Self Improvement Archives - The Limitless Self

The Mind-Body Morning Ritual

November 20th, 2018Ben0 Comments

Win the morning, win the day. There’s a reason for our growing obsession with morning routines and rituals. They work. Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.” — Richard Whately I’m no stranger to ritual and routines. In addition to having researched and written about the neuroscience of routines from a medical perspective, I’ve also experimented extensively with routine variations ranging from the very complex to the bare basic elements needed for lasting behavioral change. What I want to share today, is a distillation of the distillate. The basic building blocks, or philosopher’s stone from which you …

Morning Mobilization Routine

November 16th, 2018Ben1 Comment

Here is a basic seriese of mobilization exercises you can do each morning to: Awaken the nervous system, Map activation pathways Increase flow of blood, oxygen and nutrients throughout the body If Motion = Life, then Stagnation = Death. Just look at the water quality of a flowing stream vs that of stagnant pond. The human body is no different. Whether we’re addressing it on the level of bio-energy, biochemistry, molecules or emotions – flow and movement is the natural state that will always lead to better wellbeing. Description Sleep is a time of inactivity. While key parasympathetic actions (digestions, …

The Beginner’s Mind #002 – Adopting A New Worldview with Josiah Bouricius

November 14th, 2018Ben0 Comments

Topics Discussed How do you shift your worldview? Precognition, synchronicity, dreams & intuition Recognizing your own responsibility and ability to change your life & health Spontaneous recovery and the “holy shit” of healing experiences The role of emotional processing for healing & recovery How & why to live consciously in the present moment If you have a big enough dream, you don’t need a crisis? Creating our own crisis – is there wisdom in it? The commodification of spiritual practices Conspiracy theories & conspiracy fact Stand up comedy Dream Journals About Josiah Josiah grew up in a family that was …

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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. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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. …

How We Make Progress in Work and Life

October 11th, 2014Ben2 Comments

Author, psychologist, and Silicon valley leadership expert Gustavo Rabin says: There are three things in life that better well work, in order for your life to work well… And they are: Your relationship to your work Your relationship to others, and Your relationship to yourself Many books have been written on all subjects in each category so I will not delve into psychology here. What will be most advantageous and get us to the point, will be the simple identification of the one universal roadblock that stands in the way of all personal, professional, and relational progress: Doubt. – Everyone …

How to Achieve Balance: by Accepting There’s No Such Thing

August 4th, 2014Ben2 Comments

At a glance it appears she’s done it. She has reached a “balance point” that prevents her from falling, but a closer look with a keener eye will reveal that what we think of as balance is actually achieved by a continuous series of self-corrective movements, each aimed at bringing the subject back to center. If you were to watch the gymnast up close, you could see that the muscles in her shoulders work constantly as she subtly shifts her weight forward and backward, side to side, to find and regain her center. Random little event after event will …

How to Use Procrastination to Foster Productivity

February 26th, 2013Ben1 Comment

Six months ago I made a fascinating discovery – I’m a procrastinator… but that’s not all. The fascinating part was that, if properly structured, my innate procrastinating tendencies could be redirected and applied to: 1) Fixing my sleep, and 2) Increasing productivity 5x We’ll get to how in a second, but first a bit of back-story – I’d been a poor sleeper my entire life. For as long as I can remember I’d suffered form “onset insomnia” (difficulty falling asleep) – It took some doing but resolved itself with some basic sleep highgene techniques (cutting out caffeine, sleeping in a …

Plugging Into Your Hard-wired Happiness

April 24th, 2012Ben0 Comments

The following presentation by Srikumar S. Rao, Ph.D was filmed in May of 2009 and made it’s way to the homepage of Ted.com on March 7th of 2010 where it has since been viewed nearly 500,000 times! The contents of this talk are universal, timeless, and absolutely true…. “Life is short. And uncertain. It is like a drop of water skittering around on a lotus leaf. You never know when it will drop off the edge and disappear. So each day is far too precious to waste. And each day that you are not radiantly alive and brimming with cheer …

The Art of Doing Less (and Accomplishing More)

March 23rd, 2012Ben0 Comments

I felt like starting this one off with something funny, and this clip get’s me every time! The following post is inspired by my friend Ari Meisel – founder of LessDoing.com Two things happened in the past three weeks that have profoundly influenced my sanity in a very positive way: 1) I went on a weekend-long silent meditation retreat after what had been one of the most chaotic, productive, engaging yet mind-scrambling months of my life, and 2) I attended Ari Meisel’s skillshare class in Soho, New York. The details of my schedule that lead to such catalysts are …

THE EXTREME MIND-BODY CONNECTION – PART I: How to Change Your Life, by Changing Your Mind (The Neuroscience of How Thinking Makes It So)

February 22nd, 2012Ben4 Comments

What follows in this three-part-post is a collection of examples, the implications of which not only open new doors for achieving potential, but completely negate the concept of Cartesian Dualism once and for all. Some of these stories might seem bizarre, others, down right impossible. But I’ve done the research and you can check it out too. The data is real. What you choose to do with this knowledge is up to you. At the very least, my intention with these posts is to get you thinking of the possibilities… What if you could: – Increase physical strength without moving …

Is Life What You Make of It?: Q&A

January 14th, 2012Ben2 Comments

Heard it before have you? “Life is what you make it.” Or, “The world is what we make of it.” – Sounds very Hallmark, or perhaps, like something you’d find in a fortune-cookie. Well, it’s time we crack that cookie open and examine the validity of its contents…. Q: Is life really what you make of it? A: Yes. Short story: Once upon a time, …

Total Reboot – Five Habits To Change Your Life

December 19th, 2011Ben11 Comments

The following post is an excerpt from my recent ignite talk at Habit Design: Topic: Five habits acquired over the past five years, which, assembled in the proper construct, have proven to be the most instrumental in actualizing significant and enduring change in all aspects of my life from health, to happiness, to self-concept, and general outlook on the world as abundant and positive. These habits, you might note, are quite broad. Whereas habits such as, tooth-brushing, regular exercise, and healthy diet are among those commonly targeted for improvement, consider the five habits on my list as “meta-habits”; ones that aim …

Habit Design – Must Read Articles!

December 13th, 2011Ben3 Comments

Here are the links I mentioned in last night’s talk. For anyone interested in understanding the real power behind techniques such as visualization, routine adherence, and NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) – I implore you to read theses articles. Each of them is guaranteed to blow your mind!:

Practically Letting Go – What Zen and Children Tell Us about Recovery

February 28th, 2011Ben5 Comments

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs, when a number of people are confronted with disaster; children often pull through ahead of adults. Author and survival expert, Laurence Gonzales, has read hundreds of accident reports and writes in his book, Deep Survival, of such instances when an experienced hunter gets lost in the woods and perishes in one night while a four-year-old survives. The underlying principle, he says, applies not only to wilderness survival but to getting through any demanding situation, be it divorce, loosing one’s job, or surviving illness. The question is: what do children do that we …