If I had to choose 3 things to do for exercise for the rest of my life, these would probably be them:
Curiously none are team sports. This list would have been very different 10 years ago.
Sprawling newsfeeds, popularity contests, amassing of friends and contacts for the sake of it. LinkedIn is the new Facebook – It is still a more professional network in my opinion, but for how long?
We never had to do it before. We were born, grew up, and died in the same village. Not true anymore. We move schools, jobs, towns, countries more often than ever before. It’s great for experience but not for community. Unfortunately our needs have not changed as quickly as our technology and our wealth.
No matter how much traveling we distract ourselves with, at the end of the day we humans need to belong to something bigger than ourselves. We need family and familiarity around us. We need it for contentment. I have moved around a lot. I am now trying to settle- And so I hunt for community as follows:
Some tactics work better than others but in the absence of a childhood history to build bonds, I have to start somewhere 🙂
Black Friday Blues are a very distinct set of emotions. These emotions hit my consciousness like a Mike Tyson punch to the head once a year. My name is Ross and I am addicted to technology.
If you could see my setup you would realise how deep my addiction has set in. I have wonderful headphones linked up to specialised hifi equipment attached to my Macbook. My TV room is full of gaming, streaming, hifi and AV devices. The pleasure it gives me to link up a piece of high fidelity tech has become a crutch. And now the internet throws half price deals at me – it’s like offering an alcoholic a tequila shot and a beer chaser – half price happy hour. Sheesh.
I still haven’t figured out how I am going to avoid/ignore/manage the deals that will barrage my inbox all day today and tomorrow.
Wish me luck.
If someone is struggling with a real issue, it will tilt their worldview.
While it is tempting to assume everyone else sees the world as you do, this approach is actually a cop out – an escape from the responsibilities of explanation. Nobody sees the world exactly as you do.
Take the time to listen and to explain. This comes from a father of a 2 year old!
One of my favourite songs and it has this line:
“I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are, you make it hard.”
And then after the switchup in timing:
“I’ve got an answer, I’m going to fly away. What have I got to lose?”
And then a trippy guitar solo.
Magic.
Some options for how to approach a situation that is not working out as you planned:
A scorched-earth policy brutally removes resources from the game – starving the competition (and any bystanders) as you flee the battle ground.
Offensive moves take the conflict to the ‘enemy’. The aim here is to destroy the enemy’s resources to make them easier targets for domination.
A third option is to not compete for resources at all – instead put in the groundwork to build a network that encourages flexibility and stability during volatile times.
All three are valid, but you can only do one at a time.
Drinking is good if you can stop after a couple.
Listening to podcasts is good if you have set a time and a place for regularly listening to them.
Technology is good if you use it, rather than it using you.
Exercise is good if you have had enough sleep and food to carry you through.
Relationships are good if you can look after yourself.
The internet is good if you create as well as consume.
As an experiment, try and find the habits in your daily life that are driven by pleasure – you know the ones i mean – those things you do when you’re a little bit bored which give you that nice little buzz and dopamine hit.
It is difficult. It forces you to reflect on your actions and life, and it eventually forces you to recognise that pleasurable things are not the most fulfilling things, precisely because they are temporary and external. In this way, pleasure is different to happiness.
Pleasure is a momentary feeling that comes from something external — a good meal, a message notification, making love and so on. Pleasurable experiences can give us momentary feelings of satisfaction, but this feeling does not last long because it is dependent upon external events and experiences. Try and locate the pleasurable (not happy, remember) activity in your life and try to stop doing it for a whole day – I’m almost certain you’ll find it hard to do.
But pleasure is not wrong in and of itself – so why stop? Because we need to know how we feel without the constant pleasure seeking. Are we doing all these things because we are sad without them? And if we are in fact sad about something, shouldn’t we find a more permanent solution?
The trouble comes when we ascribe the pleasurable activities in our lives more value and power than we should. A drug addict gives heroine priority over everything else – she sees it as the source of her happiness and of her power in life. Similarly a bulimic ascribes power to food and the control thereof. In actual fact, drugs and throwing up give us but a temporary pleasure – not a true satisfaction. They are not the answer to any sadness that is felt.
Once we see the things we are deriving pleasure from, a useful next step is to reflect on how we feel when we do not have access to these things – are we happy or sad without them? If we are happy without them, then there is no real problem. Carry on living.
If we are sad without them, and furthermore if we rely on the activity more than we should – then something needs to change for the sadness to lift.
I am reading Russel Brand’s new book Recovery and I am struck by a few things already:
It has given me food for thought and for writing. It has already made me want to change my life.
Chimpwithcans 