Southmead hospital in Bristol is using robots to help improve services.
NHS hospital uses robot technology
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Category Archives: Mind Building
Covid: Israel Omicron spike could bring herd immunity but with risks – health boss
Health boss says Omicron may lead to herd immunity but it would be better achieved via vaccination.
Eating Raw in 2021 (Recap)
Happy New Year! 🥳
Since I ate mostly raw for 2021 – so many salads! – I can go back to eating more cooked food today.
Oddly I feel less motivated to do that than I expected. I fell into some very simple eating habits centered around fruit and salads, and that worked well for me. I’m sure I ate more greens this year than in any previous year. I got really good at making salads that I like.
There are a lot of foods that I haven’t eaten since 2020, such as pizza. I look forward to trying them again, but that feels more like intellectual curiosity than any sort of craving. I feel like my cravings for certain foods went down a lot. I got used to eating fairly simple meals this year, and now that feels pretty normal to me.
I like that eating raw makes my taste buds more sensitive, so everything tastes better than ever. I’d say that enjoy my meals more now than I did at the start of 2021.
I ended the year about 2 pounds less than I started. I gained some weight in the beginning from being a bit too piggish with high-fat foods, but then I toned that down and wove in 2 fasting days per month, and the extra weight came off easily.
This was a strange year due to COVID too, but it’s been one of my best motivationally and emotionally. One thing I like about eating lots of raw food is that it makes me feel happier and more motivated. I also experienced a different flow of inspirations throughout the year than usual.
I think the biggest change I experienced this year was taking some back-burner ideas, moving them to the forefront, and getting them done. These projects turned out better than I expected. One idea was to flow from the Amplify course launch right into the Conscious Growth Club opening. Another was decluttering and organizing my garage and finally processing old computers going back 20 years. Another was doing our first-ever online workshop. Another was my home theater upgrade project.
Eating raw helps me tap into under-expressed parts of me, like I can hear those parts more loudly and clearly, and I feel more inclined to trust them. Instead of talking myself out of so many ideas, I find myself getting into the flow of inspired action with more ease and less friction. So even though I spent a lot of time at home this year other than a trip to Philadelphia, it wasn’t a lazy year at all. I took a lot of action.
I feel like eating this way creates an ever-spinning energy turbine within me that fires me up with endless motivational energy. It’s really easy to get into the flow of action and stay there, as if my enthusiasm circuitry gets triggered more easily. This has been a great year in terms of momentum. It’s also been nicely balanced between work and personal projects.
The downside is that I sometimes take so much action in new directions that I have a lot of loose ends to fully close, like bits and pieces of projects that need to be tidied up. That isn’t so bad though since the ability to capture new opportunities faster is worth it. I also feel that I’ve been pacing myself pretty well.
Our Next Course – Guild
For this first quarter of 2022, we’re going to launch and develop the new Guild course, which is about building an aligned social circle. That with be our 5th major course.
A lot of people in my audience struggle with misaligned social circles, such as friends and family that don’t support their goals. I used to be in a similar situation, including being the only person I knew who was into self-development. Everyone else around me was skeptical or sarcastic about it. If I talked about any kind of growth-oriented goals, I could mainly expect eye rolls and discouraging commentary from the people who knew me. So I mostly kept quiet about these pursuits till I fixed that social alignment issue.
It will be very rewarding to guide people through the reframes and actions needed to meaningfully upgrade this part of life. Life is very different when the people closest to you are all supportive of your goals, and receiving daily encouragement becomes your normal, everyday reality. I found that a key to this is to practice compersion towards others as well. Compersion is the opposite of envy – it means feeling good about other people’s gains and successes. This really helps to get past neediness and to attract more alignment.
If you’re an ambitious person, it’s especially important to upgrade your social circle to include more ambitious people, including people who keep you on your toes and challenge you to think bigger. I find that something inside me begins to dwindle when I don’t engage with high-ambition people enough. It’s so crucial to have people in your life who spike your motivation when you connect with them.
If you have some insights to share about your current social circle and how it affects you, I’d love it if you’d drop me a message via my contact form and tell me more about your situation, so I can ponder how I might be of service to you. I’d love to know what aspects aren’t working for you yet and if you have some clarity on what kinds of improvements you’d love to see in this area of life. We’re still in the formative stages of developing the course, and we’re going to co-create the lessons as we go with those who enroll. For previous courses, entire lessons were created because one person asked for help with a specific issue.
YouTubing
I also intend to get more into video in 2022. Inside CGC we’re forming a YouTubers mastermind group for members who want to upgrade their video skills and build up their YouTube channels. This has been getting some enthusiastic interest since a number of members feel the time is right for them to invest in this direction too.
I have about 55 videos on my YouTube channel, but that averages out to less than 5 per year since I did my first videos in 2009. I’ve dabbled with YouTube but haven’t invested a whole lot in it. I’d like to explore doing more with it in 2022, and I’ve already been making some upgrades and doing some prep in that direction. I’m very comfortable on camera, especially from doing so many Zoom calls and live events, but I’d like to explore how I can express more creativity through editing and other improvements too. Plus that will give me a chance to give my new MacBook Pro to the test – I’ve been loving it so far.
If getting into video is a match for you too, you might want to join us in CGC this year. We open for new members to join during just one week per year, which is always the last week of April. So mark your calendar around April 25th to check in with us then.
This is also a great time to set some goals and intentions for the upcoming year. I especially encourage you to think about your life in terms of relationships – like your relationship with your work, your relationship with your body, your relationship with your social circle, etc. Then think about what kinds of upgrades you’d like to invite in these relationships, focusing on what you want to experience internally. For instance, this year I intend to make the experience of video creation more fun, expressive, original, playful, and social.
New Year Honours: Whitty, Van-Tam and Blair knighted, Lumley and Redgrave made dames
Athletes, actresses, campaigners, Tony Blair, a Spice Girl, and an 11-year-old boy are also honoured.
Covid booster 88% effective against hospital treatment with Omicron
UK health officials said the latest data reinforces the importance of getting a third dose.
Paxlovid: UK medicines regulator approves second Covid antiviral pill
Paxlovid can cut the risk of hospitalisation in vulnerable adults by 89%, a clinical trial suggests.
Covid: UK incomparably better placed this New Year – PM
Boris Johnson urges revellers to take a Covid test and “remember the importance of ventilation”.
South Africa says Omicron wave may have peaked
Officials relax restrictions noting lower hospital admissions from the Omicron variant than feared.
Covid-19: Calls to give NHS staff priority access to lateral flow tests
Pressure on the testing system grows as the UK’s daily cases reach another record high of 189,213.
The COVID Omicron Surge (and Why I Got Vaccinated)
The current COVID surge is bigger than ever by a lot, particularly in Europe and North America. The daily infections rate blew previous records away yesterday in many places.
Here are some telling graphs showing daily new cases in some countries. Note how quickly the latest spike has shot up.
United Kingdom
France
Spain
Italy
Canada
USA
COVID is especially rampant in New York and Florida right now. The current surge makes New York’s previous surges look like little speed bumps. Those two states combined added more than 114K new cases yesterday, both hitting all-time records.
New York
Florida
Nevada
My home state of Nevada is starting to surge again as well.
California
Here’s neighboring California, which has a similar pattern to Nevada, except they have almost 40M people while Nevada has about 3M.
So in many places, there’s more contagious COVID out there right now than ever, and it’s still increasing rapidly.
Vaccination
Rachelle and I got our first vaccine shots on April 10 and May 8 (basically as soon as we could), and we got the booster on December 22. All three were the Moderna version.
The first shot was the easiest. I only had a little bit of arm soreness.
The second shot was the worst, with each of us being knocked out energy-wise for about 24 hours, except that Rachelle was laid up for the first day while my worst day was the second day. Within 48 hours though, we both felt fine.
We also had some fatigue from the booster shot, but it was milder than after the second shot.
As far as we know, neither of us has gotten COVID, but a lot of people we know have gotten it, including some CGCers. Some have had pretty mild cases while others had a really rough time. Some friends have lost family members to COVID.
Why I Got Vaccinated
I like to make decisions based on looking at the objective and the subjective sides. Normally I find the most clarity on the subjective side, so I’ll share a little about how I made this decision.
The objective arguments for and against vaccination are already pretty well presented by society, so I’m sure you’ve encountered an abundance of that by now. I’m not going to rehash those arguments here, partly because I don’t find that side the most interesting to consider.
What I did consider was which of the objective stories I found to represent the most interesting invitation to explore. Since I don’t have the means to personally prove or disprove anything about vaccination – it’s not like I have a bio lab in my garage – I could frame it as a question of whom to trust. But that type of framing is still too objective and not particularly helpful. I could spend weeks investigating and still not have a clear winner. It would be exhausting to try to make every meaningful decision that way.
A better subjective framing is to consider which story invitation looks most interesting or appealing. Which potential storyline do I want to personally participate in? Where do I want to take my story next?
One story aspect that appealed to me was regarding vaccination as a form of biological education. I’d be giving my body a taste of what’s coming up, so it can prepare itself. I was curious to see what the vaccine would feel like and how my body would respond to it. I liked the idea of pre-teaching my body something about the virus. I’d rather be biologically more prepared than less prepared. I like to explore, and vaccination seemed like an interesting way to let my body explore how it wants to relate to the virus.
By contrast I found the potential unvaccinated story lines to be unappealing. I probably would have gone that route in my 20s since it would have appealed to my rebellious side back then. I’d have gladly pushed back against society’s demands. Today I feel that that the rebel part of my story has run its course, so I don’t consider that to be interesting story today. I find that kind of story pathway too boring, predictable, and cliché. These days I prefer invitation into more refined and interesting storylines. I don’t have the same story tastes that I did when I was younger.
One reason I choose vaccination is that it quickly moves me through potentially boring parts of the story, so I can focus more attention on the interesting bits. By getting vaccinated I put the vaccination question to rest quickly. There’s nothing more to decide about it since I’ve already done it. I don’t have to waste any energy on fussing over whether or not to do it. This frees up mental and emotional resources that I can invest elsewhere.
Then I can look deeper into the big picture storyline that’s playing out in the world. The simulation is making a big, disruptive move here. Why? What’s the invitation in this shift? These are questions I find fascinating and very worthy of consideration. I’ve made numerous shifts in my life by pondering them, and I’ve been seeing a great deal of cooperative flow from reality in response.
One way I like to assess how well my story is doing is by how much life seems to be cooperating with my decisions. If I’m out of sync with life, my progress gets bogged down, and it feels like I’m swimming against the current. I felt that if I went the unvaccinated route, I’d be swimming against the tide. Reality was dropping plenty of hints that this would be an invitation into a very resistance-filled story path, and we’re seeing that play out today, such as with vaccine mandates. I looked at that branch of storylines and thought, “Blech! No thanks!”
On an objective level, the world seems like it’s been going kittywampus. But I have a deep and abiding trust in the flow of life since that’s the most permanent relationship I can invest in. I know that the objective story is just the surface, and there are much deeper happenings beneath that layer. The subjective layer of life has been unfolding in some really fascinating ways lately. I love where the story flow is going there. I’m glad that I didn’t choose to thrash around with the surface story in this case. I found much juicer invitations beneath that layer.
For example, since Rachelle and I have been spending a lot of time at home, we’ve invested more social time in Conscious Growth Club. There have been CGC Zoom activities pretty much every day this month, including playing games online, watching movies, and doing various activities together.
This week we’ve just begun putting together a mastermind group of members who want to invest in building up their YouTube channels for 2022 and beyond. That aligns nicely with many members’ lifestyle and business goals.
There’s a lot of interesting story playing out socially within CGC, and it feels like we’re getting better at coordinating our growth experiences, like our stories are synchronizing more than usual.
I feel like the COVID situation has been a gift. It blocked some avenues but presented an invitation to go deeper in different directions. In order to properly invest in these other storylines, I felt it was wise to speed through the vaccination chapter, so I could get to the good parts of the story sooner.
Subjective Decisions
I find that when I give a lot of thought to the subjective aspect of life, pondering the meaning and story aspects of key decisions, the overall flow of life is so much better, and I find beauty even in chaos.
When you get hung up trying to make decisions by weighing objective factors, I recommend flipping over to the subjective side. Consider that you’re living in a simulation and that your relationship with the simulation is the most important relationship of all because it’s your #1 most enduring relationship. Hence you’ve got to do your best to keep that relationship strong and healthy no matter what happens objectively.
What binds the objective and subjective viewpoints together is the lens of story. A story has objective events, and it also includes the inner experience of the characters. So a great shortcut to making good decisions is to consider how your decisions will affect the story flow of your life.
How will your decisions affect events? How will your decisions affect your inner experience? How will your decisions affect your overall relationship with life?
I felt that if I remained unvaccinated, it would likely cause issues in my relationship with life, like it would restrict the flow. I think I made the right call there since the flow has been excellent.
If you’re in the flow too, keep doing what you’re doing because it’s obviously working for you. But if you feel that life has become stunted or restricted, that’s an invitation to reconsider how you’ve been making decisions. Look especially at which decisions have been straining your relationship with reality, and set the intention to put that relationship first in your life and to keep moving towards greater harmony and meaningful story. Lean towards invitations to trust life even more.
