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Takeaways from The Comfort Crisis
Jan. 11th, 2025 10:51 am- The natural human drive for comfort led us to find food, take shelter, flee from predators, avoid overly risky decisions, and do anything that would help us live and spread DNA. During this era, comforts were negligible and short-lived. In this uncomfortable world, seeking comfort helped us stay alive. But today, our environment has changed, but our wiring hasn't.
- As we experience fewer problems, we don't become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem, and end up with the same number of problems. The human brain likely evolved to make relative comparisons, because it uses way less brainpower than remembering every instance of a situation you've seen or been in. This allowed us to make quick decisions and safely navigate our environments. But applied to today's world, when we make relative judgments, we become less satisfied than we used to be with the same thing. When a new comfort is introduced, we adapt to it and our old comforts become unacceptable.
- In misogi, we use the artificial, contrived concept of going out and doing a hard task to mimic these challenges that humans used to face all the time. Then when we return to our everyday lives, we're better for it.
- Boredom doesn't make you more creative. It just tells you to do something. And when that something is letting our mind revive "unfocused mode" or "flow state," rather than consuming the same media as everyone else, we literally begin to think on a different wavelength. That's what creativity requires.
- 20 minutes, three times a week, is the does of nature (even a city park or backyard) that most efficiently drops people's level of cortisol. We should spend five hours a month in semi wild space like nature trails, hikes, picnics, fishing trips, or mountain bike rides. The three-day effect is at the top of the nature pyramid and requires background nature, where dirt roads end, wildlife is around, and other humans, bathrooms, and reception is not.
- A person should mostly be eating unprocessed whole grains (grains that must be cooked in water before we can eat them such as rice, oatmeal, quinoa) and tubers, fruits and veggies, and lowish-fat animal protein. This helps us find a healthy weight and keeps meal satisfaction high. An average plate could be a quarter animal protein, a quarter whole grains or tubers, and half veggies or fruit. Highly active people might want to do half whole grains or tubers and a quarter veggies or fruit. In Papua New Guinea, they eat cultivated tubers (yam, sweet potato, taro) supplemented by fruits, leaves, coconuts, fish, maize, tapioca and beans. In Bolivia, they eat rice, plantains, tubers, corn, meat and fish, fruit, and occasional wild nuts.
- We fully metabolize our last meal 12 to 16 hours after we've eaten it, depending on how much we ate. That's when our body releases the hormones testosterone, adrenaline, and cortisol, which acts as a signal to burn stored tissues for energy. But we don't burn our finest tissues; we get rid of a lot of dead and damaged cells.
- Bhutanese people think about death one to three times daily. Pretend you are walking on a trail, and there is a cliff in 500 yards. The cliff is death, and we will all walk off of it. When we know there's a cliff, we can change our course by taking the more scenic route, noticing the beauty of the trail before it ends, saying the things we truly want to say with the people we're walking it with. When you know the cliff and death are coming, you naturally become more compassionate and mindful.
- Westerners tend to blindly pursue checklists of things to get done and cram our lives with compulsive activity, so there's no time to confront real issues. This forces us into acts that take us away from a higher reality and happiness. Obsessively trying to improve our conditions can become an end in itself and a pointless distraction. The checklist phenomenon is driven by our search to "finally relax and enjoy the present." But we generally don't understand the underlying purpose of this search. Chasing the checklist for the sake of it is a false hope. Lasting shifts in happiness don't come from job promotions or stuff; they come from shifts in mental state, like becoming sober.
- When a person realizes death is imminent, their checklist becomes irrelevant and their mind begins to center on what makes it happy. Top regrets of the dying include not living in the moment, working too often, and living a life the person thinks they should rather than the one they truly want to.
- Everything is impermanent. Nothing lasts, so nothing can be held on to. By trying to hold on to something that is changing, like our life itself, we ultimately end up suffering.
- People who are able to detach from their emotions during exercise (for example, not thinking of their burning lungs and legs or putting a negative feeling around that sensation) almost always perform better.
- Do physically hard things, and the rest of life gets easier and you appreciate it more. Not doing physically hard things gets us out of whack. Humans need to sweat, be outside, and be part of a community.
- Altitude training changes mitochondria, which makes our muscles more efficient and improves how we bugger exercise-induced acids, allowing us to go harder longer. Prolonged, repeated bouts at altitude -- mountain misogis perhaps -- lead to the most profound changes.
- After a misogi, you will likely find yourself applying two lessons to life. You will have increased awareness, possibly in the form of a newfound appreciation for the comforts of our modern world. Or possibly in the form of recognizing so many more details about things that you didn't notice before, like exactly how many shades of blue there are. You will also have more of an awareness of time and how little we have. When you do more novel things, time slows down. Think less, notice more.
- As we experience fewer problems, we don't become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem, and end up with the same number of problems. The human brain likely evolved to make relative comparisons, because it uses way less brainpower than remembering every instance of a situation you've seen or been in. This allowed us to make quick decisions and safely navigate our environments. But applied to today's world, when we make relative judgments, we become less satisfied than we used to be with the same thing. When a new comfort is introduced, we adapt to it and our old comforts become unacceptable.
- In misogi, we use the artificial, contrived concept of going out and doing a hard task to mimic these challenges that humans used to face all the time. Then when we return to our everyday lives, we're better for it.
- Boredom doesn't make you more creative. It just tells you to do something. And when that something is letting our mind revive "unfocused mode" or "flow state," rather than consuming the same media as everyone else, we literally begin to think on a different wavelength. That's what creativity requires.
- 20 minutes, three times a week, is the does of nature (even a city park or backyard) that most efficiently drops people's level of cortisol. We should spend five hours a month in semi wild space like nature trails, hikes, picnics, fishing trips, or mountain bike rides. The three-day effect is at the top of the nature pyramid and requires background nature, where dirt roads end, wildlife is around, and other humans, bathrooms, and reception is not.
- A person should mostly be eating unprocessed whole grains (grains that must be cooked in water before we can eat them such as rice, oatmeal, quinoa) and tubers, fruits and veggies, and lowish-fat animal protein. This helps us find a healthy weight and keeps meal satisfaction high. An average plate could be a quarter animal protein, a quarter whole grains or tubers, and half veggies or fruit. Highly active people might want to do half whole grains or tubers and a quarter veggies or fruit. In Papua New Guinea, they eat cultivated tubers (yam, sweet potato, taro) supplemented by fruits, leaves, coconuts, fish, maize, tapioca and beans. In Bolivia, they eat rice, plantains, tubers, corn, meat and fish, fruit, and occasional wild nuts.
- We fully metabolize our last meal 12 to 16 hours after we've eaten it, depending on how much we ate. That's when our body releases the hormones testosterone, adrenaline, and cortisol, which acts as a signal to burn stored tissues for energy. But we don't burn our finest tissues; we get rid of a lot of dead and damaged cells.
- Bhutanese people think about death one to three times daily. Pretend you are walking on a trail, and there is a cliff in 500 yards. The cliff is death, and we will all walk off of it. When we know there's a cliff, we can change our course by taking the more scenic route, noticing the beauty of the trail before it ends, saying the things we truly want to say with the people we're walking it with. When you know the cliff and death are coming, you naturally become more compassionate and mindful.
- Westerners tend to blindly pursue checklists of things to get done and cram our lives with compulsive activity, so there's no time to confront real issues. This forces us into acts that take us away from a higher reality and happiness. Obsessively trying to improve our conditions can become an end in itself and a pointless distraction. The checklist phenomenon is driven by our search to "finally relax and enjoy the present." But we generally don't understand the underlying purpose of this search. Chasing the checklist for the sake of it is a false hope. Lasting shifts in happiness don't come from job promotions or stuff; they come from shifts in mental state, like becoming sober.
- When a person realizes death is imminent, their checklist becomes irrelevant and their mind begins to center on what makes it happy. Top regrets of the dying include not living in the moment, working too often, and living a life the person thinks they should rather than the one they truly want to.
- Everything is impermanent. Nothing lasts, so nothing can be held on to. By trying to hold on to something that is changing, like our life itself, we ultimately end up suffering.
- People who are able to detach from their emotions during exercise (for example, not thinking of their burning lungs and legs or putting a negative feeling around that sensation) almost always perform better.
- Do physically hard things, and the rest of life gets easier and you appreciate it more. Not doing physically hard things gets us out of whack. Humans need to sweat, be outside, and be part of a community.
- Altitude training changes mitochondria, which makes our muscles more efficient and improves how we bugger exercise-induced acids, allowing us to go harder longer. Prolonged, repeated bouts at altitude -- mountain misogis perhaps -- lead to the most profound changes.
- After a misogi, you will likely find yourself applying two lessons to life. You will have increased awareness, possibly in the form of a newfound appreciation for the comforts of our modern world. Or possibly in the form of recognizing so many more details about things that you didn't notice before, like exactly how many shades of blue there are. You will also have more of an awareness of time and how little we have. When you do more novel things, time slows down. Think less, notice more.
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