320. anti-fragile
Imagine a champagne glass being shipped in a wooden box, during shipping if you shake the box too much it will shatter; that’s fragility. Now imagine the opposite of a champagne glass, something that doesn’t break under stress, perhaps you’ll think of a rock in the box. If you shake it during shipping, nothing happens; it doesn’t break. But the strange thing is, the opposite of fragility isn’t sturdiness or resistance to the surrounding pressures, it’s gaining strength under volatile conditions.
What gains from stress? Things like the muscular system, good relationships, immune systems, emotional health, and connected communities are all examples of things that grow under stressful situations. In fact, they need stress in order to change in a positive way, and a lack of imposed stress can even be detrimental over time.
The only way our muscles can grow is through the stress of resistance training (no matter how much anabolics you’re on). The bond between two people in a healthy relationship only grows stronger when confronted with challenges together. The immune system is only bolstered by coming in to contact with and fighting off things that cause to make us sick. Our emotional health can only develop in response to the full spectrum of emotions that we all have. Likewise, communities only seem to thrive under the shared experience of collected stress; just look at how the country, and much of the world, came together post 9/11.
So don’t run from stressful situations (unless it’s a bear, of course). Lean in. Endure. Make it through. Learn and grow from your experience as it will only serve to make you more anti-fragile.
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Side note: The world we’re quickly fitting into isn’t one that tests our limits, strengthens our resolve, or seeks to promote an anti-fragile version of ourselves. Everything we push for — from technological innovations to “healthcare” directives — only make our lives easier. But nowhere in nature does this encourage growth. It simply creates dependence on those who create the comfort. Continuing to infuse ever-greater ease into a system that is already disproportionately skewed away from anything uncomfortable and toward ultimate comfort will never allow us the resiliency we need to withstand our box being rattled, much less creating a situation where we can gain from our foundations being shaken.
305. why we dream, a hypothesis
Other than memory consolidation, it is hypothesized that a large part of why we dream is to work through our daily experiences in a safe environment. Research into this topics suggests that the phase of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) is used by the brain to relive stressful experiences without arousing the hormonal cascade associated with real-life interaction, so that those traumatic moments don’t have a long lasting affect on how we interact with the world. In essence, dreaming strips the emotion away from the memory, providing us with a fresh start to the new day.
This hypothesis arose from studies comparing those with and without PTSD. In those without PTSD, REM dreamstates were reported with a significant reduction in stress-related hormones, whereas people who reported with a history of PTSD were not correlated with a lowering of stress hormones. When most people go to sleep, they dream in a very low stress state, which allows them to work through their stressful experiences over and over until they eventually lose their power to influence their daily lives. This doesn’t happen in those with PTSD because their stress is so high even in dream states that they aren’t able to work through a traumatic experience.
It’s interesting to think about all the adaptive mechanisms the body has. We’ve been dreaming for thousands of years, yet there hasn’t really been a good explanation as to why. As far as I’m concerned, this makes a lot of sense.
285. one key element
Many years ago in the Arizona desert, scientists conducted an experiment known as “Biosphere 2.” It was a huge steel-and-glass enclosure with clean water, air that had been purified, nutrient-rich soil, and plenty of natural light. The idea behind this contraption was to create ideal living conditions for the ecosystem within. And while it was successful in many ways, there was one glaring failure.
As the trees inside the Biosphere grew to a certain height, they would simply fall over, again and again. At first, it was a confusing phenomenon, until scientists came to the realization that one key element was overlooked in the planning and construction of this idyllic environment. Wind. In a natural environment, trees are buffeted by the elements, namely wind. And they respond to that stress and agitation by growing stronger and deeper roots to increase their stability.
Like the trees, if our environment doesn’t challenge us, we’re destined to fall into a certain level of complacency. We waste a lot of energy trying to stay comfortable within our bubble, and in doing so, we fail to realize our potential. Our fear is rooted in the challenges and stressors that come along with change, but it is exactly those situations that are necessary for us to grow.
58. let go
Holding on to past traumas or emotional stress can be the limiting factor when it comes to successfully overhauling your life and setting the stage for long-lasting change. Without doing so, you will be sabotaging your progress. Freeing yourself from negative thoughts is just as important to sustaining weightloss or reversing disease as improving your nutritional habits or removing toxic chemicals from your body. This is because the body and mind are connected. You literally need to detox emotional negativity from your mind in order to bring about the physical change you seek.
Unfortunately, overcoming the negative thoughts that hold us back is an overlooked aspect of the process of implementing healthy lifestyle change. Perhaps, it’s because the hardest thing to do is look in the mirror and confront ourselves, but without doing so it’s easy to fall back on our old ways and hinder our progress. Confronting your demons, and letting go of the past frees your mind from the stress of emotional baggage allowing for physical manifestations of health to occur. Without this alleviation, emotional stress — whether past, present, or future — has the ability to affect the body the same way that physical or environmental stressors can.
All forms of stress affect our body the same. Negative thoughts stimulate stress hormones (like cortisol) that impact our detoxification pathways, digestion and nutrient uptake, the bodies capacity to heal efficiently or defend against viruses (like the RONA), our sleep habits and patterns, our relationships with others, energy production, and just about everything else you can think of. The stress you’re causing yourself, by continually replaying things you cannot change over-and-over in your mind, slows or shuts down many biochemical processes in an effort to deal with the stressful situation your body thinks is going through. And those are just the the physical manifestations.
Negative emotions can also affect your mindset. If you’re unable to “get over” what is bothering you, it will result in self-limiting beliefs such as anxiety, hypochondria, worthlessness, failure, pessimism, and depression. All of which can undermine your most earnest attempts at improving your life and health because they can turn on the stress response. It’s really a vicious cycle that is worth the pain of confronting, so that you can lead a better life.
So what can you do about it? It is easier said, than done, but…
Acknowledge that it happened. Accept that it cannot be changed. Forgive those involved. Move on and be Grateful for what it made you.
How you do it is up to you. You can talk to someone, or even yourself. As part of my coaching, I help people construct a new narrative to live by on their way to a healthy lifestyle. But for me, it’s writing. Which I recommend for everyone to at least try because it’s a way to get negative thoughts out of my head, and put them somewhere else so they aren’t able to get to me anymore. It’s a cathartic experience, where the process of doing it is far more important than the product. It doesn’t matter what you write down, so much as that you do, and when you do, you feel a sense of relief that it isn’t running around in your head anymore.
the present moment is all we have
In nature, animals fight or chase one-another because someone is hungry. After the confrontation (or dinner) everyone goes their separate ways, carrying on with life instead of dwelling on what just happened for the next few hours or days. Nature flows simultaneously with time.
In the modern world, we encounter things like arguments, getting cut off in traffic, or Karen trying to ruin the cookout. Afterwards, we rarely go on with our lives, instead we relive the past situation and experiencing the same emotions allowing it to affect us long after the event happened. As humans we spend too much time stuck in the past.
The present moment is all we have. Everything that happened to you, every encounter, every decision and subsequent outcome made you who you are. This is not to say that we need to be happy about everything but we are the product of our experiences — good and bad. So live your life right now, and never look back because it’s all working out how it was meant to be.