Break Homeostatis

BREAKING OUT OF HOMEOSTASIS The Not-So-Magic Pill of Self-Development

❂

LUDVIG SUNSTRÖM

2013 Copyright. All rights reserved. You are free to copy, distribute and transmit this material in its original format. You may

not alter, transform, or use it for commercial purposes. First edition, July 2013

Health Disclaimer:

The information on this book is designed for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for informed medical advice or care.

Consult a doctor before starting an exercise program or diagnosing any illnesses or health problems you may have.

Life is Practice

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Who should Read this Book?

A Day in the Life of a Student 7

PART 1

HOMEOSTASIS

What is Homeostasis? 6

The Characteristics of Homeostasis 15

Metacognition 28

How Homeostasis Sustains Itself 36

PART 2

BREAKING OUT OF HOMEOSTASIS

Allostasis 51

Exerting More Energy 62

PART 3

THE BRAIN

The Prefrontal Cortex 82

Amygdala 96

Your Brain’s Reward System 97

Habits 107

Time to Walk the Walk and Follow Through 120

List of Recommended Books 123

At day's first light have in readiness, against disinclination to

leave your bed, the thought that 'I am rising for the work of

man'. Must I grumble at setting out to do what I was born for,

and for the sake of which I have been brought into the

world?

Is this the purpose of my creation, to lie here under the

blankets and keep myself warm?

'Ah, but it is a great deal more pleasant!'

Was it for pleasure, then, that you were born, and not for

work, not for effort?

Look at the plants, the sparrows, ants, spiders, bees, all busy

at their own tasks, each doing his part towards a coherent

world-order; and will you refuse man's share of the work,

instead of being prompt to carry out Nature's bidding?

'Yes, but one must have some repose as well.'

Granted; but repose has its limits set by nature, in the same

way as food and drink have; and you overstep these limits,

you go beyond the point of sufficiency; while on the other

hand, when action is in question, you stop short of what you

could well achieve.

You have no real love for yourself; if you had, you would love

your nature, and your nature's will. Craftsmen who love their

trade will spend themselves to the utmost in laboring at it,

even going unwashed and unfed; but you held your nature in

less regard than the engraver does his engraving, the dancer

his dancing, the miser his heap of silver, or the vainglorious

man his moment of glory. These men, when their heart is in

it, are ready to sacrifice food and sleep to the advancement

of their chosen pursuit. Is the service of the community of less

worth in your eyes, and does it merit less devotion?

― MARCUS AURELIUS ―

2

The Book is Divided in Three Parts:

◊ Part 1 explains what homeostasis is and how it manifests itself in your life by powerfully manipulating your brain and body through various devious ways in order to conserve energy. You will also learn how you can recognize when this happens to you and how you can work on reducing its negative effects.

◊ Part 2 explains the process of allostasis and how to go about Breaking out of Homeostasis by exerting more energy. Allostasis is the sweet spot of optimal physical or mental exertion and the physiological state in which your body adapts most efficiently to stressors. In part 2 you will also learn a ton of practical exercises that you can use to become more physically active as well as numerous ways of activating your brain and becoming more mentally focused.

◊ Part 3 explains how a couple of very important parts of your brain work. These are the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the amygdala, and the brain’s reward system. You will learn how you can practice these parts of your brain on a daily basis in order to improve their abilities. You will also learn beneficial ways of improving your learning process and implementing habits.

PREFACE

Who Should Read This Book?

You should read this book if you are interested in:

◊ Learning why change must happen internally in order for it to last.

◊ Learning practical methods for becoming and remaining more focused and energized for longer periods of time than before.

◊ Learning how the brain and body manipulate you for their own gain and ‘selfish’ purposes.

◊ Learning about the process of learning and powerful methods of implementing habits and new behaviors into your life.

◊ Understanding the process of keeping yourself motivated and why fear or anxiety often arises.

◊ Understanding why discomfort, pain, and fear are really good things – as long as they aren’t constant.

◊ Understanding by what fundamental mechanisms in your brain and body that your behavior from day-to-day is derived from, and the basics of how it works.

◊ Understanding why humans are lazy and opt for the easy way out in life.

◊ Understanding neurologically how the positive or negative feedback loops work. AKA the upward or downward spirals as coined by Stephen Covey.

◊ Achieving a higher degree of efficiency and discipline in your life.

[You may skip the preface and go right to page 13 – “The Life of a Student” if you’d like but I think it might be useful to keep the information from the preface in mind as it provides an overview of the content of the book and a few explanations]

PREFACE

Why did I Write this Book?

It’s probably easier to say why I didn’t write this book.

I didn’t write this book to save the world from poverty, from global warming, from the Illuminati, or from any of those other very serious modern day issues that the world currently seems to stand face to face with. Surely someone else will shoulder the role of messiah and rescue us from such matters of magnitude. I’m rooting for Al Gore, George W. Bush, Obama, and David Icke.

I didn’t write this book to save endangered species such as pandas or dolphins either.

I wrote it for practice.

Clarifying a Few Things

This book shouldn’t be read in one or two sittings. There’s far too much information in it to be successfully assimilated that quickly. Take a break from reading if you get tired or bored because almost everything in this book is connected in one way or another to something else.

Also; throughout the book when I use the word homeostasis, and it seems like I am using it in a negative way, it is because for the vast majority of people it is. Homeostasis is awful to most people, especially those who have no idea of its existence.

But to clarify: Yes, I am generalizing.

Homeostasis can be a good thing for a person once this person has put in a lot of time to form a large number of intelligent and healthy mindsets, routines, and habits. But this isn’t the case for most people.

* * *

The process of breaking out of homeostasis (BOOH) is rather straightforward, but the state of having BOOH is not so straightforward to understand unless you have experienced it sometime yourself.

It’s very hard to accurately describe an emotional and mental state. What I have done is more like taken out different pieces of the puzzle and tried to hold them up separately – which, of course, doesn’t make for a fair depiction of the entireness of the phenomenon in itself.

This book is for the most part based on years of personal experimentation combined with information gathered from reading a lot of books in multiple different fields of knowledge, ranging from nutrition, to self-development, psychology, biology, neurology, and

PREFACE

philosophy. I have listed a few of these books in the sidelines as recommended reading.

If I seem dogmatic, mastering, or pedantic at times it is because I found it to be incredibly boring and stifling to qualify every phrase with “I think…” or “in my opinion…”

I use a lot of quotes in this book. Not necessarily to prove that the people I am quoting have credibility and that you should blindly believe in their words, but rather to help describe and elucidate a lot of concepts that may be tricky to understand.

One reason as to why I wrote this book is because I believe that the habit, or perhaps phenomenon, that I’m calling Breaking out of Homeostasis, is a higher level of operating compared to how most people live in regards to how we can achieve more concentration, efficiency, and clarity in life. To put it succinctly I think it is useful information that more people need to learn about and apply in their life.

Throughout the book I recommend and suggest doing quite a few things, whereas in most cases it’s not the activity in itself that’s the important thing, but the underlying function that the activity serves. If you can come up with another activity or a better way of serving that same function then by all means go for it – don’t let my current restrictions become your restrictions.

* * *

I expect there’s going to be confusion between the concepts of being in a flow state, activating the brain, and of having broken out of homeostasis.

Flow to me is when you lose yourself completely in an activity and lose track of time. It often involves a loss of self and perception of time. Flow is usually activity-specific, meaning that you may be able to achieve a state of flow in one activity, but it rarely remains as you shift over to another activity.

Activating the brain is when you manage to engage your brain and make whatever activity at hand interesting. This stokes your curiosity which in turn boosts your ability to learn dramatically. You may feel the brain tense up euphorically. Activating the brain is deeply stimulating. If the brain is activated for prolonged periods of time, especially at night, it can be very hard to sleep even if you are physically exhausted. Your brain does not want to stop coming up with ideas.

Breaking out of homeostasis (BOOH) is when you feel an abundance of energy and reach the turning point of going from conserving energy to that of naturally WANTING to do things and

PREFACE

exert energy. Unlike flow, BOOH is completely independent of the activity. Whatever thing you need to do right now will feel much easier if you have BOOH, and it’s probably going to be fun as well. Once having BOOH, flow state can more easily be achieved. It’s natural to want to do your best in the situation regardless of results when having BOOH. There’s usually inherent motivation and positive emotions.

The major difference between flow state and BOOH is that to break out of homeostasis you must push through the plateau of discomfort and reach that sudden switch-point when the body starts to naturally exude energy. If you are not consciously trying to break out of homeostasis it is very unlikely to happen, because your body takes drastic measures to sustain its current state through various defense mechanisms in order to preserve energy.

It is very hard to know where to draw the line between where activating the brain begins and breaking out of homeostasis ends, and vice versa. But don’t get caught up in studying this as an academic issue. Results and efficiency are primary. It’s the doing that matters, not the theoretic issue of separating the two. As long as it works – which it does – the theory is secondary.

Two Things to Keep in Mind

1. The more things from the book that you immediately apply, and the more hard work you put in; the greater the positive effect will be.

2. There’s a vast difference between grasping something on an intellectual and theoretic level compared to a deeper understanding rooted in first-hand experiences of practical learning. I recommend the books My Big TOE by Thomas Campbell and the various works of Nathaniel Branden on the psychology of self-esteem for more on this. The key takeaway is that self-esteem, knowledge, and learning are all based on first-hand experience that gets stored in your brain to be used by its memory bank later as reference points without you actively thinking about it. You do not get first-hand experiences by reading, you get it by practicing and putting the theory to work in real situations. Keep these things in mind and remember that this book is written mostly for practical means. I’ll provide you with a ton of useful exercises, but they won’t matter much if you aren’t using them. I want you to muster up some intent and apply this stuff in your life – get mad as hell and start breaking out of homestasis.

PREFACE

Summary

You might not understand much of this definition below as of right now due to its high concentration of weird concepts and terminology. Don’t worry; you will understand all of these concepts as you read on because most of them are described in separate chapters. You may refer back to this later if you become confused of what it means to break out of homeostasis.

My definition for breaking out of homeostasis (BOOH) is:

To consciously induce stressors upon yourself and get somewhere in the vicinity of the sweet spot of allostasis; thus making the stress response adaptive and being a positive and healthy thing for the brain and body. After you get somewhere near that sweet spot of exertion you stay there for as long as possible, you keep putting in the mental or physical effort during a sufficient amount of time enough to push through the plateau and get that self-sustaining, internal motivation – momentum. After that point there is usually not as much effort involved in continuing to do whatever it is you’re doing. It becomes a matter of how long you can stay there in the state of having broken out of homeostasis – which in turn comes down to various factors.

The guideline for what to do in the long-term could be summarized as following:

Create a good and challenging daily routine, rewire the brain’s reward system, form positive habits, eat for performance, get good sleep, relax properly and in an efficient way after going through stress. Put forth slightly more effort than you want to every day and improve gradually. Rinse, wash, and repeat. Repeat more until you break out of homeostasis. Then repeat for five more minutes.

Synopsis

We are in a state of homeostasis by default. The state of homeostasis has us unconsciously repeating our current thoughts and behaviors over and over again as habits. Most of us are living in more or less complete reaction to homeostasis, being nothing but slaves to its power of sustaining and continually reinforcing the same patterns and feedback loops on us. By the same workings; by the nature of this feedback loop – once you are able to reverse it – you will slowly start breaking out of homeostasis more consistently.

You might say that once woken up once and having tasted its sweetness you will want to reproduce it that same awesome high, and thus wake up more often.

PREFACE

Homeostasis resists change and keeps most of us stagnant at a low level of consciousness. Homeostasis keeps people completely trapped in the endless cycle of chasing the same stimuli over and over again in order to remain in balance.

Being deeply in homeostasis is like being hypnotized to conserve energy. Homeostasis is the number one adversary of progression – whether that is on a personal level and in terms of individual growth, or on a bigger scale as in an organization or a community.

When we completely give into and identify with the needs of homeostasis we prefer to sustain our sense of comfort rather than do something that is briefly uncomfortable, scary, or painful; even though we rationally know that this thing would be massively beneficial to us and create happiness in the long-term.

Change is by default uncomfortable and painful to the untrained mind. One of the main ways of breaking out of homeostasis is by continually doing ‘uncomfortable’ things until we push through a plateau; after reaching that point, our body, brain, and personality together undergo a temporary change and we no longer fear or hold negative associations with discomfort or pain. Our reward system and beliefs are drastically altered for some time and we feel awesome.

In life we base our decisions and act in a certain way based on what we, often wrongly, believe will make us the most happy and content. We set goals that we work toward for a number of reasons, but the underlying objective is still that we want to have fun and enjoy life. The purpose of this book is to give you a greater understanding of the process for breaking out of homeostasis, which is not only a very helpful tool for accomplishing whatever goals you have, but also a very fulfilling way of life and how to be ‘naturally high’ for gradually longer periods of time.

The process of breaking out of homeostasis is not something you perfect during the course of a day. It’s a daily process to live by. To break out of homeostasis is something you do, not only on a daily basis, but also in the long-term as you establish many smaller habits that make up the bigger habit of breaking out of homeostasis. When the habit is established it becomes easier, but it is never over. You do not conquer homeostasis more than temporarily and to break out of homeostasis cannot be put on autopilot as most other habits can be. It’s still something that has to be done daily by putting in a lot of conscious effort. You won’t break out of homeostasis automatically no matter how good you are. But then again nothing that’s worth having comes easily.

2

Waste no more time arguing about

what a good man should be.

Be one.

― MARCUS AURELIUS ―

2

A Day in the Life of a Student

You wake up at 7 AM. Your first lecture is at noon and you have nothing else planned before that. “What’s the point, nothing gets done in the morning anyway”, you think to yourself as you hit the snooze button and get four hours of low quality rest until 11 AM, at which point you are forced to get out of bed if you’re going to be able to get to class in time.

You attend to your usual morning routine and finish by brushing your teeth at 11.40 AM. You get to class and feel sleepy. You do not engage any random people in conversation on your way to class because you feel stressed as you hurry to get there as an effect of your last minute departure. Once you get to class you discuss something vaguely interesting with your friends for a few minutes before it starts. The lecturer begins speaking and you attend to the class haphazardly. You lose focus within minutes and feel drowsy – cursing yourself for not purchasing a coffee or a can of soda.

You look around: few people are taking notes, and most are not even focusing on the lecturer or what he is saying at all. The latter group of people is using their smartphones or laptops to scan the Internet for the latest soccer scores, browsing forums and news sites, or playing computer games.

You think to yourself, “if everyone else in here, including my friends, is behaving in this manner – being uninterested in the lecture and being too cool for school, then so will I”. You begin drawing spaceships and unicorns to rebel against the boring lecture.

It is too much of a hassle to actually take notes or ask questions – and besides, no one else is doing that anyway.

Time goes on like that until the lecture is broken in half by a short break. You have learned absolutely nothing and feel bored and unengaged. It’s too bad you don’t have a smartphone, and you forgot your computer at home because you were stressed on your way over here so you can’t check your favorite forums and blogs to pass the time.

You and your friends talk a bit on the way to the cafeteria during the break. You purchase a cup of coffee.

When the lecture begins again you feel better and actually slightly focused as a result of the caffeine. You feel like you are waking up and start to pay attention to what’s going on and disregard your uninterested peers.

You start thinking that the class is somewhat interesting and you have a lot of relevant opinions on some of the stuff being said. You feel the urge to ask an interesting question and make a few cool assertions, but you don’t feel


3

quite entitled to do it. Besides, no one else is doing it. And the lecturer is not explicitly asking for your opinion.

A certain order has been established and no one is willing to break out of it. You think to yourself, “It’s probably best to follow the status quo and be safe and comfortable, so as to not draw any attention or risk any negative social feedback. The reason why the other people in class aren’t asking questions must be because they already know the material perfectly or because they’re not interested, or because they want to be respectful and not take up everyone else’s time with their individual questions. Yes, that must be it. It would be disrespectful of me to ask questions and waste other people’s time”, following this line of reasoning, you remain quiet while enjoying your little buzz of caffeine.

Time goes on until the last 5 minutes of class, at which point the lecturer asks the class an interesting question. You have a great answer that you prepare in your mind. You mentally prepare how you will deliver it. But you never do. It slips you by. Instead you just sit there and wait until class ends.

What Happened?

You were passive – reactive to the dynamics of the group rather– rather than to be proactive, following your own rhythm, and letting your curiosity direct your actions. The reason you acted this way was because you were deep in homeostasis. That’s a normal day for most contemporary students.

From the moment you woke up and made the (probably unconscious) decision to snooze, you began the daily habit of procrastination, giving it momentum. By procrastinating once you increase the likelihood of it emerging as your dominant course of action throughout the day; it becomes your automated initial response, often without you being aware of it.

By not immediately using your willpower consistently from the moment you woke up, it became very hard and uncomfortable to answer the teacher’s question even though you had a great answer – because to do so would mean to start a new pattern of behavior and a complete reversal in terms of action compared to how you acted earlier in the day – thus requiring more energy and willpower to implement. To quickly changing your behavior like that is to go against homeostasis, it’s basically like making a car go from zero to sixty in a second. Very few normal people can do this, it’s simply to uncomfortable and feels too weird to them. They never practice this ability, so their ‘muscles’ for breaking out of homeostasis remain weak.

The brain and body want to remain in the same energy state, mood, and behavior. They do not want to change the current level of operation; and


4

thus far today you have only been lazy and inactive. Your brain wonders why it should change now all of a sudden when it already got a safe and workable way of operating.

5

P A R T O N E

HOMEOSTASIS

⩎

We cannot break out of homeostasis forever.

Only impermanently, then it becomes too much for the body.

— U.G KRISHNAMURTI —

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the

labor of thinking.

— JOSHUA REYNOLDS —

6

WHAT IS HOMEOSTASIS?

The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you

that you couldn’t go any further. The mind was telling you

how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to

keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past

that, turn it all off if you’re going to get where you want to

be.

―MICHAEL JORDAN ―

The keys to life are running and reading. When you're

running, there's a little person that talks to you and says, "Oh

I'm tired. My lung's about to pop. I'm so hurt. There's no way

I can possibly continue." You want to quit. If you learn how to

defeat that person when you're running. You will how to not

quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have

been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us.

There's no new problem you could have – with your parents,

with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that

someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book.

― WILL SMITH ―

he word homeostasis can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Usually it is defined as the state whereby an organism maintains balance in its internal

system. The act of homeostasis is responsible for regulating the body’s temperature, PH-levels, keeping the hormones in check, keeping track of when we need to sleep, and similar important stuff that we need in order to survive. You could say that homeostasis economizes energy expenditure and constantly works to keep us alive as long as possible.

In this book we are not so much concerned with the biological aspect of homeostasis, but rather the practical aspect of it – the phenomenon of how it governs our daily life, conduct and behavior as well as thoughts and habits. We are interested in how it keeps us stagnant and hinders progression. Therefore my definition for the word homeostasis differs from that being used in the community of medicine or biology. By the end of the book you will be very familiar with what homeostasis represents to me.

T


7

While homeostasis is great and absolutely necessary for a number of survival reasons, it hasn’t had the time to quite adapt to our modern society. Human society and the technology we use evolve quickly, evolution does not.

We have become a thinking species rather than hunter-gatherers, but our bodies are still very much the same as when we were cavemen. Look around; you’ll find that energy is plentiful; in fact, most people are excessively energized in terms of calories consumed. People don’t need to eat more, people need to do, act, and move more. Most people eat primarily for stimulatory reasons. I get into this more later.

We all want to be creative, productive, and hard-working; to be successful and do well in life – whatever that means to us. But for us to do that we must be willing to think and align our action consistently in a certain way to achieve our goals. We need to gear our mind and our actions toward a long-term perspective and realize that life is a marathon and not a sprint.

What stands in the way of accomplishing everyday goals, such as changes in diet or habits, is usually not the imagination to come up with something we desire, but rather laziness and fear in a variety of forms. In almost all cases I have found that these stems from being in a state of homeostasis!

By knowing and accepting this we become more capable to lead our lives and conduct our actions in alignment to the nature of reality and can become more efficient and productive. This enables us to make better use of the time.

To the extent that we understand and accept that homeostasis cannot be permanently overcome – the less resistance we will generate inside of us, making the process of breaking out of homeostasis that much easier.

Since homeostasis inherently exists in all of us we should neither consider it bad nor good, but rather to accept its existence and use it to our advantage. Homeostasis is a bad thing in terms of productivity and accomplishing change of sorts when you are starting from the bottom and bootstrap yourself up. But it’s a good thing given that you have already established consciously chosen productive habits and ways to conduct your life.

It may be useful to consider homeostasis as a separate entity that’s stuck to you in order to identify whenever it is at the root cause of an urge to do something (or more likely, not do something), or when it is giving rise to certain thoughts.

Homeostasis cannot be reasoned with, it’s purely focused on sustaining itself. If you’re really deep inside homeostasis you will not


8

be able to convince yourself or even imagine that it could possibly be more satisfying and fun to be working hard and to reach a deep state of concentration as your brain activates, than to stop the endless cycle of pursuing whatever comfortable instant gratification you’re currently occupying yourself with. You need to get to a point somewhere outside of homeostasis for that thought to even have the possibility of appearing to you. And vice versa – when you have broken out of homeostasis – the last thing on your mind is to slow down and pursue instant gratification or comfort; your only objective is to keep going and deeply channel your outflow of energy into some activity.


9

You Ought to Know this Stuff Already!

I think that most people are already deeply familiar with what I refer to as homeostasis. The reason for this is because they have spent a lot of time in it – probably their entire lives.

Here are some further explanations of the “symptoms” of the types of behavior and characteristics that the brain and body tend to showcase in order to and preserve homeostasis:

Exert a Minimal Amount of Energy

This is what it all comes down to.

All other aspects of homeostasis can be broken down to its root cause – that of expending the least amount of energy needed unless you can conceive of a reason powerful enough not to. If you don’t you will suffer the same fate as 99% of all other human beings and live in reaction (like a slave) to the brain and body as it sustains homeostasis.

Resist Change

Have you ever noticed how after sitting in your computer chair for a while you become docile? First you were alert, but then as you sat there passively you gradually grew increasingly lethargic. The same could be said for sleeping in or snoozing as well; it kind of creeps up on you slowly and gradually grows until suddenly you find yourself very passive and demotivated.

The longer you do something the harder it becomes to change that course of action. This is true both in the short-term given an activity or behavior through the course of a day, but also in the long-term through your life.

Let’s say that you start watching a TV-series and find that you cannot stop watching it. You want to continue the process. Or maybe you start reading on a forum and want to read every discussion topic.

It usually requires less energy to continue what you are already doing than it does to change the activity. Remember this.

Come up with an Infinite Number of Excuses not to Exert Energy

The brain and body will come up with any amount of excuses and rationalizations not to exert more energy above what is absolutely


10

needed. The number of different rationalizations is infinite, but the nature of these excuses is somewhat similar. It’s common for the brain to employ doublethink, a term coined by George Orwell in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Here’s the definition:

...the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

You’re experiencing a form of cognitive dissonance so strong that you cannot resolve it, and hence you employ doublethink to keep yourself from thinking any more deeply about it and actually reaching a definitive resolution; because to do so would require a lot of effort and energy, and your brain doesn’t want that unless you convince it that it absolutely has to.

When you are able to do this – that’s when you have turned a ‘should do’ into a ‘must do’.

Live to Procreate another Day

It has a catchy tune to it, doesn’t it?

From an evolutionary standpoint it makes much more sense for humans to “weather out the storm” while staying safely inside their caves with the berries and meat they had already collected than it would for them to go out of there and face the danger of the storm for no reason at all.

Besides, it’s way more comfortable to take the easy way out and stick with what you know is safe than it is to face some uncertain scenario. This made a lot of sense back then, but times have changed drastically and there are no dangerous storms or fierce predators in the cities; life is very dull and repetitive nowadays for most people.

The thing about contemporary society is that it is way too safe and easy for most people in the Western world; we are not challenged enough by default, so we must make up challenges and be inventive


11

in finding ways of getting ourselves motivated and make life more exciting and intense. But very few people actually do this.

Seek Instant Gratification, Avoid Pain

It’s well known that animals, including humans, chase after pleasure and avoid pain. What constitutes pleasure or pain varies between people. In society instant gratification is very often regarded as pleasure, whereas working, exercising, or public speaking is often regarded as painful or uncomfortable.

With the world becoming increasingly globalized and as the mainstream grows larger, we find that people become more and more alike. People eat similar kinds of food, watch similar TV-series or entertainment and so on. We are being grown into a kind of mold through modern society. We unconsciously form a perception of what is normal by being subjected to very similar inputs for information and stimulation. I’m not saying this in a conspiratorial sense, I am merely stating the facts.

To be normal today is to spend most of your time chasing after various forms of instant gratification and do as little painful things as possible. To have a chilled-out and non-challenging life where everything just breezes along. To succumb fully to homeostasis. Kind of like the character Turtle on the TV show Entourage.

When you keep yourself continually stimulated through instant gratification, deeply in homeostasis, you don’t need to think much because all your needs are taken care of. There is little, if at all any, deep thinking going on when constantly eating (sugar) or chasing stimulation.

Human beings are wired to seek out whatever makes them feel good and keep reproducing that same stimulus over and over again; homeostasis wants to preserve that special chemical cocktail formed by the pleasure of your choice.

Entropy is the normal state of consciousness—a condition

that is neither useful nor enjoyable. To avoid this condition,

people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever

information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention

from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings. This

explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in

watching television, despite the fact that it is very rarely

enjoyed. Compared to other sources of stimulation—like

reading, talking to other people, or working on a hobby—TV


12

can provide continuous and easily accessible information that

will structure the viewer’s attention, at a very low cost in terms

of the psychic energy that needs to be invested.

— MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI —

Herd Mentality

We human beings hate being uncertain about things. Therefore we strive to resolve that uncertainty through any number of ways, but for the sake of the book let’s divide it up into two polarities: Herd mentality and thinking for yourself. The first sustains homeostasis and saves us energy while the latter requires the expenditure of a lot of energy and may break us out of homeostasis.

Having herd mentality means being a follower in all possible ways. Being a follower usually means you don’t want to spend the energy thinking about something carefully enough to form an opinion about the matter. It’s simply way easier and more comfortable to let someone else do the thinking. For people who are not used to thinking heavily, it is one of the most uncomfortable and burdensome tasks. For these people it becomes a much easier way of resolving this uncertainty by joining a group or following a guru/expert, than it would be to think about it themselves and carefully weigh the different alternatives against each other and thoroughly testing out each alternative until they reach a conclusion. For example: in Nazi Germany after the economic downturns, during the depression around 1930, there was such confusion and chaos in the streets that many people chose to join the Brownshirts (SA) simply because they were able to provide a daily meal, companionship, and a form of (pathetic) purpose to the herds in the manner of beating up people and drinking a lot.

* * *

The symptoms of homeostasis are everywhere in society. This, of course, isn’t very strange because to be in homeostasis is the default mode of operating in, so naturally it ought to be found in abundance.

Everywhere you look, if you should choose to do so, you will find an unwillingness to exert effort; laziness in various forms, resistance to change being reflected back at you – as if to justify its own existence. It is on constant defense of its position and will readily assure you to act the same way:


13

“It’s OK for you to engage in it as well because we’re all doing it!”

Because we’re exposed to this daily we think it’s the nature of reality and often unconsciously accept it. We are animals guided by herd mentality:

“If everyone else is doing it, then it must be OK.”

One person acting in a peculiar manner is a dissident or a madman, maybe that person is even called a psychopath. If sufficiently many people act in the same way it becomes accepted and often mimicked. Such are the implications of herd mentality. No one has any clarity, but they assume others have it and think they themselves can get it through osmosis by joining that group or buying that piece of clothing and so on.

Herd mentality and group think are symptoms of being in homeostasis because it relieves the burden of taking responsibility to someone else. It requires less energy than thinking for yourself.

Repetitive Thinking

We all think and act very repetitively, but some more so than others. Talking to some people is like talking to a preprogrammed robot; you already know what response they will regurgitate at you before you even assert something or ask them a thing.

Change requires energy, and someone who is deeply in homeostasis will tend not to change their thought process because it feels uncomfortable. The irony of this is that the longer they wait the harder and more uncomfortable it becomes to make that change in thinking. It’s easier to let the mind keep repeating the same thoughts over and over again even if they are of an unproductive nature or maybe even harmful to the person. The reason for this is because the brain/mind follows the path of least resistance. Imagine that there’s an energetic current pulsing through a network of electric lines. These lines are referred to as your brain’s neural pathways, and for every time you think about something, and repeat that thought – the more solid and durable that particular line becomes. The line, or neural pathway, represents a thought.

Through the path of least resistance your thoughts keep repeating themselves unless you do something about it consciously. When you do this, and make the decision to change your thought process you could picture it as if you are changing the direction of the current by imposing your will on it. This is tiresome work and involves a part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex.


14

Another way of seeing it is that your thoughts inside the neural pathways are like water flowing in a river, and it will continue to run there unless you redirect the flow of the water through irrigation.

15

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF

HOMEOSTASIS

he human brain and body have several states of being. I have identified two opposites: being in homeostasis or being out of it. We dwell in the former state by default while the latter

is rarely achieved without conscious effort. The difference between the two is palpable and they are like two different personalities and value systems.

Once you are in either state you want nothing to do with other one and it is hard to even imagine what the other one feels like even though you may have experienced it lots of times. This is because the brain and body dislike switching between these states – it requires an amount of energy expenditure above the threshold of what it would prefer to spend if it had the choice.

The brain and body are naturally inclined to avoid this shift in states; this gives rise to a resistance that stabilizes and keeps you in whichever state you currently dwell in. This resistance has to be overcome or at the very least acknowledged to break out of homeostasis.

In homeostasis there is often an unhealthy amount of dreaming and future planning going on, but never any real plans or actions taken to implement it. The act of starting is too frightening to the brain because then it has to work, so it is always postponed by the brain as part of the mental behavior of remaining in homeostasis. Years may go by without any real change in the life of a person deeply in the shackles of homeostasis.

Of course no one admits to this. There’s always an excuse for not taking action – some better than others, and as long as we buy into and believe in these excuses to justify our behavior then there’s no need for us to work harder. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can blame it on something else.

When we believe in these excuses it means that our brains are in charge of us; the excuses arise from the brain trying to shirk.

As an example of the brain wanting to stay in its current state, if you crave bread and cookies while in homeostasis you will find that can’t stop thinking about how good it would be to eat some right now:

Mmmm bread and cookies.. . So tasty.. Mmm, it tastes so gooooood.. I want more…

T


16

The brain will come up with a good justification for this and most of us will believe in that excuse every time and think that it was our own decision to do it.

And vice versa, if you’ve broken out of homeostasis you might react differently:

Fuck bread and cookies – that shit is for losers!

Eating bread and cookies is going to put me back to sleep again!

No way I’m eating that!

Both states want to sustain themselves.

You’ll soon notice how they both manifest themselves on many different levels as you start shifting between the two when you practice breaking out of homeostasis. It’s very common for either state to hijack your thought process like this.

In the book Eat Stop Eat, Brad Pilon explains that we’re either in the process of storing fat or burning it. Digesting or fasting. Glycolysis or ketosis. I believe that there’s a correlation between fasting and breaking out of homeostasis; this is something I get into later in the book.

Just as the body does not quickly flip back and forth by the press of a button when it goes from storing the energy from food and releasing it, the same is true for homeostasis. The body is either in a state of homeostasis or it’s out of it.

But homeostasis cannot be broken out of immediately. If done correctly it can be done rather quickly, but never instantly. It’s more accurate to describe the process of getting out of homeostasis as (usually) boring, exhausting, and arduous – until you get past a certain threshold.

Reaching that threshold is a lot like cycling uphill. The hill is steepest in the beginning and during this time of the process you experience the largest amount of anxiety and discomfort, but if you can get through that part and reach level ground on top, then it’s just a matter cruising downhill somewhat effortlessly while enjoying the breeze. The shift in experience during this process is very obvious if you manage to go all the way through. It goes from negative to positive very suddenly. Most people cannot persist through the plateau and quit before breaking out of homeostasis or changing their state. They quit way early, usually the moment discomfort arises.


17

Pushing Through the Plateau

To get past the threshold will be called ‘pushing through the plateau’, because that’s exactly what it feels like. It often feels hard, boring and occasionally impossible – until all of a sudden you realize that you made it through to the other side.

When you get past the plateau it feels really, really good; as doubt, discomfort, and resistance all fall away. In short, you feel like a boss.

Now, suddenly this is all you can think of and identify with. Remember how I previously wrote that the mind likes to stay in whichever state that it’s currently in and has trouble picturing a different state of mind? It’s the very same process at work here.

That weak, self-doubting person who was haphazardly messing about in uncertainty a few hours ago is now gone.

You think, “That was not ME! That was someone else... Some loser stole my body and inhabited it. Now, finally, I am BACK in control. What took me so long?”

My life’s got to be like THIS, old sport!

— JAY GATSBY —

This is how it’s supposed to be. It ought to always feel the way it does past the plateau. But you must earn it every time, and it gets harder and harder as you increase in skill.

When you have already gone pushed past the plateau you no longer experience the same kind of internal resistance towards doing things that normally feel uncomfortable or scary. It’s more like:

“What do I need to do right now?”

- X!

“Alright. That was easy, now what?”

- Y!

“Fine. What else?”

- Z!

“Cool. Now what?”

- Next thing!


18

And so on. Action breeds action and the hours fly by. All of a sudden you need to sleep and the cycle starts all over. Usually you wake up as the ‘other’ – less awesome – person again.

Keep in mind that whichever mode you’re in – homeostasis, or broken out of it – will automatically try to sustain itself for as long as possible. Therefore it’s relatively easy to stay out of homeostasis once you have gotten out of it. The hard part is pushing through the plateau; persisting through the period of struggling to get up that hill.

Know that if you persist through the initial phase of discomfort, it shall pass. This phenomenon is particularly easy to experience when doing cardio and getting into steady state.

19

0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2,5

3

3,5

4

Time A Time B Time C Time D Time E Time F Time G

Level of Comfort (positive emotions)

Plateau

Start

Pushing through the plateau

This is where most people fail by quitting too early

In homeostasis

BOOH --> Momentum!

TIME IN THE PROCESS


20

Various Factors Influencing the Difficulty of PTTP

◊ Physiology of your brain and body (neurotransmitters, hormones).

◊ Current skill level or ability in performing an activity.

◊ Your own belief, or perceived ability, of performing an activity.

This means that it will require less effort in absolute terms to push through the plateau if: your physiology isn’t at all used to, or has adapted to a certain stressor, if your skill level in regards to something is low (you suck at it), or if it is your own belief that you suck at doing something – even if in reality you are quite good at it.

The last case may be the most important and interesting one. It means that if you have low expectations of your own ability and you manage to surpass those expectations you tend to get motivated and excited. This in turn greatly improves your chances of pushing through the plateau.

But it’s not that easy to magically conjure up low expectations of yourself; the mind builds these expectations through a virtually automated process by which it reviews your earlier reference experiences, and thus constructs your self-esteem brick by brick for everything you do daily.

You will get a better understanding of this when we get into stressors, change, and various other aspects, such as allostasis, later on. However, this is definitely something that is best understood from personal experience, and not mere theory; if you have never pushed through the plateau (which I suspect many have not) it is impossible to imagine. The mind cannot conceive of the unknown, only what has already been experienced.

The plateau is never more noticeable than when engaging in physical activity. This is one reason why I like reading about incredible athletes, bodybuilders or people who are uncommonly competent at pushing through these limitations.


21

Momentum

After you manage to push through the plateau you gain intrinsic and self-sustaining motivation – like a force of momentum propelling you forward. Momentum makes tough things way easier. This was the concept that birthed my blog, and has now evolved into this book.

The reason we achieve this self-sustaining intrinsic momentum is because the brain is a lazy bastard that wants to conserve energy. When you push through the plateau you go past the point of no return. Though it’s actually more accurate to call it ‘the point of no return for a while’.

Once you have gone through the effort of pushing through the plateau your brain decides that it would be easier – less demanding energetically speaking – to maintain this new, more awesome mode of operation which switches the brain and body to release energy rather than store it. The state that I call breaking out of homeostasis.

But it only lasts for so long.

Don’t expect it to last very long at first when you begin practicing. I remember thinking how awesome it felt when it first started happening to me; and then I would usually feel completely drained the day afterward, as though I was hung over.

I actually was hung over, but not from using a drug. I’d simply spent so much energy, felt so good and focused my thoughts to an extent that my brain wasn’t used to and as a result it had to recover. This sense of being hung over stems from a deficiency in positive neurotransmitters and has a lot to do with diet and (mental) exercise as well.

http://www.startgainingmomentum.com/


22

In or out of Homeostasis?

A lot of times it’s hard to notice whether you’re in homeostasis or not, especially if you haven’t been out of it recently. To be caught in homeostasis is to settle for less – to settle for comfort and ease. To have broken out of homeostasis means you don’t settle at all. You keep going until you run out of energy and find out where the limit is. But in order to reach the razor’s edge one has to try a lot without being discouraged.

While I’ve been writing this book it has been clear to me from the beginning that a lot of times I’ve been generally lazy and procrastinated things; doing other stuff that stem from acting out of a state of homeostasis such as writing out chapters in bullet points and then waiting days to write them out simply because no one has held a gun to my head or literally forced me to do it. Very immature and stupid of me because it just increases the amount of work I have to do at a later point in time, and it’s very common that you forget an idea if you don’t write it down clearly or act on it immediately.

I did it because I allowed myself to be tricked by my brain’s excuses for slacking off. Unless you find a reason that is emotionally stronger and more potent than homeostasis’s hold on you, it will prevail through its countless rationalizations as to why being idle is perfectly fine. You are literally fighting your brain and body for control, and this is incredibly hard when you are not used to it.

The way my body works is that whenever I set a goal that is somewhat definite, I tend to receive major anxiety if I fail to deliver what I specifically set out to do; in this case to write a minimum of 1000 words per day or sit a minimum of one hour per day and work with it (at the time I was busy with school). I only failed to do so once due to a major school project that had me pulling two all-nighters and left me with no time or energy to write for one of those days. Nevertheless I failed to deliver and felt utterly terrible afterwards.

Another symptom of homeostasis which has been particularly palpable to me some days is that I’ve only done what I set out to do minimally. To write 1000 words or sit one hour per day, instead of keeping it up longer and getting into a deeper state of concentration. These are signs that my brain is jerking me around to do its bidding. Since I kept tabs on how many words I’ve written every day as well as and logging how much time I’ve spent writing this book every day, it has become obvious that productivity is increased exponentially


23

the longer I sit and work on it. Longer time invested in a single sitting usually leads to exponential returns in productivity as opposed to several smaller sittings of the same total time spent. It’s a lot like Moore’s law or the concept of increasing returns to scale. Keep this in mind when you read the chapter the positive cumulative effect later on.

It’s not easy to give an exact description of how homeostasis manifests itself in everyday life because I believe the process is different for each and every one of us; yet it follows a similar pattern.

There are certain symptoms you may notice in yourself, or behavioral characteristics in other people which you will probably begin to take note of – a lot like ‘tells’ in a game of poker.


24

Archetypes

Ever notice that people are lazy?

A few people are lazy by choice and actually take pride in their ability to shirk. This small group of people is usually above average in intelligence and often finds ways of doing chores or work in a quicker or more efficient way than by conventional means. They are good at thinking outside of the box and often find new ways of doing things – commonly by cheating. This works out great in the short-term, but in the long-term it can to become their main weakness because they tend to have incredibly low discipline and work ethic as a result of never practicing it.

When a person like this finally gets a great idea that has the potential to propel him to the life he dreams of having, he is unlikely to be able to bring it into fruition because he hasn’t developed his character or work ethic. He’s spent his entire life in pursuit of exerting a minimal amount of effort; making him mentally weak in terms of willpower and follow-through.

However, the vast majority of people are unconsciously lazy. They are not lazy by choice like the small group of people mentioned above.

Most people are lazy merely because they are so used to constantly living in unconscious reaction to their brain and body. Their mind and body are running the show and they are living in unconscious reaction to most of that communication, kind of like a well-designed robot or a zombie-like creature.

We humans tend to think of ourselves as not being animals; that we’re something unique and different. But we aren’t. We are more highly evolved than snakes, bears, or birds in terms of intelligence and thinking, but the largest part of our intelligence and impulses are still carried in our genes and wired into us, even though we are taught by society to act and behave in certain ways. But the fact is that we’re still animals, merely well-dressed and with a wider range of behavior. We are much more emotional than we are rational.

Homeostasis and the act of energy preservation lie at the root of why most animals will go out and hunt only when they have to. Cats and a few other animals that hunt for fun are exceptions. Similarly, most humans will procrastinate doing a task until they are faced with a deadline. For example, most students do not start studying for real until a week before their exam. It’s a lot less common to be


25

consistently studying for a couple of hours a day and continually rehearse what they learn to better memorize it. They need that deadline in order for their brains to become activated.

We humans are therefore lazy by default unless we’re taught or convinced by ourselves or by someone else not to be. In either case it’s a matter of replacing an inferior set of behavior and habits with a superior one – in terms of productivity.

● ● ●

Recommended

Reading:

Desmond Morris

The Human Animal

● ● ●


26

Poor Frames of References

I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and

you're not in this world to live up to mine.

— BRUCE LEE —

Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while

losers compare their achievements with those of other

people.

— NIDO QUBEIN—

Because we see almost everyone else being indecisive, lacking in clarity, and being lazy and unproductive in regards to their potential, we often unconsciously assume that it justifies our own similar lack of clarity. But it doesn’t. The only thing it signifies is a failure to take personal responsibility. If the saying that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”, is true – then certainly it has to be a pretty bad idea to be using peers in homeostasis as social references to compare yourself to.

If this is the case for you then my only advice to you is to either stop hanging out with these friends of yours and find better suited ones, or to consciously stop comparing yourself to them because they make for poor references.

Just because everyone else is delusional doesn’t mean that you have to be delusional too. If it suddenly became fashionable to chop off an arm – would you do it?

Consider whether or not you choose to watch videos on YouTube based on the number of views the video has – as if to think that the more views the video has, the better it ought to be.

Is the amount of shown views for a video really a good indicator of its quality?


27

It’s the same rationale that club owners use for keeping impractically long queues: to amplify the perceived quality of the club. If the club has a long queue then certainly it must be great, right?

The flaw lies in thinking that everyone else knows what they’re doing and have a high degree of clarity in their actions – when in truth extremely few do. Therefore pinging off of the environment and other people or groups of people is a very poor guide for governing your conduct and action.

Queues and crowds are interesting places to observe this part of human psychology. Because everyone is just pinging off of each other no one will do anything; sheep leading sheep equals mass confusion. So when the queue stops for a long while no one does anything about it because they expect others to do it. Everyone makes the assumption that someone else will take care of it, but no one does. Eventually people will start complaining that the queue is slow or imply that they may be standing still, but few people do anything except to stand there.

Finally, some guy with balls walks past the queue and enters the venue. Everyone saw what happened and for the flash of a second think to themselves how the heck that could’ve happened, but since no one does anything about it they quickly justify it by post-rationalizing that the guy surely must be the owner of the venue, or be a VIP etc.

So rather than thinking that “if he can do it then so can I, and go for it” people reaffirm their current situation and do nothing. If they accept the possibility of the first scenario it makes them uncomfortable about their own situation, which could lead to change. And change is dangerous, thinks the brain.

28

METACOGNITION

Of course we become what we think about. The real question

is, do we know what we think about?

— STEVE SIEBOLD —

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a

thought without accepting it. — ARISTOTLE —

etacognition is a fancy word for self-reflection; to think about what you think about and the nature of your thought process. The way that I use the word means to be aware of

the thoughts you’re having.

Feeling or observing the symptoms of homeostasis within yourself will require a certain degree of practice and interpersonal intelligence. Metacognition is the act of being aware of your current behavior, thought process, mental programming, and habits.

Do you know why some thought occurred – or when?

The more you practice it the less unconscious you become. By practicing metacognition you slowly but gradually increase the period of time between a stimulus and your response to it long enough for you to be able to catch yourself in the act of unconsciously reacting.

You will soon notice how this skill is integral to the whole process of breaking out of homeostasis and maintaining that state. Metacognition is the key tool being used as you go through the trial and error process of finding what works for you and what does not.

There are various explanations as to how and why we think. I adhere to the belief that most, but not all, of our thoughts arise unconsciously out of reaction to stimuli produced in our bodies as a response to external events and things that happen in our surroundings. Or explained in another way – most thoughts arise from the information we perceive through our senses.

The vast majority of the information being gathered continually by our senses is blocked out and very little of it is noticed by the conscious mind. Depending on which scientific study being quoted

M ● ● ●

Recommended

Reading: Michelle de Montaigne

Essays

Nikola Tesla

The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla

● ● ●

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/aristotle100584.html




29

you’ll find that the conscious mind can process information somewhere between 20-40 bits (credited to Bruce Lipton), or 2000-4000 bits per second (credited to University of Pennsylvania). In either case it’s a very small number.

Sure, most thoughts are outside of our ability to control, but it’s possible to dramatically improve our metacognition and as we do our control increases over time, we can control and understand a lot of our thoughts and greatly fine-tune our thought process to whatever goals we set.

* * *

You have thoughts and you are very much influenced by your thoughts, but ultimately you aren’t your thoughts. That’s the basis for practicing metacognition.

One of the easiest ways of exercising your metacognition is to start observing your thoughts as if like they were separate entities or something being shown to you. This implies that you shift your frame of reference from being based wholly in the mind and thoughts to somewhere else where you’re able to objectively watch them as if on a screen.

Another useful analogy is that of your mind being a fishbowl and the thoughts being water. You’re no longer your mind and the thoughts running through it. You realize that your thoughts are actually under your control to a certain extent depending on your skill to practice metacognition. Meditating on a daily basis might be a helpful process for practicing these faculties. I dislike using the word meditation because many people have weird new agey associations with it.

However, you definitely don’t need to delve into a ‘spiritual life’ or meditate to practice metacognition. There are other ways, but they all require you to have, or be willing to develop a certain extent of self-distance so that you become able look on your behavior and thoughts as if they belonged to someone else.

There are lots of other ways of increasing metacognition. I like reading biographies for this reason, it often gives you a vivid picture of an interesting person’s thought process.

There are times when we experience a temporary boost in overall clarity – including metacognition. I distinguish between different moments of clarity. First there are unusual times when you become able to see things from a radically different perspective. Perhaps from sub specie aeternitatis (eternal point of view), or maybe you are able to perceive where you are headed rather than just looking in front of you. Then there are recurring moments of clarity which provide a less powerful boost of metacognition. For me these times


30

usually occur early in the morning, the same is true for Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert.

I often get epiphanies post workout when my system is flooded with endorphins, but it’s very hard to make it last; thus an epiphany. I usually try to put it down in words as soon as possible, but words cannot accurately depict a brief powerful sensation – it’s one of those the-map-is-not-the-territory type of situation. However, after I experience the same epiphanies a few times and compare my notes I usually begin to grasp it, and that makes the effort worth it.

You need to identify when this happens to you and start to purposely put yourself in this state as often as possible to practice metacognition. These moments are to be savored. Squeeze everything you can out of them – think deeply, write down how you feel or think, or film yourself. Of course, there’s more than one way of doing it; maybe you want to record a song or something, but it’s got to be something you can daily that helps you disidentify from your thoughts and analyze them. Try finding out the root cause of certain thoughts or urges that you consistently experience. It usually takes a while, but it’s well worth it.

Another very helpful way of improving metacognition is to keep a journal or commonplace, look it up. It doesn’t matter much whether you do this by pen, on your phone, or on your computer.

The point is to catch yourself in the act of wrongdoing and bring it up to the surface so that you become aware of your own unconscious behavior and immediately start to act in order to change it.

Another helpful activity in order to develop metacognition is to go somewhere you can be by yourself, close your eyes, and start curiously asking questions to your mind. Casually observe whichever thoughts the mind brings up to your attention, but don’t buy into them. Don’t believe every thought or image you get in your head to be true – don’t trust your mind entirely as authority. Maintain your separate position of objectivity and casually observe the thoughts as if on a screen – without taking a particular stand or completely identifying with them. Don’t allow your thoughts to draw you in and lure you into becoming identified with them immediately even though there is a natural inclination to do just that. This activity can be hard at first, but it’s a helpful daily practice in many ways.

My final exercise is what I call, ‘holding counsel with your mind’, and the analogy I use for it is that I picture myself as a CEO or leader of sorts holding an important meeting in which I listen objectively to whatever information my closest counselors (my thoughts) are bringing up to my immediate attention. I picture myself sitting by a fine mahogany table, quietly listening to what my counselors believe


31

ought to be my agenda for the day. What kind of matters do I have to attend to in the immediate future?

After having listened to what they have to say my job is to deem what is of relevance and what is not, some advice will be pure bullshit.

I politely tell them to leave me to about my business, I will see them again tomorrow around the same time. I usually do this once or twice a day for about ten minutes.

* * *

The next time you press a button to open a door or ride the elevator, ask yourself: am I doing this consciously or do these actions perhaps stem unconsciously out of homeostasis?

Remember, homeostasis wants you to be comfortable and exert the least amount of energy possible.


32

Principal Agent Theory

Principal agent theory is an economic theory which says that E.G a manager (principal) gets his employee (agent) to do a task for him. Principal agent theory then goes into depth about how the principal cannot ensure that his agent will do the work for him the way it was planned unless the agent is monitored at all times; and that isn’t possible. A common assumption is that the agent will shirk unless monitored or incentivized somehow.

In relation to breaking out of homeostasis, it can be said that you are the principal who wants a goal to be accomplished and your mind/brain is the agent that has to carry it out.

The saying that “When the brain is stupid – the body suffers.” Holds somewhat true in this regard.

Therefore you need to observe and monitor the mind/brain to ensure that you are doing what you said you would, and EXPECT the incoming dumb-ass excuses, rationalizations, negative feelings, fear and doubt that arise as the brain tries desperately to conserve energy by shirking. The reason why it’s important that you expect this phenomenon is because it then makes you more able to deal with it when it shows up. By expecting this negative behavior from the brain you can ruthlessly dismiss it with certainty and see it for the trick it is. These mind-made excuses and fears are uncalled for and will only limit your potential for growth.

When these things happen to you more often, such as when you spend more time BOOH, it makes you develop an improved sense of intuition and metacognition. These mental capabilities help you catch low quality thoughts and emotions by stopping them before they get a hold of your mind and begin to fester in there. They work as anti-virus programs for your mind – helping you detect, clean out, and block the mental weeds you don’t want in there in the first place.

To improve your metacognition it will be beneficial to implement the habit of writing down and thoroughly describing the sensation whenever you are in a really great emotional or mental state, whenever you feel really powerful and productive.


33

Write it down

◊ How does it feel? Be very precise, the purpose is to map out

certain stimuli that frequently occur when you hit this state. What are the so-called ‘tell-signs’?

I, for example, have three very clearly defined tell-signs related to sound and sensation when it comes to different degrees of conscious concentration during meditation.

◊ What did you do before, was there anything specific that happened?

Can you identify if there is a recurring pattern that leads to this awesome state? You’ll want to find out if there certain things you do that stimulate this state, and start doing them to recreate it.

Perhaps you moved around and talked to a lot of people, or maybe you were very focused on some activity, or maybe you ate something.

If you can accurately convey how it felt and find different recurring patterns as to why you entered that state it will increase the chances of engraving it in your mind and eventually let it become a point of reference for the times you slip out of it; and you definitely will from time to time. It’s a bit like sending messages between two different selves – the one who has BOOH and ‘woken up’ is now coaching the other you who’s ‘asleep’ and locked inside a mental prison by the mind and thus in a state of homeostasis.


34

Useful Questions for Exercising Metacognition

Don't think about why you question, simply don't stop

questioning. Don't worry about what you can't answer, and

don't try to explain what you can't know.

Curiosity is its own reason. Aren't you in awe when you

contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the

marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of

the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and

formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and

touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have

holy curiosity.

— ALBERT EINSTEIN —

Here are some more useful questions to ask yourself on a daily basis in order to improve your capacity for exercising metacognition:

◊ Do my current actions as of right now in this moment stem from trying to preserve energy?

◊ Is this activity I’m about to undertake going to help my

chances of breaking out of homeostasis or will it serve to push me further into the comfort of homeostasis?

◊ Did this thought or urge I’m having right now spring up

as a defense mechanism of homeostasis preventing change and wanting to be comfortable? Remember: homeostasis is self-sustaining.

o Be persistent in questioning. Find the root cause. Be patient; this is not a one day fix.

◊ Monitor your thought process throughout the day as

you do things or as things happen to you. Observe your response. Try putting yourself in an objective position and see how it makes you feel.


35

◊ Why are you reacting the way you are? If you were to guess, why would expect that you are having this certain sensation or urge right now?

When you start asking yourself these sorts of self-reflective questions it may get very uncomfortable after a while – which is actually a sign that you’re doing well and headed in the right direction. The brain absolutely does not want to engage in deep, character-changing thinking because it isn’t used to it and it wants to stay the same through homeostasis.

There are very few activities requiring more concentration and energy exertion than that of sustaining a certain train of thought; when you’re not used to doing it, your mind (brain) will find any and every way possible to distract itself rather than to face its own belief system. Getting to the root of an issue is simply too energy-demanding and uncomfortable, which explains why so few people do it during the course of their entire lives.

36

HOW HOMEOSTASIS SUSTAINS ITSELF

omeostasis will sustains itself by default unless your metacognition is highly developed enough to catch it, and if your intent is sufficiently strong to allow you to persist or

push through the plateau.

Don’t trust your thoughts or intentions without examining them. Unless you put a thought there through conscious effort, which is rare, then the thought and its corresponding action is likely a symptom of homeostasis sustaining itself.

Homeostasis perpetuates our unconscious autopilot behavior. If we don’t convince ourselves otherwise, we will take the easiest way out; the solution which requires us to exert the least amount of energy.

The brain ‘uses us’ to sustain its current behavior, addictions, and way of operation indefinitely unless a change is forced upon it by an external situation. A drug addict can’t buy any more drugs when he runs out of money and is forced to do something about the situation. A ‘normal’ working member of society has to stop snoozing in order to get to work in time. Both are habits broken by an external event forced upon them. If it wasn’t there to stop them they would continue.

However, even if an external event forces us to change it is usually merely temporary, rarely are such changes permanent. True change must come from within and that takes time and effort, it’s not a magic pill.

True change happens slowly, gradually, and through consistent repetition every day.

H


37

Excuses and Rationalizations

The grass isn’t greener. Not in homeostasis, even if it surely will seem that way sometimes.

If the grass seems greener it is only because the brain tries to make it appear that way. The brain creates false future images of what reality would be like if we did the specific thing that it so desperately wants us to do, in order for it to stay in homeostasis. It gives us imaginary sensations in order to manipulate us into doing its bidding.

The better you become at quickly dropping and disallowing these false images and sensations from lingering in your mind and gather focus cumulatively, the easier it will be to break out of homeostasis.

Why, just as I’m writing this I’m beginning my weekly two-day fast and I feel a strong urge to abruptly stop writing, run to the grocery store and buy a large pack of ice cream, and then watch TV series and movies. If I did that my life would be perfect... But I’m not going to do that – no matter how tempting it seems. For me to do that would mean to regress and go against my better judgment and create a downward spiral, eroding my integrity. I’ve already been down that road and I know where it leads and how it sustains itself incessantly. It’s time to move on.

I know from experience that if I was to give into the urge of instant gratification I would give into homeostasis and allow my brain to control me. Even though the mind-made scenario appears very tempting I know that it isn’t real: once it’s said and done and I’m sitting there in that moment of time it won’t feel anything remotely close to how my brain currently pictures it. The brain does its best to make it seem like some magical and wonderful event which would solve all problems. This happens when the brain’s reward system begins associating the ‘pleasure neurotransmitter’ dopamine with a desired activity or event; this makes us crave it. When we chase that urge and go get the drug, food, or activity that we have associated with this pleasure dopamine tends to dissipate and we no longer experience that same desire for it; but the desire is not exchanged for happiness; instead we feel neutral or complacent. We are satiated.

Even though we can understand how this works, and it’s very interesting stuff, it doesn’t make the impact of these sensations that much weaker. The brain still instinctively comes up with large


38

amounts of rationalizations as to why it is a highly considerable choice of action to chase after this instant gratification.

There’s a ton of excuses that the brain comes up with to sustain itself in homeostasis in any given situation when it wants to trick you into doing something to fuel its addictions or keep you from exerting more than the minimal amount of energy. The brain is a lazy little bastard that tries to trick you.

This is why you absolutely cannot trust your brain to, by default, work in your best ‘rational’ interest. It is absolutely selfish and wants to keep doing whatever it’s already doing and nothing else. It will stop at nothing to justify an action which is going to fulfill its needs; and these needs are in accordance to how your brain’s reward system is currently wired – the kind of things you are addicted to and associate with pleasure etc.

The slow process of rewiring the way the brain operates is bothersome, it’s much easier for it to try to trick you into stopping rather than to actually do the work; this is why we have such a hard time changing our behavior, habits, diet, beliefs etc.

Naturally there will be some difference between individuals, but here are a few common excuses and rationalizations to specifically watch out for:


39

– I’ll do it later…

– No one else is doing it, why should I?

- Everyone else is drinking and having pizza, this doesn’t count as cheating on my diet.

– But I’m tired now. I’d rather watch TV…

– I deserve this; after all, I did X before. Taking a break now won’t matter…

– But it doesn’t feel quite right, I’ll do it when I feel like doing it instead…

– It would feel SOO good if only I could do Y. Yes, that’d solve all my problems.


40

Procrastination

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you

develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an

exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

— COLIN POWELL —

One of the brain’s most powerful and devious ways of fooling us into saving energy is by procrastinating.

When we procrastinate it means we have bought into the brain’s rationalizations. We have been tricked – usually without us being conscious of it!

If it happened unconsciously it means that there was no gap between the stimulus and the response. There was no process of metacognition going on at all, just a pre-programmed response.

There is such a thing as purposeful procrastination – but that’s called planning, though planning can easily become excessive and keep you from getting started. Most of us walk a tight row when it comes to planning.

As a rule of thumb it’s better to do things right away nine times out of ten – because that’s about how often your brain will try to trick you and give rise to thoughts or urges that stem from sustaining homeostasis.

Another rule of thumb that can be applied to procrastination, as well as any other habit or behavior, is that if you act wrongly today you will be a lot more likely to do so again tomorrow.


41

Self-Pity

Self-pity is useful to the user because he feels important and

deserving of better conditions, better treatment, or because

he is unwilling to assume responsibility for the acts that

brought him to the state that elicited self-pity.

― CARLOS CASTANEDA ―

Do you feel entitled to certain things?

Well, you aren’t. You aren’t entitled to anything but your thoughts and actions.

Self-pity is another deeply rooted and stealthy way that the brain keeps you from taking action. It also decreases the potency of your actions if you’re already doing something by taking up mental space, thus diminishing your intent. Self-pity hinders you from dealing with the current situation.

The solution to self-pity can be summed up as to stop feeling sorry for yourself and do something about it instead!

You can easily tell people who harbor self-pity just by watching how they move; how they wallow in their sorrow and miserably drag their feet as they walk.

Self-pity is a disgusting mental habit that needs to be worked on diligently in order to be removed. You have to understand on a fundamental level that by feeling sorry for yourself you are only self-sabotaging your productivity and happiness. When the brain finally learns that such behavior is not acceptable and does not serve any useful purpose, it will be gradually reduced.

Or put differently, it’s you versus your brain: when you respond to the brain’s mental behavior of inducing self-pity by ‘punishing’ it through working extra hard and exerting more effort than you normally do, the brain eventually learns that its ‘clever’ strategy didn’t work and will stop it. If you give into it; it persists. If you punish it; it diminishes.

However, it’s easier to talk about than it is to do; when we feel depressed or victimize ourselves it’s hard to force ourselves to get to work and do the thing we least want to do. But that is paradoxically the best way out.


42

It may take a while to get it to stop, but keep in mind that patience is a virtue when it comes to implementing positive habits or removing bad habits.

A weird example of how self-pity can manifest itself for me is when I’m working out and I notice how the sensation arises as a response when I begin feeling pain and fatigue set in between the sets or while running. My state of concentration is exchanged for something worse as my focus shifts to the physical pain and is transformed into self-pity with my current situation. I feel tricked and disgusted every time my metacognition catches this mental behavior. As soon as I recognize this behavior I firmly tell my mind that it won’t get out of pain or discomfort by annoying me or pleading with me to stop. To do so is immature and weak behavior that I refuse to condone and therefore won’t focus on.

* * *

Often we have bad habits or thought patterns – such as self-pity – that were formed when we were younger and less capable of taking responsibility. At some point earlier in our lives we used this way of coping with the situation because it gave order to our consciousness and provided an adequate resolution.

This habit then lives on indefinitely within many people – I have met people way over 50 years old who have it far worse than young people in their teens or twenties, showcasing that these things aren’t going to be resolved by themselves or by inaction; it’s a mental mess caused by the individual and it must be consciously attended to sooner or later. It has to be cleaned up and resolved by the individual or it will continue to fester in one’s mind and likely grow even worse.

At one point self-pity served a point – like the appendix. But you are way past that point by now and need to deal with it and move on.

If you know you have a bad habit, take care of it. Even if it’s a deeply rooted problem it’s better to take care of it sooner rather than later.

Now that you know better – why would you continue to act wrongly? You have no rational reason to continue; though emotion overpowers thought. Talk is cheap and homeostasis is powerful.

If you’re trapped in a sea of shit – start swimming! Time is finite. You will die. Don’t die in a sea of shit. Unless of course that’s what you want to do.


43

HOMEOSTASIS AND FOOD

My appetite comes to me while eating.

― MICHELE DE MONTAIGNE ―

luttony is the cardinal sin.

Eating is directly linked to homeostasis as it puts you in a passive mode when you begin digesting the food and your body begins to

store energy. This causes your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) to go into a state of rest-and-digest, which makes you sluggish.

We must all eat, but we ought to carefully examine our reasons for eating to see how it aligns with our other goals in life so that we can integrate it as a part of our process of living in a more deliberate and conscious manner.

The food you eat matters greatly in terms of your energy and concentration. Overeating or snacking are easy and common methods for keeping ourselves in homeostasis and getting easy stimulation as we give into the current desires of the brain’s reward system and give it what it has come to depend upon. Most eating is habitual and hormonal – which I’ll get into shortly. If you can’t go a few hours without eating, that means you have work to do in terms of diet, unless you suffer from some sort of condition.

If you seek to increase productivity and want to feel more clear-headed, then you should strive not to eat more than what you need to. This of course requires a lot personal experimentation in terms of meal sizes. You can teach your body to eat almost any size of meal. I have experimented with this to the extreme – all the way from six meals per day to eating just one meal per day to fasting for days. However, I’d like to warn you about eating only one meal per day as it ‘stretches’ the gut and makes eating a smaller meal size less satisfying.

The body can be taught to eat on almost any time of the day; it’s just a matter of consistency and not obeying your hormones for the first week or two, and then your body adjusts to the new meal timing.

Most of us consume way too many empty calories; care a lot about the taste of food, and less about its nutrients. We don’t think about eating; whether it is really necessary for us or not. We just do it.

G


44

Eating More or Less and Paying the Price

As a generalization I say that people eat too much, but of course some people need to eat more; it will vary among people depending on personal goals and preferences, notably so for people who are serious about their exercise, such as athletes or bodybuilders. These people will require eating more food as their energy expenditure is larger, and because they want to gain muscle.

When I was bulking up a few years ago I started eating a lot in combination with working out very seriously. This large increase in calories consumed every day made me a bit sluggish overall; most of my days I would have my PNS activated and be in a state of rest-and-digest, so naturally I was a bit mentally slow except for during the workouts. The highlight of my days would be when I was working out and got energized. Gradually I stopped eating so much when I realized how slow it made me, but I did succeed in accomplishing what I set out to do – I gained weight and built muscle. But I did so by sacrificing a lot of time that could have been more productively spent had I not eaten so much.

The downside to being a serious athlete or bodybuilder is that you sometimes have to make the tradeoff between eating for efficiency and productivity, and eating in order to gain muscle. We can’t focus on too many things at once or our efforts will cancel each other out. Thus the importance of having clarity of what the objective we are trying to accomplish is.

However, many different factors play into this tradeoff because our bodies differ in what food we can properly digest, for example; some people are capable of ingesting and assimilating much more protein than other people are without getting sluggish or getting gassy etc. This is an “unfair” genetic advantage. But it is what it is, and for the most part we are all very similar in terms of what and how we should eat, exercise, and work, in order to optimally move towards our goals.


45

Hormonal Hunger

Most of us eat out of boredom or because we are addicted to certain tasty foods. Very few of us eat out of necessity. The major reason for this is because very few people nowadays know much about nutrition or healthy dieting, this in turn affects their children who grow up eating unhealthy food and becoming addicted to snacking several times a day so that once the kids are grown up they have since many years established a hormonal rhythm of eating many meals per day. This means that even if the body doesn’t need food to get by, it has got used to consume a meal at a specific point in time and will want to sustain its hormonal levels – resulting in a drop in blood sugar. This in turn makes us feel shitty. To fix it we go and buy some sugary treat to satisfy our craving. We are just following a preprogrammed pattern enforced on us since childhood. This is no different than a drug addict, except it’s food or sugar, and not a drug.

Being addicted to sugar is not to be taken lightly as it is one of the hardest addictions to stop. Sugar binds to the same opioid receptors in your brain that cocaine binds to. A single soft drink contains a lot more sugar than what we should optimally consume in the course of an entire day; and even worse is that the sweetness is usually derived from some cheap and potent artificial sweetener, such as high fructose corn syrup. These artificial sweeteners are more addictive to us than, say, fruits are.

About 70 % of the activity of the immune system takes place in the stomach, and eating sugar spikes your insulin levels which lead to inflammation, which in turn keeps your immune system busy. This makes you way more susceptible viruses.

Keeping your insulin levels on a permanent high does more harmful things than temporarily lowering the immune system, it can also lead to an increased insulin resistance, which in turn may lead to diabetes, obesity, poor concentration, lethargy, etc.

* * *

Now I will briefly go through a few important hormones related to eating. Keep in mind that all of these hormones were essential to human survival back when food was scarce and we were hunter-gatherers, but now that food and energy are plentiful, these hormones have become a curse for many people.


46

A key point that I really want to emphasize is that the concept of moderation is not applicable to food, especially not sweet food; because it gives rise to a number of hormones that in turn make you feel hungry, even when you’re really not. Therefore it is harder to ‘eat only a little’ than it is not to eat at all and to let the hormonal sensation of hunger fade away.

Insulin

One of the main things that the hormone insulin does is that it makes us store energy by adding onto our fat reserves. Insulin tells the body to save most of the calories for later rather than to use them right now; this was great when food was scarce because fat is the most efficient way for the body to store energy. Insulin also plays an integral part in the body’s process of creating the urge to eat – the sensation of hunger.

Insulin levels are particularly sensitive to carbohydrates and sugars. Pretty much all obese people have gained their weight by eating too many small meals per day and by eating too many carbohydrates and not enough protein, crucible vegetables, and last but not least healthy fats – such as from fish, seeds, nuts, coconut, or certain oils. Had they eaten this kind of food more often they would likely not feel “hungry” as often as they do.

The problem is that insulin levels surge very easily, in fact they do so every time we eat. But it takes a couple of hours for that surge to fade away; this means that the more meals (snacking) we eat, the more times a day we raise our insulin levels, the more hungry we generally feel, and the more of these calories we will store as fat.

If we refrain from eating for a few hours our insulin levels will revert to a baseline state and we will gradually start to break down some of the calories stored in the fat reserves – this is called lipolysis. If we keep from eating a while longer, lipolysis soon turns into ketosis – which is when the body’s main energy source comes from ketones. This never happens to a person who is eating constantly; this person is always using glucose as his main source of energy. This is why the approach of calories in vs calories out isn’t completely bulletproof, even though it is a good guideline for dieting.

Leptin

The hormone leptin is one of the reasons why obese people become hungry more often than those who are not. Leptin plays a crucial part in providing you with the sensation of feeling full and satiated from eating.

Leptin is produced by the body’s fat cells, and the more fat you have, the stronger the hormonal sensation of hunger gets. This makes it tougher, in terms of willpower, for an obese person to go on a diet.

Ghrelin


47

Ghrelin is another hormone related to hunger. One of the main functions of ghrelin is to regulate your body weight and keep you eating about the same amount of calories every day

If we say that insulin is the hormone that produces a short-term and immediate sensation of hunger, ghrelin is the hormone that observes the long-term trend of what you eat. Ghrelin levels increase if we do not eat, creating a craving that motivates us to search for food. And when we finally eat, ghrelin levels drop and the urge and motivation goes away.

This motivation to chase after food is explained by the fact that ghrelin boosts dopamine levels.

So, once we begin eating our brains become less activated and we feel less motivated to learn or do things. So if we are eating all the time we lose our motivation to do other stuff and become lethargic.

You will not be able to get that awesome feeling of activating your brain if you are eating all the time.

Fasting

I am a big proponent of both intermittent fasting (16-24h), and short-term fasting (24-72h). By fasting you gradually reduce as well as temporarily break free from these sensations of hormonal hunger, and as a result you become a lot more clear-headed and focused.

You get less distracted because your body isn’t busy digesting food and going into a state of ‘rest-and-digest’, nor is it being tricked by the hormonal hunger into diverting your attention to constantly be chasing after food.

I am not going to go into fasting that much in this book, but I recommend you to read the summaries about intermittent fasting on my blog, and try it yourself.

My current routine for fasting looks like this:

◊ Intermittent fasting every day with feeding gap of 8 hours and 16 hours of fasting. I have my first meal between noon or 2 pm, and my last meal before 8 pm.

◊ I often go on a 48 hour fast, while drinking water mixed with

glutamine a few times a day. The amount of glutamine is usually equal to about 20-30 calories, which isn’t enough to activate my hormonal hunger and break the fast. I may also consume raw cocoa, tea, or coffee as stimulants.


48

Two Types of Eating

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat

and drink that they may live.

― SOCRATES ―

Which one are you?

Are you living to eat or eating to live?

Hedonic Eating

This is the paradigm under which most people fall. Hedonic eating can be separated into many subcategories, but the only thing that we need to be concerned with is the underlying assumption that the main purpose for eating is for it to taste well and be stimulating in one form or another.

Eating tasty food is one of the easiest ways of achieving instant gratification, and it’s incredibly addictive and harmful in the long-term because the brain quickly learns that it can get its enjoyment without having to do any work, but can skip right to the reward by having some junk food. Then add to this that most of the food industry cares little about health; it cares more about making money, and the market has chosen that which tastes best. This in turn has led chemists working for the food industry to come up with artificial substances that taste a lot sweeter or saltier than what ‘real’ food does. These artificial substances have virtually no benefits, but many adverse effects; more than I care to list here. Perhaps the biggest adverse effect for most people is that these artificial substances are more addictive than normal food is; it induces way more dopamine into our brain’s reward system, making us crave it all the more badly. That’s why it’s so hard to stop eating junk food and sugar at first. This is one of the reasons why I feel people ought to get off their high horse and stop judging various drug addicts when they themselves are addicted to sugar and junk food.

Eating for Performance.

Hippocrates, the ancient Greek progenitor of doctors said that the best medicine is food. I think this is true in the case of all people except those with serious illnesses. Most common ailments would be avoided if we ate


49

● ● ●

Recommended

Reading: Mark Hyman

The Ultramind Solution

● ● ●

well, exercised a few times a week, and activated our brains to reach a state of high focus daily.

Eating for performance assumes that you choose food mainly depending on its effect on you in relation to productivity in terms of your goals, long-term health, and overall well-being. Very few people, professional athletes excluded, eat entirely one hundred percent out of practical purposes. It’s really the habit that counts; you don’t have to be a fanatical absolutist and never ever eat unhealthy food again, what matters is that you change your perception of the unhealthy food and see how it may affect you in the long-term, because if you do chances are that you won’t want to eat it anyway because you know the harmful effect it may have on you.

It’s rare for a person to have that strict absolutist view of not ever indulging in food and drink. I must confess I am impressed by the discipline by people like Steve Jobs, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and Julius Caesar in this regard.

The immediate tradeoff between these two purposes for eating is that you will have to choose whether you value the short and ephemeral sensation of taste more highly than you value a higher sense of well-being and mental clarity. To me that choice is usually simple. Certainly there are occasions for both, but I am of the opinion that eating for performance must be the dominant purpose for eating if we are to lead a remarkable life.

Hair Analysis

The cheapest and best way of knowing what you need to eat to be healthier is to do a diagnostic hair analysis. The hair analysis doesn’t cost more than $100-300 depending on where you live, and it is probably the best bang for your buck when it comes to health tests. Depending on the extent of the analysis it will let you know in which minerals and vitamins you have a deficiency and should eat more of, and if you happen to suffer from some unknown ailment you should see if it is related to your eventual deficiencies. You could also check for heavy metals levels.

I had eaten a lot of canned tuna over the last two years at the point when I did my hair analysis, and it showed me I was above the normal levels of mercury. That was great feedback because it could’ve been a real problem for me later in life; it was already having a few negative effects for me in terms of focus. Some people call it brain fog.

Summary Questions

◊ Why do you eat; what is your purpose for eating?

◊ How highly do you value taste? Are you willing to pay the price for eating unhealthy food in the long-term?

50

P A R T T W O

B R E A K I N G O U T O F H O M E O S T A S I S

➰

An object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by

a force. An object in motion remains in motion, and at

a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.

— NEWTON’S FIRST LAW OF MOTION —

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than

him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory

is over self.

— ARISTOTLE —

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than

to find those who are willing to endure pain with

patience.

— JULIUS CAESAR —

51

ALLOSTASIS

Nothing is constant but change.

— HERACLITUS —

he term allostasis was coined by a researcher called Bruce McEwen a couple of years ago. He defines it as ‘constancy through change’, which is a bit of an oxymoron. A lot of

people have a hard time understanding the concept and I don’t blame them.

Another way of explaining allostasis is that it is the process by which the body and brain are able to stay in a working balance by adapting to the things that are currently happening – whether that is waking up in the morning, getting hit by a baseball bat, giving a speech, exercising, getting thirsty, etc. When we make the transition between sleep and waking up our bodies are subjected to a lot of stress – for most people this is the most stressful activity that will take place during the entire day. To deal with the sudden change of waking up, our bodies are flooded with various hormones to help us make the transition. Change is stress, almost.

But that’s not all; then there’s also the mental imaging of things being experienced as well. For example, when we imagine a future scenario – which we constantly do – it affects the body through allostasis. This constant communication between brain and body is commonly known as the brain-body connection. They both influence each other.

A key insight from this scientific field that we keep hearing over and over again is that being constantly stressed is bad for us (no shit Sherlock!) and gives rise to several adverse effects that can be visibly observed in certain parts of the brain, such as in the hippocampus, which is associated with memory function.

Here’s where it is crucial to make the distinction between consciously induced stress, such as when working out, and that of prolonged unconscious stress which happens by thinking or anticipating negative things. The implications of this is that there is feeling bad actually hurts you, though slowly

Even though our thoughts are merely anticipations of a non-physical future scenario, the brain experiences it as if it was happening right now (to a varying degree depending on the vividness of our imagination). The brain then responds to the experience by telling

T ● ● ●

Recommended

Reading: Bruce McEwen

(Various papers on Google Scholar)

Robert Sapolsky

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

● ● ●


52

the body what to do. Surely you have experienced almost falling asleep and feeling like you started falling or that you were about to trip, only to respond to the situation as if it was really happening and instinctively react by sitting up in bed or kicking with your legs. You have likely also experienced thinking about fighting someone and felt your body surge with adrenaline and start to sweat. Much in the same way as explained in these examples; when you have negative anticipations and feel nervous or scared before some event your brain perceives it as happening now and produces the appropriate hormones in your body which then give rise to the corresponding emotional response of fear in you.

The key takeaway is that whenever you have thoughts that make you feel bad and induce negative emotions or make you feel stressed you are actually physically hurting yourself and slowly etching this thought into your brain little by little. After years of repeating negative thoughts and mentally experiencing self-induced stress you not only experience negative emotions, but may adversely affect your health.

So what can you do about it?

What you can do about this is first to practice the skill of inducing a relaxation response in your body (calming down) as soon as possible after you have gone through some stressful situation, such as; after a tough workout, a scary situation, a serious accident, etc. The other thing that you can do about it is to think less about negative things and stop projecting yourself into the future, worry less. Another thing that works well for me is to randomly stop every once in a while and stand completely still until I become relaxed. It helps a lot when I remember to do it if I am stressed as I go about my day.

But these things are as with the metacognition, it is not something that you develop overnight. Mindfulness – if you want to call it that – isn’t something you that you can pick up by going to a yoga class one time, stretch in some weird position, and come home doing perfectly. As with meditation, I dislike the term mindfulness because many people confuse it for weird new agey things.

Continual and prolonged periods of responding to stressors, whether physical or mental, will exhaust your body and give rise to what Bruce McEwen calls allostatic load, which is when allostasis is no longer helpfully adaptive to the brain and body, but actually becomes harmful as a result of continual wear and tear. The easy explanation is that you overexert yourself without being able to sleep or relax properly. That’s when you tend to get sick, hurt, or – if you have a lot of bad luck and happen to be a kid – may suffer serious consequences such as stress-dwarfism. This last example is likely what gave rise to


53

the ‘myth’ saying that kids shouldn’t be lifting weights as it would stunt their growth.

It’s important to point out that increased stress does not absolutely equate to adverse effects such as becoming sick or getting hurt. Science does not have any one specific answer to why we become sick or unhealthy; it hinges on way too many different factors. There are people who can do a lot of unhealthy things throughout their lives and still remain completely healthy. Except for stress levels (sleep included), other important factors are: genes, personal attitude, and diet. The current popular scientific view of stress – which I agree with – is that unhealthy levels of stress increase the likelihood of various ailments through a number of ways, notably by decreasing the potency of your immune system.

Other negative side effects of stress and allostatic load include a less potent brain. We go into this a bit deeper later in the chapters of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the amygdala.

Specific areas of the brain that show several forms of

plasticity, are involved in allostasis, are affected by allostatic

load, and are implicated in stress-related vulnerability to

chronic health conditions include regions of the prefrontal

cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. These brain areas

represent the primary targets of preventative and

intervention efforts to reduce the public health burden of

mental and physical illnesses.

—BRUCE S. McEWEN & PETER J. GIANAROS —


54

Avoiding Allostatic Load

Allostatic systems enable the individual to cope with stressful

experiences. They are adaptive when rapidly mobilized and

terminated. However, when the activity of allostatic systems is

sluggish, ineffective, prolonged, or not terminated promptly,

allostatic systems can impair mental and physical health

through their maladaptive effects on brain plasticity and

metabolic, immune, and cardiovascular pathophysiology.

— BRUCE S. McEWEN & PETER J. GIANAROS —

The most important thing to understand about allostatic load is not very hard at all to grasp; your brain and body’s response to a stressor should not be:

◊ Sluggish; you want to be able relax as quickly as possible following a stressful event, but if your response is sluggish you can’t. Consider a person who has breathing problems; this person may have a very sluggish response to recovery after some intense physical activity. Recovery and relaxation become stunted if your blood pressure and hormonal levels stay up longer than what merely is needed to do the job.

◊ Ineffective; it kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? An

ineffective response to a stressor diminishes the brain and body’s capacity for adaptation. When considered in the long-term it may become dangerous, and it will challenge recovery.

◊ Prolonged. Don’t be in stressful situations for too long; if you run away from a mugger for five minutes it will actually probably be healthy for you, but if you were to run for days it would be bad. Of course, the definition of what is prolonged or not is highly individual.


55

◊ Not terminated promptly. If you were to be repeatedly

subjected to stressors you might not be able to relax properly in between these occasions. Consider a person being subjected to torture by means of sleep deprivation and gets slapped or lit up by a bright flashlight every five minutes.

Other aspects of allostasis and allostatic load may be harder to understand. I have taken the liberty of simplifying these concepts in hopes of making it more easily understandable, just as I have done with much of the other material in the book. If you don’t like the following analogy, or, if you become interested in learning more deeply about this stuff, I suggest that you read the’ recommended reading’ box in the beginning of the chapter.

Hormonal and Allostatic Gauges

Here’s a video game analogy.

The figurative hormonal gauge measures your hormonal points. If you run out of hormonal points and cannot produce any more appropriate hormones, you die.

Nah, I’m just kidding!

But what actually does happen, is that you will induce an allostatic load, and, depending on how much you exert yourself, will either revert back to a baseline state of functioning (homeostasis), or you will plummet below that level and feel tired, bored, and lethargic like the hang over phenomenon I explained previously. Physiologically speaking, the process is very similar to what happens when a drug addict goes through detox and feels depleted; ecstasy (MDMA) and cocaine are especially known to deplete dopamine levels and make the user sluggish afterwards. Though such a degree of depletion is far more serious (and potentially harmful) than an allostatic load which has been induced through natural and ‘normal’ means.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be hormones that you run out of; it can also be neurotransmitters, nutrients or sleep.

Both of these aspects – the figurative gauges – are influenced by a large number of parameters, whereby the most important ones are likely your current condition of brain and body, practice, diet, sleep and recovery, and use of substances.


56

Hormonal Gauge HP (Hormonal Points)

Allostatic Gauge AP (Allostatic Points)

The allostatic gauge shows how we can only adapt to so much at a time. Small things add up. If we are constantly worrying about something and producing mentally induced stress on ourselves, we not only use up our focus in the present moment and lose out on that, but also slowly deplete our supply of mental energy, hormones, and neurotransmitters (hormonal points) as well as our capacity for adapting to changes (allostatic points).

It’s important that you understand that the ‘worry’ part can be much larger than what I have arbitrarily illustrated here, at which point it may be categorized as a serious case of anxiety and becomes a serious hindrance to adapting to change.

If the allostatic gauge becomes depleted you will revert back to the baseline state or plunge into a more or less lethargic state of idleness, depending on the intensity of the stressor. The bigger the change is to your brain and body, the more allostatic points it will require in order for you to adapt.

The intensity of a stressor, is as you surely understand, different between people. What may be perceived as uncomfortable, dangerous, or scary, can be perceived just the opposite by another person.

Pretty straight-forward, right?

So, as long as you don’t induce an allostatic load by taking on more stress than your brain and body currently is capable of handling, you will be getting stronger and smarter – you will become hardened gradually. It’s very much like lifting weights; you need to go at it hard, but then you need to rest before coming back so that you can lift again with at least the same amount of intensity next time. And vice versa, by the opposite logic it’s a stupid idea to go to the gym and lift heavily every day of the week.

The hard part is finding that sweet spot for going at it with sufficient intensity for getting that natural high that I call breaking out of homeostasis; to feel intrinsically motivated and interested – full on immersion.

That’s what this entire book is about – to encourage you to find this out through self-experimentation and trial and error. However, the sweet spot will gradually shift and you will either have to take on

Remaining HP HP Lost

Remaining AP WORRY ACTIVITY X


57

more difficult challenges and exert more effort – or switch to novel challenges in order to keep the brain engaged and activated.


58

Moderation?

The issue of what constitutes moderation is a constantly underlying theme in this book. It becomes painfully obvious that we want to reach this evident sweet spot of effort, and yet we don’t want to induce an allostatic load.

But to theorize about this sweet spot too much will just end up hindering you from doing the work and actually putting in the time to getting the practical experience which constitute the very foundation of BOOH.

Do you see the paradox?

The brain tricks us back into the habit of being lazy and not exerting more effort than what is necessary by justifying this behavior as being productive; it makes us think that we’re doing a good thing by trying to find out how to theoretically do it rather than to actually be doing it. This, of course, goes against the whole purpose; we’re supposed to progressively go harder and harder, exert ourselves more and more, improve on neural pathways – or build new ones. Not revert back to the old ones and to get trapped in homeostasis on autopilot.

Therefore, don’t concern yourself too much about being “perfect” and avoiding allostatic load. You can take it. As a matter of fact I believe fewer than one percent of the people reading this book have the mental fortitude, combined with the stupidity, to put themselves in a state of self-induced allostatic load through exerting themselves too hard day after day.

Be more worried about never getting there in the first place. Be more worried about never pushing through the plateau.

Or in the optimal case, don’t worry at all.

Just do – continual action.

Most people, myself included, never get anywhere close to such a point that physical or mental exertion become seriously harmful.

While it’s healthy to go out jogging every once in a while, it’s terribly unhealthy to be part of an Iron Man competition – it puts an enormous physical strain on the body. That’s one of those rare cases when physical exertion has gone beyond the point of positive effects, though I speculate that the mental fortitude and the strength of character gained by enduring an Iron Man competition could very well be worth whatever physical damage one might sustain.


59

My Experience of Breaking out of Homeostasis

Remember; the definition for BOOH was to consciously induce stressors upon yourself and get somewhere in the vicinity of the sweet spot of allostasis; thus making the stress response adaptive and being a positive and healthy thing for the brain and body.

After you get somewhere near that sweet spot of exertion you stay there for as long as possible, you keep putting in the mental or physical effort during a sufficient amount of time enough to push through the plateau and get that self-sustaining, internal motivation of momentum. After that point there is usually not as much effort involved. Sometimes not any at all. It’s easier continuing to do whatever you’re doing. It becomes a matter of how long you can stay there in the state of having BOOH.

* * *

In this chapter I figured I would try to pick out and decipher a few aspects I normally experience when I BOOH. In reality, these aspects are actually more of a whole than separate parts; therefore they all connect to each other somewhat and have a lot in common. They’re all there to fulfill the brain’s need of fueling the positive feedback loop and help it sustain the new emotional state for as long as possible.

To break out of homeostasis can be a little bit like the movie Limitless. At least during the first couple of times.

When you push through the plateau and BOOH it’s a very sudden shift; like when electrons switch orbits. It happens almost instantly and after that point a lot of things become different for a period of time.

Our personalities and value systems are drastically different when we’re in a state of unconscious homeostasis versus when we have BOOH.

When we have BOOH there’s a natural inclination for the brain and body to be used and exercised as much as possible. What we procrastinated or feared doing in homeostasis often becomes viewed as challenging and interesting when we have BOOH.

I often feel my brain tingle euphorically, and if I start focusing on the sensation, I get the feeling that it’s moving slightly. I have read about a few others who experience the same thing. This sensation is


60

particularly palpable if I try going to sleep in the state of having BOOH.

The main underlying characteristic that I’ve consistently identified once having broken out of homeostasis is the inherent urge to exert energy, try new things, and take on challenges; as opposed to the urge of wanting to exert the minimal amount of energy possible while being comfortable and continually stimulated through instant gratification.

That’s the only consistent characteristic that is always there for me when I have broken out of homeostasis. The brain and body switch from a state of preserving energy to a state of naturally releasing energy.

Then there are some other commonly recurring aspects that I experience when I have BOOH:

◊ Increased curiosity. Especially in regards to seeing how far you can go; to see if you can push it to the limit and extend it further. Remember how I wrote that exceeding your personal expectation lead to an increased possibility of pushing through the plateau? Well, it’s the same here. It’s a positive feedback loop that helps sustain the emotional state.

◊ Propensity for seeking novelty. Very common aspect of

BOOH. Taking risks, being adventurous, doing things differently and trying new things help keep the brain stimulated and fuels interest. It’s also part of the positive feedback loop.

◊ Doing it now. Gaining a natural preference for doing

things right away instead of procrastinating things as a sneaky mental strategy of reducing energy expenditure. You already got the momentum, it becomes easier to take things as they come without letting thought creep in lead to self-doubt.

◊ Less anxiety. I wouldn’t say I am calm; it’s more like

being fanatic about focusing on something. But in either case there is less caring about stuff, apart from what I’m currently doing. Focus is shifted to the action rather than how it will turn out. The brain now thinks it’s more important to keep going and sustain the emotional state than it is to worry about other stuff, so it blocks out that which isn’t relevant to its process of


61

staying energized and motivated. In other words, it’s the complete reversal of the excuses and rationalizations I explained about earlier kept you from exerting any extra energy. Now those rationalizations and excuses tell you not to eat, sleep, slack off, and chase instant gratification.

o This process stops when you start to run out of hormonal points and move back toward the point where the brain realizes it would save energy by reverting back to its normal baseline state again.

◊ The grass IS greener. To me the grass is greener when I have BOOH. It’s more fun to me to be in this state than it is to be operating in a normal and sub-optimal state. The only exception is if I get dead tired or incredibly hungry, at which point I sometimes revert back to the baseline state as a result of activating the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The PNS becomes dominant in controlling our bodies and slows us down when we sit still for too long, maintain a lousy body posture, and when we eat or sleep.


62

EXERTING MORE ENERGY

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.

In practice there is.

— LAWRENCE PETER “YOGI” BERRA —

f it was easy everyone would do it. But it’s not easy, and you will find out why when you read the chapter about the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

The art of expending more energy than needed (yes, it’s an art form) is largely based on achieving a certain degree of mastery over your physiology and using your metacognition to become increasingly aware of how different ways of using your body influence your emotional state.

I wrote this chapter to specify a few habits and exercises that I have implemented in order to exert more energy and improve work ethic. I might add that all of these exercises are excellent ways for practicing your prefrontal cortex.

Lead yourself

To break out of homeostasis it is crucial that you lead yourself by acting incongruently with your emotional state when it is unproductive and negative. Further sulking won’t do.

Forcing your physiology will work. If you feel like shit, go for a run or work out and you will feel better. If you start feeling tired during the day for no reason start tensing your muscles or jump a bit, or perhaps dancing a bit will cheer you up.

The point is to activate the sympathetic nervous system and snap yourself out of your spell. Shouting, raising your arms above your head, and similar ‘powerful’ movements will do the trick.

You are not going to feel like doing it the least, but if you do it you will feel better.

I ● ● ●

Recommended

Reading: Muhammad Ali

The Greatest: My Life Story

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Total Recall- My Unbelievably

True Life Story

● ● ●


63

Keep Going for Five More Minutes

To become a champion, fight one more round.

— JAMES CORBETT—

The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow.

This area of pain divides the champion from someone else

who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having

the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no

matter what happens.

— ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER —

When I run or do my exercises, I don’t start counting until I’m

in pain. Early in my career I learned to run until I’m tired, then

run more after that. The running I do before the fatigue and

pain is just the introduction. The real conditioning begins

when the pain comes in; then it’s time to start pushing. And

after that I count every mile as extra strength and stamina.

The reserve tank. What counts in the ring is what you do after

you’re tired.

— MUHAMMAD ALI —

It’s very easy to overlook the depth of these quotes. I encourage you to read it at least ten times – massive repetition is the key to memorizing and quickly internalizing information. Or as Arnold would say, “It’s all about the reps.” Here’s another excerpt from the biography of Muhammad Ali, The Greatest: My Life Story:

A reporter asks: ‘Where did you get that extra energy from?’

— I get energy by looking into the future and seeing what

defeat will mean. Other fighters have been defeated more

than me, but they have amnesia. They forget the lesson. I

never forget it.

It’s the same thing with a near death experience or an intense psychedelic experience. It matters little unless you immediately act on the wisdom that was bestowed upon you. Treasure it and repeat


64

it continually – NEVER forget the vital lessons learned while walking the razors’ edge of your understanding, or you will have squandered it for nothing.

It’s very easy to logically get a hint of what these badass guys are saying. It’s a completely different matter to deeply understand it, become truly changed by it, and be implementing it in your life every day.

Some people may argue or disagree with me whether this behavior of persisting further and to ‘keep going for five more minutes’ truly is a habit… In my opinion is most definitely is.

I know what you might be thinking:

“But these guys were born with incredible persistence or mental fortitude!”

Maybe. I never met them so I can’t say for sure. In either case it shouldn’t serve as a viable excuse for you not to verify it yourself by actually taking the time and effort to find out if it works or not.

* * *

Whenever you’re undertaking some form of activity that matters in regards to your goals and aspirations, whether you enjoy the task or not: the second you feel like quitting you must make the decision to keep going for at least five more minutes when you first feel like stopping. Make the decision prior to getting tired so that you don’t succumb to the discomfort.

If you’re working on something important and want to give up, you need to summon your latent energy by focusing on the goal of keeping it up for five more minutes. If you’re lifting weights and feel like you’re succumbing to the pain or exhaustion – force yourself to do at least one more rep. You want to get used to exerting just a bit more effort than the brain wants you to. It doesn’t have to be much more so long as you do it consistently.

Never let the brain and homeostasis get the last word. Never let homeostasis get away with doing the minimal amount of work and thus to be sustained – go beyond that!

It doesn’t necessarily have to be five minutes or a specific amount. The point is to really form the mental habit of not letting the brain dictate reality to you, especially in negative, uncomfortable, painful, or boring situations. If you can keep going for five more minutes every day in some activity for a few weeks you will quickly notice a significant increase in self-esteem.

Your goal ought to be to get this down on autopilot by forming the habit so that you no longer have to be consciously focusing on and


65

thinking about it all the time. So that the notion to keep going for five more minutes automatically pops up in your mind as an instantly generated response whenever you’re about to quit or succumb to the pressure of fear, boredom, exhaustion, pain, or laziness.

Five more minutes always!


66

Deliberately Self-Sabotage

We humans are creatures of habit. And now it’s about time You started messing and interfering with some of those habits!

I expect that only the most innately curious, or the most discontented readers, are going to be willing to seriously do this.

This exercise can be hard because a prerequisite for using it is that you’re aware of several habits that you have, or that you are willing to identify a number of habits that you’re not aware of.

Once you have done that you may begin the mission of purposely messing up the habits that you have identified.

You see, a habit is a routine behavior or thought that the brain has internalized through a sufficient amount of repetitions; this in turn helps us save energy by having the prefrontal cortex focus on doing more important stuff, such as learning new things, rather than to keep focusing on the same thing over and over.

In short, it is very annoying and demanding to the brain if you mess up its usual mode of operation. By doing this you force the brain to spend a lot more energy than it wants to, and it may feel very uncomfortable.

Here are a few examples of what you might do:

◊ If you tend to walk a certain way to school or work, change it dramatically and take massive detours.

◊ If you normally drive a car or ride the bus it’s time you

force yourself to walk or go by bike. ◊ Start writing with your left hand if you are right

handed. This is one very hard and frustrating at first! ◊ Eat your food with chopsticks. ◊ Turn off the automatic word composer on your cell

phone if you’re used to it. And vice versa. ◊ Take the stairs if you normally ride the elevator.

◊ Open doors manually instead of by the press of a

button.

Surely you can come up with plenty of your own as well.


67

You know yourself better than anyone else and you also know what you’d least of all want to change, and which habits you treasure the most. Those are the ones that are going to be the most helpful to mess with.

You could also come up with new strange habits that you do every day as an excuse to exert more energy.

I want to clarify that I am not recommending you to do these things to the point of ruining your life, but merely to force yourself to become used to the idea of spending more energy than the brain wants you to. By doing this you’ll take the path least traveled – the path of most resistance.


68

The Reserve Tank

What this power is I cannot say:

all I know is that it exists and it becomes

available only when a man is in that state of mind

in which he knows exactly what he wants and is

fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

— ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL —

You’ve got latent deposits of energy available to you if you demand strongly enough that they be used. But you’ll never access this energy by begging for it, you’ve got to take it by force and through action. You show your brain that you are serious about something through taking action, not by sitting in your room and thinking positively.

These hidden deposits of energy, or reserve tanks if you will, cannot be accessed by the weak-minded. They’ll only be made available to those who are able to push way past the plateau and yet find themselves needing it.

You will find that there are countless examples of this phenomenon if you choose to study it more deeply; probably the most common example would be someone in a life-threatening situation – when it’s either do or die.

A few times when I’ve managed to break out of homeostasis in a particularly potent way I’ve felt absolutely unstoppable in terms of physical stamina; it’s been like I was being hooked up to an infinitely powerful generator from another dimension. One minute I’d be completely exhausted, and in just a few seconds I would feel replenished to go again.

The habit of going for five more minutes is crucial in regards to unlocking the reserve tank. It all starts and ends with that. You focus on five more minutes and persisting just a little longer.

If you invest your willpower into the habit of keeping it up for five more minutes during every day for at least a month it should be an automated response afterwards.

But why stop there?

Make it a way of life!

You’re running on the treadmill and feel tired. Your body is aching and you’re gasping for air. You’re beginning to think you can’t make it. But then you remember to keep going for five more minutes.


69

You will use this as an opportunity to break out of homeostasis; so you stop entertaining the thought of quitting and instead shut up and do it. And when those five minutes have gone by your concentration is suddenly peaking, your body is exploding with energy feeling absolutely euphoric.

You keep running for at least ten more minutes without any difficulties, all because you had the resolve to keep going during the uphill struggle of those first five minutes of quitting.


70

Checkpoint

Do you think this is a masochistic or fanatical outlook on personal performance?

If so, I would speculate that you have a lot of work to do on yourself if you want to break out of homeostasis and stop living in utter reaction to your brain. You’re not going to be able to do it unless you really want to, or desperately need to.

You will quit way before pushing through the plateau of bodily and hormonal discomfort.

Remember, to break out of homeostasis has nothing to do with executing in terms of absolute numbers. It’s completely different for each person depending on your starting point and the activity undertaken.

If you’ve ever watched The Biggest Loser you’ll find that perhaps 90 % of the contestants will give up very easily – almost as soon as they are faced with the slightest discomfort – which logically isn’t strange seeing as how they have let their willpower atrophy their whole lives while they were stuffing themselves with cookies despite their better knowing. Their bodies craved it and now that very same body is craving that they stop running. What do you think the likelihood is that they will succeed this time if they’ve lost the battle for years on end before?

The brain has way too much power over them. They have many, many thousands of reference experience in which they vividly remember losing this mental battle, and giving in to their addiction for junk food or sugar. Moments when they gave up.

On the other hand, among the very few contestants who actually make it to the finals, you’ll notice that they all have the ability to go into a rage-mode, turning them into miniature Hulks (not the Lou Ferrigno version), and literally scream in fury. That, old sport, is to truly fight the brain and push through the plateau.

* * *

Do you still think that to break out of homeostasis is an unhealthy or exaggerated outlook on personal performance?

I’ll repeat what I wrote before because it bears repeating itself many times over, and I know it will be the sticking point for many people who read this book:


71

Don’t worry so much about whether you are exerting too much energy or pushing yourself too hard mentally. Don’t worry about suffering an allostatic load. Don’t concern yourself so much with reaching that sweet spot of optimal exertion.

Do concern yourself with putting in the effort consistently – to keep going for five more minutes when you want to quit. It adds up cumulatively over time.

The body will make it known if you’re overexerting yourself physically or mentally. If you work out too hard in the gym you will get tired and your body will ache, but you won’t die. Besides, you don’t go to the gym for sake of comfort do you?

Point being: don’t concern yourself with working too hard, but do concern yourself with mental anxiety and thinking too many destructive thoughts.

When Julie Moss ran Iron Man in 1982 and collapsed numerous times; that however, is a seriously intense allostatic load. Look it up on Youtube. She got to the limit of the mental reserve tank and that is a very rare thing.

72

Action

Unrelenting repetition: Exerting

more effort and energy than the brain thinks is comfortable!

Activating Brain

Intense focus

Triggering adrenaline &

neurotransmitters

Drugs/Substances

BOOH

Self-sustaining to a certain extent. Exerting yourself no longer feels

bothersome.

And all that other good stuff...

Activating Your Brain

The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

— WILLIAM BLAKE —

re you easily and often bored?

If that’s the case then there’s a very high likelihood that you don’t activate your brain properly on a daily basis.

You can break out of homeostasis by either one of these two alternatives, but it works best in combination, and in truth you can’t do one without doing the other.

In my experience you can only get so far by ‘single-handedly’ pursuing one of these alternatives, then after a while you reach the point of diminishing returns to scale and you gain very little by keeping it up, compared to if you was to start doing the other.

So to sum it up, you need to be in a state of continual action and movement, combined with activating your brain. How you choose to do these things is up to you. I’ll provide a few examples soon.

A


73

Nothing is Inherently Boring

Boredom is a physiological state that stems from a deficit in the production of positive neurotransmitters and hormones, or from a diverted focus. The brain is not activated in the least. So, if you are constantly bored that means that your brain needs a lot of work.

There is no such thing as something that’s inherently boring. It’s purely a matter of whether your brain is activated or not. That’s why meditation becomes quite ‘fun’ when you get over the initial hurdle, and why Buddhist monks and other weird dudes sit around doing nothing all day and still feel stimulated and happy.

If you can find ways of keeping your brain engaged you’ll find almost any activity interesting.

The three most efficient ways I’ve found to activate the brain can be distilled into the categories of intense focus, triggering adrenaline, and responsibly using helpful drugs.

* * *

Looking at the picture above, you can see that I’ve made a distinction between “Action” and “Activating Brain”, however those two parts are closely interconnected and shouldn’t really be considered separate. I made that distinction for illustrative purposes only. Both parts are correlated. It’s extremely hard to separate the cause and the effect between the two.

When you consistently take action and push past the plateau beyond the point where the brain finds the situation uncomfortable it almost always results in intense focus and an activated brain. Using a drug that makes you feel energized will in turn often generate an intense focus or motivate us to take action.

So, due to the bidirectional nature of the brain and body, it does both ways.

Now, let’s go into the first of the three ways of activating the brain – intense focus.


74

Intense Focus

We obviously live in a world that bombards us with

information, and we feel the need to respond to stimulus as it

comes in. The problem with this is that we get stretched

along the superficial outer layers of many things. I believe in

depth over breadth in the learning process. Let’s say we have

three skills to learn. The typical approach is to take them all

on at once. It is much more effective to plunge deeply into

one, touch Quality, and then transfer that feeling of Quality

over to the others. A martial artist, for example, should

internalize one technique very deeply instead of trying to

learn 10 or 15 superficially.

This approach engages the unconscious, creative aspects of

our minds, and we start making thematic connections which

greatly accelerate growth. It is also important to point out

that deep presence is required for a state of neural plasticity

to be triggered—our brain does not re-map effectively when

we are skipping along the surface.

I learned this lesson in my late teens/early twenties trying to

stay concentrated for 8 hours a day, two weeks at a time in

world chess championships—I would burn out. When I

started taking mini breaks, my endurance and quality of focus

surged. Stress and recovery should be our rhythms, and

physical interval training can be an excellent tool for

improving mental recovery.

One of many problems with multi-tasking is that the frenetic

skipping leaves little room for relaxation, and thus our

reservoir for energetic presence is constantly depleted.

– JOSH WAITZKIN –

Most students I’ve met go to class in a daze such as the one described in the beginning of the book. Not surprisingly their focus is all over the place and they can’t concentrate on the matter at hand without getting bored. The end result of this is that they process information inefficiently and thus the time they allocate to attending class is spent poorly.


75

My approach nowadays is a bit different. I try to be up several hours prior to class and warm up my focus so that from the moment I get there I’m already in a peak state of learning. This makes time in class much more satisfying and well-spent in terms of efficiency.

All in all, reaching a state of intense focus has to be something you constantly do and live by. Reducing all unnecessary multitasking is a good start as it greatly diminishes your capacity to focus for longer periods of time. Most people cannot even eat without watching TV, sitting by their computers, or listening to the radio. That has to stop.

Live simply and concern yourself with fewer things and your focus is likely to increase over time. Trying to do ten different mid-size important tasks in one day is very inefficient; the brain doesn’t shift between various activities without losing focus.

You’ll want to spend as much time as possible on as few important activities as possible in order to gather up an intense focus at the activity at hand.


76

Triggering Adrenaline

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day

surmount a fear.

― JULIUS CAESAR—

Too much comfort and safety dulls the brain. It’s now time to become an adrenaline junkie.

The fastest way to get your brain fully engaged is to put yourself in situations that you fear. It doesn’t have to be that you risk your life or anything; it just has to be a slight fear.

Depending on your perceived fear or discomfort of doing a thing, the more positive neurotransmitters and hormones you will produce and the effect of that is that your brain stays activated longer!

There are infinite ways of triggering adrenaline seeing as how we all have our individual fears, but I am only going to deal with those that are practical in daily life in order to help BOOH and improve productivity.

I am not going to be talking about skiing in steep slopes, climbing mountains or bungee jumping – though of course they are great examples of activities that trigger adrenaline and activate the brain. But they are not particularly mundane and accessible for most people.

Speak Up

When we do something we fear or think is uncomfortable –such as public speaking – what actually happens from an evolutionary standpoint is that our brain thinks it is in a threatening situation and will react as though our life is endangered. Depending on the extent of our fears this may cause a fight-or-flight response powerful enough to cause an “amygdala hijack”, meaning that our entire thought process is blocked out because the brain thinks it is in mortal danger and has to prepare us to defend ourselves optimally.

This mechanism would be great if we actually were in a dangerous situation, but we are not.

In cases like this, the brain’s perception of the situation is disconnected from the reality at hand – but it can’t tell the difference. Logically you know that you are not going to get killed for speaking up, but your amygdala is older and has precedence over your

● ● ●

Recommended

Reading: Seth Godin

Linchpin

● ● ●


77

neocortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for most of the thought process.

The end result is that after we do a thing like this, the silly brain believes it’s in danger and has to work harder to survive. Suddenly, its ability to absorb and retain information is greatly improved – because it literally thinks its life depends on it!

A more scientific explanation of the phenomenon is that the sudden surge of adrenaline triggers the release of glucose into the body, which gives rise to increased energy and a heightened concentration. This makes us feel very interested, alert, and usually euphoric.

Another good reason for deliberately triggering adrenaline and do scary things is that memories are significantly strengthened by an emotional anchor. Just think of the time when you made a fool of yourself in front of the class as a ten year old kid. The humiliations of that experience still sticks to your memory.

There are a few different scientific theories as to why an experience accompanied by a strong emotion increases the vividness of the memory.

Most of these theories have to do with using multiple parts of your brain and body so that the memory has more places to be connected to. This is an oversimplified explanation of course, but in the end it doesn’t matter that much, the point is that this principle works.

So, here’s what you need to do:

◊ Speak up ASAP in a meeting or in large crowd of people so as to quickly engage the brain and trigger adrenaline. By doing this you get ‘buy-in’ from yourself and your brain will want to sustain this alertness. This is uncomfortable for many people, but you have to realize that nothing dangerous will happen, it’s only your brain being afraid and trying to keep you from doing it. This feels great the first times you do it.

◊ If you hesitate it will only get worse. The longer you wait, the more doubt you experience, and the more power your brain will hold over you. Remember, your brain doesn’t want to exert more energy than it has to. Its only chance of remaining in homeostasis is by keeping you from starting.


78

Using Drugs The truth is that we are all addicts – the question is whether we know what we are addicted to or not. And if we do know, then the only smart move is to consciously choose what stimuli we become addicted to. Because homeostasis will preserve whatever habits, behaviors, feelings, and addictions we have.

Most people do not know what they are addicted to or how much they are addicted to things, and of those who do know, few choose to align their addictions with their chosen goals.

* * *

Using drugs is the lazy and effortless way of activating your brain. But it does work quite well to certain extent, disregarding the eventual toll it may take on your health.

It is only a short-term solution and shouldn’t be more than a small staple of your entire arsenal of tools when it comes to activating the brain and being productive. Consider it a way to jumpstart yourself into a specific state needed to reach some goal.

Drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine (coffee, tea, energy drinks, cocoa etc.) are usually helpful. Personally I like tea, raw cocoa, and coffee.

However, when you find yourself in the situation of needing to drink more than two cups of coffee to get a buzz, or if you absolutely need coffee to wake up in the morning, then you have ventured far beyond the point of increasing scales of return in terms of personal productivity and health.

Drug Use as a Way to Activate the Brain

I am a firm believer in eating healthy, exercising, and all that stuff. I have put in many years of reading and trial and error to find what works best for me. Yet, my conclusion after optimizing my diet, meal timing, meal size, etc., is that I don’t think that diet, including use of drugs and substances, comes anywhere close to practice some skill and activating the brain on a daily basis.

To activate the brain and practice some skill on a daily basis is way more significant; that’s the 80/20 of becoming smarter and healthier. If this wasn’t the case; it would be very hard to explain why guys like Ludwig Wittgenstein, Einstein, Napoleon, Winston Churchill, Stephen King, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Donald Trump, Jack Kerouac, and many more super-successful and smart people have been able to


79

live somewhat long and healthy lives despite having what we today consider decadent life styles. They all had very unhealthy diets or were heavily addicted to various drugs – especially alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. Well, Jack Kerouac is the exception, he drank himself to death.

You might pose the nature vs. nurture question; you might say that they were only lucky or very abnormal because they were blessed with super-human genes. However, I doubt that was even nearly as significant as the fact that they activated their brains throughout their entire lives, and fanatically worked on their crafts day in and day out.

Sugar

Sugar is the opium of the masses. If sugar were to be banned we would have a world war on our hands within a matter of days.

Sugar keeps people doped up in a lethargic and docile state and prevents them from thinking deeply about their situation. Sugar keeps most people from ever reaching a point of critical mass in terms of focus. It also hinders them from building up a sufficiently strong discontent with their current state of affairs needed to break out of homeostasis.

Eating sugar is one of the worst things you can possibly do to your body and brain. Drinking soft drinks on a daily basis is probably the one single unhealthiest thing that there is in terms of dieting.

Almost everyone is addicted to sugar, and while it isn’t specifically classified to be a drug, its negative effects are worse than most illegal drugs.

If this comes as news to you I strongly advise you to put aside at least one whole day to do thorough research about its harmful effects – in doing so you may live many years longer. It just may be one of the wisest things you could possibly spend a single day of your time on in terms of long-term health. Sugar has no benefits that cannot be gained elsewhere in superior ways nutritionally speaking, and it’s extremely addictive and harmful to you.

Don’t believe me?

Try going a month without sugar in any form (including fruits, milk, and artificial sweeteners). It’s a lot harder than you’d expect. Most people can’t even go a day without sugar – that’s how addicted they are.

Think of that the next time someone you know excuses him or herself to take a break and goes to buy candy or soda and blames it on their low blood sugar. That’s the addict getting withdrawal


80

symptoms and running to get his next fix while making excuses to avoid taking responsibility for his condition and fixing it.

* * *

Ultimately, drugs won’t work very efficiently as a long-term strategy of way of activating your brain unless your diet is on point.

If you drink a several cups of coffee per day you’ll likely end up with sleeping problems as well as becoming deficient in important minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc). This is because the caffeine has an antagonistic effect on your ability to absorb the minerals, especially if you drink the coffee while you are eating or in the vicinity of meals.

Being deficient in these minerals will make you stressed, and a common symptom is that you get recurring cramps. I used to get cramps in my hands and thighs all the time before I began started consuming more zinc and started sleeping in a pitch black room.

To avoid messing up my sleep I limit my daily intake of coffee to a maximum of two cups and don’t drink past 2 PM.

81

P A R T T H R E E

T H E B R A I N

ה

Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your

mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most

cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like

grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.

— STEVE JOBS —

82

THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX

Without the frontal lobe’s involvement, we spend a

great deal of our time focusing on future events based on

our memories. Most people, most of the time, do not direct

their frontal lobes to be in control.

― JOE DISPENZA ―

apoleon Bonaparte was extremely in love with his second wife Marie-Louise, yet he never slept in the same room as her – even during their honeymoon. She couldn’t sleep

without having lights on in the room because she was terribly afraid of the dark. Napoleon on the other hand refused to sleep in a room that wasn’t completely blacked out. He was unwilling to compromise the quality of his sleep.

When we get suboptimal sleep, such as in a room that isn’t completely dark, we impair the recovery and functioning of our prefrontal cortex. Though Napoleon probably didn’t specifically know about the PFC, he definitely understood its workings as well as how to exercise it from a very early point in life, and he always had a very strict daily routine that was conducive to practicing this part of his brain.

* * *

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is situated in the front of the head and it is attributed with the abilities of making snap decisions in the present moment and redirecting the focus of your attention, maintaining your focus on long-term goals and delaying gratification, exercising willpower, and also the extent of your working memory.

The PFC has connections to the rest of the brain and works like a command center, you could also picture it as the RAM-memory on a computer.

The first ‘scientific’ examination of the PFC took place some 160 years ago, starting in 1848 with a railroad worker named Phineas Gage who got his brain pierced by a rod that went straight through his PFC. Gage and other people who had their prefrontal cortices severely damaged or even removed, seemed to lack the ability to

N ● ● ●

The Brain

Recommended

Reading:

Joe Dispenza

Evolve Your Brain – Science of

Changing Your Mind

Daniel G Amen

Change Your Brain, Change

Your Age

● ● ●


83

prioritize their goals, leading them to engage in all sorts of instant gratification presented to them in every moment.

70 years after the curious case of Phineas Gage, neuroscientists John Fulton and Carlyle Jacobsen tested out a new surgical procedure on aggressive chimpanzees that resulted in the chimpanzees becoming docile afterwards. This was the start of the procedure which was going to be known as the frontal lobotomy.

Patients that were ‘treated’ with frontal lobotomy as a way of curing their erratic and dangerously impulsive behavior, became docile, demotivated, uninspired, and showed an incredible aversion to change. They started doing the same things over and over again and were unable to make changes regarding routine behavior; they wore the same clothes every day, ate the same food, and listened to the same radio shows, and so on. In short, they became like severe OCD-cases who could not make changes in their ‘safe’ routine behavior.

It was soon shown that they were unable to adapt and assimilate new information even when encountering negative feedback. For example, they continued eating the same food day in and day out, even if it was rotten. They also became completely sidetracked and were unable to hold conversations due to their inability of sustaining focus – because they could not filter out unnecessary stimuli. Often when they were speaking they would forget what they were talking about because they got distracted by some small thing or noise in their immediate environment, such as a fly passing by, or the noise of a car honking its horn.

In other words, these people became very primitive and sheep-like as they had lost or impaired their ability of focusing and making decisions. They could no longer adapt to change.

* * *

To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular

periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge

the imagination without distraction.

― THOMAS EDISON ―

Scientific studies involving measuring of brain activity and spiritual experiences have shown that skilled practitioners of meditation, such as Tibetan monks, have particularly active prefrontal cortices.

The more we use our PFC the ‘stronger’ and more capable it becomes through the process of Hebbian learning, which states that neurons that fire together wire together.


84

It then becomes easier for us to make snap decisions and act out of the present moment rather than resorting to autopilot behavior of making decisions based on past experiences or acting out routine behavior memorized as habit.

I want to add that it’s not necessarily a bad thing at all to be making informed decisions based on collected memories, but it does very little in terms of activating the brain or practicing the PFC, which is what we’re interested in doing.

The PFC & The Reticular Activating System (RAS)

The PFC has played a crucial part in the evolutionary process and has sped up our ability to learn from mistakes and correct errors.

The way we do this is usually from negative feedback in the form of pain or fear – so that the next time we encounter the same, or a similar situation, the PFC in combination with another part of the brain called the reticular activating system (RAS) will block out all other incoming stimuli, causing us to fully focus on the situation at hand. An example of this might be a person who trips while having a jog and then during the next jog as the person gets close to the scene of the accident he will suddenly remember what happened the last time and likely avoid tripping again.

Together, the PFC and the RAS provide us with the ability to focus on whatever we choose to focus on, and block out all other incoming stimuli. If you have read or heard about Steve Jobs’ ‘reality distortion field’, then you know the power of an incredibly well-honed PFC and RAS.

With the help of the PFC and RAS we can form a thought or a mental picture and ‘make it more real’ than the daily reality which we encounter. To do this and practice these two parts of our brain daily fundamental to creating a vision, and living by it.

Badasses like Henry Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Albert Einstein, Tupac Shakur, Bruce Lee, Steve Jobs, Julius Caesar, and Andrew Carnegie are excellent examples of people who focused on their vision long enough for it to become realer than their everyday reality.

They did this through conscious repetition every day for years. In the book The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, the author Napoleon Hill explains this through the phenomenon of autosuggestion (self-hypnosis) and what he believes to be the mind and its thoughts acting like a magnet which then attract similar thoughts as well as opportunities into our lives the longer we focus on the thought. It builds up cumulatively over time.

● ● ●

Recommended Reading:

Napoleon Hill

The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons

● ● ●


85

This formed the basis for what later became the law of attraction by new agers or whatever you’d like to call them. I’m very skeptical towards the popularized version of the law of attraction, but I do believe in exercising the PFC and the RAS.

Unfortunately few people know about the existence of the PFC and the RAS, and even fewer make a habit of consciously exercising it daily to an extent above what feels comfortable. It’s a little bit like people who go to the gym without ever lifting to the point of failure.

PFC, RAS, and Learning

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never

have to look for new interests. They come to you. ... All you

need to do is to be curious, receptive, eager for experience.

And there’s one strange thing: when you are genuinely

interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

― ELEANOR ROOSEVELT ―

I remember when I was younger (age 7-18) and learning English. I quickly amassed a very large vocabulary relative to my peers. It all happened effortlessly as well. I didn’t understand exactly how, but already back then from an early age I understood the gist of it intuitively – I could observe the process.

The phenomenon remains the same to this day, though now I know slightly more about it; it happened through the RAS.

I would come across new words I didn’t know of and this made me want to know what they meant. Within days I would always spot or hear the words I was looking for.

This process would usually unfold while I was watching TV or playing video games. I never purposely practiced or did any repetitions. I was always the best at English in my class without even trying. I remember telling a few people about this when I was young, and how I thought it was amazing. But no one cared much about my cool discovery so I just let it simmer in my mind until recently.

I now know the importance of the RAS in the learning process and I rely on it almost entirely for learning new things.

* * *

There have been scientific studies suggesting that the brain processes about 400 billion bits of data per second, but our ‘conscious minds’ are only able to take in somewhere around 2000-


86

4000 of those bits, that’s not very much now is it? This of course gives us an idea of how inefficient intellectual thinking is when it comes to performing an activity. Keep this trivia in mind later when you read about the chapters about habits and the competence ladder.

Consider the RAS your personal search engine; it plucks out what 2000-4000 bits you will be conscious of. With the help of the PFC, you then keep your focus on these objects for a sustained amount of time, and as you keep your focus on something eventually you integrate it into your mental framework of understanding as it connects with the rest of your understanding. Here’s another way of looking at it:

This book represents a model of reality. During your course of reading the book your brain will examine past experiences by using what you are now reading as a framework to interpret these past experiences. You will likely find that you recognize a lot of the phenomena I speak of in this book, you just didn’t know how to explain it previously, or maybe you do know how to explain it and use different words for doing so. Assuming that a lot of stuff in this book comes as news to you, your RAS will start to notice these things manifest in your life through a variety of patterns. You find what you focus on, and the theories that you read about will soon become real to you when becomes stored as firsthand experience and positive reference points that support the logical understanding of the theory. At that point you no longer need the theory because your experience stands on its own.

* * *

When you read something that you think is cool or smart you might start to notice this thing in your life soon. That is the RAS at work; but that is still a very unrefined and inefficient way of making use of the RAS, because you are leaving much of it to chance – you are squandering its potential.

You need to repeat whatever seems important many times in writing, by saying it, or by thinking it – preferably, all three. Most importantly; you need to keep your focus (PFC) on the things that you want to learn (RAS).

The dilemma is that you cannot focus the RAS on too many things at once or it will become sloppy. The more you exercise these parts of your brain the easier it becomes and the more things you can focus on for a longer period of time.

This is the true meaning of ‘meditating’ or ‘reflecting’ on something. You keep meditating on the object of your choice until you’ve got it down properly, which can more or less time depending on whatever you are learning. It will take the time it takes. Don’t fall victim to the


87

brain’s lazy temptation of wanting to move on to the next thing without first grasping what you were focusing on.

Development of the PFC

The PFC is the part of the brain that takes the longest to mature and it is considered to be what really sets us apart from most other animals.

By the time we’ve become teens, the brain is nearly fully matured with the exception of the PFC. This fact is often used to explain why teenagers sometime act impulsively.

Some researchers in the field of neuroscience believe that the PFC is fully matured by the time we become somewhere around 25- 35 years old.

After that point we don’t retain the same degree of neuroplasticity in the PFC and therefore can’t rewire it as fast as when it was still maturing. This means we might not have the same advantage in quickly adapting to our environment or improving our faculties of exercising willpower, focusing, and making decisions at the same rate as we did when we were younger.

We can still make the conscious decisions to change our habits and behaviors but it becomes gradually harder after that point in our lives. The saying that old people are stuck in their ways hold true in this regard. They don’t have the same ‘evolutionary boost’ as younger people do.

* * *

When he was around 70 years old, Jean Paul Sartre said that he didn’t like spending time with people his age, nor had he for many years. He felt he couldn’t even hang out with people who were ten or fifteen years younger because they were too dull and stuck in their ways; too fixed in their behavior and thoughts to take on anything new or be interesting. Their cups were filled already. They had certain opinions and beliefs that they felt were accurate and if the world and all the things in it would not conform to their opinions they felt that something was profoundly wrong.

The Implications

The earlier we start, the more we stand to gain. The law of cumulative results is as much at work here as it always is.

The earlier in life we start consistently exercising the PFC, the more we stand to gain from it in the long run. Consider a person who knows all this and wisely applies the information on a daily basis


88

up until he is 40 years old. Then consider a person who has lived all his life in unconscious reaction to homeostasis without knowing of its existence – which likely holds true for most people.

Let’s say both of these people have not yet found out what they truly want to do with their lives and cannot express with certainty which their highest values to live in integrity with are. All of a sudden both people ‘wake up to their purpose’ and achieve complete clarity as to how they want to spend the remainder of their lives. Of course, they both come up with different answers to the question of how to live their individual lives and how to find happiness, but what they have got in common is that this ‘new life’ requires for them both to change exactly everything in their lives down to what they do for a living, what they eat, where they live, and who they hang out with.

Quite a big change in other words.

Which person do you think is going to have an easier time making this huge shift in behavior – and being more capable in terms of operating deliberately and consciously in the world?

The implications of this is that the earlier you start consistently learning new things, keeping your brain activated, exercising your willpower, maintaining focus for prolonged periods of time, making quick decisions and purposely doing uncomfortable and scary stuff, the more you will stand to gain from it, because your PFC rewires at a higher rate when you are young. In the long-term this gives you more freedom to act on your decisions and you become better at following through on your plans.

A highly developed PFC aids you regardless of what you decide to do when you become older. The earlier you start the process of breaking out of homeostasis the freer and more capable you will become later as a human being no matter what goals you want to pursue.

Could there be a better investment?

Leaders and Followers

Napoleon had a theory that to really understand a man you would have to have known him during his twenties; implicating an assumption that almost all men (and women) unconsciously cruise along life and get affected by external events which in turn shape their beliefs and behavior.

This in turn leads to the degree of development and the unique formation that their brains and prefrontal cortices neurologically map out during this time of heightened plasticity. Or put way simper; what happened to you when you were younger likely


89

shaped a large part of your personality and character unless you specifically made the decision that it wouldn’t.

A person who rarely exercises self-discipline and willpower is likely to have a ‘weak’, lowly developed, and inactive prefrontal cortex. Such a person will have a much more difficult time making quick decisions and leading himself in life. Such a person will likely have a lesser sense of perceived purpose and meaning in life and will live in a high degree of reaction to his environment and to the hyperreality of society.

A person with a ‘weak’ PFC is a lot more likely to be part of groupthink and relegate the responsibility of thinking and decision-making to outside authority or to the peer group in which the person considers himself to be part of.

To speak very generally it could be said that natural leaders are people who early in life began implementing the habit of using their PFC frequently through various activities, and thus developed it to a high level; whereas followers are people who use the PFC minimally.

Most people think the act of making decisions is uncomfortable and they usually want to avoid responsibility to the largest extent possible. With responsibility comes the uncomfortable risk of being blamed. When we are not in the habit of doing a specific thing it becomes hard or uncomfortable to do. The same goes for making decisions and taking responsibility.

Leaders on the other hand relish the act of making decisions and taking responsibility. Not only are they used to making decisions, but they have formed positive associations with it.

It Gets Easier – Positive Feedback Loop

I believe that the conscious act of consistently choosing to practice your PFC is similar to the goal-oriented thinking behind the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he said:

Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me

pain is pleasure.

This mindset reflects that of a person who is passionate about the process of developing his PFC, activating the brain, and BOOH. It is the mindset of a person who has the ability to delay gratification and to recognize how doing something that might temporarily be uncomfortable is going to be very beneficial in the long-term.

In short, Arnold rewired his brain and thus also his reward system from an early age to accept and to even cherish discomfort because


90

he knew it served the purpose of his goals. He trained himself into seeking challenging novel experiences; to press on rather than to comfortably settle down at a level deemed to be acceptable by the status quo of society.

When we understand this idea on a fundamental level based off of positive reference points, we soon form the habit of associating challenging and uncomfortable stuff with personal growth and overall improvement.

Practice the Goddamn PFC

What are fears really?

Fears are like leashes – they stand in the way of and limit our capacity for freedom.

Freedom in turn is necessary to achieve self-esteem and happiness. Self-esteem is built slowly by acting on one’s desires and forming positive reference points. And happiness is the byproduct of a positive self-esteem. Or as I stated previously in neurologic terms, happiness the result of good hormonal levels and an abundance of positive neurotransmitters, which arise naturally when we have formed ‘positive’ neural pathways through daily repetition. Daily repetition in turn requires hard work and willpower, which in turn become easier if the PFC is well-trained.

You should now see the benefits of applying this philosophy and letting it govern your daily conduct; because practicing the PFC improves your ability to focus on something, and consciously choosing where to place that focus.

Summary of a Weak PFC

To summarize, here are some common indicators of having a ‘weak’ PFC:

◊ A craving for safety, comfort, and routine behavior.

Experiencing a massive discomfort when straying from the routine (this can be said about anyone due to the nature of homeostasis, but more so to a person with a ‘weak’ PFC).

◊ Often feeling uninspired; feeling lethargic.

◊ Reduced ability of perceiving subjective meaning and

infusing intent into their lives (feeling cool).

● ● ●

Recommended Reading:

Nathaniel Branden

Honoring the Self

+

Psychology of Self-Esteem

● ● ●


91

◊ A lack of discipline and inability to follow through on goals. Having a hard time ‘breaking the vicious cycle’ right NOW.

◊ Inability of remaining focused for longer periods of time.

◊ Failure to learn from past mistakes and quickly assimilate and apply new information gathered.

Know anyone that fits the description? Now you see that the PFC is crucial to the process of breaking out of homeostasis.

Your ability to snap out of autopilot and thus defy the self-sustaining feedback loop of homeostasis is largely dependent on activating the PFC.

You might picture the PFC as the enforcer of your will, whereas the rest of the brain consists of shirking employees. Or you could picture it as an overseer armed with a whip forcing the slaves to work. .

Good & Bad Stuff for the PFC

The best thing you can do for your PFC is to use it as much as possible.

Focus, even when it feels uncomfortable. Any activity can be used to strengthen the PFC.

Here are a few things to think about in relation to practicing your PFC:

◊ Learning new things continually is good for the PFC. When we learn new things or are thrust into new situations the PFC is very active. Doing routine work that we already know doesn’t activate the PFC, unless we do it to the point of where it becomes challenging and we have to make the active decision of continuing to do it – that is often what pushing through the plateau is about. This is why people who do routine work for years without learning new things or seeking novel experiences become like robots or zombies.

◊ Multitasking and/or switching between many activities per day detract from focus and hinders you from using the PFC.


92

◊ Ask yourself – who is in control right now? Make use of your PFC instead of living in reaction.

◊ Continually ask yourself: “How does this relate to my

goal!?” throughout the day.

Here’s a list of things that improve or boost the function the PFC:

◊ Any activity that requires prolonged concentration. ◊ Novelty of most sorts, anything that breaks the routine.

This is why traveling is so exhilarating to most people. o But you don’t need to go across the world to

practice the PFC. You can just take new routes when you walk to school or to work.

◊ Physical exercise and sports. ◊ Good sleep in a completely dark room (recovery). ◊ Meditation. ◊ Making a lot of decisions. ◊ Following through on decisions. ◊ Resisting instant gratification and temptations.

Exercising the PFC is not rocket science. It is easy in theory, but harder in practice.


93

Lasting Decisions

Positive feedback loop of the PFC:

(Note that this positive feedback loop is accurate for almost anything related to reference experiences and creating an

upward spiral, but in this case the PFC is the dominant object.)

To make a lasting decision is an excellent everyday tool for activating the PFC and holding your focus on something for a prolonged period of time.

It starts with the decision to do something no matter what. It does not much matter what you choose as long as you stick to it. The important thing is to make it very clear to your brain that this is a serious commitment.

This thing is going to be accomplished come hell or high water – there is no plan B or quitting. Once you have made the decision you are past the point of no return and must do everything within your power to make it happen.

You might decide to finish reading a book before allowing yourself to go to bed, writing a set amount of words for your paper before allowing yourself to quit, or abstaining from food for an entire day.

Let’s say you make the lasting decision of abstaining from food for a day.

It’s going to be easy for the first part of the day and you will have no trouble remaining focused on following through on the decision. Then during the second part you will face massive negative feedback from your body and brain telling you to quit and give into its urges.

Making Decisions

Stick to Decision

'Lasting Decision'

Integrity

Self-Esteem

PFC


94

The (hormonal) urges feel so real that you begin to doubt your abilities to make it through.

Logically you know that if you choose to eat something it is going to hurt your integrity and you will suffer in the long-term. This is the decisive moment in which your mettle is tested.

Will you be overcome by your urges for instant gratification and perhaps fall into unconscious autopilot, or will you persevere through it and build integrity?

The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me

[compared to normal people] is I’m not afraid to die on a

treadmill.

I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent

than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier

than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in

nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together,

there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die.

It’s really that simple, right?

You’re not going to out-work me. It’s such a simple, basic

concept. The guy who is willing to hustle the most is going to

be the guy that just gets that loose ball. The majority of

people who aren’t getting the places they want or aren’t

achieving the things that they want in this business aren’t

working hard enough.

It is strictly based on hustle. It’s strictly based on being out-

worked; it’s strictly based on missing crucial opportunities. I

say all the time if you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready.

― WILL SMITH ―

That’s a lasting decision.

When you commit to making a lasting decision you will initially feel empowered – because you’re activating the PFC. As soon as that happens you should harness it by memorizing how the sensation feels, and keep focusing on it as long as possible. With practice you will be able to sustain your focus and maintain that sensation longer before feeling the tug of homeostasis.

Remember – you chose this. It happened through your own volition. All the pain that comes with it is good. It will promote growth. You made that decision in advance knowing this – so don’t quit! It’s all about maintaining the focus and holding a specific intention.


95

Here are some other examples:

“Today I will remain positive all day and let nothing affect me or my emotional state negatively; I will not waver from the content state of mind I currently dwell in.”

Or:

“Today I am going to keep going for five more minutes despite what happens. The second I feel tired I’ll force myself to keep it up for at least five more minutes.”

By doing these things not only are you improving your chances of implementing these great mindsets as habits, but you are also exercising your PFC by holding your focus and blotting everything else out.

When the pressure is greatest to compromise, to drop out, or

to settle, your desire to quit should be at its lowest. The

decision to quit is often made in the moment. But that’s

exactly the wrong time to make such a critical decision. The

reason so many of us quit in the Dip is that without a

compass or a plan, the easiest thing to do is to give up. While

that might be the easiest path, it’s also the least successful

one.

Only quit if you’ve got a very good reason or it’s

premeditated. Never quit from sudden short term reasons

and panic.

― SETH GODIN ―

● ● ●

Recommended Reading: Seth Godin

The Dip

● ● ●

96

THE AMYGDALA

he amygdala is another interesting part of the brain. Some of its main functions are to form emotional connections to thoughts and memories, to give us empathy, and to keep us

alive in dangerous situations – i.e. the ‘fight-or-flight response’.

The amygdala causes us to react instantaneously in urgent situations –such as when we are driving and find ourselves pressing down on the break only to realize a few seconds later that we were about to collide with someone. Fortunately the amygdala made us press the break by circumventing our neocortex – the thinking part of the brain.

The amygdala is also at work when we get into a dangerous situation; this causes the amygdala to produce a fight-or-flight response that fills us with adrenaline. The adrenaline quickly fuels our muscles with glucose needed to fight or run away.

A lot of people freeze and get paralyzed when attacked or facing a dangerous situation. If you have never been in a fight before or if your PFC is ‘weak’, then freezing up is normal. It does not have to be a fight though, it can be any kind of situation so long as the brain perceives it to be dangerous.

While the amygdala was, and still is, essential to our survival, it is a major pain in the ass for modern man because it gives rise to a lot of unnecessary fear and tension –such as during public speaking or when we challenge the norms of the status quo. Or whenever we do something that might give rise to negative social feedback. The amygdala is overly active unless we train it not to be.

The more we exercise and develop our PFC the less power the amygdala will hold over us. This is the key point.

But scary things are still uncomfortable.

Even if we know all of this fancy information it will not change the fact that we still need to go through a lot of scary things in order to acquire a sufficient amount of firsthand experience to elevate ourselves above the amygdala. But, by understanding the theoretical workings of the brain we gain a bit more clarity of the process and can BOOH more easily.

T

97

YOUR BRAIN ’S REWARD SYSTEM

oseph Campbell said:

“Follow your bliss”

And I think that’s great advice – but it assumes that you are able to make the distinction between what is bliss and what is not.

Are the thoughts and urges you are having something that will lead you toward bliss or is it merely your body and brain repeating the same chemical pattern that it has gotten addicted to?

Knowing the difference can be tricky and will require metacognition. It will require that you’re able to elevate yourself above homeostasis.

When you practice metacognition more consistently in your daily life you will become better at distinguishing between what truly is your ‘intuition’ and what is merely the brain wanting to sustain its current form in terms of behavior and thoughts, through homeostasis.

Basic Meaning

When I use the word reward system I am referring to the neural pathways connecting the parts of your brain called the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the nucleus accumbens.

Whenever we encounter some form of stimulus that we think is enjoyable or pleasurable, the reward system will flood the three aforementioned parts of our brains with dopamine and make us go after it. If we were successful in getting that stimulation (we usually are) and found that we liked it, the reward system will make us go after it again and try to reproduce that same experience.

The reward system gives rise to most of our urges and determines what form of stimulation we chase. Tiger Woods has associated practice and working out with pleasure while a typical teenage guy has associated video games and snacks with pleasure.

You have built up these beliefs and associations over time as you have gathered information and experience about things, much like an ant running around with its antennas exploring the world, or a curious child putting things in its mouth to see if the thing is edible or not. For example if you are not in the habit of eating healthy it’s probably because you haven’t formed the belief that it is good for you, and you aren’t associating good emotions with doing that.

J


98

Much of your unconscious behavior stems from the brain’s reward system. The following chapters examine this system of yours to see if it serves your purposes or not.

* * *

The things that have made us feel good in the past have been enforced as behavior through the reward system; all of this is physically shaped in the neural pathways of our brains.

The dilemma is of course when we have a reward system that goes against our goals, which is the case for most people. This makes it harder to follow through on goals because we are being torn in multiple directions and become uncertain about what to do.

On one hand we have the existing reward system that wants to be sustained and thinks the best way of getting stimulation is through what we are already doing, and it will trick us through various ways already explained. And on the other hand we have a goal that we desire to reach; but since we haven’t reached it we haven’t got any experience to ground the theory of why acting in alignment with our goal is the best thing for us. This makes us experience akrasia, decision anxiety, and cognitive dissonance.

Akrasia

It’s not uncommon to consistently act wrongly even though we‘re highly conscious of it, this is called akrasia.

Akrasia is Greek for lacking command over oneself, to go against your better judgment. You might logically believe that something is ‘good’ for you, but your brain’s reward system is wired inconsistently with that logic belief.

Akrasia is the difference between really being as opposed to trying to be something. It results from logically believing something, but lacking the firsthand experience to back it up and internalize it on a fundamental level of your personality.

This means that you think you know what is good for you, but the knowledge hasn’t been grounded in anything real.

Acting acratic means that you lack practical reference points; that somewhere in your thought process there’s an assumption or opinion which you falsely and unconsciously regard as a fact when in reality this assumption is only backed up by theory, and not in real experience.

Decision anxiety arises when the brain needs more evidence to be sure about something, or when it has trouble changing its beliefs. The brain calculates and weighs one alternative against another, but


99

it lacks enough data; it needs more reference points before trusting in the new theory: Theory 1: Ice cream is good for me, it makes me happy. Theory 2: ice cream is bad, it makes me fat and sugar is deadly. When this cognitive dissonance arises, the brain will by default take the path of least resistance – this means the neural pathway most traveled. Unless you can muster the willpower and redirect its course by using your PFC, you will unconsciously take the easy way out that requires the least amount of energy. In all likelihood you will keep doing what you’re already doing in alignment with your reward system.

The solution for beating akrasia is to stop compromising.

Respecting the Power of the Reward System

Napoleon had much insight on the workings of his brain. For example, when he finally divorced his first wife Josephine – with whom he’d been madly in love with, and thus extremely emotionally addicted to, he immediately ordered for the door that connected their large apartments to be shut by bricks and mortar. He also removed all memorabilia still present in his houses that reminded him of her. By doing this he would have a much easier time rewiring his brain to get over her.

I imagine this was an incredibly hard decision for him to make because he was truly ‘whipped’ by her. She had the upper hand in their relationship for the most of the time. He would send her really, I mean really, pathetic love letters to which she usually wouldn’t respond to. He would then resort to writing several more letters in a frenzy of desperation and chase after her even more.

Good riddance.

To Trust or not to Trust – That is the Question

To completely trust your mind, body, and your emotion are as previously stated not always a good idea since the brain will give rise to resistance, doubt, and potential self-sabotage; all in an effort to make you stop your work and get you to sit down, shut up, and keep you hooked on its preferred choice of instant gratification.

To play devil’s advocate, it can often be a good idea to listen to and trust in your mind, body, and emotions once you have established the correct behavior and habits – but not before. Because now you have deliberately rewired your reward system to associate pleasure with chasing after the things that help you fulfill your goals. You’ve


100

gotten yourself addicted to the activities that are actually helpful and productive.

The point is this, don’t trust stupid and unproductive automated responses. Trust only the beneficial ones you put there yourself through persistent practice, like five more minutes, for example.

If you’re like most people and in need of thoroughly reprogramming yourself – then nine times out of ten don’t trust the voice in your head when in doubt and experiencing akrasia.

If you are at the bottom, stuck in the feedback loops of homeostasis, you have to be absolutely ruthless to yourself to get out of it.


101

Good or Bad Reward System

The brain’s reward system is either working to our advantage or it’s not.

The generally accepted notion that the person who we are today is the sum of past experiences is a rather disempowering way of looking at life – but it is very accurate in terms of how our brain’s reward system is wired. .

In theory we can make the decision to radically change our life for every second that passes by – let’s say we do. Yet, change will not happen immediately because we need to incrementally rewire our reward system, and that does not happen overnight.

This is where the PFC, willpower, discipline, intent, motivation, and similar tools for harmonizing consciousness come in. These things focus our consciousness like a laser beam.

Motivation or inspiration may come to a person quickly at times, but will it be remain consistent for years? I think not. Incredibly few people are inherently motivated. This is a way of life and something that needs to be practiced daily; we literally have to brainwash ourselves by repetition every day until it sticks, like Muhammad Ali did for years by constantly proclaiming that he was the greatest until he actually was. If we don’t, the motivation will not last and it will be dependent on the external events that gave us motivation, and it will wane off quickly as that external thing is taken away from us. Drugs are a good example of such an external motivator.

Let’s distinguish between two types of reward systems. To clearly illustrate these two reward systems, let’s put them in complete opposition to each other and look at some of their respective characteristics.

[See the image on the next page)


102

Suffice it to say that an unproductive and inefficient reward system is one of the key aspects that separate successful and happy people from those who are not.

It took me about half a year to gradually move out from the left side and move somewhere right of the middle on the arrow-picture above.

Unproductive & Inefficient

Productive & Efficient

Unproductive & Inefficient

• Instant Gratification

•Rewards Used Excessively

•Unplanned Use of Stimuli and Rewards

Productive & Efficient

•Delayed Gratification

•Rewards Used Sparingly

•Deliberate Use of Stimuli and Rewards


103

By the process of repetition and conscious effort I have implemented habits such as reading daily to become extremely enjoyable whereas I hated it in the beginning. I have taught my brain’s reward system to associate positive emotions with various activities I initially did not like.

Excessive Stimulation

Most people are addicted to all sorts of instant gratification and stimulate themselves excessively.

They get most of their stimulation from watching TV, browsing social networks and chasing other forms of instant gratification for the rest of the week. These are the things that they have gotten addicted to through repetition.

They have unknowingly taught their brains to engage in this behavior whenever they feel bored, making the sensation of boredom a powerful cue for starting to watch TV or sit by the computer so that they can get back to feeling stimulated. But this stimulation does not last long. They quickly need more stimulation or their brains become bored and disengaged, and that happens frequently. This is an evil cycle that slowly gets worse.

The PFC of people like this is not used enough, and their capacity to focus is usually in a suboptimal state due to continual multitasking.

* * *

We cannot change the fact that our brain by nature gets addicted to things, that’s just how we work. We cannot remove the reward system because it is the framework from which we fundamentally operate from. But we can change it. We can change our addictions and inputs for stimuli and information.

The rate of change will be determined by how much we can make ourselves practice and repeat a thing, by the degree of intent we can put into it, and the longer we are able to focus on what we want and keep our focus there.

The last part has to do with the PFC and the RAS. Activating the brain supports this process massively.

Now we are coming full circle; by understanding the process of BOOH we can now see how everything is connected and that we need to start gaining momentum and get into these positive feedback loops.

By applying the process of BOOH we can much more easily and efficiently do whatever it is that we want to do – to keep going with


104

the repetitions past a point we normally would not come close to or be comfortable with.

Work Ethic

Great things require hard work, nothing happens by luck. Hard work is made a lot simpler by positive habits.

If our reward system is crappy, we will have a very hard time achieving an impressive work ethic because we’ll associate pleasure with the wrong things.

A person with a crappy reward system is not likely to be very productive. Without a consciously chosen reward system we will find it difficult to work at anything of significance in the long-term, because that usually implies having to do at least some hard and boring work.

Without strengthening the PFC and thus our capacity for willpower and decision making, we will be lacking in the ability to delay instant gratification in order to pursue productive long-term projects. With a weak PFC we will lack the motivation and self-control required to sit down, shut up, and put in the time every day despite hardships.

Every time we face the choice of working hard now and reaping a large reward much later, or to slack off and be somewhat comfortable for a while, homeostasis will overpower us and cause us to neglect the first option in precedence of taking the easy way out.

Every single time we are faced with choices like this our brain will do its best to self-sabotage for us by opting for the easy way out. It will be making excuses or coming up with the aforementioned rationalizations as to why it makes perfect sense and is completely justifiable to take the easy way out.

The brain, being the little addict it is, wants its stimulation on time in the same manner that we have always been catering to it earlier in our life, and it will not take no for an answer.


105

The evil cycle of having a ‘weak’ PFC and a crappy reward system.

The process for strengthening your PFC and building reference experiences has to start at some point sooner rather than later or the cycle will continually sustain itself as per homeostasis.

CRAPPY REWARD SYSTEM

WEAK PFC

DISSATISFACTION

LOW MOTIVATION

BOREDOM

CHASING AFTER UNPRODUCTIVE

MEANS OF STIMULATION

MULTITASKING AVOID DEEP

THINKING

POOR FOCUS & ATTENTION

SPAN


106

Now and Then

Goods are bought only as they meet needs. Needs are filled only as

they are felt. They make themselves felt largely in leisure hours. The

man who worked fifteen & sixteen hours a day desired only a

corner to lie in and, now and then, a bit of food. He had no time to

cultivate new needs, hence he had only the most primitive.

― HENRY FORD ―

When Henry Ford set the stage for the new paradigm of industry and introduced the five day workweek, he knew that it would lead to more leisure, which in turn would increase the overall demand for consumption in the U.S, which in turn would cause people to work harder in order to satisfy this new desire to purchase material objects – a cycle of greed if you will.

Ford was afraid that this increase in leisure activity might make the common man idle, disengaged, and unhappy. But in the end Ford believed that the employee would be able to productively use his leisure, and that it ultimately was not his place to decide how other people decided to spend their time.

But he was wrong.

* * *

Around the time of 50 B.C in Ancient Rome Pompey built a large, flashy arena in order to gain popularity with the people.

This arena was actually the first to include seats and this gave rise to a fair bit of criticism. Some of the Roman senators were of the opinion that this new luxurious comfort would make the average citizen more docile, less productive, and more of a spectator.

They were right.

The same senators were afraid that people would become less active in the affairs of the state as they spent their time focused on cheap entertainment instead.

They were right again.

107

HABITS

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not

an act, but a habit.

― ARISTOTLE ―

Active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones

are weakened.

― C.S LEWIS ―

o have implemented good habits is like standing on the shoulder of giants.

Once you to get up there – make sure you hold on for dear life. Let nothing come in the way of you keeping your elite, hard-earned habits. Very few things are worth the risk of compromising a good habit.

Habits can be based either in action (behavior) or in thought (mindsets). The habit of picking your nose is a behavior while the habit of positive thinking is a mindset.

I usually distinguish between habits depending on their roles relative to each other. Important habits can be divided into smaller “sub-habits” that together improve the quality of the important habit. You could say that to break out of homeostasis (BOOH) is a big habit and that it consists of a many smaller sub-habits, some of which I have mentioned already.

T


108

BOOH

Exert More

Energy

Eating for Productiv

ity

5 More Minutes

Self-Experimentation

Metacognition

Activating Brain

Continual Action

Habit

Sub-habit

Sub-habit

Sub-habit

Sub-habit

Sub-habit

Sub-habit

Sub-habit


109

● ● ●

Recommended

Reading: Dan Coyle

The Talent Code

● ● ●

Practice – Repetition and Myelin

To consistently do your repetitions every day is of paramount importance; you already know of Hebbian Learning, which says that the more we repeat something (fire the same neurons), the stronger the synaptic connection gets. Neurons that fire together wire together, etc. etc.

I mentioned this in passing before, but here’s the longer explanation. The reason why practice makes perfect is because it helps us grow myelin.

Myelin acts as a conductor for the neural pathways and plays a crucial part in memory and learning; if we don’t practice a certain skill for about thirty days, the myelin around those neural pathways will start to decay and we will get much worse at the skill. That’s one of the main reasons used to explain why even if a person is muscular and fit, but hasn’t exercised for a few weeks, working out will be experienced as more strenuous than it was to the person a few weeks ago. The person might think that he has grown weaker – but his muscle size is still about the same, it’s just his memory about that particular motion that’s gotten worse.

Consider your neural pathways a system of electric currents. Every electric current will dissipate and lose efficiency if it isn’t insulated and has a proper conductor. Myelin is a type of cell that acts as an insulator and wraps itself around the axon of a neuron inside your brain. This in turn increases the power, accuracy, and speed of that electric current.

The more repetitions we do, the more our myelin will grow around that neural pathway, and the easier it gets for us to the same thing next time; of course this happens very slowly and we can rarely notice it from day to day. The amount of myelin in our brains keeps increasing (so long as we learn things and practice) until we are around fifty years old.

Helpful Tips for Practicing

In the book The Talent Code, Dan Coyle mentions a few ways in which the efficiency of practice, and thus the growth of myelin, can be amplified:

◊ Get the big picture, then start small-chunking it. Let’s say you want to become good at an activity. You start by finding someone that does the activity really


110

well, a person you want to mimic, because humans learn mostly through imitation. Then you watch this person do the activity, maybe play a sport, write a book or dance. You watch it as a continuous motion – the big picture. Then you start breaking the big picture down into the smaller segments. You small-chunk it and learn one of these small things a step at a time through repetition until they all come together; like a presentation with bullet points. o The challenge in this approach is in knowing what

the next step is; what is the main thing to focus on? Identify that thing, stick to it, then move on to the next thing by the same method. Deep and immersive practice at one thing at a time.

◊ Slowing down. This is my personal favorite, especially

when it comes to physical learning and bodily motions. Slowing down allows you to place more focus on the sticking points, it helps you attend to these errors more closely and perhaps resolve them before they happen. o I recommend that you film yourself during

practice if you have the ability to. Filming yourself while doing public speaking or in the gym gives you a better perspective and helps you find the sticking point, which you can then focus on by slowing down.

◊ Distinguishing between ‘flexible circuit skills’ and

‘consistent circuit skills’. Becoming good at flexible circuit skills, such as public speaking or writing, requires a larger number of varied connections between circuits (neural pathways) in your brain, whereas consistent circuit skills like playing an instrument or playing certain monotonous sports requires you to deeply master the basics because it is from the basic movements that you give form to everything else. Consider arm-wrestling for example, that’s a consistent circuit skill.


111

Unconscious Incompetence

Conscious of Incompetence

Conscious Competence

Unconscious Competence

Stages of Learning – Ladder of Competence

In Zen there is an expression known as the gateless gate which alludes to a person not understanding a certain matter at all, thus being stuck at the aforementioned gate. Later the same person manages to unlock or sneak past the gate somehow, and when he looks behind him, the gate is gone for it never existed in the first place.

Going from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence is a bit like that; first your RAS is finding the thing that you are trying to learn and you see it manifested everywhere, then, after a while you no longer need to consciously focus on it. After that you no longer notice it much more because you have assimilated it into your autopilot. It has now become a habit.

When we start learning a new skill, implementing a new habit, or anything else for that matter we struggle to understand because our brain keeps reinforcing whatever we think is true by exposing us to it everywhere by pattern recognition.

Incrementally we learn more and more as we struggle with the new concepts. When we least expect it we accomplish quantum leaps in learning, this is how each step in the ladder of competence is transcended as we have stepped up onto the next one. Our framework of understanding has evolved on a fundamental level and

Intuitive leap in understanding

Unaware & ignorant!

You know that you suck!

You can do it, but it requires persistence and conscious effort!

You’re a natural!

Unconscious Incompetence

Conscious of Incompetence

Conscious Competence

Unconscious Competence

You’re a natural! aanaturaleeeeeenteeeeeeeeeenaturalnatural! You can do it, but it

requires persistence and conscious effort!

You know that you suck!

You are unaware and ignorant!


112

no longer functions the same way as before; now it has likely formed connections to other neural pathways which have been strengthened by the myelin. Whatever problems or questions we struggled with a few days ago are resolved and we have progressed past them. We no longer think about these problems or experience them.

This is why it is can be hard for a master of a craft to teach beginners. The master’s frame of reference is so far removed from the situation of the beginners that he knows not in which stage of the learning process that they are. The master has already internalized and reached the state of unconscious competence in so many aspects of the craft; the master has long ago gone through all the processes that the beginners will be spending the next years focusing on. Unless the master has a great memory it can be a difficult task to identify with the situation of the beginners.

Journaling

The ladder of competence is one of the reasons why keeping a journal or commonplace are great tools for learning things.

Keeping a journal is one of the best habits to have no matter what you want to do in life, period. Start doing it today or regret it for the rest of your life. People who write down interesting things daily, such as their goals, daily evaluations of themselves, and so on, are much more likely to be successful in all areas of life. There have been studies about this, but to quote them and list specific statistics would be lame – I think it should be obvious that this is true.

When we read old entries of our journal it is often painfully obvious to note in which step of the competence ladder we were at in terms of some activity at that specific point in time.


113

How to Implement Habits

The greatest thing we can produce is character. Everything

else can be taken from us, but not our character.

― HENRY FORD ―

Decide in Advance

An essential part during the process of implementing habits is to decide in advance when you will implement the habit. Let’s say you want to implement the habit of activating your brain, so you decide in advance that once you wake up in the morning you will meditate or read, then when you get to work or school you will speak up as quickly as possible. To make sure you do not shirk you give yourself a deadline of fifteen minutes from the time you get to the location. By deciding in advance you force yourself to take action despite it being uncomfortable, and remember: if you do not follow through on your decision you will hurt your integrity by giving yourself a negative reference experience, and you don’t want that because it leads to negative self-esteem.

Deciding in advance provides mental clarity because it spares you unnecessary thoughts as your objective is already fixed.

But to do it efficiently you need to do quite a bit of thinking in advance and thoroughly identify situations in which you will want this new habit to become your automatic initial response. For example, you might decide that the next time someone or something gives rise to a negative feeling or thought within you, you are going to simply observe the emotion or thought without letting it attach itself to you, this time you will not allow yourself to react angrily.

The better you are at holding your focus and thus increase your chances of remembering to implement the habit as often as possible, the easier it becomes.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) in combination with the reticular activating system (RAS) will help you notice that which you focus on everywhere you look and will filter out other information and stimuli coming at you.

Our brains are like pattern-deciphering computers, so it is essential that we know what pattern we are looking for. Back in the day before neuroscience knew much about the PFC and RAS, guys like Tony Robbins used the analogy of the brain being like a missile in the regard that it would find its target as long as you knew where to aim. They would say that the brain is like a servomechanism. This

● ● ●

Recommended

Reading: Maxwell Maltz

Psycho Cybernetics

● ● ●


114

● ● ●

Recommended

Reading: Charles Duhigg

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do

in Life and Business

● ● ●

expression was coined way back in the 60s by Maxwell Maltz in his book Psycho-Cybernetics and the theory was pretty much the same as it is today, only now we use other terminology and have a slightly better idea of how it happens.

If - Then

This is like a follow-up to deciding in advance because it also involves planning how you will react to the situation to avoid self-sabotage or getting drawn into unconscious reaction to homeostasis.

You will expect a specific situation to unfold and make an If-then strategy for handling that situation to be ready to assume an already decided course of action.

Here are a few examples I have used recently:

◊ If I feel tired in the morning then I will stand up, drink some water and mix with glutamine, go outside and move around until I no longer feel tired. I will do this to prevent me from forming a habit of snoozing.

◊ If I get tired and unmotivated while writing this book then I will resort to reading it and checking for errors, and if that also is too strenuous for me then I will move around or rest for five minutes and go back to it.

◊ If I feel that something is scary and rewarding then I will do it just to prove to my brain that it cannot keep paralyzed in homeostasis through fear. I often do weird or uncomfortable things just to wage war on my brain whenever I catch it making excuses and trying to manipulate me. I do this to let it know that its excuses will not always work.

◊ If I feel like quitting amidst an important activity then I will remember to keep going for five more minutes.

◊ If I am tired and feel like sleeping then I will first review my whiteboard or notes to keep focused on the habits I am working on implementing. If I am lucky this will appear in my dreams and grant me an extra repetition and help me internalize it quicker.

◊ If I am stressed or if I feel that I am passively in reaction to homeostasis, then I will stand completely still for as long as it takes no matter where I am and


115

take a couple of deep breaths. I will not move until I feel a change in my state.

And so on; you could apply it to anything.

It’s really quite useful so long as you use it consistently. With a few repetitions of this If-then plan that you have constructed, the thing you have practiced should pop up in your head as your initial automated response the next time you are encountered with that situation.

Staying Focused on the Habit

As you think, so shall you become.

— BRUCE LEE —

If there is any one thing that discoveries in neuroscience points towards, it would be this. But you must think it repeatedly, multiple times daily.

A good way of keeping focused is having a whiteboard in your room to write the habits you are focusing on and rehearse them multiple times daily. You should also write down these things on a note of paper or on your cell phone or computer that you bring with you and review it multiple times every day to keep focused. I am currently using Microsoft OneNote and EverNote for my journals and commonplace, but there are many other note tools out there.

Doing these things reduce the risk of losing sight of what you are focusing on as you go about your day; forgetting means missing out on opportunities for your RAS to pluck out situations in which to implement the behavior that you want to habitualize. This means you are missing essential repetitions. Remember; whether we are mentally rehearsing or doing practical repetitions, those very same neural circuits are being fired and strengthened.

For example, if you are on a diet the most essential thing is to get through the first week or so without cheating, then it becomes way easier to sustain it. It’s the first week or so which is paramount to get through – similar to the plateau that needs to be pushed through to break out of homeostasis. But it’s easy to forget or get fooled by the brain to ‘forget’ (doublethink), or fall for excuses and rationalizations. If you are able to keep the goal in mind for most of the day, every day, you will significantly reduce the risk of failing the first week.


116

Length of Time

I usually keep the habits and mindsets and quotes that I am implementing on my whiteboard for one to four weeks –depending on the difficulty. I also reflecting on them and rehearse them several times a day until I finally manage to make them my first automated response to chosen events. Toward the end of the period it usually gets very boring, but that is when it is most important to press on, because for me that is a sign that I am very close to coming full circle to assimilating the new stuff into my long-term memory.

Beware of this mental recklessness, because the brain wants to quit just before reaching the finish line. The brain puts up resistance manifested in boredom and disinterest toward the end and I often get the urge to avoid looking at my whiteboard after a while. When this happens, and my metacognition spots the behavior, I know I am nearing the end of the process and that I don’t have much longer to go until I can change the text and start a new experiment.

The Brain and Habits

Habitualized behavior saves the brain energy. When some sort of information has become a habit it means that we have reached the stage of unconscious competence and no longer need to consciously think about doing it. Because we have internalized the knowledge we will now make use of the behavior without intruding on our conscious focus, which can now be used for something new.

While we are implementing a habit, especially during the stage of conscious competence, there is an increase of blood flow and dopamine to the prefrontal cortex. This increased activity in the PFC will gradually decline and once the behavior has been habitualized and we reach the stage of unconscious competence there is no longer an increase in blood flow to the prefrontal cortex; it constantly wants novelty.

The more good habits we have, the more mental capacity we free up for our prefrontal cortex and reticular activating system to focus on new things, for we cannot focus on everything at once – it must be small-chunked incrementally.

The key is to selectively implement quality habits or carry out goals continually. These are also a great ways of strengthening the PFC.


117

Linking Habits

Stimuli and response are closely linked and happen almost instantaneously. In this manner we closely link one habit to another habit and form patterns that fill most of our days. This is how Eminem started linking drug use to creativity, writing lyrics and performing, and eventually the rest of his life too.

* * *

I almost exclusively take cold showers after working out. When I am not working out I barely shower at all. I have been sick for a few days now as of writing this and have not been exercising. I have not taken a shower in five days now. The habits are linked.

It is important that we stop for a while to ponder what habits we link to each other.

I associate drinking coffee in the morning with reading, writing, or working out. I never drink coffee unless I do these things. Tea and cocoa on the other hand I occasionally use without doing these activities.

I do not know what sort of person you are, but I know that I very easily get addicted to things. I am on the verge of being addicted to coffee, even though I don’t drink as much as most people. I use it as reward for doing what I know is best for me in the long-term and never drink it otherwise. If I find that a new habit I am implementing is very difficult, then I usually link it to coffee, reading, or working out –because those are my main ways of rewarding myself after doing something that feels hard and boring.

Another example of linking habits is when you drink and smoke at the same time. This makes you enforce the connection between the two drugs and you will eventually want them in combination, even though you may usually dislike smoking.

Or perhaps you smoke and write in combination – then you link these activities and associate them with each other. Or maybe you play video games and drink energy drinks.


118

Using Homeostasis and the Law of Diminishing Intent to your Advantage

By now I bet you’re thinking that homeostasis is a bad thing, am I right?

Well, it’s like I said in the clarification in the beginning of the book; homeostasis is ‘bad’ for most people, but somewhat good for those of us who have made it far in terms of having a disciplined and productive routine.

It’s pointless to think of homeostasis as inherently bad, because it just is and we can’t permanently remove it. It’s always going to be there.

Therefore we ought to use it to our advantage if we want to be productive and get things done. If we can find ways of deliberately self-sabotaging our bad habits and addictions, we will then be using homeostasis in a constructive way.

The law of diminishing intent is usually at work when we procrastinate.

We get an urge to do something, but then when we do not do it right away it gradually becomes less important to us as times progresses.

One way to explain the law of diminishing intent is that when we do not take immediate action on our desires we signal to our brain that we do not care for its input. This in turn causes the brain’s reward system to gradually stop giving us these desires. Because we:

1. Didn’t think much about how good it would feel to do it. 2. Didn’t act on that desire, so we never gained the reference

point of knowing whether it actually was good or not.

In either case we effectively told our brain’s reward system not to chase after that form of stimulation; we never gave it a chance to start a feedback loop to get us addicted to it. If we do this repeatedly we usually stop getting the urges to do a thing.

Or explained differently; you have a thought and this in turn produces a unique combination of chemicals and neurotransmitters in your brain, and when you don’t do anything about it and you don’t try to reproduce the same stimulus, the brain quickly learns that this thought or behavior didn’t work, and it will be less likely to try the same thing again.


119

Bad habits and urges increase as we obey them; for example think of how many times you must have woken up in the morning and felt tired.

Logically you know that it would be better for you to get up right away and maybe you even do that. You get up and open a window or get something to drink.

But the urge to go back to bed is too strong and you give into it and decide to lie down for “just a few minutes”. A few minutes turn into half an hour and then you fall asleep.

This is one of those situations when acting on your desires is unintelligent. What you should do instead is to use the law of diminishing intent and wait it out. Get up and procrastinate going back to bed for as long as possible, and soon you will see that you no longer feel like going back to bed, because your hormonal levels are normalizing and you are starting to feel alert.

Next time you feel the intense urge to give into instant gratification or any other activity that you have sworn to discontinue, simply sit there passively.

Do NOT move away from what you are currently doing. You may or may not think about how nice it would be to give into the desire, but the important thing to keep in mind is that the longer you wait the less you will feel like doing the thing: for example, going to the store to purchase ice cream, sleep in, masturbate, do drugs, surf the internet, or whatever.

The Key Takeaway?

Procrastinate the bad things. Tell yourself you will make that decision in an hour. An hour later you’ll likely have forgotten it. And if not, simply sit and do something else until the desire goes away.

120

TIME TO WALK THE WALK AND FOLLOW THROUGH

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we

must do.

― JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE ―

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is best

expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run we shape our

lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die.

And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

― ELEANOR ROOSEVELT ―

y now I hope you have picked up a few practical methods to apply in your daily life for breaking out of homeostasis and for becoming a more productive and mentally disciplined

person. But theorizing isn’t enough. Theory is useless unless applied.

Reading and understanding theory is at best a third of the learning process. The rest comes from the process of trial and error and practical experience.

You are in this for the long-term. This is not something to be taken lightly. You are recreating your entire mode of operation on a fundamental level down to the structure of your brain’s neural pathways.

Give yourself at the very minimum a couple of months to succeed, depending on the extent of change. Lasting change doesn’t happen overnight or in a flash.

Also, it is incredibly important to understand that you are not going to be able to get instant positive feedback on many things that you choose to practice, you must be patient until your brain’s reward system has been rewired.

Just because you managed to BOOH very successfully a few times does not mean you have won and that the battle is over. It starts again the next day. See if you can reproduce the same experience. You may not be able to do that, and likely it is due to the fact that the you today does not equal the you tomorrow; sometimes we

B


121

experience significant moments of clarity and focus, but only for a brief period before reverting back to our normal state.

* * *

A lot of kids today need reinforcement. They need a pat on the back. Back in

those days, if you didn’t get the pat, you better pat yourself and keep

moving.

― MICHAEL JORDAN ―

When you start to break out of homeostasis, which I hope you will, people may not understand your ‘motive’ for putting in extra effort in whatever ways you have found to activate the brain, push through the plateau, and so on.

Many will not be able to identify with it and may think that you are being a tryhard. Disregard these losers.

Do not expect an abundance of positive social feedback. Most people are way deep in homeostasis and may dismiss the effort you put in as pointless. Whatever, leave them to their beer, chips and TV watching.

It’s called self-development. Not world development. No one can fight this battle for you.

Your work is with yourself, not others. By focusing on others you take away the focus from yourself.

Let’s do this.

―――――――――――――――――

122

THE END?

f you enjoyed reading this book and learned something you’ll probably enjoy reading my blog and the material posted there as well. And seeing as how I cut down the size of this book to about

50 % of its original size I will probably add some of that content to the blog as well.

I would be delighted to hear your opinions and feedback about the information in this book and whatever methods you use for breaking out of homeostasis.

Do let me know.

I hope to hear from you in the comment section.

www.Startgainingmomentum.com

I

http://www.startgainingmomentum.com/

123

LIST OF RECOMMENDED BOOKS

ere’s a list of all the books that I have recommended throughout the book. The books listed in bold text are the ones only mentioned in passing, whereas the

rest of the books listed in normal text are the recommended ones listed in boxes on the left side of the pages.

» My Big TOE by Thomas Campbell » The Psychology of Self-Esteem & Seven Pillar of Self-Esteem by

Nathaniel Branden

» Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon » Essays by Michele de Montaigne

» The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla by Nikola Tesla » The Human Animal by Desmond morris » The UltraMind Solution by Mark Hyman

» Various papers on allostasis by Bruce McEwen » Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky

» The Greatest: My Life Story by Muhammad Ali » Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold

Schwarzenegger » The Shallows by Nick Carr

» The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield » On Writing by Stephen king » A Way of Life by William Osler » My Early Life by Winston Churchill

» Mastery by George Leonard » Linchpin by Seth Godin

» Evolve Your Brain – Science of Changing Your Mind by Joe Dispenza » Change Your Brain, Change Your Age by Daniel G Amen

» The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons by Napoleon Hill

H


124

» Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Malt

» The Dip by Seth Godin » Various papers on motivational theory by Carol Dweck

» The Talent Code by Dan Coyle » The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by

Charles Duhigg

Date post:	22-Oct-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	dbrcs
View:	20 times
Download:	8 times

Break Homeostatis

Documents