jorgeam

Welcome back to a new episode of The Better Self Show!

This is again one of those episodes that I share with you a recurring failure which is that I have not recorded for a few months so it feels that I’m starting over one more time. I come back with new ideas and with better audio quality as I got a new microphone to record.

In this episode you will hear about what is my current situation with this podcast and the ideas I have for the next 3 months on how to move forward with the project and with my life. I hope you enjoy 🙂

A dream digital job

For the last few years and specially the last few months I’ve been in this journey of creating content in the form of a podcast, a long lasting dream, and I have come to some conclusions so far.

While looking at some videos, reading articles and browsing through social media it occurred to me that there are so many people out there (like me) whose dream is to have a sort of ‘digital’ job.

You know the ‘clichés’… turn your passion to your career, escape from the 9-5 job, be your own boss, travel anywhere while working, create passive income, become a digital nomad… Yes, I am sure that you have heard of those terms before if you want to be an entrepreneur.

I also have that dream but the journey is far more complicated than it seems at the beginning, and one more time I ‘failed’ and I am back doing content again.

It is easy to see all those who are successful in having their own digital business but hard to notice all of those who have failed along the way in trying…

It takes time to build a brand and all the people who have successfully done so have also started from the lonely beginning like me.

So my intention is to share this journey with you so maybe you can get inspired to do the same, maybe you can come back to this content if I ever become successful with this business or maybe you can witness one more person trying and not getting it.

What skills have I learned

The past 9 months have changed my life in many good ways. I got the opportunity to participate in a volunteering program (European Solidarity Corps) funded by the European Union as an IT assistant for an NGO called GEN Europe. Also I got the opportunity to live in a thriving ecovillage while doing the work that I may becoming part of depending on how everything goes after 3 months.

In this time I messed around with creating and documenting websites to the point that I now feel comfortable to do a website for another person.

I also published this podcast with all the editing and producing that goes behind the scenes. And lastly I helped GEN Europe with creating their own podcast called Community: The Ecovillage Podcast to help to spread the word around ecovillages and sustainable lifestyle (which is wonderful!).

So now I am at the point where I have no income and have to pay rent and all that stuff. I have at least 3 months of spare expenses and have different ideas on how to help others with their businesses and hopefully generate some income along the way.

Life Coaching

In case you didn’t know yet, a few years ago I got trained and certified as a life coach. After some time I found difficulties in getting clients so I had to find a conventional job to make money having to leave it away… It is a skill that I feel deeply connected to and that I apply into my daily life, as well as philosophy.

At that time I always had the idea that it is easier to get clients if they get to know you before booking a session. Essentially that is now what I am doing with the podcast. I believe that there is a higher chance of getting hired if you share your own story so maybe people connect and resonate after hearing the podcast.

So the idea is to offer again one on one life coaching sessions for those of you who may feel in need of some assistance in setting and pursuing life or business goals.

With life coaching, active listening and powerful questions I can help you to go deeper within your self, redefine your goals and find your values so that you have a better chance in achieving those goals.

Website creation

Having a good presence in the internet nowadays is essential for any brand or business. A website is probably one of the first things clients check out before purchasing products or services so having one is very important.

Since I have worked a lot with websites in the past few months I now feel confident in offering you this service if you need it. If you want to find more details please get in touch with me.

Podcast creation

Whatever I do for my business is because I strongly believe in it. I believe that if you have a service or a product you probably have a lot of value to bring with your knowledge and experience. Having a podcast if a great way to help the world by bringing free value to many people and at the same time you can leverage whatever service you provide.

And even better with one piece of content (the audio) you can easily distribute it in many forms in social media so that in can reach even more people, again like I do with my page.

So if you are interested in exploring the possibility of having your own podcast please contact me. I am very passionate about this topic so I’ll do everything to help you out 🙂

Do you like the idea?

Well this is the intention of this next entrepreneurial phase that I’m living. To keep creating content for this podcast, and as income generation to start providing services for others who feel connected with my work.

So again, like always, thank you so much for listening to the episode if you did and for reading this content. I hope that it brought you value in some way and if you want to also bring me value with comments, feedback, support, or work please don’t hesitate to do so.

Thank you so much for being there and have a great day.

Ciao 🙂

Welcome to the last episode of the year! Today I bring a topic I believe can give you some food for thought as the number game is something that affect us in everyday life and we can get advantage of specially if you are a content creator or thinking about it.

The idea of the number game is not original of course, but it is an idea that occurred to me when I was talking with a friend and sharing about the podcast. I told him that I had 14 episodes recorded and he was really impressed by the number. Even admiring my work without checking it out… So I started to think on the effect a number can have in different things.

It is not quite the same to say that I am doing a podcast and I have several episodes than putting an specific number in front of it. It somehow shows the amount of work you have putted into a project.

The same happens to me when I see other content creators like podcasters and I see a number in front of the episodes… 1, 10, 50, 1000… Putting a number in front of things has a lot of advantages!

What is the number game?

Imagine 2 persons who have a podcast. Person A has 10 episodes and person B has 100 episodes. Just because one has more episodes than the other it does not necessarily mean that one podcast its better than the other. The only thing it means is that one person has more experience than the other and perhaps in consequence it may be better.

The point is that numbers help to have a preconceived image of something that we may not know of. An ability that is really important in the evolution of the brain but we can talk about this in another episode.

In essence, what I call the number game is to put numbers in front of anything and see how it feels or how it can affect inner and outer perception.

The numbers on the outside

Personally before I watch a movie or read a new book, I go to different review sites to check their ‘numbers’. How many reviews, how many starts, how many comments… and then I make a decision of whether it is worth my time to watch or read that book.

And this happens to many other situations in life… Like when going to a new city searching for an apartment or a restaurant, or buying something online. We are in constant influence by the numbers things have even though we have not really tried that product. Like it happened with the podcast. In a way we are guided by the numbers and then we make the ‘informed’ decision of investing into something.

How to take advantage of the numbers?

Playing with the numbers in daily life can also bring great advantages. In fact you could put a number in front of anything and see how it feels… How many times you do exercise in a week? Meditation? How many projects did you finish this month? How many books? How many episodes? How many articles?

The only number you can control is the number of things you do

I can control how many episodes I create, but I can’t control how many views, likes, comments, shares or reviews they will have. And it goes the same for many other parts of life. I can control how many times I can exercise in a week but I can’t control how I will perform each time I exercise (time, weight, repetitions…)

A little neuroscience behind numbers

Using numbers are a way of increasing dopamine. If you don’t remember about dopamine you can go back to the episode where I give an introduction to the neurochemicals of the brain. It is in fact easy to generate dopamine with numbers and I can give you my personal experience with this podcast.

At the time I recorded this episode I thought back to the first episode or the 10th. Because I haven’t recorded in a while I was feeling very lazy and demotivated, but when I looked back at how I felt the first or 10th time I recorded I felt much better because of all the work I’ve putted behind this project and it made me want to keep moving forward. To put down one more episode.

To go further, I even believe that the number game also boosts serotonin because looking back at the beginning makes me really happy to have come this far even if it is not so far. Especially cause I’ve been thinking about doing a podcast for 3 years and only now I’ve been able to create some episodes after such a long time.

And the same goes for coaching sessions. I say that I’ve done around 60 sessions and that already shows an experience and reputation even if you have not yet done a coaching session with me.

If you also think about serotonin as reputation, like I heard in a neuroscience book and hopefully one day we can talk about this idea. Then having numbers in front of things may increase the reputation of which people perceive something. 10 episodes, 100… 5 seasons on tv… 10000 book sales… and so on.

This technique that I apply into the podcast and other aspects of my life you can use it for anything in yours. So if it inspires you I totally encourage you to give it a try and see how you could apply it into your daily life. How many times have you meditated in the last month? and how many times did you do exercise this week?

Whatever you’re doing with your life or whatever habit you want to create, you can take advantage of the number game and all its benefits. Just put one more number down and keep track of it.

So that’s it for today! Thank you so much for being there one more time. I must share with you that for some reason the episode got cut off a bit at the end but I hope you don’t mind. Remember that you can support me in many ways so that I can keep going with the show.

One more time, thank you so much for listening to the episode, and I hope to see you on the next one! And happy new years 🙂

Ciao!

Welcome to episode 13 of The Better Self Show! Today we are going to talk about Philosophy vs Science and how to apply these topics into daily life.

First I want to be clear with you. The title of the episode may be a bit of a clickbait because it is not about the long time debate of philosophy vs science but more about what we can learn and how these topics affect us into daily life.

Philosophy definition

In order to understand this episode you may want a refresh on the definition of philosophy. The word comes from the greek, philo which means love and sophia which means wisdom. So philosophy can be defined by the love for knowledge. And you may guess by now that in some way or another we all love knowledge! So in essence are we all philosophers? Maybe we can talk about this in another episode if you wish, just contact me if you would like to learn more about it.

But we are not here to talk about what does philosophy, science or mathematics mean… Or if philosophy came before science and all that stuff…

I want to bring you a reflection on the struggle that we live everyday between the philosophical part of life and the scientific one.

Philosophy wants to question and answer long time thoughts that concern to all beings like what is the meaning of life, does God exist, or what is the purpose of life.

On the other hand, science can prove with data, facts and statistics that can be ‘certain’ about different life situations specially related to the physical world.

The need for ‘real’ facts or truths

I believe that nowadays in society you may often find yourself looking for real facts, or absolute truths about life, and that is great! But don’t forget about the free thinking and questioning that philosophy allow us to do even questioning things that have been ‘proven’ scientifically.

From the previous episode, thanks to the power of imagination we saw how things can be ‘real’ for our bodies even if they are not scientifically proven or are not present in the physical world.

When talking about life there are many things that are abstract and hard to prove… how can you prove life? imagination? feelings? life purpose? Relations?

For some strange reason I feel that there is a need in life to have certainties about the world. And not just certainties but the truth about life. We want facts and we want the truth! And my friend… the truth is a topic that has been studied for a long time in philosophy and I believe it is quite difficult to get universal truths in life.

You can say that there are absolute truths in life. In my experience, most of them come from mathematics and even science. 1+1=2 may be truth in all places of earth… or the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 180º.

But the truth within ourselves is a little harder to find.

Freedom of speech and Galileo Galilei

There is a very famous philosopher that you may know if you ever heard about utilitarianism or utilitarian ethics called John Stuart Mill. He wrote a book called On Liberty in which he talked about the issue of freedom of speech. On the top of my mind I remember he said that we should hear all opinions even if a person is totally wrong because truths or beliefs can change with time.

In science there have been statements considered to be true for many years that turned out to be wrong. In Galileo Galilei’s time there was the belief that the sun revolved around the earth and that was the truth in that time. He proved that it was the other way around, that the earth revolved around the sun and he ended up being condemned to die.

Science can prove things that later in life might be contradicted. Everything can change.

So be careful with ‘absolute’ truths, especially about life experiences.

Truth in daily life

On daily life you may get into an argument with someone and each of you may fight for your version of the truth. You may feel that what you are saying is the truth and that the other person is wrong… and at the end both of you may even be right!

An argument may fit better one person than the other, and it’s hard to find the absolute truth because each own has its own truth.

This need to be right may come from the ego and the ego is not the greatest source of knowledge. Just because you wanna be right or you think you have the truth… in the end you may be wrong!

Why science vs philosophy

We live in a time with lots of information. Tv, youtube, books, social media, random articles, podcasts… and you may believe things are right because an argument is convincing or you heard it from a ‘credible’ source without thinking about it.

What I advise here is to be a little more ‘Socratic’ here. To seize these opportunities to train your brain muscle, to question things. Not because you hear something in the news, or in the podcast you should believe it right away!

Like I say in the introduction of every episode. Make up your own mind about things and choose what you want to believe and fits your values and beliefs.

In daily life you are gonna see a lot of conversations about different points of view and its hard to find that fact that proves something right and makes it absolutely true. There is truth for each of the persons in this world.

In life it may be hard to know who you are and what are your truths. In the end you can choose to be whoever you wanna be.

Who you really are? What is the truth for you?

There are no facts of who you are. You can be one person today and different some years later.

Anything can change and you are the leader of your life.

Wow what a speech I gave you! I hope that you enjoyed the episode and that it brought you some value in any shape or form. I appreciate you being there one more time and remember that I would love it if you give me some feedback or if you can support the show in any way possible.

And if you wish to start working on yourself you can now book a coaching session with me to see where you at and what can we do together.

Thank you so much for listening, and I hope to see you on the next episode.

Ciao!

Welcome to episode 12 of The Better Self Show! For today we will talk about a very important topic for life that I discovered when I started studying neuroscience, which is the power of imagination.

Whether consciously or unconsciously we are using imagination all the time. Foreseeing what could happen in the future, thinking about anything that happened in the past, dreaming, putting ourselves in different situations with imagination…

It is good to remember, in case you haven’t heard the podcast, how powerful the brain is. You know, everything happens in the brain. When you move a finger it is because your brain sends a signal to your body to move it. When you breath or when your heart beats are also signals from the brain even if we do them unconsciously.

The power of imagination in neuroscience

Imagination is very powerful because it can produce close to the same sensations as in ‘real life situations’. It also generates neurotransmitters and other ‘chemicals’ that can make us feel as if we were living that certain situation.

I first learned about the power of imagination when I did a course on neuroscience. The ‘teacher’ or doctor who was working at a hospital in Seville told us a case study she did in her hospital. But first I must tell you that this story comes from my memory, I don’t exactly remember all details or have all facts on my hands. So you are free to believe it or not 🙂

A case study

She told us that there was a man who had an accident and his leg got severely damaged, so they had to cut it. When he went to rehab they tried a different approach using neuroscience, meditation, hypnosis and imagination as well as tracking the different muscle movements and brain signals.

So they would invite him to enter a ‘state of imagination’ bringing different situations, for example. Imagine you are in the jungle and you suddenly see a tiger and you run from it as far as possible… Or imagine that you are running a marathon and when you see the finish line you start running faster… And many other of those ‘imaginative’ situations.

After the study they found out that using imagination could be as powerful as living the ‘real life situations’. When he was thinking we has running the marathon, the sensors in his legs showed a great deal of activity. And the same with the other activities probing that using the power of imagination can be as strong as reality sometimes.

When I learned about this example I went crazy because it made a lot of sense to me, and with years it becomes even more clear nowadays. If you’ve listened to the show you may know how passionate I am about imagination and about the placebo, which I hope to talk about it soon!

Imagination and visualization for entrepreneurs

If you are into the world of ‘entrepreneurs’ and have heard or read a couple of them you may have heard about the concept of visualization and how some of them use it on a daily basis. Well, after the case study above it becomes clear that doing this technique can be very powerful.

It is as simple as imagining yourself in the future accomplishing a dear goal you may have. In my case, I sometimes imagine being successful with this project. Doing hundreds of episodes, having coaching sessions every week and even attending to conferences.. I know a bit ambitious but it certainly rises a lot of energy inside me that helps me to keep going with this dream.

The law of attraction

Imagination is widely used in the law of attraction or quantum physics. My goal here is not really to go deep into the law of attraction so if you are really interested in me talking about this topic you can get let me know!

There is a very famous book called The Secret where they showcase different stories of people using the law of attraction and imagination to think about a dream they want to accomplish everyday and for many of them ends up happening. There is also a documentary about this book really cool in netflix I believe also called The Secret.

The point I’m trying to make here is not whether ‘The Secret’ or the law of attraction are true, but to say that using imagination is really powerful and that it definitely generates ‘good’ neurochemicals by putting one’s self in a beautiful situation as making a dream come true.

The Placebo and Logotherapy

Inside the episode I give an introduction on both of these topics independently, The placebo and Logotherapy. If you want to hear the introduction I encourage you to listen to the episode. In both topics imagination is a key component for them to be true. I really hope that I can make independent episodes to just talk about these topics soon enough.. but in case you are interested in any of them and you let me know it would be cool and give me even more motivation to talk about them 🙂

A personal story…

Inside the episode I share my personal story of how I became vegetarian and how the power of imagination brought me there. I also share how I have done ‘imagination’ exercises with coaching clients and how it can bring many insights like ‘the empty chair’ exercise.

“Whatever you do in the physical world world if you don’t back it up with thoughts you’re just never gonna get there”

This quote is something I said inside the episode when I shared my personal story and I really liked it.

Anyways, I just want to thank you for being there reading or listening to the episode. Hope that you enjoyed and that it brought some value in whatever shape or form. And to remind you that you can support the show to help me to keep on doing more episodes and believing in this project in any way you can think of.

If you feel curious about the power of imagination and want to experience yourself you can book a coaching session with me.

Thank you again for being there, and hope to see you in episode 12!

Ciao!

In this episode you will hear about how the outer world can affect the inner world at all times. I was inspired to talk about this because I had this sentence in my head for some years now, ‘the outer world is a reflection of your inner world’.

Right before doing the episode I search for this sentence on the internet and funny enough (to me) it was a sentence I read in one of the first self development books that I read some years ago called, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” by T Harv Ecker.

It is sort of funny to me because of how some things that you read or you hear many years ago can stay inside and we may not even remember where they came from.. Part of the Why of The Better Self Show is to bring you these sort of ideas that you hear and you may remember for sometime after…

The outer world

There is a tendency in thinking on the outer world all the time. Weather, politics, economics, neighbors… It may be easier than actually sharing the things that we have inside. The good thing about this is that sometimes the ‘outer’ things can bring you insights about your ‘inside’.

I can give you a personal example. I am from Gran Canaria, one of the Canary Islands. There when I was on the late teens I realized that before going to study in the USA I found myself complaining all the time about the island.. The island sucks, it is small, there is not much going on here, always the same people, always the same landscape and so on…

With time I discovered that these sort of thoughts happened to a lot of people, and to my surprise they still do nowadays. But the most crazy thing to me it was that when I traveled to the States or to other places I found people with the same sort of thoughts. In that time I discovered the sentence, “wherever you go there you are”.

What I learned is that life doesn’t suck because of the place you live in. Live sucks independently of where you live. Your inner world is a reflection of the outer world. In this case if you see the place you live in as a bad place, and complain a lot about it.. how is your inside looking then?

Complaining about others

Complaining is engrained in our everyday lives, and if you wish I can talk about the neuroscience behind complaining on another episode, just let me know. In the episode I share a personal story where I found myself complaining about a friend’s behavior and how I found that whatever I was complaining about I had it in my inner self.

Whenever you are complaining about another person or place, try to see how much of that complain is reflected upon your inner self

Another example. You may have heard me in the show complaining about the guru’s of the internet, the happy hippie life coaches or the online marketing experts of the internet. Yes I am no saint here, I may just know that I know nothing.

In the end I may complain about these people because I am jealous or I admire the business they have built for their own, and I deeply wish that I can also do the same with this project. In any complain about the outside try to look at what’s inside.

Coaching examples of the outer world as inner world

In coaching I often do an very famous exercise that is used in many disciplines that I call ‘the empty chair’. It consists of having the client talk about his or her goal on a chair. After describing what is going on then you have that person stand behind the chair and describe what he observes in the person who was sharing before (himself). It is like looking at the inside from the outside.

To go a bit deeper. There is a variation of this exercise where you also bring other people and mentors. So that person moves around different positions ‘imagining’ what one of his mentors would say to him when in reality the mentor is being himself. It is hard to explain but if you have tried this exercise you may know better what I mean, and if you want to try then get in touch with me.

Apply it to your daily life

Everything is part of our live whether it comes from the outside or from the inside. And the outer world can perfectly be a reflection of the inner world. To apply this concept to your life what I do in mine is:

• Observe when you find complaining about someone, and think what’s in that complain that can tell you something about yourself?
• Look at your life right now. How is your room? Your kitchen? Your close relations? In what state are you right now? Think then how the inside is reflecting on the outside or viceversa

So that is it! Thank you so much one more time for being there, for listening to the episode, for you feedback, comments, question, likes.. And remember that you can support the show to help me to keep going with this beautiful project that I hope that it brings you value in any shape or form.

See you in the next episode!

Ciao!

Welcome to episode 10 of The Better Self Show!! It is incredible for me that I got to this point so let’s celebrate for this episode and hopefully many more to come! And thank you so much for the support you have been given me throughout this journey

Today to celebrate we are going to talk about a philosophical topic that occurred to me sometime ago which is appealing to ignorance. If you have been following the podcast you probably know by now that I really like Socrates and this episode is inspired in him.

Ignorance, Socrates and the maieutic method

One of the most famous quotes of Socrates says, “the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing” to which I refer in a sense as appealing to ignorance. It is also the first step in the maieutic or Socratic method.

But first let’s talk about the opposite, appealing to expertise or wisdom.

Nowadays on the internet, especially in the oversaturated world of ‘coaching’ or ‘online marketing’ you may find hundreds of experts and gurus telling you about their magic formula for sales, happiness or any topic whatsoever. Most of them are appealing to wisdom or expertise.

In Spain we have a meme, the brother in law or the ‘cuñao’ meme. It makes fun of that person who sits at the dinner table or in any situation and seems to know everything about any topic. You probably found many of them throughout your life.

I’m sure that you’re not one of those… but probably sometimes in life you may have positioned yourself as an expert and that can be a double edged sword because it can be easy to trust and believe at first someone that seems to be an expert in a topic.

For example, if you go to the doctor because you have a headache or any other health issue, then you may believe what they say that it is at first. But just because someone is a doctor it doesn’t necessarily means that they know everything on their field.

Back in Socrates time, those experts or gurus could be called the sophist. But we’ll talk more about them in another episode.

Appealing to ignorance is the key

Part of the purpose of this podcast is for you to make up your own mind about things, and that I believe will bring you closer to a better version of yourself, you know, to train the brain muscle a bit.

When someone appeals to expertise people may believe that person but he may be wrong. However, if you appeal to ignorance and you say that you know nothing about something then you’re never gonna be wrong, because you are already saying that you are wrong 🙂

It exonerates you from any mistake you may do so that you can freely philosophize about any topic. Then the other person is the responsible for making their own mind and believing your or not.

Empowering other people

A direct consequence of appealing to ignorance is that you are making people responsible for checking with themselves if they wish to believe whatever you’re saying. In a way it feels like giving the power or the responsibility to the others and by doing that you’re definitely helping them.

But just saying that you know nothing and freely talking about anything is not the trick here. The trick is to actually believe that you know less that you do, that you can make mistakes and that whatever you’re saying is not the absolute truth about the world.

Anyways I hope that you have a listen to the episode and that it brings you value in any shape or form. For me if the episode makes you think than I can’t ask for nothing else as with thinking you are already working on a better version of yourself.

So thank you so much for being there one more time, for celebrating the episode 10 with me. And if you wish to help me going in this adventure it would be great if you could support the show, send me a message, a comment, or give me feedback as any little action greatly helps me to keep going.

See you in episode 11!

Ciao!