Break Homeostatis

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You are free to copy, distribute and transmit this material in its original format. You may not alter, transform, or use it for commercial purposes.

First edition, July 2013

Health Disclaimer:

The information on this book is designed for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for informed medical advice or care.

Consult a doctor before starting an exercise program or diagnosing any illnesses or health problems you may have.

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Who should Read this Book?

A Day in the Life of a Student 7

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The Characteristics of Homeostasis 15

Metacognition 28

How Homeostasis Sustains Itself 36

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Exerting More Energy 62

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Amygdala 96

Your Brain’s Reward System 97

Habits 107

Time to Walk the Walk and Follow Through 120

List of Recommended Books 123

At day's first light have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that 'I am rising for the work of man'. Must I grumble at setting out to do what I was born for,

and for the sake of which I have been brought into the world?

Is this the purpose of my creation, to lie here under the blankets and keep myself warm?

'Ah, but it is a great deal more pleasant!'

Was it for pleasure, then, that you were born, and not for work, not for effort?

Look at the plants, the sparrows, ants, spiders, bees, all busy at their own tasks, each doing his part towards a coherent

world-order; and will you refuse man's share of the work, instead of being prompt to carry out Nature's bidding?

'Yes, but one must have some repose as well.' Granted; but repose has its limits set by nature, in the same

way as food and drink have; and you overstep these limits, you go beyond the point of sufficiency; while on the other hand, when action is in question, you stop short of what you

could well achieve.

You have no real love for yourself; if you had, you would love your nature, and your nature's will. Craftsmen who love their

trade will spend themselves to the utmost in laboring at it, even going unwashed and unfed; but you held your nature in

less regard than the engraver does his engraving, the dancer his dancing, the miser his heap of silver, or the vainglorious man his moment of glory. These men, when their heart is in it, are ready to sacrifice food and sleep to the advancement of their chosen pursuit. Is the service of the community of less

worth in your eyes, and does it merit less devotion?

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◊ Part 1 explains what homeostasis is and how it manifests itself in

your life by powerfully manipulating your brain and body through various devious ways in order to conserve energy. You will also learn how you can recognize when this happens to you and how you can work on reducing its negative effects.

◊ Part 2 explains the process of allostasis and how to go about

Breaking out of Homeostasis by exerting more energy. Allostasis

is the sweet spot of optimal physical or mental exertion and the physiological state in which your body adapts most efficiently to stressors. In part 2 you will also learn a ton of practical exercises that you can use to become more physically active as well as numerous ways of activating your brain and becoming more mentally focused.

◊ Part 3 explains how a couple of very important parts of your

brain work. These are the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the amygdala, and

the brain’s reward system. You will learn how you can practice these parts of your brain on a daily basis in order to improve their abilities. You will also learn beneficial ways of improving your learning process and implementing habits.

Who Should Read This Book?

You should read this book if you are interested in:

◊ Learning why change must happen internally in order for it to last.

◊ Learning practical methods for becoming and remaining more focused and energized for longer periods of time than before.

◊ Learning how the brain and body manipulate you for their own gain and ‘selfish’ purposes.

◊ Learning about the process of learning and powerful methods of implementing habits and new behaviors into your life.

◊ Understanding the process of keeping yourself motivated and why fear or anxiety often arises. ◊ Understanding why discomfort, pain, and fear are

really good things – as long as they aren’t constant. ◊ Understanding by what fundamental mechanisms in

your brain and body that your behavior from day-to-day is derived from, and the basics of how it works. ◊ Understanding why humans are lazy and opt for the

easy way out in life.

◊ Understanding neurologically how the positive or negative feedback loops work. AKA the upward or downward spirals as coined by Stephen Covey. ◊ Achieving a higher degree of efficiency and discipline

in your life.

[You may skip the preface and go right to page 13 – “The Life of a Student” if you’d like but I think it might be useful to keep the information from the preface in mind as it provides an overview of the content of the book and a few explanations]

I didn’t write this book to save the world from poverty, from global warming, from the Illuminati, or from any of those other very serious modern day issues that the world currently seems to stand face to face with. Surely someone else will shoulder the role of messiah and rescue us from such matters of magnitude. I’m rooting for Al Gore, George W. Bush, Obama, and David Icke.

I didn’t write this book to save endangered species such as pandas or dolphins either.

I wrote it for practice.

Clarifying a Few Things

This book shouldn’t be read in one or two sittings. There’s far too much information in it to be successfully assimilated that quickly. Take a break from reading if you get tired or bored because almost everything in this book is connected in one way or another to something else.

Also; throughout the book when I use the word homeostasis, and it seems like I am using it in a negative way, it is because for the vast majority of people it is. Homeostasis is awful to most people, especially those who have no idea of its existence.

But to clarify: Yes, I am generalizing.

Homeostasis can be a good thing for a person once this person has put in a lot of time to form a large number of intelligent and healthy mindsets, routines, and habits. But this isn’t the case for most people.

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The process of breaking out of homeostasis (BOOH) is rather straightforward, but the state of having BOOH is not so

straightforward to understand unless you have experienced it sometime yourself.

It’s very hard to accurately describe an emotional and mental state. What I have done is more like taken out different pieces of the puzzle and tried to hold them up separately – which, of course, doesn’t make for a fair depiction of the entireness of the phenomenon in itself. This book is for the most part based on years of personal

experimentation combined with information gathered from reading a lot of books in multiple different fields of knowledge, ranging from nutrition, to self-development, psychology, biology, neurology, and

philosophy. I have listed a few of these books in the sidelines as

recommended reading.

If I seem dogmatic, mastering, or pedantic at times it is because I found it to be incredibly boring and stifling to qualify every phrase with “I think…” or “in my opinion…”

I use a lot of quotes in this book. Not necessarily to prove that the people I am quoting have credibility and that you should blindly believe in their words, but rather to help describe and elucidate a lot of concepts that may be tricky to understand.

One reason as to why I wrote this book is because I believe that the habit, or perhaps phenomenon, that I’m calling Breaking out of

Homeostasis, is a higher level of operating compared to how most

people live in regards to how we can achieve more concentration, efficiency, and clarity in life. To put it succinctly I think it is useful information that more people need to learn about and apply in their life.

Throughout the book I recommend and suggest doing quite a few things, whereas in most cases it’s not the activity in itself that’s the important thing, but the underlying function that the activity serves. If you can come up with another activity or a better way of serving that same function then by all means go for it – don’t let my current restrictions become your restrictions.

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I expect there’s going to be confusion between the concepts of being in a flow state, activating the brain, and of having broken out of

homeostasis.

Flow to me is when you lose yourself completely in an activity and

lose track of time. It often involves a loss of self and perception of time. Flow is usually activity-specific, meaning that you may be able to achieve a state of flow in one activity, but it rarely remains as you shift over to another activity.

Activating the brain is when you manage to engage your brain and

make whatever activity at hand interesting. This stokes your

curiosity which in turn boosts your ability to learn dramatically. You may feel the brain tense up euphorically. Activating the brain is deeply stimulating. If the brain is activated for prolonged periods of time, especially at night, it can be very hard to sleep even if you are physically exhausted. Your brain does not want to stop coming up with ideas.

Breaking out of homeostasis (BOOH) is when you feel an

abundance of energy and reach the turning point of going from conserving energy to that of naturally WANTING to do things and

Once having BOOH, flow state can more easily be achieved. It’s natural to want to do your best in the situation regardless of results when having BOOH. There’s usually inherent motivation and positive emotions.

The major difference between flow state and BOOH is that to break out of homeostasis you must push through the plateau of discomfort and reach that sudden switch-point when the body starts to naturally exude energy. If you are not consciously trying to break out of

homeostasis it is very unlikely to happen, because your body takes drastic measures to sustain its current state through various defense mechanisms in order to preserve energy.

It is very hard to know where to draw the line between where

activating the brain begins and breaking out of homeostasis ends, and

vice versa. But don’t get caught up in studying this as an academic issue. Results and efficiency are primary. It’s the doing that matters, not the theoretic issue of separating the two. As long as it works – which it does – the theory is secondary.

Two Things to Keep in Mind

1. The more things from the book that you immediately apply, and the more hard work you put in; the greater the positive effect will be. 2. There’s a vast difference between grasping something on an

intellectual and theoretic level compared to a deeper understanding rooted in first-hand experiences of practical learning. I recommend the books My Big TOE by Thomas Campbell and the various works of Nathaniel Branden on the psychology of self-esteem for more on this. The key takeaway is that self-esteem, knowledge, and learning are all based on first-hand experience that gets stored in your brain to be used by its memory bank later as reference points without you actively thinking about it. You do not get first-hand experiences by reading, you get it by practicing and putting the theory to work in real situations.

Keep these things in mind and remember that this book is written mostly for practical means. I’ll provide you with a ton of useful exercises, but they won’t matter much if you aren’t using them. I want you to muster up some intent and apply this stuff in your life – get mad as hell and start breaking out of homestasis.

Summary

You might not understand much of this definition below as of right now due to its high concentration of weird concepts and

terminology. Don’t worry; you will understand all of these concepts as you read on because most of them are described in separate chapters. You may refer back to this later if you become confused of what it means to break out of homeostasis.

My definition for breaking out of homeostasis (BOOH) is:

To consciously induce stressors upon yourself and get somewhere in the vicinity of the sweet spot of allostasis; thus making the stress response adaptive and being a positive and healthy thing for the brain and body. After you get somewhere near that sweet spot of exertion you stay there for as long as possible, you keep putting in the mental or physical effort during a sufficient amount of time enough to push through the plateau and get that self-sustaining, internal motivation – momentum. After that point there is usually not as much effort involved in continuing to do whatever it is you’re doing. It becomes a matter of how long you can stay there in the state of having broken out of homeostasis – which in turn comes down to various factors.

The guideline for what to do in the long-term could be summarized as following:

Create a good and challenging daily routine, rewire the brain’s reward system, form positive habits, eat for performance, get good sleep, relax properly and in an efficient way after going through stress. Put forth slightly more effort than you want to every day and improve gradually. Rinse, wash, and repeat. Repeat more until you break out of homeostasis. Then repeat for five more minutes.

Synopsis

We are in a state of homeostasis by default. The state of homeostasis has us unconsciously repeating our current thoughts and behaviors over and over again as habits. Most of us are living in more or less complete reaction to homeostasis, being nothing but slaves to its power of sustaining and continually reinforcing the same patterns and feedback loops on us. By the same workings; by the nature of this feedback loop – once you are able to reverse it – you will slowly start breaking out of homeostasis more consistently.

You might say that once woken up once and having tasted its sweetness you will want to reproduce it that same awesome high, and thus wake up more often.

over again in order to remain in balance.

Being deeply in homeostasis is like being hypnotized to conserve energy. Homeostasis is the number one adversary of progression – whether that is on a personal level and in terms of individual growth, or on a bigger scale as in an organization or a community.

When we completely give into and identify with the needs of

homeostasis we prefer to sustain our sense of comfort rather than do something that is briefly uncomfortable, scary, or painful; even though we rationally know that this thing would be massively beneficial to us and create happiness in the long-term.

Change is by default uncomfortable and painful to the untrained mind. One of the main ways of breaking out of homeostasis is by continually doing ‘uncomfortable’ things until we push through a plateau; after reaching that point, our body, brain, and personality together undergo a temporary change and we no longer fear or hold negative associations with discomfort or pain. Our reward system and beliefs are drastically altered for some time and we feel awesome.

In life we base our decisions and act in a certain way based on what we, often wrongly, believe will make us the most happy and content. We set goals that we work toward for a number of reasons, but the underlying objective is still that we want to have fun and enjoy life. The purpose of this book is to give you a greater understanding of the process for breaking out of homeostasis, which is not only a very helpful tool for accomplishing whatever goals you have, but also a very fulfilling way of life and how to be ‘naturally high’ for gradually longer periods of time.

The process of breaking out of homeostasis is not something you perfect during the course of a day. It’s a daily process to live by. To break out of homeostasis is something you do, not only on a daily basis, but also in the long-term as you establish many smaller habits that make up the bigger habit of breaking out of homeostasis. When the habit is established it becomes easier, but it is never over. You do not conquer homeostasis more than temporarily and to break out of homeostasis cannot be put on autopilot as most other habits can be. It’s still something that has to be done daily by putting in a lot of conscious effort. You won’t break out of homeostasis automatically no matter how good you are. But then again nothing that’s worth having comes easily.

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Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be.

Be one. ― MARCUS AURELIUS ―

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You wake up at 7 AM. Your first lecture is at noon and you have nothing else planned before that. “What’s the point, nothing gets done in the morning anyway”, you think to yourself as you hit the snooze button and get four hours of low quality rest until 11 AM, at which point you are forced to get out of bed if you’re going to be able to get to class in time.

You attend to your usual morning routine and finish by brushing your teeth at 11.40 AM. You get to class and feel sleepy. You do not engage any random people in conversation on your way to class because you feel stressed as you hurry to get there as an effect of your last minute

departure. Once you get to class you discuss something vaguely interesting with your friends for a few minutes before it starts. The lecturer begins speaking and you attend to the class haphazardly. You lose focus within minutes and feel drowsy – cursing yourself for not purchasing a coffee or a can of soda.

You look around: few people are taking notes, and most are not even focusing on the lecturer or what he is saying at all. The latter group of people is using their smartphones or laptops to scan the Internet for the latest soccer scores, browsing forums and news sites, or playing computer games.

You think to yourself, “if everyone else in here, including my friends, is behaving in this manner – being uninterested in the lecture and being too cool for school, then so will I”. You begin drawing spaceships and unicorns to rebel against the boring lecture.

It is too much of a hassle to actually take notes or ask questions – and besides, no one else is doing that anyway.

Time goes on like that until the lecture is broken in half by a short break. You have learned absolutely nothing and feel bored and unengaged. It’s too bad you don’t have a smartphone, and you forgot your computer at home because you were stressed on your way over here so you can’t check your favorite forums and blogs to pass the time.

You and your friends talk a bit on the way to the cafeteria during the break. You purchase a cup of coffee.

When the lecture begins again you feel better and actually slightly focused as a result of the caffeine. You feel like you are waking up and start to pay attention to what’s going on and disregard your uninterested peers.

You start thinking that the class is somewhat interesting and you have a lot of relevant opinions on some of the stuff being said. You feel the urge to ask an interesting question and make a few cool assertions, but you don’t feel

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quite entitled to do it. Besides, no one else is doing it. And the lecturer is not explicitly asking for your opinion.

A certain order has been established and no one is willing to break out of it. You think to yourself, “It’s probably best to follow the status quo and be safe and comfortable, so as to not draw any attention or risk any negative social feedback. The reason why the other people in class aren’t asking questions must be because they already know the material perfectly or because they’re not interested, or because they want to be respectful and not take up everyone else’s time with their individual questions. Yes, that must be it. It would be disrespectful of me to ask questions and waste other people’s time”, following this line of reasoning, you remain quiet while enjoying your little buzz of caffeine.

Time goes on until the last 5 minutes of class, at which point the lecturer asks the class an interesting question. You have a great answer that you prepare in your mind. You mentally prepare how you will deliver it. But you never do. It slips you by. Instead you just sit there and wait until class ends.

What Happened?

You were passive – reactive to the dynamics of the group rather– rather than to be proactive, following your own rhythm, and letting your curiosity direct your actions. The reason you acted this way was because you were deep in homeostasis.

That’s a normal day for most contemporary students.

From the moment you woke up and made the (probably unconscious) decision to snooze, you began the daily habit of procrastination, giving it momentum. By procrastinating once you increase the likelihood of it emerging as your dominant course of action throughout the day; it

becomes your automated initial response, often without you being aware of it.

By not immediately using your willpower consistently from the moment you woke up, it became very hard and uncomfortable to answer the teacher’s question even though you had a great answer – because to do so would mean to start a new pattern of behavior and a complete reversal in terms of action compared to how you acted earlier in the day – thus requiring more energy and willpower to implement. To quickly changing your behavior like that is to go against homeostasis, it’s basically like making a car go from zero to sixty in a second. Very few normal people can do this, it’s simply to uncomfortable and feels too weird to them. They never practice this ability, so their ‘muscles’ for breaking out of

homeostasis remain weak.

The brain and body want to remain in the same energy state, mood, and behavior. They do not want to change the current level of operation; and

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We cannot break out of homeostasis forever. Only impermanently, then it becomes too much for the body.

—U.G KRISHNAMURTI —

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.

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The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn’t go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past

that, turn it all off if you’re going to get where you want to be.

―MICHAEL JORDAN ―

The keys to life are running and reading. When you're running, there's a little person that talks to you and says, "Oh I'm tired. My lung's about to pop. I'm so hurt. There's no way I can possibly continue." You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you're running. You will how to not quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have

been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have – with your parents,

with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book.

― WILL SMITH ―

he word homeostasis can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Usually it is defined as the state whereby an organism maintains balance in its internal system. The act of homeostasis is responsible for regulating the body’s temperature, PH-levels, keeping the hormones in check, keeping track of when we need to sleep, and similar important stuff that we need in order to survive. You could say that homeostasis economizes energy expenditure and constantly works to keep us alive as long as possible.

In this book we are not so much concerned with the biological aspect of homeostasis, but rather the practical aspect of it – the

phenomenon of how it governs our daily life, conduct and behavior as well as thoughts and habits. We are interested in how it keeps us stagnant and hinders progression. Therefore my definition for the word homeostasis differs from that being used in the community of medicine or biology. By the end of the book you will be very familiar with what homeostasis represents to me.

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While homeostasis is great and absolutely necessary for a number of survival reasons, it hasn’t had the time to quite adapt to our modern society. Human society and the technology we use evolve quickly, evolution does not.

We have become a thinking species rather than hunter-gatherers, but our bodies are still very much the same as when we were cavemen. Look around; you’ll find that energy is plentiful; in fact, most people are excessively energized in terms of calories consumed. People don’t need to eat more, people need to do, act, and move more. Most people eat primarily for stimulatory reasons. I get into this more later.

We all want to be creative, productive, and hard-working; to be successful and do well in life – whatever that means to us. But for us to do that we must be willing to think and align our action

consistently in a certain way to achieve our goals. We need to gear our mind and our actions toward a long-term perspective and realize that life is a marathon and not a sprint.

What stands in the way of accomplishing everyday goals, such as changes in diet or habits, is usually not the imagination to come up with something we desire, but rather laziness and fear in a variety of forms. In almost all cases I have found that these stems from being in a state of homeostasis!

By knowing and accepting this we become more capable to lead our lives and conduct our actions in alignment to the nature of reality and can become more efficient and productive. This enables us to make better use of the time.

To the extent that we understand and accept that homeostasis cannot be permanently overcome – the less resistance we will generate inside of us, making the process of breaking out of homeostasis that much easier.

Since homeostasis inherently exists in all of us we should neither consider it bad nor good, but rather to accept its existence and use it to our advantage. Homeostasis is a bad thing in terms of productivity and accomplishing change of sorts when you are starting from the bottom and bootstrap yourself up. But it’s a good thing given that you have already established consciously chosen productive habits and ways to conduct your life.

It may be useful to consider homeostasis as a separate entity that’s stuck to you in order to identify whenever it is at the root cause of an urge to do something (or more likely, not do something), or when it is giving rise to certain thoughts.

Homeostasis cannot be reasoned with, it’s purely focused on

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cycle of pursuing whatever comfortable instant gratification you’re currently occupying yourself with. You need to get to a point

somewhere outside of homeostasis for that thought to even have the possibility of appearing to you. And vice versa – when you have broken out of homeostasis – the last thing on your mind is to slow down and pursue instant gratification or comfort; your only

objective is to keep going and deeply channel your outflow of energy into some activity.

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You Ought to Know this Stuff Already!

I think that most people are already deeply familiar with what I refer to as homeostasis. The reason for this is because they have spent a lot of time in it – probably their entire lives.

Here are some further explanations of the “symptoms” of the types of behavior and characteristics that the brain and body tend to

showcase in order to and preserve homeostasis:

Exert a Minimal Amount of Energy

This is what it all comes down to.

All other aspects of homeostasis can be broken down to its root cause – that of expending the least amount of energy needed unless you can conceive of a reason powerful enough not to. If you don’t you will suffer the same fate as 99% of all other human beings and live in reaction (like a slave) to the brain and body as it sustains

homeostasis.

Resist Change

Have you ever noticed how after sitting in your computer chair for a while you become docile? First you were alert, but then as you sat there passively you gradually grew increasingly lethargic. The same could be said for sleeping in or snoozing as well; it kind of creeps up on you slowly and gradually grows until suddenly you find yourself very passive and demotivated.

The longer you do something the harder it becomes to change that course of action. This is true both in the short-term given an activity or behavior through the course of a day, but also in the long-term through your life.

Let’s say that you start watching a TV-series and find that you cannot stop watching it. You want to continue the process. Or maybe you start reading on a forum and want to read every discussion topic. It usually requires less energy to continue what you are already doing than it does to change the activity. Remember this.

Come up with an Infinite Number of Excuses not to Exert Energy

The brain and body will come up with any amount of excuses and rationalizations not to exert more energy above what is absolutely

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book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Here’s the definition:

...the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word

doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

You’re experiencing a form of cognitive dissonance so strong that you cannot resolve it, and hence you employ doublethink to keep yourself from thinking any more deeply about it and actually

reaching a definitive resolution; because to do so would require a lot of effort and energy, and your brain doesn’t want that unless you convince it that it absolutely has to.

When you are able to do this – that’s when you have turned a ‘should do’ into a ‘must do’.

Live to Procreate another Day

It has a catchy tune to it, doesn’t it?

From an evolutionary standpoint it makes much more sense for humans to “weather out the storm” while staying safely inside their caves with the berries and meat they had already collected than it would for them to go out of there and face the danger of the storm for no reason at all.

Besides, it’s way more comfortable to take the easy way out and stick with what you know is safe than it is to face some uncertain scenario. This made a lot of sense back then, but times have changed

drastically and there are no dangerous storms or fierce predators in the cities; life is very dull and repetitive nowadays for most people. The thing about contemporary society is that it is way too safe and easy for most people in the Western world; we are not challenged enough by default, so we must make up challenges and be inventive

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in finding ways of getting ourselves motivated and make life more exciting and intense. But very few people actually do this.

Seek Instant Gratification, Avoid Pain

It’s well known that animals, including humans, chase after pleasure and avoid pain. What constitutes pleasure or pain varies between people. In society instant gratification is very often regarded as pleasure, whereas working, exercising, or public speaking is often regarded as painful or uncomfortable.

With the world becoming increasingly globalized and as the mainstream grows larger, we find that people become more and more alike. People eat similar kinds of food, watch similar TV-series or entertainment and so on. We are being grown into a kind of mold through modern society. We unconsciously form a perception of what is normal by being subjected to very similar inputs for

information and stimulation. I’m not saying this in a conspiratorial

sense, I am merely stating the facts.

To be normal today is to spend most of your time chasing after various forms of instant gratification and do as little painful things as possible. To have a chilled-out and non-challenging life where

everything just breezes along. To succumb fully to homeostasis. Kind of like the character Turtle on the TV show Entourage.

When you keep yourself continually stimulated through instant gratification, deeply in homeostasis, you don’t need to think much because all your needs are taken care of. There is little, if at all any, deep thinking going on when constantly eating (sugar) or chasing stimulation.

Human beings are wired to seek out whatever makes them feel good and keep reproducing that same stimulus over and over again; homeostasis wants to preserve that special chemical cocktail formed by the pleasure of your choice.

Entropy is the normal state of consciousness—a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable. To avoid this condition,

people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention

from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings. This explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in

watching television, despite the fact that it is very rarely enjoyed. Compared to other sources of stimulation—like reading, talking to other people, or working on a hobby—TV

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—MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI —

Herd Mentality

We human beings hate being uncertain about things. Therefore we strive to resolve that uncertainty through any number of ways, but for the sake of the book let’s divide it up into two polarities: Herd mentality and thinking for yourself. The first sustains homeostasis and saves us energy while the latter requires the expenditure of a lot of energy and may break us out of homeostasis.

Having herd mentality means being a follower in all possible ways. Being a follower usually means you don’t want to spend the energy thinking about something carefully enough to form an opinion about the matter. It’s simply way easier and more comfortable to let

someone else do the thinking. For people who are not used to thinking heavily, it is one of the most uncomfortable and

burdensome tasks. For these people it becomes a much easier way of resolving this uncertainty by joining a group or following a

guru/expert, than it would be to think about it themselves and carefully weigh the different alternatives against each other and thoroughly testing out each alternative until they reach a conclusion. For example: in Nazi Germany after the economic downturns, during the depression around 1930, there was such confusion and chaos in the streets that many people chose to join the Brownshirts (SA) simply because they were able to provide a daily meal,

companionship, and a form of (pathetic) purpose to the herds in the manner of beating up people and drinking a lot.

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The symptoms of homeostasis are everywhere in society. This, of course, isn’t very strange because to be in homeostasis is the default mode of operating in, so naturally it ought to be found in abundance. Everywhere you look, if you should choose to do so, you will find an unwillingness to exert effort; laziness in various forms, resistance to change being reflected back at you – as if to justify its own existence. It is on constant defense of its position and will readily assure you to act the same way:

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“It’s OK for you to engage in it as well because we’re all doing it!”

Because we’re exposed to this daily we think it’s the nature of reality and often unconsciously accept it. We are animals guided by herd mentality:

“If everyone else is doing it, then it must be OK.”

One person acting in a peculiar manner is a dissident or a madman, maybe that person is even called a psychopath. If sufficiently many people act in the same way it becomes accepted and often mimicked. Such are the implications of herd mentality. No one has any clarity, but they assume others have it and think they themselves can get it through osmosis by joining that group or buying that piece of clothing and so on.

Herd mentality and group think are symptoms of being in

homeostasis because it relieves the burden of taking responsibility to someone else. It requires less energy than thinking for yourself.

Repetitive Thinking

We all think and act very repetitively, but some more so than others. Talking to some people is like talking to a preprogrammed robot; you already know what response they will regurgitate at you before you even assert something or ask them a thing.

Change requires energy, and someone who is deeply in homeostasis will tend not to change their thought process because it feels

uncomfortable. The irony of this is that the longer they wait the harder and more uncomfortable it becomes to make that change in thinking. It’s easier to let the mind keep repeating the same thoughts over and over again even if they are of an unproductive nature or maybe even harmful to the person. The reason for this is because the brain/mind follows the path of least resistance. Imagine that there’s an energetic current pulsing through a network of electric lines. These lines are referred to as your brain’s neural pathways, and for every time you think about something, and repeat that thought – the more solid and durable that particular line becomes. The line, or neural pathway, represents a thought.

Through the path of least resistance your thoughts keep repeating themselves unless you do something about it consciously. When you do this, and make the decision to change your thought process you could picture it as if you are changing the direction of the current by imposing your will on it. This is tiresome work and involves a part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex.

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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF

HOMEOSTASIS

he human brain and body have several states of being. I have identified two opposites: being in homeostasis or being out of it. We dwell in the former state by default while the latter is rarely achieved without conscious effort. The difference between the two is palpable and they are like two different personalities and value systems.

Once you are in either state you want nothing to do with other one and it is hard to even imagine what the other one feels like even though you may have experienced it lots of times. This is because the brain and body dislike switching between these states – it requires an amount of energy expenditure above the threshold of what it would prefer to spend if it had the choice.

The brain and body are naturally inclined to avoid this shift in states; this gives rise to a resistance that stabilizes and keeps you in

whichever state you currently dwell in. This resistance has to be overcome or at the very least acknowledged to break out of homeostasis.

In homeostasis there is often an unhealthy amount of dreaming and future planning going on, but never any real plans or actions taken to implement it. The act of starting is too frightening to the brain

because then it has to work, so it is always postponed by the brain as part of the mental behavior of remaining in homeostasis. Years may go by without any real change in the life of a person deeply in the shackles of homeostasis.

Of course no one admits to this. There’s always an excuse for not taking action – some better than others, and as long as we buy into and believe in these excuses to justify our behavior then there’s no need for us to work harder. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can blame it on something else.

When we believe in these excuses it means that our brains are in charge of us; the excuses arise from the brain trying to shirk.

As an example of the brain wanting to stay in its current state, if you crave bread and cookies while in homeostasis you will find that can’t stop thinking about how good it would be to eat some right now:

Mmmm bread and cookies.. . So tasty.. Mmm, it tastes so gooooood.. I want more…

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And vice versa, if you’ve broken out of homeostasis you might react differently:

Fuck bread and cookies – that shit is for losers!

Eating bread and cookies is going to put me back to sleep again!

No way I’m eating that!

Both states want to sustain themselves.

You’ll soon notice how they both manifest themselves on many different levels as you start shifting between the two when you practice breaking out of homeostasis. It’s very common for either state to hijack your thought process like this.

In the book Eat Stop Eat, Brad Pilon explains that we’re either in the process of storing fat or burning it. Digesting or fasting. Glycolysis or ketosis. I believe that there’s a correlation between fasting and breaking out of homeostasis; this is something I get into later in the book.

Just as the body does not quickly flip back and forth by the press of a button when it goes from storing the energy from food and releasing it, the same is true for homeostasis. The body is either in a state of homeostasis or it’s out of it.

But homeostasis cannot be broken out of immediately. If done correctly it can be done rather quickly, but never instantly. It’s more accurate to describe the process of getting out of homeostasis as (usually) boring, exhausting, and arduous – until you get past a certain threshold.

Reaching that threshold is a lot like cycling uphill. The hill is steepest in the beginning and during this time of the process you experience the largest amount of anxiety and discomfort, but if you can get through that part and reach level ground on top, then it’s just a matter cruising downhill somewhat effortlessly while enjoying the breeze. The shift in experience during this process is very obvious if you manage to go all the way through. It goes from negative to positive very suddenly. Most people cannot persist through the plateau and quit before breaking out of homeostasis or changing their state. They quit way early, usually the moment discomfort arises.

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Pushing Through the Plateau

To get past the threshold will be called ‘pushing through the plateau’, because that’s exactly what it feels like. It often feels hard, boring and occasionally impossible – until all of a sudden you realize that you made it through to the other side.

When you get past the plateau it feels really, really good; as doubt, discomfort, and resistance all fall away. In short, you feel like a boss. Now, suddenly this is all you can think of and identify with.

Remember how I previously wrote that the mind likes to stay in whichever state that it’s currently in and has trouble picturing a different state of mind? It’s the very same process at work here. That weak, self-doubting person who was haphazardly messing about in uncertainty a few hours ago is now gone.

You think, “That was not ME! That was someone else... Some loser stole my body and inhabited it. Now, finally, I am BACK in control. What took me so long?”

My life’s got to be like THIS, old sport! —JAY GATSBY —

This is how it’s supposed to be. It ought to always feel the way it does past the plateau. But you must earn it every time, and it gets harder and harder as you increase in skill.

When you have already gone pushed past the plateau you no longer experience the same kind of internal resistance towards doing things that normally feel uncomfortable or scary. It’s more like:

“What do I need to do right now?” - X!

“Alright. That was easy, now what?” - Y!

“Fine. What else?” - Z!

“Cool. Now what?” - Next thing!

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Keep in mind that whichever mode you’re in – homeostasis, or broken out of it – will automatically try to sustain itself for as long as possible. Therefore it’s relatively easy to stay out of homeostasis once you have gotten out of it. The hard part is pushing through the plateau; persisting through the period of struggling to get up that hill. Know that if you persist through the initial phase of discomfort, it shall pass. This phenomenon is particularly easy to experience when doing cardio and getting into steady state.

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Time A Time B Time C Time D Time E Time F Time G

Level of Comfort

(positive emotions)

Plateau

Start

Pushing through the plateau This is where most people fail by

quitting too early

In

homeostasis

BOOH --> Momentum!

TIME IN

THE PROCESS

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hormones).

◊ Current skill level or ability in performing an activity. ◊ Your own belief, or perceived ability, of performing an

activity.

This means that it will require less effort in absolute terms to push through the plateau if: your physiology isn’t at all used to, or has adapted to a certain stressor, if your skill level in regards to

something is low (you suck at it), or if it is your own belief that you suck at doing something – even if in reality you are quite good at it. The last case may be the most important and interesting one. It means that if you have low expectations of your own ability and you manage to surpass those expectations you tend to get motivated and excited. This in turn greatly improves your chances of pushing through the plateau.

But it’s not that easy to magically conjure up low expectations of yourself; the mind builds these expectations through a virtually automated process by which it reviews your earlier reference experiences, and thus constructs your self-esteem brick by brick for everything you do daily.

You will get a better understanding of this when we get into

stressors, change, and various other aspects, such as allostasis, later on. However, this is definitely something that is best understood from personal experience, and not mere theory; if you have never pushed through the plateau (which I suspect many have not) it is impossible to imagine. The mind cannot conceive of the unknown, only what has already been experienced.

The plateau is never more noticeable than when engaging in physical activity. This is one reason why I like reading about incredible

athletes, bodybuilders or people who are uncommonly competent at pushing through these limitations.

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Momentum

After you manage to push through the plateau you gain intrinsic and self-sustaining motivation – like a force of momentum propelling you forward. Momentum makes tough things way easier. This was the concept that birthed my blog, and has now evolved into this book. The reason we achieve this self-sustaining intrinsic momentum is because the brain is a lazy bastard that wants to conserve energy. When you push through the plateau you go past the point of no return. Though it’s actually more accurate to call it ‘the point of no

return for a while’.

Once you have gone through the effort of pushing through the plateau your brain decides that it would be easier – less demanding energetically speaking – to maintain this new, more awesome mode of operation which switches the brain and body to release energy rather than store it. The state that I call breaking out of homeostasis. But it only lasts for so long.

Don’t expect it to last very long at first when you begin practicing. I remember thinking how awesome it felt when it first started happening to me; and then I would usually feel completely drained the day afterward, as though I was hung over.

I actually was hung over, but not from using a drug. I’d simply spent so much energy, felt so good and focused my thoughts to an extent that my brain wasn’t used to and as a result it had to recover. This sense of being hung over stems from a deficiency in positive

neurotransmitters and has a lot to do with diet and (mental) exercise as well.

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In or out of Homeostasis?

A lot of times it’s hard to notice whether you’re in homeostasis or not, especially if you haven’t been out of it recently. To be caught in homeostasis is to settle for less – to settle for comfort and ease. To have broken out of homeostasis means you don’t settle at all. You keep going until you run out of energy and find out where the limit is. But in order to reach the razor’s edge one has to try a lot without being discouraged.

While I’ve been writing this book it has been clear to me from the beginning that a lot of times I’ve been generally lazy and

procrastinated things; doing other stuff that stem from acting out of a state of homeostasis such as writing out chapters in bullet points and then waiting days to write them out simply because no one has held a gun to my head or literally forced me to do it. Very immature and stupid of me because it just increases the amount of work I have to do at a later point in time, and it’s very common that you forget an idea if you don’t write it down clearly or act on it immediately. I did it because I allowed myself to be tricked by my brain’s excuses for slacking off. Unless you find a reason that is emotionally stronger and more potent than homeostasis’s hold on you, it will prevail through its countless rationalizations as to why being idle is perfectly fine. You are literally fighting your brain and body for control, and this is incredibly hard when you are not used to it.

The way my body works is that whenever I set a goal that is

somewhat definite, I tend to receive major anxiety if I fail to deliver what I specifically set out to do; in this case to write a minimum of 1000 words per day or sit a minimum of one hour per day and work with it (at the time I was busy with school). I only failed to do so once due to a major school project that had me pulling two all-nighters and left me with no time or energy to write for one of those days. Nevertheless I failed to deliver and felt utterly terrible afterwards. Another symptom of homeostasis which has been particularly palpable to me some days is that I’ve only done what I set out to do minimally. To write 1000 words or sit one hour per day, instead of keeping it up longer and getting into a deeper state of concentration. These are signs that my brain is jerking me around to do its bidding. Since I kept tabs on how many words I’ve written every day as well as and logging how much time I’ve spent writing this book every day, it has become obvious that productivity is increased exponentially

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the longer I sit and work on it. Longer time invested in a single sitting usually leads to exponential returns in productivity as opposed to several smaller sittings of the same total time spent. It’s a lot like Moore’s law or the concept of increasing returns to scale. Keep this in mind when you read the chapter the positive cumulative effect later on.

It’s not easy to give an exact description of how homeostasis manifests itself in everyday life because I believe the process is

different for each and every one of us; yet it follows a similar pattern. There are certain symptoms you may notice in yourself, or

behavioral characteristics in other people which you will probably begin to take note of – a lot like ‘tells’ in a game of poker.

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Archetypes

Ever notice that people are lazy?

A few people are lazy by choice and actually take pride in their ability to shirk. This small group of people is usually above average in

intelligence and often finds ways of doing chores or work in a

quicker or more efficient way than by conventional means. They are good at thinking outside of the box and often find new ways of doing things – commonly by cheating. This works out great in the short-term, but in the long-term it can to become their main weakness because they tend to have incredibly low discipline and work ethic as a result of never practicing it.

When a person like this finally gets a great idea that has the potential to propel him to the life he dreams of having, he is unlikely to be able to bring it into fruition because he hasn’t developed his character or work ethic. He’s spent his entire life in pursuit of exerting a minimal amount of effort; making him mentally weak in terms of willpower and follow-through.

However, the vast majority of people are unconsciously lazy. They are not lazy by choice like the small group of people mentioned above.

Most people are lazy merely because they are so used to constantly living in unconscious reaction to their brain and body. Their mind and body are running the show and they are living in unconscious reaction to most of that communication, kind of like a well-designed robot or a zombie-like creature.

We humans tend to think of ourselves as not being animals; that we’re something unique and different. But we aren’t. We are more highly evolved than snakes, bears, or birds in terms of intelligence and thinking, but the largest part of our intelligence and impulses are still carried in our genes and wired into us, even though we are taught by society to act and behave in certain ways. But the fact is that we’re still animals, merely well-dressed and with a wider range of behavior. We are much more emotional than we are rational. Homeostasis and the act of energy preservation lie at the root of why most animals will go out and hunt only when they have to. Cats and a few other animals that hunt for fun are exceptions. Similarly, most humans will procrastinate doing a task until they are faced with a deadline. For example, most students do not start studying for real until a week before their exam. It’s a lot less common to be

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consistently studying for a couple of hours a day and continually rehearse what they learn to better memorize it. They need that deadline in order for their brains to become activated.

We humans are therefore lazy by default unless we’re taught or convinced by ourselves or by someone else not to be. In either case it’s a matter of replacing an inferior set of behavior and habits with a superior one – in terms of productivity.

● ● ● Recommended Reading

:

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Poor Frames of References

you're not in this world to live up to mine. — BRUCE LEE —

Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other

people. — NIDO QUBEIN—

Because we see almost everyone else being indecisive, lacking in clarity, and being lazy and unproductive in regards to their potential, we often unconsciously assume that it justifies our own similar lack of clarity. But it doesn’t. The only thing it signifies is a failure to take personal responsibility. If the saying that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”, is true – then certainly it has to be a pretty bad idea to be using peers in homeostasis as social references to compare yourself to.

If this is the case for you then my only advice to you is to either stop hanging out with these friends of yours and find better suited ones, or to consciously stop comparing yourself to them because they make for poor references.

Just because everyone else is delusional doesn’t mean that you have to be delusional too. If it suddenly became fashionable to chop off an arm – would you do it?

Consider whether or not you choose to watch videos on YouTube based on the number of views the video has – as if to think that the more views the video has, the better it ought to be.

Is the amount of shown views for a video really a good indicator of its quality?

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It’s the same rationale that club owners use for keeping impractically long queues: to amplify the perceived quality of the club. If the club has a long queue then certainly it must be great, right?

The flaw lies in thinking that everyone else knows what they’re doing and have a high degree of clarity in their actions – when in truth extremely few do. Therefore pinging off of the environment and other people or groups of people is a very poor guide for governing your conduct and action.

Queues and crowds are interesting places to observe this part of human psychology. Because everyone is just pinging off of each other no one will do anything; sheep leading sheep equals mass confusion. So when the queue stops for a long while no one does anything about it because they expect others to do it. Everyone makes the

assumption that someone else will take care of it, but no one does. Eventually people will start complaining that the queue is slow or imply that they may be standing still, but few people do anything except to stand there.

Finally, some guy with balls walks past the queue and enters the venue. Everyone saw what happened and for the flash of a second think to themselves how the heck that could’ve happened, but since no one does anything about it they quickly justify it by

post-rationalizing that the guy surely must be the owner of the venue, or be a VIP etc.

So rather than thinking that “if he can do it then so can I, and go for it” people reaffirm their current situation and do nothing. If they accept the possibility of the first scenario it makes them

uncomfortable about their own situation, which could lead to change. And change is dangerous, thinks the brain.

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METACOGNITION

Of course we become what we think about. The real question is, do we know what we think about?

— STEVE SIEBOLD —

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

— ARISTOTLE —

etacognition is a fancy word for self-reflection; to think about what you think about and the nature of your thought process. The way that I use the word means to be aware of the thoughts you’re having.

Feeling or observing the symptoms of homeostasis within yourself will require a certain degree of practice and interpersonal

intelligence. Metacognition is the act of being aware of your current behavior, thought process, mental programming, and habits.

Do you know why some thought occurred – or when?

The more you practice it the less unconscious you become. By practicing metacognition you slowly but gradually increase the period of time between a stimulus and your response to it long enough for you to be able to catch yourself in the act of

unconsciously reacting.

You will soon notice how this skill is integral to the whole process of breaking out of homeostasis and maintaining that state.

Metacognition is the key tool being used as you go through the trial and error process of finding what works for you and what does not. There are various explanations as to how and why we think. I adhere to the belief that most, but not all, of our thoughts arise

unconsciously out of reaction to stimuli produced in our bodies as a response to external events and things that happen in our

surroundings. Or explained in another way – most thoughts arise from the information we perceive through our senses.

The vast majority of the information being gathered continually by our senses is blocked out and very little of it is noticed by the conscious mind. Depending on which scientific study being quoted

M

:

of Nikola Tesla ● ● ●

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you’ll find that the conscious mind can process information

somewhere between 20-40 bits (credited to Bruce Lipton), or 2000-4000 bits per second (credited to University of Pennsylvania). In either case it’s a very small number.

Sure, most thoughts are outside of our ability to control, but it’s possible to dramatically improve our metacognition and as we do our control increases over time, we can control and understand a lot of our thoughts and greatly fine-tune our thought process to

whatever goals we set.

* * *

You have thoughts and you are very much influenced by your

thoughts, but ultimately you aren’t your thoughts. That’s the basis for practicing metacognition.

One of the easiest ways of exercising your metacognition is to start observing your thoughts as if like they were separate entities or something being shown to you. This implies that you shift your frame of reference from being based wholly in the mind and thoughts to somewhere else where you’re able to objectively watch them as if on a screen.

Another useful analogy is that of your mind being a fishbowl and the thoughts being water. You’re no longer your mind and the thoughts running through it. You realize that your thoughts are actually under your control to a certain extent depending on your skill to practice metacognition. Meditating on a daily basis might be a helpful process for practicing these faculties. I dislike using the word meditation because many people have weird new agey associations with it. However, you definitely don’t need to delve into a ‘spiritual life’ or meditate to practice metacognition. There are other ways, but they all require you to have, or be willing to develop a certain extent of self-distance so that you become able look on your behavior and thoughts as if they belonged to someone else.

There are lots of other ways of increasing metacognition. I like reading biographies for this reason, it often gives you a vivid picture of an interesting person’s thought process.

There are times when we experience a temporary boost in overall clarity – including metacognition. I distinguish between different moments of clarity. First there are unusual times when you become able to see things from a radically different perspective. Perhaps from sub specie aeternitatis (eternal point of view), or maybe you are able to perceive where you are headed rather than just looking in front of you. Then there are recurring moments of clarity which provide a less powerful boost of metacognition. For me these times

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endorphins, but it’s very hard to make it last; thus an epiphany. I usually try to put it down in words as soon as possible, but words cannot accurately depict a brief powerful sensation – it’s one of those the-map-is-not-the-territory type of situation. However, after I

experience the same epiphanies a few times and compare my notes I usually begin to grasp it, and that makes the effort worth it.

You need to identify when this happens to you and start to purposely put yourself in this state as often as possible to practice

metacognition. These moments are to be savored. Squeeze

everything you can out of them – think deeply, write down how you feel or think, or film yourself. Of course, there’s more than one way of doing it; maybe you want to record a song or something, but it’s got to be something you can daily that helps you disidentify from your thoughts and analyze them. Try finding out the root cause of certain thoughts or urges that you consistently experience. It usually takes a while, but it’s well worth it.

Another very helpful way of improving metacognition is to keep a journal or commonplace, look it up. It doesn’t matter much whether you do this by pen, on your phone, or on your computer.

The point is to catch yourself in the act of wrongdoing and bring it up to the surface so that you become aware of your own unconscious behavior and immediately start to act in order to change it.

Another helpful activity in order to develop metacognition is to go somewhere you can be by yourself, close your eyes, and start

curiously asking questions to your mind. Casually observe whichever thoughts the mind brings up to your attention, but don’t buy into them. Don’t believe every thought or image you get in your head to be true – don’t trust your mind entirely as authority. Maintain your separate position of objectivity and casually observe the thoughts as if on a screen – without taking a particular stand or completely identifying with them. Don’t allow your thoughts to draw you in and lure you into becoming identified with them immediately even though there is a natural inclination to do just that. This activity can be hard at first, but it’s a helpful daily practice in many ways.

My final exercise is what I call, ‘holding counsel with your mind’, and the analogy I use for it is that I picture myself as a CEO or leader of sorts holding an important meeting in which I listen objectively to whatever information my closest counselors (my thoughts) are bringing up to my immediate attention. I picture myself sitting by a fine mahogany table, quietly listening to what my counselors believe

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ought to be my agenda for the day. What kind of matters do I have to attend to in the immediate future?

After having listened to what they have to say my job is to deem what is of relevance and what is not, some advice will be pure bullshit. I politely tell them to leave me to about my business, I will see them again tomorrow around the same time. I usually do this once or twice a day for about ten minutes.

* * *

The next time you press a button to open a door or ride the elevator, ask yourself: am I doing this consciously or do these actions perhaps stem unconsciously out of homeostasis?

Remember, homeostasis wants you to be comfortable and exert the least amount of energy possible.

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Principal Agent Theory

Principal agent theory is an economic theory which says that E.G a manager (principal) gets his employee (agent) to do a task for him. Principal agent theory then goes into depth about how the principal cannot ensure that his agent will do the work for him the way it was planned unless the agent is monitored at all times; and that isn’t possible. A common assumption is that the agent will shirk unless monitored or incentivized somehow.

In relation to breaking out of homeostasis, it can be said that you are the principal who wants a goal to be accomplished and your

mind/brain is the agent that has to carry it out.

The saying that “When the brain is stupid – the body suffers.” Holds somewhat true in this regard.

Therefore you need to observe and monitor the mind/brain to ensure that you are doing what you said you would, and EXPECT the incoming dumb-ass excuses, rationalizations, negative feelings, fear and doubt that arise as the brain tries desperately to conserve energy by shirking. The reason why it’s important that you expect this phenomenon is because it then makes you more able to deal with it when it shows up. By expecting this negative behavior from the brain you can ruthlessly dismiss it with certainty and see it for the trick it is. These mind-made excuses and fears are uncalled for and will only limit your potential for growth.

When these things happen to you more often, such as when you spend more time BOOH, it makes you develop an improved sense of intuition and metacognition. These mental capabilities help you catch low quality thoughts and emotions by stopping them before they get a hold of your mind and begin to fester in there. They work as anti-virus programs for your mind – helping you detect, clean out, and block the mental weeds you don’t want in there in the first place. To improve your metacognition it will be beneficial to implement the habit of writing down and thoroughly describing the sensation whenever you are in a really great emotional or mental state, whenever you feel really powerful and productive.

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Write it down

◊ How does it feel?

 Be very precise, the purpose is to map out certain stimuli that frequently occur when you hit this state. What are the so-called ‘tell-signs’?  I, for example, have three very clearly defined

tell-signs related to sound and sensation when it comes to different degrees of conscious concentration during meditation.

◊ What did you do before, was there anything

specific that happened?

 Can you identify if there is a recurring pattern that leads to this awesome state? You’ll want to find out if there certain things you do that stimulate this state, and start doing them to recreate it.

 Perhaps you moved around and talked to a lot of people, or maybe you were very focused on some activity, or maybe you ate something.

If you can accurately convey how it felt and find different recurring patterns as to why you entered that state it will increase the chances of engraving it in your mind and eventually let it become a point of reference for the times you slip out of it; and you definitely will from time to time. It’s a bit like sending messages between two different selves – the one who has BOOH and ‘woken up’ is now coaching the other you who’s ‘asleep’ and locked inside a mental prison by the mind and thus in a state of homeostasis.