Category: Principles

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Mobility Routine with Peter Attia & Jesse Schwartzman

Peter Attia is an interesting person. A doctor specializing in longevity, he is a wealth of information on health, exercise, sleep, nutrition, and much more. After a great appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and the recent start of his own brand new podcast, I was reminded of the video series he had done with Jesse Schwartzman that focused on a mobility routine that allows you to move and feel better, whether it’s before a workout or just for life in general.

I learned about these videos last year and have worked in a lot of the movements into my own daily stretching routine, but fell off practicing the whole regimen. I recently recommended the videos to a few friends who also listened to the podcasts and got great feedback. It made them more comfortable going into a workout, freer, looser, with a better range of motion.  I always feel good after doing it, whether I’m going into a workout or not.  I’m jumping back into the full practice myself now, and thought I’d share it here if anyone was interested. I recommend trying it out, seeing what you like, and at least building those ones into some sort of routine. I definitely recommend learning more about Peter too; he’s a fascinating individual with a lot of valuable information on health and life.

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Anthony Bourdain, Positive Affirmations, Empathy, and Going Forward

This was first posted in November of 2016

The night of the election, I watched an episode of this season’s Parts Unknown. Anthony Bourdain visits Houston to take a look at how diverse it has become from the immigrant tradition of America. It was a beautiful episode, and a nice respite before the crushing election that was to come. But I want to focus on one part of the episode and hopefully come back in a way that can provide some hope, and maybe a practical action you can integrate into your life.

During his trip, Bourdain visits an ESL class at a school where 80% of the student body’s first language is not English. The class begins with positive affirmations repeated by the class.

Today is a beautiful day. 

I will work hard. 

I am important. 

I will succeed. 

Watching it I felt profoundly moved hearing all of those kids say these things loudly and proudly. How rare it is for a kid, or an adult, to express such things to others, let alone to themselves. And how much more empowering for kids in a completely new country, in a completely different language, to express this and feel it inside themselves.

It also rang true to me. I’ve been experimenting with positive affirmations in the morning each day for about 5 months now. I simply say each morning, while I make my bed, maybe with some light stretching: I am kind. I am patient. I am curious. I am happy. I am compassionate. I am forgiving. I am open. I am here. Happy. Healthy. Strong. Love. 

Saying that this has radically changed my life sounds false to me at first, until I think about it. I am still naturally impatient and selfish. But saying this every morning at least puts me in the right mindset, on the right path, to come back to it throughout my day. Sometimes it feels like I’m just going through the motions, but surprisingly often, I truly feel it, and it does radically change my day. It gives me the same feeling I felt when I watched those kids repeat their own affirmations.

I went to Austin, Texas right after the election and I had a wonderful, beautiful time. I interacted with a lot of different people. In the back of my mind I was trying to formulate some way to write about this election, this time we live in now, based on this experience. But I don’t want to write about the election. I also don’t want to preach to the choir. I’m sure if you’re reading this you may have similar beliefs, and you’re a good person who just wants what’s best for yourself, your family and friends, and the world. But in light of this episode, and in light of the hate filled speech that guy used throughout his campaign, and won the election with, I wanted to share one story from my trip that rings home with this segment of Parts Unknown.

I was getting a ride home at the end of the night from Gabriel. Gabriel ended up sharing that he was a Rwandan genocide survivor. He wasn’t much older than me, so he must’ve been really young when he escaped. After he escaped, he lived in a refugee camp for 10 years. No electricity, no running water, no toilets. 10 years. Finally he was allowed to relocate, and he narrowed the options given to him down to America, down to Texas, and finally to Austin, where he’s made a living and enjoyed life ever since. Just as powerful as his story was the genuineness he gave off in just a 15 minute car ride. He seemed like a sweet man, a happy man. And he’d gone through hell to get to this point.

As a country and as people we’re going to have to go through a lot of shit moving forward. It’s easy to focus solely on ourselves and our families, and shut everyone else out, especially if they seem very different from us. It’s easy to take what we have for granted. And it’s incredibly hard to imagine how we can make a difference in our country and community, if we’re even lucky enough to have the time and resources to do so. But one thing we can all try to do is to be kinder to each other. To be open and to listen.  To recognize that everyone has their our own struggles we cannot see.

In order to be kind to one another we first have to be kind to ourselves. Positive affirmations can be one way to practice being kind to yourself. Even though it might seem silly, corny, or a waste of time, it’s one of the easiest, simplest, yet most powerful ways to be kinder to ourselves each day and to remind us how we want to live while we’re here. And it’s able to be done by every one of us.

I hope you have a great Thanksgiving and can remain sane through the wonderful political talk you’ll all endure. You’ll survive.

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Thoughts and Feelings, Feelings and Thoughts

For as long as I can remember, this is how I thought it went down: I think about something and then feelings form in response to those thoughts. That’s how it always seemed. Usually the thoughts were made up of worries, and then I’d feel anxious, stressed or impatient. It always seemed to be at it’s worst when I woke up in the morning. I’d immediately begin thinking of all the things I had to do, the people and problems I had to face (I didn’t actually have that many problems). I’d keep on thinking about my worries, leading to a downward spiral that could set the tone for the rest of the day. I’d wake up, worry, feel anxious about my worries, repeat. I now think I had it wrong. Despite it being not quite right, it was still a functioning, misdirected loop that ended up just making me feel worse.

After another beautiful day of vacation, I was sitting down to eat dinner and watch an episode of the Office when I was struck by a feeling of anxiousness. I began to search my mind for the reason for this feeling and before I settled on the answer, I recognized what was happening. I felt a feeling, and then I looked for a thought to attach to that feeling, a thought that would justify why I felt anxious. It could have been anxiety over the eventual job search I’ll have to do, or anxiety over my lack of clear direction for the future. No matter what was going on though, I’m sure I could’ve come up with a reason. I’ve always been able to. But this time I recognized there was no thought, no reason, preceding this feeling. The feeling arose on its own, and now I was trying to support the unpleasant feeling by coming up with a justification for it.

I’ve been meditating for a few years now. I’ve read books and listened to podcasts that deal with meditation, mindfulness, presence, compassion, and gratitude. A lot of these sources are repetitive and ultimately say the same thing, but I continue to go back to them. It helps me remain in that mindset, to be present and grateful, interested in life around me, right in this moment. It’s frustratingly easy to lose this connection if you don’t keep it up. The other reason I continue to revisit these topics is because I’ve learned that all it takes is one subtle shift, the right metaphor, or one moment of clear recognition in real time, to drastically change my understanding of how the whole thing “works”. In this case, it clicked for me in a moment of awareness and then recognition, feeling something and then catching myself reaching out for a thought. In this moment I was able to see clearly something I’d read plenty of times: feelings and thoughts, for the most part, arise randomly and constantly. And you don’t need to prop them up. Most of the time you can just feel the feeling, or recognize the thought, and let it go. Of course that’s easier said than done.

I’d heard and read this time and again, in scientific and spiritual terms, that thoughts and feelings are, for the most part, out of our control. They arise from our unconscious. But it took all that repetition, all the different ways of hearing the same thing, before I was able to fully grasp it. I read Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance before I left, and I listened to an incredible podcast with Jack Kornfield while here, and both talk a lot about this. Strangers to Ourselves is a book all about the unconscious mind. I touched on some of these ideas in a recent piece. But even when I thought I knew it, there was a deeper moment of understanding to come (and I’m sure many more still to come).

Strangers to Ourselves really hammered home some uncomfortable but mind-blowing facts about our brains, of our lack of awareness and control. Feelings can come from our environment, or or our own thoughts, but just as easily they appear randomly. We’re just used to supplying a reason for it, something that makes sense to us, because we like to feel in control. Scientific studies show that our brain unconsciously makes a decision, and milliseconds later, our conscious self feels as if it has come up with it on it’s own, with some reason to point to, even though the decision was already made.

So I had an understanding that our feelings don’t always need to be thought more of, to be analyzed and processed. But even after all that, it took a moment of anxiety washing over me to finally catch the actual process unfolding. The process that I had become so used to that I was now blind to it. It seemed to me that constantly thinking about future events made me worry, and I’d ruminate on that worry, increasing it the more I thought about it. And that is certainly a part of it. But the more I learned and reflected, even just after this most recent realization, I recognize how I could have gotten the cause and effect wrong. I thought I woke up, thought about problems, and then felt anxious. But more likely, I woke up, felt anxious, and latched onto minor stressors or even just bits of routine life, and made them the reason I felt worried. In hindsight it makes much more sense that drinking every weekend and having a poor diet predisposed me to feeling anxious upon waking. Through that one moment of recognition the other day, I’ve been able to connect these dots, from the past, present, and hopefully future, and better understand part of the deeper processes going on inside myself.

I love when interests of mine collide from unexpected places. After beginning this piece, I watched a video of Chris Evans (aka Captain America) talking about how he deals with his own anxiety. His process rests on the same principles. When anxiety and overthinking come, he says to his mind ‘Shhhh’.

“It’s been a big thing for me, ‘Shhhh.’ It’s so funny how noisy my brain is. Everyone’s brain is noisy, it makes thoughts. The problem is, in most of our lives, the root of suffering is following that brain noise and listening to that brain noise and actually identifying with it as if it’s who you are. That’s just the noise your brain makes, and more often than not, it probably doesn’t have much to say…The moments I’ve felt my best is when I can pull that plug and say Chris, shhh. It’s rising above the thought, operating on a separate plane.”

Feelings and thoughts are fleeting; we can feel happy and then sad and we can usually point to some series of events that prompt this. Our natural inclination is to provide a thought that justifies how we feel. Finally internalizing this, and recognizing it in the moment, produced a complete paradigm shift. In that moment of recognition, I stopped myself from searching for a thought to attach to the feeling. Instead, I just felt the feeling. And then it was gone, as quickly as it came, and I got to enjoy my dinner and laugh at Michael Scott. A few days later, I woke up and felt those familiar feelings of morning anxiety. But instead of searching for a reason, I just took some deep breaths and cleared my mind before it could gain that usual momentum. And then, again, the feelings dissipated. I realized I had been the one fueling it in the first place.

It’s such a slight shift and hard to notice in the first place, but when I did, it felt like a massive change in perspective. And that’s how most of what I’ve learned from the books and podcasts and the practice itself has been: it comes slowly, subtly, and then upon realizing it, and feeling it, it’s there all at once and clicks into place, as if I solved a complex math equation (I wouldn’t know for sure, I stink at math).

It’s a small, simple yet powerful tweak in how I see things. Inherent in it is recognizing that this doesn’t banish unpleasant feelings. On the contrary, it’s accepting of them, recognizing them when they come, and feeling them fully, in part so they can go through you and out the other side that much quicker.

Part of this hard work is recognizing which thoughts have merit and should be explored, which should be outright ignored, and maybe the toughest of all, which need to be looked at as a loving witness, with compassion. Jack Kornfield explains that many of these negative thoughts,  reactions or habits we seem to be plagued by once served a purpose. They were once necessary to get us through a tough experience. We needed to think or behave in this way, to escape suffering as a kid, to survive abuse, to survive the thoughts in our own head. But now, we recognize we no longer need them. Being a loving witness, we thank it for helping us get through that tough time, and then we tell it we no longer need it in our lives. That might sound simple or childish, but I think it’s supremely powerful and beneficial.

If it feels like I’m writing about the same things over and over again, it might be because I am. I feel like I’m learning the same things over and over again, except one subtle level deeper each time. That’s what the whole process of meditation and mindfulness is. It’s what learning is in general, but with even more subtlety and repetition. It is a practice, something you need to repeat and repeat, even when it doesn’t feel like you’re making any headway. Because eventually, seemingly out of nowhere, it connects and you truly feel the change.

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Here’s a list of resources that I’ve learned from:

Jack Kornfield on the Tim Ferriss Podcast

Tara Brach on the Tim Ferriss Podcast

Sharon Salzberg on the Tim Ferriss Podcast

Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson

Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong by Norman Fischer

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman

“Is the Default Mode of the Brain to Suffer?”

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Status Report: CHANGE

I’m entering a period rife with change and uncertainty, mostly by my own choice. I just left my wonderful job (on great terms) with no real ‘career’ plan. We recently had to put our dog, Mojo, a beloved member of our family for the last 15 years, to sleep. I’m writing this on the opposite coast from where I’ve spent most of my 27 years, and I’ll be here for the next 2 months. My change is something I’m very excited for. A vacation in San Diego for three weeks with my family. Then a month of road tripping with my brother, zig zagging up the West Coast, a dream trip of mine. I’m sure this change will get harder once the adventure is over, but right now it’s exciting and care-free.

In the past, I’d be freaking out internally about all of this, worrying what my next step was going to be. I’ve always been prone to worry. But right now I’m not that worried. Occasionally panic flares up, and I just take a deep breath, recognize it, but I don’t engage it in thought. I just feel it. And then it passes. I believe I’m better able to do this now because of changes I’ve already faced and endured.

I don’t think I fully comprehended change, or life in general, until my Dad passed away suddenly at 54. It gutted me and my family. I learned for the first time, viscerally, that change is absolute. There’s no value system to it and it can come at any time. Change is guaranteed. That has informed how I live and a lot of the decisions I’ve made since.

It prompted me to change myself. Eventually, I scaled back my drinking to now nearly non-existent levels and I quit porn. These two habits were recurring activities in my life for years as an adolescent and into early adulthood. I replaced it with meditation, writing, journaling, exercise, marijuana, great food, books, TV, movies, deep conversations, diving into interests and learning about them, and adventure. These changes and the work that went into them have allowed me to feel kinder, gentler, more vulnerable, braver, and happier than, well, maybe ever before. That took a lot of hard work, practice, struggle, and repeated failure. It took a lot of active change to eventually see fuller aspects of the change cement itself.

Change has been on my mind and I want to share some of what I’ve learned about it, and how I’m trying to experience this change now and going forward.

The Paradox

The only constant is change, bro.

Change is the only constant in life, yet our reflex is to try our damndest to make sure things stay the same. On a basic level, change is uncomfortable. Change, even when begun in the pursuit of bettering ourselves, will bring up stressful feelings in the process like doubt, worry, anxiousness, fear and panic.

This pull to remain the same despite our constantly changing world is also an innate impulse inside of us, defined by natural laws such as homeostasis. Homeostasis is the tendency to maintain equilibrium, within ourselves and the world as a whole. It “characterizes all self-regulating systems, from a bacterium to a frog to a human individual to a family to an organization to an entire culture—and it applies to psychological states and behavior as well as to physical functioning”. Homeostasis is the reason why when we attempt to change a habit we so often backslide into our old behaviors. “Our body, brain, and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed”. And for good reason: “if your body temperature moved up or down by 10 percent, you’d be in big trouble. The same thing applies to your blood-sugar level and to any number of other functions of your body.” Without homeostasis, we would die very quickly. But, homeostasis, “like natural selection and like life itself, is undirected and does not have a “value system” — it doesn’t keep what’s good and reject what’s bad.” This is a crucial distinction. Homeostasis resists all change.  “After twenty years without exercise, your body regards a sedentary style of life as “normal”; the beginning of a change for the better is interpreted as a threat.”

I encountered this while cutting out alcohol and porn. Alcohol was easier because of hangovers, or the lack thereof. Porn was a lot harder. Even though you know it’s bad for you, it feels good in the moment, and being the most biologically rewarding function, the pull is much stronger. I backslid and relapsed a ton. Eventually I carved out a new normal where I wasn’t craving it.

But then came the change of living without it. And that’s where I started to recognize the underlying root addiction or tendency more clearly for what it was, and how it so easily and imperceptibly affects so many of us today. The root lies in comfort itself; or put another way, the urge to avoid or numb any and all discomfort.

When I stopped drinking and porn, I replaced it with marijuana. Habit change is also indifferent to value systems and nearly any habit can replace another if it’s strong enough, good or bad. In this case it seemed like a perfect trade off, one that I’d still make. But eventually I realized I replaced one habit of comfort with another. In my opinion, a much less harmful one, but still a pull to comfort that takes a level of control and feeling out of my life. Instead of working on something I’m passionate about, or seeing friends, or experiencing new things, or just being bored by myself, lonely or sad or worried, I was blocking all of it out by getting high, and then usually eating and watching TV. That’s not the worst thing in the world, especially compared to darker vices, but I think that’s also what makes it harder to break out of, because it seems so harmless. Life is change and this habit keeps me comfortable but stagnant. Now I know working to change this pattern will bring its own challenges and uncomfortable feelings. But awareness of the problem and the road ahead is the first step. The awareness of comfort as the root of it all will hopefully help get me through it.

The Root

We cling to what feels good and we try to avoid what feels bad. It’s our nature and just seems like common sense. We try to avoid, at all costs, a void. With smart phones, social media, entertainment, drugs, and all of the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, we no longer need to feel something as mundane and previously common as boredom, let alone deeper and scarier feelings like existential dread or our own mortality and ultimate death.

Comfort blocks these scary things out. But according to ancient wisdom and cutting edge science, the most important thing to do is to FEEL IT. The Buddha to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius to Garry Shandling, Viktor Frankl, Tara Brach, Pema Chodron and many more, all agree: Trying to avoid our feelings created by the change and reality around us only digs ourselves deeper into a hole and increases our reliance on the thing that makes us not feel discomfort, even if it ultimately makes us feel worse in the long-term.

It’s uncomfortable to realize how little power we have in the world. It’s uncomfortable to recognize how much power we have over ourselves. It’s uncomfortable to feel embarrassed or awkward, sad or lonely, stupid or angry or jealous or ashamed. But by simply paying attention to the feelings rather than reacting to them, they actually lose their control over us. As Tara Brach says, “When you see and feel the sensations your are experiencing as sensations, pure and simple, you may see that these thoughts about the sensations are useless to you at that moment and that they can actually make things worse than they need to be.”

I’m not quitting all of the things that bring me joy in life, like movies and books, great food or some marijuana. But I would like to change my relationship with them, towards a more balanced, healthier approach. I want more time to experience new things, meet new people, nourish relationships I already have, and feel what I’m feeling, whatever it is, in the moment.

But right now, in this time of change, I’m just going to plant myself in the here and now, and enjoy myself and time with my family. There are much harder places to do that than San Diego. Pema Chödron says to “relax into the groundlessness of our situation”. Any time I feel worried about the present or future, I try to remember this quote and take a breath. By embracing the fact that we are insecure and vulnerable, that we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, we are freed to truly feel and live, in this moment now.

I don’t know what my next job will be and I’m not sure where I’ll live 6 or 12 months from now. I’m not sure what my next attempted habit change will be but I have some ideas. I do know I feel best when I’m living in the present, embracing the change, learning new things, struggling, and trying to become better. I am 27. In 27 years I will be 54. I hope to make it there and live on well past it, but the evenness of it both weighs on me and propels me, to live these next 27 years to the absolute fullest.

Post-Script

Going forward, beyond personal self-improvement and this west coast adventure, I’m going to focus on writing. I’m finishing a screenplay I’ve been working on for a while and submitting it to competitions in May. I aim to be more active on this blog too. It still isn’t quite what I thought it would be. I think I had the wrong preconception. I imagined I’d post something each week with original, breathtaking thoughts. But more and more I’m thinking of this blog as an archive, and my role on it as more of a curator, for what I’m into, what I’m learning, and what I’d like to share with you. Nothing is original, and the internet and the world it’s created is so gigantic, I might as well just share what I find interesting, helpful, or joyful.  More practically, it can be a personal archive untethered from the social media conglomerates that rule today and could be gone tomorrow. As Austin Kleon advocates, I’m owning my own turf with this blog. And it can be whatever the hell I want it to be.

I saw a retweet from Kleon by Paul Boag that inspires my fresh outlook on this site: “I know it sounds kind of arrogant but I am bloody proud of my blog. Everything I have learned over 13 years all nicely organised and documented. I find myself referring to it everyday. It is an invaluable tool. More people should blog.”

I think that’s a lovely idea.

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Loving Kindness

Struggling to come up with something to write about this week, I found some inspiration, as usual, from Sean. I recommend reading his most recent post first. It’s real and raw.

How do we deal with living in such a tough world? Our lives can feel hard and tragic, but then we look out the window, or on the internet, and realize how lucky we are. And that can make us feel even worse, for feeling bad about our “minor” problems. How can we stop that cycle of shame? And what can we do to impact the world we live in in a positive way?

I’ve been reading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. I keep returning to books about mindfulness, meditation, compassion and how our internal mental processes work. It’s so easy to fall out of gratitude and presence, and reading a bit on these topics each day helps keep it present in my mind.

I want to share something I’ve practiced before that Brach goes over in her book, and something I’m sure we’ve written about before: the lovingkindness meditation. It seems simple, even cheesy, but can have a noticeable effect with consistent practice.

Here’s the process.

Sit comfortably. Relax. Feel the breath going in and out.

Remember your basic goodness. Whether it was helping someone out last week, or the joy and compassion you had as a child. Remember it and feel it.

Choose four or five phrases that are meaningful to you. For example:

May I be filled with love and kindness. May I accept myself just as I am. May I be happy. May I know the natural joy of being alive. 

You start with yourself, just like in an airplane when the oxygen masks drop. Repeat the words in your mind or in a whisper.

Then envision your loved ones, family, your partner, close friends. Think about them in your mind and then repeat the following:

May you be filled with love and kindness. May you accept yourself just as you are. May you be happy. May you know the natural joy of being alive. 

Repeat it for a few different loved individuals.

Then bring to mind someone neutral, that you interact with but have no strong feelings for. Repeat the words again towards this person or group of people.

Then think about someone you have a difficult relationship with. Maybe you don’t like them or they don’t like you. Maybe it’s for a good reason. Even so, repeat those words again, in their direction.

Finally, try to open it up to everyone in the world. Each person is real and filled with emotions and struggle and goodness and pain. Repeat the following:

May all beings be filled with love and kindness. May all beings accept themselves just as they are. May all beings be happy. May all beings know the natural joy of being alive. 

Then rest in openness and silence. Breathe in and out and recognize how you feel.

Tara Brach has guided meditations on her website, and a guided lovingkindess meditation can be found here.

This may seem too passive. You’re not directly helping anyone, you’re just thinking thoughts. But think of it as priming yourself to act in a kind and loving way. It doesn’t mean you’ll be perfectly serene and understanding. It’s just meant to open you up and create some more awareness to take with you. You’re loading up for the day ahead.

The root of the practice is in recognizing that other people are real. It’s easy to walk by a homeless person on the street or wait behind an obnoxious asshole in line and dehumanize them as other. But that person is real. All people, no matter if they’re saints or monsters, want to be happy and loved, and they want to avoid pain. This practice can at its heart open you up to recognizing the basic goodness in another person, even if they’re not showing it. Whether they’re numbing themselves with drugs, or striking out at another, they’re actions are rooted in trying to avoid pain by whatever means necessary. This doesn’t excuse a behavior. But it can open up your mind to at the very least, see them as a fellow human being, a real person, who’s suffering and doesn’t know how to deal with it.

You’re not going to change the world with this 5-10 minute practice. But you might change yourself.

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The Horrifying Wonders of the Human Mind & Body: The Unconscious Mind

All the ways in which the human body actually functions are astonishing, and for the most part, completely overlooked by all of us. The brain is where my interest first started, and since learning about it, whenever I’m curious about a part or process of the body, I do a quick Google search to try to figure out what the hell is going on. I wanted to start sharing what I learned to shed light on how mind blowing these processes and functions are, and how completely oblivious we are of them. Today we’ll start where I started, with the brain, and I hope to explore more aspects of the human body and mind in the future. 

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The brain is incredibly complex and there’s so much interesting, crazy stuff going on in it, that it’s hard to know where to start. Neuroplasticity and cognitive biases are two of my favorite areas, but there’s something else that’s seemingly straightforward, yet baffling, that I want to highlight here. I learned about this probably a year ago and it’s only really hitting home now.

This seemingly simple, scientifically proven fact is:

The brain decides before “I” decide.

That seems obvious. Of course decisions arise from our brain, that’s where all thought processes come from. More specifically put, the unconscious mind decides, then the conscious mind, or “I”, decides. The distinction is important, as we’ll see. Your brain decides, then you decide. The more you think about it, the more questions arise.

Before we go on, a quick distinction between the unconscious and conscious mind. The unconscious mind does things automatically, without the need to even be aware of it happening. Our breathing and our digestive system are two examples of this unconscious process. We don’t need to focus on or even think about these things for them to run properly. The unconscious mind also contains desires and fears that we may not be consciously aware of, but nonetheless direct us. The unconscious mind is completely inaccessible to our conscious mind. The conscious mind is actively thinks or acts. It plans our dinner later that night and what ingredients we want to use, it  chooses between two movies, it lifts the barbell for another rep. Our conscious mind makes decisions. Or so we think.

In Sam Harris’s book Free Will, he makes the case that we do not truly have free will. One of his main arguments for this point is that through scientific lab studies, “fMRI techniques show that our brains indicate the choice we are going to make 700 milliseconds before we are aware that we are going to make the choice.” These conscious decisions that we feel we came up with, that we’ve decided on, were actually made by our brain, milliseconds before, unbeknownst to us. 

700 milliseconds might not seem like a lot of time, but the fact remains that the brain makes a decision that is completely unconscious to us, THEN, milliseconds later, we consciously seem to “come up with it”. But “I” didn’t actually “make” the decision. As Harris lays out, “the intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness. Rather it appears in consciousness. As does any thought or impulse that might impose it.”

All sorts of thoughts and questions sprout from this one clear fact. Our idea of free will is certainly different than how we think of it, if it exists at all. It distinctly shows the power of the unconscious mind over the conscious mind; the unconscious mind decides, then makes it appear that the conscious mind has chosen. We have all of these unconscious thoughts, feelings and desires, which we are completely unaware of, until the unconscious decides to almost  plant them in our conscious mind, making us feel that we determined it. It helps explain why it’s so hard to change a habit or escape from an addiction that we so clearly, consciously want to change, because they are rooted deeper, not in the conscious, but in our unconscious.  It casts questions over the nature of consciousness itself and the power and control we assume we have over our lives. 

This is a tricky one to wrap our heads around. Like I said, I learned about this a year ago, but only after recently reviewing a summary of the book, did the subject sort of click it in my mind. Sure, “I”, this human body that is Sam Post, is still making the decisions, but it’s not necessarily coming from the “I” I imagined it was, that conscious self I identify as. It’s coming from another layer in, the unconscious part of my mind that I, nor anyone else, has access to. So who the hell is running the show that is ourselves? The better question might be, what shapes the unconscious mind and what determines it’s desires and feelings that prompt our actions and behavior?

The genes we are born with determines a lot, anywhere from 20-50%. But once born, our environment, our conditioning, how and where we were raised, and much more, all form and shape our unconscious mind. And the really interesting part, and the hopeful part, I think, is that it is possible to change our unconscious mind, even if we can’t access it directly. It can’t done by our conscious thinking. It can only done by taking action and by changing our behavior in the real world first. 

This is where I think Sam Harris’ argument against free will starts to show it’s cracks. While thinking about change and consciously desiring it does very little to impact our unconscious mind, directly changing our behavior in the real world has a much more powerful effect. This is where the principles of habit change, or the concept of “fake it till you make it”, comes in. By forcing yourself to do something enough times, even if it’s at first uncomfortable or challenging, you’ll eventually form a habit, or put another way, a behavior that doesn’t need to be directed by your conscious mind. The behavior becomes automatic. It has become a part of your routine and can be done without even thinking about it. One example would be learning how to drive a car. At first it seems very complicated and hard, but after enough experience, it seems to take very little conscious will power to get where you’re going. 

Harris’ argument to this would be, well, this person that eventually changed, had whatever factors already set in place that allowed them to change in the first place. His genes or his brain had the capability to do so, and it finally did. That seems a bit to deterministic to me, and for an atheist like Sam Harris, it just seems to run too close to what others might call “fate”. But he is much smarter than me. That’s just the way I choose to look at it now, maybe because it’s more comforting and encouraging.

All of this has gotten me much more interested in the unconscious part of our mind, that we all basically ignore, understandably so, because we aren’t even aware of it in the first place. We literally can’t be aware of it, until we start to pay closer attention to and examine our thoughts, actions and behavior. The unconscious mind and it’s importance has appeared countless times throughout my reading, from great thinkers like Carl Jung to Joseph Campbell and beyond, and I’m only now feeling like I’m able to grasp what it actually means. After reviewing Free Will’s book notes, I found another book James Clear summarized titled Strangers to Ourselves, and it helped clear up some of the confusion I had. I ordered that book and can’t wait to dive in. Maybe I’ll return to this topic after I learn more. But for now, I think this simple fact, that there’s a lag between the unconscious brain deciding, and then ourselves feeling the conscious decision, is more than enough to ponder. At the very least, maybe it can make us a little more thoughtful, or questioning, or simply awed, the next time we’re making a decision, whether it’s what we’re having for dinner, or what we want to do with our lives. 

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Habits Towards Goals

I’m personally a big fan of the end of the year. You get to reflect on what you liked about the last year and what you didn’t, what you want to continue and what you want to change. The new year allows you to start with somewhat of a blank slate, fresh to pursue new goals, experiences and adventures.  I’m spending the end of 2017 thinking about what I want out of 2018, what I want to add to my life and what I want to leave behind. One thing I’m going to try to do, beyond just identifying my goals, is identify the habits that will help me achieve my goal. Having goals is important,  but you need to know how to get there, and for real, sustainable change, you need to change your habits. Below is something I previously wrote on habits that I’ll be reviewing and trying to instill as I pursue my goals in 2018. Best of luck with whatever you set out to do and have a wonderful new year!

https://www.tumblr.com/sampostlives/146708370885/habits

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Staying Sharp in the Dark

We’ve entered November, it’s dark before most of us leave the office, and bad news just seems to keep on coming. I can feel the S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder) hovering over me. But it hasn’t quite taken hold yet, in part because of the routines and practices I’ve made a habit of over the last few years. It used to hit me much harder in years past, before I cut back on unhealthy habits and started practicing healthy ones, but I’m still definitely not immune to it, especially if I’m slacking on those healthy habits. These healthy habits are listed below, and I try to do them everyday in order to give myself the best chance to have a great day. Some of these include locked in routines I’ve been doing every day for years now and others are newer things I’m trying to introduce to make sure I stay at my best. So this is more of a reminder for myself, as much as suggestions for you to try out if the change in seasons gets you down.

Meditation and Mindfulness

Every morning after I shower I meditate for 10 minutes. This doesn’t mean I sit and reach zen enlightenment. Usually I have to continuously pull myself back from thinking about the day ahead and what I have to do, and return to the moment, to my breath, to the mantra, over and over again. That’s why it’s called a practice. Some days are great, other times it’s a struggle. But every morning I do it. It lays the foundation that allows me to be calmer, happier, and more present and in the moment throughout my day. It’s challenging to describe the practice and effects of meditation. I never feel that I do it justice, but I want to try to in a future post and get as in depth and practical as I can with it, so stay tuned for that.

Outside. Water & Tea. Breakfast. Supplements.

After I meditate I let the dog out and I find it really helps to stay outside even for just 30 seconds, to feel the cold and breathe in the fresh air. It helps me wake up and feel alive. While breakfast is getting ready, I’ll drink a glass of water and make some tea (with a little bit of apple cider vinegar and coconut oil splashed in). Then I’ll have breakfast, which is usually oatmeal and peanut butter, or some bacon and eggs. After breakfast I’ll take supplements. Sean (and Tim Ferriss) got me into taking supps, and they’ve done wonders for both Sean and I. He’s written before about his own supplement routine, as well how diet can effect your mood. Almost every day I take cod liver oil, and rotate between potassium, magnesium, garlic, and Vitamin D (especially this one with the time change and lack of sunlight). Not only do these boost my mood, I hardly ever get sick anymore, which I think is due to the cod liver oil in particular. Now that I’ve said that, I’m sure I’ll get sick within the next week.

Practice Gratitude

I’ve written about my gratitude journal before, but in short, the first thing I do at work when my computer boots up is open Evernote and jot down a few things I’m grateful for. That’s it. It’s incredibly simple and I think you’d be surprised at how much it can change your mood and how you look at things throughout the rest of your day.

Go for a Walk

Every day, at 11am and 3pm, I get up from my desk at work and take a nice, mindful walk around the block. It doesn’t take more than 5 minutes each time, and I think it’s vital not only for my health, but my mood as well. Go for a walk. You’ll feel better. 

Limit or Block Information Overload

Working at a computer all day, I have a bad habit of continuously clicking on news sites and Twitter, compulsively and repeatedly, even if I know there is absolutely nothing new, let alone anything I need to know. I’ve tried a number of different tactics but always end up backsliding. This month I started a new tactic. I can check those news sites and Twitter one time, usually in the morning, and then I am done for the day. I block them on my work computer after that one time check-in, and I have Freedom on my laptop set to block all news sites and Twitter after 6:00pm. It’s still early, but I’m off to a good start and I feel much, much better because of it.

Exercise & Sauna

I try to hit the gym at least twice a week, if not three times. It’s a lot harder to do in the colder months, but it’s even more important that I get there. I ALWAYS feel better after a session at the gym, even if it was light. And at the end of each session is a reward, and probably my favorite part of the whole process: I sit in the sauna for 15-20 minutes. It always feels good to sweat it out in there, especially when it’s cold outside. Sauna use has a host of health benefits, and is also just relaxing and pleasurable for its own sake, so if you have one at your gym, I highly recommend it.

Stretch & Music

At the end of my day, I blast music and do a stretch routine that takes about 10-20 minutes. This is where I where I process my day and begin to relax and enjoy my evening. It usually means my day is done. It’s glorious.  

Marijuanna

In the immortal words of Memphis Bleek, “I gets high…I can’t lie” (not while I drive though). Marijuana absolutely helps me unwind and relax in the evenings. I take a couple puffs and put the day behind me. I throw a record on, cook up and enjoy some dinner, write in my journal, then settle into a book, TV or movie. I know it’s not for everyone, and it can be a double-edged sword even for me. If I indulge too much, it can easily launch me into laziness, so less is usually more. But for the most part, it relieves me of unnecessary stress and anxiety, lifts up my mood, and allows me to take life and myself a little less seriously. I feel like I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t include it here.

Conclusion

That’s a brief overview of the regular actions I take that help keep me happy, productive, and at the very least, sane, during the cold, dark days of winter. I focused more on my daily routine, but it’s also of course crucial to get out and be social, have fun, see friends, laugh, and maybe have a deep conversation or two if you can. But some days I’m really dragging ass and I do fall into the pit of junk food and Netflix. And that’s okay too; some days you need to just take a break. But what’s important is you pick it back up the next day. Small, simple actions are what gets us out of our ruts. So if you’re really feeling down but want to get back up, start small. Clean your desk. Bundle up and go take a walk around the block. Try to meditate for 5 minutes. And if it’s just not happening, dive into that favorite TV show for some laughs, and get after it again tomorrow.

All of this is simple advice but it might not be easy for you. My form of seasonal depression is pretty mild, and these things help, but this isn’t to say any of these things would cure a serious case of depression. Please seek out more experienced, professional help if you need it. These are just meant to be some helpful tips if you’re prone to feeling down in the dumps in the fall and winter.

Stay sharp and stay healthy this winter my friends!

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Confession

Confession, for a few thousand years now, has consisted of entering a closet with a screened window, and telling a stranger with some type of moral/religious authority your sins. But like many things established in religious practice, this form of confession wasn’t explicit in the Bible. The origin of confession in the religious practice comes from the Epistle of St. James: “Confess your sins to one another”. This was then taken to mean, confess to your priest, who, appointed by God, can forgive you of your sins, so you can go to heaven. But I think the original message is much more important than the way it was co-opted as a form of authority and religion, strictly for the gain of an eternal afterlife after you die. What about right now?

I found this origin of confession in a throwaway line in a book on philosophy. While doing a quick check for accuracy, I found the wording a bit different, but the same message: “Confess therefore your sins one to another”. But, directly below that came a footnote from someone else, I’m assuming much, much later:

         Confess your sins one to another… That is, to the priests
          of the church, whom he had ordered to be called
          for, and brought in to the sick; moreover, to confess to
          persons who had no power to forgive sins, would be useless.

Hm. This person seems to say that without the promised afterlife you “win” through confession, the act would be pointless. But why the hell should a pure and noble act, admitting our mistakes, be re-purposed solely as a gesture  to purchase real estate in a place no one can guarantee exists? Aren’t there good qualities to admitting wrongdoing that could change our lives now, as we live them?

I think so. In the last 3 years, I’ve found that the act of ‘confessing’, to ourselves, to one another, to the people we care about, is an incredibly freeing, valuable, essential exercise.

Calling it confession might weird you out because of the overtones. I didn’t think of it as confession when originally recognizing and thinking about this topic, but confession seemed like an interesting, historical parallel to enter through. The concept’s been around for ages. In our own lives and the way we might practice it though, I think it can more aptly be described as being vulnerable, and sharing your vulnerabilities. Sean and I have tried practicing this through these essays, which can be very freeing to write. Dumping out your inner thoughts and secrets is liberating, and you might end up finding out more than you even knew about yourself. Sharing them online is scary; I’m admitting things I don’t like about myself or past self, and posting them online for anyone to see. But it’s still removed from face to face human interaction. That’s a whole different ballgame, and one we experimented with during our ‘porch sessions’.

Continue reading “Confession”

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X Marks the Spot

If you want to create, change, or eliminate a habit, do this:

Identify your goal. What do you want to do differently each day? Make this a simple yes or no question. Did I eat junk food today? Did I write 500 words today? Did I go for a walk today?

Now get a monthly calendar that you can mark X’s on. Hang it up where you can see it regularly each day.

Each day you accomplish your goal, mark a big fat X on that day. If you don’t do what you’ve set out to do, you leave that day blank. Eventually, those X’s create a chain, and it makes you feel good. You want to keep the chain growing. When you can’t write an X and the chain is broken, you feel bad, and motivated not to slip again.

This is one tool I used to cut out bad habits and create new ones. This is what my friend used to quit smoking cigarettes. This is what Jerry Seinfeld used to make sure he was working on new jokes every day. He’s the one who ‘created’ this system. This simple advice has been recommended on probably thousands of blogs by now, by writers such as Warren Ellis, Austin Kleon, and Ryan Holiday.

So I thought I’d pass it along here. Because it works.