Schalk, Author at Happy Healthy Wealthy Productive Sustainable

Schalk November 3, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness diet, happiness, health, mental health, personal development

A Practical Guide to Mastering the Mental/Physical Health Connection

Mental and physical health interact in self-strengthening spirals. It’s up to each of us to determine whether they spiral up or down.

Created by Janet Cloete using an image by silviarita from Pixabay

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to look after yourself when life feels good? It’s a powerful, self-strengthening effect: Enjoy life, do more healthy things, experience better health, enjoy life even more.

Of course, there’s a flip side too. Depression, frustration, and anxiety often trigger self-destructive behavior like binge eating, drinking, or watching. The resulting unhealthy body (and guilt) only make these unhelpful feelings worse, completing the vicious cycle.

This article takes a closer look at the interaction between mental and physical health. We’ll build an understanding of the most important connections and then distill this knowledge into a practical strategy for lifelong, holistic health.

Mental/Physical Health Connections

There are many fascinating bidirectional links between mental and physical health. Let’s take a brief tour of the most important ones.

The gut-brain axis

This interesting connection between two seemingly unrelated parts of our bodies has received plenty of press lately. On the off chance you haven’t heard of it, it’s all about the trillions of bacteria that live in our guts and the effects they have on mood and mental health.

This “microbiome” produces all sorts of important chemicals in the body, including neurotransmitters for healthy and positive brain function. They love healthy, whole foods with plenty of fiber, and they wither in a typical Western diet filled with added sugar, saturated fats, and excess salt. Many see our sick microbiome as a contributing factor to the high incidence of mental health issues in today’s affluent Western society.

Exercise

Movement produces a range of positive biochemical effects in the body, including a near-instant release of feel-good hormones. And there are several fun ways to boost this effect, such as exposure to nature, sunlight, and social contact through exercise.

Exercise is also a great stress reliever. A body full of fight-or-flight hormones needs to take action, and there is no better way to release all this stressful energy than doing some healthy exercise.

Sleep

Like the gut-brain axis, sleep’s role in mental health has only recently started reaching a broad audience. It strongly affects general emotional stability and our ability to handle stress and anxiety. Sleep deprivation also causes unhealthy food cravings and drains motivation to exercise.

This effect gets a further boost from the fact that healthy people enjoy better sleep. Obesity and sedentary living are both associated with a broad range of sleep disturbances. Other chronic aches and pains from poor health will obviously also make it harder to get that vital slumber.

Body image

A negative body image is a major contributor to psychological challenges today. On the flip side, there are few better feelings than seeing a carefully nourished body in the mirror and thinking: “Yep, that’s me. I did that.”

This daily moment of pride and satisfaction soon grows into a healthy self-image only accessible to those who are comfortable in their own skins. Life looks much better from that vantage point.

Healthy pleasure

Healthy living is not the constant stream of sacrifice and deprivation it’s often made out to be. Far from it! For example, a mind unburdened by sugar desensitization deepens culinary enjoyment and vanquishes the persistent pestilence of sugar cravings. Similarly, a fit and agile body is the gateway to a world of joyous physical activity.

It may be hard to fathom at first, but here’s the truth: Unhealthy living involves much more severe self-deprivation than healthy living.

Self-strengthening effects

When you love your body, your actions will ensure it loves you back ten-fold. A healthy body gives you access to a wide range of exclusive healthy pleasures, all serving to effortlessly maintain excellent health.

This principle applies all around. Happy people with a healthy microbiome are less likely to consume the kind of junk that corrupts their gut health. Fit people have the energy to move their bodies regularly and the skills to do it enjoyably. A well-rested mind is less likely to succumb to all those unhealthy temptations that disrupt sleep.

Once this mental/physical health cycle is firmly in place, it sustains itself beautifully. But the opposite is also true: Breaking out of the vicious self-sustaining combo of poor mental and physical health requires a Herculean effort. So, let’s lay out a clear strategy to get this done.

The Vital Paradigm Shift

We now know that mental and physical health are closely linked. But we should also recognize that both go through natural cycles, especially on the mental side. We all have good days and bad days, often for no apparent reason. These natural variations can be annoying, but the right mindset can transform them into a great asset.

Does the following situation sound familiar? You suddenly receive a dose of motivation from the universe and enthusiastically start a new diet or exercise regime. But soon after, life throws you one of its typical curveballs, and you drop right back into the worst of your old habits.

Here’s the problem: We tend to waste our periods of positivity and drive on chasing our health goals directly. This is a big mistake because it inherently means we only get to do good when we feel good. And no one feels good all the time (especially not someone following this pattern).

The solution is simple: Instead of spending a positive mental state on forcing yourself to do healthy things, invest it in building environments that make healthy living come naturally. This is a vital intervention because today’s urban jungles with all their junk food, mechanized transport, junk media, and overwhelm seem purpose-built for poor health.

Repairing this powerful environmental influence is key to long-term health and happiness. Each element you add to your healthy environment will boost the virtuous cycle in future good times and interrupt the vicious cycle in future bad times. As the virtuous cycle slowly gets the upper hand, you’ll get more and more good periods to enjoy and invest in better environments. And that’s when the joy of healthy living really starts blooming.

So, let’s compile a handy list of environment-building investments for when you get your next dose of motivation for healthy living.

Constructing Your Healthy Environment

The ideas below will all contribute to making healthy living great fun in good times and sustainable in bad times. Next time some good times roll around, give it a go! And when you feel down, don’t be too hard on yourself. Instead, put your healthy environment to the test by doing whatever you need to do to get out of your funk. Your natural actions will reveal any weaknesses in your environment that need fixing during your next motivation boost.

One quick caveat: If you suffer from a mental illness that keeps the good times away permanently, be sure to seek out proper medication and therapy. As my mom’s story of battling depression shows, these solutions are needed to create the mental space and energy required to implement the lifestyle design interventions listed below.

A home full of gut-healthy foods

A healthy food environment is the first step to a mentally and physically active life. First and foremost, your home should not contain any addictive temptations that threaten your health. Instead, fill your kitchen with these healthy, gut-friendly foods.

Second, you’ll need all the ingredients, skills, and equipment to turn gut-healthy food into enjoyable and practical meals. If healthy eating is a drag, you’ll never escape the clutches of the junk-food industry.

Action step: The best building blocks for this environment are quick and delicious gut-friendly dishes you can prepare at home. So, each time motivation strikes, be sure to try an interesting new recipe. Before long, healthy eating will be so easy and enjoyable that it happens all by itself (even during tough times). Here are some of my favorite breakfast and lunch/dinner ideas as examples.

Fun ways to move your body

We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that exercise is great for mental and physical health. Sadly, most of us live in concrete jungles built for cars and not for people, killing the two most natural forms of exercise: personal transportation and interactions with nature.

Escaping this unfortunate environment is by far the best solution. And it gets no better than establishing a practical car-free lifestyle close to nature. Setting up this environment remains the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

Action step: Moving to the ideal location is the best possible action, but it will be impractical (in the short term) for most. The next best action step is to experiment with different fun ways of moving your body (there are hundreds of options). And what if the thought of sport totally turns you off? Well, then it’s best to invest your motivation in finding ways to spend more time in nature. It really is great for well-being.

A consistent sleep schedule

The sleep deprivation epidemic is costing the world dearly, both in terms of mental and physical health. The starting point to ridding your life of this debilitating problem is establishing a consistent sleep schedule and sticking to it (even during weekends).

Getting up at the same time each day is most critical, and a fully automated morning routine is the perfect enabler for this wonderful habit. It also brings bonus benefits in terms of productivity and relationships. If you can work in a nap during your natural afternoon energy dip, all the better.

Action step: First, if you’re still in denial about the importance of sleep, please take 10 minutes to read this post (or better yet, buy the book). Then, you should have the drive to use your next bout of motivation to add a new element to your morning routine. Give it two weeks to prove its worth, and then see if it sticks around without costing further willpower. Keep experimenting and building until your ideal routine emerges.

Protection against self-destruct triggers

What triggers you to poison your gut, let your body stagnate for hours on end, or snooze way past your optimal wake-up time? Next time any of these things happen, stop, take stock of your feelings, and do your best to identify the root cause and the main trigger for this damaging behavior.

For example, eating in front of the TV is a major self-destruct trigger for me. It totally deactivates my natural satiety response, getting me to binge terribly. Hence, I drew up a contract forcing me to pay a sizable sum to charity every time I fall into this costly trap. Today, it almost never happens.

Action step: Make a plan to eliminate your biggest self-destruct trigger once and for all. It won’t be easy, so don’t be discouraged if your first few attempts fail. Keep learning about yourself and trying new solutions. One powerful strategy to investigate is actively replacing unhealthy habits with better alternatives like these seven wholesome indulgences.

A healthy identity

Last but not least, we get to something a little more abstract. The single best way to cement healthy habits is to make them part of who you are. Building such an identity while surrounded by unhealthy temptations and unhealthy people is no easy task. But it can be done.

My healthy identity rests on several pillars. The oldest one is my 12-year streak of never getting sick. Next, I merged my healthy identity with my deep concern for sustainability by identifying the many ways in which healthy living makes the world a better place, not least avoiding the massive social costs of empty calories and poor sleep habits. Health also became a central pillar in the creative freedom I worked so hard to achieve. Lastly, I built the hedonic case for healthy living to finally bury the idea that a healthy lifestyle should involve loads of sacrifice.

Action step: What does healthy living mean for you? Hint: It should be more than just looking good in a swimsuit. Next time inspiration comes along, direct it towards this key question and use the answers to start constructing your own healthy identity. It offers a lifetime membership to the beautiful mental/physical health virtuous cycle.

Closing Thoughts

Mental and physical health are closely interlinked. As such, they can make each other spiral up or spiral down. Of course, spiraling up makes life a whole lot more fun (and a whole lot longer) than spiraling down.

We need only one key paradigm shift to make sure we spiral up: Use any natural bursts of inspiration to build an environment where healthy actions come naturally (instead of wasting them on chasing health directly). Such an environment will make healthy living awesome during good times and sustainable during bad times.

The ideal healthy environment will look different for each individual, but there are some general guidelines. Here’s a quick recap:

Fill your home with gut-healthy food. Food creates mood. Looking after your microbiome will give you the positive mental state that makes healthy living easy.
Learn to really enjoy moving your body. Exercise is the healthiest natural high out there. There are hundreds of options, so there must be a solution for you. Getting out in nature makes it even better.
Prioritize sleep. Chronic sleep deprivation degrades every aspect of life, including mental and physical health. Don’t do this to yourself. It’s never the right solution.
Destroy your self-destruct triggers. We don’t destroy our mental and physical health because we want to. There is always a deeper reason. Find it, fix it, and enjoy life without it.
Build a healthy identity. If there’s one surefire way to live healthily ever after, it is to make healthy living part of who you are. Figure out what health means to you and build your identity around that.

May you enjoy a beautiful life gliding effortlessly upwards on the virtuous mental/physical health spiral! 😀

Schalk October 1, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness depression, health, mental health, relationships

A Quality Life with Clinical Depression: My Mom’s Story

Four decades of wisdom to give hope where it’s needed most.

Me and mom enjoying a sunny South African beach back in 2016

One day, somewhere in my early teens, I found out my mom was in the hospital. I didn’t understand why she had to go to the hospital for being sad, but at least she looked fine when we visited. She returned home soon after, and life went on as usual.

That was more than two decades ago. During that time, I learned more about depression and my mom learned a lot more about living with it. All that learning paid off. Today, she enjoys an excellent quality of life, despite her depression always lurking in the background. That’s why I decided to ask her some questions about how she managed to pull it off.

Let’s start at the beginning. What exactly is depression?

There are many definitions by professionals, but for me, it basically comes down to feeling utterly miserable when you have no reason even to feel bad. And it goes on and on and on. Naturally, hardship and loss can worsen depression, but it’s not necessarily the source. Feeling like you have nothing to live for when you KNOW you have lots of things to be grateful for adds a layer of guilt, only making the situation worse.

This is different from feeling blue for a day or two or grieving for a loss or being sad about something that happened. These feelings can be terrible, but they dissolve over time and usually don’t rob the person involved of his ability to experience joy.

That’s depression for me: a thief trying to steal all the joy from your life.

Depression is quite common, right? Do you think it’s increasing, or are people just becoming more open about it?

I think both. People are more open and that’s great. In our Afrikaans community in South Africa, I also try to do my part to lessen the stigma. But there is a troubling increase in mental illness, especially now with the pandemic just going on and on (particularly in countries with a low vaccination rate).

Could you share with us your journey down to rock bottom — that proverbial point where it is darkest before dawn?

It took me nearly a decade to reach rock bottom for the first time. I fought long and hard but without real knowledge or support.

One will never know, but the starting point could have been the failed miscarriage (yes, there is such a thing!) of twins that I experienced between my two children. It left me with a huge sense of failure and loss, and there was absolutely no support and very little sympathy for women who had lost an early pregnancy at the time.

The next step was postpartum depression after the birth of my second son (who is now one of the greatest joys in my life). I now realize that I tried too hard to be the perfect mom, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend. Perfectionism is a close ally of depression.

Starting a new career when I had the opportunity, while I would have preferred to remain a stay-at-home-mom who wrote romantic fiction in her (very little) spare time, was not the best decision. I was very good at my job, but I compromised a great deal to be accepted after a previous experience of severe bullying (which I only recognized years later for what it was). The pressure of doing everything perfectly while handling my job, two sons in different schools, and a dear husband who did not realize how hard I struggled, brought me to the point where I spent many weekends crying in bed. Finally, I surrendered to being admitted to the hospital.

Nearly twenty years later, after many years of ups and downs, but mostly ups, I reached rock bottom again. Over about five years, a series of deaths in my extended family, the emigration of both my children (although I’m extremely proud of them both), plus some disillusionment in my writing career took their toll. I actually considered suicide, but after a brief Google search realized that is not for me. I phoned my psychiatrist and uttered the most important words in my life: “I need help.”

What’s it like to be trapped in such a deep depression?

Depression distorts your sense of reality. Everything is wrong. Nothing seems good or right or joyful. You feel you’re worth nothing — that nobody loves you or has any reason to love you.

You have no sense of self-worth and lose the ability to enjoy the things you used to love.

You may lose your appetite, or you cannot stop eating (that’s me), which leads to body issues and an even worse image of yourself.

You either sleep too little or too much.

You know you must reach out to people, but you don’t have the energy.

The worst-case scenario is where you don’t see any reason to keep living. It’s not necessarily that you want to die — you just can’t live anymore.

Now for the comeback story! First off, what triggered the turning point in your battle with depression?

My first hospitalization many years ago (they basically just kept dangerous objects like scissors out of reach and gave me an injection to sleep). After that, my secret was out. Most people had no idea what to say to me, and vice versa. I experienced it as a huge humiliation, but over the following years, a slow learning process began to emerge.

My second hospitalization two decades later was a much more positive experience because a wonderful clinic for mental illnesses had been established in our town. They followed a holistic program, creating a safe space when the world becomes too much. I could also openly share my experience with family, friends, and contacts on social media.

Another pleasant surprise was that people were much more willing to talk about it than all those years ago. Other people shared that they also spent some time in a clinic. Thus, I can see clearly that the stigma has weakened during those two decades, although it’s far from completely gone.

That second hospitalization was four years ago. How has life changed since then?

What I learned over the years (and really experienced during and after my week-long stay at the clinic) is that many people respect me for fighting depression and being open about it. But I must stress that I try to keep my communication with them as positive as possible. People find it hard to cope with someone who complains all the time. Most people cannot understand depression completely (not even me after thirty years of intense study!). And being confronted with a depressed person’s lament makes them feel helpless and prompts them to give unsolicited advice.

The tremendous support I received during this time helped make it a very positive experience. It also helped that I had the insight to take part in ALL the activities the clinic offered, especially when I didn’t feel like it. This experience cemented many lessons I learned over the years, but the thing that changed is actually something very small: Learning to fill empty spaces of time with craftlike activities, which lessens the urge to go and lay down on my bed (the biggest danger of all for a depressed person). I’ve always done some knitting and crocheting, but I came home and added things like coloring for adults, building puzzles, and doing crossword puzzles to my repertoire. These are stationed at strategic places in my home, ready to be used when necessary.

The pandemic also served to cement some well-known truths in my life: that life is short and unpredictable, that deliberate gratefulness can actually lead to a real sense of gratefulness, that the world is a wonderful and interesting place with millions of secrets waiting to be discovered.

I developed a real sense of how precious life is and that it can end at any moment. This helps me live to the fullest while I have the opportunity.

I’m particularly interested in lifestyle solutions for controlling depression. What would you say is the relative importance of medication and lifestyle? Do they complement each other?

I believe one cannot stand without the other. Medication can give you the lift to be able to make lifestyle changes. Therapy is also a must — at the very least a few sessions when you’re in a really bad spot.

Sadly, both are very expensive and, at least here in South Africa, not accessible to most people. I’m one of the lucky ones, but even I find it very costly. Another problem is that many doctors still freely dish out antidepressants with no therapy or lifestyle change advice. This can lead (as it did for me years ago) to the patient believing everything would be fine after taking medication, which is often not.

Lifestyle change did not allow me to reduce my medication, but it helped me reach the point where I can live a really good life despite my depression.

What permanent lifestyle changes did you implement? Which ones do you think make the biggest difference?

My lifestyle developed over many years, and often I did not even realize I’m doing the right thing concerning my depression.

The most important thing that got me through many bad patches (and without which I cannot survive) is walking every day. For the last 27 years, I have walked 5 km at least five times a week.

Developing a morning routine also helped me a lot. I’ve known for many years that if I really want a successful day, I must do the important stuff as early in my day as possible. It’s only quite recently that I learned a morning routine is actually a thing.

Nature, reading, traveling, music (very important), and yoga have all helped me over the years. Nurturing relationships are of the utmost importance.

Later, I added a set of breathing exercises and meditation to my routine.

Each of these elements helps me keep my head above water. It basically comes down to filling your life with as many meaningful (for you) experiences as possible.

What I find impossible to conquer is my addiction to comfort food. Too many carbs can bring me down very effectively, so I do my best to control my intake of refined sugary products. But I cannot cut sugar completely (especially not when presented as carrot cake in a nice coffee shop that needs my support to recover from the Covid-slump).

I imagine that depression is not exactly the best mental state for making these types of lifestyle changes. How did you get it done despite the challenges?

I’ve always been interested in lifestyle design and living a meaningful life. Reaching my sixties and thinking about the inevitable challenges of aging enhanced my need to live my life as well as possible.

Having a son interested in these things with whom I can share my experience also played a big role in formalizing my development.

You mentioned the importance of nurturing relationships. Which relationships help the most with your depression?

My female friends are a great source of strength and hope, but what really can make or break me are my relationships with my close family: my husband, two sons, and one daughter-in-law. I simply cannot live without meaningful interaction with each of them.

I work very hard to maintain communication with each of them on their terms. They all have unique lifestyles and preferences I try to respect. That includes trying not to intrude too much on their time (but also not pulling back because of the fear of intruding).

A great joy in my life, prompted by my second hospitalization, is the daily early-morning video calls with my two emigrated children. With these short chats, we keep each other accountable to be up bright and early. This is especially important for me when my husband is traveling since I work from home and, in his absence, there’s nobody who sees or cares whether I get up and do things or just stay in bed and mope all day.

I savor these conversations and make sure I’m available at the decided time, respect our schedule, and keep the tone as positive and fun as possible, but also authentic and free of toxic positivity. For example, I don’t ignore the dire situation in my country, but I avoid feeding sad stories to my children all the time.

How would you describe your current relationship with depression?

We live together in a tense but respectful relationship. There is no winner or loser — we’re stuck with each other, and both of us accept that.

I’ve accepted that I will never be “cured” of my depression. I’m no longer looking for quick fixes or to be saved by anyone (doctors, religion, my dear husband). I’ve taken full responsibility for my quality of life.

I take care to complete all my daily tasks. Ticking off things I have done gives me a sense of control. That includes my daily tasks, but especially my little list of MUST DO’S for every day: exercise, healthy eating, being creative, meaningful contact with people I care about, doing something for other people. These things are most important when they feel the hardest.

What do you do nowadays when that somber feeling comes over you?

The very best thing I learned to do is just to put one foot in front of the other, even when I feel totally overwhelmed or incredibly sad. Quite often (but not always!) I succeed in stopping negative thoughts by taking a few deep breaths and letting the thought pass. It’s amazing how quickly a thought can dissolve when you don’t dwell on it.

At sixty-five, I have finally accepted that life is not meant to be a picnic and that all is not lost when one (or quite a few) things are bad or sad or wrong. During the pandemic, I recognized that this is a hard time, but not nearly as hard as many of the wars, famines, and natural disasters that millions of people have had to cope with over the centuries.

Did the pandemic present a particularly tough challenge?

At the beginning of the pandemic during total lockdown, I was inspired (and full of adrenalin) and literally did everything right. Sixteen months later, it is much more difficult.

Living with the loss and suffering in my country (South Africa) is never easy, but now it sometimes gets unbearable. I find solace in the many stories of real goodwill and people standing together in adversity. Doing small things for others (like lending my books to fellow readers while libraries are closed due to lockdown) and talking about my experience with a few special friends carry me through.

Oh, and crying. I’ve always been ashamed when I cried. Not anymore. Crying brings huge emotional relief. You must just stop again. 😊

A few years ago, I learned about Highly Sensitive Persons — a rather large percentage of the population wired to experience emotions and physical stimuli much more intensely than other people. Learning and accepting that I belong to this group eased my guilt about my more intense reactions to things other people wouldn’t think twice about. I’ve also learned that being a Highly Sensitive Person has its advantages, like finding natural empathy with other people’s ordeals.

If you could go back and give your younger self advice about living with depression, what would it be? Would the advice look different at different stages of life?

My advice would be the same at every age: Do not carry it alone. Seek help. Take responsibility. Look after yourself. If you cannot love yourself, at least respect yourself and treat yourself like a good friend, not as an enemy you try to bring down all the time. You deserve the best.

What would you say to your younger self when she was at her lowest point?

You are not alone. You are good enough.

Any final words of wisdom for readers who are struggling with depression?

Like the above: You are not alone. You are good enough.

Also: You deserve a good life. Use medication and therapy to help yourself, but do not stop there. Take responsibility for your lifestyle. Lifestyle changes cannot magically heal depression, but they can dramatically enhance your quality of life.

Life is precious. Savor it.

Schalk September 1, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness growth, happiness, personal development, productivity, wealth

Happiness Lives on the Border Between Order and Chaos

Life on the border can be practical yet exciting, responsible yet fun, structured yet inspiring.

Every once in a while, you come across little gems like this one on the internet:

Without order, civilization is impossible. Without chaos, civilization is intolerable.

Indeed, if we couldn’t coordinate our efforts into an orderly society, we’d still be animals fighting for survival in the wilderness. But order by itself is not enough. We need the spice of chaos to make our lives worth living.

A good life comes to those who achieve a healthy balance between these two opposing forces. So, let’s dissect this never-ending balancing act.

Defining Order and Chaos

Order is pretty easy to understand, but we need to treat chaos with a little more care. The word “chaos” has a bad rap. It’s often used when things are in total disarray — a hopeless mess. In this article, though, we’ll consider the positive attributes of chaos, particularly where it can counteract the soul-killing drone of excessive order.

The next four sections cover specific areas of life where order and chaos play major roles. Each time, we’ll discuss some techniques or philosophies for finding the right balance between these opposing forces.

Space: Organic Minimalism

Take a look around you. Where do your immediate surroundings stand on the order/chaos scale? Too much chaos and your living spaces quickly lose function. But a bit of chaos is needed to give your surroundings some personality. It also saves plenty of maintenance effort.

An environment with the perfect order/chaos balance is enjoyable, practical, and low-maintenance all at once. It makes you feel good, helps you stay productive, and takes very little time and money to maintain.

Minimalistic living spaces make this ideal much easier to achieve. The larger and the more cluttered your environment becomes, the riskier it becomes to let things evolve organically. And since we rather enjoy letting things evolve organically, such a situation can be a real pain.

Organic minimalism means you maintain order by keeping things simple rather than by keeping things structured. It allows some natural chaos to creep in without sacrificing functionality.

But what if you love being surrounded by pretty things? Go for things like art, designer furniture, or robust plants that are low-maintenance and unlikely to create clutter. And if you think you can’t be happy without many moving parts (pets, gadgets, frequent guests), please try some gradual simplification to give organic minimalism its fair shot. Undoing minimalism is very easy, so this is a risk-free experiment.

Overall, it’s fun and liberating to let a little organic chaos into your living environment. Organic minimalism can give you this freedom by ensuring that chaos brings character instead of dysfunction.

Time: Routines, Blocks, ARW

Perfect order is no fun when it comes to living spaces, but it’s downright soul-killing when we talk about scheduling. The creative human mind needs freedom and variation. That bit of chaos is essential for a good life.

But if you just let your mind do whatever it wants all the time, your life will be a (painfully short) mess. Indeed, we need plenty of order to keep ourselves in check. Let’s look at three tools to maintain this balance.

Structured routines for accommodating chaos

I do whatever I feel like for most of the day. But all this randomness is kept firmly in check by three simple routines:

Morning routine. This one is highly structured and happens at the same time every morning (weekends included). If you’re looking for maximum order from minimum effort, look no further than a perfectly tailored morning routine.
Afternoon nap. If you have the possibility to nap during your natural afternoon energy dip, this offers a beautifully structured daily reset. My afternoon nap is less rigid than my morning routine, but it still happens about 90% of my days.
Evening wind down. A good morning routine already starts the previous evening. Like the afternoon nap, this one is also not too rigid, but it happens most nights to ensure I give sleep the priority it deserves.

These routines only consume about two of the 16 waking hours I have every day. And that’s the magic of well-structured routines: two hours of structure can safely facilitate 14 hours of organic unstructured flow.

Time blocking for controlling chaos

A decent amount of chaos in a daily schedule is essential for high motivation and creativity. But it needs to be the right kind of chaos. Constant distractions from colleagues, social media, and the like are not the kind of chaos we’re looking for.

That’s where time blocking comes in. I schedule almost all my meetings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. All the remaining time is reserved for focused work or whatever wholesome indulgence I feel like.

I also use RescueTime to block any digital distractions after a short period of use. This was essential to my productivity in earlier years, but following my philosophical shift on the Instant Pleasure Industry, serious digital temptation has become refreshingly rare.

Asynchronous remote work (ARW) for unstructured collaboration

ARW is when people from around the world work together without any deadlines or fixed schedules. I do my part when I feel like it, pass the (digital) ball to you, and trust that you’ll do your part in good time.

The beauty of ARW is that it allows for plenty of flexibility in everyone’s schedules. Usually, teams work according to a fixed schedule with strict deadlines, turning the process into stressful and tedious work. ARW breaks this outdated pattern, creating happier and more productive teams.

There are three main requirements for effective ARW:

A project that is interesting enough that people want to work on it.
Self-driven collaborators. If one or two team members need deadlines, that’s OK. Just remember to give them the deadlines they need.
Plenty of interesting things to work on while waiting for collaborators to do their part. It works well to run several ARW projects in parallel.

Growth: Super-Compounding and the Zorro Circle

Now we get to the most crucial order/chaos balancing act. On the one hand, the power of compounding makes an ordered growth philosophy immensely powerful. But on the other, growth often pushes us into a potentially chaotic unknown.

Most ambitious people take this too far, though. They chase every half-decent opportunity at once, mostly ending up with little more than dysfunctional chaos. Part of the problem is that such sporadic growth might work on the rare occasion when the stars align perfectly. When it does, the result can be spectacular, making a big media splash.

Sadly, these headlines say nothing about the thousands of chaotic growers who end up a mess for every one of these fluke success stories. This gives a badly distorted view of how success works. So, let’s put things straight.

Super-compounding supercharges the 8th wonder of the world.

Einstein reportedly called compounding the 8th wonder of the world. Everyone who has ever read anything about investment will be familiar with this concept. For example, someone investing $500 per month in a fund that returns an average of 6% per year over a 42-year career will retire a millionaire. Compounding is responsible for turning a quarter of a million in savings into a million in wealth.

But such simple investment examples only scratch the surface of compounding’s potential. A smart growth strategy unlocks the power of super-compounding — a setup where multiple exponential trends interact and augment each other.

One of the examples I’m currently pursuing is the interaction between wealth and creative potential. Two years ago, I started leveraging my (still quite modest) wealth to work almost exclusively on inspiring, growth-oriented projects. If this gives me a 6% personal growth rate layered on top of the 6% investment return, our previous $1 million suddenly turns into $8 million over a 42-year career.

This is more than enough for most of us, but ambitious individuals will find many synergies between personal and public investment to achieve even faster growth. And such deep engagement will keep compounding going far beyond conventional retirement. Playing around with these numbers, it’s easy to end up in the hundreds of millions.

Simple compounding wealth scenarios starting with an annual after-tax income of $26000 and expenses amounting to $20000.

I’ve been tracking that grey line quite nicely over the first decade of my career. But let’s be honest: I’m still far from the kind of person who can effectively direct millions of dollars. That’s where I need Zorro’s help.

The Zorro Circle keeps ordered growth on track.

Shawn Achor gives an example from the film The Mask of Zorro where an aging swordmaster trains a hot-headed apprentice to become the new Zorro. Central to his training philosophy is a small “training circle” where the apprentice must first master core skills before moving on to the next level.

Just like the hot-headed apprentice, human nature is notoriously impatient. We want everything right now. And in pursuing everything, we often end up accomplishing nothing, experiencing crisis after crisis as our core skills fall short of the challenges we undertake.

In contrast, the Zorro Circle patiently expands ambition in line with competence. You take on challenges that lie right on the edge of your abilities, placing your life neatly on the border of order and chaos. It’s here where we find real exhilaration without falling prey to the swarm of overlapping fiascos just waiting to devour those who reach too far.

So, be patient. A career of gradually expanding Zorro Circles designed to capitalize on super-compounding can really take you places.

Risk: Engaging Diversification

When it comes to risk, the orderly approach is to take calculated risks with a long-term perspective. The classic example is consistent and dispassionate stock market investments with a long time horizon.

Anyone who enjoys enough financial security to ensure they’ll never be forced to sell stocks out of desperation can invest in the volatile stock market risk-free. Sure, the market will crash once in a while, but if you never have to sell, you can simply wait for the inevitable recovery that far exceeds the previous high. This is orderly risk-taking — seemingly risky high-return opportunities exploited in a surprisingly low-risk manner.

But while orderly risk-taking is a brilliant way to get ahead in life, it’s not particularly exciting. In our stock market example, all you need to do is set up an automatic investment order and forget about it.

To bring more spice to life, it’s great to diversify into a little bit of chaos: exciting and more intuitive long-shot opportunities that offer a small but conceivable opportunity for thousand-fold returns.

The reality is that such high-risk opportunities will yield nothing most of the time. That’s why you should always limit such investments to a small fraction of your resources (time, energy, money). Even more importantly, make sure there is no contagion risk, i.e., the potential for things to go badly wrong and mess up the rest of your life. The worst-case scenario should be that you lose your entire investment.

A couple of such risks add plenty of spice to life, even if they don’t amount to anything. And even though I’m yet to experience it, I can imagine the thrill when one of them actually comes off one day.

Final Thoughts

The ideal balance between order and chaos will look different for different people. Like all of life’s other balancing acts, it’s a process of continuous learning and adjustment.

In general, it’s easier to make these adjustments from a place of order. Chaos is the natural state of things, so adding some chaos into an orderly system is much easier than bringing order to a chaotic system (especially when the chaos has started spreading to other systems).

So, err on the side of order, but make sure you enrich your life with a healthy dose of chaos.

Schalk August 12, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness happiness, health, personal development, productivity, willpower

The Willpower Gap: A New Understanding of Happiness

Willpower is to happiness what money is to wealth.

Are you happy? Like most of us in the developed world, you’re probably doing OK. But somewhere in the back of your mind, you know life could be a whole lot better.

As shown below, rich world happiness keeps stagnating despite continued technological progress. This trend actually goes back much further, with the percentage of Americans seeing themselves as “very happy” declining from 35% in the 1970s to 31% in the 2010s.

What’s going on? In this article, I’ll answer this burning question with an interesting new understanding of happiness and suffering, inspired by a painful recent experience.

Let’s start with the short version:

Willpower is a limited resource

We’ve all been frustrated by this fundamental fact of life. Willpower gives us direct control over our bodies and minds, but when it runs out, we become passengers as our primitive instincts take over.

It can be spent …

Most of us spend our entire supply of willpower on keeping our lives together in an increasingly overwhelming world filled with temptations designed to lead us down the wrong path.

… or invested

The better solution is to invest our limited willpower to design environments and habits that permanently increase willpower supply and plug daily willpower drains.

Happiness is the gap between willpower supply and demand

Wise investments continuously increase the surplus willpower at our disposal. This growing “willpower gap” provides the tools to craft a truly meaningful life and opens the mental space to genuinely enjoy it.

Suffering happens when willpower demands exceed supply

Situations that demand more willpower than we have available suck all the meaning out of life. In this situation, we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: neglect prized areas of life and let them unravel or buy temporary willpower through self-destructive instant-pleasure consumption.

The moral of the story: Maintain the gap

Living at or beyond the willpower edge is not a sign of strength. It’s a sign of ignorance. Just like you’ll never be wealthy if you keep spending all the money you earn, you’ll never be happy if you keep spending all the willpower you have.

To put all this in context, here’s the story of the last time I’ll ever exceed my willpower bounds.

The (Research) Proposal

People view their work in one of three ways: job, career, or calling. I’m one of the lucky ones able to say my research work is my calling in life.

Well, most of it at least.

Indeed, there’s one part of the job I have no love for whatsoever: the huge amount of time, effort, and compromise required to get funding.

The struggle for research funding brings three major problems: It takes a big bite out of the limited time available for productive research, it creates a soul-killing multi-year gap between having an exciting idea and winning the right to explore it, and it often demands that this beautiful idea is distorted almost beyond recognition to make it fit a funding opportunity.

The story of my final encounter with this terrible trio starts in June 2020 when I joined a 3-month proposal-writing effort on one simple condition: we would keep things clean and simple.

In hindsight, I should have foreseen what would happen next. Like it always does, one thing led to another and, before we knew it, we had a huge consortium and an overcomplicated proposal, all in an ultimately futile attempt to better fit the funding opportunity. By the time I realized this, the sunk costs were already too high to pull out, so I ended up exchanging three months of my hard-earned creative freedom for precisely the kind of work I so desperately wanted to avoid.

Then, about three weeks before the submission deadline, my usually pristine personal health habits cracked. In a blatant violation of my core principles, I fell into the typical pattern of suffering through a hateful 9–5 job and turning to empty calories and empty media in the afternoons and weekends to make up for this suffering.

The rest of this article is a researcher’s attempt to make sense of this unfortunate outcome and ensure that it never happens again.

Uncovering the Root of the Problem

How could this happen? No matter what I did, my mind flatly refused to do anything unless I marinate it in instant pleasure. And, like so many other people, I got that from gorging on junk food in front of the TV. It was excruciating to betray my principles in this way, but for those three weeks, it genuinely felt like I had no other choice.

So, after plenty of thought and analysis, I finally have a solid theory. Let’s take a closer look.

We all have a limited supply of willpower

The supply is not fixed — for example, those with excellent health, inspiring careers, and a good support network can have much more — but it is limited. We can use this limited willpower supply to exercise direct control over our bodies and minds. But once it runs out, our primitive instincts take over, and we start chasing instant pleasure and comfort with no regard for the future.

Our modern world contains far too many willpower drains

A huge amount of this precious resource gets wasted on things like trying to lose weight, struggling through uninspiring 9–5 jobs, and maintaining bad relationships. Such an existence beyond the willpower edge forces us to sacrifice important areas of life every time our willpower comes up short.

I believe this is a core reason behind the slowly declining happiness trends observed in most developed nations. Our world is always getting more complex, increasing the strain on our limited willpower reserves. Hence, we’re faced with a chronic shortage of the willpower we need to keep our lives in order, leading to the state of suffering illustrated below.

We need to boost our willpower supply and decrease demand

Intelligent micro-environment design is the most valuable life philosophy I know. It helped me shape my world so that health, financial freedom, and productivity happen automatically, shrinking demands on my willpower.

This creates many interesting opportunities for willpower investment. For a research-obsessed scientist like me, the best investment is the launch of exciting but intimidating new ideas. As the development of these ideas makes life ever-more interesting, willpower supply expands, building a larger “willpower gap.” To me, this gap is happiness.

Soul-killing work shrinks our willpower supply

So, if I had such a large willpower surplus, why couldn’t I just ramp up my willpower consumption and endure a few months of reduced happiness to finish this proposal? Well, that’s exactly what happened over the first two months of the process — it certainly wasn’t fun, but I did make good contributions while maintaining excellent health habits.

It was only during those last three weeks that I folded. Over the preceding two months, the proposal had been gradually chipping away at my willpower supplies. And then, when we entered the hectic final stretch of the proposal process, I was beyond maxed out.

Temporary willpower can be bought at a huge cost

Even though I had no willpower reserves left, the proposal still had to get done. More willpower had to come from somewhere. So I turned to the usual solution: paying the Instant Pleasure Industry a big chunk of my long-term health in exchange for some temporary willpower.

Despite all the chocolates, ice cream, and movies, this was a terrible time I never want to repeat. Sadly, millions of people worldwide regularly find themselves in this situation. Let’s see what we can do about it.

Recommendation

Based on the simple graphs above, the key to a good life is to increase the gap between willpower supply and demand. This gap is happiness.

Grow the gap

The single best use of willpower is to build environments that permanently increase your willpower reserves and decrease your willpower demands. Willpower reserves swell in an inspiring environment. Willpower demands shrink in environments where virtues like healthy living, financial responsibility, and high productivity run on autopilot. Such environments make you a true native of the modern world — someone whose natural behavior leads to progress instead of self-destruction.

Willpower investment instead of spending

Money and wealth are much like willpower and happiness. If you keep spending all the money you earn, you’ll never be wealthy. Likewise, you’ll never be happy if you keep spending all your willpower.

Each of us must figure out ways to set aside some willpower for building our willpower gaps. To give the simplest example, don’t waste willpower on attempts to follow a painful and self-depriving diet. Instead, invest it in designing your own zero-compromise diet that makes it a joy to eat a wide range of whole foods every day.

Proactively avoid situations requiring artificial willpower

As my story above illustrates, forced excursions beyond the willpower threshold are as unhealthy as they are painful. That’s why I’d even go as far as saying that we should proactively avoid getting into situations that could push us even close to our willpower thresholds. I’ve learned the hard way that this is much more stupid than it is brave.

Will this philosophy of “minding your willpower gap” cause you to miss out on some seemingly attractive near-term opportunities? Yes, it will. Will this be worth it in the long run? Totally! It’s finally becoming accepted that we’re most productive and creative when we’re happy. Patiently and intelligently expanding your willpower gap will pay off handsomely in the long run.

The key takeaway

If you find yourself constantly at or beyond your willpower’s edge, stop. That’s no way to live life. It’s painful, self-destructive, harmful to relationships, and, ultimately, considerably less productive.

In contrast, consistent willpower investment can be even more beneficial than its financial counterpart.

Become a willpower investor. Get rich on happiness.

Schalk August 6, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness mental health, personal development, stress, stress management

How to Handle Primitive Fight-or-Flight Emotions in the Digital Age

Our natural stress response is long due for an update.

Stress is our natural emotional response to threatening situations. Without this powerful fight-or-flight instinct, we would never have survived in the hostile pre-industrial world representing 99.9% of human history.

By these historical standards, today’s developed countries are paradise. But strangely, we’re more stressed than ever. Why?

Well, stress may be great at identifying threats, but it sucks at judging their severity. That’s why modern living with its overload of low-level stressors winds us up so tightly. Each molehill looks like a mountain. And most of us carry around a mountain of these inflated molehills.

Clearly, our system needs an upgrade. But that’s no easy task. Most of us are stretched so thin that we have no time or energy to discover and implement the long-term strategies that enable low-stress productivity.

That’s why effective stress management must happen on different timescales. We first need to implement some short-term solutions to create space for implementing lasting solutions.

This article shares a tried-and-tested stress-management strategy built on this simple philosophy.

Short-Term Responses

We all know the basic stress reduction techniques, but consistent implementation remains a challenge. The trick is to build a solid habit of pulling out the right one at the right time.

Here’s a recap of the four most important techniques. A good strategy is to choose only one and focus on turning it into a habit. When it finally sticks a couple of weeks later, move on to the next.

Movement

Whenever you get worked up physically (heart pounding, breath quickening, or body shaking), exercise is the most productive way to channel those fight-or-flight hormones. Go for a brisk walk, drop down for 30 seconds of push-ups, or, my personal favorite, pull out a couple of dance moves (the last two work particularly well off-camera on a stressful call).

Talking or writing

This should be the go-to when your stress is complicated. Talking about it with a trusted friend or writing about it in a journal is a great way to make sense of the matter. Such demystification not only brings instant stress relief; it can also uncover valuable insights with longer-term benefits.

Healthy pleasures

There’s a huge amount of self-destructive stress management going on around the world. Whenever you get the urge to bury your stress in chocolate or Netflix, it’s great to have some healthier alternatives available. Take an hour just to relax (screen-free), listen (or dance) to your favorite music, or enjoy a long bath (perhaps with some relaxing fragrances).

Breathe

Sometimes, the situation doesn’t allow for any of these techniques when they’re really needed. In this case, simply focussing on slowing your breath is the best solution. The 4–7–8 technique is a good start.

Medium-Term Responses

The next level blends instant stress relief with the prevention of future stress. These guys work best in a mind unclouded by fight-or-flight hormones, facilitated by the short-term responses listed above.

Stop digging

Humans have the weird tendency to keep digging themselves deeper into the stressful hole they find themselves in. So, when stress starts driving your actions, make sure those actions don’t involve any further digging.

Are you overwhelmed at work? Stop taking on more responsibilities (either at work or at home).

Did you have a bad falling-out with a loved one? Don’t make it worse with passive-aggressive behavior.

Stressed about your health or weight? Ice cream and chocolate won’t provide the answer you’re looking for.

Objectively unpack your stressor

Once you’ve stopped digging, use this much-needed breather to answer three simple questions:

What is the worst that could happen? We often stress far too much about things that aren’t dangerous, like a presentation or a date.
What’s the chance? A catastrophic worst-case scenario may have such a minute chance of happening that any reasonable person would ignore it. Plane crashes and shark attacks fall in this category.
What can I do? If needed, it’s often possible to reduce the impact or likelihood to acceptable levels with a little bit of cheap insurance. Prepare well for that presentation and stay out of shark-infested waters.

Most Efficient Next Action (MENA)

When a good objective unpacking of your stressor fails to defuse your stress, it’s time to turn to MENA.

Any stress that passes through the three questions above is trying to tell you something important: The situation you’re facing requires decisive action. This type of stress is legit. It can save you from serious trouble, and you should give it the respect it deserves.

There’s no better way to honor such valuable stress than by identifying and executing your MENA — the near-term action that will permanently reduce the most stress with the least effort.

MENAs are rarely pleasant or comfortable. Typically, they involve a difficult conversation or some tedious admin. In this case, allow your helpful stress to push you through. It will only fade away once it has served this (very important) purpose.

Long-Term Responses

Last (but not least), we have strategic actions to prevent or mitigate future stress. This is easily the most powerful type of stress response, but the problem is that it requires plenty of time and focus without delivering the instant results we like to see. Thus, we need to already be in a pretty good place to implement these strategies.

Proactive overwhelm prevention

The hedonic treadmill offers one of the best explanations for the human condition that I’ve ever come across. It usually applies to consumption: Our happiness quickly returns to the baseline after the initial high following a big purchase, always leaving us wanting more. But the principle works just as well for creation.

We always want to do more, achieve more, experience more. And after the high of every peak we reach, our happiness resets and points us to several more daunting peaks. Unlike the consumption cycle, this creation cycle can be useful, driving people to ever-greater heights. Unfortunately, most of these high flyers soon get caught in a terrible storm of overwhelm that sends them crashing and burning in a chaotic fireball.

For overachievers (myself included), it’s vital to recognize that overwhelm only makes us less productive. Creation is one long balancing act of taking on enough responsibility to keep our creative fire burning but not so much that we end up with third-degree psychological burns.

So, if you’re burning too hot, lighten your load. And no, we’re not talking about quick fixes here. We’re talking about firmly redrawing boundaries in your career and relationships and defending them with conviction. It may be uncomfortable and potentially unpopular, but it’s totally worth it. Once free from the burden of overwhelm, you can really go places.

A solid foundation

Excellent health. Nourishing relationships. Financial security.

If your life is safely perched atop these three foundational pillars, stress will have a much harder time reaching you.

Each of these three pillars can fill many books, but we all have a pretty good idea of the basics we need for building each one. The trick is to prioritize it above all the other stuff in our lives.

And here’s the good news: If you free your life from overwhelm, this critical prioritization suddenly gets a whole lot easier. So, draw some healthier boundaries in your life and invest the resulting time and energy in building this foundation. It provides the basis for a life you (and everyone you care about) can be proud of.

Big stress-reduction moves

Many people have one or two major stressors in their environment. Classic examples include abusive relationships, hateful jobs, and unstable political regimes. As long as these elements are present, chronic stress can persist regardless of any positive actions you take. Getting rid of such stressors requires big stress-reduction moves.

Of course, such moves can be highly stressful in themselves, but they become no-brainers compared to a life spent in fight-or-flight mode. The trick is getting the ball rolling. Once you gather some momentum, further actions become easier. So, focus all your willpower on that first step.

Be careful, though. The stakes are high, and rash decisions can have serious consequences. Do it patiently. Do it right.

Wrapping Up

Effective stress management happens over three timescales. Short-term measures make space for medium-term measures, which, in turn, make space for long-term measures.

If you can jump straight to the long-term measures, that’s great! But, ironically, this will only be possible for someone who already has their stress under decent control. Those most in need of these long-term measures will first need to make space for them using short- and medium-term strategies.

So, pick your battle plan, muster up some courage and patience, and get the ball rolling! It will take time, but there’s much to look forward to. De-stressing your life is a richly rewarding experience. And discovering your potential over a life of low-stress productivity is even more fun.

Schalk July 28, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness contribution, happiness, personal development, relationships, wealth

Four Lifestyle Design Strategies to Set Your Happiness Free

Want a good life? Free yourself from compromise.

Created by Janet Cloete using images from Pixabay and Unsplash (1, 2, 3, 4)

Life is one long trade-off — sacrifice one thing to get another. Almost every route to happiness we pursue today suffers from this problem, especially the good old degree-money-marriage-kids lifestyle recipe.

But no-compromise lifestyle designs do exist. Granted, establishing them is not easy, but once they’re up and running, they provide a reliable stream of happiness without any costly trade-offs.

This article presents the four that added the most value to my life.

1. True Creative Freedom

My #1 lifestyle design strategy is to earn the right to make your living doing something you’d happily do for free. I’ve been enjoying this privileged lifestyle for about two years now, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

It’s easy to see why this lifestyle is so desirable. After all, the status quo is suffering through a soul-killing 9–5 job to earn enough money to make the suffering worthwhile. Considering how much of our lives we spend working and how hard it is to buy happiness, it’s no wonder we want change.

Unsurprisingly, the internet is full of advice on how to achieve this dream lifestyle. But there are some serious problems with the two most popular pathways: FIRE and side-hustling.

Playing with FIRE

My creative freedom was forged in FIRE, even though I only found out it was a thing shortly before I earned the right to retire at age 34.

But let’s get real: Building wealth equal to 25x your annual living expenses by your mid-30s simply isn’t feasible for most people (especially not the spartan, research-obsessed route I followed). Still, the minority who manage to pull it off is very vocal about the benefits, causing considerable distress among all those who cannot access this privilege.

All too often, this leads people to dive head-first into the problems with the second popular pathway to freedom.

Hustling ourselves to death

Like FIRE, the internet houses a vocal minority of highly successful side-hustlers — the silliest of which are those hustlers who make money from videos/blogs showing the world how to make money side-hustling.

As a result of these vocal outliers, side-hustling is now a classic get-rich-quick scheme. It sucks many people in, only to spit most of them out dejected, burnt out, and bitterly disappointed.

Indeed, hustling to get rich is a terrible idea. It gets the priorities all wrong.

Freedom in Transition (FiT)

My FIRE strategy was stupid. The critical element I neglected was the part of my job I really enjoyed and wanted to continue doing. The salary I still get from this continued partial employment means that I need much less investment income to sustain my lifestyle.

If I could get a do-over, I’d start ramping down my level of formal employment after as little as three years of work. By that point, I already had a clear idea of my likes and dislikes in the job and sufficient reputation to negotiate a small reduction in official working hours.

Simply put, FiT is about gradually replacing the most hateful elements of your job with more of the parts you enjoy most. When negotiating this with your boss, offer to take a pay cut for this privilege. After all, when your job is fun, you’ll suddenly need much less money for buying happiness.

Start small and prove how effective you can be when you get greater freedom to work on things you enjoy. Then, gradually leverage this evidence to shape your responsibilities even more to your liking. A few years later, you’ll find yourself in your dream job that pays enough for a good life (and gives ever-increasing leverage to turn your visions into reality).

2. Healthy Pleasure

Most pleasure today is a straight trade of our time, money, and health for a series of carefully engineered dopamine hits. The Instant Pleasure Industry has figured out how to make these toxic treats so addictive that we keep overconsuming despite the serious long-term damages.

Luckily, life offers several healthy pleasures that involve no compromises. Here are seven of them. In today’s post, I’d like to focus on two in particular.

A zero-compromise diet

The modern world really struggles with food. Courtesy of the Instant Pleasure Industry, we’re constantly surrounded by hyper-palatable empty calories. And these sugary, fatty, and salty addictions are creating massive costs for individuals and society alike.

A zero-compromise diet offers a beautiful solution. It assembles a set of eating habits that combine great taste, excellent nutrition, high practicality, and decent affordability.

Just like the FiT strategy discussed earlier, a zero-compromise diet must be built gradually. Each meal will require several iterations before it fits your life just right. So, keep experimenting with ways to enjoy more whole foods. You’ll be amazed at how much your diet can change in a year.

If you’re worried about missing out on the pleasure from junk food, let me put your mind at ease. Once you heal your brain’s broken reward system, a wide range of whole foods will suddenly become deeply enjoyable. Add mindful eating to the mix, and you’ll get more than enough pleasure from your healthy food.

Restful time in nature

Nature has a mysteriously soothing effect on the human spirit. Aside from making us considerably happier, it offers at least three more proven benefits:

Fitness. Whether you’re walking, running, cycling, skiing, or rowing through nature, your body will love you for it.
Creative insights. The human mind seems to get considerably more creative after some exposure to nature.
Stress reduction. Nature is a great therapist.

Sadly, regularly getting into nature is difficult for many people. Despite some promising signs of change, most of our cities remain sterile blocks of concrete built for cars instead of humans. Still, even if this is your reality today, it’s worth making the effort to get your recommended 2-hour weekly dose of nature.

And when it becomes time to move house again, grab this chance to make nature your next-door neighbor. Choosing a location for effortless car-free living with nature in my backyard remains the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

3. A Few Quality Relationships

I’m one of those weirdos who can go for weeks without human contact. Case in point, the Covid-lockdowns were such a positive experience for me that I actually feel a little guilty. But even this research-obsessed scientist must admit that a few quality relationships with quality people enrich life.

On the flip side, low-quality relationships make life a whole lot worse—ditto for an excessive number of mediocre relationships.

So, how do we know where to draw the line? Well, in the context of this article, that’s straightforward: You draw the line at the point where your relationships become a clear trade-off between pros and cons.

Of course, any relationship involves some give and take. I certainly don’t mean to say you should try and find a relationship where you never need to give. No, the quality relationships I refer to here are those where you genuinely enjoy giving (and receiving, of course).

How many do we need?

Relationships of such quality don’t grow on trees, but the good news is that we only need a small number of them to be happy. That number will vary from person to person, but 3–5 looks like a good general guideline.

The key to getting the considerable health and happiness benefits from relationships is to feel good about where things currently stand. On the one hand, loneliness can be as dangerous as smoking. On the other, having to invest too much time and energy in too many relationships makes it impossible to look after yourself properly.

Listen to your heart. Let it guide you to that perfect balance where your relationships energize both yourself and the other party. This is the sweet spot where relationships provide true zero-compromise happiness.

Whether you’re currently above or below this sweet spot, be sure to approach it slowly. Building a close relationship can take a year or two. Stepping back from excessive relationships can be even trickier. Either way, patience is as much a virtue in this arena as in any other.

4. Unconditional Contribution to Society

We evolved to experience good vibes when we contribute meaningfully to the tribe. Without this instinct and the community it builds, our species would have perished millennia ago.

Today, the world is our tribe. And (to put it mildly) there’s plenty of room for contribution. Many see all the world’s problems as a source of despair. But to those who open their hearts and minds, tackling the world’s problems can bring tremendous purpose and fulfillment.

I know of no more fulfilling feeling than a deep conviction that my life is making the world a better place. To make it even better, this path to happiness connects beautifully with the three prior lifestyle design strategies.

Let’s take a closer look at these synergies.

A sustainable life

My personal development writing is based on the idea that a sustainable life can be a happy, healthy, wealthy, and productive life. Most people still see sustainable living as a painful compromise we need to make to save the planet, but nothing could be further from the truth:

Sustainable habits like a predominantly plant-based diet and walking or cycling instead of driving greatly improve health.
A clean divorce from environmentally destructive consumerism is the genesis of financial freedom.
The sense of purpose that arises from making the world a better place skyrockets productivity.
Happiness naturally flows from a healthy, wealthy, and productive life smartly designed to preserve our planet for future generations.

Earning true creative freedom, discovering healthy pleasure, and building a few quality relationships all contribute to a sustainable life. They effectively dematerialize our pursuit of happiness, freeing us from the hedonic treadmill (a.k.a. the consumerist hamster wheel to nowhere). From here, we can really go places.

The privilege of genuine contribution

I only get paid for about a third of my work, with the rest being free-time research into our great 21st-century sustainability challenge. “Why would anyone work thousands of hours for free?” you might ask. Well, as much as I’d like to say it’s because I’m such a good person, the main reason is that it fills my life with a tremendous sense of purpose and meaning.

Sadly, earning this privilege of serving society with no expectation of reward is surprisingly hard. In fact, our economy seems to try its level best to prevent people from selflessly contributing to the world. Many well-paying jobs today create little or no (or even negative) social value. And yet, we persist in these “bullshit jobs” (short version) because we need the money to make our meaningless work seem worthwhile. This vicious cycle only creates more environmentally destructive, bullshit work for others.

I really hope this changes one day. But in the meantime, earning true creative freedom in point #1 above is your ticket to the bottomless source of socially beneficial happiness flowing from unconditional contribution. It’s not easy, but it’s so worth the effort.

Wrapping Up

Lasting happiness cannot be bought. It’s not some conditional reward we get in return for our suffering. Although society doesn’t make it easy, happiness can be ours without any of the costly trade-offs we’re used to.

Win true creative freedom. Give up some salary for the right to trade your most hateful tasks for more of the work you love. Then, leverage the resulting increased performance for more creative freedom until you earn a good living from work you’d happily do for free.
Discover healthy pleasure. Ditch the Instant Pleasure Industry and all its toxic temptations. Life offers many better alternatives, starting with a zero-compromise diet and revitalizing time in nature.
Maintain a few quality relationships. Meaningful connection is vital to our health and happiness, but relationships can easily become riddled with compromise. So, use this as a guide, focusing on those precious few relationships that don’t feel like a continuous trade-off.
Contribute unconditionally to society. There are few better feelings than the knowledge that your life is making the world a better place. Discover the amazing benefits of sustainable living and earn the privilege of contributing to society without any need for reward.

Each of these steps takes time. But that only makes it more rewarding when you finally arrive. Enjoy the journey! There’s much to look forward to.

Schalk July 21, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness happiness, hobbies, leisure, psychology, television

Why We Spend 4x More Time on Leisure Activities 3x Less Likely to Make Us Feel Good

A little bit of psychology to bring a lot more joy to life.

Compiled using images from Pixabay (1, 2, 3, 4)

It’s Wednesday shortly after lunch. John stares blankly at the blinking cursor on the white screen before him. This report is due by Friday, but his mind has already taken the weekend, daydreaming about all manner of fun and revitalizing things.

He could invite Fred and his family for dinner. That’s always a blast! The weather also looks lovely this weekend — perfect for dusting off the old mountain bike and taking it for a spin on the trails a few miles from his home. Then there’s the copy of Sapiens Mary gave him for his birthday a couple of months back. It’s right up his ally and sure to rekindle those stimulating philosophical conversations they used to have.

Come Friday, John is late with the report. There were just too many distractions over the last couple of days. After a draining coffee-fueled cramming session, he manages to send out the email shortly before 5 p.m. It’s not exactly his best work, but at least it’s done.

As he fights through the Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic, he realizes he forgot to ask Fred whether the family is free for dinner tomorrow. Maybe he should call? Or maybe not. Fred probably already has plans.

The next morning, John extracts himself from bed at the usual late hour. By the time he has showered, had breakfast, and scrolled through the news feed on his phone, it’s already 11. The beautiful weekend weather arrived right on cue, and he remembers his mountain-biking ambitions. It’s already quite hot, though. Maybe tonight when it’s cooler. Or tomorrow morning.

OK, then it’s finally time to delve into Sapiens — right after a quick email check. As he opens his personal mailbox, his eye catches an ad showing that the new season of Cobra Kai just dropped on Netflix. Before even thinking about it, he clicks the link.

Around midnight on Sunday, John finally reaches the end of the rabbit hole as the credits start rolling on the last old Karate Kid movie. He feels deflated and stuffed all at the same time as he slowly clears away the empty pizza boxes responsible for the stuffing. The beautiful weekend is gone, and all he can think about are the things he didn’t get done (including the groceries).

He collapses into bed with a dejected sigh. It’s going to be a long week…

WTF Happened?

Does this story I so shamelessly paraphrased from Shawn Achor’s The Happiness Advantage sound familiar? It sure does for me.

John planned to fill his weekend with fun, laughter, sunshine, fresh air, and mental stimulation, leaving him revitalized for the week. Instead, he ended up numbing his mind with old movie reruns, stuffing his body with junk, and getting a demoralizing tongue lashing from his conscience.

In The Happiness Advantage, Achor cites research that found American teenagers 3x as likely to experience elevated enjoyment when engaging in sport or hobbies than when watching TV. And guess what, those same teenagers spent 4x as much time watching TV as they spent on sports and hobbies. I bet the numbers are even worse for adults who no longer benefit from organized sports and recreational school activities.

Other research from the book shows that passive leisure activities (stuff like vegging out in front of the TV, getting lost down the Netflix or YouTube rabbit hole, or scrolling through Facebook’s unique blend of silly cat videos, cliché memes, and filtered photographs of our friends’ perfect lives) are only enjoyable for about 30 minutes. After that, they start sapping our energy.

And here’s the kicker: The resulting “psychic entropy” leaves us listless and apathetic —perfect prey for the effortless and totally passive entertainment offered by the Instant Pleasure Industry.

Thus, we keep watching and scrolling (maybe pausing occasionally to order some junk food) even though we’re hardly enjoying it.

The amount of human potential, happiness, and health destroyed by this tragic cycle is incalculable. It needs to stop.

Here’s how.

The 20-Second Rule

The human mind is brilliant. It’s also surprisingly lazy. If an activity takes more than 20 seconds to initiate, it probably ain’t gonna happen.

This trait is shamelessly exploited by the Instant Pleasure Industry. Their services are often just a tap or two away, and consuming more content mostly involves no effort whatsoever (a few lazy swipes at most).

Luckily, we can shield ourselves from such humiliating exploitation by using the 20-second rule to our advantage:

Unsubscribe from any services likely to steal many hours of your time without making you feel energized and revitalized. Use RescueTime to block distractions that don’t need a subscription.
Hide your TV remote in the darkest corner of your most remote closet. Or, if you’re feeling really brave, get rid of the TV altogether.
Turn off all notifications on your phone and move any useful apps that often distract you into a folder on the last quick-access screen.

Sure, you’ve probably seen plenty of tips like these before. But have you acted on them and purged your life of quick-access distractions? No? Then, to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger (in the appropriate accent): Do it! Do it now!

You did it? Great! Now we can leverage the 20-second rule to redirect all this previously squandered time into more joyous activities:

Make sure your favorite hobbies are less than 20 seconds away: a guitar on a prominent stand in the living room, an interesting book on every open surface, a camera hanging right by the front door.
Pleasant physical activity should be just as easily accessible: Have a fun Zumba routine at your fingertips, make sure your sports equipment is in good condition, and, ideally, get nature in your backyard.
Set up healthy social activities the moment you think of them. Even better, set up recurring activities that will require effort to cancel.

These ideas from The Happiness Advantage resonate with James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Wholesome activities should be made obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. Unhealthy and distracting activities should be made invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.

It doesn’t take much effort to set up these changes. And once you do, your life is automatically set on a much more enlightened path.

Just ask John.

John’s Comeback

The following Wednesday, John finds himself in his weekend daydreams again. But the dream is rather patchy, constantly interrupted by the sting of utter failure from his previous attempt (and many more before it).

Then, in a flash of divine inspiration, he makes the pivotal move: He gets off his ass, marches straight to Fred’s office, and invites him over for dinner that weekend. Everything is settled about 20 seconds later: Fred will arrive at four to watch the game, with the family following later for dinner.

That Friday evening, John feels inspired. He gives his bike a quick service and leaves his cycling clothes on the floor next to his bed. Then, he tucks himself in at a reasonable hour to wake up naturally just before seven the next morning. As he swings out of bed, his foot hits his cycling shoe. With a still-groggy smile, he gets himself kitted up.

After enjoying a light breakfast in his cycling attire, he goes out into the cool morning air, mounts his well-oiled bike, and sets off to the mountain trails.

It’s been too long since his last trip, and he’s really huffing and puffing when he finally reaches the viewpoint that marks the top of the trail. But it’s totally worth it. The early morning scene over the city is beautiful, especially on the soundtrack provided by an enthusiastic bird chorus.

He spends a good 15 minutes drinking in the sights, sounds, and some refreshment from his water bottle. Then he jumps back on his bike and enjoys an exhilarating descent down the winding single-track trails.

When he gets home, he finds himself way more energized than he was when he set off. After a much-needed shower, he sets out on his grocery run to stock up for the week and to gather everything he needs to treat Fred and his family to a lovely dinner.

Following an early lunch, he gets cooking, another badly neglected passion of his. One satisfying hour later, the dinner’s in the oven, and John decides to finally dig his copy of Sapiens out of the bookshelf.

It takes him about 20 seconds to become fully engrossed in the book. What feels like five minutes later, the oven starts beeping, signaling that 45 minutes have passed and the food is ready. He hastily puts things in order and gets back to the book for another chapter before Fred arrives.

They enjoy a couple of beers under the ultimately losing effort of their team. Despite the close loss, both are in great spirits when Fred’s family arrives. The dinner is a fun affair with plenty of ego-boosting compliments to the chef.

The next morning, John, his bike, and Sapiens find themselves at the top of the trail once more. He settles down under a tree and covers a fascinating couple of chapters, after which he spontaneously pulls out his phone and sends Mary a text to thank her for the gift. A couple of texts later, they have a date for the following weekend.

That night, John falls asleep with a satisfied smile on his face. It’s going to be a good week…

Schalk July 14, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness children, education, happiness, marriage, money, work

Four Outdated Social Narratives that Still Govern Our Lives

It’s an age-old recipe: Get a degree, land a well-paying job, find a loving partner, start a family. But have you ever stopped to think whether it actually works?

Created by Janet Cloete using six images from Pixabay and Unsplash (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

I recently finished an interesting read entitled Happy Ever After. In it, Paul Dolan takes aim at several of the “social narratives” we’ve been conditioned to accept as gospel over the generations.

He digs up plenty of data to show how each of these well-accepted ideas of a good life has little or no effect on our happiness. Whatever little positive effect there may be, he argues, comes mainly from the acceptance we get when conforming to societal norms, even useless ones.

That’s big news. The social narratives covered in the book dictate the lives of billions of people worldwide. All these people spend huge amounts of time, energy, and resources in their efforts to follow the recipe.

This article will take a quick trip through the four most influential narratives from the book: education, income, marriage, and children.

Step 1: Get a Prestigious Degree

One of the ideas that Dolan emphasizes throughout the book is the “just enough” philosophy. In terms of education, it means we should know enough to function well in society, but there is little benefit to be gained from higher levels of education.

For example, someone who lacks basic literary and computer skills would obviously have a tough time in today’s world. However, the effect of education on wellbeing becomes insignificant beyond that level:

Paul Dolan’s analysis of education-related data from the American Time Use Survey

Higher education levels slightly reduce misery, but there is also a slight reduction in pleasure and purpose, especially for the most highly educated.

Initially, this surprised me. As a proud member of the right-most bar, I thought a Ph.D. should at least deliver a big boost in purpose. But then again, there are many ways to find purpose in life other than knowing all there is to know about a minuscule academic niche.

Ultimately, the pros and cons of higher education pretty much cancel out. Take away the status created by the social narrative, and higher education becomes the wrong choice for many people. Informal learning solutions and the good old “school of life” often present better alternatives.

Society certainly needs highly-educated people, but it doesn’t need an oversupply of deeply unhappy and debt-laden young adults who scraped through courses they have zero passion for.

If you have a thirst for knowledge and big ambitions, higher education could be the thing for you. For example, I would rate my purpose 6 out of 6 and my pleasure 5 out of 6 because I’m a born scientist. However, I’ve seen several students who suffered greatly during their Master’s and Ph.D. studies. We generally push them through due to the huge costs of failure, but it’s not a pleasant (or socially useful) process.

Please don’t let the narrative pressure you onto this path if it’s not for you.

Step 2: Make Big Money

Even though the “just enough” principle has been proven for income countless times, society remains obsessed with getting rich. This irrational money obsession gets drilled a little deeper into our skulls by each of the thousands of ads we see daily.

Paul Dolan’s analysis of income-related data from the American Time Use Survey

As shown above, the effect of income on pleasure and purpose is essentially insignificant in America. However, income does reduce misery up to about $50k per year, although the gain beyond $25k is small.

Let’s investigate this further by listing a few pros and cons of high income:

When it comes to money, the narrative itself accounts for much of the positive effect. Dolan cites numerous studies finding that we get a clear happiness boost if we feel richer than our peers. In a classic example, most people would rather live in a 3000 sq ft house in a neighborhood of 2000 sq ft houses than a 4000 sq ft house in a neighborhood of 6000 sq ft houses.

This drives lots of aspirational spending, forcing people to compromise their health, relationships, and passions to earn more money. Society rarely pays the big bucks for pleasant, low-stress work. No, high earners typically spend long hours on stressful and demanding tasks with little freedom to influence either timing or scope.

It’s tragicomic how much time, energy, and resources society wastes on this hamster wheel to nowhere. Please don’t be taken in by the consumerist culture behind this environmentally destructive social narrative.

Step 3: Find True Love

Much like the advertising industry drives the income narrative, the entertainment industry drives the marriage narrative. After all, without our deep desire to find “the one,” most music lyrics and movie plots would fall flat.

The data shows that settling down with your true love has a similarly unimpressive effect on wellbeing as the previous two narratives. On the positive side, finding out that your love wasn’t so true after all doesn’t seem to make much difference either.

Paul Dolan’s analysis of marriage-related data from the American Time Use Survey

Marriage does give a significant bump in purpose, though. It’s not large, but considering the tiny effects these narratives have on our happiness, it’s worth mentioning. However, when the marriage breaks down, that purpose bump is canceled by a similar bump in misery.

A few pros and cons of marriage are listed below. When looking through the list, it becomes clear that you need the perfect partner for marriage to deliver a clear happiness boost. And such perfection is rare indeed.

Most real-world marriages are like all the other narratives: a continuous compromise between pros and cons. Emotion-rich relationships tend to amplify both positive and negative experiences. However, this effect also diminishes with time as couples transition from the passionate love glorified in movies to the more mundane companionate love of real life.

The marriage narrative also gets support from most tax systems. However, these financial gains quickly evaporate if things turn sour. One funny statistic from the book is the correlation between how much you spend on your wedding and the likelihood of divorce. If you feel you need to pay that much to prove to the world how much you love each other, think again.

Finally, Dolan shows that marriage is a better deal for men than for women, especially health-wise. Still, despite getting a rather bad deal from marriage, women experience much greater social pressure to marry. They’re also stigmatized to a greater extent for being unfaithful in an empty marriage. All told, women should be particularly wary of this narrative.

Step 4: Build a Loving Family

Each of the previous narratives served society well in the past but have since outgrown their usefulness. But this fourth narrative takes it a step further. Raising children has become so complex and expensive in recent decades that Western governments need to shell out increasingly costly incentives to keep the birth rate from falling through the floor.

Despite these perks, children have a clear negative effect on the happiness of younger parents, with the association turning slightly positive in older age when children start leaving home.

The effect of age and the number of children on happiness (source)

Younger parents of younger kids have a tough time, and it’s easy to see why. The cons in the table below are all big factors today, and they’re only growing larger with time.

If you’re going to have kids, Dolan suggests having them later in life. Raising children in today’s world is a massive challenge, and you will need to reach a high level of development, both personally and financially, to make a success of it.

Even so, many younger people (especially women) experience great pressure to have kids. Much of this pressure comes from would-be grandmothers — the one group that gets a clear happiness boost from children.

Still, if you’re a natural-born parent, go for it. But if the social narrative is playing a role in your plans for procreation, please reconsider. In general, childless people spend their efforts to care for people already on the planet, whereas parents create new tiny people requiring (lots of) care. Our world already has more than enough people (and other life) to care for.

Wrapping Up

There’s nothing wrong with getting a degree, earning a high salary, getting married, and having children. If these social narratives genuinely enhance your quality of life, follow them with conviction.

However, there are also several common circumstances where these narrow lifestyle prescriptions should be bluntly rejected:

When you consider going to university mainly because you want to make more money or please/impress other people.
When you start doing increasingly stressful and unfulfilling work to earn the high salary you need to keep up with the Joneses.
When you’re thinking of settling for a partner you’re not 100% sure about because you feel the clock ticking (especially if you’re a woman).
When you experience pressure from family and friends to start a family before you feel ready, both personally and financially.

We can all get better at respecting each other’s choices, whether they align with these social narratives or not. Far too many people put themselves through hell by succumbing to social pressure and following narratives that are a terrible fit for them. Others flip completely to the opposite side, turning against the narratives and resenting those who choose to follow the standard degree-money-marriage-kids recipe.

So, let’s appreciate the rich possibilities of life outside these narratives and give each other the space to choose.

Schalk June 30, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness adversity, growth, happiness, personal development, stuttering

Falling Up: The Art of Finding Fortune in Your Misfortune

How handicap, disease, and injury bettered my life

I’ve had a blessed life, that’s for sure. So many things went right: good parents, a secure childhood, solid genes, excellent education…

But life wasn’t always sunshine and roses. Many things went wrong, some of them quite badly. And weirdly enough, those were the ones that ended up helping me even more.

Apparently, this phenomenon of benefitting from misfortune is fairly common. Shawn Achor calls it “falling up.” When life really hurts, it’s easy to see only dark clouds. But if you keep a keen eye out for silver linings, you may well end up falling upwards to wonderful new heights.

So, without further ado, here are my top three falling-up stories.

1. A Stutterer’s Life

I’ve stuttered for as long as I can remember. At the surface, stuttering looks like a simple speech impediment. At its core, however, stuttering handicaps a central part of the human experience: connection.

For fluent speakers, talking is psychologically rewarding. It helps people depressurize emotionally and organize their complex inner worlds. Well, for us stutterers, it’s often exactly the opposite. Psychological pressure builds and builds, but you cannot get it out. It’s a terrible feeling.

In my case, this often caused me to shut myself off from life. And all the while, anxiety was building about my future out there in the big, bad world.

Luckily, my dear (and deeply concerned) mom found a solution at just the right time: the McGuire Program.

McGuire didn’t cure my stutter, but it did get me out of my shell. More importantly, it got me started on a lifelong personal development journey.

We’ll never know what my life would have been like if my mom never found that course. But so many good things happened after that turnaround that I can be nothing but grateful.

How stuttering improves my life:

Today, I have a surprisingly good-natured relationship with my stutter. In fact, I’ve discovered many unexpected benefits to this handicap:

You become a specialist. My ability to focus on what I’m good at is responsible for most of my success in life. Without a stutter to limit my options, this focus would not have been possible.
You learn to write. Speaking is easy. Writing is hard. But most spoken words live only a few seconds, whereas written words often live forever. Stuttering makes writing a necessity, shaping a precious skill.
You’re drawn to other forms of expression. There are many alternatives to speaking besides the written word. Music soon emerged as my favorite, and it has been enriching my life since childhood.
You don’t waste words. Fluent speakers often talk a lot and say very little, quickly losing their audience. To a stutterer, words are expensive, so you naturally pack as much meaning into each one as possible.
You speak the truth. I can’t remember the last time I lied. But I remember several instances of wanting to lie and realizing that my stutter would make me sound so awkward that no one would believe me.
You learn to listen. I’m often surprised by the things people confide in me. I guess they sense that I can never betray their confidence, but it also helps that my stutter made me a pretty good listener.
You’re forced to stay calm. Stuttering is an emotional minefield, but getting all worked up only makes it worse. Over time, this trained me to keep my cool under almost any circumstance.
You stay modest. I’ve been almost fluent at several points in my life. But each time, I noticed something troubling: I became a bit of a jerk. It seems like I need my stutter to remain a genuinely nice guy.
You learn to collaborate effectively. An ambitious person who cannot speak well must collaborate with people who can. This skill of shaping mutually beneficial relationships has far-reaching benefits.
You’re driven to optimize life. If my life is a stressful mess, my stutter goes haywire. Thus, I have no choice but to keep things in order. This is a major driving force behind the near-perfect life I enjoy today.

The broader benefits of a handicap:

If someone were to offer me the perfect cure for stuttering, I honestly don’t think I’d take it. Not only has this handicap greatly enriched my life, but I’ve also managed to shape my affairs so that it rarely bothers me. Hence, a cure could well cost me more than I would gain.

Many of the benefits listed above could also apply to other disabilities. The freedom to pursue anything you want is not necessarily a good thing, and much good can come from the way a handicap forces you to adapt.

The key is to make a firm decision to embrace the situation and make the best of it. That’s when all the unexpected benefits start showing up.

2. A Cancer Scare

I went through my first course of chemotherapy at the ripe old age of 23. Nausea, low energy, hair falling out … let’s just say it’s not an experience I would recommend.

Luckily, this was only “preventative chemo” because the doctors were reasonably sure they got all the malignant tissue under surgery. But still, it was unpleasant enough to give me an iron resolve never to repeat the experience.

That mental switch signaled the start of an epic health journey that helped me build some of my most precious habits.

How cancer improved my life:

It’s ironic how cancer ended up adding so many years to my life expectancy. Today, my lifestyle is so healthy that I’m confident I’ll never be sick again (my last sick day happened way back in February 2009).

Building a healthy lifestyle in today’s world with all its addictive temptations takes loads of mental energy. Without the right motivation, prioritizing this critical project above all of life’s other demands is near-impossible. Lucky for me, cancer turned out to be a pretty good motivator.

There were some lovely side benefits, too. For one, my health habits soon spread to several people close to me, visibly adding life to their years and years to their lives. That gives me great satisfaction. Hopefully, my sleep, diet, and fitness writing here on Medium also helped a couple of people.

Second, I needed to build many precious skills in the process of creating a perfect health environment in a world constantly begging us to self-destruct. These skills soon spilled over to wealth, productivity, and sustainability. By age 34, they had already given me financial freedom, the scientific publication track record of a retired professor, and a sustainable ecological footprint.

It’s weird, but cancer was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

The general benefits of a major health scare:

My story is far from unique. Many people who had major health scares end up making lasting positive changes to their lives.

I was lucky that my scare happened right as I entered adulthood. But it’s never too late to ride this motivation to a longer and better life.

If this opportunity ever comes your way, be sure to recognize it for what it is and grab it with both hands.

3. A Broken Leg

I’m not the world’s best curser, but when my fibula cracked during that ill-fated rugby practice session, I let loose a string of expletives that would have made Samuel L. Jackson squirm.

Luckily, the excruciating pain only lasted a couple of minutes. After that, I was whisked off to the hospital by the guy whose shoulder did the damage, and, thanks to the Norwegian healthcare system, my leg was already full of titanium screws the following morning.

As far as timing goes, I would struggle to find a better moment to break a leg. The very next day, my mom arrived for a long-planned visit from South Africa, so she could look after me for several weeks. More importantly, though, this shock to the system helped me make some much-needed changes that would have lasting positive effects.

How breaking my leg improved my life:

At the time of the accident, rugby took up far too much of my time — both through practices and weekends spent watching pro matches. Today, I no longer play and only watch the occasional big game with friends (like our World Cup victory 🏆), freeing up a solid chunk of time.

But the biggest benefit of this shock was seeing how the world kept turning when I was forced to take a few weeks off. At that point, I was involved in far too many projects and, despite being badly stressed and overwhelmed, I would have never taken time off out of my own free will.

That terrible cracking sound emanating from my ankle kicked off the long process of healing my relationship with work. Today, five years down the line, my working habits are fully sustainable.

The benefits of a major shock to the system:

Every once in a while, life lashes out unexpectedly and leaves us reeling. A broken leg is just one of countless possible examples.

When something like this happens, it tends to send your mind to places it would never otherwise have gone. Use this opportunity to question your current habits, priorities, and basic assumptions about life. Chances are you’ll find some major areas for improvement.

Final Word

Life sometimes works in mysterious ways. Handicaps can unlock major advantages, serious diseases can improve health, and painful accidents can heal broken relationships.

When the dark clouds are gathering, it’s important to keep your head up in search of those unexpected silver linings. I know it can seem impossible when your world is crumbling around you, but maintaining such an open mindset is a central skill in the art of post-traumatic growth.

May life treat you well. But when it doesn’t, don’t despair: Good things may yet come from your misfortune.

Schalk June 23, 2021

2.5 - Mental Health & Happiness happiness, health, mental health, pleasure, rest

Five Steps to Authentic Happiness

Discover what life is supposed to feel like.

I am happy.

Man, it feels good to write those three words with no mixed feelings!

It wasn’t always like this. Sure, I was happy enough as long as life played by my rules. But life rarely respects anyone’s rules for long. And whenever it broke away from my perfect little plan, my happiness went with it.

It took ten years of active personal development before my external environment and internalized habits finally aligned to reveal authentic happiness. And it was (and still is) breathtakingly beautiful.

Here are the five steps that got me there.

1. Pursue Happiness Directly

“I’ll be happy once I [fill in the blank].”

A clean divorce from this toxic Western concept of conditional happiness is the first step to a truly fulfilling life.

If humanity has proven one thing, it’s that no amount of consumption or achievement will ever bring you authentic happiness. Thanks to the hedonic treadmill, your mind will simply move the goalposts, maintaining that nagging sense of dissatisfaction with life. Also, living large brings much more stress and complexity than we expect (or care to admit).

Instead, we should spend more time and energy on things that connect directly to happiness. Things like those listed in the next four steps.

For all the strivers out there, take it from this former overachiever: Happiness leads to success much more readily than success leads to happiness. A happy mind is more creative, easier to collaborate with, and keener to get stuff done. It took me a decade of way too much stress to figure this out.

Do more things that make you happy. Our culturally ingrained dogma of suffering our way to happiness was never going to work.

2. Choose Freedom and Meaning

“That sounds nice and all, but happiness doesn’t pay the bills.”

Yes, we’re conditioned from an early age to strive for high-paying jobs so we can buy all the stuff that’s supposed to make us happy. And it’s true: The privilege of working at your own pace on meaningful tasks you naturally excel at typically earns considerably less (at least initially).

Herein lies the first big test of whether you take your happiness seriously: Are you willing to trade money and stuff for freedom and meaning?

It’s a philosophical choice: the red pill or the blue pill.

The blue pill is the accepted social narrative: a well-paying job where high stress and limited freedom are accepted as normal. Suffer to earn money. Use that money to make the suffering worthwhile.
The red pill is the emerging alternative: a commitment to finding happiness in work, so excess spending becomes unnecessary.

The blue pill offers security and social acceptance, both of which we value very highly. The red pill, on the other hand, involves risk and uncertainty.

Luckily, the real-life choice between the red and blue pills is not as absolute and irrevocable as in The Matrix. Instead, we can gradually transition from a blue-pill life to a red-pill life.

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Today, I’m working 40% in my blue-pill job and spending the rest of my time and energy building my red-pill life. Not only is the red-pill life deeply fulfilling, but the 40% of my blue-pill job I chose to keep is good fun too. Overall, it’s pretty awesome!

3. Happily Interpret Your Experiences

The analogy continues beyond red and blue pills. In fact, we live our entire lives in a weird kind of Matrix where none of our experiences are real.

Unless your circumstances are genuinely awful, objective reality has surprisingly little to say about your happiness. In fact, our physical circumstances explain only about 10% of the variation in human happiness. It’s crazy if you think about it: wealth, marriage, kids, education, career, and everything else we strive so hard for sum to a measly 10%.

What matters much more is our interpretation of reality.

This is good news because we can train our brains to see our reality in a more positive light, whether it’s past, present, or future:

Whenever your mind drifts back in time, look for something to be grateful for. And yes, the character and wisdom you gained from all those painful experiences deserve plenty of gratitude.
Learn to savor the present moment. We’ll return to this in Step 5.
Earn the right to be hopeful about the future. How? Build a set of habits you can confidently extrapolate into a better tomorrow. What would your life look like if you were your best self for the next decade?

I can also add that the freedom and meaning from Step 2 seem to augment this step. Skillfully interpreting your reality requires mental space and a sense of calm — both of which are hard to find in a hectic blue-pill life.

4. Master Your Primitive Emotions

We’re a bunch of cavemen (and cavewomen) stuck in the future.

Our high-tech reality is so alien to the primitive instincts that evolved over our 200-millennia history that we might as well be living on Mars.

Most of our ongoing lifestyle disease epidemic can be attributed to this mismatch. The problem is simple: Our outdated instincts drive us to act in myriad ways that slowly degrade our bodies, minds, and spirits.

Taming my primitive emotions is one of my proudest life achievements. It sounds silly, but my superpower is the ability to never self-destruct, even when life deals me an unexpected low-blow. No junk food, no junk media, no sabotaging my relationships.

Each of the other steps in this article will contribute to such an emotional upgrade. In my case, Step 2 was particularly important. A more direct route is the emotion canvas, a concept inspired by The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. It looks like this:

This simple canvas can help you understand the triggers that send you into an emotional tailspin. Take some time to populate it, sync it between your devices, and consult it whenever your emotions flare up. It offers a powerful emotional upgrade (more details available here).

5. Discover Healthy Pleasure

Today, most pleasure involves a straight trade of your time, money, and health for a carefully engineered, highly addictive dopamine hit.

Luckily, there are plenty of healthier alternatives to this terrible trade. My top seven read as follows:

Rest. If you’re a striver like I was for most of my adult life, the skill of deeply restorative (screen-free) rest is a life-changer.
Active rest. Light exercise offers a lovely mental recharge and even dishes up the occasional flash of inspiration. As a welcome bonus, this revitalizing habit will keep you fit for life.
Wholesome sensory experiences. Be mindful of the taste and texture of whole food, the aroma of a fresh rainfall, the sensations of a perfectly warm shower, the vision of a sunset, the soothing sounds of nature…
Creative expression. Forget the artificial perfection of all those filtered and autotuned consumer creatives. Embrace your creativity for your own pleasure. What the world thinks of it matters not.
Make someone happy. There are few better feelings than invoking a genuine smile or a heartfelt “thank you.” It would be a happier world if we could help each other smile more often.
Inspiring work. In line with Step 2, meaningful work you do out of your own free will is a wonderful indulgence. You might even be treated to the occasional flow experience.
Realistic dreaming. Can you extrapolate your current habits into a beautiful future? If so, realistic dreaming is a richly deserved pleasure.

It’s pointless to waste your willpower on resisting the highly addictive, self-sabotaging temptations offered by the Instant Pleasure Industry. Instead, gradually displace them with these healthy alternatives.

You’ll never look back.

Thanks for reading! May authentic happiness carry you through life’s ups and downs with a grateful, mindful, and hopeful heart.

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About Schalk

Posts by Schalk Cloete:

Mental and physical health interact in self-strengthening spirals. It’s up to each of us to determine whether they spiral up or down.

Mental/Physical Health Connections

The gut-brain axis

Exercise

Sleep

Body image

Healthy pleasure

Self-strengthening effects

The Vital Paradigm Shift

Constructing Your Healthy Environment

A home full of gut-healthy foods

Fun ways to move your body

A consistent sleep schedule

Protection against self-destruct triggers

A healthy identity

Closing Thoughts

Four decades of wisdom to give hope where it’s needed most.

Let’s start at the beginning. What exactly is depression?

Depression is quite common, right? Do you think it’s increasing, or are people just becoming more open about it?

Could you share with us your journey down to rock bottom — that proverbial point where it is darkest before dawn?

What’s it like to be trapped in such a deep depression?

Now for the comeback story! First off, what triggered the turning point in your battle with depression?

That second hospitalization was four years ago. How has life changed since then?

I’m particularly interested in lifestyle solutions for controlling depression. What would you say is the relative importance of medication and lifestyle? Do they complement each other?

What permanent lifestyle changes did you implement? Which ones do you think make the biggest difference?

I imagine that depression is not exactly the best mental state for making these types of lifestyle changes. How did you get it done despite the challenges?

You mentioned the importance of nurturing relationships. Which relationships help the most with your depression?

How would you describe your current relationship with depression?

What do you do nowadays when that somber feeling comes over you?

Did the pandemic present a particularly tough challenge?

If you could go back and give your younger self advice about living with depression, what would it be? Would the advice look different at different stages of life?

What would you say to your younger self when she was at her lowest point?

Any final words of wisdom for readers who are struggling with depression?

Life on the border can be practical yet exciting, responsible yet fun, structured yet inspiring.

Defining Order and Chaos

Space: Organic Minimalism

Time: Routines, Blocks, ARW

Structured routines for accommodating chaos

Time blocking for controlling chaos

Asynchronous remote work (ARW) for unstructured collaboration

Growth: Super-Compounding and the Zorro Circle

Super-compounding supercharges the 8th wonder of the world.

The Zorro Circle keeps ordered growth on track.

Risk: Engaging Diversification

Final Thoughts

Willpower is to happiness what money is to wealth.

Willpower is a limited resource

It can be spent …

… or invested

Happiness is the gap between willpower supply and demand

Suffering happens when willpower demands exceed supply

The moral of the story: Maintain the gap

The (Research) Proposal

Uncovering the Root of the Problem

We all have a limited supply of willpower

Our modern world contains far too many willpower drains

We need to boost our willpower supply and decrease demand

Soul-killing work shrinks our willpower supply

Temporary willpower can be bought at a huge cost

Recommendation

Grow the gap

Willpower investment instead of spending

Proactively avoid situations requiring artificial willpower

The key takeaway

Our natural stress response is long due for an update.

Short-Term Responses

Movement

Talking or writing

Healthy pleasures

Breathe

Medium-Term Responses

Stop digging

Objectively unpack your stressor

Most Efficient Next Action (MENA)

Long-Term Responses

Proactive overwhelm prevention

A solid foundation

Big stress-reduction moves