Ways to Find Happiness in Life - Is Extreme Well being on Your “Must Have” List?

Play the Brain-Centered Integration Game

Well being is feeling really good. Where everything seems to be clicking — you feel physically well and good about yourself, your relationships and your life. Ratchet that up any amount and you enter the realm of extreme well being. If that isn’t on your list of “must haves,” put it there! The 21^st century offers opportunities like never before. 

In the year 2000, having studied the issue exhaustively, the White Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine declared that a “biopsychosocial–spiritual” approach to healthcare was optimal.

When I read that, I could hear the collective ‘forehead smack’ as people thought, “Really? An exhaustive study to say something as obvious as that?”

It’s common sensical. If you want peak well being, you improve every area of your life. The thing is that although we may know that, we forget. We focus on one or two, maybe three areas at the expense of all the areas let alone the key strategies within each one.

Here’s a list. Just scan it. It’s got the six life wellness areas and some key examples of strategies within each one. Before you finish it and begin to freak out because it seems like so much, by the very end of this post you’ll learn that there is more to it than meets the eye:

1.      Physical

·         Exercise — both aerobic and strengthening

·         Nutrition — including optimal food, fluid and fasting

·         Sleep, rest and relaxation

·         Self-health, supplementation and partnering with professionals

2.       Mental

·         Learn about your personality and how you uniquely experience things

·         Understand the story of your family and childhood

·         Discover how to change your behavior and thinking

·         Laugh; have fun

3.      Social

·         Learn communication, assertiveness and negotiating skills

·         Nurture your relationships with love and attention

·         Create supportive and empowering social networks

4.      Cultural

·         Prepare for disasters

·         Learn to manage your time

·         Learn how to organize your finances, home, work and life

5.      Moral

·         Clarify and live in accord with your values and principles

·         Discover your life’s passion and go after it!

·         Do things to continually give back

6.      Traditionally Spiritual

·         Practice your religion if you have one

·         Regularly recount what you are grateful for

·         Give and ask for forgiveness — a lot

·         Find beauty everywhere

Ok, here’s the catch — actually catches.

First, to have extreme well being, you need in some way or another to practice everything on this list and whatever else you can think of that’s relevant to you.

I know, it’s hard to do everything. I get it. And remember what you saw was a partial list. We need a lot of help to practice all of these things. No problem. I have that covered in a new SatoriWest “LifeClub” that you can find out more about later.

Anyway, 100% perfect is not what we’re aiming for. Mostly because it doesn’t exist — which can make it tricky to achieve anyway. Try for about 70% to 80% of the strategies and we’re cookin’ with gas.

Two, now that I’ve said the above, not only do you need to practice all these strategies, you need to do them at about the same time. (Ouch. That probably sounds even harder than the first catch.)

The overall strategy is to practice at least one key strategy from each area of wellness to begin and work up from there. If you can do that, the synergy, the multiplication effect takes over. Not only will you get a higher return of investment, so to speak, but it will make adding more strategies that much easier! In other words, your life will evolve at a much faster pace.

Three, at the heart of the matter, not only do you need to practice one if not most strategies from all these areas, and at about the same time, you need to integrate them. By integrate what I mean is that you practice each strategy with this common end: developing your higher brain.

“Developing your higher brain? Huh?”

Ok, let me back up. There’s a little fact central to total wellness that I left out. Extreme wellbeing basically requires only one thing! It’s the one thing from which everything arises and the one thing you must aim for in return: A highly developed higher brain.

Before you injure your neck shaking your head back and forth, I’ll try to unravel this for you.

Really briefly, when you develop your higher brain you wake up to something that you had previously taken utterly for granted: that your existence is crazy unlikely. It’s rare beyond imagination…and because you can be aware of it, because you can experience it, makes each moment a true miracle. (Learn more about that here.)

If you were to grasp the miracle of your existence — even a tiny bit — you would be in a state of amazement. Grasp it a lot and you would be astounded by your very existence each moment of your life. You would appreciate everything — good or bad! Nothing could take away a deep and abiding happiness and inner peace. You would flow easily through each moment.

That’s also the core definition of peak wellness: Being so aware of, amazed and grateful for your own existence that…

·         your level of physical vitality and health shoots up.

·         happiness skyrockets while inner calm settles in.

·         your relationships become empowering, loving and effective.

·         you are more successful in almost everything you do.

·         you discover a passion to make a difference in the world.

·         there is a sense of connection with everything around you.

To name just a few ways your life improves.

So, you might be wondering, “Well if developing your higher brain inside your head is all it takes to have extreme levels of wellness, why bother talking about wellness? Why practice wellness in every area, at the same time, and directed to…oh, directed to developing your higher brain. I get it. One thing leads to the other. If I practice wellness in a way that stimulates my higher brain and strengthen my higher brain from the inside I’ll experience a quantum leap in wellness and wellbeing.”

That’s the SatoriWest Method: strengthen your brain from the inside while practicing wellness strategies at the same time to make it easier and easier…and you head straight to extreme wellbeing!

To find out more about the SatoriWest Method and SatoriWest Life Clubs, go to SatoriWest.net. 

An open letter to Global Visionaries Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Larry Page, Jeff Skoll, George Soros, Bill Lee and Warren Buffett.

Dear Gentlemen,

Because of you, the world is already going to be a much better place. Thank you.

Still, I’m sickened when I hear about violence, abuse and poverty—especially on a large scale. I’m saddened because I know the root of the human strife causing this is treatable. It stems from the fact that the human mind causes people to suffer. Everyone struggles emotionally with life—even if their lives are outwardly successful. This observation has been true since humankind began.

Yet, the 21^st century offers a historic and rare opportunity for a radical, global transformation. You ought to investigate it. A detailed, scalable and workable plan exists which could, with your support, accomplish what would have been considered crazy, improbable or impossible decades ago…

Make the development to “spiritual” Enlightenment, as a brain and wellness science, so accessible it is commonplace in the world!

What does this boil down to? Teach people to see how miraculous—how incomprehensibly rare—each unique moment of their existence is. This is simple to understand yet challenging to do because it is requires a brain skill. Yet, when people learn to cherish the fact of their existence in each moment—“good” and “bad”—their sense of happiness and wellbeing skyrockets. They connect with each other on a deeper level without ego-defenses and fear.

This is a brain and wellness approach to “spiritual” attainment that gives people of different cultures and religions a common language and principles.

I realize that people have basic physical, safety, social and psychological needs. Yet, with modern advances in the science of neuroplastic brain development, contemporary life-wellness and social psychology it is often possible to bypass lower stages and go to the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to find the peace and contentment of Enlightenment. This ancient discovery can be a practical reality throughout our world today.

I bring unique qualifications to this undertaking—as a long-term, experienced Zen meditation practitioner, MD psychiatrist, former brain researcher, PhD Natural Health Science, author and previous medical administrator. To manifest this integrative approach (called the SatoriWest Method) making it is practical and scalable, I engineered the SatoriWest LifeClub. A community-centered LifeClub helps people get the help, training, guidance and support they need to make fundamental changes in how they experience the world.

An affordable LifeClub has been launched online. It will someday be followed by still affordable brick-and-mortar LifeClub centers located in regions throughout the US and world. Each LifeClub center in an area will be surrounded by LifeClub satellites (mini-LifeClubs) installed in other businesses, e.g. healthcare, fitness, schools/universities, churches, corporations, retirement communities, military, mental health. This is what makes this approach so scalable.

The skeleton of this plan is in place. However, the global change humanity is capable of will never be seen in our lifetimes. Not without you! There is a ton of research and development needed to make the approach even easier, the language clearer, the strategies more powerful, the marketing more global, the website more user-friendly, the operations team more effective, etc.

Please check out our crowdfunding launch at Indiegogo.com and help us now, or explore SatoriWest.net or better yet contact me directly through info@satoriwest.net. I will answer every question.

Be the defining catalyst for this movement and watch the unfolding of a massive global shift in consciousness and wellbeing.

In gratitude,

Jeff

Jeff Skolnick, MD, PhD

CEO, The SatoriWest LifeClub

Live in world you can only dream of. Leave a world you can be proud of.

The SatoriWest LifeClub - Quick overview

The SatoriWest LifeClub was designed to help people change their lives. It can help you be happier, healthier, more at peace and grateful. But what exactly is it? What does it mean to join? What do you do if you are part of a LifeClub? These questions are answered in a quick 2 minute video - check it out.

Click here to view the video

Click On Press Release To Visit The Campaign

6 lessons learned (so far) from a struggling Indiegogo campaign

We are a company called the SatoriWest LifeClub…and we have an Indiegogo campaign. I am the operations director and I wanted to share with you a few things we have learned, so that you might avoid the same pitfalls.

Our company vision and mission statement are transformative. We want to start a global movement because we have a formula that helps people change the wiring of their brains to be more content, peaceful and calm.

Like many small businesses, we have the idea…we just don’t have the capital. We explored many ways to acquire funds and landed on crowdfunding. Our vision was that crowdfunding would offer us 3 things: Money, exposure and new customers.  We have 25 days left of our 40 day campaign and we have only raised 5% of our goal. Ouch. We haven’t given up, at all – instead we are taking a step back to assess (and share) what we have learned so far.

1)   Launch when you are ready, even if that means pushing your original deadline. Planning is not a joke. We were focused on getting our campaign out by the beginning of January. We stuck to the deadline rather than waiting until we were really ready. There is a ton of information on how to plan for your campaign and get ready…we kinda jumped the gun.

2)   The campaign will not market itself. This lesson goes hand in hand with making sure you have planned. People won’t just happen upon your campaign. You need to reach out and you need to be putting up new and fresh content. The campaign needs to be your top effort everyday of the campaign and other work projects need to be postponed.

3)   Your network of friends and family may not donate like you thought they would. Our team is small (4 people). We started counting up our combined personal contacts and we were confident at least 20 or 30% of our personal contacts would donate something. That has not been the case. It is not that they are unsupportive, but we made a mistake in estimating such a high conversion rate of close contacts. 

4)   Put on your sales person and marketing hat. We are a team of visionaries, creators, makers, implementers etc…  Marketing and sales are not something that comes naturally to any member of our team.  We feel like we are being pushy, or rude, or spamming.  This has led us to not reach out enough. We need to check our egos at the door and become sales people. Asking for money can be hard. Remember that you are offering people the opportunity to be part of something – not just pan handling. 

5)   Big ideas should be boiled down to an actionable list. Our concept is big (we have a monthly membership club that is designed to help people manage their complex lives and rewire their brains). We focused on getting people to understand the high level goals of our business model. What we offer is transformational and we hope to start a global movement. But, our campaign message isn’t tangible enough for potential contributors to understand what exactly they are funding.

6)   You lose 10% of contributions made through PayPal. Yep…we should have read the fine print, but we didn’t think much of it. We wanted to offer campaign viewers as many options as possible to contribute. We wouldn’t change our decision to offer PayPal as a payment option, but we should have budgeted that into our contribution projections.

All of that said…Check out our Indiegogo campaign. Contribute to our campaign and be part of this global movement. (Of course we had to put in a shameless plug – see, we are practicing being sales people.)

We would love to hear your ideas for how we could have, or still could improve the chances of our campaign being successful.

I also want to say a sincere thank you to our backers so far. Thank you for getting our campaign started and believing in our mission.

Open letter to kindred spirits - let's change the world…one brain at a time

Live in a world you can only dream of. Leave a world you can be proud of. 

Open letter to family, friends and kindred spirits,

Join our campaign. We’ve launched a new, extraordinary company—called the SatoriWest LifeClub. It promises to significantly impact humanity—on a global level!

In case you haven’t met me, I’m Jeff Skolnick, the founder. I’ve spent the last 33 years studying and practicing meditation and have dedicated most of my free time and discretionary income over the last 17 years to one, powerful calling…

Make Enlightenment as a brain science so easy to access it’s commonplace throughout the world! 

I have a deep calling and unique qualifications to launch this company—as an experienced Zen meditation practitioner, MD psychiatrist, PhD Natural Health Science, former brain researcher, previous medical administrator and author.

This crowdfunding campaign helps us get:
   1. Widespread recognition to attract new members,
   2. Capital for needed short-term operations and development,
   3. The attention of deep-pocket visionaries.

Even a contribution of $10 will give enthusiasm and momentum to others to entice them to contribute. Join me and be part of a historic movement and company you can tell stories about starting when you’re older.

Here’s our campaign.

With gratitude and affection,

Jeff Skolnick, MD, PhD
Founder, The SatoriWest LifeClub

What is a Spiritual Life Coach?

LifeCoaching is all the rage in the US. Doctors, lawyers, therapists and psychologists are getting in on the trend. There are training programs at varying levels that can make you into a LifeCoach.

The idea is basic yet it can be effective: focus on the future, hold people accountable and help then hold themselves accountable for what they say they want in life…and voila, you’re a coach. You can take this role when it comes to helping people with self-healthcare, emotional growth, job and wealth creation, etc.

So what is a spiritual LifeCoach?

The term can mean different things to different people. It is a commonly used description. Let me share with you how we occasionally use the term here at the SatoriWest LifeClub.

Spiritual may mean religious to some. Associated with some religion. That’s not how we use it.  We view the word, “spiritual” to mean “issues dealing with one’s existence.” In other words, your unique existence as you experience it. In essence, the fact that you exist and the meaning you give to it is not just the subject of other people’s understanding. That’s religion. When you can experience meaning in and appreciation for your own existence—directly and first-hand, right here and right now—that is what we mean by spiritual.

At the SatoriWest LifeClub, this level of self-awareness doesn’t happen by talking about it. It doesn’t happen by thinking about it. It doesn’t happen because you have the right philosophy or because you can imagine it and wish it were so. It is a skill.

More specifically than that, it is a brain skill that we teach. We divide that brain skill up into learnable chunks or exercises. We call this brain development process Inshifting. That’s how we take you to a place of “spiritual realization.” Realization of the enormity of your existence. Realization of how incomprehensibly (incomprehensible by words) rare and miraculous your existence is.

And one more thing. At the SatoriWest LifeClub, we believe that these Inshifting brain exercises are learned faster and easier (or even happen naturally on their own) when you practice life wellness in ways that promote them. So, by how you take care of your body or relate to your health, how you observe your own personality and relate to yourself, how you nurture your relationships and relate to others, how you approach success and relate to goals, etc. can foster your spiritual development or hinder it.

So, how does a spiritual LifeCoach help you?

At the SatoriWest LifeClub, your LifeCoach is a coach in many respects. They may help you focus on and hold yourself accountable for any number of goals you may set in many areas of wellness, including physical, mental, social, modern living, values-based and traditionally spiritual. Traditionally spiritual means things like doing Yoga or meditation or even setting goals in your religion. And our LifeCoaches can help you focus your intentions on mastering the Inshifting brain development exercises.

At its core, a SatoriWest “spiritual” LifeCoach is as interested in helping you focus on now as they are in helping you focus on the future. The awareness and appreciation, the perspective and meaning of your existence right now is of paramount importance to them. As is should be of yours, if you want to learn to live life to its fullest.