122. the beaten path
The trouble is not that life is short, but that we waste so much of it following someone else’s directions while searching for our happiness. Rarely do we sit with our thoughts and truly ask ourselves, “what would be the next best course of action for me to take that will put me on a path to create a better life?” Instead, we find a guru, we google, or youtube, or ask our friends how they did it, or follow any number of narratives put in place by society that are deemed acceptable ways to live your life and find your happiness. But that’s the problem. Your path shouldn’t be defined FOR you, it should be define BY you. Sitting on the shoulders of giants is different than mirroring the footsteps of those that came before you.
Matsuo Basho, a famous poet from the Edo period in Japan, said; “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.” Too often we become blinded by the narrative espoused by the “wise” to realize that the path they’re walking isn’t always in alignment with the direction we need to take in life. Even though we may be searching for the same thing, it is important to understand that there are many roads that can lead to the same place.
121. expectations of health
For two million years man was a success. His journey through time efficiently living as a hunter-gatherer might have seen him through another million-year anniversary. Yet, for us, the chances of our way of life seeing us through another passing century is diminished with each day’s activities.
During our transition to modernity from the hunter-gatherer life, those few thousand years have revealed to us that we can master our environment, but not without consequence. Our efforts to create a world based on desire has wreaked havoc upon the natural order of the world and managed to bring into disrepute the highly evolved good sense that guided our behavior throughout the entirety of our coevolution with this planet. Led by the subjective and uncomprehending gaze of scientific thought, our instinctual competence has seen an increasingly diminutive role over time. Our innate sense of what is best for us has been superseded by the scientific theory, letting intellect serve as the foundation to decipher what should be done — surgery, medication, suppression of symptoms — without taking our real needs into consideration — proper nutrition, lifestyle, aligning ourselves with nature.
We were not formed by the intellectual thought processes theorized and borne out of a lab setting, that sought to guide us toward a better tomorrow. Our successful march forward was only achievable through the adaptation of our environment, led by the expectations of the past. In a sense, we came out of the world, thus are adapted to thrive within it if given the permission to listen to our instinctual needs, instead of the loudest opinions on what should be done to capture health. Therefore, aligning ourselves in accordance to what the body expects by looking to the past to design programs and initiatives, versus the tragic narrative composed by the popular opinion of the day, will best serve us in our efforts to recapture our health.
In the Continuum Concept, author Jean Liedloff speaks to this very fact, in that “Expectation… is founded as deeply in man as his very design. His lungs not only have, but can be said to be, an expectation of air; his eyes are an expectation of light rays of the specific range of wavelengths sent out by what is useful for him to see at the hours appropriate for his species to see them; his ears are an expectation of vibrations caused by the events most likely to concern him, including the voices of other people; and his own voice is an expectation of ears functioning similarly in them.” She goes on to say that his list can be indefinitely extended; “waterproof skin and hair — expectation of rain; pigmentation in skin — expectation of sun; perspiratory mechanism — expectation of heat; coagulator mechanism — expectation of accidents to body surfaces; reflex mechanism — expectation of the need for speed of reaction in emergencies.”
It is this sense of expectation that led our body to its robustness and resiliency over millennia. The slow transition granted us the time to easily adapt to the environment we found ourselves within, living in good health and harmony with the natural environment. The sudden shift over the past few thousand years created significant changes to our environment as we pushed toward modernity. With it, we saw lifespan’s expand and at the same time healthspan’s reduce. Instead of understanding the reason behind our declines in health were due to a mismatch in our environment — one divorced from nature and all its wisdom — we used our intellect, guided by scientific thought to suppress our instinctual urges, further separating us from the health that was so easily found by those of past generations who’s success was afforded by succumbing to the natural way of doing things.
How is it that we got things so wrong? How is it that the forces of nature that put us together in good health to begin with knew what we would need? As with mastery of anything it comes down to experience. The lineage of experiences encountered from the first single-cell eukaryote to the multi-trillion cellular structure we recognize as human is vast enough to defy comprehension, and at the same time obvious in the sense that the only way to become proficient at anything is through repetition. In the millions of years preceding this pivotal point in our history, what you and I have become is the culmination of experiences ranging from environmental changes resulting in everything from temperature fluctuations to the availability of nourishment. All of which gave our body the data to inherently know what it needs to thrive, transmitted by means still unknown to science.
The intellect of scientific thought has largely suppressed the instinctual urges of what we inherently know is right. The epidemic rates of poor health, disease, and obesity have been brought upon us by differing consistently to the idea that what we read is better than what our body is telling us. Our continued reliance on a system that has constantly failed us is nothing less than insanity.
120. the system is broken
According to a John’s Hopkins study, the number one cause of death in the U.S. is heart disease, followed by cancer, and then death from medical interventions - either through misdiagnosis in treatment or negligence. In other words you’re more likely to die from going to the doctor in some cases than if you didn’t at all. In some respects, the allopathic medical model is phenomenal, but where it excels in some areas, it falls short in others. We have the ability to transplant a heart into someone else’s body, but we don’t have the know how to keep a heart healthy within a single person. It’s amazing as it is asinine.
We are the most technologically advanced society we know of, and the best advice we have against an infectious disease is wearing a thing piece of fabric across our face and stay away from that other person doing the same. We think we are so evolved, but we’re lost when it comes to the fundamentals of health.
We’ve been hearing the same thing for the last 7 months now — “wear a mask, and social distance” — instead of any real advice about how to actually improve your health. The problem, and the reason the conversation hasn’t shifted is because the system isn’t constructed to focus on the things that matter most. The medical system is good at majoring at the minor things. The CDC published a report saying only 6% of those ~200k that died didn’t have a chronic disease, the other 94% who died had an average of two or more chronic diseases. How the fuck are these people alive already? You would think we wouldn’t need a pandemic to come to the realization that the ways we are continuously told to bolster our health aren’t worth listening to.
The system has mastered the art of missing the point. Perhaps these people wouldn’t have died if they didn’t get the C O V I D, but if we had a system focused on taking care of your health vs. taking care of your sickness, one that was based in the fundamental principles of health — eating well, sleeping well, moving well — then the outcome of this scenario would likely be significantly different. Instead, we’re left waiting in a socially distanced line for a vaccine with a mask that really does fuck all for anyone’s overall health and wellness.
119. revisions
We come into this world as one thing and leave it as another. The time we’re granted in between can be described as our journey. A finite amount of time to figure out how to leave our mark on the world. We have ideas, expectations, and interests we hope to fulfill, but as in any great story, they’re all challenged by the tensions of an ever changing world.
Where we thought we would be at any given point in our lives doesn’t always match the reality that the world doesn’t always work the way we expect it to. It pushes us to overcome obstacles, by going through or around them. These roadblocks can certainly discourage our progress, yet it is in the moments of tension, or conflict, or hardship that allow us to discover who we are and what we can become.
We either figure out how to make the thing we’re after work for us, or change directions and create a new path. Neither is inherently right or wrong. Evolving, or becoming a better version of ourselves, is a never ending process, it takes hard work — including failure, adversity, and heartbreak — and so many revisions from the original idea of who we thought we would become that sometimes where we end up is barely recognizable to where we thought we would be. And that’s not a bad thing, so just keep making your revisions.
118. why do you do what you do
If we look at all the things we do for the sake of something else, is there an end to it all? Why do we work? Why do we need to pay bills? Why do we want to look a certain way? Where do we hope to arrive with our decisions? The inevitable answer at the end of a lengthy string of why’s is happiness. Everything we do is an attempt to find happiness.
On the surface, it’s really hard to argue with this conclusion. We work to earn money so we can trade it for things that give us happiness. This comes in the form of possessions and experiences that we’re continually reminded by with those monthly bills we have to pay. We want to look a certain way to attract a mate. And no matter what we seek out of the relationship, it is in another person we’re searching for happiness. The distant hope of Happiness shines as a guiding light on our journey through life. Whenever we’re faced with options, we choose the one that leads to the most happiness.
Except we don’t, at least not in the longterm, for the simple fact that our brains aren’t wired that way. We are wired like a straight line; the quickest way to happiness being the “best” choice. Too often we choose what makes us happy in the moment, because it’s much easier to just do what we want. Rarely do we sit down to consider the outcomes of our decisions, weighing one against the other, and seeing what would create more happiness longterm. It’s tiring work, and the immediate outcome is hardly satisfying — and the main reason why we don’t always make choices that lead to happiness. Think of how many people you know “fell into” their career. Think of how many people stay in relationships. Think of how many people trade their long-term happiness simply because it requires a little bit of effort for an exponentially more fulfilling experience, for the short-term ease of being happy now.
One of the hardest lessons we’ll have to learn is to make sure our short-term choices are leading us in a direction for long-term happiness. In the end, it will be worth enduring the modicum of struggle to create a more fulfilling life.
117. don’t limit the positives
We all encounter feelings of anxiety or apprehension because we are always thinking about the result. Somewhere along the line we learned that the love we receive is based on external motivation. We’re not loved for who we are, so much as what we accomplish. We learned this behavior from a family member, coach, or someone we looked for approval from. They saw the the excellent grades or the way we scored the game-winner and showed their approval through their expressions of adulation.
Early in life, we came to understand that the better we did in school or on the field, the more love we received. If you brought home a bad report card or lost the game, the love that you needed in that moment was replaced with devastating silence. We learned to equate love, or acceptance, or belonging, not with who we were, but how we performed, internalizing the idea that love is predicated on what we outwardly accomplish. So now we’re grown-up, anxious, walking around in the world, afraid to bump into things, completely missing the point of having experiences because we’re worried about the outcome. We’re still worried about the result of our performance, without recognizing that the fear we pay attention to is attracting the worst case scenario. We all want to live our best life, but we’ll never find it if we are limiting our performance by thinking about what might happen.
Don’t limit the positives of your life because you’re afraid of the negatives. Don’t dampen your enjoyment of something simply because you’re worried about the outcome. Don’t approach your day with anxiety because of uncertainty. Don’t shy away from loving someone with your whole heart because you’re afraid they’ll leave you. Give it all, otherwise you’re betting on the worst case scenario.
116. fit within the world
When we grow up, we’re taught to see the world as it is and the best way to proceed is to find a life that fits within the world. Try not to be too disruptive or make too much noise, but feel free to move things around if you need to, just don’t mark up the walls set in place before you arrived. Follow the rules. Go to school. Get an education to qualify you for a job that allows you to fit within the confines of what most people call acceptable. And in no time you’ll have the life you never knew you wanted! This approach might work for some, but for other’s it limits the opportunity that life can offer. Happiness, love, fulfillment, success shouldn’t be defined for you, they should be defined by you.
Life can be much broader and more fulfilling, as Steve Job’s put it, “once you discover the fact that everything around you that you call life was made by people no smarter than you.” You have the power to break down the walls that aren’t serving you and change your place in the world.
Like a fish, we are often the last to realize we are swimming in a massive sea of ideas, beliefs, and practices. Some are beautiful, while others are frighteningly normal. Likewise, we’re often blind to the fact act the path laid out before us — the narrative we’re implored to follow — is simply a collection of agreed upon thoughts of all those who came before us. They took no input on how you or I would want to captain our lives, yet all their ideas completely saturate and influence the entirely of our lives. So, if the path you’re walking isn’t fully your own, don’t be afraid to question the direction you’re going because you ultimately have the power to change it.
115. when things aren’t working
When things aren’t working the way we like, some of us place too much emphasis on the negative thing we want to change. We give it power by complaining to our friends which only reinforces the negative thoughts and emotions associated with the event. However, this never works in our favor because we aren’t able to see what we want clearly. We are blinded by our negativity. Instead of complaining and speaking about the negative, turn it around and talk about what you want in a positive way. In other words, state what you want, not what you don’t. This gives your mind a clear intention to work towards. For example, rather than saying things like… “I don’t want to be depressed,” “I don’t want to be fat,” or “I don’t want to be poor,” say something like “I want to be happy,” “I want to feel healthy,” or “I want to be successful.” The latter statement differs from the former because it redirects the focus in the direction of where you want to go, not where you currently are, ultimately providing you with a clear intention of where you need to place your next steps toward improving your situation.
book thoughts: Regenerate by Sayer Ji
TL:DR Challenging the standard of practice, pill-for-every-ill approach to healthcare, Sayer Ji dives into the history of how the modern medical establishment came to be, as well as explores the alternative to the “sickcare” system by looking into ways of optimizing health through holistic practices and functional medicine tactics, rather than managing illness.
114. habitual thinking
We’ve all developed habits by consistently performing something a certain way, over and over again. Whether, it’s the most effective way to accomplish something doesn’t cross our minds because after a certain number of repetitions it’s far easier to simply turn on autopilot and complete the task at hand. However, issues can arise when we struggle to tell the difference between habitual thinking and intuition. When habits start to feel like intuition, it has the tendency to keep us stuck in the familiar, which isn’t always the best way to get things done. If we’re struggling to overcome something in our life — weight loss, relationship woes, career stagnation — using the same habitual thought processes that led us to this point, it may be time to step out of the familiar line of thinking you’re accustomed to by listening to the voice of intuition. Therefore, it becomes important to realize that you can’t change something with the same line of thinking that got you there to begin with.
113. the chase
We’re all chasing something. Dreams. Money. Status. Success. Hell, some of us are even chasing people for their love, attention, or admiration. With all the talk about the perseverance and consistency needed to achieve our ideal lives, we also need to live with the reality that no matter what endeavor we choose to pursue there still exists the possibility that it can fail. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, despite how difficult that realization might be. Not everything is meant to work, nor last forever. It’s all part of the lesson that serves to guide us through the next chapter of our lives.
So, how do we know when to stop the chase? There’s no right answer. If there were, it would allow the transition to come and go more fluidly and with less trepidation. Instead we’re left with the murky waters of interpreting events and justifying outcomes to fit whatever narrative that allows us to hold on to the idea of what we pine for. You think, “oh, what if I do this, or that?”, when what really needs to be done is to step back and take an objective look at the situation. Is there a possibility that the thing you’re chasing is holding you back from finding what you desire somewhere else? Has contributing ever greater resources — whether it’s time, money, love, or attention — provided any significant return on the thing you’re after? If the answers are no, perhaps the direction you should be focusing your attention on is simply being blinded by the glimmers of hope you continue to chase after.
112. identity
One thing people don’t think about is how they have assumed a particular identity. We think we freely define ourselves, when in fact, we are the sum of where we place our attention. Everything from the harping of our parents and the influence of cultural norms, to the constant messages of inadequacy we hear from social media and television.
All these things have embedded us with a certain identity. The hardest thing to do is enable a person to see themselves as who they are, not who they’ve been taught to be. Identity, by it’s very nature, is manmade and exclusive. If you’ve been socialized to identify as poor based on where you come from or what you look like, you are no longer rich. The same goes for if you’ve been convinced you’re fat, you no longer can perceive yourself as skinny. All these little words we use to identify and define ourselves only put us in a box, they don’t free us. They don’t give us the power to see ourselves as who we are — completely free to do and be whatever we want, no matter our starting point — and therefore keep us confined to living a life within the limits of the words we use to define ourselves. These words impact our decisions and are the underlying force that drives our inner narrative in a particular direction. So, it becomes very important to understand where you’re placing your attention because it has the power to create or reinforce an identity that really isn’t who you are.
111. excuses are valid
Your excuses are valid. You’re not imagining your reality. You’re not imagining that you started out poor, fat, or uneducated. That’s all real. You can choose to live with the negative emotions, brought on by the excuses, that come along with the situation, but what happens when the next day comes and you haven’t moved an inch out of the mindset created by the excuses? You continue with the same line of thinking, which produces the same negative emotions, leading to the same results. The situation you find yourself in isn’t negotiable, what you do is. If your life has dedicated so much time and energy to a feeling that isn’t getting you to where you want to be, then you have to decide whether you’re more attached to the excuse than the progress.
Who do you need to be? You need to be a person that starts to think and act different, so that you can start to feel different and see a path forward. Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, is quoted as saying, “the path won’t appear until you start walking.” There are no right answers, but there is a wrong one, which is giving too much credence to your excuses and allowing them to dissuade you from changing your life.
110. what am I measuring against
The moment you find yourself discouraged about where you are in your journey, it’s important to stop and ask, “what am I measuring against?” Most likely, it’s against your version of ideal. That far off place, just over the horizon. But just like the horizon, you’ll never be able to catch it. It’s unattainable, as it will always remain ahead of you. It’s important to let that far off point serve as a guide, not as a comparison.
When you realize the horizon exists as a guide for your potential and not a place where happiness resides, you should ask yourself, “where did I come from?” And at that moment, you can turn around to look how far you’ve come from the point where you started. All the changes, failures, adjustments, and hardships brought you to the point where you stand today — far closer to the horizon than where you used to be, but still so much more you’ll be able to achieve. So, if you’re disappointed with the progress of your journey, remember to look in the direction that allows you to see how far you’ve come and not how far you need to go.
109. the path
We find comfort in the way things are. We take the beaten path, and say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” We think, it’s the obvious choice, as it was traveled by all those who came before us.
In the book Think Like a Rocket Scientist, Ozan Varol gives the following example about how far this idea can go:
The width of the engines that powered the space shuttle — one of the most complex machines humankind has ever created — was determined over two thousand years ago by a Roman road engineer… The engines were 4 feet, 8.5 inches wide because that was the width of the rail line that would carry them from Utah to Florida. The width of that rail line, in turn, was based on the width of tramlines in England. The width of the tramlines, in turn, was based on the width of the roads built by the Romans: 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
What we’ve done in the past, has the power to shape what we do next. This not only goes for feats of engineering, but our lives as well. The decisions we’ve made throughout our lives create the waves that impact our future. So, if we do not like what our past has presented us, then we must change our behaviors, thoughts, ideas, mindsets, and lifestyles to create the change we seek.
108. modern disadvantage
Imagine living 10,000 years ago. As the sun draws down over the plains you find yourself huddled around the campfire with your tribe, where the kill from that day’s hunt is roasting on a spit. Waiting to eat the whole animal, organs and all, you gnaw on a collection of berries, roots, and leafy vegetation gathered from pristine mineral-rich soils. Your water came from a nearby stream that is fed by the snow melt from a distant mountain top. You’re outside, with sun kissed skin, in the fresh air, sitting on the ground barefoot, fresh soil under your fingernails from the day’s gathering. The day is over, and there is nothing left to do but enjoy the company of your tribe, the stars, and the sustenance of that days kill. And as darkness takes over, your body will know it’s time to rest, just as it knows to rise with the following day’s sun because that’s natures rhythm.
Fast-forward to your present life. You’re woken up at an ungodly time of the morning by the blaring of an alarm clock that hates your dreams, so that you can be up early enough to beat traffic to a job you probably only work so that you can afford the place you live and buy toys you don’t need. If you’re lucky, you have time to spare to cook a breakfast where you cut up pesticide-aided GMO vegetables, thrown into a few factory-farmed eggs — don’t forget to remove the yolks, we have to think about our cholesterol number! — that are frying in butter made from cows fed a nutrient-poor and ruminantly-incorrect diet of corn. Once the food is done, you eat, clean up with your antibacterial soap, and rush out of the front door. You go from your climate-controlled home, to your climate-controlled car, to your climate-controlled office, where you sit hunched over a desk, staring at a screen all day. You make sure to check your phone regularly to break up the monotony of your 8-hour slog with a continual stream of fresh notifications that satisfy you like a slow morphine drip. The day ends, you’re stuck in traffic breathing in the fumes from the traffic, feeling the stress from the workday and the political talk on the radio, your eyes hurt from all the screen time, and you have no energy to make a decent meal when you arrive home so you order a pizza, eat and fall into a restless sleep to do it all over again tomorrow.
The difference between these two scenarios couldn’t be more stark. We have to deal with with exponentially more chronic stress than our ancestors did, which wears heavily on us, both mentally and physically. Our ancestors weren’t stressed about bills, viruses, work emails, or taxes. They didn’t have Hot Pocket’s or DoorDash to deliver them food that stressed their digestive systems so much that they would need toxic pharmaceutical drugs to counteract the affects of a high stress, nutrient poor diet. The environment we built for ourselves is robbing us of nutrients, and microbial defenses that used to come as part of our diets by default. The way we live now is deficient and sterile. We were tricked into swapping out fat for sugar as it was meant to improve our health, yet the “food” we’re eating is so processed that not even insects will eat it.
As Aubrey Marcus put in in Own the Day, Own Your Life:
“All that artificially and hyper sterility have robbed our bodies of the natural conditioning and the necessary bacteria that come from being outdoors and eating food that grew in the earth or ran, swam, or flew on it. Instead, we become prey to the bacteria — ever sicker, ever more vulnerable. Add to that, the problems of soil that’s been overfarmed, and animals that re undernourished, and you’ve got a recipe for a food supply and an environment that leaves our bodies wanting more.”
We’ve built a society that was meant to be greater than where we came from, but in reality we’re at more of a disadvantage when it comes to our health than ever.
107. happily ever after is a mindset
We all grew up on fairy tales with happy endings. Whether it was slaying the dragon, or marrying the prince, the characters all found their way to “happily ever after.” They gave us the impression that happiness was a destination to be found at the end of the yellow brick road. Accomplish this, or achieve that, and you can live happily ever after. That’s not how real life works. We achieve new things and are met with new obstacles. These stories were great for stirring our imagination, but they also provided us with unrealistic expectation of how to find our “happily ever after” because happiness is ultimately a mindset, not a destination.
Thinking we will someday be happy after we achieve this, or acquire that, will only leave us lost and looking for the next thing to provide us the happiness we were promised in the stories we read when we were young. The truth is, no matter how much we achieve or accomplish we are going to be continually met with new challenges and obstacles throughout our lives, so if we’re reserving our happiness for some far off time when all things are great in our kingdom, then we are setting ourselves up to be disappointed. We have to be happy with who we are, before we can be happy with what we achieve, otherwise we will continuously be searching for the next achievement to fulfill us.
106. answers are meant to be questioned
We’ve been told to “fake it, til we make it,” and in the process have become experts at faking it, all the while distancing ourselves from the ability to tell the difference. Whether it’s due to ego or ignorance, a lot of what we “know” simply isn’t accurate, and the danger is that it often isn’t easy to tell what parts are lacking real evidence. Mastering the art of stating an unfounded opinion as fact, the “experts” are found smiling and bluffing their way through an answer. They rise in the ranks because we value chest thumping and answers, that match our opinion, delivered with conviction over an honest “it depends.” Yet, the majority of us have invested little more than a sound bite worth of time or a few minutes worth of googling in an attempt to become knowledgable on an issue. “In our certainty obsessed public discourse,” As Ozan Varol says in Think Like a Rocket Scientist “we avoid reckoning with nuance” and prefer baffling people with bullshit, instead of realizing that our answers are meant to be questioned. So we march forward pretending to “know“ what we think we know, oblivious to any fact that may contradict our beliefs simply because our discussion is allowed to proceed without a rigorous system for discerning facts from fake news.
question everything
We want everything to be straightforward but it's impossible to give a comprehensive and detailed prescription for health. Most natural systems are irreducible, which places profound restriction on the validity of the inherent reductionist ideology of modern scientific thought. Everything on this planet is about N=1 because everything can be altered individually from epigenetic changes brought on by environmental input down to the quantum theory of observation where the outcome is dependent on the observer.
105. upgrade the system
No one in the modern world is unaware of the impact a virus can have on our day. We’ve dealt with them for years. Ever since the advent of downloadable porn, music, and movies, we’ve had to be on the lookout. The natural solution at the time was to install an antivirus software and go about our day. However, as technology evolved we found that upgrading the hardware and software would make the whole system more robust and allowed our digital interactions to be less prone to exogenous attacks.
We’ve taken the antivirus mentality and applied it to our current health crisis, forgetting that upgrading the hardware and software — i.e., lifestyle and mindset — are the key components to creating a more vibrant and healthy system. With the knowledge that the majority of our society is unhealthy, operating on a dysfunctional and worn down system due to years of neglect, compounded by the fact that the least healthy among us are the ones most affected, why are we choosing to wait for the latest antivirus to “install” when the real solution is to improve the overall system?