August21: Longetivity Notes

Lifestyle Change: Automacity - Brain Muscle

I’ve run a few lifestyle experiments over the last 3-4 months:

1. Switched from a daily 5 km run to a weekend 30 km run (finished my 16th run today)

2. Started a daily 1 hour meditation routine (except for the day I have my weekly long run)

3. Introduced 24 hour fasting (have done this 3-4 times. Not yet on a fixed schedule but more “on-demand”, so far)

Each of these journeys has been deeply intriguing and immensely rewarding by themselves. But a sudden realization struck me today. It was the uncanny similarity and interconnectedness of these seemingly disparate experiences. The point where they converge, I realised, is a common underlying theme they all reinforce: the understanding that all of the constraints we shackle ourselves with are there because we, quite literally, “thought” them to be as such.

Allow me to elaborate.

Our concepts of “good” or “not good” and of wanting more or less of certain things and feelings essentially originate from our thoughts. Over time, we develop an “operating toolkit” of standard responses towards those things and feelings. Positive responses for what we categorise as “good” and negative responses for the “not good”. These canned (or pre-packaged) responses bring a sense of “automaticity” in our lives and further reinforce the binary concepts of “good” and “not good”. I realised this applies to the concepts of “pain” I feel when running long distance or the “itch” I feel when sitting still while meditating or the “hunger” I feel when fasting.

As I have observed myself on these journeys that were far removed from our regular lives, I’ve often found myself in situations where the canned responses didn’t get invoked anymore. The inadequacy of the canned responses I had accumulated over the years, forces a kind of “first principles” approach to making sense of these experiences. And that first principles approach or an awakened sense of awareness not only sheds new light on the canned responses of the past but also fundamentally call into question the utility of the “cans” in the first place. It forces me to constantly snap out of the automated habit and thought patterns and interpret everything afresh. It feels like a muscle building exercise for the mind in letting go of our familiar thoughts and feelings that we cling on to unconsciously.

And that, I feel, is the point where all of these experiences converged. At the very core of it, I realised they’re all essentially journeys of mindfulness. Of constantly un-conditioning your mind, detaching from thoughts & feelings and allowing for a state of constant awareness to take over. The amazing part is that those are totally transferable skills to the much broader canvas of our personal and professional lives.