“The keys to life are running and reading”

will-smith-running“The keys to life are running and reading. Why running? When your running there’s a little person that talks to you and that little person says, oh I’m tired, my lungs are about to pop off, I’m so hurt, I’m so tired, there’s no way i could possibly continue, and you want to quit, right? That person, if you learn how to defeat that person, when you’re running, you will learn how to not quit when times get hard in your life. […] The reason that reading is so important, there have mean millions and billions and billions and gazillions of people that have lived before all of us, there’s no new problem you can have, with your parents, with school, with a bully, with anything. There’s no problem you can have that someone hasn’t already solved and wrote about it in a book.” – Will Smith

If you’d like to kill two birds with one stone, read the book Spark, about the power of – and science behind – running.

3 books that changed my life and I hope they help you, too: Power of Habit, Spark, and Religion for Atheists

3 Books: Power of Habit, Spark, Religion for Atheists

In the last few years, there were 3 books that profoundly influenced me and together pushed me in a whole new direction, with respect to both life philosophy and career interests. As part of writing Habit Driven Life, a series of essays that I might turn into a book, I wanted to share these three life changers with you.

The first was Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit [Amazon aff]. Here’s my cheatsheet for it. Charles’s book taught me that if your life is a house, then habits are its brick and mortar. Brick by brick, layer by layer, habit by habit, you construct the building that is your life. Your creation can be a wobbly shack or it can be a rock walled mansion. It all depends on your habits.

The book was filled with mental lightbulbs. One lightbulb that shined brightest for me was a concept known as keystone habits. Like the keystone which is placed at the top of a stone arch, holding the arch together, keystone habits are behaviors upon which other behaviors rely. For example, in a group of good friends, there is often one person who does all the planning and organizing. Without her there might not be a group, or the group would socialize far less often. Keystone habits work like this. An example of a keystone habit for me is daily exercise. Every day that I can go for a long run, I am happier and more relaxed. I have a better appetite. I sleep better. I can almost feel the mental cobwebs being dusted off and wiped away with each mile.

After reading The Power of Habit, I began to think of a day as just a sequence of habits. If you haven’t programmed your habits, then your habits are programming you. Habits create outcomes, good or bad. If you don’t wake up early and feel refreshed, it’s because you don’t have the habit of going to bed early and sleeping under the right conditions (such as a very dark and quiet room). If you don’t build your favorite side project, it’s because you haven’t created the right routines in your schedule and in your environment to do so. If you want to accomplish your dreams, you absolutely MUST set the right habits.

Some of us are lucky enough to have good habits from childhood, learned from our parents or teachers or coaches. But everyone can improve their habits. And good habits, no matter how sturdy, can break, fall apart, require maintenance. Just like a house.

Building the right habits requires experimentation and patience and, above all, repetition. You simply make your bed each morning, morning after morning. A year later, one random morning, you’ll leave your bedroom and walk into the kitchen. You’ll have a moment where you wonder, wait a minute – did I make my bed? And you’ll walk back to your bedroom to discover that the bed’s already been made.

You, my friend, have got yourself a new habit.

It’s a great feeling.

Here’s aspiring comedian Brad Isaac telling a story about Jerry Seinfeld and the habit that helped him become the world’s richest standup comic:

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day.

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

**

The second book was John Ratey’s Spark [Amazon aff]. Here’s its cheatsheet. Spark convinced me that regular aerobic exercise could alleviate and cure almost everything that began to plague me in my late 20s: growing social anxiety, a sometimes depressive mindset, the heavy lethargy that enveloped me like a fast moving fog on many afternoons. The book provided just the – spark – I needed to get out of the house and run. And as I mentioned above, running has rewired my life.

Spark is the sort of book that’s like a wise grandfather. It tells you what you kinda-sorta-already know, but finally, for the first time, you truly listen. Your heart and soul open, and the book gets into you, and it tweaks and adjusts and cleans things like a mechanic.

**

The third and final book was Religion for Atheists [Amazon aff]. The author Alain de Botton asks, how can we live better by studying the world’s enduring religions? He submits, in convincing fashion, that religious traditions from Buddhism to Judaism are enduring sources of wisdom and self-help. I’m a big fan of Alain’s work.

As you study organized religions, digging through and within their infinite layers, you see that each tradition is a massive collections of habits. From prayer to sacrament, from weekly sermon to annual pilgrimage, religion-as-institution just might be the most enduring and comprehensive collection of habits we’ve ever assembled. Religion is belief, and religion is ritual. And ritual is a collection of habits, in much the same way a football team is a collection of players.

A devout Muslim prays at five precise times each and every day, in a highly prescribed and structured manner. What actions do I perform five times a day? Only the most fundamental ones: eat, drink, use the restroom, check my email. Talk about power and influence. Hinduism has been around for 4K years. What else but the most essential technologies have lasted this long? The written word? The wheel? Certainly not the oldest American corporation (DuPont, about 200 years old) or even the world’s oldest university (depending on who you ask, about 1000 years old).

Now of course religion can go very wrong. But so can any other set of powerful and lasting beliefs. After all, democracy and capitalism are two pillars upon which America today stands, but it was these same engines that propelled us to take our land, with violence, from the very people who had been living there, while also capturing and importing millions of others to serve as slave labor for centuries. Two enormous tragedies from which we’ve yet to fully recover. Both driven by, and justified by, the ideologies upon which we’re so reliant today.

But I digress.

Upon finishing Religion for Atheists, I downloaded and read the Bhagavad Gita, in awe of its lyric beauty and incomparable scope. I started to attend church, which is a fulfilling but not-yet-regular habit. I deepened my meditation practice. Slowly, most importantly, I began to have faith: not in a powerful, bearded man who sits high above the clouds and renders judgment, but rather in a force that is both far simpler and yet more magical. The simple belief that there is something greater than us in the world. By us, I mean you and I.

The single danger of life in a godless society is that it lacks reminders of the transcendent and therefore leaves us unprepared for disappointment and eventual annihilation. When God is dead, human beings – much to their detriment – are at risk of taking psychological centre stage – Alain de Botton

If Power of Habit gave me understanding and Spark gave me inspiration, Religion for Atheists provided purpose. I felt driven to understand and share religious wisdom, wisdom that has, for the most part, been isolated and kept within silos.

I believe we can and should learn from all of the religious traditions. Whether you’re Catholic or agnostic, Hindu or Wiccan or atheist. Many people are already doing this, even if they don’t see it as such. From yoga to meditation to pilgrimage, from vegetarianism to tithing to universal compassion, religious ideas and rituals are everywhere in modern secular society. And everywhere being rebranded and reinvented for reasons that are as difficult to explain as they are easy to understand.

So these three books: Power of Habit, Spark, and Religion for Atheists. I hope you browse them, I hope you read them, I hope you enjoy them or at least are challenged by them. And I hope you let me know. Thanks!

1-Page Cheatsheet: John Ratey’s Spark

spark-book-coverI started documenting and summarizing books using a concept I called the “Good Life guides”. Here are some examples. How can we take a nonfiction book’s lessons and apply them to live a good life?

However, the guides were too time-consuming and I wasn’t enjoying the creation process, so I’m trying something simpler and more straightforward where I take the most interesting findings, facts, and snippets, and pack them into a “1-page cheatsheet”.

Comes out to about 1000 words, which is closer to 3 pages, but oh well :)

HERE WE GO!

I chose Spark because it came highly recommended by Steve Pavlina and I’m always looking for motivation to exercise more.

John Ratey is a psychiatry prof at Harvard Med School. His book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain [Amazon] is about the tremendous benefits of exercise, specifically cardio-intensive activities like running and biking. Through a combination of interviews, frontline work as a clinic researcher, and extensive analysis of the latest scientific literature, it concludes that frequent, moderate-to-high intensity cardio permanently improves not only physical health, but mental and psychological health too.

LESSONS AND HIGHLIGHTS

1. Exercise helps your body utilize energy more efficiently

One of the ways exercise optimizes energy usage is by triggering the production of more receptors for insulin. In the body, having more receptors means better use of blood glucose and stronger cells. Best of all, the receptors stay there, which means the newfound efficiency gets built in.

2. Regular exercise helps you:

A. Be more social

Studies show that by adding physical activity to our lives, we become more socially active—it boosts our confidence and provides an opportunity to meet people. The vigor and motivation that exercise brings helps us establish and maintain social connections.

B. Calm down

As for the trait, the majority of studies show that aerobic exercise significantly alleviates symptoms of any anxiety disorder. But exercise also helps the average person reduce normal feelings of anxiousness.

C. Fight depression

In Britain, doctors now use exercise as a first-line treatment for depression, but it’s vastly underutilized in the United States, and that’s a shame.

D. Improve focus

Paradoxically, one of the best treatment strategies for ADHD involves establishing extremely rigid structure. Over the years, I’ve heard countless parents offer the same observation about their ADHD children: Johnny is so much better when he’s doing tae kwon do.

E. Fight unhealthy addictions

In smokers, just five minutes of intense exercise can be beneficial. Nicotine is an oddball among addictive substances as it works as a stimulant and a relaxant at the same time. Exercise fights the urge to smoke because in addition to smoothly increasing dopamine it also lowers anxiety, tension, and stress levels—the physical irritability that makes people so grouchy when they’re trying to quit. Exercise can fend off cravings for fifty minutes and double or triple the interval to the next cigarette.

F. Make better decisions

…the participants reported that an entire range of behavior related to self-regulation took a turn for the better. Not only did they steadily increase their visits to the gym, they reported that they smoked less, drank less caffeine and alcohol, ate more healthy food and less junk food, curbed impulse spending and overspending, and lost their tempers less often.

G. Have healthier babies

Exercise seems to be more than just not harmful, though. In one study, Clapp compared thirty-four newborns of exercisers to thirty-one of sedentary mothers five days after birth. There’s only so much you can do to gauge behavior at this early stage, but the babies from the exercise group “performed” better on two of six tests: they were more responsive to stimuli and better able to quiet themselves following a disturbance of sound or light. Clapp sees this as significant because it suggests that infants of exercising mothers are more neurologically developed than their counterparts from sedentary mothers.

H. Live longer!

If your brain isn’t actively growing, then it’s dying. Exercise is one of the few ways to counter the process of aging because it slows down the natural decline of the stress threshold.

[A subject I’m personally very interested in. Here are my resources on living forever]

3. How much and what types of exercise?

#1: AEROBIC. Exercise four days a week, varying from thirty minutes to an hour, at 60 to 65 percent of your maximum heart rate.

#2: STRENGTH. Hit the weights or resistance machines twice a week, doing three sets of your exercises at weights that allows you to do ten to fifteen repetitions in each set.

#3: BALANCE AND FLEXIBILITY. Focus on these abilities twice a week for thirty minutes or so. Yoga, Pilates, tai chi, martial arts, and dance all involve these skills, which are important to staying agile.

#4: MENTAL EXERCISE: KEEP LEARNING. My advice here is to keep challenging your mind. You know by now that exercise prepares your neurons to connect, while mental stimulation allows your brain to capitalize on that readiness. It’s no coincidence that study after study shows that the more education you have, the more likely you are to hang onto your cognitive abilities and stave off dementia

Doing a mix of low, medium, and high intensity exercise is important as they all do different (good) things for your brain & body

FUN FACTS

  • It turns out that marijuana, exercise, and chocolate all activate these same receptors in the brain.
  • As an illustration of the power of drugs, consider that while sex increases dopamine levels 50 to 100 percent, cocaine sends dopamine skyrocketing 300 to 800 percent beyond normal levels.
  • The brain is made up of more than 50 percent fat, so fats are important too, as long as they’re the right kind. Trans fat, animal fat, and hydrogenated oils gum up the works, but the omega-3s found in fish are enormously beneficial
  • The one proven way to live longer is to consume fewer calories—at least if you’re a lab rat. In experiments in which rodents eat 30 percent fewer calories, they live up to 40 percent longer than animals allowed to eat as much as they want.
  • Low-carb diets may help you lose weight, but they’re not good for your brain. Whole grains have complex carbohydrates that supply a steady flow of energy rather than the spike and crash of simple sugars, and they’re necessary to transport amino acids such as tryptophan into the brain.
  • Vitamin D is being recognized not only for its importance in strengthening bones but also as a measure against cancer and Parkinson’s. I would recommend 1000 IU (international units) of vitamin D…I would also recommend taking vitamin B with at least 800 mg of folate, which improves memory and processing speed.

Here’s a list of all 1-page cheatsheets, and a list of all books!

February: Amazing books and articles that I read and recommend

Every month, I’ll post the best stuff I read, watched, listened to, etc. in the prior month. So this is from January.

Books

January was a huge month, in part because I was traveling. When traveling, I read a lot in my down time, and I’d just bought an iPad mini (and then promptly left in the seatback pocket of an international flight).

I finished:

blue-zones-dan-buettner Blue Zones by Dan Buettner [Amazon]. Given my interest in living forever, this was high on my list of longevity/health-related books.

Buettner does a great job combining storytelling, health science, and applicable advice into a fast read. Hara hachi bu!

 

good-without-god-greg-epsteinGood without God by Greg Epstein [Amazon]. I created a Good Life Guide for this book, check it out here.

Well-written, thorough in scope, and with real passion/emotion.

 

 

spark-john-ratey SPARK: The revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain by John Ratey [Amazon]. This book immediately changed my behavior. Basically a long, well-constructed argument for why we should all be runners.

Since finishing it, I’ve run on average 30 minutes/day, 5 days/week. Trying to up that to 45 minutes; ultimate target: one hour/day, 6 days/week. Aerobic exercise, to slightly adjust a frequent Ratey saying, is like “miracle-gro for the brain”. Better focus, better memory, better mood, better sleep, better sex, better everything. Read it now!

Articles

I mostly consume RSS feeds (using Netvibes), the occasional article from Facebook/Twitter, and what my friends forward. Here’s the best stuff this month. Note that not all of it is “fresh”: I emphasize quality, not topical-ity.

  • That which does not kill me makes me stranger (Daniel Coyle, NYT). The best article I’ve read on ultra-endurance athletes. Snippet: Around Day 2 of a typical weeklong race, his speech goes staccato. By Day 3, he is belligerent and sometimes paranoid. His short-term memory vanishes, and he weeps uncontrollably.
  • What is your biggest secret desire that you are ashamed of telling anyone? (Reddit). Amazing, the secrets we hold. Snippet: In the middle of the night, I would pack one bag and drive away from my life. Not look back for one second and drive clear across the country. Find a small, rural town and just rebuild where nobody has an idea of who I am.
  • The distractions of social media, 1673 style (Tom Standage). History repeats itself, which is why its valuable to understand history. Coffeehouses!! Snippet: With the promise of a constant and unpredictable stream of news, messages and gossip, coffeehouses offered an exciting and novel platform for sharing information.
  • A Pickpocket’s Tale (Adam Green, The New Yorker). Read this, and watch the videos too. Will blow your mind. Snippet: Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way.
  • late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope) (Dave McClure). Another classic from Dave, honest, powerful, irreverent. Snippet: Most folks thought I was a decent fellow, but over the hill with my best days behind me… and I guess I thought so too. I watched as other friends helped make companies like Google and Facebook and Twitter into juggernauts, but mostly I was on the sidelines, only peripherally involved in their big ideas.

For a complete list, check out my Amazing media page. All of these will be added there.

In a followup post, I’ll talk about movies and podcasts.

What did you read/watch in January that blew your mind? Share away! Thanks as always for your time.