What’s the habit that’s give me the most benefit? I’m not certain if it’s journaling or meditation. I have a habit of reviewing previous-years’ journal entries each morning. Reading the one-year-ago entry is enlightening. Reading the 10-years-ago entry often induces vertigo; who was that person?
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Beauty vanishes; Virtue is lasting.
~ Goethe
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Do you think it is easy writing all these thoughts for this blog/email? It’s a strange experience for me. The writing is really easy—I’m just tapping some little keys and moving a few ones-and-zeros—and my brain has never not been full of thoughts and questions. The writing is really hard—for over a decade I’ve been crafting digital output in various forms for this site, using various systems and routines but it’s an endless task.
So what [is it]? What determines success? Hard work or good fortune? Effort or randomness? I think we all understand both factors play a role, but I’d like to give you a better answer than “It depends.”
~ James Clear from, Absolute Success is Luck. Relative Success is Hard Work.
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The odd thing is that whether I think the writing and all the web site work is hard or easy depends on what I think I am trying to accomplish. To be widely read? …to generate income? …to help others? …to write a certain amount, or for “the most years”? —yikes, this is extremely difficult and arduous work. If my goal is a bunch of stuff over which I have no control, ouch.
On the other hand, when I manage to write because I enjoy fiddling with technology, because I’m curious and love to see/hear others be curious, because thinking and writing and thinking more lead me to clarity and insight… well suddenly it seems so easy.
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It’s a choice. The choice between being the linchpin (the one people can’t live without) and the cog (who does what she’s told). The choice between doing art (and forging your own path, on your own terms, and owning what happens) and merely doing your job (which pushes all the power and all the responsibility to someone else).
The good news is that it’s your choice, no one else’s.
~ Seth Godin
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Every evil in the bud is easily crushed; As it grows older it becomes stronger.
~ Cicero
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The other evidence we have is animals who live in the cold have higher metabolic rates, higher activity levels, yet higher body fat and body mass than those that live in the warmth. This suggests that fluctuations in body fat may be tied to changes in temperature exposure, and not just to protect us from famine. The bottom line is temperature matters.
~ Brad Pilon from, Does Temperature Affect Weight Loss? – Brad Pilon’s ‘Eat Blog Eat’
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My pull-quote is from the very end of Pilon’s article. Overall it lays out a delightful overview of the main systems that regulate our body composition. I love this last point—the part I’ve quoted—because it has nothing to do with humans; It’s a nice “and the same thing seems to be true for other mammals” that provides a great reality check on the models he’s presented in the article.
Pilon is the author who made things clear and simple enough for me to try intentionally manipulating the window of time each day when I stuff food in my face. Being intentional about that greatly increased my awareness of subtle signals from my body. At 8:30am, when I’m day-dreaming of blueberry pancakes, am I actually hungry or am I simply having a craving for carbohydrates? And when I wake up at 1am with a massive cramp in my left calf… I should probably have remembered to take my magnesium supplement before bed, and I better eat a banana first thing in the morning.
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Sitting on the patio one morning, in the cool humidity and calm air of what was going to be a blazing-hot summer day, this single down feather drifted down. It skimmed along the tabletop and disappeared off the edge taunting me to chase it.
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There is no question that apps are here to stay, and are a superior interaction model for some uses. But the web is like water: it fills in all the gaps between things like gaming and social with exactly what any one particular user wants. And while we all might have a use for Facebook – simply because everyone is there – we all have different things that interest us when it comes to reading.
~ Ben Thompson from, Why the Web Still Matters – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
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That’s from 2014, and holds up pretty well I think. That the web, “fills in all the gaps,” is insightful. Sure, the technology that defines “the Web” drives an enormous amount of stuff other than written content. But even just the smaller portion that is the written word is a huge swath of time and attention. That speaks well for us in the aggregate.
I still believe that the problem, currently, is simply that people rarely bother to figure out how things actually work. People don’t tinker and change things. Once someone gets the bug of curiosity, it’s a slippery slope from poking and prodding, to tinkering and experimenting, to building and creating; It’s a slippery slope lined entirely with reading.
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(Part 8 of 13 in series, Changes and Results)
The “minimalist shoes” journey is probably the most drastic change I’ve made in recent decades. If you want to just spin off to the references, here are four to get you started:
Pronation As Your Favorite Nation: Pronation as Your Favorite Nation – Dr. Dooley Noted
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The Shoe Cushioning Myth: The Shoe Cushioning Myth | Natural Footgear
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Grow Yourself a Shoe: «http://fitforreallife.com/2015/10/grow-yourself-a-shoe-all-about-the-foots-fatty-padding/»
The journey began the day before my very first parkour class. Class was on a Sunday afternoon, and Saturday I went shoe shopping. Clueless, I bought a pair of low-cut Keen shoes like these. These are effectively like sticking your feet into solid rubber blocks. During that first class, I realized that I might want my feet to be involved—that I might want to use some of the joints or senses in my feet, and these shoes remove any chance of that.
Back home, I grabbed my pair of Feiyue. These are crepe-soled shoes that I was using for tai-chi practice. At the time, I felt these were like being barefoot. I’d only ever worn them indoors, on padded matting at a martial arts school. I bought a couple pair of the low-cut variety and started into parkour classes. Today, I cannot stand these shoes. They have far too much padding in them. But back then, I couldn’t do anything without feeling I was destroying my feet. I started to run in these shoes… woa, I had to re-learn how to run.
…and then I read, Born to Run by C. McDougall and things started to click.
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Unfortunately, the “chemical imbalance” theory continues to be the dominant paradigm for understanding depression nearly 30 years after this profound discovery, despite the weak correlation between serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine and depressive symptoms.
~ Chris Kresser from, Is Depression a Disease or a Symptom of Inflammation? | Chris Kresser
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I’m sure I have nothing useful to add on the topic of Depression– being not a doctor, psychologist, etc.
But I can raise my voice because I believe I understand the personal experience of depression. It sucks. Talk to someone.
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(Part 54 of 72 in series, My Journey)
I think it may be the sun exposure.
When I started Parkour, I wasn’t even aware that I was generally UNhappy. But I sure did notice that everyone I met WAS happy. At first I just marked this down to “everyone is young”, and I set about simply enjoying training and playing with a mob of fun people.
Then, slowly, I realized I was becoming happy.
Now sure, some of this has to be due to my changing — some life-style changes, some dietary, some weight, some exercise, etc. But the more I’ve been reading, the more I’m inclined to blame some of it on the sun.
You see, it’s been shown that Vitamin D supplementation works wonders, and I’d bet that getting my Vitamin D the natural way is even better.
«http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/supplements/sunshine-superman/»
«http://www.drbriffa.com/2007/09/12/vitamin-d-supplementation-appears-to-save-lives/»
«http://www.drbriffa.com/2010/04/29/can-sunlight-and-vitamin-d-help-to-preserve-physical-function-and-independence-as-we-age/»
Male Depression: How to Deal With It | The Art of Manliness
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(Part 25 of 25 in series, M. Eades' Blog)
He replied that although the drug did dissolve gallstones, it didn’t treat whatever the underlying problem was causing the gallstones in the first place. Patients who took the drug, got rid of their stones, but as soon as they went off the drug, the stones redeveloped. He said the only effective permanent treatment of gallstones was to remove the gallbladder.
Over the next few years of my medical education, I learned this was the common wisdom on dissolving gallstones. It can be done, but what’s the point? The stones will simply come back.
Turns out, however, that there may well be a way to avoid surgery, get rid of gallstones and, most importantly, keep them gone.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/get-rid-gallstones-without-surgery/»
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…and then it snowed pink and nearly killed the lawn :*D
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Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
~ Winston Churchill
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