Powerful Life Changing Hacks That Truly Transformed My Life: Using simple yet effective hacks to transform physical, mental and emotional health rapidly and sustainably

In this post, I'd like to introduce one of my recent books reflecting my transformational development.

It is titled "Powerful Life Changing Hacks That Truly Transformed My Life: Using simple yet effective hacks to transform physical, mental and emotional health rapidly and sustainably" 

This is a biographical book depicting my transformational changes, based on  bio-hacks and alternative ways to overcome my limitations in my life, improve my health, increase my performance and reinvent myself to desired versions multiple times.

I share what I learned and practiced transforming myself from multiple angles. The emphasis in this book is on the small changes which turned into tipping points and made big impacts on my journey.

The main mechanism was to understand the points, try them on myself, validate and verify their effectiveness and document the findings in a biographical format.

Even though some techniques and approaches are well known and accepted by many, some of the points are controversial in nature and can even shock some audiences; hence they become interesting experiences to read, validate and re-use as related.

Refraining from any advice or recommendations, I provides a simple narration of practical changes using the unique style of first-person narration in a conversational tone rather than using a formal style. I  deliberately did not provide any citations to keep the book uncluttered and simple to read and comprehend. Any terms, tools, supplements, approaches, methods, and concepts provided in this book can easily be Googled and relevant articles can easily be accessed from PubMed and other prominent scientific information sources.

The books is available in Kindle format and Paperback format in Amazon.

Today's big PEACEFUL social networking protest

Let's start in this big online protest line, bring your placards and attach them to this blog or here!

Here are some placards for you; feel free to use them

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NO to shortcuts and quick wins!
When? Now!

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NO to procrastination and laziness!
When? Now!

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YES, to action and hard work!
When? Now!

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NO to self deception!
When? Now!

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YES to self awareness and self respect!
When? Now!

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NO to unnecessary competition!
When? Now!

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YES to collaboration!
When? Now!

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NO to meaningless networking!
when? Now!

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BEWARE of self promoted social network gurus!
When? Now!

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NO to blame games!
When? Now!

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YES to taking personal responsibility!
When? Now!

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NO to war and fights!
When? Now!

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YES to peace!
When? Now!

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NO to discrimination!
When? Now!

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YES to diversity!
When? Now!

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NO to wasting this beautiful life!
When? Now!

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Yes to enjoy a meaningful life!
When? Now!

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------End of my placards, feel free to add yours here-----

Whatever doesn't kill us can make us stronger

Until now, the "whatever doesn't kill us can make us stronger" was an adage. However, a new national multi-year longitudinal study of the effects of adverse life events on mental health has found that adverse experiences do, in fact, appear to foster subsequent adaptability and resilience, with resulting advantages for mental health and well being.

They admit that these data cannot establish causation but the evidence is consistent with the proposition that in moderation, experiencing lifetime adversity can contribute to the development of resilience. The media release from Buffalo University is titled "Study Confirms: Whatever Doesn't Kill Us Can Make Us Stronger"

I don't know you but the result of this study makes me feel good. I am more grateful to make some investment on improving my AQ (adversity quotient) with the inspiration of Dr. Paul Stoltz for a number of years which cost me considerable amount of time and energy. Sometimes we know something is right through our guts even before a useful piece of research like this proves it so.

Is importance of UGC (User Generated Content) nebelous?

Thank god it is Saturday, the sun is shining in a windy winter lunch time! I have some much desired breathing space in this mission [im]possible phase of my life to take things off my chest in writing from yesterday's lunch with Helen and et al.

If there is one thing in my life that I'd like to keep despite any challenges at any levels, it would be serendipity itself. Based on this strong feeling of serendipity concept and its mechanism reflected in my day to day thoughts and activities, I conducted a study on technical aspect of UGC (User Generated Content) in my field with the assistance of Associate Professor Tuncay Ercan, which was published last week in the The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, Volume 6, Issue 4, pp.179-188 titled "Issues in User Generated Content Process and a Proposed Model to Solve them"

Yesterday on our traditional Friday lunch (with Helen, her dad Bruce, her research mate Despina and a few members from Helen's show crew), we discussed UGC from various angles. It was interesting to see Helen being totally disagree on my views related to UGC. She said "anyone can say anything even with no context which could be so harmful at times and consequences may be very heavy and unbearable". Well, I said to Helen it could be true but anything sometimes could create something. Saying things could be better than leaving them unsaid which could have tremendous impact on our lives. My points appear to be supported by Professor David Green of Monash whom I have high respect and admiration in his studies on serendipity published in 2004 which has been a true inspiration to me since then.

Despina believed that my technical focus and my co-author Tuncay's literature search on the topic is timely and well balanced to complete the picture in a sense whilst Bruce was raising one of his eye brows with lack of the emphasis from anthropological aspect which I purposefully had hidden in the methodology section itself. However the most interesting review comment came from a CoP (Community of Practice) participant of the study who said that until we conducted this study, he even was not aware that he has been producing content which empowered his communication and maintained his connectedness in his field. For him the importance of the study was the study itself and shedding lights on this controversial and exponentially growing topic from at least one angle creating a kind of awareness. All feedback pros or cons of this study was well received by myself as they all add value for the post follow up phase of my studies.

I'd like to extend my follow up to a wider audience hence have one simple question here that may shed some lights on what UGC is or is not. My question to you is "What is the importance of UGC in your personal and professional life?" By this question, I'd like to understand how important UGC is for you, how it has been affecting your life, your profession, career and more from your own experience.... Do you believe (as Helen alluded) UGC is mainly rubbish and could be toxic for overall life?

Regards,
Mehmet Yildiz

What affects our attention so much?

Attention in our lives determine our success in certain context. Attention is affected by myriad of factors. However, one of the major ones which I have been observing (and recently confirmed by a study conducted at the University of Granada) is anxiety.

The article titled Anxiety Affects Attention Processes highlights that "Being of a nervous disposition and being anxious at a given moment affects our attention to what happens. This finding will help improve the treatment of anxiety disorders, so common in our days. In fact, anxiety has become one of the most common conditions among the population, which can explain the negative connotations usually associated to this term."

Dealing with anxiety in an efficient way may have tremendous affect in our life satisfaction as I believe that attention is the key enabler of this process. Wondering what else may have as much impact as anxiety for our attention? Could it be other strong emotions like fear, love and even other shades of anxiety?

Balance between the more and the less

After a complex problem resolution session, emotions on each person's face were getting more and more complex to describe with words. Definitions were mingling as obscurity prevailed. David believed in more emotions were better than less. He knew I trusted in simplicity however complex my endevours were perceived by others. Once he witnessed how I removed what was perceived as essential from a distance but were only verifiable with referencing fine knowledge and experience in specific setting. My replacement of the meaningful components in that certain context enabled him grant me such an unconditional support when I really seemed to need it at personal level to satisfy the thirst of contribution in a larger scope with higher impact. I was grateful to be given full accountability for re-engeenering a complex solution by taking possible failure responsibility with equanimity. At least by convincing the amygdala as discussed in my previous post as part of our limbic needs. My unique and perhaps the only differentiator in this ocean of talents ironically was the lack of the scary word "failure" in my personal vocabulary replaced by another word some may call it "experience". In a more simple sense, the more experience we gain the less fear we seem to experience, of course with an ongoing mindfulness of limbic systems. Having said that it is almost sunset time here...

Another stimulating phone conversation with Helen

It is a warm autumn Saturday in Oz. I have never heard Helen so enthused before to tell her dreams to me on the phone in the early morning. In fact it was the first time she told one of her dreams to me on a phone conversation like this surprisingly with a tag of importance. Helen has committed suicide in her dream last Thursday. She lucidly remembered to throw herself to the large ocean entry around the Cape Schanck Lighthouse Reserve in the Mornington Peninsula then turned into a Lavagirl in the middle of this vast ocean.

I knew why Helen was telling me this dream and she also told it to another friend (David). This dream triggered a number of memories and thoughts in me when I was listening to her on the phone. Four years ago in a warm January day, one of our most interesting collaborative idea was emerged whilst having a cup of tea with Vegemite sandwiches in the Keeper's Cottage after filling our lungs with fresh ocean air in over 2 hours of walk. Still remembering a fiery discussion between our joint friend David (a retired cognitive scientist) and Helen’s father Bruce (retired professor of anthropology) whether amygdalae were considered part of the limbic system. Helen was pressing Bruce’s sensitive buttons with evolutionary nonsense and I was pressing David’s with artificial intelligence theories ironically to witness how their amydalae were in function in this discussion which we called kind of a meta dream or type of dream in dream like life itself. And, when we finished drinking our tea, Helen mentioned later a piece of research news from Monash Uni where she did her first degree and where I did my masters. The study then revealed that patients with more severe social phobia showed a correlation with increased response in the amygdala which David re-iterated as “a marker of the effectiveness of pharmacological and psychological treatments”.

I knew the main reason of this dream for Helen was her recent initiative to prevent youth suicide in Australia which has been an important phenomenon. Helen made a number of shows to raise funds for her research in this area. As a person of golden heart, Helen also directly interacts with the disadvantaged young people in streets and loves them "until it hurts". She listens to their dreams and dreams about their dreams. And Helen, unlike mythological Altjira of our aboriginals, will not seem to retire when the "Dreamtime" vanished!

In my view, jumping over the ocean is a fascinating symbol for Helen as those who knew her resembled her shows to, a number of times, close to committing suicide. Of course, this was nothing new to Bruce when David who also heard Helen’s story and started conversation this morning with Bruce saying “Helen committed suicide” as a teaser. But Bruce is now immune to or more tolerant to uncertainties attacking his amygdala about Helen. What else could he choose in these circumstances! Don’t you think oceans and uncertainties tell us poignant and incisive stories about volcanoes in our minds and hearts!