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October 20th, 2010

The Sitcom Cringe

Past glory may be uplifting, but failure is what makes you grow.

I’m really proud of a talk I did in Victoria BC at Social Media Camp a few weeks ago. Re-watching the video is weird– there are good parts where I feel I was doing well, and bad parts where I was slower. Being a perfectionist means you’re always thinking of what you could have done better, of course, but largely I think it was a good show.

But here’s what’s interesting. While I watch the bad parts, I still cringe, like they’re happening right now. It’s like watching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, it’s horrible. I’ve watched clips like this many times before, and I always get that feeling–the sitcom cringe.

Of course it’s absolutely useless to cringe during one of these moments. But we can’t help it, even if it’s not real. Eventually, it started giving me a feeling like “ok, clearly it wasn’t that bad. I survived, didn’t I?”

I have a theory: the more you review past failure, the more it strengthens you. If I read old blog posts from 5 years ago, I realize what a train wreck I was then. I have access to the exact feelings, the writing/audio/video, how badly I dressed… I have access to it all. And yet, I made it, I handled it fine. I made it. So now, it’s just a big joke.

Go take a look at some of your old posts. You can go to your blog, or Facebook, or whatever else you use. Listen to one of your old podcasts. Look back at what’s happened, and what you’ve become since then.

We never see growth happen, but it does. Look back at yourself. I think you’ll find it relieving.

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October 19th, 2010

What We Can Learn From Conditioner

What exactly is conditioner? This is something the average man does not know.

Conditioner is a failure of the system, a basic misunderstanding in which companies do not know how to speak to regular guys and say “your hair will look somewhat reasonable afterwards instead of being a poofy mess.”

No girl can teach them this, because guys won’t listen to girls about this issue. They need to learn from a man, like the kind in the Old Spice commercials. (Extra points if he’s black, white people love to listen to black people.)

(Only a man like this could tell regular guys to use something like shower gel. Nothing less will do.)

What you do needs to be like conditioner– a blind spot where people most people don’t look, and don’t see anything wrong, but with massive opportunity. They are everywhere, but nobody sees them.

The first hair company that can figure out how to get men to use conditioner wins… huge. The rest follow behind. It’s that easy.

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October 18th, 2010

Expand, Contract, Experiment, Iterate

Xeni Jardin put up a great slide in a presentation I saw at MIMA, seen at right.

Those four words represent a lot about life, growth, business and strength. Put those four words together and you have a continuous, cyclical process for how to try new things and what to do once you have.

Chris and I have been thinking a lot about this pattern recently for the new stuff we’re writing, so I have my own version of this loop, as follows. I think of it as what happens when a child is learning to walk– after all, that’s the definition of experimentation, balance, and resisting pressures (gravity, etc.). The metaphor is fundamental and can be understood by all.

Step one is to experiment– trying something new. I’ve called this touching the burner because it is a fundamental risky act, but in all aspects of life, the small, easy experiment is what leads to the potential success. Walking eventually becomes a rote activity, but it began as a purposeful attempt at something that was previously impossible.

Practice is what happens after that. This is a combination of our old stuff and new stuff. If we learn to play the piano we are integrating new movements into old movements so they happen without us thinking about them. We increase our range of motion to include the new thing until it becomes an entirely banal part of our behaviour instead of a risky new thing.

Next we go for balance (contraction). When we do this it is an attempt at the new thing becoming a new normal that is more capable than the last. Contraction is a process where we take the new behaviour and take advantage of it, and where we bring ourselves back to a stable state.

Then, finally, it’s about starting again (iterate), trying it again to expand more. This is how we learn to move, or interact with people, or build castles or empires. It’s a fundamental act, and you need to know where you are in the cycle in order to behave properly. Once you do, though, you know which direction to take.

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October 17th, 2010

Trust the Future

Every organization in the world, every political group, every parent, thinks that they are needed forever. They aren’t.

A long time ago I talked about how the myth of the fragile Earth is doing nothing but hurting the environmental movement. They think “ZOMG, what will the Earth do without us,” but this is a very humanocentric view. The Earth will actually be fine without us. She will survive great– it’s us that will die if we don’t fix this stuff.

The same applies to a lot of situations– conservatives think the United States will go to the heathens without them. Liberals think corporations will take over the country unless they legislate. Both these things may be true (they’re in the future, so who knows), but both ignore the reactions that these incidents would provoke. Neither exist in a vacuum.

Your children will be fine, even if they do drugs. They’ll even be fine if they fall off their bike and hurt their head. Everything will be fine, pretty much no matter what.

Your child will recover and fix his mistakes. Liberals will move to Canada or Europe, creating a brain drain on those countries. Conservatives will move to the Bible Belt or to states where taxation hinders them less. All these are reactions, and none of them mean the end of the world.

Everything is a flow. Very little is an abrupt stop.

History shows that the stock market generally trends upward, with corrections here and there. Likewise, culture generally gets more lenient and progressive (with similar “corrections” like the repealing of Prop 8). This happens everywhere, but it won’t change which direction we’re going.

What you need to do is prepare and place yourself at the crossroads of trends, not worry about whether the world will vanish. There is nothing down that road.

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October 16th, 2010

It's Saturday

You probably shouldn’t be on the internet. Here’s a little tool to help.

I downloaded Freedom about a year ago and it’s helped me gain access to creativity and tranquility over and over again since I downloaded it. It does this by wiping out the ability for your computer to connect to the internet for up to 8 hours. It works with either Mac or PC.

You can also download OmmWriter if you want to get some writing done while you’re offline. It just came out with a new version that has all these calming sounds and colours. Combine both of these apps and I promise you’ll have an interesting day.

(Photo by Christine Zenino)

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October 15th, 2010

The Revolution is Never External

No matter how interesting your idea, it is never as unique as you think.

Surprisingly, this is good news. Any idea too revolutionary is hard to place in the mind, and hard to fit into any existing structure. A bike with a motor is easy to understand. A teleportation device is not. So rather than creating a new box (Twitter is… what exactly?), you expand an existing box. This is a much easier process, but unfortunately it is also more competitive.

The true revolution is never actually external. It is not exciting. It has no explosions, and no crowds gather for it. It is a silent, humbling, internal experience which forces you to question assumptions and often makes you feel like a fool. This is the exact opposite of the 30-second sound-byte infomercial we see on the news, or the feature length movie full of drama and backbiting. We need a creation myth, but it is just that– a myth. When the cameras are on, we see stardom, but when they are off, what we don’t see is the everday. (The Situation never has a prostate exam.)

The reason the revolution cannot be televised is because it is internal. You are it, or you are not. That is not exciting unless it is talked about, and if it is talked about, it’s often because it didn’t happen.

The bait is that our environment tells us one thing (brilliant ideas, reality TV stars, etc.) but the reality is silent struggle and examination of previous assumptions, collaboration that could go nowhere, but suddently becomes incredible.

None of this comes from the product itself. All the work comes from within, and it takes time. This is why, when it comes, your success will surprise you. It will not be what you think it is.

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October 14th, 2010

Talkers vs. Doers

Doers make things happen. Talkers get the credit.

There are always people in the background of any huge project or enterprise. They worked hard, read a lot, and experimented so things could get done. They let achievements speak for themselves, and sometimes, that works for them. More often than not, though, they don’t get enough credit for the work they did. They don’t draw attention to it, they just do it.

Talkers do the opposite. They are so good at rallying people together, at inspiring them or just getting themselves noticed that, often, they realize that’s all they need to do. People who pay attention to talkers think “why would he lie?” or “he really believes in himself,” so they believe what the talker says even though there may not be evidence of it.

The result is that doers work harder to get their stuff noticed, whereas talkers just talk more. Both sides work (kind of). But what we really need people in between.

What side are you on? Could you learn from the other?

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October 13th, 2010

How To Lose Weight, Quit Coffee, and Stop Wearing Glasses (Part 1)

Anyone that reads this website knows that I don’t do interviews.

I like to keep this blog my own and, for the most part, I’m very selective about who I’ll give a forum to in this place. When I first was introduced to Getting Stronger, a great blog about hormesis, I knew an interview was the right thing to do.

Todd Becker is the author of Getting Stronger, a blog about stress and adaptation for the purpose of thriving in the modern environment. This is Part 1– the rest will follow up later, or you can read more now here.

Julien: What is Hormetism? Why is it important?

Todd Becker: Hormetism is both a philosophy of life and a set of specific self-improvement techniques, based upon the practical application of hormesis. Hormesis is a biological principle which is surprising or counterintuitive to most people when they first encounter it: a small dose of something harmful or stressful is frequently good for you. There is a lot of research showing that health and lifespan can be improved by exposure to a wide variety of stressors, including toxic chemicals and radiation, exercise and calorie restriction. Of course, there is always a balance, and too much stress or toxicity can harm you. However, I think most people unnecessarily fear and avoid stress, and as a result they miss out on the benefits. It is very important to understand how to gradually adjust the dose and frequency of the stress to get the maximum benefits.

Hormetism goes beyond the science and asks how we can incorporate hormesis into our lives in a practical way, to increase our resilience and well-being. It is more than a set of techniques; it’s a practical philosophy. I’ve read the works of the Greek and Roman Stoics, philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and was surprised to see that they recognized not only the physical benefits of hardship and self-denial, but the psychological benefits as well. The Stoics were not a sour and humorless bunch, as you might think, but they were joyful and light-hearted because they learned to appreciate the good in life while building up a tolerance for what most people consider as misfortune, adversity or even pain. The Stoics feared very little in life.

A few years ago, I began to see how the principle of applied stress and hardship generates positive returns in so many different areas.  There is a lot of good scientific research on hormesis, but it is typically very narrow and esoteric, and I was surprised that nobody was connecting the dots to develop general principles for self-improvement. My interest is in elaborating the findings of hormesis into more general guidelines, which we can apply to improve our health and our outlook in life in any field of interest.  The more I read and think about it, the more connections and applications I see to every aspect of life and society.  I think this is such an important finding, because all of can benefit by getting stronger physically, psychologically, and even spiritually.

So I started writing my blog, “Getting Stronger” back in March.  And I’m getting a very good response, my readership is growing every day.  I’ve even started a forum where discussions take place on various topics.  I think I’ve tapped into an important niche that nobody else seems to be addressing.  This is exciting to me and I want to see how far the idea of Hormetism can go.

J: I bet the main question you get from people is “Why would anyone do this to themselves?” So, why would they?

TB: You’re right, there’s often a certain puzzlement as to why anyone would subject themselves to cold showers, skipping meals, running barefoot, or lifting heavy weights slowly. All of these things are uncomfortable, at least at first. One of my readers tried taking a cold shower and commented that it was ‘the most intensely uncomfortable non-dangerous thing’ he’d ever tried. So I can understand the reluctance. But I’m not recommending masochism or self-harm. The practices I’m advocating trade short term pain for long term gain. Everything I write about is something I’ve tried myself, after I’ve researched it to understand the scientific basis and evidence for the benefits. In each case, there are long term objective benefits, which become increasingly apparent with time. And what is remarkable is that the initial short term discomforts generally also diminish in short order.

Two good examples of that are cold showers and barefoot running. When you take your first cold shower, you’ll probably experience “cold shock” — involuntary gasping, a pounding heart rate, and very cold extremities. But after several cold showers, this reaction gets much shorter and milder, and you’ll soon feel a kind of radiance and vitality that lasts all morning. Cold showers are a great anti-depressant! Barefoot running can also be a bit awkward and uncomfortable at first. You get calluses and sore muscles you didn’t known you had. But after a few sessions, you realize how fun it is, and people find themselves stronger and less prone to injury.

I’ve also written about the psychological benefits of refraining from pleasurable things and learning to tolerate uncomfortable things. The Stoics were the first to recognize these benefits. And recent psychologists, like Richard Solomon, noticed that strenuous or unpleasant activities often bring with them a pleasurable aftermath which grows stronger, and lasts longer, the more it is repeated. He first found this when studying the euphoria that skydivers experience after their first terrifying jump. Each time they jump, it becomes less and less terrifying–whereas the positive feelings upon landing get stronger. It’s almost the inverse of addictive pleasures, where the pleasure decreases and lasts less time with each “hit”, leading to tolerance effects and very unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.

The good news is that most of the long term benefits I write about don’t take all that long to show up. So you don’t have to be some type of super-disciplined person to follow this program, you just have to have enough motivation to get started, and take it one step at a time.

J: I found out about intermittent fasting around 2007-2008 and started practicing it, with interesting results. I also recently started taking cold showers, which are known to have physiological benefits. How could someone start this process of intentional stress if they were interested?

It’s interesting that you have tried cold showers. When I first wrote about cold showers, my wife said, “Why don’t you stick to diets, there’s a big audience for that — nobody wants to take cold showers!”  But of all my posts, the one on cold showers has had the most hits, even more than the diet-related posts, and its popularity has grown steadily over the 6 months since I posted it. I’m not sure why that is, but perhaps its because I focus on the subjective experience of taking cold showers and the benefits of making it a daily habit — whereas most other web articles talk only about the health benefits, or recommend a cold shower as a one-time freakish experiment.

Every practice I recommend is intended to become a permanent habit, something that you stick with for the long term. The benefits continue to grow, like compound interest. Even my recommendations regarding eating are not meant as “crash” diets, but long term changes to eating habits.

I also find that these are not separate, individual practices, but they tend to work together to improve physical and psychological resistance. For that reason, you can start almost anywhere. I’d recommend choosing a single area of your life where you’d most like to see improvement. Don’t try to change everything about yourself at once– pick one area that is important but manageable. If you are overweight or out of shape, it could be weight loss or fitness. Perhaps you want to improve your vision, overcome an addiction, or learn to manage emotions like anger or fear. I’ve written posts on each of these. In all cases, the technique involves exposing yourself to the uncomfortable aspect of change, but doing so gradually and in a systematic way. So for example, with intermittent fasting, I recommend that you take it one step at a time. Don’t start out fasting 24 hours. First try eliminating afternoon snacks. Then, when you can handle that, cut out breakfast. And so on. You have to be motivated and patient, but it helps to know that the science is on your side — that your body and mind are plastic and adaptable, and that with the right approach you can change.

When you’ve had success improving yourself in one area, the second and third areas come more easily.  In the process, you are actively strengthening not just your physical being, but your patience and tolerance to undergo further challenging changes.

J: That fits right into the stuff I wanted to bring up next. It was actually on your blog that I first read about the “opponent-process theory of emotion,” which I’ve found to be an interesting way to build willpower. Can you explain how that works?

That’s a really interesting question, Julien.  In the 1950s, two neurologists, Leo Hurvich and Dorothea Jameson, tried to understand why we see after-images.  When we stare for a while at bright colors and then look at a white wall or paper, we’ll often see a ghostly image with the opposite, complementary color.  Hurvich and Jameson traced these after-images to processes within our nervous system, in the retina and ganglion cells, that act in opposition to the initial stimulus, so when you remove the stimulus, this weaker but persistent “opponent process” is still running.  And as I already mentioned, psychologists like Richard Solomon and J.D. Corbit found this to also be a good explanation for why intense thrills like skydiving give way to pleasurable relief, while intense pleasures from drugs or whatever can lead to addiction, because they leave one feeling down or depressed between highs. Solomon’s biggest insight, I think, was not just in coming up with many examples of these kinds of psychological reactions and describing them, but in actually trying to locate their underlying causes within our nervous systems.

The basic idea is that our nervous systems try to resist large changes through a mechanism called homeostasis.  Whether we see a change as “good” or “bad” doesn’t matter; homeostasis acts to compensate for big changes. This applies to any physiological system in our body, not just our nervous systems.  If we get hot, our circulatory system acts to cool us down. If we eat a big meal, our digestive hormones act to control blood sugar.  If we get highly excited or stimulated, our neurochemistry acts to depress the stimulation. For any big change, there is a simultaneous, lower level process acting to at least partially blunt the impact of that change. Solomon found several interesting things. First, the low level opponent process continues on even after the original stimulus stops.  So if we experience a stressful thrill like skydiving, the calming reaction leads to a sense of relief that can last much longer than the original thrill.  For example, if we take a cold shower, the thermogenic opponent-process outlasts this and we feel a lasting pleasant warmth after stepping out of the shower.  More interestingly, the opponent process gets stronger and lasts longer with each repetition; the body is adapting and realizes it must try harder to maintain homeostasis. That means that the original “shock” is muted faster and more strongly, even from the beginning.  It also means that with repetition the opponent process continues to get stronger and last longer after the stimulus stops.  So the more you take cold showers, the shorter the initial unpleasantness, and the longer and stronger the “afterglow”.

I think this also explains why exposing yourself to challenging or unpleasant situations is a great way to build up your tolerance, or “willpower” if you want to call it that.  Some people think of willpower as a mysterious ability you are either born with or lack.  But the opponent-process theory shows that anyone can strengthen their willpower by continuing to test their will.  The will is like a muscle — you have to build it up by confronting progressively more difficult challenges.  Cognitive behavioral therapists have found that exposure therapy — progressive exposure to fears  – is very useful in overcoming phobias or anxieties.  Similarly, we can gain willpower by first setting small challenges for ourselves, and increasing the challenge.  We can expect a reward each time in the form of a feeling of satisfaction that comes after meeting each challenge.  And the opponent process theory teaches us that we can expect this “relief” or satisfaction to continue increasing the more we test ourselves. Willpower gets easier the more you practice it.  It’s just how our nervous systems work.  I’m currently researching the underlying physiological mechanisms for this for an upcoming post on my blog.  Its absolutely fascinating how this works.

End of Part 1! Until then, check out Getting Stronger for more.

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October 12th, 2010

The Obligation to Change

This is a guest post from Chris Guillebeau, the author of the great book, The Art of Non-Conformity. Julien was in Iceland, he’ll be back tomorrow. :)

A quick read of In Over Your Head confirms that Julien is an advocate for change, in business and in life. In the battle of change vs. more-of-the-same, change wins out almost every time over here.

I read the posts and cheer along, because I’m pro-change too; the decision to question expectations and strike out toward something new has always served me well. Lately I’ve been thinking even further—not only does change offer plenty of opportunity, it comes with its own set of responsibilities as well.

In my part of the online world, I write a lot about opportunity and possibility. I choose invincibility and adventure. I also try not to be an asshole, which means that I’m not really in the business of telling people what to do. I don’t judge anyone except the closed-minded. Whatever rocks your world without harming someone else, go for it!

But along with opportunity comes responsibility. We can do things that few people in the world have ever been able to consider. We have conversations about what kind of work we’d like to do, and how we’d like to spend our time. Like Julien and me, many people who read this post spend part of their days in shops where we pay $3 for a cup of coffee and a free WiFi connection.

It’s a nice world we live in. And it’s a world that comes with responsibility, not only to think about contribution, but also about change. I don’t usually like obligations, and I wrote a book about how to ignore them. But I’m not sure we can ignore the obligation to give change the attention it deserves.

If you’ve benefitted from the same opportunities, what are the corresponding responsibilities? What can you change right now?

 

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October 8th, 2010

How Emotion Guides Performance

When I was in grade school, at lunch, I would throw away the fruit.

I did it every day– I had a sandwich, usually ham or turkey with some mayo, maybe some yogurt or something, a piece of fruit which I always threw out.

One day the cafeteria lady found the fruit in the garbage. I remember her lifting it out of there and yelling across the cafeteria, “WHO DID THIS???” as I hid my head in shame. Really vivid memory, I’ll never forget it.

This was a fundamental act of rebellion, but that doesn’t mean it was smart. I thought I knew better, and why should I eat this thing I don’t like, so I found a way around it. Every kid does this in their own way. Sometimes it’s good (calling out stupid teachers), but sometimes it’s like the fruit, and we have to see the difference.

Whatever we do in our early lives become the patterns for the rest of it. I still sit with my right foot underneath me like I’ve always done, and like my mother yelled at me about. I still feel comfortable like that, and it’s benign, so whatever. But not everything is like that.

The act of questioning authority is a strong one, and it’s critical that it be based on actual truth or goodwill, but sometimes that’s not enough to change you. The emotions need to lead to ensure that it will actually happen. Fear, desire, jealousy, love– all these and more are the fundamental building blocks of growth.

This means the question should never be “what do I need to learn?” but instead “how do I need to make myself feel?” Then, you move to make yourself feel that way, like psyching yourself up so you can deliver a great speech. The emotion drives the performance.

The stuff that Chris Brogan and I are writing about for the new book is all about understanding the strength of that feeling and how it guides you towards action. So you get the information, you become convinced, and then you build up the necessary emotion.

Once you’ve got that, you’re a weapon. Everything happens when they all line up.

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