New Rituals: Recovery Sundays, ADD over which podcast to listen to, 24-Hour Fast protocol.
New Rituals: Recovery Sundays, ADD over which podcast to listen to, 24-Hour Fast protocol.
Sunday Morning Trail Walks without Headphones like a psycho
Sunday Morning Trail Walks without Headphones like a psycho
Every Sunday morning my wife and I do a ~3-5 mile walk around the river here in Austin near where we live. We grab a coffee halfway through an get our steps in as the sun comes up.
This week I found myself more ADD than normal. Might have had something to do with the Mezcal Old Fashion’s from La Holly…
Anyway, on the trail, I started and stopped listening to at least 4 podcasts that I had saved to my Pocket stream to listen to.
None of them gave me the “fix” I was looking for, and I was spending more time looking at my phone than enjoying the moment.
The problem was not that I had nothing to listen to… the problem was there were so many different (good) things to listen to that my brain felt no excitement.
What if the bigger problem was that I felt like I needed to listen to something at all?
Realizing this, I decided to go cold turkey and walk for 45 min around the trail with no headphones, and no talking… like a psycho.
It felt amazing and I had so many unique insights that I plan to do it again next week.
Internet Addiction Recovery Sundays: See if you can take the day without social media, or go for a walk without anything to look at or listen to.
Watch how clarifying it is and how much your mind is able to “settle” and process.
Moving to a lower run on the excitement ladder.
If you lived in the year 1700 – watching an Avengers film would be the most mindblowing experience of all time. Nothing could compare, and your brain would be lit up like a Christmas tree.
Today, because it’s normal to see movies – so we get more of a kick out of VR, or IMAX, or Tiktok. That’s because we got used to that level of fidelity and intensity of brain-chemical-maxxing products we’re exposed to.
When in doubt, your brain wants the most exciting thing. That means that given any two options, your brain wants the one with more thrill to it.
Would you rather have broccoli or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream?
That said, everything is relative and everything is contextual to one another.
Would you rather sit in a room with nothing except a lightbulb, or sit in a room with nothing in it but a light bulb and the entire Harry Potter series of books in it?
One is PAINFUL to do for 4 hours, the other could be quite enjoyable, relatively speaking.
Because everything is relative, we get to make relative choices.
People read more in the 1800’s because reading was the most exciting form of entertainment.
So, to read today, more, give yourself more boring options than reading. By moving to the rung on the excitement ladder *below* the thing you actually want to do, you make the thing you want to do more exciting!
The excitement ladder (low excitement to high excitement):
Watch nature
Read book
Check email
Watch Youtube
Scroll Twitter
Scroll Tiktok
Given that you’re going to want to grab for things that are the highest excitement, give yourself a relatively more boring backdrop option (say reading a book) and watch yourself happily grab for your email inbox.
24-Hour Fasting Experiment – 9/10 Results
Women and maybe especially men, I highly recommend you listen to this podcast as a preview of Dr. Mindy Pelz.
It’s possible that school teaches us exactly zero or negative when it comes to our health. Here Mindy Pelz explains the basics of a women’s cycle in the context of fasting. It’s informative for both.
I completed a 24-hour Fast last week from Thursday to Friday and it was amazing.I will 100% be doing this at least once a month.
It was incredibly energizing and clarifying.
My suspicion is that I eat so healthy 95% of the time that the fast itself was less difficult as I didn’t have a major detox from sugar or carbs. I did, however do a few things to make it easier shared below.
*NOTE: Women, if you are interested in fasting listen to the above – the medical system and most health and fitness recommendations from men are not 1-1 compatible for you.
Some factors that helped my fast:
I went dinner to dinner – 5PM Thursday to 5PM Friday
I drank ~2 cups of coffee
Lots of hydration
I drank electrolytes (LMNT) and put a tiny bit of Coconut oil in my coffees.
Ok that’s it for today – I want to continue to share some tiny lifestyle updates that may help you with your own practices that keep you feeling great.
As always,
xx David