Do the Opposite - Switch Off Your Auto-Pilot, Intelligence of Plants, Where Pain Lives, Project SPHINX
Greetings friends,
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Switch Off Your Auto-Pilot
We live most of our lives on auto-pilot. That's just the nature of things, of the way our brains work - running our habit loops. We, of course, can interfere, when we "come online" in our own heads, and in those windows of time we can make decisions that will put us on the new path (kind of like putting our train on the new rails that lead somewhere else). The more we course correct, like a guided missile, the more successful we are, and faster we are moving towards our dreams.
The problem we encounter is that with the hamster wheel of our days, we don't often "wake up" to look around, we are stuck in doing the same things we've been doing for years, the same behaviours, the same good and bad habits, the same excuses, the same lies we tell ourselves ("I will definitely start doing that! Tomorrow is the day!")
To solve this issue we need to teach ourselves to create more "awake moments", where we look at our lives as if from aside, and are able to spot where we are steering off course, or maybe when we have no course at all, and are just drifting.
I don't think it's possible to "be awake" all the time (unless you are enlightened :), nor do we need to be, but if we increase the frequency of these moments and if we actually use them when they arise, we will be much better off.
You know exactly the kind of moments I am talking about. Washing the dishes and realizing that you truly love your partner and you are glowing in appreciation and gratitude towards them. Walking home from work and taking another route. Running and coming up with an idea of a business or a way to improve some part of your life. Deciding that you've had enough and leaving a bad relationship or an evil boss/company. All of these decisions and moments come to us when we are truly connected, fully "online" and wide awake. So how can we manufacture more of them and train our brains to pause the thought/worry humdrum in which they live.
Here are some ideas:
1) Take a notebook with you and create a timer(s) for the whole day to go off every 30 minutes. When the alarm goes off, write down what you are doing at the moment. The results after a couple of days of this practice will often be eye-opening.
2) Take some time super early or before going to sleep (10-15 minutes) with your notebook, analyzing the day, writing your to-dos for tomorrow. This will reshape your days, with you now being in the driver seat of the day, as opposed to letting things and situations happen to you.
3) Once a week, take your notebook+pen only, no gadgets, and go to a park or a coffee shop, and write out your goals, plans, what you would like to do in the near future, think of what you would love to be doing, how you would love to live, and more. The options for this step are endless. You might decide to write a list of things/people you are grateful for, or just have a "free-writing" session to allow your subconscious to spill onto the page. Anything you decide to do will be helpful for your life alignment and adjustment - so it comes closer to what you know deep inside it should be.
4) Do physical activity of any sort. Do as much as you can, for example run or swim as much as you think you can do. Then, do some more of the activity, going beyond what you thought would be your norm for the day. That's the zone where the magic happens, when you run for the sake of running, swim for the sake of swimming, with no thoughts, just the feeling of being alive. Cherish these moments and remember them.
5) Anytime you think you are bored, do the exercise of being present: bring your awareness to the moment, the situation, the fact that you are alive and breathing. Take in all the smells (even the bad ones), sensations, sounds, all of it. I guarantee you will feel better and your mood will improve.
Do the Opposite Book Giveaway Results!
In the past week I've run the first ever book giveaway for the Do the Opposite project - huge thanks to everyone who participated! I've announced the winner today.
I hope to do more of these in the future: please reply to this email and let me know whether it's something you would like to participate in, or if you have ideas on how to improve it! Also: would an offer like this (getting a book) be exciting for you or not so much? If not, what would be?
Articles:
1) "Project SPHINX – When The USSR Tried To Change The Computer Forever" by Riccardo Bianchini
I found this by chance, and was very suprised that I haven't seen this before :) It's an article describing an ambitions plan by the Soviets in the 80s, to build a revolutionary computer system for the time. They have come up with a lot of ideas and prototypes for the things that later indeed have become parts of our lives, like multimedia centers, flat screens, a smartwatch, AR glasses and more. Seeing all the prototypes in the photos still makes me think like all of this is from some alternative reality. Definitely a fascinating piece of history. The project was supposed to put all these techs into people's homes by 2000s, but with the downfall of USSR that never happened. The craziest piece of hardware they came up with, in my opinion, is the block that has 3 slots for triangular(!?!) memory modules.
2) "The Intelligence of Plants" by Cody Delistraty
This is an interesting piece on plant intelligence. Their intelligence, of course, can't be measured using anthropomorphic terms, but indeed, besides the proven ability of trees to communicate danger between each other by relying on the network of fungus that connects their roots (this has inspired a storyline in the recent Star Trek: Discovery, which I highly recommend) they also learn and adapt very fast to their surroundings and various triggers. Monica Gagliano have found this out by repeatedly dropping a plant called "Mimosa pudicas", found in Australia, that pulls its leaves inward when it senses danger. She would drop them from mere 5-6 inches above the ground, and they would close up. To her surprise, after several attempts, the plants have adapted, "having realized" that there is no actual danger in being dropped from such a low height, that they've stopped closing up when dropped.
3) "Where Pain Lives" by Cathryn Jakobson Ramin
Cathryn tells us that for a lot of patients with back pain, the main part in pain management is making patients realize that the pain is something that their brain is making them feel (sending the pain signals) rather than what is actually happening in their back. That was discovered in the 1990s with the rise of spinal imaging: the doctors have noticed that there was little correlation often between the pain the people were experiencing and their actual condition. In other words, the data was all over the place. What's more interesting is that often even the surgeries (multiple ones too) wouldn't alleviate the pain some have been reporting.
I've always been curious about the way our minds work, how our own thinking patterns determine our experience, and how we can "train" our brain to do uncommon things: handle cold showers easily, manage pain and heal (especially the "placebo" effect), shatter perceived physical limitations (like with the now famous 4 mile record and more.)
This article is just another example of what our brains can do when we start using them to help ourselves, instead of resigning to our fate blaming external events for our conditions. Yes, sometimes we are stuck with a condition, but that doesn't mean we should treat that as our limitation, quite the contrary, we can defy our situation by refusing to back down and only go forward.
4) "To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight" by Jordana Cepelewicz
Our brains are constantly bombarded by the input coming in from all of our senses. Then the brain needs to somehow choose the information we care about out of all of that incoming data. Previously it was believed that that process is akin a spotlight that "lights up" the useful information and uses it. It turns out that the brain uses filters to filter out the unnecessary instead. Not only does the brain "dim" the other senses but the one from which the information comes, it can also filter out the parts we don't care about within a single sense (like vision).
Tweet that resonated with me
Ethos:
Quotes:
"Through every generation of the human race there has been a constant war, a war with fear. Those who have the courage to conquer it are made free and those who are conquered by it are made to suffer until they have the courage to defeat it, or death takes them."
― Alexander the Great
"Whatever course you decide upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires....courage."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Keep doing the opposite,
Alexander Kallaway
Website: dotheoppo.site
Twitter: twitter.com/ka11away