Month: January 2018

I am a pleaser. Sometimes I get into these relationships, usually quickly, and usually as a result of my need for intimacy, and I overlook a lot of potential relationship flags. I have this idea that things will change in time. That people will. That early on there’s problems because we’re working things out. But I think I expect people to change. And really when you work things out, it’s not that they change, per say. It’s that you accept the person and their “qualities”. As a result, for things to work, it’s really that I must accept the person, and change.

But as I’ve grown older, and undergone therapy, I guess I realize that some things I don’t want, some behaviors I don’t want to accept. Because, they are not healthy. And I am incapable of being fulfilled and happy, while accepting that these negative qualities must coexist within the relationship.

But while I’m aware of these qualities, I guess it takes awhile to act or really believe that it’s not what I want. I get caught up in the other things. The sex. The adoration. The passion. And I overlook basic fundamentals of healthy behaviors. Continue reading “Relation Ship Bound Aries”

I mostly never know what I’m talking about, but I talk so that my ignorance is revealed to others, so they can point out my error, and I can revise my understanding.

Just finished reading The Role of the Individual in History by Georgi V. Plekhanov.

In summary, social and economic trends are inevitable, due to the social relations and economic production at the given time, and there’s nothing a single individual can do to stop these trends.

The historical role of the individual (the hero) is exaggerated, simply because he is elevated to that position out of the necessity that those trends call forth, and if that individual were not available to fill that position, another individual, more or less qualified, would take their place.

But that does not discount the role of the individual. His role is necessary and vital nonetheless, simply because the forces command it.

An individual cannot derail the inevitability of the trends, and no individual can “make history”, because these trends are determined by the whole of productive forces within social relations.

The individual plays a role in facilitating that inevitability, but there are men who can do more than others to facilitate the solutions to the problems.

“A great man is precisely a beginner because he sees further than others. He solves the scientific problems brought up by the preceding process of intellectual development of society; he points to the new social needs created by the preceding development of social relationships; he takes the unitive in satisfying these needs.”

Any individual who is sufficiently embedded within the social relations who “have eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to love their neighbors” can actively engage in facilitating these trends, and become the hero.

“But he is not a hero in the sense that he can stop, or change, the natural course of things, but in the sense that his activities are the conscious and free expression of this inevitable and unconscious course.”

In regards to fasting:

I liken the body to a sponge.

When a sponge is constantly saturated, it cannot absorb additional volume.

If you have a dirty sponge, you cannot clean it out by simply submersing it in clean water.

It is only when you totally wring out the sponge, and expunge it’s total liquid volume, that you are able to introduce clean water, and refresh the sponge.

Likewise, when the body is constantly saturated with glucose, which stimulates insulin and signals to cells to absorb additional volume (ie nutrients that piggy back off the glucose), you cannot expunge cell waste, and introduce needed nutrients.

It’s only when you allow the body to expunge/ deplete it’s glycogen stores, via fasting, or intense/ prolonged exercise coupled with a restricted diet, that nutrients can be introduced to refresh and revitalize cell function.

If you don’t allow your body to enter a calorie restricted state, so that glycogen stores sufficiently deplete, and cell waste adequately purge, then no amount of nutritious eating will heal and benefit the body: you cannot introduce nutrients when the body is saturated with glucose. The cells won’t allow anything else to enter: they’re full.

The following study complements this analogy by demonstrating that excess internal cell glucose prevents the uptake of Vitamin C, a vital nutrient to cell function:

Preloading the vesicles with glucose inhibited ascorbate uptake similarly, indicating that glucose interferes with the ascorbate transporter from the internal side of the membrane. The results of this study suggest that DHAA crosses the apical membrane by facilitated diffusion, whereas ascorbate transport is a Na(+)-dependent, electrogenic process modulated by glucose.

PubMed Source

The Journal of Nutrition

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There is a theory that complements this line of thought, called the Glucose-Ascorbate-Antagonism (GAA).

Essentially, glucose and vitamin C are so chemically similar, that they compete for the GLUT-1 receptor.

White blood cells may contain 20 times Vitamin C than other cells, and up to 50 times more than blood plasma, in order to combat oxidation.

In white blood cells, glucose has a much greater affinity for this receptor. In addition, white blood cells have more insulin pumps than any other cell.

When white blood cells encounter pathogenic bacteria and viruses, they must ingest or phagocytize these organisms in order to neutralize them. The phagocytic index measures how effective a particular white blood cell is at destroying viruses, bacteria & cancer cells. Elevated blood sugar impairs this phagocytic index. In fact, a blood sugar of 120 reduces the phagocytic index by 75%.

Glucose and ascorbic acid also work on the hexose monophosphate (HMP) shunt. The HMP is a biochemical pathway that produces NADPH. White blood cells need NADPH to create superoxide and other reactive oxygen species that oxidize and destroy pathogens. Vitamin C not only helps produce NADPH, but also regulates quantities so the white blood cell does not create too much oxidative stress in its attempt to protect the body.

Vitamin C activates this important shunt while glucose inhibits it. This HMP shunt also produces ribose and deoxyribose, which provide important raw materials for the formation of new white blood cell RNA/DNA. When the immune system is under attack, it needs to quickly produce new immune cells. If blood sugar is high enough to turn off the HMP shunt, it will reduce the quantity of RNA/DNA and the amount of new immune cells formed.

(Source)

Excess glucose results in increased oxidative stress on the body, which leads to increased inflammation and leaves the body vulnerable to disease.

I kinda resent life “hackers”, or anyone who thinks there is a short cut to success. (see: Tim Ferris)

I am all about working smarter. But you never get something for nothing.

Easy come, easy go.

And I think that hard work and the struggle inherent to it is exactly what’s necessary for building character, or the craftsmanship that brings value to your work/career endeavors.

Working smarter is always the point, but that never gets you out of working hard.

It just gets you ahead. Which is where you must be, if you want to survive competition.

If you find a shortcut, you can count on someone else also finding it.

And one major difference between maintaining that competitive advantage is how hard you work, the time you invest cultivating your skill.

And I definitely appreciate the sentiment of maintaining balance. Don’t be a neurotic who expends all this energy in an inefficient, uncalculated way.

Have a plan and execute and learn and repeat. Know when to work, and when to take your foot off the gas and recharge, and reflect on your efforts, and whether they’re producing the optimal and desirable results.

When I sold books door to door during the summer, we had the following quota:

•30 contacts/leads/qualified prospects

•10 demos

•3 sales

In the beginning, because you lacked the skill and craftsmanship, the only way to increase your sales was increase your contacts.

Double your contacts, and you’d double your sales.

So instead of working 7am to 7pm, you worked 6am to 8pm, and ran door to door instead of walked.

You could double the number of contacts you spoke to.

The sheer volume of repeating the sales script and demo over and over, and being rejected twice as fast, caused your skill to double twice as fast.

Soon you would get a demo more often, and the more demos you got, the more practice demoing, and the better your skill at closing.

In time your closing percentage went from 10% to 20%, and your contacts per day decreased because you were spending more time demoing and closing.

The work ethic never changed.

You still hustled all the same, with the same enthusiasm, but you were seeing less people, and closing more.

When there were periods where people weren’t buying, you just maintained the same work ethic, and eventually it’d turn around, and you’d get even more demos, and your closing rate would grow to 30%.

This same approach worked in my corporate sales job.

There were people who tried to hack the sales. Network, and spend time trying different techniques, different scripts, different demos.

When you stuck to the fundamentals day in and day out, you developed a very fine skill. You were a machine. A robot.

I would ride with top salesman, and I was always so eager to pick up on their “secrets”, the special techniques they must employ to get all those sales.

I can say, without a single exceptions, that every single top salesman I’ve ever road with, used the same exact, same old, tried and true script that they taught you on your first day, and the same damn demo.

They did nothing special.

The only thing they had was this enthusiasm and attitude and work ethic. I think the confidence in knowing exactly what to say, and knowing every conceivable response to the words they said, left them supremely prepared for every objection, and so they always maintain the utmost ease and confidence, and guided the customer to the sale like they were leading the blind.

I would always walk out of those meetings completely astonished it was that simple.

It was like magic.

The lesson learned was that the fundamentals are always the most important.

The master craftsman, the master athletes, lifters, investors, creators, artists— they are the master at the fundamentals.

And the fundamentals are not necessarily fun. They require constant discipline, constant upkeep. Constant work.

But they are what separate the good from the great.

I want to stress that this shit is not fun. It’s fucking exhausting. Working hard, is hard. It’s… not necessarily fun at all. It’s taxing.

And that is precisely where attitude comes into play.

BUT. You acquire the skills and develop the craft so much faster. When your efforts are doubled, your focus is doubled, and you accelerate your ability to achieve.

You become better, faster, which has exponential returns.

The biggest lessons I always get (or at least am reminded of again and again) out of negative episodes, is that the more I fixate on the problem, the more I prolong it.

It’s becomes a negative feedback loop, that eventually spirals out of control.

I can obsess about thinking myself out of the problem. But it just exaggerates it.

Accepting the problem, and embracing the negative episodes, is quite literally a skill.

The ability to transcend the discomfort or pain.

It’s essential for achieving anything.

Life is suffering. That’s the Buddha’s first noble truth.

Learning to transcend and operate from a place beyond it allows us the capacity to overcome it, and find some joy or peace.

It’s like the only way to avoid suffering is… do nothing. Say nothing. Be nothing.

But I feel like you still end up suffering.

Every choice has a risk. Even no choice.

Also, there are those (myself included) who attempt to eliminate suffering by control.

This can lead to neurosis. You can’t control everything, and you can’t control people. No matter how sophisticated your plan. Life is unpredictable.

And there are those who try to eliminate suffering by surrendering control. They avoid conflict. They retreat into a comforting place, away from the chaos, where they find equilibrium.

I do think that having the courage to confront conflict head on, and engage with problems and the world, is where personal growth and the source of strength is cultivated.

I think those situations teach you wisdom about what you can control and what you can’t, and how to optimize your attitude and approach for each.

I think gaining distance from thoughts, feelings, and states of being are crucial for any intelligent change.

Meditation. Personal reflection. Journaling. Objectively discussing these situations, with trusted confidants, or in therapy.

They instigate self awareness.

If you aren’t self aware, you’re a hostage to these unconscious habits and drives and primal reactions.

Stepping back. Gaining perspective. Seeing your “self”.

Quieting the conscious “noise”. The mess of feelings and reactionary thoughts and tangled attention.

Allowing the unconscious to achieve space to reveal itself.

What’s really going on here? Who is that? Why is that?

Then you can change behaviors, thoughts and feelings about things, which allow you to escape from the habituated patterns of mind that thrust you into the same dilemmas time and time again, and set in motion a new chain of events that produce a different set of outcomes.

Which you likewise must inevitably wrestle with.

The process of self development. Self mastery. Purification.

The more obsessed you are to a cause or vision or goal, the more dedicated, absorbed, and focused, the more dominated and possessed by the compulsion to analyze and act and repeat with persistence, like an addiction, like a hunger, like your life depends on it, no matter the struggle or set back or stagnation… the more successful you’ll be.

Some people balance this better than others.

Some are more neurotic. Some are more composed.

But in the end, your level of consuming obsession dictates your ability and speed of accomplishment.

Sometimes I want to stop this “self improvement” philosophy bullshit, and stop all personal development, just out of spite. Like, stop all these attempts to purify character and attain virtue and cultivate principles.

Does anyone feel like it’s cliche at this point?

What does it all mean?

Everyone seems like that’s what they do. Or post about. Or read. Pictures of their self help books. Their feel good quotes. Success thus and achievement that. Peace and love and yoga for enlightenment and meditation yay.

Living? Learning from experiences? Isn’t this what happens by default, from living?

Must we (I, or millennials) be so obsessed with cultivating skills and improvements and success? (I often feel it’s an illusion, to comfort ourself from the bane reality that existence is mostly trivial chance. The illusion of control, the illusion that we can “fix” ourselves, like we know what that even means, like we know what a healthy or happy self even looks like).

Sometimes i just want to fail. And like. Live with that failure forever. Never fix it. Just be a piece of shit. But. Still live, and thus, still get things done. Cause survival. And the necessity of survival.

And by being a piece of shit, I don’t mean being a malevolent malicious asshole.

I just mean, stop caring about anything that doesn’t directly effect me in the hear and now. No planning. No dreaming. Just be. Maybe fuck and drink while I’m not eating or working.