Since moving my medical practice to The Perlman Clinic 3 months ago, I wish I could say I’ve been musing in my spare time, about what’s important. That would be inaccurate because there hasn’t been any spare time; the first several weeks have been all about change, racing, and trying to stagger to the car before 8 PM.
So when there HAS been time, I’ve tried identifying survival central.
“How do I re-assert the important stuff?” Because important things like staying healthy need consistency over time, oh exemplar of health and fitness.
BJJ was maintained, though it took a few iterations of rescheduling.
Weight stuck at 220 pounds, though — my max weight from my wife’s first pregnancy.
Definitely paused on the writing and posting.
Is there an inviolate kernel that always protects the mission-critical stuff, no matter what?
Given my ninja with hair on fire state of mind, apparently not.
But in times like these, it’s instructive to revisit the idea.
What if you lost everything and had to start over from scratch?
I think that was the third Ironman movie premise. Tony Stark gets blasted away from Stark Tower, and has to lick his wounds and find his way back from a small town, with the help of a kid.
Is there a core of something hyper-compressed and durable, that you always carry with you (and can never be taken from you or lost), that you could use to rebuild your life in the event of an unforeseen catastrophe?
In the realm of science fiction, this is some kind of amazing alien technology that packs a sentient AI and a matter synthesizer into a corn kernel. Doomsday hits, and the AI unfolds, assesses the situation, protects the protagonist, then proceeds to build whatever is necessary — a connection to the Internet, weapons, a factory — from dirt and sunlight. At exponential speeds.
In a week, Ironman is back on his feet. In a month, he’s back in his niche. In 3 months, he and the other Avengers are protecting the galaxy.
If fantasy and fairy tales is more your thing, it’s a very small lamp with a very powerful djinn inside.
What’s a fun thought experiment?
Starting your business over from scratch? Maybe not in the same field, but getting on your feet within 30 days, what would you do?
Got a berth on the next mission to Mars, but you’ve got to lose 40 pounds in the next 3 months, how would you do it?
You’ve learned a thing or two from your time in the wastelands, there are a handful of items you never leave home without, “just in case.” What makes it into your everyday carry pouch?
Besides an indomitable will, what would you have or do, to build everything you’d need to rebuild your life?
To build, you must protect
Part of that kernel should be “How to stave off piranhas.”
Piranha attacks — the bites that life takes takes out of you from every angle — are the defining feature of modern life.
Traffic headaches, contractors who overpromise, mounting debts, family chatting you up for money, insurers who don’t insure, and a burrito and a gallon of gas cost how much, now?
External or internal drains upon your energy until there’s nothing left. (Spoiler alert: regardless of circumstance, the final drain is always internal.)
Without an inoculation cycle that kicks in early in the unfolding of the kernel, any exponential growth will get stymied.
In fact, if automating iterative improvements is the hallmark of an exponential engine, automating piranha protection at every step needs to be one of the earliest investments.
Why “Just say No to piranhas” doesn’t work
I’m pretty sure it has something to do with using the mind to quiet the mind. Telling your mind to shut up, calm down, and don’t take things personally works about as well as Whatever you do, DON’T think about pink elephants!
And even if you could come up with a way to deflect the piranhas, your energy reserves are already spoken for. You’re nearly tapped out, which is why you’re trying to create a new strategy.
Getting rid of your energy vampires may demand an infusion of external energy.
A family member has decided he’s long overdue to lose major weight, at least 30 pounds. He’s been successful before by just deciding to go keto and intermittent fasting, and doing it. For him, it’s a matter of willpower: taking his considerable will and deciding to redirect it away from work, where he’s a monster, to his eating and exercise habits, which he has been neglecting. Until now (we shall see).
Me, I need to lose almost the same amount: 30 pounds would get me back to my high school senior weight, and would almost certainly improve my health metrics. But I’m constructed differently; I don’t have an abundance of will to direct at a target like the Death Star planet-killing laser. I know what to do and have tried for years to make it so, but ultimately, I decided to start tirzepatide. One month in and I’m a third of the way to target.
Your mileage may vary. Your choices, your struggles, are uniquely your own. Some people are built to decide and GO BABY GO in a startling, almost scary way, and I think that’s a superpower we can all develop and that’s another post for another time.
But as a doctor, I’m very familiar with the whole, “There’s something wrong with me if I can’t do XYZ on my own” mindset. It’s a very common way of thinking, particularly in America, and it delays people for years, decades, even, from getting healthier, stronger, and happier. (For some reason, many of my international patients come to the exam room ready to start the medication or see the specialist, etc.)
There is absolutely a cost to not achieving XYZ at all, because you insist on trying on your own when that’s not working. Sometimes that cost is death, and that’s not a figure of speech.
If you live long enough, you will eventually arrive at a point where results matter more than your pride. (The converse is also true, though it’s less a matter of maturity: at any age, you can realize that certain intangibles are more important than results and money.) One way is not necessarily better than the other, achieving the goal via your will vs. via an external aid.
In certain situations, the goal is so vital, it becomes very secondary how you achieve it.
One more thing
You can’t avoid all the cuts. Even if you could — and you cannot, it’s thermodynamically impossible — you wouldn’t want to. In my opinion.
You want to avoid being sucked into apathy by all manner of energy vampires. But swimming in the proverbial Amazon, you’re gonna get bit; that’s the price of being in the water.
In martial arts terms, to get decently adept at self-defense, you’re going to have to spar, and sparring means you’ll take some hits.
You could construct a plexiglass shark tank for the river, or pay sparring partners who always pull their punches. But you wouldn’t really be in the Amazon, or learning meaningful fighting skills.
There’s a cost to having all your time and energy eaten up and not achieving your goals. It’s in your face and frustrating as hell, seeing the years go by without making progress.
But there’s also a cost, more insidious, to having an artificially curated life either handed to you or chosen by you. It’s kinda cool, and you start thinking this is the norm, how it should be, how it is, and how it will be forever.
People get bent, living out of touch.
Just saying.
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