Category: mindfulness

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Do we change?

on February 11, 2019

I recently listened to a podcast with Joe Rogan and Sam Harris – they talk a lot about redemption and change. One of the questions is with regards to Liam Neeson and his recent confession about how he once stood outside a bar waiting to kill a black man – any black man for the rape of his friend. A completely unnecessary confession from a man that has a lot to lose. Without actually reading the confession or hearing the dialogue for myself, just from the quoted aspects of that interview with Liam Neeson it was obvious that the man thought it was abhorrent how he felt at that time. Obviously, I don’t think anybody actually read his interview and thought “Liam Neeson is a racist and needs to be banned from the world..” If there is somebody who thinks that, they probably have the intellect of a 10-year-old.

But Joe Rogan and Sam Harris spent a lot of time discussing the “outrage culture” that exists today in the media. Which I agree there is a ridiculous amount of “outrage” being spewed all over the place. We see it constantly on the internet – the main reason for the outrage culture, in my opinion, and its effects on modern journalism is because it creates clicks. Journalism today is more about creating headlines and getting clicks than it is about an actual story. It’s not unusual to click on an article only to realize that the content of that article is completely different from the clickbait title.

A lot of discussions and mental space is given to the likes of Twitter and Facebook – and my own idea is that we give too much weight to youtube and twitter comments. Are twitter comments a good gauge in how outraged somebody really is? Most of the time I think of twitter and youtube comments to be an exercise in verbal diarrhea. Yet entire news articles are written, complete with perceived opinion polls, based purely on how the Twitterverse reacts to the news. On top of this, any crowd, digital or not, are going to sink to the lowest common denominator – in other words, the crowd will always sink to the level of a festering pile of shit if given enough time and big enough platform.

I also get the impression that Sam Harris and Joe Rogan give too much weight to this. Maybe I am wrong, which I probably am, but I think people use social media as an outlet to spew their shit lives in. I don’t think somebody read that article with Liam Neeson and thinks “Liam is a racist and he needs to be removed from public life” rather what is really happening is this; “fuck my life sucks, school is too expensive, I have a shit job, my future reaks, my tax bill is too high.. so I’m just going to vomit this comment here and let somebody else experience my own shit life for an instant and become somebody else, somebody important”

Still the same person?

Now back to the title of this article: Do we change? There seems to be a movement on, again, social media about destroying peoples lives for shit they did 20 years ago, or posted on twitter 10 years ago. At what point do we just admit that the people digging up old skeletons and trying to make it an issue, are in essence, rotten and at the least, suspect with a very clear objective. I’m not talking about Bill Cosby skeletons, or R. Kelly style skeletons – those can never be forgotten.

I’m talking about the teenager who wrote something stupid on twitter 10 years ago and now as a young adult are running for Congress. Or being a film producer or any of the above. The stupid teenager now as an adult – yet still being judged by past fuck ups.

So am I the same person I was when I was 20? In some ways yes.. I considered myself an intellectual then as I do now. I wrote articles, even a few books that are on my hard drive still, I listened to a lot more music, my general politics have changed, but I still believe in the good of people. Looking through my own eyes I can barely see a difference, but when I take an outside looking in approach, I see a massive difference.

There is so little of the 20-year-old me left, the insecurities, the blind ideologies, the black and white view of issues and politics, my transgressions with women, drugs, and debauchery. I was a 20-year-old American house DJ living in Sweden. Of course I did stupid shit, an unending, relentless stream of bad ideas followed by more bad ideas. My life has changed so profoundly, my mind and mental state are years beyond the 20-year-old me.

I imagine I am not alone in this progression? I imagine most of us learn, grow and strive to become better people with each waking moment. At age 20 I thought I owned the world, and in my own little way, I did. But it didn’t make me happier, so with time, I vowed to change, to progress, to be thoughtful and thankful for the life I have. I dreamed of creating a better life and mind for myself. It’s something I strive for every day, to be better than the day I was before.

Jordan b. Peterson has a quote that I think fits good here:

“These kids want to change the world economic system, rebuild earth and create a new society. Yet they can’t even make their own beds. Start small, start with yourself and move up from there.”

Judging others

Yet, today there are literal movements to destroy people who did stupid shit when they were younger. My guess is that like most things, this movement is powered by people who wish not themselves be judged. I wouldn’t trust somebody who hasn’t done stupid shit in their lives and have grown up and moved on. Life is about experiences and if you haven’t done something incredibly stupid in your life, then you haven’t lived and you sure as hell can’t be a judge of others. Your fuck up’s simply haven’t come to pass yet, they will. And the truth about fucks up’s is that the older you get, the bigger your fuck-ups become. So fuck up when you’re young, because when you get older your fuck-ups affect a lot more people and tend to be a hell of a lot more expensive.

So do we judge negatively on Liam Neeson for the stupid shit he did at a younger age, or do we give a pat on the back for admitting his own stupidity and moving on? At what point do we accept an apology as sincere? And who are we to judge if an apology is sincere?

Start with yourself

In the end, the life we have is the life we have created for ourselves. The society we have is the society we have created. Do we really want to be a society built on outrage culture? Is banning speakers from universities a proper path forward? Virtue signaling, fake outrage, twitterrage, whatever.

Start with yourself, the next time you want to unleash a shitty comment on Twitter or vomit your ideas on Facebook, take a step back, breath and try imagining that the person on Twitter is real. The comment you are about to leave will be read by a real person. Interact with social media the way you would in real life. And remember that being angry or pissed off at somebody and carrying that around on your shoulders, is about the equivalent of drinking poison and waiting for that person to die.

blogLiving simplymindfulness

Uncopyright all my work

on November 4, 2017

Uncopyright

This entire blog, and all my ebooks, are now uncopyrighted (as of Nov 4 2017).

That means I’ve put them in the public domain, and released my copyright on all these works.

There is no need to email me for permission — use my content however you want! Email it, share it, reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, put in a bunch of swear words and attribute them to me. It’s OK.

Attribution is appreciated but not required.

I’d prefer people buy my ebooks, but if they want to share with friends, they have every right to do so.

Why I’m releasing copyright

I’m not a big fan of copyright laws, especially as they’re being applied by corporations, used to crack down on the little guys so they can continue their large profits.

Copyrights are often said to protect the artist, but in most cases the artist gets very little while the corporations make most of the money.

I think, in most cases, the protectionism that is touted by “anti-piracy” campaigns and lawsuits and lobbying actually hurts the artist. Limiting distribution to protect profits isn’t a good thing.

The lack of copyright, and blatant copying by other artists and even businesses, never hurt Leonardo da Vinci when it comes to images such as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, or the Vitruvian Man. It’s never hurt Shakespeare. I doubt that it’s ever really hurt any artist (although I might just be ignorant here).

And while I’m certainly not da Vinci or Shakespeare, copyright hasn’t helped me, and uncopyright probably won’t hurt me. If someone feels like sharing my content on their blog, or in any other form for that matter, that’s a good thing for me. If someone wanted to share my ebook with 100 friends, I don’t see how that hurts me. My work is being spread to many more people than I could do myself. That’s something to celebrate, as I see it.

And if someone wants to take my work and improve upon it, as artists have been doing for centuries, I think that’s a wonderful thing. If they can take my favorite posts and make something funny or inspiring or thought-provoking or even sad … I say more power to them. The creative community only benefits from derivations and inspirations.

This isn’t a new concept, of course, and I’m freely ripping ideas off here. Which is kinda the point.

Counter arguments

There are a number of objects that will likely be brought up to this idea, and here are a few of my responses:

1. Google rank will go down. My understanding is that Google penalizes pages that have exact duplicates on other sites, when it comes to PageRank. But in 4+ years of uncopyright, Zen habits has had no loss in PageRank. Anyway, SEO isn’t important to me.

2. You’ll lose ebook revenues. If people buy my ebook and then distribute it to 20 people, and each of those distributes it to 20 more, and those to 20 more … I’ve lost $76,000 in ebook revenues. Perhaps. That’s if you agree with the assumption that all those people would have bought the ebook if it hadn’t been freely distributed. I don’t buy that. In this example, thousands of people are reading my work (and learning about Zen Habits) who wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s good for any content creator.

3. Who knows what people will do with your work? Someone could take my work, turn it into a piece of crap, and put my name on it. They could translate it with all kinds of errors. They could … well, they could do just about anything. But that kind of thinking stems from a mind that wants to control content … while I am of the opinion that you can’t control it, and even if you can, it’s not a good thing. What if someone takes my work and turns it into something brilliant, and becomes the next James Joyce? Or more likely, what if they take the work and extend the concepts and make it even more useful, to even more people? Release control, and see what happens. People are wonderful, creative creatures. Let’s see what they can do.

4. What if someone publishes a book with all your content and makes a million dollars off it? I hope they at least give me credit. And my deepest desire is that they give some of that money to a good cause.

5. But … they’re stealing from you! You can’t steal what is given freely. I call this sharing, not piracy.

 

This post in fact is stolen from Leo over at Zen Habits – And why not? It’s a great post that I simply change to match my own needs with small changes.

mindfulnessRunningUncategorized

When doubt takes over

on May 8, 2017

Yesterday I ran 26 kilometers during a competition called the Lidingö Ultra. It was both a 26 and 50k competition. I was complete garbage during this race. 26km for the most part is not a problem for me, but 26km on a course that likened a roller coaster I found to be too much. for the first 16km life was good, I was truly enjoying the run and having a great time. Then somewhere along the line doubt started to creep in, maybe it was the burning in my thighs, or the pain in my back, or my empty stomach screaming louder than normal. In any case, the doubt crept in and the more doubt I had the bigger the challenge became.

This particular course has 20 steep inclines and deep declines to match along the 26k course. I don’t normally run these kinds of courses but I thought it would be a great challenge. It was definetly a challenge, and I times I just wanted to throw in the towel. In any case I crept along the finish line and can say I did it. Though along the way I started doubting me ever becoming a real runner, you know, the runner that runs 50k on this kind of trail in 3 hours? which by the way was the winners time.. 3hours 16 minutes on a 50k roller coaster. Insane!

When I got home I crashed on my sofa and just watched football and ate anything my body could take in.. I was spent. No matter how much I ate I was still hungry.. Crazy day. With that said, today I am looking forward to my first marathon in june. Yesterday I was hating the idea and was thinking about dropping out, not anymore. Today I feel good mentally and physically.

Once I was done with the race I started thinking about all the times I let self doubt get in my way. When I let self doubt become my provibial brakes to achieveing my goals. This was certainly not the first time I had self doubt, and won’t be the last. This just happened to be in my mind the biggest physical challenge I have ever had to overcome. We all have self doubt, it’s a perfectly natural occurance, it’s when we let the self doubt become the main voice in our heads, that’s when we fail. Yesterday I was feeling good, my body was feeling fantastic, until I let my mind take control of the situation.

Today when searching articles about self doubt I ran across Zen habits recent post on just this specific feeling.

“We doubt ourselves, feel inadequate, dislike our looks, criticize our failing harshly, feel uncertain about whether we’re worthy of praise or love.

The result is anxiety, procrastination, fear, and the inability to change our habits. I’ve seen so many people who are unable to stick to an exercise program or healthy diet changes because they don’t believe in themselves. At the heart of their failure to make positive changes is a deep feeling of unworthiness and inadequacy.

Every time we fail, we are harsh with ourselves, and we see it as just more evidence that we suck. Every time things are less-than-ideal, we blame ourselves (or, if we don’t want to be blamed, we blame other people).

What if, instead of beating ourselves up (or blaming others), we just accepted what happened and then took appropriate action? What if we took this as an opportunity to see our humanness, to love ourselves, to see ourselves as innately good?”

When backpacking and self doubt starts to creep in I can just focus on what an amazing experience being in the outdoors is. When the weather turns to shit I can just say the old swedish mantra to myself “no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing”. When writing, I am convinced that my writing is terrible, even this stops me from writing sometimes. But to get over that feeling I just start writing and eventually I find a flow in what I’m doing and everything else disappears.

With running though? Obviously I have some work to do… But my strategy going forward will be as follows:

  1. Medidate pre-run to clear my mind and relax my anxieties.
  2. Train better – I had been training for a relatively flat marathon the last couple of months. I don’t see and hill training will hurt my marathon running so I will start adding some hill work in my runs.
  3. When doubt starts to creep in mid-run find somthing other than pain to focus on. Yesterday I got so focused on how much my legs hurt from the roller coaster run that I couldn’t find any joy in the run itself.
  4. My focus point when all else fells should or could be a mantra of some kind. Scott Jureks mantra is “sometimes we just do things”… simple and fun.

 

 

mindfulnessminimalismminimalistPurposesimplicity

Finding purpose

on April 8, 2017

I’m going to write about something different here. Something that I hope will help you on your journey to become not only a minimalist, but even a better you. We all have ambitions, goals and a journey we wish for ourselves. But somewhere along the line that vision we had for ourselves gets replaced by a reality we find ourselves in. Within that reality we try to make peace, find contentment and in the end we try to forget what our dreams and ambitions of a silly youth were.

When searching for that contentment we fill the empty space that once was our dreams with stuff. Many of us consume in-order to convince ourselves, often unconsciously, that the life we live or chose is better. Perhaps the life we dreamt about was simply that, a dream. Maybe some of us have tried and failed in pursuing our dreams.

I have done a lot of things in my life, at times I’ve made a lot of money, and other times I have been scraping by. The worst time of my life emotionally was when I was done with my studies, I was tired of playing music for a living, and I wanted to create a good life for myself and my girlfriend at the time (now my wife). I didn’t want to be a DJ anymore as I had been doing it since I was 12. I was tired, and I simply didn’t want that life any longer. However I wasn’t exactly a model student, in fact I barely got my Bachelors and I didn’t want to put in the work for a masters. I knew more or less what I wanted to do, I wanted to be a portfolio manager. I had been trading in stock, bonds, futures and options since I was 16 and had a good track record over the years. I figured a bachelors and my track record would be enough to land any job. I was wrong.

My studies ended in 2007. My bachelors term paper was written on the ”real or perceived threat of the housing market crisis”. A crisis that hadn’t hit full swing yet and was still brewing. When my studies were finished nobody was hiring, and even if they could they wouldn’t. I must have sent out a hundred or more applications, I called, had several contacts in high places, but in the end nobody was hiring. I was desperate to get my foot in the door, but I hadn’t done my homework or put the effort into getting my masters degree or make myself attractive enough for potential employers. So I eventually started my own fund called ”shaw logic, LLC”. I had a few investors and we had a decent amount of seed money, the first year or so we even had decent results. But it’s not what I wanted, I didn’t want to own a fund, manage it and do the investing. I just wanted to be a manager and build strategies to beat the market.

In the end the pressure of having a fund was too much to do it by myself so I closed down and gave the money back to the investors and moved on. Accepting the fact that I would never work as a portfolio manager in the traditional sense of doing it, also realizing that there was a large possibility that I didn’t want to either. I eventually took a job as an accountant to make ends meet and was still going to interviews and so on for fund management positions. But the truth is that if there are 10 applicants applying for the same job, I was the one that was automatically filtered out as I didn’t have the necessary experience or education.

Ten years removed from when I was done with my studies, and seven years after my time as a fund manager and five years removed as an accountant, I am happy with the life I have. I have done a lot in that time since I finished my studies. Together with some investors I started one of Stockholms largest sports bars, I got hired on as a financial advisor, I’ve worked and became part owner in a management consultant firm and now I work as a manager in the nation wide employment agency. But after doing all this I realize that none of it is really the life I wanted or craved.

I crave a simpler life, I crave a life where I wake up everyday on pursue my passion with vigor, where everyday is filled with the joy of living a life with purpose. Perhaps the problem with me is that I have had moments of pursuing my passion blindly, and they have been the greatest moments of my life. If I had never experienced this, then maybe I would be content with what I have?

I have often thought about what mans purpose is and I believe that our purpose in life is to find our purpose, than pursue that purpose with childlike abandon. (Yes a very Budhist like statement). I love the life that I have created with my wife and child, but I know we can do so much more than the traditional ”middle class life”. The house, Volvo, 2.5 kids and running endlessly in the hamster wheel.

Finding passion

In my bones I feel that I have to do something else, something that is my passion. Maybe my purpose is to write, to explore the world, to train, to teach, to help others. So if my passion is to write, explore and teach, how do I know? How would you know what your passion is when you find it? Or to that end is your passion you purpose? Just because you love doing something doesn’t mean it’s what you want to do as a career, or if it’s even possible. Some people say collecting stamps is their passion in life, but is it really? or is it a compulsion, a need to collect, a void that is being filled by finding, buying and collecting different stamps? I can’t answer that for other people, I can only relate to my own life experiences, and in my life I usually start to collect things when I am unhappy with something else. A kind of compulsion to fill my emptiness.

Think about it like this, if money didn’t exist, was no object and you got to do whatever you wanted to do with your time, what would you do? If I strip away everything In my life and break it down like this I always come back to the samethings:

I want to backpack more, I want to write more, I want to take the time necessary to be a photographer, I want to help others in their own journeys in life. I want to be with my family more and I want the time we are together to be spent with joy. How is this different from what I’m doing now? It’s not. I just want more of it and only it and I don’t want the middle class burden that I now find myself and family in. I don’t want the house, cars and stuff. I don’t want the bills and debt or the idea of somebody else owning my time. I don’t want my few precious hours where my family is home together in the evenings to be filled in front of a TV, iPad or computer. I want our time to be just that: Our time.

Yet the life we find ourselves in drains us to the core. My wife works 40-50 hours a week and Alexander goes to pre-school and I work. When we get home in the evening we are spent, and as an excuse we turn on the TV and Alex plays with his iPad. We are stuck in a hamster wheel of our own making.

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Our backyard at the moment.. Filled with stuff that we at one time thought we had to have now getting ready for the dump

Everything is a distraction trap, every little buzz on the phone, every little beep on a watch, every little sound the iPad or TV makes. It’s all a distraction from a purposeful life. How do you find your passion if you can’t even stop to meditate for 10 minutes?

Making a change

Minimalism is the answer to the hamster wheel, the real answer. Not the ”get rich quick” answer, but a true answer to many of life’s real problems. I am stuck in the hamster wheel because we as a family like to buy stuff. We have debt which in turn creates a demand to pay. That demand to pay means we have to work. The bigger the debt the bigger the problem, the bigger the demand to pay. That debt is not just money that needs to be paid, above all else it is time. Time in your life, in my life, that must be spent doing work that isn’t my passion in-order to pay for a life I don’t want. With every purchase I make, I am giving up an equal amount of time from my life. The bigger the house, the more time needed from my life in-order to pay. It’s as simple as that. If I own less, consume less, and have less debt, the more life I have to pursue the passions that I love.

I don’t see debt as simply debt, I see it as my life, dreams and passions slipping away before my very eyes. I see the stuff in my house as an anchor, I see my house as a grave because it is owned by the bank. Don’t get me wrong, I love my house, I love my comforts, and the ability to buy what I want when I want. The problem is, I don’t want to have to slave 40 hours a week for 30 years for something that isn’t my passion in-order to have this life. On top of that if my house is not designed with singular purpose than it is very much a distraction from my passions.

What do I mean by singular purpose? If my passion is to write and teach, then how does a TV, hundreds of glasses, towels, DVD’s, sofas, chairs, tables, games and so on help me pursue my passion? It doesn’t, it simply distracts me from my passion. Anything that doesn’t help my pursue my passion, distracts me from it. The more stuff we have in our house, the more time goes towards, if nothing else, dusting the stuff off every now and then and re-organizing it.

We started to make some changes last year around summer time. I started emptying and selling tons of stuff, my wife caught on and started to sort a lot as well. But in the end, even though we have less stuff, we still have too much. Too much distraction, too much debt, too many bills, too many anchors. Minimalism has to be a singular goal in and of itself. A constant pursuit to own less, and above all else, the reason to own less. We must have a reason to own less. We must see the benefits before the actual goal is achieved. When we started to empty the house last year I felt it in my bones that this was the answer.

My buying habits have changed dramatically, I now make a 30 day wait list for things I want to buy. It’s interesting to see what pops up in my calendar from a month ago.. Stuff I put on a waiting list that I absolutely knew I had to have, and poof.. A month later I forgot what the item was to begin with. I now own less stuff, and I question everything that I do have. I still hunt, and the hunt is a pain in the ass and something I am still trying to break. I still have watch lists of stuff I want to buy. I still place bids on eBay just to see if I can get something really cheap. And all this hunting takes away from the important things in life.

With that said, our house looks like just about any other middle class house, it’s still filled with stuff we don’t use, in places that keep dust, organized in closest we never go into, and a house in a constant form of repair; Repair that requires time, money and above all else energy. At some point, we as a family have to decide that this isn’t working for us. This middle class life is a lie, this lie built on an advertisers playbook. Brainwashing us since birth. I long for the day when I wake up in my bed with my son and wife by my side and we have no idea what the hell we are going to do for the day, but have no worries at all. I long for the day when this is a reality that exist beyond the realm of vacation.

I believe this is possible with less. Less debt, less stuff to take care of, less bills, less house to repair.. Less of stuff and more of the things that matter. Life, love and passion.

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Life should be just this.. a spontaneous day out with friends and family

backpackingblogLiving simplymindfulnessRunning

A little secret

on April 2, 2017

I’m going to fill you in on a little secret, something that has been in progress for sometime and only now am I starting to accept it. It all started about 6 months ago and was cemented into place around 3 months ago. Since around 2014 I have been sick constantly, in fact somewhere around 2-3 times a month from anywhere between two days to weeks at a time; to say that is has been difficult to keep to a training regime is an understatement. I figured I wasn’t getting enough sleep, or my child was making me sick, or I became allergic to something. In any-case I figured it would go over soon enough so I never bothered with going to the doctors.

On top of always being sick I have had very little energy over the last couple of years. I figured it was part of getting older! However after finally getting sick of always being sick I decided it was time for a change. I was sick of being sick and tired!

Before I go any further let me roll back my timeline another two years about the first time I tried to get into running, it was after I read the phenomenal book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. It was this book that inspired me to start running, and with that I also learned that I couldn’t keep any routine as I kept getting sick all the time. I also figured that losing some weight and running more is probably a good idea considering my “adventurous” lifestyle.. or backpacking.

I kept giving it a shot, and whenever I needed some extra motivation I would go back to reading Born to run. Well, getting sick and being tired has a bad habit of sapping what little motivation I had to move and at the same time I started to get more fat than usual around my stomach and chest. Man boobs started to form and where I once had a slight visible muscle definition was now replaced with fat and mushyness. My thin muscular face has been replaced by a somewhat gooey one. To say I was aging bad, in my opinion was an understatement.

I had always followed the Paleo diet or carb free diet for most of my adult life, not religiously but it had definitely become my lifestyle. I preferred a steak a plate full of broccoli and sweat potatoes to a pizza. I believe that this kept me from getting overly fat, as the diet does work as a diet. I never thought that it was my diet that was leading to my sickness and getting fat. Then I watched a documentary called Forks over knifes a while ago, more like a year or so ago, and it stuck with me. So I decided to watch it again as well as read a few books on the subject of a whole foods plant based diet. To my amazement these are some of the absolute best researched books i’ve ever read of diet and nutrition such as the China Study and Whole by Colin t. Campbell. How not to die by Michael Greger and a few others. I also read Rich Rolls book on his similar journey from half dead to making a change; Finding Ultra.

After reading these books I realized that there was a very real possibility that it was my diet that was killing me and not some unknown infliction that came up from hell and has decided to plague me personally. So I figured that I could at-least give the idea of the whole food plant based diet a try for a short while and see if there is any difference. What is a whole food plant based diet? (WFPB diet = VEGAN) Or sort of, in reality vegan could be chips and coke cola, WFPB is a healthier alternative.

At about the same-time I started to make my progress over to a WFPB diet, I finally made my way to a doctor to get my blood work and so on done. The test results came back negative on finding any reason on why I am sick, but came back positive on that I will probably die a young and horrible death due to heart disease as my cholesterol levels where much higher than normal for my age. What did my doctor prescribe? Pills and lots of them or change my diet and start exercising more (this is Sweden, doctors are allowed to prescribe diet and exercise as their not yet completely owned corporate subsidies of the drug industry). I decided I would try diet instead.

My process has been slow, it has taken me several months to replace my typical meat recipes with WFPB alternatives, to empty my shelves of my meat and dairy recipe books, and to restock my fridge and cabinets with vegan goods.  When I got the test results from the doctor, my WFPB transition was more or less complete, with the test results pushing me over completely.

Disclaimer: I hate the term Vegan, when I think of the word vegan all sorts of strange shit pops into my head, the PETA people throwing paint on fur wearers, the hippy dread lock guys refusing to shower or wear shoes, or the creepy vegan gangs standing outside McDonalds terrorizing bystanders. With that said, I certainly think animals should be able to live their own lives, but It simply doesn’t sell me on being a vegan, I love bbq chicken wings and a lovely juicy cow on my plate.

No, my motivation for a WFPB diet is this: I don’t want to die a horrible slow death. I don’t want cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s or any other number of afflictions that can be attributed to the typical western diet. I would love to write a lot about the research done and used in the books I listed above, but I won’t. It’s just too much and I prefer everyone to do their own research before listening to me. There are studies of patients, hundreds of patient on their death beds with heart disease and diabetes who went over to a WFPB diet and within months their health improved so much that they didn’t need pills anymore. Many of them in the control groups lived an extra 20 years or more while the subject who continued their traditional diets and moved over to pills and operations died within the first year or two of the studies. I could go on and on, but I will leave that to you. You will know when the time is right, you will feel it in your bones and when you feel it, you will read these books and make the changes.

IMG_4154
Stopping to drink some cocunut water and eat a banana on a 70k bike ride

So what are the results so far? Since I converted over to a WFPB diet I have not been sick, not even close to being sick. My energy levels have increased ten fold – I feel like I’m 18 years old again. I have so much energy that in-order to not go crazy I have to get out the house and run! How much do I run? Hundreds of kilometers every month on top of several hundreds kilometers biking. I don’t get tired, I just keep moving. My muscles and bones are completely recovered from one day to the next. I’m sleeping better, I don’t get tired after eating and I’m losing a lot of weight. My energy levels increased so dramatically that I quit drinking coffee altogether – from a liter or so of coffee a day to nothing. To say that the side effects of eating a WFPB diet are far beyond my expectations is again and understatement. The new me is so addicting that the idea of ever going back to a traditional western diet with dairy and meat is simply not a possibility. Another plus side is that most restaurants only have one or two vegan dishes, AWESOME! I don’t have to spend time debating on which of the 20 different meals to choose from.

Left: Just finished the Stockholm tunnelrun 8k
Right: About to run my third competition for the year. 10k which I came in at 56 minutes.

I have no idea what my test results will show the next time around, but honestly, I’m not too worried about it. There is no doubt in my mind that my cholesterol will be radically reduced and my heart will be thumbing at full blast without interference for many years to come.

IMG_7749
My mousli banana crunch. A vegan breakfast that taste amazing

So heres to the new me, and my own continued progression, I am even thinking of making a simple VLOG to document my journey. I am also in the process of converting all my backpacking recipes to vegan alternatives and so on. With all this said I hope that you two will do the research and find the motivation to change. It will change your life and make you wonder what the fuck you where doing all these years killing yourself slowly, when you could have been living life to the fullest. Focused, energized and on fire.

Some tips for your own transition:

  1. Watch the documentaries Fork of knives, Food matters and the newest What the health
  2. Read some books The china study, Whole, How not to die
  3. Buy some new recipe books. Fork over knifes has a great app as well as recipe book. The plant power way is a good book. Green kitchen has a great book and App.
  4. Replace your favourite recipes with vegan alternatives. Experiment! you can’t be afraid to try new dishes when making the transition.
  5. Be patient and realistic, the transition is not going to happen overnight. Give it a month or so to take the first steps, then go all in! The feeling of being unstoppable and awesome is addicting.
  6. Remember: on a pure health basis if you want to avoid cancer and all the other diseases and sicknesses attributed to the western diet meat and dairy should not exceed 5% of your total consumption. So in other words, it’s perfectly ok to eat a little cheese now and then if you get the urge!
  7. You don’t need dread locks and wear hemp clothing just because your diet changes. But if you feel like it go for it!
christmasconsumptionmindfulnessminimalismminimalist

A happy minimalist Christmas

on December 24, 2016

It’s that time of year when we are not only expected to continue our mass gluttony of consumption, but also add to that gluttony by consuming for others. I have literally met people who take out massive loans in order to buy a bunch of garbage for their friends and families, and in the end feel just as empty after Christmas as before. In my earlier posts I talk a lot about the emptiness mindless consumption leaves in our souls. As if we are corporate owned robots with no personal willpower, the only willpower we (usually) have is dictating what we buy and what interests we find more enjoyable than others. But even the last vestiges of self control are thrown out the window around Christmas time.

Christmas is the time of year when 80 year old men and women need iPads and 80” flat screen TVs. When kids need new cars (hot wheels depending on age) and video games, (though they already have hundreds of each lying around. It’s the time of year when we pay thousands of dollars and take out new mortgages on our homes in order to buy the latest hush puppy or Nintendo. In other words it’s an absolutely soul crushing and ridiculous tradition the corporations have created for us.

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consumptionLiving simplymindfulnessminimalismminimalist

Consuming with a minimalist mindset

on November 28, 2016

Less is more. More time, more money, more freedom. The less stuff we own, the less stuff to take care of, the less stuff to be stressed about and the less stuff to distract us from our calling in life. This is what we need to think about before every purchase: How will this make me achieve my goals? Will it help me achieve my goals? Do I need it now?

There are a few different minimalist online that even suggest waiting 30 days before any major purchases. I think this is a fairly good strategy as it really teaches discipline – which is undoubtedly missing in the first place. At least it is for me. I am a man of little discipline, granted more than probably most people from my generation, but not where I want to be. I find that when I have the urge to purchase something, I simply open my iphone calender, set a date for 30 days in the future, and put in the item there. Currently the items I have in this calender are: Read More