More and more, the body is portrayed to us in popular culture as merely a vehicle for the mind. We often hear of the inevitability of how, in the future, our bodies will fuse with technology for the betterment of all. The supremacy of the mind over the body is often hailed as the ultimate goal in modern enlightenment, where we finally cast off our earthly needs and constraints. The ascetic traditions treat the body as an unclean prison that needs to be overcome. It would appear that those with cybernetic aspirations drink deeply from the ascetic cup.
Our physical bodies are how we interact with our surroundings. To a large extent they are also how our surroundings interact with us. When we interact with others, physical feelings occur in our bodies. In fact, our emotions are very much felt in our bodies, not just in our minds. A negative emotional experience can remain in our bodies long after our minds have moved on to other things. This accumulation of negative emotions can have a profound effect on how we live our daily lives. As the emotional stress builds in our physical bodies, it can affect us in unexpected ways. Our bodies can crave attention and indulgence in ways that will trick the mind. In fact, the needs of the body far outrank the preferences of the mind. Think of how pregnant women can have food cravings for things that they would never normally eat; and in some cases would have found repugnant.
Unfortunately, our evolutionary past has given us a body that does not respond well to long-term pampering. Since the vast majority of our time on Earth has been a struggle to survive, we have not had time to adapt to opulence. We have never needed the physical and mental tools to live in the land of plenty for generations. The body is well adapted to calorific deficit but not for excess. For a metabolism that is hardwired to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, it’s difficult to know when enough is enough. If we add to this the fact that modern food processing deliberately sets out to trick the body, with combinations of sugar, fat and salt that do not exist in nature, into not realising that it should stop eating. We have available to us in our daily lives an amount of poor quality, inexpensive calories that would have seemed impossible just 100 years ago.
Our daily existence is far removed from our simple hunter-gatherer past, but our coping mechanisms for our daily challenges have remained the same. We activate our fight or flight response daily for situations that cannot be fought physically or ran away from. These constant stresses take a toll on the body and it is important to find constructive ways to help the body relax in a healthy manner. Although a few drinks might give a short term respite, things like this can quickly become a crutch that only has to bear more weight over time.
I was very much in this situation. Although my life was generally good, I found myself taking temporary refuge from its stresses and challenges, in food and alcohol. The problem with doing this is that the problems are compounded. By escaping from the problems, rather than dealing with them, we are allowing them to continue to grow. This, coupled with the fact that we are also harming our bodies by making bad health decisions, means that things will inevitably get worse and worse.
Breaking the cycle
The very first thing that needs to occur before we can fix a problem is that we need to acknowledge that we have one. This is easier said that done. I know from personal experience that it is easy to revel in dark thoughts and unproductive behaviour. By seeking solace in bad food and alcohol, I was causing my body to get fat and feel old. The worst thing that was happening to me was that I was becoming a bad person to be around. My toxic behaviour was intoxicating my character. I was becoming irritable and moody. At the same time my energy levels were falling and I was finding it difficult to motivate myself to begin tasks. I was in a situation where things were spiralling downwards and leading me to indulge in more of the behaviour that was causing me harm.
At the time I was most concerned with my weight. Looking back it was more of a vanity issue than a health concern. I have always had the type of metabolism that allows me to gain weight very quickly. As a child I would noticeably fatten up at Christmas when sweets were most available. When normal behaviour resumed I would lose some of that weight again. I would compare myself to my friends and see that they could pass through Christmas unscathed. When my adult behaviour could have been confused for celebrating Christmas every day, the results on my waistline were inevitable. It was the outward sign that inside things were out of control.
Since I was most concerned about my weight, that was the issue that I tried to fix first. I had good success with the Bulletproof Diet (basically the Paleo Diet with product placement). I enjoyed the fact that it horrified my wife to see me adding butter to my coffee (actually delicious), and eat large amounts of animal fat, only to lose even larger amounts of weight. It was also the first time that I had looked into nutritional advice that was outside the conventional mainstream. We will discuss “conventional mainstream” issues another day.
It has been over 10 years since I broke with conventional food advice and, although I did have the occasional setback in the early days, I have managed to maintain a healthy weight coupled with an active lifestyle.
So what has changed over the last 10 years that has helped me to lock-in the lifestyle changes?
Cultivating Will, not Willpower
Willpower and Will are not the same. You may have used them interchangeably in your lexicon but I suggest that you learn the difference and apply it to your life. My hypothesis is that by naming them interchangeably we apply them to the wrong situations unconsciously. (I also suggest you learn the difference between “hypothesis” and “theory” but that is just a pet peeve). I can’t state this enough. Will and willpower serve fundamentally different purposes. If you have ever heard of Jocko Willink you will know that this guy epitomises the use of a cultivated Will alongside a developed Willpower muscle. When Jocko gets out of bed at 4:30 each morning to do his workout he is using his Will not his willpower. He clearly wants to be up and active at that time and nothing gets in his way; especially not himself. As far as I am aware he has been posting a picture of his watch face each morning since around 2015. If this behaviour was only maintained through constant struggle, Jocko would have stopped long ago. It is clear that he isn’t in a constant battle of willpower (at least regarding this); he clearly has the Will to do what he is doing.
Cultivating the power of your Will is the way to lock-in success. I believe that your true Will resides in the heart. If a goal is solely in the mind then it is susceptible to all of the techniques that have been created to affect the mind. We use many of these techniques against ourselves daily. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. We wouldn’t want to “get our heart set” on every fleeting thought and desire that passes through our mind. Once we have determined what our goal should be, we need to ensure that it cannot be easily overridden by the mind. This is easier than it sounds. Unfortunately, it also has an aspect of circular logic to it. If you have set a goal for yourself and fail at the first difficulty or inconvenience then it is likely that it wasn’t much of a heart-felt goal anyway. Desire and Will are very different things. It is also possible that the reason that you cannot achieve a goal is that you have a negative goal getting in the way. We have all heard tales of cancer patients refusing to give up smoking, even when it has taken them to the situation where they are smoking through a tube in their throat after surgery. Nobody would attribute this behaviour to willpower; but we can easily see that they are Will-ing it. Their smoking is so much part of their being that not smoking would be comparable to death for them. Believe me, although it might seem like an impossible task for you to get out of bed at 4:30am and hit the bench in your garage; for Jocko it’s probably one of the easiest things he does all day. I expect that he needs to expend zero mental energy on it and zero willpower.
Once you set yourself a goal and you believe it in your heart then you are most of the way there to achieving that goal. Obviously, there will be external obstacles that will need to be overcome, but they aren’t as insidious as the internal ones that can hold you back.
I didn’t get my weight under control until it I stopped using willpower to control myself. In a similar manner to the saying, “Do something that you love and you will never have to work another day in your life”, once you successfully integrate something into your Will you will never have to struggle to achieve it again. You will still have to strive to achieve it but you will no longer be fighting an internal battle that makes progress feel slow and painful.
Techniques to help your body
Your body experiences the world through sensation. The sensations that you feel when you take a small amount of alcohol are largely pleasant and relaxing. This relaxation technique, however, doesn’t scale into a productive daily routine. If your only way to cope with a spike in stress at work is to take a shot of vodka, you probably aren’t going to be on that career path for much longer. There are several things that I do daily that keep my stress levels under control and also provide my body with pleasant sensations; at least when I finish.
Cold shower
I can’t recommend this enough. Once you have worked your way up to it, a 5 minute cold shower is a great method of resetting your stress levels and calming your mind. Obviously, it probably isn’t something that you can do at work if you find yourself getting overwhelmed, but it absolutely is something that you can work into your morning routine to ensure that you are prepared for the day in the best way possible. Start with short cold showers (30 seconds) and gradually work up to 5 minutes over the course of several weeks. Once you can get through a 1 minute cold shower, the rest is plain sailing.
Exercise
The biggest favour that you can do for your body is to give it some exercise, preferably daily. It might just be a brisk walk but anything that raises your pulse and gets you breathing a little quicker will go a long way to helping your body feel relaxed and give you a nice relaxing sensation for the rest of the day. Even 15 minutes with some weights or a kettlebell at home can go a long way too.
EFT (Tapping)
Here is a link to the Tapping playlist on the Suicordium Youtube channel so you can dive straight in.
This is my go-to for peaks of stress. If I am feeling overwhelmed, a couple of rounds of tapping will really get the stress levels under control. You can easily take yourself off to the bathroom and really take the stress down a few notches.
When I first started tapping I adhered to the instructions 100%. If you find the words a little off putting you can simply focus on your stress (or other issue you are tapping about) and go through the steps. I cannot recommend this technique enough. I wouldn’t go a as far to say that this technique has saved my life, but it has certainly helped me save face and get through some of the toughest professional situations that I have ever dealt with.
You can also use tapping when you feel an overwhelming urge to do something that you know won’t be healthy for yourself. Try tapping instead of raiding the fridge or opening the bottle of wine after work.
Stop eating processed food
I know that this sounds like a big ask, but until you are eating in a way that isn’t hurting your body, you are unlikely to know what feeling well actually means. As I mentioned above, my first steps towards eating healthily were by adopting the Paleo diet. I find it easier to adopt and stick to larger shifts in behaviour than trying to drop certain habits; but that could just be me. You don’t need to go full Paleo to get most of the benefits. Just dropping sugar from Monday to Friday will take you a long way too.
Before I began trying to eat healthily I actually did the No S-Diet. If you don’t think that you are ready to radically change the foods that you eat, you could probably start here.
This is probably the easiest “diet” to follow in the world and it will actually work in helping you to start moderating your eating and provide a lens for how you look at what you eat. It works too.
I will be talking a lot more about diet in Part 2.
Conclusion
Your body could be considered as the canvas upon which your life is depicted. If that canvas is not in a good condition then it could radically affect the perception of whatever is portrayed through and upon it. Your body is the medium through which you experience life. Your thoughts and feelings all happen within your body. You owe it to yourself to ensure that you are not causing your body to put you into a downward spiral of negative thoughts and emotions. There is no greater sign of self compassion than to treat your body with the level of care that a loving parent would give to their child. Remember not to confuse your body’s needs with your lack of discipline and direction. If you think that your body is craving unhealthy experiences it is most likely that your mind is in a bad place. You could do worse that to try tapping away the sensation, instead of reaching for the next doughnut.
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