if not great communicator.  I have been a successful salesperson and my ability to articulate my thoughts isn't too shabby.  With all that said, I was, and am still at times, a poor communicator. For starters, communication is a whopping 93% non-verbal.  So whatever delusions I had about my proficiency with the English language it was...

As I have mentioned in the past, our emotions are based on our thoughts which are based on our beliefs, experiences, values, etc.  Emotions are difficult to control, so I am not going to suggest that you simply “get over it” or “snap out of it”.  Emotions feel very real to us, and therefore are real.  What you CAN control are the thoughts that propagate those feelings.   I know many self-help professionals focus on emotional discipline and control, but what I am trying to do is acknowledge that your emotion(s) are absolutely real, but I also want to challenge the thought that triggers it/them. Our thoughts are in our domain of control. Most of us make critical thinking errors every day, which cloud our emotions and hurt us. Worse still, can lead to bad decisions. Some of these decisions can be more costly than others, but if you are in any decision-making business, it is vital that you operate on all the information available. When you have a bad feeling wr...

The only thing that makes life unfair, is the delusion that it should be fair"  --Dr. Steve Maraboli-- I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but while sick and unable to do too much other than exercise my brain, I did a lot of studying and reading.   One of the things that I think helped me to recover was, instead of working my brain overtime worrying about what was going to happen to me devoting whatever time I had left, to helping others in ways that I most needed at my darkest points.   This led me to take classes in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and neurolinguistic programming (NLP)  Over 100+ hours of classes later, I became a Certified CBT Therapist and a Master NLP Practioner.  (who could imagine?)   I took some other courses on nutrition, exercise, and meditation (I had a whole lot of time), but these two certificates were closely aligned with my Christian Stoic philosophy, and really put me in the best position to help ...

Bad joke, I know, I know. While I was sick I had a lot of time to read, learn and take classes that I hoped would allow me to help people if I was to get out of that situation, and I haven't stopped.  Some of that reading and research was pertinent to my situation and some of it was outside of it.  One of the best things about learning and expanding your purview is that you will learn things that might not be useful to you but may be useful to others.  Luckily for me, my parents are aging gracefully and seem to be healthier than most people my age, but dementia is a real threat to everyone eventually, and losing your mind while staying healthy is a whole other struggle that is hard to even imagine.   Alzheimer's (the most common form of dementia)  was one of the things that I came across by mistake.  While I am still young enough that I do not need to concern myself with Alzheimer's...yet, what I do live with and have experienced is "chemo brain" which...

“Most people are as happy as they make their minds up to be” --Abraham Lincoln. Every year it seems that hurricanes and tornados hit the same spots, damage the same people’s homes, and occur almost like clockwork every couple of years. While it is always sad to see people lose everything, I always wonder "Why wouldn't they just move?". The same might could be said for why I still live in NY with a giant crime rate, ridiculous taxes, and politicians that do not reflect my values. For me, the answer is, (as I guess the answer for the people subject to natural disasters would be) “because it is home”. I do not have a good logical answer other than familiarity, friends, family, and attachment. We have familiarity and attachment to our "emotional homes" as well. This is the place we go to emotionally when we are triggered by external events. It is important to be aware that we have an emotional home and what our emotional home is.  Only then you can begin to g...

  For the folks that follow me on Facebook, they are probably sick and tired of me posting about how much sleep I get and how close it is to 8 hours on the nose most nights.  I originally started doing this to keep myself in line and well-trained in getting sleep.  I was working on my sleep habits because it was generally good advice from any doctor or health specialist, but it wasn't until I dove deeper did I understand why.  I don't know about you but understanding why something works the way it does is a far greater motivator for me to do it than simply being told to do it because "it is good for you" Sleep is important and good for your health.  That's it.  End of blog .   If that is all you need, then I just saved you a lot of time.  If not, here are some interesting ideas and facts: If you consider evolution, sleeping is counterproductive.  We cannot eat, hunt, reproduce, while sleeping, and all of this while completely at the merc...

I can imagine that people are sick of hearing me talk about cancer and dying, but one of the benefits of it is that it leads me to read and research all sorts of information on how to live longer and healthier. I was given a second chance and I am not trying to blow this one. Hopefully, we can learn together before you have to have the same awakening. I was never too badly out of shape in my life, but this journey has really pushed me into seeing how much healthier we can all be, and how long we can all live. Medical technology is improving at such a rapid pace, that it is not unheard of to think that our children will live past 120, and if that isn't shocking...most of those years can be younger healthier years. Someday 80 will be the new 50. So, we are not just looking to live longer, but live longer and better! I was one of the fortunate 22,000 people in the US to receive a successful stem cell transplant. 10 years ago when, my son, Axel was born, we were given the option...

  The words a speaker uses to communicate are only a small part of his overall efforts. The pitch and tone of his voice, the speed and rhythm of his spoken words, and the pauses between those words may communicate more than words alone. Furthermore, his gestures, posture, pose, and expressions typically convey a variety of subtle messages. These nonverbal elements can provide important clues to the speaker's thoughts and feelings, substantiating or contradicting the speaker's words. Prof. Albert Mehrabian of the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted the most frequently and casually cited study on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages in personal communication. His studies in the 1970s suggested that we overwhelmingly deduce our feelings, attitudes, and beliefs about what someone says based on the speaker's body language and tone of voice rather than the actual words were spoken. Prof. Mehrabian calculated that words, tone of voice, and body lan...

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." -- Albert Einstein Recently in my house, we have been talking about dreams and what they mean, and while I don't personally consider my dreams to have much meaning outside of being random thought soup, it made me think about the dreams that are really important... The best dreams you have are the ones you have when you are awake. Your imagination and ability to see your future in a positive way can be powerful tools for success, but we've lost touch with that spark over the years. Somewhere along the way of becoming an adult, we stop imagining how life could be different in an exciting way. Sure, we can consider how much worse it could be, but even that should instill some gratitude in you. You can, and should, begin to dream about how much better it can be! The power of this lies in the fact that ou...

My last post got a lot of positive feedback but left a lot of questions as to how... How does one eliminate the noise and distractions in their life? Being overwhelmed might be more of a problem for organized, focused people than you would think. In my case, I started with a focused purpose, but as my resources increased, more opportunities and options came my way, making it harder to stay on task and ultimately diluting me in any one area. The minute you start to be the "go-to" guy for people, the more demand for your time exists. From there, you can easily become distracted from what your priority was or should be. You can see how this can be a slippery slope for people with the best of intentions. How can you begin to discover your priorities and/or get refocused on what is important? I was jettisoned into a desperate situation where I was quickly... continue reading

If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. The word "priority" came into the English language in the 1400s.  It was singular and remained so for 500 years.  Not until the 1990s did it start to be used in the plural.   We literally changed the meaning and use of the word to illogically use it as plural which takes the meaning of priority and throws it right out of the window!  You cannot have multiple priorities.  Something is a priority or it is not.   When you have multiple priorities none of them are a priority at all  For a long time in my life, I was married, running a marketing company, buying and managing real estate, and to make things even more sticky, went out and purchased and operated a hair salon.   As you can probably imagine my efforts were not ever focused in one place and therefore they all suffered.  I lost my marriage, and my business partner, which resulted in more and more fallout across the boa...

I first showed my friends on Facebook, so if you are getting this message twice...good :)  I finally finished my "book" (it is really more of an essay) on fitness and how faith, love,  and a growth mindset helped me to overcome the biggest challenge in my life. In it, I focus most on the physical aspect of recovery because that was the most obvious and challenging.  This was surprisingly a lot more challenging than I imagined, and it led me down some dark memories that were hard to remember and write.   Today, it is an e-book which means it can be read on a Kindle, a tablet, a phone, or a PC.  A lot of people were confused as to if they needed a Kindle Reader to read it, and you do not.  Some of the formatting might be different between the devices, but it all looks roughly the same.   You can get the book from the link here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1166946 If you prefer Amazon, you can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B...

"An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth" --Bonnie Friedman Going through cancer and now in the middle of my life, I recognized how precious time is  Hopefully not too late.  It is our most important asset and one that is finite and cannot be bought.  If you have read my other posts about when I was in the hospital dying, I prayed only for more time.  Not money, not love, or anything else in the world.  This surprised me more than it should have.. I would guess most people close to death would pray to escape it, but at the core, what they are all really wishing for is more time.  What they want the time for might vary, but at the end of the day, we all want more of it.   If we were to be justified in our greed for anything, I suppose that it would be ... continue reading

Anxiety and worry might be the largest contributor to stress that I can think of and stress is the largest contributor to death.  If you have any hope of living a healthy and successful life or recovering from an illness or injury, limiting your stress needs to be a priority , and the first step in limiting stress is limiting your anxiety! We all understand and hear about the power of positive thinking, and how you can manifest dreams by creating vision boards and meditating/praying for what you want out of life.   Worry is like making a vision board of all the things you DONT want.    If you believe manifesting works, then it should terrify you to know that you can manifest the negative even easier than the positive.   When you worry about something, you invite that which you are most worried about into your life.   The good news is that 98% of all the things... keep reading

The 7 Scientific Benefits of Gratitude:  Gratitude opens the door to more relationships. Gratitude improves physical health.  Gratitude improves psychological health. Gratitude enhances empathy and reduces aggression. Grateful people sleep better. Gratitude improves self-esteem. Gratitude increases mental strength. I was baptized Catholic, went to Catholic school up until 7th grade, and later in life moved towards Bible-based theology.  I would consider myself non-denominational, but others would align it pretty closely with Baptist, as we continue to baptize adults to be "born again".   I point this out to be transparent about my background and at the same time understand that not everyone is on the same spiritual path.  Like in my fitness posts, I can only articulate what I felt firsthand and what worked for me. Regardless of what religion you practice or your relationship with the universe, the message here is applicable to all, so please keep readi...

  When people see my pictures at the age of 47, I get a lot of questions about what I do specifically for abs.  For older men and women abs seem to be the harder of the muscles to see and develop.   If there was an industry secret, I would love to sell it to you but the truth is that I don't do anything for abs.   Well...that might not be entirely true... keep reading

  Prior to me getting sick, I had been a bodybuilder and powerlifter most of my adult life, and I have heard all the jive about Planet Fitness and the rap it gets for being "soft".  Now at 47 and post-cancer, I have really come to appreciate it in many ways.  So much so, that I deliberately like to check in on Facebook to irritate some of the die-hards.   I think there was so much good that came out... keep reading