If you're not changing it, you're choosing it. This is one of my favorite quotes. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. There are moments when it feels easier to stay where I am, to shrug things off, or just go along with what’s happening. But then I notice that staying still is, in itself, a choice. It makes me pause and ask myself - am I really okay with this? Or do I need to try something different, even if it’s just a small step? It’s not about beating myself up, it’s about quietly noticing where I have power and how I want to use it.

thoughts? A robotic enhancement shoe from Nike. https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-project-amplify-official-images 

At its core, Project Amplify is about seamlessly adding a little more power to your stride. The fun comes from realizing you can do more than you thought you could — whatever ‘more’ means to you.”

Akin to how electric bikes have made it easier to ride farther and more frequently, revolutionizing urban commuting, Nike is developing Project Amplify to make slower running, jogging and walking easier and more fun, with a focus on athletes running between a 10- and 12-minute mile pace.  

• On the one hand I definitely want to try this; I'm an early adopter and love weird cool stuff even if i dont yet know what its for
• On the other hand I'm kinda like, "wait, why?" just because we can do something doesnt mean we should, and "more" for the sake of itself obviously always goes super well, right :)
• What do y'all think?

this reminds me again that the weirdness of the future is barely getting started

What helps you wake up? Question, friends. I have been struggling with some intense tiredness in the mornings. It's like my body has become a teenager and thinks I should sleep until noon each day - but mornings are my favorite time!

Have you ever dealt with morning grogginess? What caused it? What do you do to get yourself going? 

Why I keep forgetting that exercise feels amazing. This could just as easily live in my journal, but in my favorite version of reality a lot of things get added in the comments, and this lives as a resource for everyone and for me the next time I forget that exercise feels amazing.

The culture I was aware of as a kid: 

• Athletes go to gyms. The only other people that go to gyms are vain people, and they only go because they care about having an impressive appearance.
• Exercise is hard and painful. If it's not kicking you're ass, you're lazy.
• I loved playing soccer all through childhood. When I started Junior High I tried out for the soccer team. I was the best player at tryouts- scored the most goals, saved the most goals, had the most steals. But I didn't make the team because I wasn't competitive enough. On the last day of tryouts I gave goals to girls who seemed like their self-esteem was getting battered by their failure to get a goal.

My initial influences in adulthood:

• In undergrad I was required to take dance class all 4 years. The dance teacher's job was to prepare us for Broadway dance auditions, which are usually "cattle calls" of hundreds of people auditioning for one spot. So you had to be the best, the sharpest, the fastest to learn the choreography, the fastest to get into position. These classes were the first time in my life I learned what "getting into shape" meant. He spent the entire first semester of freshman year teaching us what the names of our muscles were by spending an entire 90-minute session going ham on that muscle. Freshmen voice majors at Carnegie Mellon limped around campus and yelped trying to pick up their backpacks. I wasn't taught about warm ups, cool downs, or how to navigate muscle soreness. I was expected to be capable of at least two versions of the splits by the end of my first semester of college, so I spent hours doing homework in very uncomfortable body positions.
• In my thirties I worked with personal trainers three times. I didn't know this at the time, but I've since learned from a friend who is a health coach that most people come to a personal training session and give about 40% effort, so most trainers get in the habit of pushing and pushing them to harder things in the hopes the client gets to 75 or 80%. My trainers and I didn't know that because of my dance training I was showing up giving 110%. So they pushed me the way they pushed all of their clients. And I did everything in my power to be obedient to what they were telling me to do. It took me 8 years to realize that what I had been calling "pushing my edge" had actually been the cusp of a panic attack because my heart rate was way too high and I was pushing strength training to the point of risking injury.

New updates to my experiences and beliefs about exercise:

• Thanks largely to my health coach friend, a wise ex-boyfriend, and resources from Dr. Stacey Sims, I finally was able to believe them that not only doesn't exercise have to be painful, the cortisol, muscle soreness, etc. caused from pushing create more problems than the workouts solve. And when exercise sucks it's wildly de-motivating and unsustainable.
• I've learned through countless failed attempts and Dr. Sims that any workout plan that doesn't take my menstrual cycle into account is doomed from the start. I learned that in the days before my bleed my body takes all of the tissue-rebuilding ingredients away from things like muscle repair and diverts it all to building the uterine lining. So strength training during this time results in a week of relentless pain and soreness. I've learned that during my follicular phase I'm a literal superhero. Live it up while I can, but for god's sake do not set that as my new standard to build on top of because the cycle is going to loop back again. I've learned that women have about 30% the glycogen stores in their muscles as men, so keto and fasted workouts are a distaster. I literally need to have eaten carbs before workouts to have any legitamite fuel to work with.
• I've had fits and starts of working out, but then I'd start listening to some damn exercise podcast, fall into my old mindset of "pushing for gains," and the habit would collapse.

New intentional mindsets:

I'm a week into returning to exercise, and so far everything about it is wildly different than before. I consistently feel the tug back toward my old mindsets, but I'm practicing reminding myself of these things over and over and over.

• Do classes, but relinquish obedience. The classes are great for me because a very knowledgable person has crafted something great without my having to expend any mental energy at all. But the key is that I stay connected with my body and be always willing to disobey the instructor in favor of what my body needs.
• Start slow and easy. What I want most if for exercise to become a favorite part of my lifestyle for the rest of my life. I've been mostly going to "Restorative" classes that are passive yoga stretches in a structure designed to regulate the nervous system. Nothing's hard, nothing hurts, and I leave feeling wonderful. This is SO effective at making me look forward to getting in the car and driving to the gym the next day.
• Pride can be a great energy source. It does seem to be part of my true nature that I would like other people in the class to be impressed with me. I want to be impressed with me. I'm intentionally relinquishing the lifelong energy source of "I want to get thin and hot" and replacing it with "I wanna leave here feeling impressed with myself."
• Two mindsets I picked up from Arun, "I like being a regular" and "third place," had me choose Austin Bouldering Project as my gym. It's just fucking cool, and very attractive people are everywhere. I like the thought of becoming a regular there. A lot. People knowing my name, new friendships, maybe even finding a romantic partner who likes going to the same gym together. And third place is based on home being the first place and work being the second place. I love the midset of choosing ABP as my third place. I bring my laptop and co-work upstairs after working out. I chill in the sauna.

These are all such different mindset orientations than I've ever had before, and I hope writing this helps me remember that when I do it wisely from the right mindsets, exercise and going to the gym feels friggin amazing.

What well-being practices do you do? Will you share them? Maybe you want to teach them to us, or give us the best tips, or pose some questions?

Are there any that are so habitual you don't even notice them as "practices" anymore? Are there any that you think are dubious for others, but nevertheless have had a positive impact on your life?

eg: One of mine I noticed at Relateful Camp is Lucid Dreaming… although I don’t know how much lucid dreaming contributes to my well-being, the way I engaged it warmed me up for a continuous presence throughout the day.

How Spider-Man Shows Us the Beautiful Power of Beginner's Mind. If you’re like most people, when a shocking thing happens you instantly go into anger, fight, or some other emotional reaction. Just like Doctor Strange did in the 2016 Marvel movie.

Doctor Strange was a world-class surgeon who, because of his own hubris, had a terrible car crash that crushed his hands. After every known cure in the Modern world failed, in his desperation he found a mystical sanctuary in Nepal led by a woman called The Ancient One. Even though he had come begging for help, he was closed-minded and argumentative toward her metaphysical claims, demanding that, "there's no such thing as spirit." So she shoved his spirit out of his body. He paniced and accused her of drugging him. She assured him she hadn't, then shot him through the vast unknown while he screamed and said, "This isn't real, this isn't real." His ability to accept (much less embrace) his circumstances was slow and incredibly painful at every turn.

Which made it wildly impressive when we saw Spider-Man's response to his spirit being shoved out of his body in the 2021 movie Spider-Man: No Way Home. Initially, he was confused, but even though he wasn't inhabiting his body, it was still able to move to support his goals without him intentionally doing so- implying his incredible intuition (this is where the term spidey-sense comes from). Then he reflected on his spirit experience and said, "This feels amazing," which modeled a stunningly open-minded reception of what was happening to him. Unlike any person we know of before or since, he was then able to re-inhabit his body. In perhaps my favorite display of healthy boundaries I've ever seen, he then said, "That may be one of the coolest things that's ever happened to me, but don't ever do that again."

This scene is a perfect example of the beautiful power of beginner's mind, and in my opinion the most under-appreciated moment in all of Marvel's movies and shows. Spider-Man's natural embrace of the unknown, his fascinated approach to a shockingly unexpected experience, gave him instant access to a vast amount of choices and abilities.

Some years ago I did LSD for the first time (in a safe environment with a close trusted friend.) My relationship with psychedelics is mind-expansion. I take them very rarely, and when I do, I take what’s sometimes called a “god dose” because it’s the dose at which you have the opportunity to encounter things that can only be explained with the ineffable concept of god. So, the first time I did LSD I took a triple dose. The experience showed me that what we call “reality” is an arbitrary tiny sliver of actuality- and it taught me that this sliver was chosen because it’s where we can meet each other.

The ability to reliably encounter each other is worth more than the rest of actuality.

A few hours after the LSD wore off, I discovered a problematic side-effect of the eye-opening experience: my ability to discern what was and was not part of our reality had become way too soft and untrustworthy. Is that really a car bumper? Do I really need to press on the brake pedal? I knew that ability to function in this reality requires proper discernment of what reality is, and that I needed help with that.

So I messaged a friend who was on a Buddhist monk path, told him I’d lost my ability to reliably discern reality, asked if he had any recommendations, and went to sleep. When I woke up, he’d sent me this dharma talk, this Shinzen Young video, and Alan Watts "Veil that Conceals Reality." I started listening. As far as I recall, in each talk there was a moment where the teacher said, “It’s ok if you don’t understand this next part,” and each time the next part was an ah-ha moment for me. After listening to those I felt totally back to normal. Plus extreme gratitude for being back to normal.

I didn’t realize till later that I’d had a massive upgrade in my operating system. My new default setting was beginner's mind.

A few weeks later, I boarded a plane to fly to a connecting flight to my hometown for Thanksgiving. After a long wait, the pilot announced that the pre-flight checks had discovered a problem, the flight was canceled, and we’d all need to de-plane. Unlike ever before in my life, my automatic response to the news was the thought, “Oh! Now I’m on an adventure! I have no idea what’s going to happen next!” It was joyous. Enlivening. And then I realized everyone else on the plane was groaning, cussing, and making phone calls, and that it was surprising that I wasn’t doing the same.

I walked off the plane like a kid in line to meet Santa Claus. I followed the crowd to get in line for the service desk to get re-assigned to a new flight. I was the only person who wasn’t talking on a phone. An airline representative came over to all of us and said “If you call this number, you’ll be helped much faster than at the service desk.” I was the only person who heard him. I called the number, a kind person picked up instantly, found a direct flight to my destination that was 3 gates away and had just started boarding, and booked my spot on the flight. Leaving the line, I turned back and said loudly, “Hey everyone, call this number, it really works great!” But nobody noticed me. They were still complaining on their phones. I was in the air before most of them got to the front of the line, and I got to my hometown 6 hours earlier than I would have on my original flight.

Opportunities arrive all the time. Many of them look like problems or setbacks. But if we encounter them with beginner’s mind, like Spider-Man, we can see them for the openings they are and naturally take avenues toward beauty.

Why I keep forgetting that exercise feels amazing. This could just as easily live in my journal, but in my favorite version of reality a lot of things get added in the comments, and this lives as a resource for everyone and for me the next time I forget that exercise feels amazing.

The culture I was aware of as a kid: 

• Athletes go to gyms. The only other people that go to gyms are vain people, and they only go because they care about having an impressive appearance.
• Exercise is hard and painful. If it's not kicking you're ass, you're lazy.
• I loved playing soccer all through childhood. When I started Junior High I tried out for the soccer team. I was the best player at tryouts- scored the most goals, saved the most goals, had the most steals. But I didn't make the team because I wasn't competitive enough. On the last day of tryouts I gave goals to girls who seemed like their self-esteem was getting battered by their failure to get a goal.

My initial influences in adulthood:

• In undergrad I was required to take dance class all 4 years. The dance teacher's job was to prepare us for Broadway dance auditions, which are usually "cattle calls" of hundreds of people auditioning for one spot. So you had to be the best, the sharpest, the fastest to learn the choreography, the fastest to get into position. These classes were the first time in my life I learned what "getting into shape" meant. He spent the entire first semester of freshman year teaching us what the names of our muscles were by spending an entire 90-minute session going ham on that muscle. Freshmen voice majors at Carnegie Mellon limped around campus and yelped trying to pick up their backpacks. I wasn't taught about warm ups, cool downs, or how to navigate muscle soreness. I was expected to be capable of at least two versions of the splits by the end of my first semester of college, so I spent hours doing homework in very uncomfortable body positions.
• In my thirties I worked with personal trainers three times. I didn't know this at the time, but I've since learned from a friend who is a health coach that most people come to a personal training session and give about 40% effort, so most trainers get in the habit of pushing and pushing them to harder things in the hopes the client gets to 75 or 80%. My trainers and I didn't know that because of my dance training I was showing up giving 110%. So they pushed me the way they pushed all of their clients. And I did everything in my power to be obedient to what they were telling me to do. It took me 8 years to realize that what I had been calling "pushing my edge" had actually been the cusp of a panic attack because my heart rate was way too high and I was pushing strength training to the point of risking injury.

New updates to my experiences and beliefs about exercise:

• Thanks largely to my health coach friend, a wise ex-boyfriend, and resources from Dr. Stacey Sims, I finally was able to believe them that not only doesn't exercise have to be painful, the cortisol, muscle soreness, etc. caused from pushing create more problems than the workouts solve. And when exercise sucks it's wildly de-motivating and unsustainable.
• I've learned through countless failed attempts and Dr. Sims that any workout plan that doesn't take my menstrual cycle into account is doomed from the start. I learned that in the days before my bleed my body takes all of the tissue-rebuilding ingredients away from things like muscle repair and diverts it all to building the uterine lining. So strength training during this time results in a week of relentless pain and soreness. I've learned that during my follicular phase I'm a literal superhero. Live it up while I can, but for god's sake do not set that as my new standard to build on top of because the cycle is going to loop back again. I've learned that women have about 30% the glycogen stores in their muscles as men, so keto and fasted workouts are a distaster. I literally need to have eaten carbs before workouts to have any legitamite fuel to work with.
• I've had fits and starts of working out, but then I'd start listening to some damn exercise podcast, fall into my old mindset of "pushing for gains," and the habit would collapse.

New intentional mindsets:

I'm a week into returning to exercise, and so far everything about it is wildly different than before. I consistently feel the tug back toward my old mindsets, but I'm practicing reminding myself of these things over and over and over.

• Do classes, but relinquish obedience. The classes are great for me because a very knowledgable person has crafted something great without my having to expend any mental energy at all. But the key is that I stay connected with my body and be always willing to disobey the instructor in favor of what my body needs.
• Start slow and easy. What I want most if for exercise to become a favorite part of my lifestyle for the rest of my life. I've been mostly going to "Restorative" classes that are passive yoga stretches in a structure designed to regulate the nervous system. Nothing's hard, nothing hurts, and I leave feeling wonderful. This is SO effective at making me look forward to getting in the car and driving to the gym the next day.
• Pride can be a great energy source. It does seem to be part of my true nature that I would like other people in the class to be impressed with me. I want to be impressed with me. I'm intentionally relinquishing the lifelong energy source of "I want to get thin and hot" and replacing it with "I wanna leave here feeling impressed with myself."
• Two mindsets I picked up from Arun, "I like being a regular" and "third place," had me choose Austin Bouldering Project as my gym. It's just fucking cool, and very attractive people are everywhere. I like the thought of becoming a regular there. A lot. People knowing my name, new friendships, maybe even finding a romantic partner who likes going to the same gym together. And third place is based on home being the first place and work being the second place. I love the midset of choosing ABP as my third place. I bring my laptop and co-work upstairs after working out. I chill in the sauna.

These are all such different mindset orientations than I've ever had before, and I hope writing this helps me remember that when I do it wisely from the right mindsets, exercise and going to the gym feels friggin amazing.