Energy

I’ve been injured for a while now, and I’m starting to feel the lack of exercise in my energy level. Here’s a good article I found on increasing everyday energy.

Top 10 ways to boost energy

If you’re too lazy to read, it breaks down like this:

1. Increase magnesium intake
2. Exercise
3. Take a 60-minute power nap
4. Don’t skip meals
5. Reduce stress and deal with anger
6. Drink more water
7. Eat more whole grains and less sugar
8. Have a power snack
9. Drink latte instead of black coffee
10. Check your thyroid function and blood cell count

The bits about magnesium and milk were news to me, and a reminder on the water intake is always useful.

Epictetus 101

Today I’d like to share some simple logic that will make your life better. It did for me, anyway.

In life, there are three kinds of phenomena: Phenomena that you can control, phenomena that you can influence and phenomena that you have no control at all over.

It obviously follows that it’s better to have your stakes riding on the outcome of events that you can control. Unless you’re really clumsy, that is. So in order to become happier, it is healthy to regularly examine how much of your emphasis is on factors that you cannot control, or that you can only partially control. For example, unless you are an aspiring politician, the intelligent approach to the US Presidential election is to vote (if eligible), but to accept that your candidate might lose. If you invest a lot of emotion in the idea of “your guy” winning, then there is a pretty big risk that you’ll be disappointed.

So what are the factors that you CAN control?

1. Your thoughts
2. Your emotions
3. Your actions

What are things that you CAN’T control?

1. The past
2. The actions of others
3. The laws of nature

In other words, shit happens. Shit happens, and it’s your job to respond correctly. A lot of the time when you’re in a bad situation, it helps to make the division in your head, so that you can concentrate your energy and efforts on the factors within your sphere of influence.

In fact, it helps to keep this in mind in all situations. A lot of people who aren’t “doers” suffer from confusion in this area. They devote too much of their efforts to trying to affect things that are outside of their control.

A Buddhist might say “How people treat you is their karma, how you react is yours”.

If you’re interested in more about this kind of philosophy, I recommend reading this. Brought to you by a dead guy named Epictetus.

On tempering the mind

The hottest fires make the hardest iron. Tempering is the practice of refining a quality in an object by putting the object through elements of trial, burning away the unnecessary parts.

Tempering and conditioning the body is essential to athleticism, you must put it through stress and pain in order to make it tougher and more able. Physical pleasure-seeking is a way to weaken the body, to decrease its life span and quality.

To achieve true excellence, the mind must be similarly tempered. You temper it by asking uncomfortable questions, and then wrestling with the cognitive dissonance until it submits to you and you reach a new level of understanding, from which you can survey all of your old knowledge under a new light. Removing false assumptions and illusions, you gain more detailed knowledge. Adding detail and definition to your view of reality is the way to achieve excellence in all fields.

This is one of the most essential habits to keep. You’ll never become a star quarterback if you don’t enjoy juggling the ball while talking to your friends or walking to work, and you won’t reach your intellectual potential unless you keep looking for new perspectives.

This post was written under the influence of cannabis sativa.

Unproductive emotions

Back in 2005 when I decided to turn my life around, one of my first priorities was to try to gain more control over my own emotions. This turned out to be a key element in achieving happiness. I examined my emotional reactions and the results they had given me in the past, and came to the following conclusions:

Regret is a waste of time. The past is history, it cannot be changed. Learn from it, and move on. Any time spent on regret is time that could be spent enjoying the present. Intellectual regret is perfectly fine, as it is required to learn from one’s mistakes. I made the rule to regret each mistake only long enough to realize that I would do things differently should the situation arise again. After the mental note is made, I waste no more time on regret.

Shame is an obvious candidate for removal. Nobody wants to feel ashamed, but very few people have realized it’s possible to minimize the emotion from your life without being a conformist. Shame is always caused by social missteps, it is a mechanic put there by evolution to facilitate flock cooperation. If the leader could use shame his subjects into the fold, he didn’t have to use violence. Violence is risky, it may cause injuries that would impair the ability to hunt.
The key to eliminating shame is the realization that everyone else is just people. Governments, organizations, corporate structures and social groups are all comprised of humans just like yourself. They all shat in diapers as babies, they all pissed their beds at some point, and they all have insecurities. Everyone has the same basic human value, regardless of money, social status or job. In other words, they’ve got nothing “on” you as long as you’re honest. Your own intellect is the highest authority in your life. It is the only authority worthy of deciding what you ought to feel about anything.

Jealousy is directly counter-productive. It’s like an educational blindfold. The persons who have achieved what you desire are the ones who possess the most relevant knowledge to you. If you allow yourself to be jealous of them, you will fail to see their good sides, which will impair your ability to learn from them.

Those are the ones I realized right away. Next time I return to this subject, I’ll discuss fear and hatred.

Ignorance

A man who asks is a fool for five minutes. A man who never asks is a fool for life.

Supposedly, that’s a Chinese proverb. More importantly, it’s 100% undiluted, weapons-grade TRUTH™. One of the most common mistakes I see people make is pretending they know more than they do. I’m guilty of it as well, which makes it even worse, because it’s dumb.

Do you really think people are going to judge you as a fool for not knowing the capital of the Maldives, or the meaning of defenestrate? Personally, I base my self-worth on more solid stuff than that, and I hope you do as well. In most of the western world, there seems to be this misguided notion that ignorance is somehow connected to stupidity. This is far from accurate. If you look back at history, you will find that some of the smartest people who ever lived were ignorant about things most of us would laugh at someone for not knowing today.

Ignorance does have a connection with one unattractive trait, and that is lack of curiosity. Thirst for knowledge is a sign of a healthy mind. However, correlation does not imply causation. Even though a lack of curiosity leads to ignorance, ignorance alone is not proof that you lack curiosity. In fact, you dispel that notion the moment you reveal your ignorance by asking.

Your homework for today is to ask someone about something you don’t know. I would advise you to make a habit out of this.

Habits

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.“
-Aristotle

This is the basis for my entire philosophy of self-improvement. Five years ago I was unemployed, unmotivated, undernourished and lonely. After finally coming to the insight that I was headed for suicide, habits were the rope by which I pulled myself back up.

The method is simple: Observe a person who possesses the skill that you desire, and do what that person does. It’s impossible to change every one of your habits overnight, so pick one thing that you think you can keep up for three weeks. Three weeks is all it takes. After that, it becomes easy.

Once you have incorporated the habit, pick the next thing. It really is that simple. If you fail in the attempt to form a lasting habit, just try again with something a little easier. This is the easiest and most foolproof way to become the person you want to be.

When I feel like I can’t make any headway, this is the principle I return to, because I know it always works.