Do the Opposite - Rock Bottom Can Be Good For You, Antidotes to Overwork, Your Brain on Refined Sugar

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Why Hitting Rock Bottom Can Be Good For Us

I once read this story, (I don't remember the source, so forgive me for not citing it) about a man who walked to work every day along a small street with many houses in it. In one of the houses, on the porch and old couple would sit every morning, the old man reading the newspaper, the old lady knitting. Between them lay an old dog and would constantly whine. It didn't bark or cry, only whine – quietly and hopelessly. That went on for many days.

One day, the man finally decided to ask the old couple why their dog always whined. The old lady responded: "Oh, there's a nail head that sticks out a little in the porch where the dog likes to lie down. The pain is enough for the dog to whine, but not enough for it to move to another spot".

Though somewhat unrealistic, this story provides a great metaphor for how we live our lives. Often we tolerate certain habits and actions in ourselves that we know are bad for us, because even though they are bad, they are not bad enough, not catastrophic.

We work at a stressful job for a couple of years before developing panic attacks or gastritis due to stress, and only then we decide to quit. We constantly overeat and only decide to make changes in our diet when it becomes hard to climb stairs. We waste precious hours upon hours every day watching TV series and movies (talking to myself here big time) before we look back and 5-10 years have passed and we got nowhere we could've gotten.

Despite sounding pessimistic, all of the above are part of the natural flow of life. There is cause and effect. Sometimes we don't consider the causes to be harmful until the effects pile up or escalate quickly. We hit the rock bottom. In this case I am using the phrase "hit the bottom" not as a metaphor for failing in everything in life, but as really dropping the ball in one particular area of life.

The thing is, often we need to hit that bottom before we can muster our will to make a decision to change and to follow the plan with unrelenting self-discipline. These rock-bottoms have saved millions of people - because there is a confidence in one's power that comes from knowing that it's impossible to drop further down, this is as bad as it's going to be, and with effort we can ascend once again.

One thing that can be extracted from this pattern is: if you're able to see and recognize yourself dropping the ball to some degree, way before hitting the bottom, you can start taking consistent action to remedy the situation, thus saving yourself from having to go all the way down before coming back up. Think of it as if you were climbing a large hill, and then slipped and started sliding down. If you can catch yourself 2/3 of the way down, you significantly reduce the amount of work you need to do to go back up. Even if you fall down to the bottom of the hill, no problem - just start climbing back up. It's the effort that counts.

Personal Update: Running Along the Airport Runway

This past Saturday I participated in the Runway Run, held at Toronto Pearson Airport. We ran along the actual airplane runway, which was a lot of fun. I did 5K as you can see from the t-shirt on the photo below! There were 2200+ runners there and I was suprised by the size of the event - I expected to maybe see 200-300 runners. I guess lots of people think planes and aiports are cool :)

Articles:

1) "Parenting’s New Frontier: What Happens When Your 11-Year-Old Says No to a Smartphone?" by Virginia Heffernan
Virginia tells a story of what it feels like to disconnect and experience life to the fullest, inspired by her son's protest against using a smartphone. This is a topic I often think about and try to find ways to practice it more - the disconnection from the digital. I don't think we should all go and live in the forest or abandon technology altogether. Instead, we should experiment with both using technology and going without it for brief periods of time, like a technology detox (something Tim Ferriss is a proponent of). That way we can learn to use technology mindfully so that it serves our purposes and goals, rather than being controlled by it. Sometimes all the technology (Social networks, the Internet at large, endless apps) feels like being stranded in the middle of the ocean and trying to swim, not really knowing where the land is and being thrown around by the waves. What we want is for technology use to feel like we are driving a racing car, fully in control of it. The car just makes us go faster than we ordinarily would.

2) "How Giving Up Refined Sugar Changed My Brain" by Michael Grothaus
It never ceases to amaze me how much refined sugar compromises the body and all of its systems. In a sense it's a drug that's considered normal and even good by the society at large (in fact, there's that often quoted study that showed that sugar lights up the same zones in the brain as cocaine). Anything you can do to lower your intake of refined sugar - is a step forward towards a longer and healthier life. Coming back to the Do the Opposite ethos: if everyone is doing something it doesn't mean they are on the right track – more often than not, the opposite is true.

3) "Antidotes to Overwork" by Leo Babauta
The majority of us is overworked. We often make a sort of deal with ourselves that if we push ourselves through the pain of boredom and/or hard work, we can relax later knowing that we are doing our best. Unfortunately, that is often the lazy way out: lazy not in terms of the effort we put into "toughing it out" but in terms of thinking, prioritizing and recovering our own time to work on things, skills and projects that are dear to our hearts.

It's a type of procrastination, but on a grander scale of life. Rarely are our extra efforts appreciated at work, an d, in my opinion, we should be minimizing the time we spend on work related things, and focus on our own projects, because the chance of a better outcome for us is higher. At the very least we won't be selling the time of our best years to build someone else's (or worse: shareholders') dream. I think a better way to think about work is: prioritize the activities that bring the most results back; refuse and push back (as much as possible) busy work that serves little purpose for the organization; try to find ways to improve and streamline the processes.

Think about your work life balance. Maybe you've been putting a lot of effort on the line at work for years, but not seeing the appreciation and results? Then it might be time to either lighten the load you are bearing OR find another job. I love this article by Leo where he shared practical advice on what to do when you are overworked.

Videos:

"How I climbed a 3,000-foot vertical cliff -- without ropes | Alex Honnold"
You've probably already heard about Alex Honnold, who have solo-climbed rocks and cliffs previously considered impossible to beat, and all without any safety nets and support. One could say that staring death in the face is his occupation. In this video he tells his "origin story" himself, as well as covers his 3 most important climbs.


Tweet that resonated with me

Ethos:

Quotes:

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?"
– Lance Armstrong, "It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life"

"Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good."
– Malcolm Gladwell

"To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again."
– Pema Chodron

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Keep doing the opposite,
Alexander Kallaway
Website: dotheoppo.site
Twitter: twitter.com/ka11away