Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
The Burnout Society, Reintroducing Negativity for Health and Fitness
Have you ever considered that your path to a healthier lifestyle could begin with the simple step of tracking only your processed food intake? Or that embracing a bit of friction might be exactly what you need to escape the clutches of social media's endless scroll? This episode of Mind Muscle with Simon Devere ventures into these innovative strategies, offering a fresh perspective on cultivating better habits. We delve into philosopher Byung-Chul Han's insights on the pitfalls of our achievement-obsessed culture, and how this drive for success might be secretly sabotaging our joy in sports and exercise.
It's time to confront the uncomfortable truth: the mantra 'you can be anything you want to be' comes with its own set of psychological baggage. We explore the dark side of positive freedom, wading through the pressures of limitless potential and the inner turmoil it can wreak. I discuss how this insatiable quest for personal achievement twists into a form of self-exploitation, as Han so eloquently puts it, and reflect upon the implications for our relationship with sports, fitness, and competition. This conversation is a must-hear for anyone who's felt the sting of burnout or questioned the value of their endeavors when the applause fades.
In a world fixated on metrics and milestones, I advocate for a return to the roots of well-being—embracing the full human experience, including those negative emotions we often try to suppress. We'll consider the rejuvenating power of stillness and the untapped creative potential that lies in the moments we're not 'producing.' Wrapping up, I share insights on cultivating a diverse range of physical activities for a more fulfilled, balanced life, and the importance of self-reflection. Together, let's redefine what it means to be fit, not just in body, but in mind and spirit as well. Join me for a transformative journey that promises to shake up your approach to health and happiness.
Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant
For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast. Here's your host, simon DeVere, and welcome back to Mind Muscle, the place where we study the history, science and philosophy behind everything in health and fitness. Today, I am Simon Devere, and there is nothing new except all that has been forgotten, all right. So, up top, today I want to run through. You know, there's actually kind of a common theme running in all of these. In a sense, we're going to reintroduce negativity to create positive gains in health and fitness Not necessarily the way I think that most people think of negativity, but yeah, anyway.
Speaker 1:Specifically, I have a new nutrition logging hack that I wish I had thought of many years ago, that I've been breaking out with some good results, that I want to talk about, and then I also want to talk, in that same sense of negativity, about creating friction and how we can actually do that to encourage the things that we want to do and discourage the things we don't want to do. All of this, though, is going to lead us into a big discussion on one of my favorite living philosophers probably my actual favorite living philosopher Bien Chul Han's Burnout Society. I want to talk about that book, which is actually I really like it. I just mentioned. It was one of my favorites, but I'm relatively new to his work so I don't want to pitch myself as an expert. I'm a fan, a new fan, and I wanted to actually take a look at his book, the Burnout Society. There's a lot of things that I think are going to map up with something that I see a fair bit workout, burnout, common reasons that that occurs, I think, or maybe have a good explanation in Han's work, and so, yeah, anyway, I just kind of want to synthesize my years of training, watching people burn out with workouts and and some new reading that that I'm really, really enjoying and I'm going to recommend that. Uh, you know, if you find it interesting that you do the same cause. Again, I'm, uh, not an expert on on the work here, just a recently, you know, new fan. So, yeah, I just want to have some fun talking about those ideas and kind of where I see them mapping up in people's health and fitness pursuits. But, yeah, before I take you guys down the philosophical rabbit hole that I really want to go down.
Speaker 1:So, new nutrition logging hack new to me maybe somebody's already doing this out there, but one of the biggest impediments that I've experienced getting anybody to log nutrition is that it's just frankly, tedious and it takes a while. You don't want to remember all the things you ate, and that is, honestly, the biggest resistance that I see. So one of the things that I have started in that area, that I call phase one in nutrition, when we are focusing on quality I'm not going to do a nutrition episode, but, remember, I like to go quality-quantity ratios, so while I'm working with somebody in the quantity phase, it's been useful to have them log only processed food, nothing else. A lot of reasons for this processed food is easier to log. A lot of the apps that you have actually have UPC scanners, so if someone's eating processed food which we don't recommend one of the upsides, though, is those foods are actually quite easy to log A lot easier than logging whole foods, which you're actually going to have to measure and go find caloric estimates, keep track of how much oil or butter or anything that you added. With processed foods, you can log them very easily, and when we're in that phase one, that's kind of the only thing that we need to know is how much processed food is going in. So I found that this is like a nice entry point to get somebody into the habit of logging.
Speaker 1:Obviously, if they were following along for the next phase, in phase two they're going to get quantity, so then at that point we're going to have to keep full nutrition logs. But I've just found this is a way that you can kind of ease people into the process that, if you know they're well one, a lot of people's goals are going to be met just by making that switch to high quality food. If they're doing you know physique things, then we're going to get into the quantity and the ratios and then we're going to need really accurate logs for that. So this can just be a way to kind of ease them into learning the behavior of keeping good logs if that's going to be a goal down the line. If not, we can accomplish pretty much a lot of people's health purposes, not physique purposes. But we can accomplish most of the goals that we want to with nutrition by just controlling for quality anyway. So shortens up the log, makes it easier to put in there. So all we do is just simply phase one just log the processed food, don't worry about all the other things. Just log the processed food, don't worry about all the other things. So, anyway, that's just a new logging hack that I've been rolling out and seeing some good results with Wanted to share that and then, in that vein, something I have been employing in myself of late advocating a lot in myself of late, advocating a lot but I'm actually trying to create friction when there are things that I don't want to do.
Speaker 1:So an example would be if I have a social media app on a device, by simply logging out when I'm done using it, it takes away that push button satisfaction of logging back in. Many times you'll touch the icon, you go to the login screen and then, just like the hard part of logging food. Sometimes I just don't feel like punching in my credentials and I realized that I didn't actually want to be on that app all that bad. So that's a strategy that I've been using for a while with. Technology is just simply logging out of things when I leave and that makes my use of them. I don't beat myself up after that, it just makes my use a lot more intentional. There's probably going to be a reason that I'm actually going on there and then, when I'm done with that, then log out. So by just putting that little speed bump, it helps me achieve the goal of, you know, being on social media less you know. Another one is actually a slight inversion. I know I promised all negativity, but I'm also trying to make things easier that I want to do so.
Speaker 1:Haven't really had an issue with not being consistent with my workout, but one of the drawbacks of having a home gym. There's a lot of upsides, but I do have to set up and clean up the gym myself every single time and, yeah, not a huge deal. You should be cleaning up the gym anyway. But a lot of times when I get done with my workout, um, now I'm already setting up the next workout when I leave the gym. Um, so this is actually just helping me. A lot of times when workouts are happening in the morning, when I don't have to move things around, when I can just walk out and just start training, um, this actually makes the quality of the workout significantly better. So this is something that I've just been putting in that extra little time just to make it easier.
Speaker 1:Another one that I've always done along those lines is I always prepare coffee the night before, but yeah, so anyway, just in general, I've been really using this idea lately of creating friction around the things that I don't want to do and actually making it a little bit easier to do the things that I want to do. But yeah, at least the friction component of that is going to be in keeping with my favorite new philosopher, byun Chul Han. Quick background on him he is Korean born, writes in German, so even part of why, if you haven't heard the name, he's new to me as well. His books were only kind of recently translated well, relatively recently translated into English. So if you haven't heard it, you know it's not like you were missing out for long, it's just relatively new to the English speaking world.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I have to admit this too and I try to be careful to really contextualize where I'm coming from with all of this, because I do like to talk about philosophy and I like to talk about a wide array of disciplines, but I really, again, am not the expert or a scholar in this. One of my friends actually gave me that distinction that I was a scholar and one of the best conversations and I was like I appreciate that and that is a great compliment, but I'm like I really can't take the scholar part of it. I'm like the truth is, I read all of this that I talked to you about in English, and a lot of the writers I talk about didn't write in English. So a real scholar, especially even like the people I read up on, they would go ahead and learn the language that the person was writing and then go read it themselves. So I just I don't want to throw that word around loosely um, I love engaging a wide variety of ideas, but that definitely doesn't make me a scholar. Um, but yeah, bin chul han really is. Um, yeah, so if my facts are right, I believe he was at the University of Basel, professor there, which I'm a Nietzsche nerd. So that was cool.
Speaker 1:Nietzsche also was professor of Basel as well, and their work isn't similar in the subject matter that they're covering. But to me there's actually another similarity, not just in the school they're professor at, but each of them writes in a really short, aphoristic style. So even the book I'm talking about, the Burnout Society today, it's only a 50-page book. So, like I always will, I really will encourage you to read it, but in this instance I'm not asking you to, it's not a big ask, and yeah, so anyway, to me there are some similarities, if you will, to Nietzsche in that short, aphoristic style. He says you know what could be said a lot longer in a nice punchy prose, and yeah. So anyway, love the style, relatively new. But yeah, I got turned on to his thinking by a podcast that I like in Philosophies, philosophize this with Stephen West. So also recommend those if you just want a quick, entertaining primer, and he's, you know, frankly, going to do a lot better job explaining his thought than I will.
Speaker 1:I think the new ground we're going to cover here today is how I want to tie this into at least Han's observations in the burnout society, how those might relate to what I see in my work and why people burn out on health and fitness in general. But anyway, that's enough preamble, let's go ahead and jump into, let's actually start with the burnout society, and then I'm going to talk about workout burnout, if that's cool, and it's got to be, because I got the microphone, but yeah. So his critique basically of Western society is that you know, in a sense and this is going to sound weird to Western ears up front, but it's kind of a critique of all the freedom that we have that there is a downside to having so much freedom, and I guess one of the things he frames this under is that if you really look around the world today, there's not a huge list of things that you cannot do, and I'm sure if somebody wants to be a contrarian or argumentative they can find some. But it's probably fair to say there's less today than there were in the past and it's probably fair to ascribe that. We have a cultural attitude that you can do anything or you can be anything, like the more disciplinary societies, frankly, that are going to be described in works of like Freud. Or, even though I love dead philosophers, a lot of the dead philosophers I read weren't writing about the world that I'm living in, which, slightly veering off course for a second here, this is another thing that I like about Han's work is again, when I go back and this isn't going to stop me from engaging the great works of the past but even today, it just doesn't seem lost on people when they're maybe debating the fate of AI and the economy that all of the IP laws and things they're talking about were literally created in the 16th and 17th century and it's highly unlikely that the people who wrote those were anticipating the information economy we live in and the technology we have in now.
Speaker 1:And me saying that doesn't say that I'm the guy with the answers. I'm just saying that clearly those ideas are based in a different time. This is a thing that I like reading about Han is that a lot of times he's seen the internet. He's seen a lot of the things that a lot of times we're trying to stretch and draw analogies into. He's writing right now. So, yeah, we don't have to guess what he thinks about social media or draw it from an analogy, and it is. These developments in technology and society are actually considered in these critiques. They're not being brought in by their modern readers. So, yeah, just a lot of IP discussions, and I do recommend you go read Adam Smith, but I don't know if he's got your answers on AI, but no, keep reading it. Maybe it's in there, maybe I missed it, but no anyway.
Speaker 1:So yeah, back to just kind of setting up the burnout society, and when I veered off, I was actually talking about the downsides of positive freedom, which, again, it's going to sound odd to our ears at first, but kind of embedded in this idea of you, can be anything. It obviously follows that the only thing standing in your way is you, and I think that's even generally a culturally accepted dogma. So of course, get to work accepted dogma, so of course, get to work. And a lot of this I actually like on an individual level. But it does bring up some pretty obvious questions and the first one obviously will what happens when you don't become what you want to be or you don't achieve the goal that you set out to? Why didn't it happen? And when we believe that you can do anything or you can be anything that you want to be, the obvious answer is just the individual, and this is again going to be correct in a lot of example.
Speaker 1:Let's say that I wanted to be a center in the NBA. It doesn't matter how many mood boards I do or affirmations or whatever this culture tells me that I need to do to really get locked in to that goal. Obviously there's some goals that actually just can't be achieved by all people and that's not popular to say. It's like we're going out there and killing people's dreams, but no, we don't all have a shot at every single goal or whim or idea or dream that we can come up with. And again, this isn't a bad thing, but I do think that we do have to recognize that life actually isn't a set of endless possibilities, that actually there are limitations in many ways, and so this is going to be again a major theme in Han's work, but that it is this reintroduction of negativity in a culture that is, in his opinion, toxically positive and completely focused on positive freedom, which, again, good thing not bemoaning all the freedoms that I have but I just think we have to recognize that it's a sword that does cut both ways and there are impacts too. Well, and you know, actually, let's stay with this one she's given.
Speaker 1:I listened to a bunch of her show and don't remember exactly when this came up, but when she was describing her weight loss struggle, there was one episode where she was mentioning how her inability to achieve this always made her feel as if there was something wrong with her, and then seeing other people who could achieve it and then she couldn't made her think well, what's wrong with me? Do these people have something? I don't. She also mentioned ever since being a kid, always feeling like she was special, and she was in so many ways, always feeling like she was special and she was in so many ways. She had this great vocabulary and a lot of these things were reinforcing that feeling that she was special. So being confronted with this inability to lose weight would actually feel her with this. It was a very undermining feeling.
Speaker 1:And again, these are all her own words, but I actually think they point again to some other points that Han is going to make about the impact of us being in a toxically positive culture. And so, yeah, we'll go slowly there. But so, again, we live in this world where we are told you can be whatever you want and now it's up to you get to work. You know we've already talked about what happens if you don't. Again, you're probably going to head down the path of self-hatred or excessive judgment, whatever it may be. I think anybody in our society probably already knows those paths just as well as I do. But then there's also going to be other issues that kind of pop up in. How do you even determine what goals to go after and chase and Again, well, that's going to come down to you. So what we're ostensibly dealing with in this society that we live in, which, again, I think, is you know, we got a lot of positive freedom available to us, we're able to choose a lot about our lives. But again, we are the arbiter and determinant of what we go on creating and determinant of what we go on creating. And again, I think most people only see that as just all upsides, that there's no downsides.
Speaker 1:But what Han notices in this is that this entire orientation creates people that are very inwardly focused. And there is another name for that inwardly focused nature, and that would be narcissism. So he does see that one side effect of having all of these positive freedoms is narcissism, which quickly because I know narcissism gets thrown around like good, bad, that. That equals somebody is bad. We're not using it that way. That's not what it means and we're not using it that way. What it means is more the way he described it. It's an orientation towards oneself, it's using inward locuses rather than external locuses. It is based on one's subjective experience and not recognizing the subjectivity of other subjectivities that one may encounter. That's narcissism, not good, bad. And so Han is again more saying that an individual who is narcissistic isn't narcissistic because they are bad. He thinks that people become narcissistic because of the culture that they live in, that this actually is downstream from the culture, and when you first hear this it can sound weird.
Speaker 1:I was intrigued, but I wasn't convinced when I first heard it, but the more I sat with it and I got to be honest, have you ever said to yourself there is more narcissism today than there was I don't know, fill in the blank a few years ago? I do feel it's a generally accepted opinion that narcissism is at an all-time high. A lot of explanations for why that you know. Admittedly, I haven't found all too convincing, but people like to talk about participation trophies. Cell phones is, I think, an obvious one and almost, you know, pretty well accepted. But again, I don't think Han would say that that is exactly what's going on. He would state that we live in an achievement culture where we have a lot of positive freedom and that forces us to become inwardly focused. And it is that inward focus that is what drives us towards narcissism. Not our cell phones in and of themselves, not participation trophies, which I actually never got one. So I do question how widespread that experience is through our society. But yeah, I think it's a lot easier to see that actually, this inward focus that descends from excessive positivity and achievement culture is certainly going to be a more widespread experience than participation trophies or even cell phones.
Speaker 1:So the main result Han sees really stemming from this achievement culture and this excessive and toxic positivity is again narcissism, anxiety, anxiety and depression. So now this is kind of what gets us to the burnout part, if you will that. So han sees a a natural response basically just to the world as it is constructed that we live in is is again anxiety or narcissism. The strategies that you have at your disposal in order to gain success in our achievement culture, if you're quote unquote well-adjusted, that will be the path of narcissism, obviously being extroverted on social media. There are a lot of incentives within our achievement culture that actually benefit those that are. Well, if they weren't high on the narcissistic scale at the beginning, they'll certainly learn it as a behavior that does correlate with success within our achievement culture.
Speaker 1:And quick pause too, because I don't want this to sound like Han or myself is against achievement. That's not at all the case. That's being made and I feel like that's an obvious contention to Han's work that some will make, and clearly I can see that that's not what he's saying. There's nothing wrong with great achievements mastery. What Han is getting at is that actually, through a reintroduction of the negative into our lives, that we can achieve great things without having to push ourselves down into these psychological propensities of anxiety, depression or narcissism. Again the narcissism. So again the narcissism thing. We can't measure but you know everybody agrees with me, it's at an all time high. The anxiety, depression thing. If you go look at the stats on mental health we can also see those things are increasing, not decreasing, arguably at all time highs, only arguably because we don't have good stats on the course of history.
Speaker 1:But I think Han's premise can sound a little out there when you first hear it. But when we're really honest about what's going on in our society I don't think it's as far-fetched as it initially sounds and I do think some of it really does hinge on. We have popular understandings of a lot of words like narcissist negativity that I don't think jive with the way he is using them here. So I do think it's a little more challenging to the ear the first time it goes. But really, if you sit with this and again go read him, not just listen to me on it I think it does make a pretty coherent argument about what's going on in Western culture right now.
Speaker 1:And again, it's not that achievements are bad, but he's saying that in an achievement culture, with all these positive freedoms you have, you can be whatever you want to be. All that stuff, what results is you're actually? You know they love the master slave stuff back in the 17th century. So you're now the master and the slave. Your own brain drives you and no matter what you achieve, it's never going to be good enough and you will continue optimizing and striving. Where you get the directions for the optimizing and striving that you feel you need to do is most likely going to come from a narcissistic echo chamber.
Speaker 1:But anyway, that right there, I think at least, was a decent entry point into the burnout society, at least for our purposes today. I still do recommend Stephen West and reading Han himself if you found any of this interesting and want to dive deeper. But yeah, I'm not going to spend your entire time on just the philosophy of it, because the aspect that I saw well, and I guess it's my job to do, but as I'm reading this, I was seeing a lot of crossover into the fitness space and that's at least something I could speak about with some authority and so but yeah, if you'll bear with me, I think this orientation that Han describes in the burnout. Society can influence a lot of aspects of our lives and I'm going to argue it affects people in the most common reasons that I see for workout burnout, quite frankly. So yeah, kind of starting at one of the central thesis that Han was developing about excessive focus on achievement, more and more I actually see this as a big negative driver for people actually engaging with health and fitness.
Speaker 1:Population that I probably saw this first in was former athlete friends who, once the sport was done, they basically stopped working out. They saw no other value in sport than when they could get a transactional benefit from it. You know, either through professional some guys or, you know, getting a college education. Most of the guys I know. But it's surprising to some people who aren't athletes that once you know sport is up, that these guys don't work out. They, you know they think that they must have loved it because they were good. But but when I kind of saw in those guys was that for them actually this was the way that they got what they needed, whether it was validation or an indication, money, you name it but there was actually no other value in engaging in sport. For them it was purely transactional. And so I know this surprises some people when they see a former athlete who has put on a bunch of weight and doesn't even look like an athlete anymore. That's actually a relatively common path that I see from a lot of my former athlete friends. Once sport is gone, they don't have the why anymore and they had never seen any other reason to do it other than achievement.
Speaker 1:I think that we are actually seeing a trickle down of this now into younger athletes. Youth sports participation is down and again people are striving and achieving and competing and once you figure out that little Johnny isn't going to be all state, you don't spend any time on it and you go get him into other programs that he can be a little bit more competitive in. And so, sadly, the common denominator that people are seeing here is that if you can't develop something into a marketable trait, then it doesn't have any value. Within the paradigm of the achievement culture that they're thinking that would be valid. Even though I live in the same time, in the same place as a lot of these people, I'm not sure that I live in that same paradigm and that I actually believe that there is value in youth sports where none of the participants are going to play in college or go pro, but yeah, I actually don't think I'm alone in that one. So that's where I think, kind of re-injecting some of the negative, we'll get to that at the end. That's where I think there can be some value and at least challenging us to think about why we're engaging no-transcript college admissions scandal that we see.
Speaker 1:One of the obvious things to me is that people value a degree, not an education, and they value a degree because that's the part that you can commodify. People don't really value an Ivy League education. They value an Ivy League degree, and the truth is you can also see this because Ivy League educations are available for free online, but people don't want that. They want the proof that they went to an Ivy League school, which are two very different things, as we very often see.
Speaker 1:Another issue, though, that Han talks about being inculcated in his burnout society that I actually see in people's workout efforts in particular, but it's this hyperactivity. I see what I call workout ADD or program hopping, people not committing to one option, frankly, because there's so many other ones that are being suggested, advertised, marketed all the time. It can be hard to commit to any one thing. And again, this hyperactivity that really is induced by living in a society where you have almost unlimited options, unlimited freedom. It doesn't always lead to the best results having every single option at your fingertips and this broadly gets us favoring multitasking versus deep focus, which, kind of, pivoting back to Han's work, he argues this is actually one of the fundamental differences between humans and animals. Quite frankly, is actually the multitasking is common. Humans and animals, quite frankly, is actually the multitasking is common. It's the deep focus that's rare. Back to people's workout burnout I love the fitness trackers. We did a whole episode on it, but the reason we had to talk about it was this actually burns a lot of people out and also increases to a loss of intuition, inability to just self-regulate and manage ourselves when we're constantly having to work off the numbers.
Speaker 1:I could throw a million cliches, but we're information rich, knowledge poor. You know, I still take the measurements. I have a scale, I have a wearable, but we use these measurements as means, not ends. Any measurement isn't an accomplishment or a failure. If these are tools that you can use to further your understanding, great. But if that's not how you're using them, it's probably best to not use them at all. Quite frankly, you don't need to fall into the trap. Quantifying the self is no way to understand the self. I don't think I can say it any better than that.
Speaker 1:Self-optimization is, in a sense, a form of self-exploitation, and I think this is why so many people again wind up burning out on health and fitness, or yo-yo, ebb and flow, yo, ebb and flow. This whole optimization thing is a nebulous goal that has no finish line. It can constantly be redefined and is, but again, usually by people in the fitness industry that are just going to set you down, chasing a moving target that's going to lead you down an endless stream of products while you tyrannize yourself and I know that again, that sounds a little bit hard, but that's frankly how I see it, and I've done the same thing to myself. I had my period of health-induced eating disorders with orthorexia. I had my period of chasing down all of the products that the fitness industry told me would change the game for me and I just want to remind everybody it was through that. So I could just be projecting my own experience onto all of this, but that's what I feel I did to myself when I listened to the messaging. So just trying to present a slightly different angle. So one other thing that, well before I do that, I just want to be really blunt.
Speaker 1:I've often credited exercise on this show with helping me with my depression and I still believe that. But to bolster that case, I've often talked about the reduction of scientific studies that can talk about the neurotransmitters that are changed. And those are all still true. But I just want to point out that even when I was giving you those studies and justifying exercise from that standpoint, I was using the reductionist paradigm and I was actually using the exact same type of thinking that got people to prescribe me meds that didn't work. It was basically the thing of oh well, that increases this neurotransmitter, that so it must be good. So it does just bring up an obvious question for me and my own credibility and what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:But if I know that the reductionist approach didn't work when people were describing the antidepressants, is my explanation of strength training, curing my depression, using the same reductionist thinking that got me on antidepressants? Is it valid? And so, again, I'm not questioning the studies that I've cited about how it can influence health. I just think that I might have to take a different view than the same one that has misled me in the past. So again, I'm not ignoring the studies that I've heard on it, but I just want to look at this in a slightly different lens which, with this new lens that I just got of you, know Byun Chul Han's burnout society, and so what would he say? Why did introducing exercise help with depression? And we're not going to talk about neurotransmitters today.
Speaker 1:I think Han would have a different set of reasons, and let's run over them real quick and then I might touch on each a little more detail. But I think Han would point out that when I adopted a workout regimen, that I was countering the hyperactivity dominant in my world with focused activity, that I was restoring some of my autonomy over my body, that I was building resilience and reducing psychological stress, and that we could actually touch on the reduction of studies, if we want to, can measure that. But you know, I would also say that I was reconnecting with the non-mechanical, in a sense At least. You know, at this time in my life I was in college. I had just gotten through, you know, that period of trying to get into college, when you're trying to get your GPA as high as you can and get as many community service hours as you possibly can. And, or at least that's what I was doing.
Speaker 1:You know, I was at Boys State. I was trying to go to every single camp that I could to make my resume look as good as possible, and I was just, you know, more enamored with achievement culture than at any other point in my life. And yeah, apparently I was super happy too with the depression. But yeah, sometimes I guess the kids now to say you just need to touch grass, embracing my workout regime just kind of got me out of that. And then also community Just by engaging with my workout program, I actually wound up having some different people that I was hanging around and suddenly these weren't the people who wanted or needed anything from me.
Speaker 1:And having that, these are the reasons that I think Bin Chul Han would point to, aside from the measurable parts of how the neurotransmitters are influenced. But I think there's a different set of reasons why getting into a workout regimen was so big for my mental health, and I don't actually think that it's entirely captured by just changing the neurotransmitters, because we had already tried that approach prior to, uh, exercise working so um, so anyway, this is going to take us up to the finish. Take me a minute to get through. But one of the things that I also like about Bin Chul Han is he isn't one of those philosophers who just complains about something, identifies a problem, critique, and that really bothers people, that they're like, well, they say all these negative things and they got nothing to go on. So, yeah, that doesn't bother me as much, but I know that it's nice when you have a pragmatic takeaway. I guess why it doesn't bother me is sometimes you're left to think about things, and that was kind of the point not to be told what to do, but anyway, that's a different point. Point not to be told what to do, but anyway, that's a different point. What's nice with Han is he doesn't leave us to be uncertain about what he would do about these issues and, as I talked about right up front, it sounds weird at first, but his main idea is actually the reintroduction of negativity back into our lives, because we live in this excessively positive culture, and so, anyway, that was kind of why I talked about creating friction up front, because I've actually kind of already intuited this idea in some ways, and so actually now, when we get into the pragmatic part, I don't think his idea is going to sound as foreign or or weird as it does when I was probably setting it up, but, um, so when we're looking at you know, kind of reintroducing the negativity again, negativity doesn't mean bad. Um, we're not becoming masochists or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Bringing negativity back into life can simply be accepting and understanding limitations. I know that this isn't going to sell a lot of Hallmark cards, but you can't be everything and that really is okay. It's okay to accept our failures. It's okay to accept the spectrum of human emotions. Not only is that okay, it's actually vital for a balanced and healthy psyche. Allow yourself to feel sadness, grief or failure. It's okay. Suppressing those feelings to try to I don't know just have some compulsive cheerfulness that you can put on display. It can actually lead to some pretty serious emotional dissonance and mental health issues, and I think that is a big reason why we see them being so widespread.
Speaker 1:Understanding and accepting your limitations, I think, is actually more meaningful than telling a positive sounding lie that we can do everything or be anything. Another aspect of reintroducing negativity into one's life could also just be questioning this relentless pursuit for productivity, efficiency or optimization. Creativity often is going to stem from your moments of stillness, of reflection, or even boredom, dare I say, rather than just being constantly active In a culture that praises noise, invisibility, extroversion, reintroducing the negative values of silence and solitude. Well, ironically, because I haven't convinced you on trying to get out of this achievement culture, well, those virtues will actually make you more successful. That's not how we're going to pitch it all but, yeah, ironically, I think reintroducing some of the negative could actually even make you better in achievement culture, but some of the pragmatic strategies that I think about with reintroducing the negative into your health and fitness. So, again, we're going to value the holistic over the quantified. You know I don't throw the quantified out completely, but the quantified approach does reduce human experience to numbers, which is dehumanizing and often overly simplistic. A quantified approach is going to lead to generally shallow understanding and has limits. You'll uncover them if you run it out long enough.
Speaker 1:In the real world, what this can look like would be addressing causes over symptoms, or, like in nutrition, how we talk about choosing whole food nutrition strategies over supplements. We're going to look at the whole picture. Look at the forest, not the tree. We're going to look at the whole picture. Look at the forest, not the tree. Similarly, I think we're going to have a value of process over achievements. Put another way, it really is the journey, not the destination. Use one of my old analogies you could take a gondola to the top of the mountain and get the same picture as the guy who hiked up there, but that's not the same at all, even if your pictures look the same. So it really is the journey, not the destination. Learn to enjoy that, what that can look like in our workouts improving your technique, experiencing new things, or just being more mindful and present in the things that you're already doing. This, I think, maps up to what we were actually talking about last week, but I think this is also where we can get a justification for some varied or enjoyable activities. I understand the argument of the specialists that you're going to be mediocre and you won't be good at anything, but again, I think that's setting the only value on these activities at achievement. Um, if you mix different types of activities, um, they can cover different aspects of your fitness, like we talked about strength, cardio, flexibility, balance, et cetera. You can create a more well-rounded um, you know, coverage of fitness aptitudes than if you were to specialize and you can, frankly, just keep the routine a little bit more engaging Um with with your goals. You know we're not chasing after achievements, so to speak, but but we're looking more at personal health goals than competitive goals, definitely Um with other people.
Speaker 1:I, even when I was very, very motivated to be competitive, I was really really good at only competing with myself. I didn't really look at what other people were doing, good or bad. I, you know, even in my competitive state, just set high standards on myself and I just didn't look at what other people were doing. I always wanted to be better than myself. A minute ago, yesterday, whatever the denomination, I just wanted to constantly be getting better. So even when I was just completely focused with achievement, I know that I was actually good at not directing it too much out at other people For me, that was always directed at myself. At not directing it too much out at other people For me, that was always directed at myself. As I actually aged out of that mindset, much more of my goals now are again when I'm advocating more personal health goals than competitive goals. But I think as long as you're being your only competition, if you're a competitive type, you can still harness, get those horses going the right way for you with that. But all these things are going to be downstream from your goals, not what someone else is trying to do or something else you saw. Make sure that what these goals you're setting are coming from you.
Speaker 1:We want to bring back intuition with training and nutrition. So, again, shifting away from the quantified self, we want to learn to listen to the body. I know that's a cliche, but it's one of the most valuable tools and you really have to learn how to use it. Some days are going to be perfect for a challenging workout and others aren't. I had a week like that last week. Two days in a row I was up at five and see. One night, I think I stopped working at midnight, got up at five and then I think I pushed I don't know, maybe another similar night and then same thing.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying, oh, the story is I didn't sleep like I normally sleep. I had all these programmed workouts that I'm supposed to do. I practiced what I preached and I modified those workouts. There's supposed to be an overload going on in that, you know, according to the program that I set up. But I just took a long view and I decided these aren't going to be the days. It's going to have to be a little bit different this week. And so, even though I'm a former athlete, I work out on programs, I'm competitive. When my life isn't cooperating with the program, I'm going to adapt the program. The program I'm going to adapt the program.
Speaker 1:Um, and it's honestly, there was a time when I just always forced a square peg into a round hole Didn't matter to me and I would just burn it on both ends. It it really did take for me. I had to learn first that that wasn't the most effective strategy and and I've also learned that it just comes with a lot of stress for nothing, no benefit. So, bringing back a little bit of intuition, training and nutrition to me, that's what that looks like. Learn to listen to your body. Even with nutrition, you're going to start to figure out. If you take all the processed foods out, your body's going to tell you what you need. You're not going to have to do as much work on selecting nutrients because it sounds weird, but you'll. You'll literally have a craving for something as boring as spinach. And when you can get in tune with your body signals, you're not going to have to spend as much time selecting and thinking about things so that that one comes with some time and some practice. But we definitely want to bring back intuition.
Speaker 1:Community also important Kind of a difficult concept so I didn't really touch on it much, but Han talks a lot about contact with the other as being another form of negativity just another person. Form of negativity, just another person. But I think it's fair to assume here he means that actual, real people online doesn't count as an experience with the other. Yeah, that's like narcissists engaging with other narcissists on a narcissistic echo chamber. So interactions on social media are kind of explicitly not what is meant by community or experience with the other.
Speaker 1:Workout communities, running groups, biking, swim groups so many options here where I'm at, but I'm sure wherever you are, there's going to be plenty of opportunities for something like that. And actually did I mention it? I don't know. Han likes to garden, so one I like to lift weights, so I interpret all this in the fitness space. But plenty of options for getting your hands dirty and talking with real people besides just working out. Obviously, you know my biases, so we're just going to keep making the fitness case. That being said, even in your fitness pursuits. We actually need non-fitness activities. That's also going to be a little bit reintroducing the negative rest days. That's what that looks like to me in a program Could also we can kill two birds with one. Do some volunteer work, clean up the community park, go to a trail that you like to use, stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Last, not least, probably most important, reflection and adjustment. Constant reflection, constant adjustment. This is tinkering work done daily. Again, I know he likes gardening. I almost like to think of the reflection adjustment. Like gardening, that's something that you do have to do daily, or things are going to get out of whack, um, if you stay out of the garden too long. Um, not my hobby, but I know enough about a garden to know you can't stay out of there for a couple weeks, um, without things getting out of hand.
Speaker 1:But anyway, guys, thanks for bearing with me because I admittedly I'm not an expert on this that this has just been writer, writer that I came across recently that I really, really liked. So I just totally stretched it into a fitness relevance so I could talk about it. But that being said, I do, if you found this stuff interesting, I do want to still encourage you go get some third parties. Stephen West is one that I like. If you like podcasts, which I'm pretty sure you do, and his books are actually pretty short and now in print in English, so also recommend that. But again, always appreciate your guys' attention. Remember mind and muscle are inseparably intertwined. There are no gains without brains. Keep lifting and learning. I'm trying to do the same.
