A Compilation of Eureka Moments
At certain times in one’s life, we have those moments where you feel that inner glow, a sense of ‘ah yes!’ or even a moment of revelation. As part of my journey to making this website, I have a fair few eureka moments where I felt, ‘This is it, this can make a change and benefit the reader!’. I urge you to jot down some of your moments where they’ve made you feel really good.
Serendipitously, I came across a short book called Ikigai at a bookshop and bought it. I did a search on YouTube for calm music and started reading the book in my bedroom whilst streaming music in the background. By the end the book, I felt recharged and most importantly, a sense of purpose, fulfilment and content to my journey in creating this website as part of my ikigai. I became really excited when it suddenly dawned on me that I might be able reproduce this feeling for you. Please find a motivational + stimulating book to read and put some calm music in background – a bit of a novel therapeutic emotional exercise worth trying.
Surfing the internet, I stumbled across a new book called Christ Beat Cancer by Chris Wark. I went to Amazon to check the book out and found a new Amazon service called Audible [the US version is here] with a promotional 3-month free subscription where they also give you 1 free credit/month for three months to enable you to buy audiobooks (at the point of Feb 2019). I was therefore able to download the audiobook using the free credit. Felt lucky to have found such a well-written book (and subsequently bought a hard copy) not to mention that I managed to get the audiobook for free! I would definitely recommend using Audible for those among us who struggle to read or for those moments when you may not feel physically up to reading but happy to listen instead. To complete the package, a few weeks later I came across some wireless bluetooth earphones on Amazon on a lightening deal, which I now take around with me all the time. There are lots of useful (audio)books on the mind, body, health, cancer, etc.
I wanted to see if there were any websites dedicated to reviewing books on the topic of cancer and also looked to see if there was anything new on Amazon. Through their recommendations, I came across the current no.1 bestseller book in Medical Administration & Policy called How Not to Die and listened to a sample audio of the book. The author happened to be the founder of NutritionFacts.org, a website that I had already come across during my research hence this prompted me to spend some time browsing the website. I found some really useful podcasts on nutrition and health, which are well worth listening to. Needless to say, I downloaded the audiobook free on Audible in my second month.
Watching various TED talks on YouTube, I decided to actually go to the TED homepage in the hope of finding the urls for each of the individual talks I had seen (note: whilst YouTube and Facebook are great, wherever possible I have tried to find the original source of a video). On the TED website, I found out that you can build your own playlist and choose from various genre/topics. Having listened to quite a number of TED talks, I found all of the motivational / psychology talks really helpful in putting me in a positive mindset; this led me to the other TED programmes, which I hadn’t been aware of including TEDx, TED Ed, TED Med, TED Books, etc. All of them are a must see and a fantastic resource for information. If you have a spare free 10-20 mins, make a habit of listening to a talk. It really will make a difference.
Whilst writing the Meditation & Mindfulness section of the website on my computer and trying to link this to the How to Calm the Mind? section, I was multi-tasking and downloaded the Calm and Headspace Apps on my mobile phone in the hope of checking them out. At this point, in the background I happened to have some music on (River Flows in You) and some nature sounds playing from the Calm App. It then suddenly occurred to me that I could in fact super enhance my mood by listening to soothing music overlaid by sounds of nature whilst watching the slideshows embedded in How to Calm the Mind?. Wow, I was literally blown away by this and taken to a different place in mind and body where I felt I had escaped from the daily stresses of life! By extension, I also thought I could potentially simulate other relaxing settings. Try these out (Note: this will only work on your computer and not on your mobile phone).
Example 1
Click on All Three Links Below and Allow Them to Play in the Background
(1) Play River Flows In You
(2) Play Nature Sounds
(3) Go to How to Calm the Mind and scroll down to watch the ‘Water’ slideshow
Example 2
To simulate the sauna & spa and to get you to relax, heat up your room and scroll down to the Relaxation slideshow embedded in Meditation and Mindfulness.
Click on All Three Links Below and Allow Them to Play in the Background
(1) Play Sauna Room Ambience Sound
(2) Play Relaxing Spa Background Music
(3) Go to Meditation and Mindfulness and scroll down to watch the ‘Relaxation’ slideshow
To Enable You To Enhance Your Senses
Why not play around and mix & match things that you like to look at and listen to!
Trying to figure out how to build a website from scratch, I happened to stumble across a YouTube Ad promoting the website scrapthe9to5.com, which teaches you how to start an online business. Listening to some of the free promotional tutorials was quite a revelation and motivated me to dig deeper into something that I had no experience in (I was an absolute novice to the online world!). The biggest question I faced at the time was how to design and maintain a website without placing any financial burden on the reader in the light of the personal time and costs already incurred. Spending a substantial amount of time researching and trying to understand the business model of market affiliation, I ultimately ended up subscribing to a website called Wealthy Affiliate.
What’s WordPress? What’s a plug-in? What’s a widget? What’s a theme?
I didn’t have a clue to begin with
At Wealthy Affiliate they have online tutorials/webinars/talks and a platform to communicate with a huge community of people (ranging from novices to experts) all striving to start up online businesses. The biggest advantage to all of this is that you learn on the go and the whole process is very interactive with a lot of support and feedback along the way from experts as well as from your fellow members in real time 24/7. This CanSure Heal It website would not have been possible without them, so thank you. (If you ever want to make a website or even start an online business, I would highly recommend them. Just click on the banner below – for a more detailed account of this part of my journey, please see here.)
Together Let’s Build the Cansure Heal It ® Eureka Moments Blog!
Share your eureka or upbeat moments throughout your cancer-free journey in the hope of inspiring others (this can be the simplest of things that have given you a small amount of happiness). The aim here is that by sharing your experiences, others may be inspired to do the same and also share their unique positive experiences, too. As you may already know, writing in itself is likely to be therapeutic as well. I’d like to think it as positivity bringing on further positivity. A definite win-win situation. Here are a few simple suggestions as potential entries .
