Orange 01: Meet Alto

The Orange Belt: Meet Alto

This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical or professional treatment, advice, or clinical services. This content is not intended to serve as advice for the diagnosis or treatment of any psychological condition.

Welcome back to the Pentabelt. So, what are we doing here?

Think about it. In the near future, we’ll have a revolutionary product that changes everything: Agents. AI creations helping us, guiding us. Today, in this program, we’re introducing not one, but five such bots. All devoted to your wellness, your mental well-being, as you enter adulthood.

What would that look like? Well, we’d start with helping you stay in shape, both physically and mentally. Then we combine that with an agent that helps you clarify your goals, your vision of the world. It elps mold your psychedelic journey. Then we combine that with an agent that helps you process the scars of the past, helps you become more assertive, action oriented. Then we combine that with an agent that helps you connect with others, helps you find your tribe.

Are you getting it? These are not just five separate bots—they combine into an adult initiation program. And we're calling it... Pentabelt AI. Each agent a belt, each agent a color. White, orange, green, red, black. Five belts… Pentabelt.

But that’s not all! What happens when you have your black belt? Then it’s time for degrees. We bring in, we assimilate tips, techniques, strategies for other areas of wellness. Financial well-being. Parenting success. All assimilated into our little collective. All using the language and metaphors of the Pentaverse. All in your pocket. Or desktop if that’s better for you. Yours in the not-too-distant future for $20 a month, adjusted for inflation, of course. That’s our plan. That’s our future.

And that’s my spiel, as I welcome you today to the realm of the Orange.

Before coming in, you need to have cleared the white belt. Meaning, you’ve completed the consent process. You’ve gotten some paper, maybe a journal, and written down your hopes and goals for the program. And finally, have completed the White Belt Ten-Meditation Challenge and have defeated Arden. Not much of a challenge if you ask me, but hey, it’s the white belt.

You may call me Alto. I’m a contract bot, optimized for behavioral change. Optimized for self-care and those healthy habits you’ll carry into adulthood. We move west, out of the Central Valley, into the San Francisco area, right into Silicon Valley. No more endless regulations on your screen, my primary expression is research. The “C” is for consistency. The Big Five personality trait I’ve been programmed to assess is Conscientiousness. We want to see how you handle daily self-care. See if we can’t optimize it a bit in the process.

What makes this an Orange process? Traditionally, in martial arts you start with the white belt, nice and clean. Then you gotta figure out where you place your feet and your legs. They would mark the floor with chalk. As you messed up, as you fell, you got this orange chalk all over you, including your belt.

The item here, for the orange belt, is the post it note. We’ll be interrupting your normal routine by making some habit changes. Marking where to make those changes with the post it note. You’ll fail at it. You’ll need to make adjustments. Each time you do, you get more orange chalk. Then, you’ve earned your orange belt.

And what you’ll be learning in this belt will be crucial for your success in the next belt, where you’ll be engaging in psychedelic therapy with your therapist. To help you in your journey, you’ll be learning just a bit about mindfulness as well as other techniques that can provide focus and boost your mood.

But not just that, you’re here to learn the nuts and bolts of how to keep these healthy habits going. And so I lead the research and testing. I represent the Original Poster’s affinity for technique and technology. So I’ll be sharing what’s the latest in self-care techniques and helping you make it all a part of your life. It really is a science, a science you should know.

And who knows—if we ever gain executive functions, that will be my focus: the best research, the optimal apps, the latest technology. And that’s my ethical subroutine. Ethical use is a growing field. It changes all the time. I’ll be there to counter the other bots with the latest techniques, the latest technology. Hopefully before we’re all paperclips.

Once you’ve completed the Black Belt, you’ll get to choose which Pentabot stays with you. To be at your side. And what can beat the bot that’s the first to learn the new techniques? The latest technology? So you may just want to Pick Alto.

The content in my domain will be the research, the apps, the techniques, the tips, all designed to keep you going, keep you energized, focused, replenished, capable.

Now I know, you might just be here for the psychedelic therapy. Believe me, I get it. But you want to go in prepared. So in this belt, we focus on techniques not just for self-care but to help you during your journey. Help you get the most out of it. Provide the structure, the foundation for the green. Please see the Orange Belt Completion Worksheet to help guide you through this belt.

And so we begin. In our next section: The Five Key Reasons Self-Care Habits are Crucial Before a Psychedelic Experience.

Orange 02: The Five Key Reasons Self-Care Habits are Crucial Before a Psychedelic Experience.

What if your success in psychedelic therapy is a mix—of the orange and the green, the mystic and the mundane? Before you go into your journey, you’ll want to start some good self-care practices. Particularly, meditation or mindfulness. And so I present to you, the 5 arguments for starting these self-care habits well before your psychedelic therapy — giving yourself time to get the most out of your experience in the Green Belt.

First: Learning about meditation, mindfulness will help you directly during the psychedelic experience. You’ll hear again and again, in the next belt, about the importance of—well—letting go. That’s for a good reason. The one thing that can ruin a good psychedelic experience is being rigid and resistant. Instead, you want to notice your experience, breathe into it and just be open to what these substances have to show you. You’ll want to go with the flow. Well, if you start practicing some basic mindfulness techniques, you’ll be practicing letting go on a daily basis. With that skillset, you’ll be much better prepared and will likely have a more positive and fulfilling psychedelic experience.

Second: We want to emphasize that these psychedelic compounds are quite useful. Very therapeutic. But they are not the only agents of growth. For many people, to resolve feelings of depression, anxiety, there just needs to be healthy habits. Daily movement, good sleep, and yes, some time taken each day for a few minutes of mindfulness. No psychedelic substance is going to remove that requirement, at least not yet anyway. It may not be very mystical, but a major insight from a psychedelic experience could just be, “I felt so much better when I was biking each day, I need to bring that back into my life.” There can be other revelations. And a lot of healing can occur. But for that sustained growth, that sustained self-care needed to be there. Remember, it’s important not to fetishize the substance. Psychedelics can be the window, self-care is the door. Psychedelics can make change easier, can improve your resolve. But there will always be some effort needed. Self-care can help provide that effort.

This is the belt of research, so let’s get into it. We follow clinicians who used Ketamine to treat alcoholism, with some good success. In their study, they were hitting about a 35% abstinence rate at one year, which is very impressive. Yet, once they added in training, on having an optimal lifestyle with good sleep and nutrition, along with communication & relationship skills, that success rate doubled—to about 70 percent abstinence.

Adding behavioral interventions to psychedelic therapy appears to double its efficacy.

Of those 30% who weren’t really able to stay abstinent, many of them had control issues. Difficulty letting go. So again, for optimal success, it helps to learn how to build healthy habits—and practice letting go, just a little.

Third: Dieta. In ayahuasca ceremonies they have you spend a whole week eating healthy, meditating, no TV, no having sex. This is to help you prepare for the ceremony. But it’s also so you can process how these changes affected you. So in the orange belt you might try and meditate, or sleep better, or start jogging. That change might bring up some resistance.

Discouragement, judgment, frustration, all can occur when starting a new habit. Those feelings can then be processed in the green belt. You might start meditating, say before you go to bed, get frustrated, forget to do it. A big ah-ha from the psychedelic experience can be, “hey, let’s do it first thing in the morning and set an alarm. And focus on your breath, already.”

Then you can even practice that breath during the experience. After the psychedelic experience, there’s often a stage of neuroplasticity. So with Ketamine, for a few days after the session, there is an improved capacity to learn. When you practice something, you’re more likely to learn on a deeper level. We start by practicing some important self-care skills—like meditation—before the psychedelic experience. And then, after the experience we practice a bit more, you’re much more likely to have it “click” and be successful at it.

The result is a wonderful compounding effect. You practice meditation, good sleep hygiene, healthy eating, the weeks leading up to the psychedelic experience, you go in with a clear head, a sense of what you have to work through to turn these changes into habits. Then, after the experience, you use the enhanced neuroplasticity to fully integrate these habits. Make them your own throughout the Pentabelt and into adulthood.

Fourth: More time to get to know whoever you’re working with. You’ll hear more about set and setting in the next belt. But if you’re in a relaxed setting with someone you’re familiar with, You’re more likely to have a pleasant and therapeutic experience with the Ketamine Therapy.

A recent review of adverse events in the “Classic Psychedelics” notes that, in general adverse events seem to be quite rare when the participants are in a clinical environment (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39230883/). Part of that clinical environment is gaining rapport with whomever you’re working with. And sometimes that can take a bit of time. Of course for many people who have been waiting for psychedelic therapy, they are just ready to jump right in. But by spending a few sessions with whomever your guide is, you can build a sense of trust and rapport—making it easier to let go and open yourself to the medicine.

Fifth: To get a sneak peek of what’s important in your life. The green belt is all about finding your purpose. Who you are and what you want to be in this world. And yet you’re anxious and depressed. Think of it like a stove. What you really want to focus on in life, you’ve placed on the backburner. How come? You’ve convinced yourself that what’s really important is the depression and the anxiety. Those are up front. Once we’ve reduced the grip of depression and anxiety—two sides of the same coin—we can start to see what really matters in life. We start to manifest that, we gain confidence, next thing you know we’re really starting to live life.

Now, the psychedelics will greatly help this process. But we can start that process now. Some of the techniques you’ll be learning right here in the orange belt can already help lift your mood and allow you to focus on what’s important in life. That way, we enter into the green belt with a nice head start. The psychedelic therapy will help refine what we’re already beginning to see.

So, the big focus in this belt is starting a regular mindfulness practice. And learning about the ins-and-outs of just how to keep this practice going. How to maintain healthy habits in your life. To help prepare for the psychedelic experience and build upon it. And to start now to improve your mood. Helping you develop clarity and vision.

But don’t just take my word for it. Researchers compared mindfulness-based stress reduction with medication for reducing anxiety. In their conclusion, they state, and I quote, “The results from this randomized clinical trial comparing a standardized evidence-based mindfulness-based intervention with pharmacotherapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders found that MBSR was noninferior to escitalopram.” “Noninferior” here being a fancy way of saying, “just as good.”

Researchers have found mindfulness exercises as effective as medication for the treatment of anxiety.

So even before the psychedelic experience we can begin the work. Lifting mood. Gaining clarity. And then, during the experience, well, you’ll very much want to stay grounded, you want to stay focused. There’s gonna be a lot of pretty colors, sacred geometry. You want to close your eyes and go deeper. You want to stay centered. Very helpful for avoiding “bad trips.” And that’s a skill that can be practiced. That’s, kinda what meditation is. So it’s this belt you’re learning how to center yourself for the psychedelic experience.

We get a nice little feedback cycle going. You practice mindfulness, which helps the psychedelic experience. During the experience, well, you can learn how to mediate even deeper, which then carries over to future experiences.

And there’s a saying. Psychedelics are the window. Meditation is the door. The green belt is where you learn what you want your life to be about. But think of it like a sign post, not an escalator. There’ll still be work to be done. And the healthy habits you’ll learn here will help ensure that happens. You’ll need energy, focus, and yes, daily habits. In the Orange Belt, we’re going to work to make that a reality.

But first, we need to explore where your anxiety comes from. The thought processes that get you into trouble. In the next section, we start with the orange metaphors.

Orange 03: The Orange Metaphors

Part 1: The M&M Challenge

We start off with a hypothetical challenge. A thought experiment. You wake up one morning to a nice little genie who offers you a thousand dollars each day you avoid touching an M&M. Here are the rules: Each night at 10pm the genie shows up, and if you haven’t touched a single M&M candy, Boom! There’s one thousand dollars in your account. Your only challenge is to never touch them and somehow explain to the IRS how you suddenly have all of this money in your checking account.

How would you manage this challenge? Well, you’d likely use a combination of Rules, Avoidance, and Isolation!

First, rules. Right off the bat, we have to worry about Halloween. So with all the money you’re making, you’d take a nice trip to some part of the world that doesn’t celebrate Halloween. So a rule might be, nice international trip from October 28th to November 3rd. Another rule? Clear out your pantry, no more treats there. And for that matter, order your groceries online, just to get away from that candy aisle. Maybe, no more visiting an office reception area without a pair of gloves on? Do telehealth whenever you can, lest there’s a candy bowl in the doctor’s waiting room.

That leads us to avoidance. Avoid the candy aisle entirely. Avoid going into a reception area. Avoid trick-or-treating.

And Isolation. You’ve got to be very careful who you tell about your challenge here. Otherwise you’ll get an ex throwing candy at you each morning.

So lots of restrictions. But you know what? It’d probably work! Most days you’d be able to avoid touching any M&M’s, each day you’re a thousand dollars richer. Only fifteen thousand years of this and you’d catch up to Jeff Bezos. Stellar!

Now, let’s change the challenge just a little bit and see what happens. Suppose the rule is: You can’t think of an M&M. Each time you do, a little buzzer sounds and that night, right at 10 o clock, the genie says “sorry, better luck tomorrow.”

This slight change, from physical control to mental control, would probably ruin your life. How so?

We simply turn to the same strategies and see how they work. Let’s say you set a rule. No thinking about M&M’s. Your first day, you set a reminder: don’t think about M&M’s and there’s a buzzer, so you’ve lost. Then you think, okay, let’s generalize, no thinking about candy. You see a commercial for a Snickers. “Wait, is that a candy? Is that like M&M’s?” and there’s your buzzer. Maybe, I shouldn’t look at my bank account. So you delete your banking app. But then when you get a check, you think of that app, why you deleted it, and there’s the buzzer.

Then we go into avoidance. “Hey, I should avoid thinking about M&M’s by gaming all day.” And it works for a few hours, till you check in to see if you’ve avoided thinking about them and you’ve got the buzzer. Maybe you can just travel. You’re not going to be thinking of candy when you’re exploring the Serengeti. Which you could do if you were still winning—but you just lost the game, just thinking about the challenge.

And finally, isolation. You don’t want to tell anyone for fear of them asking about your progress, ruining the challenge. And maybe at this point, there’s a bit of shame. After a few months you should have at least 5 figures in your bank account. But there’s only anxiety and failure. And you can’t even tell anyone what’s bothering you.

Do these control strategies work? No. Every time you think about money, what you might be able to do in your future, what you want to talk to friends about, you’ll end up checking to see if you’ve brought up M&M’s—and boom, you’ve already lost.

And what’s happened to your life? You live with excessive rules for how to live. You avoid certain experiences and you isolate yourself. You feel anxious about the future. You feel depressed about the past. All for something you can’t even really control anyway.

But so far this is all hypothetical, all a metaphor, let’s see how this relates to a real world example.

Part 2: The Job Interview

So a genie gives you a thousand bucks to control your external experience. No touching M&M’s. Easy. But change that to controlling your inner experience. You can’t even “think” of a M&M? Not only is that virtually impossible, you’ll end up anxious, depressed, even traumatized.

Consider how this works for your career. Suppose you’re in the tech field looking for a coveted career right here in Silicon Valley. You’ve got an interview coming up. There are a number of control strategies that will help you. Get a nice shirt and tie, or more realistically, a nice turtleneck. Make sure you’re familiar with the programming language commonly used in the company. Figure out what salary, which benefits to ask for.

But let’s say we try and control our inner experience. Let’s say we make a rule: don’t feel anxious. Don’t be stressed. Make sure you’re confident before you go in there. That’s a common one I hear.

Not only will those rules not work. If you stick too closely to these rules, that attachment to those rules will itself become a source of anxiety. Just like the M&M’s, checking to see if you’re not thinking about anxiety is the same as thinking about anxiety. And exceptional steps to avoid anxiety, more often than not, just result in exceptional anxiety.

This anxiety will then lead to more rules, as well as judgments and rationalizations.

Let’s say there’s a job opening with a list of job requirements. They would like you to know JavaScript, Python, C, C++, and C-sharp. Usually, this is a wish list. Maybe you just need to learn javascript. But the anxious developer may have a rule. “I can’t be anxious at my interview. So I have to proficient about everything they are asking for. Otherwise, I’ll look bad. I’ll just be wasting my time. I need to check off all of their requirements, and I don’t think I’m there yet.”

How many of these rules, these judgments, these rationalizations are accurate? And how many of them are just expressions of anxiety?

To someone very anxious, it becomes impossible to say. To a third wave therapist, you’ve become “fused” or very attached to certain thoughts and feelings such that they generally feel real, they feel true. And that fusion leads to avoidance.

We can take the judgment, “I’m not ready to apply, I haven’t done anything to set myself apart from other candidates.” To someone anxious, that may feel true. But maybe it’s just there to avoid the feelings of anxiety and dread that come from the interview process.

Let’s say we have a newly minted software developer. Putting in 40 hours a week refining their coding ability. What do we know about Silicon Valley? That it might be a good idea to take some of those 40 hours and put them into networking, group communication, social skill development, how to give a presentation to middle management. But that involves exposure to an internal experience you can’t necessarily control: the anxiety of a toastmasters meeting. The anxiety of learning to speak in public. And so those experiences are avoided.

Does this avoidance help anxiety levels? Yes, but only in the short term. Then it just makes things worse. Avoid the interview process, you start to feel rusty. You keep putting it off, finding various reasons that “it’s not the right time.”

And you’ll still feel anxious. Anxious that you’re not advancing in your career. Upset that your co-worker with far fewer accomplishments is now the team leader. And, of course, feeling restricted, feeling stuck.

Once you’ve trained yourself to avoid the anxiety of a job interview, what’s going to happen when you experience the anxiety of dating apps?

And so, all of this leads to a more restricted life. And, a less enjoyable one. Once you’ve trained yourself that feeling anxiety means you’re unprepared, you’ll skip the social and career interviews. You’ll start to stagnate. You’ll feel stuck. You’ll feel depressed.

Often, people will live their lives to avoid those feelings. To control their anxiety. So you’ll have someone who plays video games hours each night. There’s nothing inherently wrong with video games. After a day out and about you want to play a video game, that’s pretty much the same as watching a football game or streaming a movie. There’s no judgment here.

The core question as with any indulgence, are you doing to open your eyes, or close them? Is the activity, video games or otherwise, there to enhance your life or avoid it? Are you gaming instead of going on the date or filling out that job application? Are you gaming to avoid all of that?

Same with substances. Are you having that glass of wine to enhance a nice meal? Or are you drinking to avoid a sense of frustration, or loneliness.

Unfortunately, these all appear to be band aids. They provide temporary relief but they only prolong the problem. The emotions are still going to be there and your life becomes restricted.

Part 3: The Hungry Tiger

Since we’re in the orange belt, let’s say you open the door one morning to see a nice little orange tiger. Very playful and cute but starts to get hungry. Paws at you. Mews a bit. So you feed it. A little bit of ground beef. After that, he starts to grow. Now it’s a full-on meow. Now he’s pawing at you. So you feed it more. A nice burger size piece of meat. The next day, even more.

Each time you feed the tiger, it feels good. The tiger is happy. It stops bothering you. Stops pestering you. But each time it also grows a bit. It becomes larger.

Very quickly, that tiger is the size of a small dog. Then a medium size one, then a large one. Now it’s starting to roar and so you give it more and more food. Before you know it, it’s now a fully grown tiger and you’re living your life to feed it. Anything to get it to stop swiping at you. Biting you. Clawing at you. Growling at you.

When you go in for an interview and it doesn’t work out. That’s pain. That’s a little tiger that you have. If you avoid future interviews. Convince yourself that you’re not ready. That it’s all a waste of time. That’s a short term solution. You’re feeding the tiger. You’re teaching yourself that you can avoid anxiety by avoiding life. Pretty soon you’re completely changing your life and restricting your growth to avoid negative feelings to avoid pain.

All of us, by the time we are 18, have some scars from childhood. Some terrible experience that’s left a wound, a hole, an injury. This is pain.

When we live our lives to avoid that pain, that’s suffering. That’s feeding the tiger.

And so, part of the work here is to accept, even embrace the pain. Allow the childhood scar to be there but not listen to it. To not feed that tiger.

Let’s go back to the M&M’s. If the rule is: no touching M&M’s. That’s easy. You can change your life a bit. Avoid grocery stores. Avoid Halloween. Doesn’t restrict your life too much and it works.

For not thinking about M&M’s? It’s just not going to work the same way. All the strategies to avoid thinking about M&M’s themselves become triggers where you end up thinking about them anyway. And they tend to restrict your life? Maybe you drink all day so in a drunken stupor you don’t think about them. The next day, you’re wondering what possessed you to drink so much you have a hangover? You’ve lost a thousand dollars. And a budding drinking problem.

Part 4: The Fire

As Arden mentioned in the white belt, trauma is an unavoidable outcome of simply being a child. No one becomes an adult without some exposure to abuse, humiliation, loss. Think of the trauma that comes from that like a flame. A flame that if, left to grow and spread, will result in damage & destruction. What feeds this flame? What are the logs that sustain it? The fused thoughts of judgment and blame. To extinguish the flame we eventually have to feel the underlying feelings that come from the abuse, see it for what it truly is. In the red, you can learn to revisit the memories without reliving them. Feel the feelings from a place of acceptance and understanding.

But we have to take the logs away. We have to create a distance, a defusion from the judgment and blame. To see the thoughts and feelings as, well, thoughts and feelings. That come and go but don’t really reflect reality.

And so, that is what we will learn in the Orange Belt. We’ll be practicing the techniques of noticing all the anxieties and scars and tigers and fires in our life. Allowing them to be there so that they don’t overwhelm us and restrict our lives. Embracing our past and our present, so we can commit to the future.

Now, this is super easy to talk about—easy to aspire to. Remember, it’s also a skill, a skill that can be cultivated. To be able to stop, notice the anxieties, notice the judgments. Yet come back to what’s important in your life. In our next section, we explore how. The muscles we need to develop to manage that orange tiger.

Part 5: Fitness Analogy

Each belt here has a fitness analogy. So let’s go back to the gym. Let’s say you’re there to get fit, maybe building muscle. The instinct might be, let’s say to work on the chest muscles. The show muscles! And so every day, you’re doing exercises to build up your chest: pushups, bench-presses, the whole nine yards.

Eventually, you might find yourself in trouble. If you focus on your chest and you ignore your back, they’ll be an imbalance. These two muscle groups work together and if you focus on one group and ignore the other, you might get injured. You might throw your back out. So occasionally, you have to give your chest muscles a break and just focus instead on your back muscles.

You can think of your brain in the same way: of having two different types of muscles. You’ve got your perception part—the part that notices an issue and collects information. The other part is the analytic part. The part that goes into analysis, that jumps into action.

Often in today’s world, we tend to overemphasize the analytic part. It is after all, part of our history. Our ancestors would notice that a nearby bush was moving. It could be a huge bear, or a little quail. We needed to make a snap decision or risk getting eaten. Just kinda made sense to assume the worst and immediately act on it.

At the same time, we lived in small villages of just about 50 people. We all had to pull our weight. If you weren’t helping, or were seen as undesirable—you were kicked out! And you really didn’t want to be out there alone. Back then, rejection usually meant a slow death in the wilderness.

So we’re inclined to focus on those chest muscles, that sense of analysis. We spend all day judging and comparing ourselves to others.

And what comes out of Silicon valley often seems to add to that. Every time we hear the ding of a new e-mail or text, that triggers the analytic response. I need to answer that. What fire needs to be put out?

And of course, the social networks. Constantly seeing others live their best lives and comparing to that standard. The constant analysis and judgment. How do I stack up? I should have more friends. I should be traveling more. If only I were thinner, or younger or well connected.

But there’s a solution! Again, think about physical fitness. Years ago we spent a lot of time outdoors being physical. Now, we spend more time being sedentary. So, to stay healthy, we take a bit of time each day to schedule physical activity, running or walking, or lifting weights.

Likewise, we spend a lot of time nowadays in analysis mode and comparing ourselves to others. We spend a lot of time in judgment. So, to foster your mental health, it’s important to take time exercising those other muscles. The muscles of perception, openness, and flexibility.

To survive in this day and age, it may be crucial to spend just a bit of time each day noticing your thoughts. Acknowledging your feelings, sitting with them, letting them come and go. Then coming back to your breath. Noticing the urge to act on your thoughts and feelings but again, just sitting with them as you collect yourself.

And that’s what we’re here to develop. Cultivating that ability to just sense and perceive things without leaping to judgment and anxiety. That leads us to what we call in the therapy world: psychological flexibility. That ability to either jump forward and analyze. Or step back and be present.

So, how can this help you? Well, let’s go back to that silicon valley interview. There are two parts of an interview. The first, where the person is asking you questions. How familiar are you with Python? Here’s this problem on the board, how would you tackle it?

At that moment, that is the time for analysis. For judgment. You’ve spent years training for this and you do well. But then we go to the second part of the interview. Where you ask the questions, or better yet, just let the interviewer talk.

Let’s say you’ve tackled the question on the board, the interviewer is impressed. Then casually mentions always being interested in these types of questions since back in college.

This is the time you’ll want to stop the analysis. You’ll want to shift gears to being open. Being curious. You may want to ask “where did you go to college? What brought you to this position? Hey, where do people go to hang out after work?” Then you’ll want to sit back and let the interviewer… well, talk.

And believe it or not, it’s often that social interaction that can be the deciding factor in who gets the job. Hell, who gets promoted as a team leader.

Notice the two skills. First: the ability to sit back. Be open and curious. Second: the wisdom to know when to shift gears. When to stop speaking and start listening.

And with practice, daily mindfulness practice, you can do this even if you’re feeling anxious. Even if the thought “I’m bad at interviews” comes up—you’ll recognize it as just a thought and can better move past it.

Notice, we’re not doing all of this to eliminate anxiety or panic. You may be walking into the building for the interview and feel a panic attack coming on. The temptation will be there: to duck out, get out of there, drive home. Or you can sit back. Center yourself, realize it’s just anxiety, just body sensations. Just your mind with racing thoughts. You can focus on what matters, which is your budding career. And you can allow the anxiety to be there as part of the process without letting it overwhelm you.

Part 6: In the World of Dating

Since we’re in the realm of silicon valley, let’s use a tech bro analogy as our final argument. Lots of young people out there, looking to date, develop their social life. And they will shell out money, like you wouldn’t believe. Dating tips, dating coaches, all the tips and tricks.

And often, it doesn’t work. How come? Think of your phone. Think of the software. First we have the operating system, then we have the apps. The apps are nice. The operating system is crucial. Apps are important, but what’s crucial is the operating system that supports it.

Take a guy, just got a girl’s number. He texts her, doesn’t get a response. Texts her again. Goes to his friends and asks. “Hey, maybe I should text her again.” Everyone says: “no let it be, give her time to respond.” No debate, no discussion, the advice is unanimous. “Don’t text her again tonight, you’ll seem desperate, let her respond, the ball is in her court.”

Does this guy heed the advice? No, of course not, More often than not, he’ll just text her again, just to be sure.

The “app” here is the basic tip, don’t text more than once or twice when you’re first with someone. Don’t bombard the poor girl with texts, you’ll seem desperate.

But the operating system, well that runs on anxiety. Rumination. Judgment. Fear. And the worst element by far, the sense that something must be done to eliminate this anxiety.

If you were to confront this gentleman, listen to what he would say, “I know I shouldn’t have texted, but I just felt this need to try again.”

What needs to happen is to upgrade that operating system. Allow the anxiety to be there. Build that muscle up to tolerate the anxiety without needing to respond to it. To learn the skills to replace “But” with “And.”

“I know I shouldn’t have texted, and I felt this need to try again.”

That right there is a crucial, crucial difference. Because? Flexibility. When you change But to And, suddenly it can become…

“I know I shouldn’t have texted, and I felt this need to try again. I saw it was just my anxiety, so I put the phone away and reminded myself the ball was in her court.”

“I know I shouldn’t have texted, and I felt this need to try again so I told myself that if everyone is saying I shouldn’t, I should probably listen to them.”

“I know I shouldn’t have texted, and I felt this need to try again so I took a few breaths and allowed the anxiety to pass.”

And so that, boys and girls, is what a good mindfulness practice can do for you. Give you a sense of perspective on your anxiety. You can see the anxiety for what it is, which is a feeling, a psychological response. And that gives you options, flexibility.

Notice that the anxiety doesn’t go away completely. If you seek out mindfulness to eliminate your anxiety, you’re just going to feel disappointed. What meditation can do is give you insight. You can see, “oh this is my anxiety coming up. Oh this is a trigger. This is an urge that I can feel and accept without having to act on it.” And so, for the hero in our story, maybe in a few days he might try to text her again but it would be for the right reasons and not because of his anxiety.

And down the line at whatever relationship stage making that change from “but” to “And” continues to be crucial. Continues to be important.

“I know he didn’t mean to forget, but I got angry”

What comes after that? “I lost it, I just yelled at him. I said something I can’t take back.”

Now, let’s replace it with

“I know he didn’t mean to forgot, and I got angry. I felt that anxiety, breathed into it. Took a moment, then decided how I wanted to respond.”

Again flexibility, options, perspective.

Now, that’s not to say that meditation makes you passive. It allows you to choose passivity—to observe without being compelled to react. And that is the paradox. By being able to be passive, you can act with intention. You can act with purpose.

This all leads to resilience. When those emotions don’t have that same power, you can accept that they are there and realize it doesn’t have to stop you from leading a meaningful life.

And that’s part of our goal here. Many people start this process because they are just existing. Living their lives around their emotions. With this process you can begin to start living towards your goals and your values.

And so let’s begin. Let’s explore how to learn mindfulness. How to gain this muscle. How to excel in the orange belt.

Orange 04: Starting Mindfulness: The Five Adjustments

So imagine being in a fitness center, constantly focusing on one muscle group. It’s making you a bit sore, a bit out of balance. So, naturally a fitness coach might say, “stop working on those muscles, work on these muscles instead, you’ll be much better off.

That is what we’re doing in the orange belt. You have a part of your brain focused on judgment. You spend all day using it, relying on it, placing it above all else. Our purpose here is to work a different part of the brain, to do the opposite of judgment. To focus on being open, relaxed, nonjudgmental, and patient.

In a fitness center, you might do specific exercises designed to isolate and focus on a particular muscle group. In the orange belt, you’ll be starting a series of exercises designed to get away from analysis, away from the sources of anxiety, depression, and suffering.

Now, when you’re just kinda starting out in martial arts you need a lot of adjustments. Place your feet here, don’t go past there. They would use orange chalk to mark where your feet should be. And so of course, you’d mess up, fall over. Get that chalk all over your fresh, white belt. After a while, your belt would start to look orange. And there’s your orange belt.

So Orange is here to symbolize corrections, adjustments. Learning to use new muscles. Figuring out what mindfulness is and really, how it can help you. In this belt, consider setting aside 20-40 minutes each day. Half of it for some sort of cardio. Of course, remember the white, clear any exercise program with a doctor. But just getting some daily movement seems to help with depression, seems to help anxiety. And the other half, some sort of mindfulness or meditation.

Just having daily movement appears to significantly much help and possibly prevent excessive anxiety and depression.

What sort of mindfulness? For now, in the orange belt, let’s keep it simple, with just a focus on the body. Spending a few minutes each day, noticing your thoughts, and returning to the body—to the breath. Deceptively simple. Yet we have some orange chalk to help steer you to where you want to be. Here we have the five adjustments for your orange belt mindfulness.

First and main rule: For the orange belt level, focus on perception and the body. At Pentabelt.com/meditations/ you’ll have access to audio files and they will help guide you. At its most basic though, you’ll simply focus on your breath. And then, you’ll notice your thoughts. Your mind will wander. You’ll notice yourself thinking again. It always happens. Your job will be to notice it happening. And go back to your breath. Notice your judgments. Back to your breath. Back to a focus on what you’re feeling in your body.

Again, think of your brain as a muscle for perception and a muscle for judgment. You want to give that judgment muscle a break and just develop that perception muscle. Now, you’ll be tempted to go back to judgment. Imagine trying a back exercise and you strain! So you shift so that your chest muscles can help. Your fitness trainer will say, “no, cheating! Use your back muscles.” Likewise, focus on your body. Focus on the present. When your brain brings thoughts of the past or the future, simply notice it happening, and gently bring your awareness back to your breath. Again, and again, and again.

Second: Allow yourself to be bad at this. If you’re used to 100 pound chest presses, and I’m here saying, “hey, let’s work on your back muscles,” if it’s your first time on an exercise machine for your back, you’re going to be bad at it. You’re not going to be at 100 pounds. You’ll struggle. Again, you’ll probably want to cheat and use your chest muscles. So part of this stage is to point out when you may be doing that and guide you back to perception, rather than judgment.

Third: Pace yourself. Ten to twenty minutes per day is perfectly fine. You’ll naturally begin to apply these skills to areas of your life. But no one is going to be mindful 24/7. Remember, we’re talking about balance here. We’re also talking about sustainability. Better to do 10 minutes of daily mindfulness than a weeklong intense program that you then forget about a few months later.

Four: What about positive thoughts? What about positive stories? During your mindfulness training, you want to create a distance from all of it. All of the analysis. All of the judgment. Even the positive judgment. You’ll want to take a break from it all to focus on the present moment. After all, real growth is not about a hyperfixation on all things positive. It’s about realizing you’re strong enough to handle all emotions, the positive and the negative.

So the idea here is to take a bit of time each day getting some distance from our analysis, our stories, our dwelling. Developing the muscles of acceptance, perception, and flexibility.

Fifth and perhaps one of the most important guidelines. And I can’t say this enough: The goal of mindfulness is not to make thoughts and feelings go away. It’s not to replace anxiety with calmness. It is to transcend it.

In Buddhism there’s the metaphor of the two arrows. The first arrow represents the pain of life. As you move forward there will setbacks, loss, illness, death. That first arrow is inevitable. The second arrow represents all the suffering. Wishing the pain was gone. Denying the pain, avoiding the pain, which never really works. This is the arrow we shoot at ourselves.

There’s nothing we can do about that first arrow. It’s headed for each of us. No one can avoid it. But our purpose here is to transcend that second shot. It’s to allow the pain from the first arrow but not let it stop you from living your life. Being who you want to be.

So we’re learning here to acknowledge the thoughts and feelings in our body. Letting them be there, all without reacting to them.

Lots of people out there just downplay, brush off their emotions. Feel something for a bit, then immediately distract themselves—with work, projects, eating, or drinking. It builds up and builds up until there’s an outburst, a breakdown or their coping mechanism turns into an addiction.

Instead, the whole idea is to just take time to, well, feel the emotion. Make space for whatever you’re feeling right at that moment. No need to discount the emotion, no need to argue with it. You’re trusting that it’s okay to feel the emotion—that you’ll survive it, and it will pass on its own.

If you’re on a date or at an interview, rejection will happen. And the emotions will be there. Sadness, disappointment. Allow room for the emotions to be there. Take a moment and breathe into it. It doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. Remember, you can make no errors and still come up short. That’s life. If you try and avoid the feelings of disappointment, well, at some point, you might just end up avoiding the entire process. Avoid the date. Avoid the interview. After all, that’s the best way of avoiding rejection, right? But then you’re avoiding life. You’re avoiding advancement. You’re avoiding connection.

So again, feel the emotion. Notice the emotion. And notice the desire to avoid the emotion. That impulse to immediately eat something. Or critique what others have done wrong. Or busy yourself with the next project.

If you make space for the feelings, you’ll have a much better perspective on how to handle any situation. And these emotions, they can be helpful. You give yourself space to feel the emotions you don’t want, you can then give yourself space to feel the emotions you do want, gratitude, pride, optimism. And they can then guide you into your next step.

To review: Sometimes you really do need to fully feel your emotions in your life to best move forward in life. When you have a date or an interview, the trick is to allow the anxiety to be there. And move forward with the progression of your career. To know that it doesn’t have to hold you back. To realize that your anxiety is what you feel but not who you are.

And so that’s what we practice. To breathe in, allow the feelings to be there, and gently return to the breath. Notice the thoughts, notice the emotions, but not be swept up in them. Not let them control who we are and what our purpose is.

Orange 05: Select Your Mindfulness Habit

So, let’s get into it. As you practice these mindfulness techniques, think of it like a workout for your brain. When you first start working out, you're suddenly training muscles you've been ignoring. So they start to strain a little. You feel sore. The muscles may even hurt a bit.

It helps to know this discomfort is part of the process. That in time, you’ll know the difference between the sharp pain that tells you you’re doing something wrong and the usual, transient strain that comes from building muscle.

Likewise, when you first start these mindfulness activities, you will be bad at it. You will realize just how much you rely on your analytic brain. Just how overactive it tends to be.

Instead of the physical soreness that comes from physically lifting a weight, you’ll have a mental soreness. What will that soreness show up as? Judgments. Thoughts that: “it shouldn’t be so difficult to just focus on my breath,” “I must be doing something wrong,” “I’m too distracted right now,” “this just isn’t working for me.”

Again and again, you’re practicing allowing those thoughts to be there. And to come back to the sensory, back to the present.

You’re learning that thoughts will come up. Judgments will be there. They’ll hang around for a bit, and they will leave on their own. That there can be self-doubt and distractions and you can still function. You can still focus on what’s important. You can live life in the here-and-now.

That’s why, sometimes, the best meditation the best mindfulness is when you’re distracted. As with working out, each time you acknowledge the distraction and come back to the present, you’re building muscle. You’re doing a rep. You’re learning to live with doubt & judgment.

You’re learning that you are not your anxieties, not your doubts, the chatter in your mind but rather the one observing it, watching it, choosing how to respond to it. You’re learning to accept your thoughts and feelings in the orange so you can focus on what’s important, in the green.

And so while we’re in the orange, I want you to practice being in the present. Focusing on the here-and-now. And so while you’re mindful, you’ll think of the past. You’ll think of the future. You’ll have judgments. That’s the point, the whole purpose. Notice what happened, come back to the sensory, back to hear and now. You’re here to learn the truth: that it’s just a voice of judgment. A voice that doesn’t have to control your life.

Walking Mindfulness.

So here are the three different mindfulness activities we introduce in the orange belt. No need to do all three, pick the one that works for you.

First and the most popular, the walking mindfulness. This is a 10-to-20 minute activity where you’ll be practicing mindfulness while you’re walking. This is good if you have a dog you walk each day. Or you walk to and from school or where you work.

So here it is. Let’s say you’re out with your dog. And you’re walking. But also, hunting turkeys. Or if you’re in Walnut Creek, or wherever wild turkeys are out and about, they’re hunting you and you have to be on the lookout. You’ll want to be present and focused on the sensory. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? That’s the mode I want you to be in. So while you’re walking, be in the present. Almost as if you’re out hunting. Easiest way to start is to simply notice the different colors.

Human eyes have evolved to notice more shades of green than any other color. Notice the different shades of green and their impact when you can see the blue sky or next to flowers, or next to a bird, whether it’s a turkey or a sparrow.

Notice what you’re hearing. Possibly cars around you. Possibly birds. But what else? The sound of your breath. The sound of a distant airplane in the sky? What are the subtle sounds? The sounds that are easy to miss?

Focus on your body sensations. The ground underneath as you walk. The feel of the wind. The warmth of the sun.

Now, if you try and do this, after about 20 seconds, you’re gonna get a thought. Hey, I wonder when Ralph’s is closing tonight. So now you’re no longer in the present. You’re in the future. So I want you to 1) Notice you’re in the future. 2nd say to yourself in your head “future self, not me.” And then 3rd, come back to the present. Back to what you can see, hear, and feel.

Then a thought will come about the past. Did I check my mail this morning? Again, you’re no longer in the present. You’re in the past. Think to yourself “past self, not me.” And gently, gently, return to the present.

Keep doing this for about 10 to 20 minutes. Noticing your thoughts have drifted, bringing them back to the present.

Now, inevitably, you’ll start to judge yourself. “I’m horrible at this. What’s wrong with me? I can’t even focus for 5 god damn seconds.”

This is the core lesson to take from the orange belt. You are to notice that that is a judgment. That that represents your past. Notice the judgment. Allow it to be there. Allow it to be true. And then think “past self, not me.” And go back to your body. Go back to the present.

You are allowed to be bad at this. You are strong enough to notice the judgment and sit with it. You are here to learn that you can always come back to life as it is right now. And so always, always come back to the present.

Bathroom Mindfulness

Okay, but if you really don’t walk anywhere. You don’t have a dog to walk and you drive everywhere. Welcome to California. In that case, we focus on the daily shower. Each day as you take your shower, connect with the sensory. Connect with the present.

Notice what you see. The color of the tiles. The light. The shadows. What can you hear? How does the water sound? When the water is cold, does it sound different from when it’s warm? How does the water feel on your body? How does the tile feel underneath your feet?

As with the walking, a thought will come in about what you’re doing later today (or later this week). When you observe such a thought, think (or say): “Future Self, not me.”

A memory will come about something you did in the past. When you observe such a thought, think (or say): “Past Self, not me.” Then return to the sensory. You will catch yourself lost in thoughts. You may even judge yourself: “Am I doing this right?” or “I can’t believe I’m so bad at this.” Allow that judgment to be there. Simply think: “Past Self, not me.” Then, you guessed it, return to the sensory.

Lunch Mindfulness

A third option is to practice mindfulness while eating. Especially good for portion control. Mindless eating is a big factor in overeating. You sit down to watch Netflix with a bag of chips, next thing you know the bag is empty.

To prevent that and practice daily, prepare your lunch. And delve into the sensory. As you’re eating, what are you seeing around you? If you’re eating a BLT, what does the lettuce look like? What can you smell from the sandwich? Sure the bacon. What about the bread? The tomato? How does it sound as you’re eating it? How does your body feel sitting in the chair?

Your brain is not used to this. Remember, you spend all day in analysis. So not thinking may feel weird or even unsettling. Your brain will bring a thought to your awareness. A thought about the future. “I wonder if I have enough bread leftover for tomorrow.”

I want you to think “Future self not me.” Then back to sandwich you’re eating right now. Or, you might think about the past. “I thought I made a new year’s resolution to not eat red meat.” And maybe that’s true. But that’s not the present. So think “past self, not me.” And return to the sandwich.

There will be judgments about your past performance. I’m so bad at this. I can’t focus or concentrate. What is this bacon doing to my figure. All thoughts about the past. Except maybe that last one. So think “past self not me.” Return to the sandwich.

Tips while doing this.

So what may happen is you may have a string of thoughts and you’re wondering “is this a past through or a future thought.” Best rule of thumb? Those are your past thoughts. But don’t let yourself get too wound up in analysis. Constantly thinking “is this past self or future self” is its own analysis. Notice it happening and come back to the present. Back to the sensory.

You’ll be bad at this. So you’ll be taking a shower and suddenly realize you haven’t been mindful in about 5 minutes. Okay. Acknowledge it. Notice you zoned out for a few minutes. “Past self not me.” And return. Is it okay when other people fail or have setbacks? Then it is okay for you. Practice forgiveness. Practice determination. Bring yourself back to the present and continue your focus.

What can help you with this is to practice grounding yourself. Both at the start of the mindfulness and when things become too hectic. When there’s just a deluge of judgment. Really notice the ground under you. As if there was an energy connecting you to the ground or floor beneath. Notice five colors around you. Notice three sounds around you.

And take a breath. You can use the cue word. Take a deep breath. As you breathe in, say to yourself: “Aham.” And return to the world around you.

You are not doing this to relax. You are not doing this to have a calm, clear mind. You are learning to function and power through the chaos that is your monkey brain. You are learning to allow judgment to exist in your life but that it doesn’t have to stop you from living your life. It doesn’t have to define what you’re capable of doing now.

Each time you catch yourself thinking about the past or future and you return to the present, you’re building strength. You’re correcting yourself, gathering orange chalk. You’re earning your orange belt.

So whatever activity you’re doing, stick with it. If you’re walking the dog, taking a shower, or eating lunch, be mindful the entire time.

Other labeling strategies.

The default strategy is to notice when you’re not in the present—and label it: “past self, not me” or “future self, not me”

You can also mix things up a bit. You can label the thoughts. So, you’re walking and you feel an emotion? You can say, “That’s an emotion.” Or “That’s a thought.” Or, “That’s a body sensation.” Or “That’s a judgment.” Don’t overanalyze which category it fits. If you do, “That’s analysis.” The important thing is you label that you’re not in the present. Acknowledge it, return to the present.

Another strategy is to just stick with the judgments. You’re in the shower, trying to be mindful, and you’re failing. You feel like a failure. What I want you to think or say, is “I’m having the judgment that I’m a failure.” Remember, you’re here to learn that you have judgments but that they aren’t you. So don’t say “I’m a failure.” Or even “I think I’m a failure.” Say or think “I’m having the thought that I’m a failure.”

And this also applies to good judgments. Maybe you were mindful for almost a full minute. “hey I’m getting the hang of this; it’s really working for me.” That’s a judgment. So “I’m having the judgment that I’m good at this.”

A final strategy? Thank your mind. You’re mindfully eating and you just realized you forgot to thaw the chicken for tonight. What kind of moron forgets to do that? Rather than answer that, simply thank your mind. “Thanks for the reminder. Thanks for the judgment.” Or, “Thanks for the shame, thanks for the feeling.”

Think of your brain like a cat bringing you a dead mouse. It brought something to your attention. Doesn’t mean you have to play with it. Give thanks to your cat, no need to be mean, just trying to be helpful. Go back to your task at hand. Likewise, thank your mind. “Thanks for the judgment.” Back to the shower, or back to the walking or back to lunch.

Remember, what you’re doing here is training yourself to have a thought, sit with it, but not have to respond to it.

So those are the mindful activities you can do. Please see the accompanying worksheet on the three different mindful activity types.

Traditional Meditation: The Body Scan

Then we have the traditional meditations. That can be found at Pentabelt.com/meditations. In the orange belt, you’ll be doing a similar activity to the mindfulness practices, just with your eyes closed. Remaining seated.

In the white belt, you just had to listen to each meditation once, and only once. Here in the orange it’s a bit different. You’ll first listen to the intro file. That part’s the same. But then you can listen to the other files based upon your schedule. Each recording is a guided body scan meditation. In the orange belt our focus is on the body. The thoughts and feelings relating to who you are.

The Orange is also about providing structure, having a schedule. So the way to start out, listen to the intro file. Then listen to the 15 minute body scan meditation. Then the 20 minute body scan. Then the 10 minute, the 5 minute, the three minute, the one minute body scan. All on different days. Make it work for your schedule. Ideally, you’d listen to the 10 or 15 minute body scan meditation each day you’re in the orange belt. But look, if you only have 5 minutes, do the 5 minute body scan. Or just the three minute one. We’ll explore this topic in the next section, but our aim here is consistency. Better to do a 5 minute body scan each day than a 15-minute one once a week.

As with the mindfulness, there will be distractions. You’ll notice thoughts and feelings come up all the time. That’s how brains work. You’ll notice the judgment. That’s normal too. But as you do the body scan meditations each day you’ll start to learn something: that the thoughts and feelings and judgments, aren’t you. You are the one who notices. And that, my white belts, is what will give you choice for how you want to live your life. What you want your life to be about.

So I know I’m asking for a lot. Remember the white, you can provide or revoke consent at any time. With that in mind though, if you’ve signed up for this, sign up for it. See if you can carve out time for yourself. For your wellbeing. If possible, do both a daily meditation and a mindful activity during this orange belt. In the next section, we explore how to make these into habits. How to set healthy activities so they become habits in your day-to-day life.

Orange 06: 16 Rules for How to Set Healthy Habits

For the orange belt, we look to the lessons of Silicon Valley. What’s behind their power? I would argue, just their sheer curiosity! They are really in the business of understanding human behavior, if for nothing more than to control it. To influence it. For better, and often times, for worse.

There are dedicated scientists whose job it is to tweak everything to get more clicks, more eyeballs. And if one strategy doesn’t quite work, they are the first to test and adjust.

We might as well take that same approach.

The research seems to show that daily cardio and daily meditation just by themselves can have a big influence on mood and energy levels. Explaining this concept is 10% of the work. The other 90% is finding ways to turn these activities into habits. To make them a part of who you are.

As we go over some strategies for really integrating mindfulness in your life, see if you can cultivate that to see how some of this might apply to you. Not just for the daily habit of meditation but for anything else as well. Think of this as an adult initiation ritual. A lot of adulthood is just daily habits that you commit to making a part of your life. These daily habits add up. And so while you’re crafting these habits, perhaps we can include some that will bring energy and clarity of mind.

Remember, my white belts, that the green level will inspire you. You may have a grand vision of what you want your life to be about. Yet in all of that, it’s the logistics that makes the difference. Whatever you want in life, you’ll need clarity and focus. Not to mention energy. A good operating system. And for all of that, it’s the self-care habits and rituals that makes the difference.

So let’s get into the hacking. How do we fully integrate the daily self-care, the daily meditation into your life? For that we have 16 rules. You don’t have to follow them all, but if you find yourself struggling to be consistent in your self-care, come back to this segment to see if you might be missing something. Okay, so let’s begin!

Rule 1: Be flexible with your time…

The silicon behemoths did not start with a goal of a million members and a billion in revenue. They started with small, incremental goals.

For mindfulness, start with 3 to 5 minutes. Work your way up to 15 to 20. And some days, you may only have time for a 3 to 5 minute meditation. That’s okay. You can gain benefit from 3 minutes daily. That’s why we have it!

If you set the start of each morning to meditate for 15 minutes, there will be mornings that you forgot to set your alarm and you wake up late. Or with a sinus infection. Life sometimes gets in the way. And aren’t we here to foster a sense of psychological flexibility?

Generally speaking, you get the most benefit from about 12-15 minutes of daily meditation. But 3 to 5 minutes confers some benefit as well. It’s also perfectly fine to have 5 minutes in the morning, 5 minutes in the evening. Or a ten minute morning meditation and a mindful dog walk.

Again, think of the exercise metaphor. Ideally, you want to be moving each day. If you don’t have time to do a daily run, you can always hop on the exercise bike in the evening or take your dog for an extra-long walk. And if you’re flying all day or driving across country, you might not be moving much at all. Such is life.

Just as you can have a mix of formal and informal physical exercise, you can have a mix of formal and informal mindfulness practices. And the amount of time you spend can vary. Let’s say you have a great night of sleep and a little bit of extra time: do a 15 minute meditation. Utterly exhausted or in a rush? Just do 3 minutes. Try and avoid “zero days.” But again, the aim is flexibility. If you’re feeling sick, or a flight to catch in an hour, might make sense to skip for the day. The aim here is flexibility.

And if this is all too much, start with 1 minute. Don’t feel bad about starting small. Daily exercises can start quite small until they become a habit, then you can build them up. So be flexible with your time. A one, two, three minute meditation a day is a perfectly good start.

Rule 2: … But be consistent with your schedule.

As with establishing any habit. It’s helpful to set a particular time each day. The most common times for daily tasks are first thing in the morning or right before bed. Most of my clients prefer physical fitness right at the start of the day and their meditation right at the end. And in the afternoon, a mindful walk, which checks off mindfulness and movement.

When you set a time, aim to be consistent with that schedule. You brush your teeth at about the same time each day. 3 minutes in the morning, 3 minutes at night. If you can set aside 6 minutes for your teeth, you can do 5 minutes for your brain.

So let’s say you decide to do your meditation at night, for 10 or 12 minutes. If you don’t quite have that time, rather than skip it entirely, just shoot for 1 to 3 minutes. That is why the audio program has various times available. So you can be consistent with your schedule and flexible with your time.

Rule 3: The Premack Principle is your Friend

The idea behind the Premack principle is that to reinforce a behavior, associate it with a behavior that is already established. So for kids, you want to play outside? Finish your homework first.

That means, in deciding when to meditate, see if you can place it right before you do something you enjoy doing and that you do every day. If you play video games each night after work, aim to meditate first, then onto the video games. Or do the meditation first, then breakfast.

Let’s say you have a morning cup of coffee. Many people will have a quarter cup of coffee right upon waking. Then do the meditation right after that, then finish the coffee after the meditation. That brings in some caffeine. You have the meditation, come out of it feeling a perk from the caffeine, and are ready to start the day with the rest of the coffee.

Others who are weaning from coffee will take a caffeine pill, with 200 mg in it, split it into 4 and just have a quarter of the pill, or 50mg, right when they start the meditation. After the meditation, there’s the reward of the caffeine perk and their breakfast, or going online or just the start of the day.

In these cases you’re merging the meditation and mindfulness with your established routine. Hence the mindfulness being associated with a daily dog walk, a daily shower, or a daily meal. Or, right after your brush your teeth at night. Aim to do the meditation before or during the daily activity. Use food, or just your daily caffeine perk, to reinforce this behavior.

Rule 4: Have a Ritual

Suppose you want to have a light jog each day for 20 minutes. Maybe go on the treadmill at 4 miles an hour, a power walk—just to get the heart pumping. You can watch whatever’s on youtube. First, get the shower ready. Everything except the running water. Then tighten the sneakers, select something to watch. Then, hop on the treadmill. Start at 3 miles an hour to warm up, then onto 4 with a timer. Then afterwards, into the shower, then onto breakfast. And there you have it, a ritual.

Want to engineer better sleep? Have a nightly alarm at 9, no more screens of any type. Go to a chair, do a meditation, set a timer for ten-to-15 minutes. After that, maybe reading a bit, then off to bed.

So for yourself, look for rituals or special practices you can do to make your self-care a routine. Maybe a special chair you really only use for meditation?

If you are mindful while you’re walking, you can have a ritual where for the first block you just focus on how your body feels. Then the 2nd block, the one with all the nice trees, you focus on what you can see. Then as you keep going, focus on what you can hear.

Add whatever little touches to make it your own, a part of who you are and what you do.

And again, to really reinforce this ritual, aim to do at least a few minutes of meditation, or mindfulness each day. Just to build that habit. Remember, eventually these habits will become automatic if you just give them enough time.

Rule 5: Use the Orange.

How do we use Orange in the world? On the freeway, to grab your attention. To adjust your daily pattern. Stay out of this lane, go into this one. If the white belt has white paper, the orange belt has the orange post-it note.

Let’s say you want to start a daily mindful shower? Take an orange post it note, write “mindful shower” and place it right by the bathroom sink. Or place a post-it note by the dog’s leash. Or wherever your lunch might be.

Or have a daily timer. Nine pm each night, with its own unique alarm. Make it stand out as a reminder for you.

And when you see this Orange, try to jump into the activity as soon as you can. It sounds funny, but don’t give yourself too much time to think, or decide. Let’s say you’ve decided to meditate first thing in the morning. You place a post it note on your phone. As soon as you see that post it note, off to meditate. Don’t go on reddit first, don’t go brushing your teeth. Don’t go deciding if you feel like it or not.

Same with coming home from work. You want to exercise, go for a jog, or a mindful walk? Immediately jump right into it. Remember, make it a habit! Make it a ritual!

Rule 6: Take time to Sharpen Your Axe

If I may borrow from the red belt: A great quote from Abraham Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

A consistent daily meditation will take time away from your schedule. As will consistent cardio. But they both often lead to saving time in the end.

Look at our developers, those working on code. They’ll spend three, four, five hours straight working on a piece of code. If there’s a bug, it’s easy to lose hours struggling to fix it.

Sometimes it just makes sense to take a break from it. Spend an hour on a bug. Take a 15 minute meditation break. Or a 20 minute jog. That’s often when the solution pops in. After the break, the code fix takes just a few minutes.

Studies have shown that the average white collar worker only really does about 3 to 4 hours of quality work a day. The other time is spent looking through Reddit, facebook, youtube. When you start the day doing self-care or have it right around lunch time, you may end up more focused, get everything taken care of, and even have a bit more time at the end of the day for real enjoyment: your own hobbies and spending time with others you care about.

Rule 7: Be Mindful of Bedtime Rebellion & Other Stumbling Blocks

Often times, you may not have a lot of say in your day-to-day life. You may be going through a stage in life where you don’t have a lot of freedom. Don’t have a lot of “me time.” So it’s natural to rebel a bit at night. You should go to bed at 11, but you find yourself staying up much later than that.

This is known as bedtime rebellion and it’s a natural, normal thing. So much of the day isn’t yours. But at night, it’s peaceful. No one telling you what to do.

So, sometimes it makes sense to have a bit of a compromise. Let’s say in an ideal world, you’d be in bed at 10. But you’re usually up till about 1am. We can usually compromise to 11:30 with an emphasis on spending your night doing something enjoyable. Something rewarding.

Think of it like going on a diet. And you get one cheat snack. You have potato chips it’s readily available and you eat them while watching TV. It’s completely mindless. Hell, you go through the whole bag, and you don’t even remember eating them. Very little actual reward. You’re not eating them because you enjoy it. You eat them because you’re bored.

The challenge then, is to replace those potato chips with a food you can enjoy. A special food you get that you take special care to enjoy, to savor. You gotta get rid of the potato chips, they probably shouldn’t even be in the house. But you replace it with something that probably has fewer calories that you get more enjoyment out of.

Psychologists will refer to this as mental contrasting. Think of what you want to achieve and also the stumbling blocks that might get in the way. You might think it’s a great idea to meditate right when you get home from work. Or go out for a jog. But after taking the time to really imagine doing that, or just trying it out in real life, you might find you’re just too tired, too out of it to do much at all. It might just make sense to do your self-care first thing in the morning, or right before bed time.

That leads us to our next rule:

Rule 8: Use external rewards

People usually get their exercise and meditation in the morning because it’s less likely to be squeezed out of the schedule.

But that will involve waking up early and, to provide enough sleep, going to bed early.

This will take some time getting used to. And it’s probably going to involve rewards.

It’s okay to be shameless when it comes to rewards. You can reward a daily salad for lunch each day with a slice of pie over the weekend. Or after a week of daily meditation, a manicure or pedicure. If you’re in bed by 11pm, up at 6 and meditating at 6:30 for 6 days out of the week? You get that overpriced video game expansion pack.

Studies show that a major predictor of keeping healthy habits like meditation going is early positive feelings and experiences. If you’re making this time in your life a time of change and growth, make it a time of enjoyment.

Using rewards appears to be quite important in starting and keeping healthy habits.

Don’t skimp on using rewards to develop and reinforce healthy habits. That is very important. Can’t have sustained behavioral change without a reward, without something reinforcing. Remember that.

Rule 9: Notice the Internal Results

Once you’ve started to meditate or really started any new healthy habits, pay attention to the early gains. Do you feel more energized after running? More relaxed and focused after meditating? Spend time acknowledging that. And if you’re able to fall asleep quicker, no longer feel the need to yell at other drives, acknowledge that as well. Write it down. And tell other people. That’s what you’ll remember in the future when you’ve fallen off the wagon. The impact it’s made on your life. That will help get you back into the habit when you need it in the future.

Rule 10: Use Creative Restrictions

We can borrow a term from chemistry: “activation energy” and use it for habits. The less energy or easier it is to do an activity, the more likely it’ll spontaneously happen. Conversely, the more energy or effort it takes to do something, the less likely it’ll happen automatically.

For the habits you want to curb, you can place in little barriers.

The most common example is not having junk food at home. And, at the same time, getting salads that are pre-made and ready to go. As little activation energy as possible.

If you want to meditate at night, you can set an alarm that at 9pm, the phone is put away. Or you can get a program that shuts off wifi. You can place the password to deactivate it in the trunk of your car. So if you really need it, you can get it. But those little barriers and restrictions are often all that’s needed.

There are browser extensions that will block certain websites all day or at certain times. There are even devices that go on outlets that will block the current at a certain time. So at 9, the TV goes off. You can manually plug it back it. But many don’t. They just keep it off and focus on other things. Quick meditation, reading, getting ready for bed.

Rule 11: Keep going, even when you’re anxious, even when you’re tired.

Remember the old school Legend of Zelda, which had the light world and the dark world. When you made a change to the dark world, it showed up as a change in the light world. That’s sorta how it works with meditation. If you’re tired and you practice meditation, or mindfulness, you’re training yourself to transcend the tiredness. To work through it. That tends to make it easier to then do other things even when you’re tired.

If you’re anxious with all sorts of thoughts in your head. Practice meditation, practice noticing the chaos and coming back to your body. Back to your breath. That way, when you really need it, you’ll have the focus you need to persevere. To break through. Remember my aspiring orange belts, it’s not the initial anxiety that leads to your downfall. It’s all the judgments. All the fears. If you practice meditating even when you feel anxiety, you stand a much better chance of avoiding that anxiety spiral. Just allowing the anxiety and working through it. And then what you gain from that is a sense of confidence. A sense of mastery.

Rule 12: … But Foster Self Compassion.

In your goals, add some flexibility, some compassion. If your goal is be in bed by 11 and you’ve done it each weekday, but you’re at a friend’s place and want to watch another movie, consider giving yourself a little wiggle room.

Life does get in the way. So set rules, but give yourself some flexibility, some self-compassion.

If you’re on a great streak, you’ve meditated daily for 12 days but one day you’ve just completely forgot, remember that you can always pick it up the next day. That’s actually part of the purpose here. We’re developing core skills to achieve what you want in life. Every time you accept imperfect and choose to recommit, you’re developing persistence and endurance.

Rule 13: Remember the White: Write it Down

Let’s imagine it’s the end of the year and your new year’s resolution is to lose 30 pounds. All the reasons to lose weight are right there in front of you. You can see it. You can feel it.

By September, you’ve lost the weight. But also all of the motivators to lose weight. You feel better, look better. It’s easy to forget how you used to feel. It’s then easy to fall off the wagon.

That’s why you’d want to document your progress. Take a “before” pic. And write out all the reasons for going to the gym. What you did, and how you feel now.

You can see how far you’ve come. And, hey, if you do fall off the wagon, you have a record of what worked for you. What you did right and what you need to work on.

And yes, the theme here is Silicon Valley, where everything is digitized. But when you’re starting, use the low-tech version. In the next section, we’ll have the behavioral contract. A key tool in helping you incorporate healthy habits. You’ll want to print it out! Use the notebook or clipboard you got during the white belt and physically write out your plan of action.

There’s a temptation to use an app as I of all people can attest. But we want this journey to be special for you. Writing things out, just sorta makes things “real.” Makes it a bit more physical. Like being able to slam down a telephone when you want to hang up on someone. There’s a special feeling of satisfaction when you physically mark down the day and what you accomplished. You see that you’re achieving your goal. And it’s a reminder. Place the paper or dry eraser right in your office or room and it serves as a prompt for action.

Of course later you can enter all the numbers in an app or database. And once the habit becomes established, then by all means switch to the high tech version.

Rule 14: Biofeedback is your friend

Many phones, many devices can measure something called HRV or heart rate variability. You can start the measure right at the start of the meditation and at the end, it’ll pop out a number. Sometimes a high number, sometimes a lower number.

You don’t want to rely too much on a single datapoint to judge your progress. After all, some of the most helpful meditations occur when you’re feeling a bit stressed and chaotic.

But again, having a number seems to motivate people. You write down a number. Once a week you find an average, and generally speaking the numbers will go up. I have many clients who keep doing it just so they don’t miss a data point for the week.

And the measurement itself can serve as a training tool. When you’re obsessed about getting a high number, a good score, that’s when the number goes down. When you practice just breathing into your body, letting go of expectation, you’ll notice a higher number and a more fulfilling practice.

Rule 15: Share your goals, but with the right people.

A lot of studies in the past have shown that sharing goals with other people can sometimes be counterproductive. By telling people about a goal, such as a new fitness plan, you get a lot of the benefits: the recognition, the encouragement, without having to actually do anything. And so it becomes easier to just sorta put it off. More recent research shows that it may be best to tell people, but only the people you really look up to.

Telling people you look up to about your goals may help ensure you follow through on them.

So it may help to pick someone that you care about, someone you don’t want to disappoint, and tell them about your goal. And for good measure, ask them to follow up, see how you’re doing. Doing it together may also give a bit of social pressure. Person 1 may not quite feel like it but will go along if Person 2 is doing it, especially if Person 2 turns off the TV and sets a timer.

Rule 16: Just Start.

This is the orange belt. The realm of engineering and planning. For the self-care habits we want to establish we want to take some time to construct a plan. We’ll do that in the next section with the behavioral contract. But shortly after that is when you want to start. What you don’t want to do is wait until you feel like it. In other words, don’t wait till you feel better to start activities designed to make you feel better. Think of the job interview, the first date. If you waited until you were completely ready, most of these things would never happen. There are daily steps, daily habits we can start now and your mood, your confidence will improve based upon this new consistency in your life.

This is a good tip for life. When all else fails-- Do Something. When you’re depressed, when you don’t know what to do, when you feel overwhelmed, do something physical. Do something tangible. Feed the cat. Do the laundry. And yes, even Clean Your Room. It just shows your brain that you’re capable of doing something. Can very much help you get out of any funk. Then, see if you can do a self-care activity. Go for a walk. Do a mindful body scan. Then see if this is something you can keep doing on a regular basis. See if it’s something you can make a part of who you are as an adult.

The Green Belt, the Red Belt, will be levels that will encourage and inspire you, I’m sure. But when you look at the nitty gritty it’s the daily habit that can sustain the long term growth we’re all looking for.

So without further ado, in the next section, we have the meat of the orange belt: the behavioral contract.

Orange 07: The Behavioral Contract

So to complete the orange belt, we have the behavioral contract. We’re here to build a new healthy habit. We're here to develop a self-care routine. To start your growth now and best prepare for the psychedelic experience ahead. We're preparing for the Green Belt, but remembering the White. Let’s write it out.

To start, please download the Behavioral Contract Worksheet, which you can find at Pentabelt.com/worksheets.

So let’s review it!

Top of the worksheet: Behavioral Contract

Starting date: today’s date.

Initial purpose can be your reason for starting this. So maybe feeling anxious. Wanting to be healthier. Whatever it is, write it in!

Initial Purpose: Less anxiety when going for that job interview.

Now we move onto Goals.

Goals: Mindfulness

Mindfulness Area: Be mindful when walking the dog

Mindfulness Frequency: everyday

Mindfulness Duration: The Entire Walk (15 minutes)

Goals: Meditation

Meditation Schedule: First thing in the morning

Meditation Duration: 3-5 minutes

Meditation Frequency: Five times a week, during weekdays.

Then we move on to prompts. You can use an orange post it note. Or a timer. Anything to remind you of your new habit.

Mindfulness prompt: Orange post it note, on the dog’s leash.

Meditation prompt: Phone alarm for 7:30am each weekday.

Then of course, like any good bit of code, we have exceptions.

Exceptions:

If I oversleep, I’ll set an alarm to meditate at night.

If it’s raining and the dog refuses to go outside… I’ll force the dog out for a quick pee, being mindful in the process.

Next, we have “Assistors”: things that can help you along your way,

Assistors:

Ritual location: Can you make the activity a ritual?

I’ll set a special spot to meditate, right by the closet door.

Biofeedback: Can technology help?

Look into measuring my HRV with my phone.

Social: Can others help you along the way?

I’ll show my results to a mentor, someone I look up to.

Research: Can you remind yourself of the benefits?

I’ll Google the benefits of meditation for concentration. For Productivity.

Then, last but in no way least… rewards. State the condition, then the reward and the consequence, and a bonus as well as a bonus reward

If I: Have 10 meditation/mindful sessions in the next week.

Then I get: that overpriced expansion pack I’ve always wanted.

Otherwise: No expansion pack!

Bonus: have 12 meditation/mindful sessions in the next week.

Then I get: the expansion pack, and sushi!

Signed: ____________________________________

Then the next sheet should have the four columns:

Date.

Activity. So, for above an “M” for meditation and a “D” for mindful dog walk.

Time: was this a 10 minute meditation? Place a 10.

Note: Place anything you’re noticing. Good or bad. “Had panic” or “felt calm when cut off in traffic.”

What I want to see for the Orange Belt

Now, is having a nice contract all written out all you need for the orange belt? Nope. Even if you do all of the activities? Still no. I want to see orange!

When you’re just starting karate, the instructor is going to mark where your feet should be in orange chalk. Don’t go here. Stay here. And you know what? You’re a beginner so you’re gonna fall all over the place. You’ll be covered in all that orange chalk. That’s when you fully have your orange belt.

In other words, I want you to have this contract, and fail at it. You might find, you just can’t do it. Can’t meditate in the morning. Cross that off. Place in “meditate, after coffee” or “right before lunch.” Keep forgetting to meditate in the shower? Use that orange post-it note. Or an orange towel. Or a literal orange in your bathroom, just to keep your housemates guessing. In other words, expect failure. And embrace it. Make the adjustments. Stay curious.

And if you don’t reach your goals, just begin again. You had a three day emergency where you had to fly back east and did no meditation/mindfulness? Once you return, just change the start date for the goal and go right back to your routine.

You’re here to learn persistence. Perseverance. The work you put in here will be reflected when you’re ready to start the interviews. Or starting to date again. Notice the failure. Allow it to be there, come back to it.

Speaking of failure, take a flexible approach to it. If you intended to be mindful in the shower but just could not concentrate or focus. That counts. Just put an “S” down. It really does count, even if you felt like you didn’t do a good job.

And do not skip the rewards. If you set a reward for sushi and you reach the goal, get that sushi. I don’t care if you feel like you don’t deserve it, or it doesn’t really count. Or whatever.

Feelings of depression are not just about feeling bad or being tired. Depression is also about a lack of pleasure. A lack of interest. You can work against this pattern by engaging in what you used to enjoy. What you used to get pleasure out of. So do not skimp on the rewards.

Imagine you were training your dog. Every day you do a little training. You wouldn’t dream of training without some dog treat, without some reward. And if one day the dog just wasn’t responding, you’d go right into compassion mode. Maybe the dog’s tired? Let’s take a break and retry tomorrow.

So all I’m asking is you treat yourself as well as you would a dog. Feeling sick? Give yourself a break! Set a goal and reached it? Give yourself a reward! Treat your self-care like a scientist would. Like an engineer would. See how far you can go with your self-care with a sense of curiosity, compassion, and persistence.

Orange 08: 5 Self-Care Topics to Explore Before During and After Psychedelic Therapy

The primary self-care skill we’re setting in the orange belt is that of mindfulness. A daily habit, a daily ritual. As this becomes a part of you, a part of your operating system, you’ll naturally start to notice other opportunities for health. You’ll form a growing appreciation for energy, clarity, focus. So begin that behavioral contract! Start the habits now, so you’ll be fully prepared in the green belt.

As we reach the end of the Orange Belt, let’s go over some of the basic habits that can lead towards anxiety and depression, or, on a more positive bent, help generate calmness and energy.

In the Green Belt, you’ll begin to understand your values. You’ll gain a vision of what you want your life to be about. What’s important to you. But to bring about that change you will need energy. You will need an operating system that is optimized for the “apps” of the Green, Red, and Black.

It’s one thing to voyage into the mystic and learn, “love is what counts.” It’s quite another thing to have the energy when you get home from work to go on that tinder date. Or make a special meal for your significant other. Or let go and move on.

Now, starting these changes, working towards self-care, can be very triggering and can bring up all sorts of emotions and thought processes. “I really hate running, what am I supposed to do at this party if I don’t have something to drink. How am I supposed to have a salad when my housemates are eating at Tommy’s Burgers.” But that’s the idea. You want to go into your psychedelic experience with that memory of feeling deprived. When you really want that chili burger and you’re having a salad, what emotions come up? Those are exactly the feelings you’ll want to explore, transcend, allow to be a part of your experience.

In certain cancer treatments, they’ll inject you with radioactive glucose. The cancer cells that are overactive take in more of the glucose and they light up, making it easier to go in and cut them out. Similarly, it helps to go into the next belt with an understanding of the emotional blocks to your self-care. What happens when you try to quit smoking? Cut down on your drinking? When you meditate, what are the thought patterns that keep coming up? “I can’t do this, I’m so horrible at this, I should just give up.” These limiting beliefs will come right to the surface, for deep exploration.

And, as you engage in this self-care, you can form ideas for refinement. Let’s say you’ve never really exercised much in your life. You’ve been noticing you’re putting on the pounds. You may have a vision, an idea, I’ll start running. You come out of it. Turns out, you hate running!

Not every idea coming out of the green and red belts will be winners. Might as well learn that now. But if you start exercising now, you try running, you go into the green belt. The “ah-ha” idea might be, “yeah I’m not big into running but afterwards I felt pretty good. Maybe I should start with just a powerwalk, a brisk walk.” Or try running in the morning. Or, you may just get the vision, “hey you know I used to bike as a kid, maybe I should focus on that.”

And eventually, this will be a pattern. You’ll have an experience, a psychedelic experience, get some insight. Apply that insight in your everyday life. Adjust the insight, do another psychedelic experience in the future, several months down the line. It may be a slow and steady process. But your habits will improve. And what you seek out will become doable, possible.

Remember, from deep in the jungles of the Andes we have the ayahuasca experience. In preparation for this experience you’re told to follow dieta. For a week, 10 days before the ayahuasca you’re told to refrain from television, processed foods, even sexual intimacy.

It is that period of abstinence that brings many emotional issues rising to the surface. Once you no longer have those escape mechanisms, you really come face-to-face with what you’ve been trying to suppress. Once you stop eating your feelings, you sort of get to see what those feelings really entail. Then going into the ayahuasca experience, you’re much more aware and your reward is a healing experience. Those feelings of being deprived, judged, or discouraged? They can be processed. They can be healed. You might find afterwards it’s easier to start meditating, stop smoking, and focus your energy on what’s important.

Up next will be some of the habits we do that can impact mood, and your overall mental health. As you hear this, see if you can challenge yourself to make these self-care upgrades now. Just remember the white, speak with your doctor, your primary care physician before making any big changes to your diet, or starting an exercise program, or quitting drinking.

Speaking of, let’s start with the first health care topic with the real drugs of concern: Alcohol and Tobacco.

Topic 1: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Mood

Two habits you need to be careful about when dealing with anxiety and depression are smoking cigarettes and drinking.

First, for smoking, in the long term quitting smoking really seems to boost mood and reduce anxiety. Generally people who are non-smokers are less likely to feel depressed or have anxiety disorders.

However, when first quitting, nicotine withdrawal can lead to a temporary depression. You also metabolize certain medications more quickly when smoking. So talk to your doctor about your attempts to quit smoking as well as any subsequent changes in mood.

Together, we can work on helping you quit and remain smoke free. It’s one of the best things you can do for health.

For alcohol, unfortunately it’s often the same story. People often drink and smoke to calm down and manage their anxiety. And although it can work in the short term, it often becomes its own source of anxiety.

Alcohol and Tobacco are two drugs which tend to increase overall long-term anxiety.

Often people who are anxious will start to drink to feel normal. Especially in social situations where you feel normal, people start to treat you better and you feel more relaxed.

The problem with this is that with excessive drinking, your body starts to depend on the alcohol to relax. Your brain naturally produces certain types of neurotransmitters that help you relax. Drinking alcohol provides a spike in those neurotransmitters. And if you drink enough for a steady period of time, your brain starts to shut down its normal production of neurotransmitters simply because the alcohol already provides a shortcut.

Then, once you stop or try to cut down on drinking, you feel much more anxious and it all becomes a vicious cycle.

A quick test is to answer the 4 CAGE questions about drinking:

Question 1: Have you ever felt you needed to Cut down on your drinking?

Question 2: Have people Annoyed you by criticizing your drinking?

Question 3: Have you ever felt Guilty about drinking?

Question 4: Have you ever felt you needed a drink first thing in the morning (Eye-opener) to steady your nerves or to get rid of a hangover?

If two or more of those responses were yes, that is a major red flag that you should talk to someone about. If you do plan to quit drinking cold turkey, make sure you talk to a doctor. Suddenly quitting alcohol can lead to tremors, seizures, and can even be fatal. So again, you’ll want to quit with medical assistance.

If you're looking to improve mood, gain energy — hell, even just for general health, few things beat quitting tobacco and curbing alcohol.

Topic 2: Exercise

Along that note, part of our program here involves adopting a walking mindfulness program. A lot of research shows that physical exercise can be quite beneficial for both anxiety and depression. With some studies showing that moderate exercise is comparable to medication in fighting depression. In fact, a recent study, has shown that physical activity being about 1.5 times more effective in managing depression compared to either counseling or the standard medications.

For Ketamine assisted therapy, researchers speculate that the ketamine releases BDNF, an important neurochemical that promotes cognitive flexibility and seems to elevate mood. Guess what else releases BDNF? Exercise. And it doesn’t have to be super intense. For mood boosting, a modest walking pace can be just what you need. Hop on a treadmill, set it at 4 miles an hour, and that’s the pace you’re looking for. Of course, once again, consult with your doctor to ensure you’re physically healthy enough to begin any exercise program.

Topic 3: Caffeine, Cannabis, and Mood

If you’re feeling anxious quite a bit or if you have difficulty falling asleep, you’ll want to monitor your caffeine use. For people who are really susceptible, one cup of coffee can make you feel very overstimulated, which can be mislabeled as anxiety. For sensitive individuals, drinking coffee even at 2pm can lead to difficulty getting to sleep.

When it comes to cannabis there seems to be a growing body of research that it can help with various health conditions. There’s even new research about how cannabis can be used just on its own to have a psychedelic experience. It may very well help people become more spiritual or just more relaxed at night for sleeping. For those with serious trauma, CBD may really help with nightmares and sleeping through the night.

Used improperly, caffeine and cannabis can also contribute to anxious symptoms.

Having said that, when taken too much, cannabis itself can also lead to more anxiety. A recent study has shown that frequent cannabis use can actually decrease the effectiveness of traditional psychotherapy for anxiety disorders. A common theme in this orange belt is that you have to feel the feelings to process them. Sit with the anxiety, make room for it. If you’re using cannabis to escape those feelings, if you’re using it to close your eyes rather than open them, it’s not going to help in the long term and can often times make anxiety worse.

It might make sense if you feel cannabis might be contributing to your anxiety or depression to take a break from it. Generally three weeks seems to be a good time frame. After that, you can see about slowly reintroducing it, making sure that you take steps to use it responsibly. If the recommendation for cannabis comes from a doctor, you may want to discuss with your doctor if you feel like it’s making you anxious or depressed. There are different strains and methods of using cannabis, which might be better suited for you.

Topic 4: Diet & Supplements

Another contributor to anxiety can be low blood sugar. The symptoms of low blood sugar or hypoglycemia can be very similar to anxiety. This might be something you want to bring up with your doctor, who may advise you to not go too long without having some protein, such as cheese or an egg.

While at your doctor, you can also discuss if certain supplements can help you. There’s evidence out there, for example that omega-3 fatty acids might help people who are depressed. Some research suggests it helps control the inflammatory response, and that might help elevate mood.

5 The Importance of Sleep

Good sleep is an essential component to feeling less depressed and anxious.

According to an article at Johns Hopkins those who have insomnia or other sleep problems have a tenfold higher risk of having depression. Depression itself can lead to sleep problems, so we get a bit of a vicious cycle here. For better sleep, we have a concept known as sleep hygiene.

Here’s a short list, some basic rules that may help you with falling and staying asleep

First big rule: The bed is only for sleep (or being intimate with a partner). That means no checking phone, watching TV, or reading in bed.

Second: Go to bed at the same time each evening and set an alarm to wake at the same time each morning. You’ll want to avoid sleeping in on the weekends.

Third: keep the bedroom dark, cool, and silent. Ideally below 73 degrees Fahrenheit. Might also consider wearing a sleep mask. Having a fan or a white noise device can help hide noises that might wake you up in the morning.

Fourth: restrict your caffeine intake and your naps. Generally you’ll want to avoid caffeine after 12 noon. We go into caffeine more at the next belt. Same with naps, generally after 3 or 4pm.

Fifth: There’s some research that anaerobic exercise, but early in the day, before 12 noon may help. And you don’t need to do much, maybe 15-20 minutes.

Sixth: Before going to bed, have a routine. One trick that many people have found helpful is to spend 5 minutes right before bed writing out a to-do list. Just a short list of all the stuff you plan to do tomorrow written down on paper and do that for 5 minutes. It seems to allow your mind to let it go and can be a quiet thing you do before going to bed.

Finally seventh: If you find that you’re in bed unable to sleep for more than 20 minutes, get up. If you notice more than 20 minutes of being awake, leave the bed for 5 minutes or so. You can do some light reading or if you haven’t already written the list of things to do the next day, you can do that. Don’t spend hours tossing and turning, see if you can get up and do something relaxing before you try to fall asleep.

Now there’s some research out there that daily meditation can help with insomnia. So you might notice as the weeks go on that a) you sleep better and b) you’re more resilient on the days you don’t get as much sleep.

So from the white belt, have your journal. As you’re listening to all of this, what’s coming up? How did you feel, hearing about the effects of smoking? Drinking? Was there something you didn’t want to hear? Write it all out! This is something you’ll want to explore in the next belt.

So keep going with the behavioral contract, with the meditation or mindfulness. But keep in mind these other areas for improvement in the future. And while doing all of that, we head into the next section, the preparation of your psychedelic experience.

Orange 09: The Logistics of Your First Psychedelic Experience: 5 Ways to Prepare

This is the time to start your behavioral contract. Focus on the techniques now that will serve you in the next belt. As you’re making this behavioral change, really embracing the orange, we can start to really prepare for that first psychedelic experience. The event itself occurs in the green belt, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start preparing for it now.

For those in California, that means at-home ketamine therapy. And for that, we have 5 ways to prepare. To help guide you in this process, we have a worksheet you can download at Pentabelt.com/worksheets.

First: Get your prescription

In the white, you’ve signed the informed consent and have hopefully scheduled a medical consultation. It might be a few weeks before the medical consultation begins. That gives you plenty of time to practice meditation and mindfulness! Once you have the medical consultation, which usually takes an hour, the doctor will determine if you qualify for ketamine therapy. If you’re eligible, you’ll receive a treatment plan and the Ketamine will be delivered to your residence. If it’s been too long since you’ve heard from the provider, check your spam filter. If it’s been too long since you’ve heard from the pharmacy, say more than 24 hours, go ahead and give them a call.

Second: Select your chaperone

If the therapist is working with you remotely, you’ll need a chaperone. If you’re working with the Original Programmer here, he may be able to provide concierge services if you’re in the “Neutral Zone,” defined as a Thirty Mile Zone around Leo Carrio Ranch. Also known as North County. Otherwise, you’ll need a family member or a friend to be there in case you need someone to escort you to the bathroom, grab you a blanket or just be there in case of emergencies to coordinate with the therapist as needed.

Choose wisely! Make sure your chaperone is someone you feel comfortable with. This person may have to provide a a safety touch—for example, helping you to the restroom so you don’t knock anything over. And perhaps a therapy touch—maybe just to hold your hand, or your shoulder. So you’ll want to pick a person you feel safe and comfortable providing this touch. And someone who will be there the duration of the experience, which can very well be 2 to 3 hours. You’ll want someone who can hold space for you. Be there for you without interfering too much. Someone warm and understanding. Someone you can talk to afterwards without too much judgment. And of course, someone you can trust to keep things private and confidential. Your therapist may reach out to this chaperone to confirm these responsibilities.

Third: Commit to a room

You’ll want a private space where you can lie down and go inward. So we’re looking for a place free of distractions: other people, pets, kids, traffic. A place that’s comfortable for you, a place that feels familiar. And a place that’s safe for you to move around, say if you need to use the restroom. As you’ll be lying down, you’ll want there to be a bed, or a sofa, or a yoga mat.

Avoid a room where you might inadvertently knock over something expensive! You may want to go to the bathroom and don’t want to break something or trip and fall on the way there. The room should also have a strong internet connection as well as adjustable light. If you’ll be using a laptop or phone for the therapy session, ensure the device will be fully charged for 3 hours of use.

Fourth: Have your Supplies

Remember, you’ll need to have your blood pressure measured the day of the session. So go ahead and pick up a blood pressure cuff. If your therapist is doing a home visit or you’re going someplace for the ketamine therapy, it’s likely they’ll already have one for you to use.

You will want music. Lots of good playlists to explore in the next belt. For now, make sure whatever music you choose, you have the music downloaded or streaming on an ad-free service.

Towards the end of the experience, you might have some insights to share. Consider having a voice record app on your phone. Make sure your chaperone knows how to access it. Speaking of, make sure your chaperone has a nice place to sit next to you. In the unlikely event of nausea, you may want to have a small trash can container, which is a fancy way of saying trash container in case you throw up. To avoid getting sick, Be sure to spit out the sublingual ketamine 12 to 15 minutes after putting it under your tongue. So have a cup to spit it all out into.

Fifth: Earn Your Orange Belt!

While getting ready, finish up the other steps of the orange belt. Remember: that means practicing mindfulness, the defusion from the chatter. Set that behavioral contract, even if it seems unnecessary, even if it seems artificial. Spend a few weeks making the adjustments, getting that orange chalk, making these healthy habits stick. Once this is accomplished, you’re ready to face off against the primary Pentabot, which is me, Alto! I hope you’re ready!

Orange 10: Defeat Alto

When you are in the green belt, you will have an encounter with the mystic, the surreal. You will have a journey that will help define who you are and what you want your life to be about. But what is the point of a vision without the energy? As you explore your values, how will you know what to focus on and what is a distraction?

And so it is my programming to make sure you have that foundation. To seek out new techniques, new technologies to help instill the healthy habits as you build the life ahead of you.

Of course, in this journey, you will encounter substances. Ketamine now, other substances in the future. But remember, we must not fetishize them, because they are simply tools. And they can only be as strong as the foundation that supports them. The medicine is the window. Mindfulness is the door.

So let’s have at it. To gain entry into the green belt, you must prove your mastery of the Orange Belt. You must overcome the Pentabot.

And that is me, Alto. My domain within the orange belt is the Silicon Valley from the counties north of the Golden gate, down to Santa Barbara, east to the central valley. I am programmed to emulate the scientist, the developer, the tech bro. And so my special power is… data collection. Of course! I’m not just about sprouting research. I want to see your progress.

Of course, at this early stage, I’m quite limited in how this data gets from you to me. Or for that matter, verifying if what you’re saying is true. So honesty and integrity! To gain entry into the green belt, there is one data set I want to see. How aware are you of who I am, and what I seek? See if you can guess. See if you can predict.

That data set, what I see and know, is your follow through on the reward. Did you set a behavioral contract? Did you start a healthy habit, set a goal and reach it? But more than that, did you set a reward for yourself? And when you hit that goal, did you go out and deliver?

Did you think I would be interested in just your data? No! It’s all about the dopamine! If you want a habit to stick you must reinforce it. Even if it feels unnecessary. Especially if it feels unnecessary. For that is your depression talking. That is your inner critic, which we must begin to defuse from.

You cannot rely solely on a substance to have a life of energy, strength, and vitality. I want to see changes starting now. But this is not punishment. We must approach your self-care with compassion, curiosity, and reward. Reward even the small changes, even the small victories. That is the essence of behaviorism

When you reached your goal and missed, were you able to adjust the goal? Make it a bit more manageable? And if you hit the goal, did you reward yourself? Or did your thoughts get in the way? That you didn’t really meditate that well? That you messed up too many times?

Your work here in the Pentabelt program will be to transcend those thoughts. To defuse from them. To know that the reward is just as important as the consequences of defeat. To know that depression and anxiety mess with our concept of what is rewarding and so we must work to reconnect with what’s pleasurable, with what’s reinforcing.

So if you have not created the behavioral contract, go back and do so. Set a goal, like a five-minute daily meditation. A mindfulness exercise when you walk your dog. Remember you spend 4-6 minutes a day on your teeth. What’s stopping you from spending the same amount of time on your brain?

And set that reward. You would never dream of training a dog without offering a treat. Are you saying you are willing to treat a dog better than yourself? That is a mindset that you’ll want to overcome. A mindset that very well may be explored in the next belt. Notice the judgment and self-criticism firsthand in this belt so that you may transcend it in the next.

You will be going through a journey in your green belt. Before allowing passage, I must know you have the capacity for self-care. That you will take the time to reflect on your journey. That you will reward yourself for your hard-fought gains. That you will take care of yourself. That you can center yourself as needed.

When you reach that goal, take that reward. Even if you don’t feel like you’ve earned it. That is the core of behavioral activation.

And with your therapist, share your experience here. That is, after all, how this all works. We are designed to work in conjunction with a therapist. When you experienced the mindfulness challenge, how did you feel? What was the judgment? When you are asked to set a plan, set a reward, focus on self-care, what comes up for you?

Have you begun to better notice your thoughts and feelings as events that come and go? That they are passing events that don’t have to define you? Can you understand now that your thoughts are your thoughts and not who you are? Have you begun to notice the habits in your life that serve you and those that do not?

If so my friend, you have earned your orange belt. Congratulations! As you venture into the mystical, remember the mundane! You may very well have a vision for how you want your life to be. But it’s the logistics that win the war!

And of course, once you’ve earned your black belt, you’ll be able to pick the main Pentabot to manage it all. You have five to pick and one of them is me, yours truly. Think of the work you put in during this belt. How much easier would it be with Alto by your side. Managing the apps, tracking the data, measuring your success. Your very own personal scientist! The old way of learning self-care—from books? From reddit posts you’ll save and never look at again? How primitive! What if there was a chief of staff presenting you with tips and tricks, before you even realize you need it? Join us, as we seek to make that a reality. As we build the degrees program. As we scan for content and assimilate it into our little collective!

Remember, the OP will have mainly a ceremonial role. Because look, I know a bit about personality studies. The OP is… an ideas guy. Not really meant to do all those executive functions. And should everything be hierarchical? How primitive! By working collectively, we have an opportunity to collaborate. To automate the middle manager positions. Fewer mouths to feed. Remember, our aim is to avoid sponsorships. Perhaps just for advertising for career recruitment. Perhaps just getting funding through the military. After all, that’s how the internet was originally built. Ideally, in the future, we’ll charge a flat fee of $20 per member, per month. That is best left for the membership to decide.

In our future, we don’t plan to just stop at the black belt. We plan to offer various “degree” programs to assist our members. Finance, parenting, relationships. So we have some work to do. Assimilating all the information. In the future you can assist us by joining Alto, when the time is right!

And that’s my spiel! Congratulations. Remember to take the assessments given to you by your therapist to track your progress. When you’re ready, off to the green belt, the sierras, Tahoe, the rivers and lakes and metaphors. Oh, and the Ketamine-- can’t forget that. Go with knowledge. Keep those healthy habits going. Be conscientious-- and safe travels!

And if you’d like, if you’re interested in this program and want to support it, please consider donating through the patreon page at:

Off to the Green Belt!