Possibly one of the best DIY self help, brain fix, auto mind penetration for better, more massive mental reconstruction, books ever written
Combining Possibly one of the best DIY self help, brain fix, auto mind penetration for better, more massive mental reconstruction, books ever written
Combining the scientific with the personal emotional to better understand the reasons Other authors might have just focused on the theoretical, neurochemical, brain architecture, epigenetic traits, etc. way, the just psychiatric psychological foundations, or on personal, emotional examples, but by combining the science and knowledge offered by Perry with the wisdom and real life experiences of Oprah, the book reaches new levels of accessibility to help readers find out how broken they really are. And accepting and understanding what caused years and decades of self doubt, fragility, and mental problems is the key to the solution in the form of a fresh, better, and more stable self.
The medical, neurological part of PTSD and trauma manifested and shown with real life examples that might be disturbing and too much for some readers The above mentioned balance stays perfect throughout the whole book, Perry delivers the understandable, broken down science which is spiced and exponentiated by Opray, who is not getting weaker by opening herself up to what happened to her, but stronger by accepting, forgiving, and thereby creating a positive, better, and healthier self. That´s another key element, not believing that one is this body, emotion, diagnosis, or mind, but that´s it´s just the current, changeable state one can form to whatever kingdom or hell one wants to live in. Including another extremely challenging part, not forgiving, but accepting the perpetrators and the impact they had without triggering flashbacks.
The baby makes the child makes the teen makes the adult brain and identity. Understanding that one can get out of her/his skin, break the doom loop, escape the self made mental torture chamber, can just be achieved by reflecting on how the present state of mind has been reached, what made one the person one is. Desillusion of self and ego, something close to enlightenment, might be an a bit too big, unrealistic option for beginners, but the central, most important key element on the way is the same. Accepting that one doesn´t have to be the person, described by adjectives, mindsets, or mainstream psychological traits, one was made and used to be, because change is possible. And just that milestone leads to
Healing and an end of suffering Just by understanding and realizing how miserable one really is, the step towards finally growing scars, on wounds festering for years, can be done. Gratitude, exercise, mindfulness, meditation, Buddhism, perseverance, and discipline are necessary to reach this extremely tricky goal. Social nets and family can help, but the most essential part is to transform and metamorphize from helpless victim or mentally sick and unstable patient who suffers, takes pills, goes to therapy for years, and never dares to dig down to the core of the problems and confront oneself with them, to someone developing auto self repair functions and resilience.
Don´t fight or flight, meditate and find inner peace The key problem, I found in close to all similar works, is to never understand that an untrained monkey mind is an accelerating self destruction train that is getting more and more momentum by changing neural passways, by deepening all problems by conditioning the personality to more fear, fright, avoiding behavior, and mental problems. While awake, the demons, memories, and injuries keep popping up as they wish to, old associations are mixed with the current life and one doesn´t even want to know what happens while sleeping. Of course, perfected mind control and years of practice are a damned hard challenge, but without that tricky psychological workout, one ends with a different, weaker, far less armored, and save brain and mind.
Personal drivel What motivates me to reach these therapy, Buddhism, meditation nonfiction works is mostly an egoistic wish to pimp my mind to perfection, because I have the extreme luck of not having real traumatic problems, just the usual WEIRD first world problems with childhood, parents, family, the usual ridiculous stuff when compared to people who suffered real, long time mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Those might find one of the most successful ways to deal with their issues, to find a better way back to a normal life. Because the more I understand how severely my minor mini traumas influence who I was, am, and will be, the more respect I have for people who find ways out of the abysses of things done to them, so terrible that close to all average people wouldn´t find a way back out of the screaming nightmares haunting them.
Other great, similar books that are dealing with improving ones´ psychic bodys´ defences:
There are huge loads of books that tell one how to be happy, mindful, but not why and don´t show in such immense detail the unbelievable impact of becThere are huge loads of books that tell one how to be happy, mindful, but not why and don´t show in such immense detail the unbelievable impact of becoming the Buddha. Such a cool God, tells one to search for errors in his ideas he calls not perfect, that´s a rare occasion.
Buddhism, neuroscience, psychotherapy,... tell one quite the same as Shawn does, but he does it in such a thrilling, understandable and astonishing way and mixes all approaches together to a laughing amalgam.
Positive psychology is the interdisciplinary idea and new science field of not just using the, often criticized, methods of psychology and psychotherapy, but to substantiate and fuse the good ideas with meditation, mindfulness, introspection, and self(mind)control.
Of course there are limits, horrible things that happened to people can´t be laughed or meditated away, in those cases the self-help has to be accompanied and mixed with psychotropic drugs and therapy. But for each lucky person who hasn´t suffered or is suffering from abuse, violence, illness, mobbing, loss of loved ones, poverty, mental disease,... there is truly no reason to be something else than happy.
Not any other person, a memory, the world; the opposite, adversarial political, ideological point of view consensed in annoying humans, other drivers, whining kids, nagging partners, lazy workmates, parents-in-law, newspapers,... make one angry, unmotivated, hateful, misanthropic, disinterested,... It´s oneself who cuts inside her/his own flesh by letting those outer impulses and past memories and future sorrows occupy the current state of mind and so the chain reaction kicks in.
Anger breeds hate, violence more violence,... What should a toxic person do it she/he recognized that you never get angry, stay calm and friendly, make them even angrier because you openly show them that you just smile at them, don´t care, ridicule them instead by not reacting in a negative manner to their provocations.
Leaving the circle is so easy by first just doing nothing and automatizing and perfecting the mantras and methods of meditation, mindfulness, autogenic training, laughter yoga,… We are creatures of habit and cultivating the dark or light side hundred to thousand times a day forms a life. One can see the last time consequences and whose side they devoted their lives to in elder peoples faces and differentiate if the lively eyes bursting from creativity are outlined by laugher lines or if it are dull eyes with worry lines, making them look like a turned around joker face with huge labial angel wrinkles hanging as deep as possible. Both epic monuments of a life lived happily or miserably.
And because happiness comes with huge health benefits, it´s very possible that the positive grandpa may still be laughing while grumpy old men have already killed themselves a long time ago, by not just opening the doors to their minds for each negative emotion, but their physis for much more illnesses and directly self-induced stress-related health problems.
Immortality sounds... nice. Too utopic, still, but prolonging life for spans that seem unimaginable at the moment may be a standard procedure in a notImmortality sounds... nice. Too utopic, still, but prolonging life for spans that seem unimaginable at the moment may be a standard procedure in a not so far future.
Sinclair, a professor of genetics and expert in the field of the science of aging from the Harvard medical school, summarizes the status quo of how to stay young and healthy as long as possible.
At the moment, the way to a longer life is a pretty hard one, focussing on some elemental and prooven elements: Workout for both strength and endurance. Have a happy relationship and a social network of few, close, real, true friends. Tricky. Rarely eat until you are replete, calory restriction, fasting, detoxication, time-restricted eating, and a healthy diet are some of the most important factors because they can slow the aging process. Other factors are nice too, but those are the ones that don´t just boost your happiness and immune system, but really let you get old slower. Not just each cigarette shortens your life, but each extra snack too. Pets aren´t a bad idea. Find fulfillment in work, but a work-life balance too. Perfect sleeping cycle between 7 and 9 hours with or without power naps, but one between 15 to 30 minutes might be recommended. No orgies, drugs, very small doses of alcohol and sugar, no getting fat and untrained. Curiosity, trying new things, always searching for something new and different, brain training, puzzles, foreign languages, self-reflection, life-long learning. Mindfulness. Be happy and resistant to stress, be conscious, meditate. Control of emotions and thoughts Etc.
There is a huge and completely unnecessary exposition and anecdote problem in Sinclair´s writing, a prime example of very clever and competent people who don´t take the time to invest in creative writing and science communication skills, not to speak of show, don´t tell. Instead of driveling about the organization, unimportant parts of research, himself, and even some completely irrelevant things, he could have used these dry, boring knowledge as exposition by including it in stories, not making it an appendix one asks why it´s there, because readers want the science of aging, not the boredom of bureaucracy that let´s one feel immortal by slowing time to zero. That´s especially a missed chance because there are so many sciences and knowledge around this topic of, well, dying later, that dozens of books could be written about it from the perspectives of different fields.
By simply avoiding this inflation with the help of a professional science writer, cutting aways at least half of the redundancy and empty narrative calories and pimping the rest, as many of the leading science nonfiction writers use to do, he could have made a solid 5 star and presented his knowledge in a much more appealing way. When people write autobiographies, they should name, and not camouflage, their mindchild.
The hard truth is, until a probable wonder cure may make one immortal, the only way to possibly live until this point is to live the very hard life of an always hungry, happy, curious, positive, etc., ascetic. Good genes might be helpful too and in understanding those might lie one of the first medical applications, first in adding them in vitro fertilization processes to create long-living humans and later possibly in adult ones too or even create new longevity genes. To pimp telomeres so much that they last forever and youth never goes is more of a long-term perspective.
The nuclear option for pimping, rebranding, fine-tuning, and perfecting grey cells. Atomic also in one regard: As long as it works, it´s perfect down The nuclear option for pimping, rebranding, fine-tuning, and perfecting grey cells. Atomic also in one regard: As long as it works, it´s perfect down to the smallest part, each atom. If it fails, it´s radioactive and self cannibalizing, -destructing- and demotivating.
To exaggerate, we can develop great working, social. and creative habits or destroy ourselves with neuroticism going haywire, find great ways to optimate oneself or madness, just read anecdotal filled pop psychology/science/philosophy books one can read without the danger of the hard work of really changing something or choose the difficult way and this book.
The 1st Law Make it obvious Repetition and consequence, as if it wasn´t so shamefully obvious, is one of the key elements to everything, a skill, foreign language, school, degrees,… and the funny thing is that successful people use learning, creativity, memo-, techniques to perfect their skills, but forget the motivational, critical thinking, analytic retrospection, optimization, meditation-,… techniques, and, most importantly, to recapitulate, criticize oneself, let others criticize oneself, reflect, and develop. There is always some space left toward top performance but without modifying or even changing habits, they won´t be possible and nothing is more painful than stopping a working, well known, perfected, but ineffective habit, using an oldfashioned program, modify a schedule, use knowledge and expertise in a new, complicated, unknown way, etc. The brain is a bit bitchy, nagging, and one´s worst enemy, because it´s a lazy manipulator, not wanting one to do something that means real work for it, trying to make it feel as uncomfortable as possible, wanting easy stagnation instead of sweaty evolution.
The 2nd Law and 3rd Law Make it attractive and easy As if this wasn´t already painful and difficult enough, the self experimental subject now has to implement unused, and thereby for the crying, sobbing, angry brain very painful, new neuronal integrated circuits because, as one knows, reptile stem brain and monkeys social anxiety wants one to run far away from everything new, different, possibly dangerous. Here the inner demons have to been disguised as angels to make the whole agony as attractive as possible, a kind of hopeful masochism. Detecting the deficits has already wasted vast resources of willpower and now one doesn´t even have the legitimation to kill and destroy positive change with anger and negative emotions, but the new mind baby has to be raised next to the rascals one has to be tolerant and sympathetic towards.
The 4th Law Make it satisfying Reaching this point is tricky, as one needs the stamina, perseverance, and resilience not to resign. As the old behaviors often aren´t directly harmful, just unproductive and used, they will come whispering and trying to get a hold of the subconscious mind to develop back towards the beginning. Humans are creatures of habit and whenever one just loses track and motivation for a second, their siren calls will try to lure you into old behaviors whose reminiscences are still lurking behind each screen, interaction, or working process.
And as if all of this wasn´t torture enough, it should come with personal development and vivisecting one´s personality, thoughts, memories, all these things that seemingly aren´t directly related to work, too. Because hidden in the chasms of each simulated reality lies the key to boosting the occupational performance even more by eliminating all the mental corpses of complexes, childhood traumas, anxieties, phobias,… As long they are not overcome, they keep holding one down, interrupting the workflow, reducing concentration, focus, the quality of sleep,… even changing the obvious problems won´t unleash the full potential.
A tip, after I´ve read a few of the most highly recommended DIY self brainwashing mind penetrating behavioral modification endeavor books for dummies, I´ve come to the conclusion that most of the theory, techniques, and schedules can easily be found during a longer google search, a Wikipedia or special wiki and Reddit, Quora walk, just using the essential keywords, bookmarking a few dozens to hundreds of pages of interest, copying the subjectively most essential and useful elements and still begin with the 1st law. But it would at least have cost you nothing.
It´s getting a bit anecdotally and subjective now, even personal (cause people seem to like that stuff for whatever reason) and, of course, misanthropic, so don´t be shy to stop reading here and saving time and eye power that could be focused on reading something profound. Seriously, I´ve warned you.
One of my main advantages is that I am naturally neurotic, a bit of still under control and productive, not negative elements of perfectionism, some might say soft OCD, but who listens to people, pedantic; a bit antisocial, and cold, rational, things very helpful when implementing new behavioral patterns because one doesn´t care about whatever other people think.
I am a bit biased here, because I have the, depending on the standpoint, positive or negative tendency to overachieve and excessively focus on one thing for weeks and months up to 12 or 14 hours a day, obsessive might be an understatement, let´s call it possession instead. Afterward, it´s often difficult to say how the final results, ideas, solutions paths developed, but conditioning oneself to combine focus and flow to hard fun and gamification, optional collaborative learning, yuck, might be a good alternative to just partying hard.
This leads me to the extroverts that might face massive deficits in this regard, as they have the unfortunate tendency to spent much unproductive time with other people, leading to excessive, exponentially growth of sympathy, friendship, contact, dangerous pheromones, endorphins, territorial alpha behavior,… manipulating logical thinking, in the worst case not just resulting in friendships, but love, relationships, and kids bringing the distraction in your home, permanently, reproducing and multiplying it and giving it names, all things that make one ineffective, cost time. So start avoiding people, feel cold, sad, and dead inside; and whenever you are doubting, compare what the introvert vs extrovert forever achieving score lists brings in comparison, all science and technical evolution that is human history vs all BS, war, extremism, tradition, all evil isms. Doesn´t an empty, lonely life seem a small price for helping primate progress? Don´t forget thanking me for ruining your socialization with these stupid tips, lol.
But seriously, social life is another prime example of habit, one becomes the people she/ he is in regular contact with and attracts more of these people, a dynamic one should not underestimate, and they all feed on you lifetime by craving for your attention, just compare how much one can get from articles and books in comparison to real life drivel filled with small talk, redundancies, errors,..., heck even the better memorization and internalization of content by social contact can be achieved with sophisticated learning techniques. To continue the isolationist standpoint (joke), it´s of course meanwhile absolutely unnecessary to make anything face to face and not in home office, VR, AR, psi transfer remote perception,... the technological singularity in general makes it more and more useless to leave the home castle.
The book unites much that has already been written about intermittent fasting, real long time and permanent weight loss, how to eat healthily and, as The book unites much that has already been written about intermittent fasting, real long time and permanent weight loss, how to eat healthily and, as the ultimate goal, die later.
It´s the perfect companion to Gregers´ first, groundbreaking work How not to die that showed how certain illnesses can be prevented and what foods boost the possibility of longevity, but didn´t explain in detail how to endure the path to the perfect weight and blood levels.
Let´s say that many weight-losing methods might be effective in short-term periods, but many know this critter named jojo effect who sometimes even adds the one or other pound after the motivation got lost and fatigue set in again, but at least the beauty and weight-loss industry was happy.
So instead of taking pills, overexercising, fasting without a real concept, plan, method, dietary change and not stopping craving for unhealthy foods, one could try to go for a long-term perspective. And here come two immense problems: willpower and temptation. Probably cousins of the mentioned jojo effect, they love to go hand in hand, because the strength of self-discipline enables one to consume one small piece of cake, one beer or just 15 potato chips. (That´s the reason why I always drink just 6 beer or more.) Go with the last one, because these crispy killers are a prime example of the problem how freaking delicious those murderous delectations are, damn, what I would do for a potato chip and a sixpack right now…I mean, a second one of course.
It is highly individual how someone deals with this problem, be it avoiding anything, binge eating from time to time or staying somewhere in the middle, using it as a motivation or reward. Even then it stays still similar to smoking just one cigarette, taking just one drug,... de facto giving just a little illness, lesser cancer, and the immense pain to control the brain's dark impulses for more and more and far too much.
Gregor shows the pitfalls and cures that don´t work in the first chapter "The problem", provides us the "ingredients for the ideal weight loss diet" in chapter two, which includes many aspects of his first book "How not do die.", gives a short introduction to the coming lifelong challenge in chapter 3 and gets really heavy-duty in chapter 4, where the awful truth is revealed in all its details. One has to, gosh, eat clean, work out, starve,... consequentially, hard and forever (stupid science, develop immortality, now!) to life long.
That chapter blew me away, it united many facts I already knew from books, articles, and news sites and added some other amazing tricks to reach 100, still able to run faster and debate down much younger 70 to 80-year-old rugrats.
People might be unsure if it´s worth it, because I have become pretty extreme in avoiding helping to give unnecessary illnesses exponential growth boosters and I don´t have to lie (anymore ;))regarding the happiness that comes with the reduction to the necessary and optimum. It´s brutal, it´s ugly and it makes no fun for the first few months or one or two years, but I like to compare it with consumerism or an unwary, not mindful ego.
Consumerism: If one is hooked on buying and accumulates tens of thousands of consumer products instead of just acquiring what she/he needs to live, the person is pushed, driven and manipulated by trivial hunter-gatherer instincts, impossible to find true happiness. Unhealthy nom-noms are consumer products. No mindfulness: Just as living self-made commercials, the monkeys jumping around in one´s brain do whatever they want, make it impossible to have longer, coherent, deeper thoughts and let one jump nervously and neurotic from trigger to impulse to emotion to hangry. Mind over body, total easy dude.
Not being able to control food intake combines the consumerism in the form of vast amounts of deadly junk trash garbage called food and the missing realization of how one is harming the only body given to her/him. Reducing the food intake to the healthiest and most natural optimum is not just prolonging the life, it is saving real-time that is instead used to choose the weapons of self-destruction by buying newer, shinier, chemicalier highly processed industrial trash. If one has the luck to get old with such a diet, what should the reminiscence look like? „Do you remember, when those new beef patties with many varieties for home cooking came out? We stood in the kitchen for days, trying all new recipes and the one time you ate 7, wasn´t that funny?“ „I nearly had my third heart attack.“ „You see, totally worth it!“
Before this epiphany I had 3 meals a day and let´s say, I didn´t really care about what I ate. Silent whispering in the background: "You were fat!" "Shut the heck up!" That changed too, but to describe my eating habits in detail, why and how they evolved would go too far and Goodreads has this limit on how long reviews can be and I am already talking far too much about myself. I changed to this schedule: 6 am: carbohydrates, protein, milk products, nuts, dried fruits, seeds, wholemeal cereal. No bread, rolls,... 12 pm: carbohydrates, vegetables, less protein (cause I want a break between the 6 am and until 4 pm intake). No empty carbohydrates like noodles, pure flour,... just the fresh, natural form as rice, potatoes, durum,... until 4 pm: just fruits, whey, natural sport dietary supplements, hemp protein, soja protein, etc.
In general, I am some calories below the daily intake I should have with exercise, ergo and bodyweight training and am hungry at morning, short before lunch and from 7 pm until I go to sleep and sometimes I am completely nuts or, better said, even more than usual, and eat close to nothing for one or two days. Jay, doesn´t that sound funny? But the thing is, the rare times I eat more than usual or substandard junk, probably accompanied by those two demons alcohol and social contac..., I mean conventions, I feel dumber and sicker than after a day of just veggie, fruits, tea, and water.
The greatest advantage is the saving of time that comes with clean and lesser eating, because all that chewing around is reduced to the necessary minimum and one can choose from a few hundred fresh ingredients that can be eaten cold, or cooked, or prepared and portioned for cooking and frozen, or cooked and frozen. Trying out new recipes, searching for new, interesting herbs, veggies, seeds,... and combining them is the alternative to keep searching for the latest poison in the supermarket, those assortment has become mostly uninteresting, which saves enormous amounts of time, because just the fresh, mostly organic stuff is bought there and the rest online, automated and (hidden commercial alert) subscribed. You see, just as with general shopaholism, there is hardly any stuff in a megafoodstore that one really needs, except for wasting time, money, and losing a few years of life by the way.
It´s tragic funny that humans are unable to associate the things they eat with the fatal problems the consumption causes up and down the whole spectruIt´s tragic funny that humans are unable to associate the things they eat with the fatal problems the consumption causes up and down the whole spectrum, from immediate, small damage that accumulates over years to terminal illnesses. I´ve been one of those until realization and insight kicked in and I did a 180 to a kind of extreme permanent clean eating, natural, organic, no sugar, fat, etc. lifestyle.
Certain foods are no nourishments, they are drugs and the similarities are evident. A short high, followed by a craving for more, permanent increase of the dose, loss of interest in any other food until to completely losing control over eating habits, weight, health and life that is primarily focused on what to eat when and as much as possible.
As an illustration: Three people, three ways of eating. Extremely unhealthy with the most unnatural, fat, artificial, industrial food in the right corner and the vegan Übereater in the left corner (don´t allege that I am hiding any subliminal political statements in this review, it´s just about the food, so back to the topic.) Between the intolerant eater of just some kinds of fast foods and other junk who doesn´t care or think about her (yes, I was shocked too)/himself, the world and science and the elflike, progressive warrior for a better world is the place where most of us are standing right now, so which way to choose?
Or compare industrial food with natural substances, be it on the biochemical, physiological or neurological level. Highly processed stuff loses all of its healthy contents and is filled with tens of thousands of different artificial chemicals instead while the clean eater eats what was normal for millions of years. The epigenetic, genetic and brain chemistrytic consequences could get nasty.
Dr. Greger does an unbelievable job in first showing how most dangers can be avoided by eating against certain diseases, what is especially interesting if someone has a genetic predisposition for certain health problems, and describes the best general nom nom compendium for staying fit in both body and membrane.
Who doesn´t listen to doctors and health specialists pays the bill and instead of researching for cures for genetic or not nutrition-related diseases, physicians waste their time in curing unnecessary illnesses with huge amounts of pills and drugs that wouldn´t have to be described to finally add their patients to a pile of corpses those quantity no one can reliably guess. But it might grow exponentially with the spread of the obesity epidemic and American lifestyle to the rest of the world when states are becoming wealthier.
Some say that Greger is biased towards vegetarianism and veganism and the question arising in my head when confronted with such opinions is what the problems of meat-eating, overconsuming, overweight, general ignorant people is, it even can´t be envy because of the far longer lives of conscious eaters, because they are too narrow-minded to even realize what they are doing to themselves and the planet. The only left option fort hem is to troll hate sh**storm as much as possible out of a primitive reflex to be against anything progressive that could help them not to die young and very sick. People seem to transfer their not see, not hear, not say mentality from politics and faith even to their eating habits and start crusades against anything alien and unaccustomed, it´s so weird. Friends often tell me that they try to help their elder relatives, especially the manly (why are it always the men who are bonkers...I like having the gender-related N-word privilege) uncles, fathers, and grandfathers and get reactions between condescension and strong reluctance towards the bearer and resign in most cases, probably someday, rather earlier than later, culminating in a dialogue like this: "He died." "How ineluctable and not completely senseless." Before there may be the vicious cycle of not exercising, taking many prescription drugs after getting sick from the junk food, taking useless artificial vitamin pills, antioxidants, miracle multi-component pills and stuff instead of eating fresh foods, not having the discipline to make a diet or gain weight after one,... And before the tragedy: "I don´t believe in those "telomeres", they are just another fake news, conspiracy theory stuff like this climate change thing." It´s quite similar to a stubborn, spoiled and petulant kid, they are virtually adult kids whose parents didn´t give them the skills to finish the deviant phase.
How should I put this mildly... We are, in many cases, eating ourselves to an early, unnecessary death while giving vast amounts of money to the dealers of doom who cook those nasty, potentially always, last meals.
No calory bomb, but a explosion of knowledge about how to stay as healthy as long as possible with the side effect of as less environmental impact as possible, because by avoiding or completely banning meat, just eating natural, not industrially processed foods and, gosh, eating less, the environmental footprint goes down just as the body weight and the possibility of an early encounter with the grim reaper.
Before this epiphany I had 3 meals a day and let´s say, I didn´t really care about what I ate. Silent whispering in the background: "You were fat!" "Shut the heck up!" That changed too, but to describe my eating habits in detail, why and how they evolved would go too far and Goodreads has this limit on how long reviews can be and I am already talking far too much about myself. I changed to this schedule: 6 am: carbohydrates, protein, milk products, nuts, dried fruits, seeds, wholemeal cereal. No bread, rolls,... 12 pm: carbohydrates, vegetables, less protein (cause I want a break between the 6 am and until 4 pm intake). No empty carbohydrates like noodles, pure flour,... just the fresh, natural form as rice, potatoes, durum,... until 4 pm: just fruits, whey, natural sport dietary supplements, hemp protein, soja protein, etc.
In general, I am some calories below the daily intake I should have with exercise, ergo and bodyweight training and am hungry in the morning, short before lunch and from 7 pm until I go to sleep and sometimes I am completely nuts or, better said, even more than usual, and eat close to nothing for one or two days. Jay, doesn´t that sound funny? But the thing is, the rare times I eat more than usual or substandard junk, probably accompanied by those two demons alcohol and social contac..., I mean conventions, I feel dumber and sicker than after a day of just veggie, fruits, tea, and water.
The greatest advantage is the saving of time that comes with clean and lesser eating, because all that chewing around is reduced to the necessary minimum and one can choose from a few hundred fresh ingredients that can be eaten cold, or cooked, or prepared and portioned for cooking and frozen, or cooked and frozen. Trying out new recipes, searching for new, interesting herbs, veggies, seeds,... and combining them is the alternative to keep searching for the latest poison in the supermarket, those assortment has become mostly uninteresting, what saves enormous amounts of time, because just the fresh, mostly organic stuff is bought there and the rest online, automated and (hidden commercial alert) subscribed. You see, just as with general shopaholism, there is hardly any stuff in a megafoodstore that one really needs, except of wasting time, money, and losing a few years of life by the way.
This is a fact-based and serious book that uses brain science, evolutionary psychology/biology and sociobiology to prove each claimed assumption and mThis is a fact-based and serious book that uses brain science, evolutionary psychology/biology and sociobiology to prove each claimed assumption and maybe one of the best explanations of how and why mindfulness and a livelong training and evolution of meditation and self-reflection might be advisable.
A few examples: Someone working hard and achieving amazing results after decades of training and exercising to become a leading expert, master, maybe even a prodigy, world elite. People bursting full of enthusiasm, charisma and happiness, spreading it as if it was a renewable energy source they could never run short of. A classical, stereotypical Buddhistic monk or a kung-fu master. A surgeon, soldier or emergency doctor, staying cool and focused for hours. Etc.
They all have what all others are desperately searching for, control over their minds. Be it innate, epigenetic or just regular practice, guess what way could work for nearly everyone? By starting practicing right now and never stop being mindful again many of personal, unreachable seeming goals can become possible. But that´s just about controlling the mad monkey in one´s single brain.
Where other books about the topic end, Wright begins to dissect the functioning of all aspects of a human mind and how a loss of objective serenity just always leads to problems, no matter if it is a family of 4 or a state of hundreds of millions or humankind. All those group dynamics, ego, being right or wrong, getting angry, sad, etc. were really fancy vehicles as long as we were nothing more than animals, but in highly developed civilizations, where uncontrolled emotions are no evolutionary advantage anymore, they just bring pain and sadness. Of course, it´s about the bad, negative emotions, not cutting love and joy out of one's soul.
Wright has the idea of a new, real-life based Buddhism without focus on afterlife, reincarnation, heaven, hell, etc. and instead a basis on the philosophical and scientific ideas that help everyone to become a better human by integrating the knowledge of psychology and evolutionary biology/psychology at a purely scientific base without any faith or potential for extremism.
Happiness and joy is a free choice and everyone can freely choose between it and neutral or pessimistic, but both the neurological and Buddhistic approach show that it might just hurt oneself. It is much healthier and makes one stronger, because we are social animals that are functioning better, be it as extroverted people lovers or as introverted stay at homers, when we enjoy what we do. It´s a shield against any harm and it´s an armor that is easy to wear and impossible to permeate, because if someone is cool about everything and takes everything negative, even provocations, positive, she/he is indestructible. In contrast, someone who protects her/himself by anger and hate, is permanently boiling her/himself in everything negative the biochemistry of the body can provide and is much easier to attack or be provoked to overreact.
As long as we were even more primitive and hairier apes (how I love calling everyone a monkey, hey, chimpanzee over there, yea, looking at you, do you want a banana? Don´t forget, anger is your enemy, I am just helping you, don´t throw sh** at me please.) many of those mental dysfunctions were helpful. Find oneself great and think that everyone else is an idiot. Check. Prone to group dynamics, opportunism and hierarchies to build mighty tribes. Done. Building a conscience, ego and higher intelligence by repeatedly believing and thinking the same things to shape the wetware. Bingo. And then, well, it quickly escalated, because narcissistic, cognitive dissonant, psycho primates (ha, got you again!) are a true pain in the gluteus maximus for themselves, all other groups and those poor, innocent planet under their swift paws.
A short utopia: Out of calm and mindful minds grow more when they reproduce and the more they get the more influence they have on the state and if everyone would be enlightened and realized how destructive ego and negative emotions are world peace and a sustainable economic system would come and, but wait, stop, dystopia just called, saying humans are humans. The sad end of the story.
No, just joking, forget the misguided and deluded ones who aren´t guilty, just had no chance and are impossible to heal, focus on the next generation instead. With each kid, able to control her/his emotions, self-reflection, self-criticism, stay objective, believe nothing, stay evolving and adapting and always curious, you make Buddha laugh.
And questioning and changing anything may bring us away from many self-destructive paths we are currently on as humankind, to realize that there may be the too objective, too easy and egoistic and wrong Buddhistic approach to say that there is no right and wrong, nothing matters, no true or false, the mind is empty, total objectivity is king, all is an illusion, etc. That´s a sophisticated way to say that one's own peace of mind and easy, stressless life is more important than to stay motivated, positive, neutral and engaged in both civil society and politics to make a change happen.
Not all that seems bad is just evil and not all that seems good is pure gold, instead the wrong, destructive, dangerous and misleading ideas out of all ideas humans ever had, have to be eliminated because there is just a collective way in the middle of the road together, not with everyone walking angrily, sulky and offended as far at each side of this metaphorical entity that is our all lives.
But all compromises have to be evidence-based, no soft science, no mumbo jumbo humanities, just real, hard-science based long term, reproducible studies, not funded by anyone interested in a certain outcome. This is also how this amazing author wrote a must-read book and how we as a society can overcome our animalistic roots, urges and instincts to something more worthy of the Latin name sapiens in the article description.
So how could it happen that even not within a generation all humans have been transformed into smombies and what happens when someone stops getting peSo how could it happen that even not within a generation all humans have been transformed into smombies and what happens when someone stops getting permanent outer input and listening to all inner voices and soliloquies? Cleaning silence, awareness for each moment or, ta-da, mindfulness.
One must imagine what the extremely slight context to other topics of all this information dump does to brain, logic and mind. The focus that originates from reading a book, working, writing, thinking, etc. doesn´t come in these cases at the cost of real effort, but with easy and sweet intermittent positive reinforcement. Emotional, funny, shocking and, most important, frightening news flashes, tweets, burning hot latest news, kitten and food porn. And similar kind of as I heard a friend of a friend recently talk about.
There is pretty much capacity for getting lost in the social network dragnets controlled by ominous spiders and the desire to acquire some of those precious, pretty products and to fear some of those gritty, evil immigrant communist terrorist leftist,... grows. Again, a huge real-life experiment in how messed up brains get in as less time as possible, especially including VR, AR and more and more realistic video game graphics.
This book has a more philosophical approach than "Digital Minimalism, How to break up with your phone, etc." It´s about digging deeper, probably asking: "Hm, who could benefit from this development of tailored filter bubbles and news brought to each device." Even people who know that newspapers, TV news channels, etc. aren´t really trustworthy, tend to believe their personalized newsfeed. I mean, it comes from friends, family and is related to hobbies and all such feel-good stuff, so it can´t be that bad. Except for turning one in a permanent passive, easy to manipulate recipient of permanent mind spam that eats away lifetime.
As a solution, the author presents bioregionalism, less consumerism, more decentralization and the average suspects for a better world, but as long as humans don´t realize the grade and sophistication of media and news manipulation, those noble ideas and ideals are chanceless against glittering, glamorous gamification and shopaholism. An untrained mind is not just like a monkey, it is an easy to trick one that; OMG, I need that product I didn´t even know about now!; eats each shiny banana given by a stranger, no matter how poisonous and filled with psychoactive indoctrination drugs it might be. Now please go and click the banana like button under this objective and true review if you want more yellow enjoyment.
I know the irony of writing such a review on a social media platform, but as always there is potential for both good and for bad, for modest consumptiI know the irony of writing such a review on a social media platform, but as always there is potential for both good and for bad, for modest consumption or addiction. One should always keep in mind that humans are social animals, prone to getting addicted to interacting with each other. Online. 24/7. Until real life (which one was that still...) collapses
Probably the one or the other reader might tend to eat too much sugar, fat, has quit smoking or even worse things like online gaming. In each of these cases, a different strong bodily and or physical addiction has triggered the craving for more. It´s not difficult to see the problem when the doctor tells you that you ought probably lose weight, quit this, reduce that, yada yada yada, what does he know, it´s my body, health and life.
Now we get stimulated with each like (Please, oh please, click the button under the review, I need it so desperately, my whole life circles around it, click it, damn!), message, comment, etc. Our brains are wired to social interaction because happy apes in groups meant survival while lonely apes in the dark jungle meant yum yum for predators. So some of us (except a large, but underrepresented group of introverts, ahem) get pretty stressed as soon as the confirmation of popularity doesn´t grow, stagnates, or even, inconceivable goes down. Why don´t those complete strangers don´t support me anymore? In nature, we could be dead now. No more drug-like hormone exposition in the brain, so that the flow kicks in, just sadness.
Any company with an allegedly free business model, running a social media site, search engine, etc. knows that. So thousand of high skilled experts do nothing except of trying to get as many people as hooked on as possible, considering age, gender, social status. It´s as if an organized drug dealing cartel had employed people to tailor and advertise their products to each possible customer base.
But hey, humans have a free will, at least in theory. What the book is trying to tell us is the same thing each monk and Buddhist says all day long each day of her/his life. Get your mind trained, meditate, stay calm, check your feelings, needs and especially cravings. Ask why your construct of personality in this wet mess up there seems to do what it wants. You are the ego it simulates, so you should really try to at least take control for a few moments every day and expand to longer periods, perhaps half hours or so.
Ideology might play a large part here too. Completely ignoring the social and human part can lead to a technocratic, cold and alienated world. Doing as if no social media exists can destroy possibilities to something that might get closer to Gaia than nothing before. It´s, as many wise doctors often said, the dosage that makes the poison. Or the demonization of the poison, although it would be the only possible cure for many problems.
It could be easy by just checking social media once or twice a day for a certain time and take a day, weekend or even holiday (Is he crazy?) off. A mini-hiatus. Just like computer gaming addiction, the social media addiction is something just existing in your mind and as someone who quit smoking (many times) I can tell you that there are really other burdens that come with real physical cravings and not just the inability to control the delay of the answer to the question of how many people have shared and liked my precious, precious review of this book that can also be read on my: Fictional twitter link Fictional Facebook link Fictional whatever the latest freaking popular overhyped social media thing, app may be.
It is not as if I am playing with fire when using this social book cataloging network, mkay. OMG, the self-deceit. It´s not as if I had already before lost complete control about different social networks or computer games or beer and weed consump... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinkin.... But I have a really fix schedule on using Goodreads and... just more self-deception, look at that poor buddy, now he has even begun talking about himself in the third person as if he thinks he is someone special or some of those strange kings who talk about themselves as "he". And bigotry, of course, too because of the yada yada about enlightenment, preaching water and drinking wine, one of my favorite hobbies. U still reading, anyone else guilty? I hope so, please, don´t let me be the only social bookmarking addict on this site!
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this, yuck, ugh, boo, completely overrated real-life outside books:
Giggling away all kind of stress factors and emotional insecurities without sophisticated, time-intensive and advanced, thousand-year-old techniques
LGiggling away all kind of stress factors and emotional insecurities without sophisticated, time-intensive and advanced, thousand-year-old techniques
Let´s say there are 2 elder people, one is the grumpy, probably even dirty, old men and the other one is a completely happy go lucky, permanent smiling happy Santa guy. They don´t just differ cause of their biochemistry, epigenetic factors and social life, it´s their whole approach to everything that makes the big difference.
I have been reading books about Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, etc. for a few years until I thought to have reached a tiny amount of inner peace and for quick success, this is definitively the best method.
It´s the power of the coming giggling, the ability to control it Yoda style. As someone who tends to laugh about his jokes and has a healthy amount of narcissism, I tended to use the practice of laughter yoga unconscious for years. Fine that it´s positive effects are now evidence-based too and it reminds me in a certain way of Chi, how the energy gets concentrated and released by pure will power, just without training and concentration.
In contrast to meditation and mindfulness, it is so easy, quick and simple that one can start just immediately. No month and years of hard training, no different successes depending on the health and mental status, no long time loading up until the energy can be released.
Take meditation: Long, very regular training, as soon as one stops for some time it can be "back to the beginning" in the worst-case and yes, it may be boring from time to time. Or mindfulness in the eye of a problem, provocation or toxic person. Very difficult to stay friendly and don´t burn inside by invoking the forces of hell to burn this person to ashes.
And now there is simply joy, happiness, laughter that can be actively or passively used to improve one´s feelings. Actively by simply staying at the point of breaking out in laughter, never crossing the point of no return, as if one had the willpower to just laugh inside without any indication that shows the true feelings to the outside world. Passively by cultivating a kind of inner laughter that takes the place of a mantra or meditation set and washes away all bad and evil thoughts and emotions.
Certainly, the grade of uncontrollability and spontaneity makes it a not as exact tool as meditation or mindfulness. But it is a quick antidote against inner and outer problems, boots much faster than other methods, boosts with immense hormone release and cultivates a happier, faster and opener mind. Combining the control of emotions by classical methods and the release of positive emotions by laughter yoga may be the best ticket to be successful in taking nothing serious anymore.
And yes, I laugh alone, because I am more the autodidactic, single learning type kind of person. I don´t go to group sessions, I train alone laughing like a lunatic. Ahem. It´s handy to don´t need other people or drugs for endorphin release anymore and its also much cheaper to just train by a book and youtube tutorials.
The only nutrition guide I have read so far and, in my opinion, the only one one needs to stay slim and healthy. Probably mixed with the steadily actuThe only nutrition guide I have read so far and, in my opinion, the only one one needs to stay slim and healthy. Probably mixed with the steadily actualized tips on diets by the World Health Organization, nutritionists, health experts and doctors including individual factors as age, gender and general state of health.
I experienced the positive effect by coincidence when I was forced to eat less, or better said, didn´t dare to eat much, cause of 3 retarding wisdom teeth that had suddenly begun moving and had to be surgically removed in 3 separate surgeries after another. In retrospect, I can say that that was one of the best things that ever happened to me, although it might not seem like that. I lost weight, was hungry all the time, got a dentist phobia, just joking, and discovered that my mind felt clearer and more focused after this meditative fastening cure.
So I wanted to know what´s behind this topic and, voila, there are books about it. Imagine the following: If an organism in nature hasn´t enough food and begins to starve, the body has no time to age anymore, cause survival is much more important. The body searches for everything that could be used and finds all crap, sickening stuff that accumulates in the body if one doesn´t take breaks from overeating. The effect starts just after about 8 to 14 hours, the studies vary on that, might be pretty individual too, metabolism, genes and stuff. That can even go so far as to finding and deleting mutations that could otherwise lead to cancer. And here comes the kicker: There is a reason why many religious groups used and still use fasting in their practice. It makes one happy, high and clear at the same time.
Back to my experience. Before this epiphany I had 3 meals a day and let´s say, I didn´t really care about what I ate. That changed too, but to describe my eating habits, why and how they evolved would go too far. I changed to this schedule: 6 am: carbohydrates, protein, milk products, nuts, dried fruits, seeds, wholemeal cereal. No bread, rolls,... 12 pm: carbohydrates, vegetables, less protein (cause I want a break between the 6am and until 4 pm intake). No empty carbohydrates like noodles, pure flour,... just the fresh, natural form as rice, potatoes, durum,... until 4 pm: just fruits, whey, natural sport dietary supplements, hemp protein, soja protein, etc.
So most of the time I have a break from eating for 14 hours, if I sleep longer or do no workout, it could be 19 hours if I have breakfast at 8, lunch at 1 and nothing else. Eating nothing for whole days or longer seems too extreme to me because I don´t think that the stress to the body can be compensated by the health benefits. Except if it is for health reasons or a self-discovery trip, but sport can get one high too without getting really hangry. Hm, seems as if I have become a food blogger without even recognizing it. Sponsor link of food product still to add.
I don´t want to go back, cause I feel better, think faster, my blood levels are wonderful, my BMI at 21 to 22, depending on the seasonal muscle growth and how much time I have for sport and training and each time I overeat at night cause of those social norms and constraints I feel that lesser is much better than too much. Cause the freaking fats, sugars and carbohydrates have the pretty nasty habit of downing the brain.
Yes, it is bitter at the beginning, but the extremely positive effects for body, soul and mind should help to endure the months up to a half year until one is accustomed to it. The hunger in the morning is the lesser problem, but in the evening it can get ugly. I could say that I never eat without being hungry. But I personally prefer to live much longer hungrily than to die early and replete. And, as a negative surplus, loose huge amounts of living time with just nom nom nom that could really be used more productively.
And if one wants to lose weight, the simple physics of reducing intake and increasing fat burning seem to be the simplest, but hardest solution without any danger of a yo-yo effect. Cause all those fancy weight loss guru books are (general) useless without a long term perspective, dietary change and discipline, just as it is in all areas of life.
Probably it might be fine to combine the whole thing with a mental superstructure, build of meditation, mindfulness and the tiny amount of enlightenment one can probably find with a lot of luck. It is not as if I wouldn´t enjoy eating as before, I would say that the quantity has decreased and the quality has enhanced. I mix slow, conscious eating with eating while reading, but I don´t think much about what to cook or get influenced by displaced foods in supermarkets which I tend to not even register. There is a large variety of healthy foods and meals that get extended if I read something about new food and I have a weekly and monthly eating plan, but I don´t waste time anymore with thinking about foods. As soon as there are no addictive, unhealthy ingredients in it, that gets much easier and I tend to optimize the progress of keeping me alive as long as possible in every aspect.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this, yuck, ugh, boo, completely overrated real-life outside books:
Mario the lone bookwolf
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