Cultivating Equanimity

SHOW NOTES

It's time to ditch the idea that willpower is the only way to conquer weight loss, especially if you're a man over the age of 40.

My personal journey exposed the limitations of brute force in weight management, and through this revelation, I've unearthed the transformative power of equanimity—a state of emotional balance. This episode explores this mindful approach, ensuring that your health and weight loss goals are not only achieved but sustained.

I also offer you nine practical strategies to help you foster equanimity and resilience, from meditation to innovative breathing techniques like the physiological sigh and the four-seven-eight method. 

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to man in the Arena. This podcast is for men over 40 who want to master their health and weight loss goals once and for all, with innovative strategies, practical tools and insightful interviews. My goal is to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your optimal health. It's time to look good, feel good and do better. Welcome, my friends, to another episode of man in the Arena. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad you jumped on this podcast today, because I am going to give you a new tool that you can use and add to your toolbox. This isn't just any tool, though. This is a brand new, top of the line, tried and tested tool with a lifetime warranty that's not only going to enhance your life, it's going to make the work you're doing on yourself a lot easier and way more effective. Now, like any good tool, this takes some practice using it and getting the most out of it.

Speaker 1: 1:05 

The tool I'm talking about is equanimity. Before I get into that, I want to tell you a quick story. When I graduated university, I was dating this girl whose mom and dad were divorced, so her mom was alone and she'd have these odd jobs pop up and she'd ask me to come over and fix whatever needed fixing. Now, since I just graduated university, I didn't have tools and I didn't have money to buy tools, so I'd often show up to her house and use whatever she had, which wasn't much. Inevitably I'd get frustrated because I couldn't finish the job or do it correctly and I'd feel terrible. I'd beat myself up. And moral of this story is having the right tools to do a job is so important. If you get frustrated trying to lose weight and you're beating yourself up and the results just aren't happening, I imagine you're using the wrong tools or you just don't have access to the right tools that are going to get the job done.

One of the tools you might be using is willpower, and I see this a lot in my coaching. When you experience an urge or you have this desire to snack and overeat, most guys try to navigate that urge using resistance or willpower, trying to power through it. Try to white knuckle and just say I'm not going to eat that, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to eat that. And they're doing this not knowing just how ineffective this tool is, because whatever we resist persists. So inevitably, if you're using willpower, it's only a matter of time before you're going to give in. We know this because willpower is a limited, finite resource. Life is going to happen, there's going to be stressful events, there's going to be things come up, and so if you're using willpower, it's like using a hammer to try to get a screw into the wall. It might work, but it's going to make a big mess. It's not effective. You need the right tool to get the job done.

The other thing I'll say about resistance and willpower is it's not a conscious process. You don't really learn anything, so you're not really changing and growing as you try to lose weight and eat less, not learning anything new about yourself, you're not developing any new skills. Right, it always leads to the same place, and that means inevitably giving up and putting the weight back on. So instead, you want to be conscious and learn from the urge and the emotion that you're experiencing, and, for my opinion, this means following the emotion through from start to finish, and we do this by developing and cultivating equanimity. Now, I like the word cultivate because it inherently implies this conscious effort, a connection to a desired outcome. It means learning through curiosity. Okay, so that's how I want you to kind of focus on this is that we're going to cultivate equanimity. It's something that we can build. It's something that we can work on and develop. It's something that we can build. It's something that we can work on and develop.

So why is equanimity so important to weight loss and managing urges and hunger? Well, first let's define equanimity. So equanimity refers to the state of calm, the state of calmness, composure and emotional balance, especially in challenging and stressful situations. It involves being able to maintain a sense of this inner peace and stability, regardless of what's happening externally. If and when you embody equanimity, you have this significant resilience and tolerance to all sorts of situations. So, no matter what happens externally in your life situations, so no matter what happens externally in your life, you will not need to seek comfort or joy or pleasure in food. So you kind of develop this force field around you, develop this superpower. Really, and what's so important about this is there's so many circumstances in life that we cannot control. Life is going to happen, and I see this all the time. Guys I coach who want to willpower through a kid being sick or an uncertain event coming up right, but when they add up and they compound, this inevitably exceeds the willpower that they have and they give in. So equanimity allows us to face all of life's challenges and capital A-N-D still pursue our wellness goals, our weight loss goals and any health goals that we have.

So equanimity can be viewed as this combination of inherent traits, learned skills and ongoing practices. So all of these things contribute to a balanced and composed way of being. So it's a trait, it's a skill and it's a practice. So some people naturally possess a greater capacity for equanimity due to their personality and their life experiences capacity for equanimity due to their personality and their life experiences and then this manifests into a general tendency to remain calm, composed and balanced in all sorts of various situations. So if you have that trait amazing, you can continue to utilize that and that's going to help you in your weight loss journey. But if you don't, or you possess a little, very little equanimity, it is a skill that can also be developed through deliberate practice and training. So it is a skill.

Speaker 1: 6:19 

This involves learning and applying techniques, which I'm going to talk about in a minute, techniques like mindfulness, acceptance and gratitude. These are all great ways to cultivate a greater skill of equanimity. And, of course, it's a practice, right. So equanimity is often considered this practice that requires ongoing effort and commitment to maintain and, as you continue to kind of cultivate it using these strategies, you will notice a greater sense, trait and skill of equanimity in your life. So how do you cultivate this?

Really, what it comes down to is a practice of mindfulness, emotional regulation and awareness, and you can do this using what I've identified as nine strategies. And just think, imagine if you developed this tool and this superpower to be able to stay calm and composed internally, emotionally, no matter what was happening outside of you. As I said earlier, you wouldn't need food to feel better, you wouldn't seek comfort in food. So these strategies, these techniques, these are really, really powerful, and what I want you to do is pay careful attention to which one of these strategies resonates with you, as I kind of describe them as we go through. So there's nine of them here and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on each one, but you listen and just kind of decide which ones work best for you.

So the first one is mindfulness meditation. Right, when we regularly meditate, we develop an awareness of our thoughts, our emotions, the bodily sensations that we have, without judgment, and then this awareness allows us to respond to situations more calmly, because we're much more in tune with what's happening in our body and we're much more understanding of what these sensations mean, right, rather than just being unconscious and reacting to them. So if you do not meditate, I recommend starting with five minutes a day and then, just you know, start by focusing on your breath, noticing what's going on in your body, and let these thoughts kind of float through your mind, and then leave your mind and go away, and then a new thought will come in and let that float away. And there's lots of great resources on YouTube which you can go to five-minute meditations. That's the best place to start. The downside of meditation is it takes time to integrate. So you might meditate for five minutes, you might feel more calm, you might feel more relaxed, but there's also a chance you won't see an immediate benefit right away, but I promise you, if you stick to it, what you're going to do is you're going to cultivate a stronger sense of equanimity as you go through.

The second strategy this is one of my favorites is mindful breathing through. The second strategy this is one of my favorites is mindful breathing. It's kind of like meditation, but instead we pay attention to our breath in a moment. Throughout the day, we check in with our breath and we do this by doing a number of techniques centered around moments of stress or anxiousness or anxiety and stuff like that. The reason why I love breathing so much is because it can provide immediate relief, so it can integrate really well.

And I have three favorites that I want to share with you, and I've talked about these before on other podcasts. But my first favorite is the physiological sigh. Okay, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time here on it. You can go and research what physiological sigh is. There's been a ton of research coming out showing just how effective it is in terms of managing our emotions. The other one that I'm really fond of is coherent breathing, and this is a really simple one where we match our inhale with our exhale, and it's usually over an extended period, so say five to 10 seconds. You know we build up, obviously, but that's what we want to focus on is a sort of matching our inhale with our exhale. And then the last one is what's called a four, seven, eight technique. That's my, my final favorite one. I mean, there's so many techniques, but these all have a really strong impact in four, seven, eight. Basically, you breathe in for four seconds, you hold for seven and then you exhale for eight seconds. Okay, so I personally would start there, as I'm trying to build more and more equanimity. This skill, this trait, this practice, equanimity.

The next strategy is acceptance. By practicing acceptance of things as they are, without trying to control or resist them, is really, really powerful. It just doesn't mean that you passively accept everything. Rather, you acknowledge the reality and then you choose how to respond in a conscious and constructive way, okay, rather than just denying or pushing things away. Again, that's resistance. Except, hey, I'm having an urge, this is normal, it's okay, and instead of just trying to power through that, can you accept that? It's there the next one that I talk a lot about, this one in my coaching.

But self-compassion is essential to integrating all of the work that you do. It's really really difficult to beat yourself up and expect positive change Just not going to happen. So you want to be kind and compassionate toward yourself, especially during challenging times. That means sort of treating yourself in a kind way, right, positive, kind self-talk. The next one is perspective taking, and this is where you try to see situations from different perspectives and this can help you develop again more self-compassion, more empathy and understanding and reduce those negative emotions. And a lot of times when we get into situations, we've just been conditioned so often in repeating those situations that we kind of put these blinders on and we don't really take other perspectives, and so these all kind of compound by the way too. So when you meditate, you do self-acceptance and self-compassion, and breathing this helps you gain a better perspective. Certainly same with the next technique, okay, number six which is a gratitude practice. So when you cultivate gratitude by regularly reflecting on things that you're grateful for again, you start to shift your perspective into a more positive frame of mind. Right, and again this promotes a more balanced outlook and especially when times are difficult or challenging, you have this sort of bank of gratitude to draw from.

Speaker 1: 13:01 

The next strategy is number seven, and this is just taking care of your physical well-being. So through regular exercise, getting adequate sleep again, all of these relaxation techniques I'm talking about this contributes to again a greater sense of balance and again it builds more tolerance and resiliency, not just physically but emotionally. When you work out, when you exercise, you are challenging yourself. If you're doing it correctly, you're pushing the limits, and what that means is, again, you build this confidence about what you're able to manage, especially in difficult times, and imagine if you have this really strong practice of working out anytime an urge comes up. You're going to have so much more confidence and belief that you're able to work through that.

Now, similarly, not only do you want to build a tolerance and resiliency, you want to limit the negative things that are impacting us on a daily basis. And so number eight is all about limiting stressors, and I've talked a lot about this before, where it's important to set boundaries in your life. There's people in your life who have a negative impact with you. Do you have to cut them out completely? No, just make sure that you are setting boundaries so they aren't just draining you of the energy that you need to do this work, and that might be people at work, might be people in your family. It might be external things like the news or social media as well. We often go to those things, to the news and social media to seek a release, not knowing that they're actually having the opposite effect release not knowing that they're actually having the opposite effect.

Speaker 1: 14:42 

The last one, which I think is really important you go into any other research on longevity and health span. It always comes back to the social network that you have and the community that you're surrounded by, so seek support. This means connecting with supportive friends, family members, having a coach or a therapist so that they can help you develop even more equanimity when times are difficult, again, these people build you up. So it's the opposite of someone who sort of invades a boundary, so these are people that strengthen you. Sort of invades a boundary, so these are people that strengthen you.

I just laid out nine different strategies that you can use to build a greater sense of equanimity and, of course, this was going to have a huge impact on how you eat, how you relate to food and how you relate to your body and your wellness. So here's my challenge to you I want you to pick two of these strategies, whichever ones resonated with you the most, and then dedicate five minutes each day to practicing them, and maybe you alternate one one day, one the next, but five minutes a day. You can set an alarm, you can set a reminder, and just start doing these. I want you to give yourself 30 days to show up and practice and I promise you you will start to notice changes in yourself you did not think were possible. You're going to have so much more resilience, so much more calmness in stressful situations and, with this increased tolerance, you're going to have way less urges, or, when you do have an urge, it's going to have way less of an impact on you. You're not going to desire food and snacks the way that you do now.

If you want to do this work with other people, I encourage you to reach out to me, because this is the work that I do with my one-to-one clients, and I do this with guys in the arena, which is my online community, where I host weekly coaching calls and challenges and different events. All right, that's all I have for you, guys today. I hope you really enjoy using this new tool, this new way of looking at how to develop yourself, how to work on yourself, so that you have so much more tolerance and resiliency when and if life gets really challenging. Thank you so much, guys. Keep showing up doing uncomfortable work and we'll see you next week. Now is the time to take action and change your life. Head on over to thespearmethodcom and discover how I can help you get started on your path to better health and weight loss.