The Limitless Self - Exploring the Boundaries of Human Potential

Pucker up Butter Cup: The Trojan Horsification of Coffee

November 11th, 2018Ben1 Comment

Can you remind me why we’re putting goat colostrum in our coffee again? I’ll come right out and say it – I’m in LOVE with coffee. I love buying it, brewing it, smelling it, and the feeling I get when I (regularly) dink too much of it. I’ve read every book on the history of coffee and coffee house culture, taken a barista workshop, and own 12 types of coffee makers ranging from the simple trendy AeroPress to the shiny handmade vintage Italian La Pavoni manual espresso machine. I even made an online course on alternative brewing methodologies [true …

Is the Internet Making Us Dumber?: Prognosis Negative

November 2nd, 2018Ben3 Comments

I recently jumped back into wordpress after a hiatus and discovered some surprising new features. Namely, the readability analysis. This addition to the Yoast plugin crawls your content for sentence structure and essentially prompts you, via realtime feedback in the editor panel, how to improve your post’s readability. (The current readability for this post thus far states, “needs improvement” and is ranked: frowny face): Suggestions offered include: Flesch Reading Ease: The copy scores 45 in the test, which is considered difficult to read. Try to make shorter sentences, using less difficult words to improve readability. Transition words: Only 20% of the …

The Beginner’s Mind: Podcast Episode #001

October 18th, 2018Ben0 Comments

Episode #001 – notes The Beginners Mind enables us to move from the fixed to the growth mindset and paves the way for enthusiasm which is really the driving force for accomplishing anything. It’s about Flipping the script and shifting the focus from outcome to process. Everything we care about comes from consistency of practice (for better or for worse). Everything, positive or negative, from success at work to six-pack abs, or obesity to cancer, happens by process – not event. Barring a cataclysmic or a lottery winning event, We don’t just wake up a radically different state, of happiness, health …

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On Having Fun and The Flip Side of Health

January 4th, 2017Ben2 Comments

I thought I’d start off the New Year with this post about the important (but often overlooked) role that FUN plays in performance, health and life. Up until a few years ago, I always focused on getting healthy or improving my health so I could have more fun. Then at some point, I’m not exactly sure when, I realized that my level of health was already sufficient enough to do any number of the activities (surf, travel, paddle, camp) that I really enjoyed. And I had and still have great fun doing them. Still, I found myself hungering for something. …

10 Signs that You’ve Joined the New Rat Race

December 15th, 2016Ben0 Comments

As I write this, I work in a co-working space. I find it ironic that there are so many people (myself included) who have ditched office culture and checked out of the rat race, only to build new offices and perhaps, join another race? Here are 10 signs that you may be a member: You’re marketing an online course on how to market online courses You sell ebooks on how to sell ebooks You’ve logged enough hours to have built a career from learning how to escape the trappings of having a career The number of books you’ve bought on …

Let Go: How and Why To Make Space in Your Life

March 25th, 2016Ben1 Comment

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark… ― Agnes De Mille It may be my selection bias or maybe it’s just because I live in New York, but I believe we’ve become OBSESSED with productivity and control. I myself have spent countless hours (and probably dollars) acquiring, learning and implementing elaborate systems for getting things done. Or creating “optimal” structures that oftentimes …

What I’ve Learned: Reflections back on 2015

February 11th, 2016Ben2 Comments

Ed Loh is an explorer of life’s greater questions. Of almost everyone he meets, Ed asks “What have you learned?” – So Ed, here’s what I’ve learned: We live in a universe of constant change. People come and go. So do jobs, finances, and all material goods. What matters most is not what we have, or even what we do with it – it’s how we are; our state of being. Are we happy? Are we uplifted? Do we uplift others by simply being ourselves? We’ve seen good friends pass in 2015. Locations change and careers transition. Amid life’s challenges, …

How to Reclaim Your Life (10% at a time)

November 26th, 2015Ben1 Comment

You didn’t sleep. You’ve been on the move. You’ve given so much to your work, family, friends, and daily routines. You wake up each morning, check your browsers, check your email, your facebook feed. You do your due diligence. Comment. Like. You keep up to date on current affairs. Forty in your inbox. Six new invitations. You spend time responding, money consuming, energy working, brain power thinking. You recoup it on the weekends, or so you try. Socializing, sleeping in, dancing with stars and staring out windows. Another year goes by. Nothing has changed. So you invest in a therapist …

On Living with Impermanence

November 14th, 2015Ben0 Comments

Recent events in Paris have acted as further potent reminders of our fragility, uncertainty and impermanence on this earth. What do we do with our time here? How do we persist in the face of such chaos? This post simply summons wisdom from the following quotes I’ve collected over the years and found to be most profound in addressing feelings of uncertainty. If you have any quotes to add, please do so in the comments below… Quote #1 from – The Epic of Gilgamesh – A powerful reminder to make the absolute most of what little we have and to show up …

How to Catch the Ultimate Ride (in surfing and in life): A lesson in discernment

November 13th, 2015Ben1 Comment

Yes! Another surfing post! Sort of… In my recent post on the power of taking a pause, I used surfing as a proxy to convey the value of slowing down in “critical situations.” Now I’d like to share another insight that came from my beloved sea. Although this post deconstructs the act of surfing, I believe the process can be replicated to expedite improvement for virtually any desired outcome. One question that I always find myself asking when striving to make tangible improvements in any aspect of my life (physical, mental or beyond) is, “what’s the most important thing?” – There’s …

Be the Person Your Dog thinks You Are

November 13th, 2015Ben0 Comments

Be the person your dog thinks you are… The first time I heard this was last year from Dr. Joe Dispenza at the Quantum Medicine conference. Joe is a person who has completely re-wired his brain and rebuilt his spine after shattering his back in a bike/car collision. He did this using the power of focussed intent and he has the scientific data to back it all up. His books, You are the Placebo as well as Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself lay it all out plain and simple and provide many similar NLP methodologies I wrote about in …

The Power of the Pause: Why you must slow down in “critical situations”

November 12th, 2015Ben1 Comment

This is a topic I’ve been wanting to tackle for a long time. It’s so freaking simple that I debated whether or not it even warrants a post. But last night as I sat down to dinner with a friend, we began talking about this feeling of “inner urgency.” And that wasn’t the first time. Almost every friend I’ve spoken to recently has expressed this same feeling. Some are launching startups while others are working steady jobs. But what came up consistently was an insatiable feeling of rushing toward accomplishment or producing some result. I know I’ve felt this way …

Ben Ahrens on Uplifting Vitality, Self-Optimization & Sustainable High-Performance

November 1st, 2015Ben0 Comments

In a recent interview, I had the pleasure of joining Alex Charfen of CHARFEN and identifier of the Entrepreneurial Personality Type (EPT). In this interview, we discuss the role of vitality in healing, recovery and life at large. Vitality, as I’ve come to define it as “the capacity to create”, is the most valuable and at the same time underappreciated resource most entrepreneurs possess. My aim is to fix that. Check out this fun interview: EP.25: Ben Ahrens Shifted the Paradigm of Medicine and Health with One Deep Breath0 Sep 24, 2015 – show notes: Ben Ahrens began his entrepreneurial …

One Windy Morning

October 16th, 2015Ben2 Comments

Wind howling out the window. Trees bending like straws in a breeze. Bushes growl and scratch at the walls. But inside all is calm. Cold air blasts thatchings, seeping seemingly through the inner walls. Summer has set. Calm turned to chaos. But inside all is calm. Chills overtake the surface of the skin. The ears hear howling; the eyes see white-caps. The mind thinks thoughts; fearful thoughts of nature and impermanence. But inside there is love. One windy morning is a short poem about impermanence inspired by friends who have recently departed. May it remind us that hurt and sorrow …

What Matters Most

October 13th, 2015Ben2 Comments

It’s so simple yet so elusive. I thought I had it figured out; the thing of greatest value and what it is that matters most. Vitality, of course! Without vitality (aka, life force, energy or the capacity to do our work on this planet) what else really matters? Sure money is important and so is time. But we all know that money without time has no value. Just as we may now assume that money + time without vitality ultimately has no use. But is there something else? Something who’s value is even more fundamental such that in it’s absence, even …

Change Your Attitude – The Power of Choice

October 1st, 2015Ben2 Comments

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d never been so close to death, or so I felt. We’d been hiking for 3 days with no food and little water. Five hours ago the muscles up the back of my legs and base of my spine were cramping in spasm but now there was little energy for them to even attempt self-preservation, let alone power my staggering footsteps further up the mountain. I veered off the rocky path and collapsed into a heap, panting, sweating and freezing at the same time as the early spring sun set off the …

Don’t Chase Happiness, Chase “Hell Yes!”

September 26th, 2015Ben1 Comment

Let’s talk business for a sec. This business of “being happy”, aka the notion that our primary goal in life should be, to be supremely happy in all situations and at all times. (Just now, after I wrote that second sentence, I popped it into google out of curiosity and here is the first thing I found.) As a culture we hold this notion that business, wealth, success (and sometimes secrets) will guide us to happiness. We hold the precept that happiness is the goal. We’ve made a terrible mistake. Happiness is not the goal but the measure of success. It’s …

The Art of Equanimity: Finding Calm In Chaos

February 1st, 2015Ben6 Comments

e·qua·nim·i·ty ˌēkwəˈnimitē,ˌekwə-/ noun mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. This word continues to take on new meaning for me. It first entered my lexicon in the fall of 2007 when I attended an intro to meditation class at the Tibet House on west 15th street. Everyone was going on about the virtue of equanimity and ways it could be practiced, and I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Years later, I’d begin to understand… Some time, but not long ago, I found myself in a frenzy of turmoil, as the compounding losses of …

Making Tea & Cookies

January 15th, 2015Ben5 Comments

I swore after college that I’d never take another writing class as long as I lived… Some promises, perhaps, are better off broken. We’ll see… This past Tuesday evening I found myself willingly sitting amid a classroom of writers in a YMCA Literary Arts, creative non-fiction class. Listening as my classmates read their work, it struck me how we all use the same words to form such distinct impressions. Below is my first assignment. Its’ message is simply this: We all start out with the same raw ingredients in life, be they words, concepts, or even tangible goods, to some degree. …

The Eye of The I: A Book Review of Works That Started A Journey

December 19th, 2014Ben0 Comments

One of the books that got me started several years ago down my path to personal evolution and the pursuit of absolute truth. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Hawkins describes and explains advanced states of consciousness and the way to spiritual Enlightenment. It includes dialogues with spiritual students worldwide. For the first time, a cogent and verifiable means of confirmation of spiritual reality is provided via an objective, replicable method of measurement, based on physiologically derived clinical evidence. I can recall reading the first time after a host of my own anomalous experiences and remember the profound sense of …