"Use it Or Lose it" for a Strong & Healthy Body & Mind

I Am Sticking With It

You know why I have sticked with exercise without any significant pause for over a decade now?

— Because I made it easy for myself to do it.

I bought 4 kettlebells, 2 heavy, 2 light, and never pressured myself into training through a system.

Yes, you still need a system to progress. But let's be honest here. Life is not always progress. Sometimes you have narrow roads and you need to at least maintain the habit of doing the thing. It's not about progressing in performance, but at least keeping the habit of exercising.

I can speak for myself; I haven't been signed up in a gym for 2 years now. Still, I look fit.

And you know what happens when I go to the gym?

I notice the big mirrors, the big egos & the bright lights.

Almost resembling the atmosphere of a club?! Fitness studios nowadays are a place to be seen and to see people & to socialise.

But when I get there, it's go time. 45 Minutes of pure intensity. And when the pump hits, I realised how structurally strong I got through the years.

That's why I love Kettlebell training.

— no bullshit

… no mirrors,

no bright lights to gaze upon yourself in a muscular lighting

no other people (you can do it at home)

dynamic movements,

& a different leverage forced upon your body (because of the Kettlebell's shape).

Movements that force your core to be fully engaged.

Through this type of training, which is cardiovascular conditioning and high intensity weight training, I got fit.

But it's not focused on muscle growth.

I don't have big arms,

I do have a bigger core then in the past (which some would say is “unästhetic”),

And of course I want to look good; but the primary focus it to be powerful & have structural integrity.

So through the philosophy of DOING the primal movement patterns, I maintain my "I feel good and empowered" state.

That’s why I want to introduce you to the concept of “how to progressively overload positive stress & progressively deload negative stress for a strong body & mind”.

I know, it’s a lot.

To keep it short: think long term & use it or lose it!

Why We Can’t Maintain A Function

First, let’s differentiate here.

Stress isn't just black and white; there's good stress and bad stress. Good stress, or eustress, is what you feel when you're excited.

Your heart might beat faster and you feel that rush. It happens during a tight game, an intense workout, good competition, a first date, any thrilling experience, or anything that will make you grow. It's the kind of stress that pushes you to do better, sharpens your focus, and actually improves your performance.

It comes and goes quickly, without leaving a negative impact.

Then, there's the bad stress, or distress.

This is the stress that drains you. It can make you anxious, muddle your thoughts, and hurt your ability to perform well. Bad stress can be acute, hitting hard and then easing off if you manage to relax soon after.

But if it sticks around, becoming chronic, it starts chipping away at your health. It's the root of many problems like headaches, sleep issues, weight gain, anxiety, and high blood pressure.

Bad/chronic stress is a result of several factors:

• dealing with loss
• dealing with judgement from other people
• health concerns
• work pressures
• financial struggles or worries
• ongoing issues in relationships
• having no boundaries in your personal life, being too involved into others life’s
• saviour complex, thinking you have to “help” everyone
• being dispersed in too many tasks/activities
• being easily distracted & lazy, which creates guilt & shame, which creates stress (vicious cycle)
• environmental toxins (read: Environmental Toxins are Everywhere: No Need to Panic Though)
• bad habits, which also creates guilt & shame, which also creates stress

Both types of stress trigger your body to release adrenaline and cortisol, leading to physical signs like a racing heart or sweaty palms.

The problem of todays age:

There is the easy way out: to turn a blind eye on all of your problems; Ignorance — the blue pill

Choosing to sleep over waking up. That’s where the difficult situation with technology, drugs & pharmaceutical medicine arose. The Impulse to take pharmaceutical medicine is based on a “quick fix” attitude which avoids you from getting to the root of the problem, by searching for real answers regarding your health.

Let me get it straight — pharmaceutical drugs are meant to treat something acutely. They are immensely helpful in creating a timeframe to survive!

They can give you an opportunity to breath for a moment, dealing with the problems you have.

But you get addicted to them, because they are drugs. Of course, that’s in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry, since they earn money from it.

But learn to see them as they biochemically engineered and meant to be.

A short term solution for you to create a window of opportunity to fix the root problem.

“When we blather about trivial things, we ourselves become trivial, for our attention gets taken up with trivialities. You become what you give your attention to.” — Epictetus, The Art of Living

The same with technology & entertainment.

You can not focus anymore because we are constantly bombarded with distractions.

Modern day enslavement is mental enslavement. We are losing our sovereignty not because we are physically chained unto a physical place, but because our attention is so dispersed that we can not focus anymore. Your real sovereignty and freedom lies in the ability to focus your attention to one task at a time. This will make you free because you get to decide what you are actually doing.

This topic requires a dedicated whole loveletter and we will manifest this in the future.

For a good reference I can recommend reading “The Art Of Focus” by Dan Koe, a book that helped me grasp the importance of establishing lasersharp focus for the sake of spiritual enlightenment and complete freedom. There is no freedom without having the power and choice to say no to distractions.

“Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.”

— Nido Qubein

Introducing Lifestyle Design

Lifestyle design is about making it comfortable (decreasing negative stress) for yourself, so you can bear more uncomfortability (increasing positive stress).

— what do I mean by that?

Lifestyle design is designing your lifestyle. Good design is based on a good user experience.

The product that is created by the designer should be easily usable, create little to no frustrations and of course should deliver value (short term or long term gratification).

If we translate that to lifestyle design, we aim to create a routine that is:

• 1st easy to use,
• 2nd smooth in application
• and 3rd gives us either short term pleasure or long term gratification. The latter is the better, but of course we can enjoy the fruits of life sometimes.

That is applicable through the art of first habit forming & then habit stacking. These are concepts described in the famous book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.

Habit forming is said, by James, to be more effective to reach your goals in life than to be focused on the goal itself. His approach is for a paradigm shift from goal focus to habit focus.

That creates the actual repetitive doing of the actual thing in order to DO the THING.

Your outcome orientation changes to habit forming,

which will enevitably lead to you reaching that goal.

One thing I learned until now is that you can not cheat your way through life. If you have certain aims in life, you can not avoid putting the pure amount of hours into it, in order to master it (Robert Greene talks about 10.000 hours for aquiring mastery in his book “Mastery”).

— There is no cheat code.

Put the hours in & ask yourself how to design it in a way that creates ease in your life. For me, it is 30 minutes of writing every day.

Not less, not more. Every day; 30 minutes:

• When I feel like writing and I want to write more, I still stop at 30 minutes.
• When I do not feel like it, I still do it because it is only half an hour.

The other concept is habit stacking. That is the intelligence to stack habits on top of eachother.

Example: If you have to take supplements everyday, combine it with brushing your teeth. Your subconscious will combine these tasks as a mental picture and soon you will be able to execute that habit of taking supplements more easily.

In german, we call that “Eselsbrücken”. It means donkey bridges. It makes it easier to know something within the means of language and words, and in regards to habit stacking, we can call it “habit bridges”. :-)

Muscle, Immunity & Resilience; Use it Or lose it!

I find it funny how we human think that we can bypass biology.

Sitting all day on a desk, not being exposed to the natural elements; but being exposed by all kinds of distractions: Toxins and bad habits like sitting all day.

You think we still can maintain basic hormonal, structural strength and immunity levels?

Actually, no.

As an example, through previously portrayed lifestyle, testosterone levels in male are rapidly dropping.

To avoid that, we create responses to the body to produce testosterone by giving a strong signal.

That could be:

• an intense workout
• a cold shower
• exposure to sunlight
• respecting your circadian rythm dummy! (go to sleep on time, avoid artificial lights)

— So a challenge is necessary. Push yourself. That is positive stress.

And all that is hard to keep in check because we still we are naturally drawn to be in the “lukewarm”, because it signals safety.

But too much safety is not healthy.

In a living system you best maintaining a function by performing that function

— K boges

• So in order to maintain a muscle, you use it against resistance.
• In order to maintain proper immune function, you expose yourself to the elements
• And grow more resilient over the years, you intentionally create challenges in your life

And how does that now relate to the counterforce of getting rid of stress?

— Well, we talked about positive and negative stress, right?

So the concept that I am introducing here is simultaniously:

• progressively overloading positive stress &
• progressively deloading negative stress

Which ultimately, at some point in your life, will create an immense equilibrium and is sure to be the path towards a strong & healthy life.

Your Habits Create Your Character

Forging your habits will create character; its not about what you do, but who you are becoming; it's about crafting the very fabric of our character.

Like the steady hand of a sculptor shaping clay, your daily routines and habits carve out the contours of your character, revealing the masterpiece within.

It's in the quiet dedication to your practices, they be as simple as kettlebell swings, that we find our true selves emerging. The simple things done every day form innermost substance of who we are. Thinking is not enough. Doing is not enough. Doing it often enough is the way. Doing it way more than other people is the way to your fullest potential.

DO the THING

So, as we close this chapter, let's commit to the art of habit formation not just as a means to an end but as a way of being.

You can dream about being the person that you want to be all day — if you don’t actually, repetitively do what will form the person that you want to become, you are just fooling yourself.

Put the hours in — with or without motivation.

kiss kiss,

Tarkan