The sheer amount of information available to anyone nowadays is appalling.
Your primitive brain, equipped well for the trials of survival in nature, is at a disadvantage.
It cannot cope with the amount of stimulus. It doesn’t know how to respond. Your mind, the catalyst of your conscious self, can no longer keep up with the demand.
As a result, our distractions become the drivers of our lives.
Instead you must refocus. You must recommit to the principled idea of intense discipline. You must force yourself to behave in a way that will get you from where you are to where you want to be.
Behaviors are action and action is king.
Discipline is Freedom. – Jocko Willink
PHYSICALITY
♦ Letter on Corpulence by William Banting. In 1865, writing about what he called the parasite of obesity, Banting discovered the efficacy of a low carb diet. Struggling to lose weight and using many of the same techniques prescribed today, Banting failed over and over again. Even after adhering to a vigours daily rowing routine, he found his hunger so immense that he was advised to omit the workout altogether. The sage advice came from the same doctor that recommended the morning rowing workout to begin with. Banting persisted until he received advice to stop eating carbohydrates, then without much effort, he would go on to lose close to 50 lbs. I wrote a follow up post about his experience here.
♦ The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney. Although it seems we have moved past the dogma of ‘carbohydrates are good and dietary fats are bad,’ the necessity to be hyper vigilant about carbohydrate consumption still exists. As a macronutrient, carbohydrates contain the most room for error, cause the most hormonal responses from the body, and will eventually lead to obesity and disease if left unchecked. When someone in a position of influence tells you its okay to consume carbs, they are making the assumption you are eating a sensible amount in a controlled way. Furthermore, many people in the modern world are what Drs. Volek and Phinney describe as carbohydrate intolerant, meaning their bodies are no longer sensitive to the effects of carbs and insulin, which becomes the breeding ground for metabolic syndrome. A swing in societal dietary practices, such as the keto diet, have arisen to somewhat combat these effects, but what really matters is continuous monitoring of one’s carbohydrate intake, progressing to a state of intuitiveness, which takes years of deliberate effort.
Read More: Insights from 30 Years of Low Carbohydrate Clinical Practice
MOTIVATION
♦ The Trident: The Forging and Reforging of a Navy SEAL Leader by Jason Redman. An accomplished Navy SEAL, Redman’s story is not full of great success. It’s a story about a lapse in leadership that led him to attend the Army’s Ranger School and a sign posted on his door after suffering a devastating injury when pursuing a key al Qaeda in Iraq. Redman’s story is about redemption and what it takes to succeed after excruciating failure. I wrote a post that includes the sign on his hospital door that garnered national attention here.
♦ Success Habits by Napoleon Hill: This book is actually a series of lectures the legendary self-help author delivered in 1952 to the small town of Paris, Missouri. Within these lectures contains Hill’s core ideas of success, developed after 40 years of research and the publication of some of the most profound names in the genre. Success is something that can be duplicated, if only you are willing to practice the necessary behaviors long enough. My post on the Law of Cosmic Habit Force is here, what Hill called the most important law of success.
Onward,
Chief
Leave a Reply