#80 - The Modern World is Engineered to Make You Weak

We’re back after a long gap, and we get real about how comfort, convenience, and constant stimulation can slowly make us weaker. We share simple challenges that build physical strength, mental resilience, and a better daily life without overthinking it. 

• why modern convenience makes unhealthy choices easier than healthy ones 
• the trade-off between comfort and capability 
• dopamine overload from social media and what it does to attention span 
• a three-minute test to sit with your thoughts 
• how strength training builds confidence and psychological armor 
• walking daily as a realistic fitness reset 
• spending time outside to improve energy and mood 
• eating mostly real food with simple basics over perfect macros 
• choosing hard goals voluntarily to escape analysis paralysis 
• one hour without your phone each day for a week 

As always, you can check out the website, wheyoflifepodcast.com.

Transcript

Welcome Back And New Momentum

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of Way of Life. I'm your host, Gus Holland. Today I'm coming back with first episode in a while. And unfortunately, you know, the past few episodes have kind of been empty promises, and it's very frustrating for me and the listeners for sure. But that definitely ends here today. I'm coming back with I think two or three hours worth of episodes of this month alone. This month is almost over, so this is the first bit of that, and then I'm gonna just try and make up for lost time basically. Today, well, just to clear things up, I've been traveling a lot for work, and I've been making massive improvements in my life, and I'm very excited and happy about that. But unfortunately, the podcast has suffered, so I'm back and gonna stick around because this is like what I what I truly enjoy as far as hobby or passion or whatever you want to call it. But anyways, I wanted to touch on a couple things that were just kind of random, cross my mind, as but they do have to do with the fitness world, fitness industry, you

Convenience Culture And Getting Weaker

SPEAKER_00 1:28

know, personal growth, success, etc. You know. The first one was how the modern world is engineered to make you weak. That's not the I mean, that's a summation. The the world as a whole, you can find good and bad within it, but unfortunately, especially in the US, there is it is easier, more convenient, typically less expensive to buy food and supplements that don't serve you, you know, serve serve the greater good for you, either through poor composition, poor quality in ingredients, messed up macros, you know, you you name it basically. It's easier to the the bad food is easier to get delivered and it's cheaper to get delivered, and then you're not having to go out and get the food. And yeah, I can ramble on and on about it, but overall, we live in the safest and most comfortable era in human history. And somehow we're more exhausted, distracted, and unhealthy than ever. And so a lot of people are pointing it out, but it needs to I I don't know. I don't know. I mean if you if you brought it up in the street and you know, people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like it doesn't necessarily mean need more awareness. It needs more action as far as I don't know, not I mean, maybe maybe regulatory at this point, but kind of the we have a very sedentary culture in America for the for the most part. I mean, there's a lot of super hardworking people, but man, I mean, even the commercials and stuff, like if you're it's all it's all just kind of pushing pushing for that. They just want you to spend more money and they don't really care how your life goes, you know. So I guess I kind of rambled a little bit, but basically that what I was touching on is convenience versus capability. Modern life removes a lot of friction, which is good, you know, overall, you know, you go back, you m most people wouldn't want to live two, three hundred years ago. And they even if they did want to, it would be most likely rougher, you know. So but comfort is addictive, and so you know, you it it kind of kind of puts you in a tough spot.

Dopamine Overload And Short Attention

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Another another point I wanted to make was dopamine overload. I mean, social media is I think the the most prevalent it's ever been. I mean, it's only it hasn't been around but I don't know, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 years. I mean, probably probably not even a 40. So, but people are constantly getting stimulation from various things that are trying to grab your attention span. So a constant stimulation uh from social media or even overstimulation. A lot a lot of those videos end up creating comparisons for you to either compare yourself to others or to I don't know. It it does a lot of there's some good that comes out of it, there's there's some bad basically. But a good exercise to try it out is after obviously after this episode, put your phone down, almost you know, try and try and get it quiet and everything, and then sit there with your own thoughts and see see if you can just do that for like three minutes. Because you can spend you can spend hours scrolling on whatever TikTok or Instagram or whatever, and so just try and spend three minutes with yourself, not meditation or anything, just like think about your life, you know, or like what's what's good. Try and try and keep it positive, you know. Think about what's good, what you're grateful for, what you'd like to improve, but not but keep a positive, you know, like oh I'm gonna, you know, by the end of the year, I'm gonna do A or you know, or A B C, whatever, you know. Yeah, and just just try that, and that's gonna, I mean, obviously, I'm sure some listeners got given eye roll after you know after I said to do that, but think about think about giving an eye roll about sit sitting and thinking for three minutes. You know, but physical training, mental training, and hard work in general, it it becomes harder and harder because your brain is expecting fast reward rewards. So that's that's primarily from that attention your attention span getting depleted over time. Like it's just getting shortened more and more. And so I don't know, whatever, whatever yeah, think about that stuff, and then if you see it at if you see it as a true problem and you want to correct it, think about ways you could correct it. You know, you can maybe maybe I should start reading, you know, just once a week, you know, just to get off the phone or throw in an extra 30 minutes of exercise, or you know, make maybe make a little like fun kind of rule that will help redirect your path toward I guess more not necessarily normal, because the normal is the the American normal isn't necessarily good, you know. So maybe just redirect yourself toward a path of betterment.

Physical Strength Builds Mental Resilience

SPEAKER_00 8:18

But anyways, the uh other point I wanted to talk about is physical weakness creates mental fragility. So it's been proven over and over, you know, for a very long time. Exercise improves your confidence, it improves your emotional resilience, increases your physical capabilities, and over time changes your self-perception. So your you know, feel good, look good, you know. There's a there's a lot of like little sayings tied to that, but your yeah, it's a it's a it's a positive change. Sometimes it physical training takes a little bit longer to see positivity from, you know, like day one, you're not, you know, maybe the first week, if you haven't worked out in a year or two or five or whatever, your first thing you're gonna notice is that you're you're weak and you're out of shape and you're sore or it made you tired or whatever. But training teaches delayed gratification, so it's almost kind of fighting against that shortened time span, a shortened attention span. And yeah, it just helps. So but hard things, doing hard things make you makes you tougher, you know, people say it builds character, another phrase is psychological armor. You're when you feel capable, you know, because of from strength or fitness or endurance or whatever, it's it's gonna shift your mentality about yourself and your predicament and the per your perception of the world all for the better. You know, whether, you know, it's a like I said, it's a slow change, it's that delayed gratification, but over time you're going to feel much, much better about a lot of things. And plus, uh, I mean, whether you're a social person or not, even working out at the gym alone, you you know, you're surrounded by like-minded people for the most part, you're have a higher chance of possibly building a friendship, or there's a there's a lot of positives, not besides just personal gain.

Daily Walking And Outdoor Time

SPEAKER_00 10:59

But so, anyways, thing things that would help you build yourself into a stronger, more capable human being is to walk daily. It sounds crazy, but I've so I've almost always been in some sort of blue-collar job. So I've always been outside a lot, walked a lot, jogged a lot, lifted heavy things, you know, gotten a bunch of sun damage. But there's a lot, I mean, a lot of white-collar jobs that they the only walking they do is to get to and from the car and into the house, you know. So, or maybe a little bit around the office or anything like that. So literally just saying, hey, I'm gonna walk daily, walk daily, is is a big shift for a lot of people. You know, you could you just walk around your neighborhood and say, Oh, well, every day before I go inside the house, take my shoes off, get get relaxed and unwind, unwound for the day. Before I do that, even if I'm in work clothes, I'm just gonna walk around the neighborhood for 30 minutes. You know, that's that'd be literally life-changing for a lot of people. Obviously, lifting weights. I'm always a big proponent of that. Lifting weights are gonna help you gain strength, endurance, and increase your organ health. You know, there's there's a lot of things. Also, just spending time outside. You're just it sounds it's you know, I guess silly, but you spending time outside, you're getting fresh air, you're out there with Mother Nature, you're potentially connecting with some of your community, you're there's there's exercises you can do out in the park. You know, if you don't like the gym environment, you can jog in the park, you can walk your dog, you can take advantage of if there's any type of uh public recreational or uh recreational equipment. There's a there's a lot of things you can do outside. You can literally go fishing, you know, you like that's there's more physical activity than just sitting at home. Any type of reducing your digital overload that I was talking about earlier is going to help you. You're a lot I've I've seen it a lot, and people spend a lot of time on whatever whatever social media is their preference, and they're just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and then someone tries to get their attention, whether it's family, friend, coworker, or whatever, and they're real like short and snippy and you know, not not nice to that person, and it's immediate, and they don't even realize that they're doing it, but it's because they're already overloaded and they're already overstimulated, and then somebody's just asking a question or something, and it's so any any type of reduction of digital overload is going to shift your your life for the better and increase your relationships, basically.

Mostly Real Food And Simple Nutrition

SPEAKER_00 14:32

But another big massive thing, especially in America, is trying to eat mostly real food, and that sounds very dystopian, unfortunately, but you could pe people harp uh harp on macros and micros and nutritional facts and all this all this stuff, and really if you just said going to uh I'm just going to get the basics. You know, it's uh it's typically cheaper to even eat healthier if you just do the basics. Get whatever seasonings you want, get as many seasonings as you want. They make a million different sugar-free sauces or light, you know, low sugar, low sodium, whatever. You can season your food however you want, and you get whatever proteins you want. And you just try and get the highest quality that you can afford, basically. So you get you get proteins, like meat, you know. Meat, chicken, uh I said meat, red meat, chicken, tofu, seafood, whatever, whatever floats your boat, basically. But you get that, you get some complex carbs, you get some simple carbs, you get a lot of vegetables, and you get fruit. And then get whatever supplements you want, you know, protein powder, um, BCAAs, pre-workout, whatever, you know. I mean, that that's getting more into the like the chemical side of things and everything, it's not necessarily quote unquote real food. But if you if you just did that, even you know, if you nixed the supplements, you know, just take that out of the picture, just grabbing that stuff where and you're not grabbing pro like super processed sweets and breads and things like that is going to massively, massively change change your life.

Choose Hard Goals And Ditch Phone

SPEAKER_00 16:47

But I guess the it all seems simple when you're when I'm saying it out loud, but the thing to do is to pursue difficult goals voluntarily. And so some of those, even though it sounds simple and it sounds easy and blah blah blah with the way our society is set up, those are difficult goals for a lot of people. So choose one of those things I said, or two or three, or whatever you can handle without burning yourself out, and pursue those voluntarily. Not because I said so, not because of your perception of yourself, like you just clear your mind and just choose a couple things and do it. You know, it's it's very simple. We we like to live in either like an analysis, paralysis type mode, or some sort of struggle mentality of it. It's not you'll you'll stress about walking daily for 30 minutes a day when you could have just walked daily for 30 minutes a day. But a good challenge just to take a take away from this is one hour without your phone every day for the next week. And it doesn't matter. You can literally just take a nap, you can meditate, you could read a book, you could sit in darkness and give your eyes a rest. You could go outside and have a picnic or walk through the park, go work out, whatever. One phone without your phone every day. Put it on, you know, put it on the charger or whatever, and get away from it. But yeah, that's that's really about it for the first episode back, I guess. Uh just some stuff that was on my mind. And yeah. Like I said, I've been doing a lot of traveling and it's finally slowing down, and it was all it was all for the better. But more episodes will be coming

Website, Fan Mail, And Closing

SPEAKER_00 19:05

out. As always, you can check out the website, uh, wayoflifepodcast.com. You can buy merch there and check out, you know, it's a it's a pretty basic site for now. Eventually, I think I think I'll do some sort of blog or something on there to just give more content out there for the listeners. The other thing is if you're still listening to this, I do this podcast through Buzzsproute. So Buzzprout has this new, not new, but newer feature and a feature I've never really used called fan mail. So if you're looking in the description, I think toward the beginning of the description, maybe before or above the description of this podcast, you should there should be a little link where it says uh send fan mail. And so feel free to shoot me a message. Um, and whether it's in English or whatever language you speak, I'd love to hear from y'all. I'd love to hear any critiques, constructive criticism. If you like the show, if you don't like the show, what whatever. I'm trying to make this very consistent and very good, I guess, for for the listener. But anyways, thank you all for listening, and I am sorry it's been so long, but uh I'll be back soon. All right. Bye.