Arnold Schwarzenegger var inspiration till dagens inlägg

Dagens inlägg kom till tack vare inspiration från Arnold Schwarzenegger…

…Detta efter att jag fick ett mejl från honom med rubriken ”Do you have a comfort crisis?”. Detta mejl trillade in i mejlkorgen när min FIRE-vardag var som allra mest inne i vardagslunken. Redan mejlets rubrik fick mig att stanna upp och fundera lite.

Jag skulle kanske inte säga att jag har någon form av bekvämlighetskris (enligt gängse normer), men å andra sidan hade jag vid tidpunkten inte heller några direkt superutmanande uppgifter eller saker utanför min bekvämlighetszon.

När jag läste Arnolds mejl stod det klart att han i sitt mejl refererade till boken The Comfort Crisis. Det är en bok som är skriven av Michael Easter. Jag lockades till att läsa boken och läste ut den i början av år 2025.

Sammantaget tycker jag att det var en mycket intressant och tänkvärd bok. De anteckningar som jag tog när jag läste boken summeras nedan (på engelska).

• Most people today rarely step outside their comfort zone. That is limiting the degree to which we experience our one wild and precious life

• Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physics and physiological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancer, depression, etc and even the feeling of  lack of meaning and purpose

• Alcohol was my (= the author) comfort blanket

• Comfort from alcohol was not only numbing me to the life I wanted to live, it was also killing me

• The author killed any semblance of boredom with his smartphone. All in all, he rarely felt the sensation of discomfort 

• He started to cleanse himself by stop drinking alcohol, etc

• Humans evolved to seek comfort. We instinctually default to safety, warmth and extra food and minimal efforts etc

• Discomfort is both physical and emotional, for example hunger, cold, pain and stress

• The modern comforts and conveniences that now exist influence our daily experience. For example cars, computers, television, smartphones, and ultra processed food have been used by our species for about 100 years or less. That is around 0.03% of the time we have walked the earth

• Constant comfort is a radically new thing for us humans

• Americans now spend about 93% of their time indoors in climate controlled environments

• At the same time people are more stressed than ever today

• Humans can generally not see black and white, instead we see grey. This was found in a research study. For example, if you will tell whether or not a person looks threatening. Imagine someone shows you several photos of people. You will answer if the person on each photo looks threating or not. In the first phase, the researcher shows photos of people who (according to many) looks threatening and people who (according to many) not look threatening. After a while the researcher asked the participants only “non-threatening” faces. In that situation, the participants started to adjust their scale of how a threatening person look. This is basically “problem creep”. It explains that as we experience fewer problems, we don’t become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. With other words, we end up with the same number of troubles

• Also comfort creep is an existing phenomenon. What is comfort today is being seen as discomfort tomorrow when new comforts are introduced 

• New research shows that depression, anxiety and feeling like you don’t belong can be linked to being untested

• Imagine a circle big as a plate. Then the very inner part is the comfort zone. Most people never go near outside this comfort zone. The plate symbolises your potential, i.e. most people are not near to realise their entire potential

• Nothing great in life comes with complete assurance of success

• Science showed: Compared to the people who had been sheltered their entire lives, the people who had faced some adversity reported better psychological wellbeing over the several years of the study. They had higher life satisfaction and fewer psychological and physical symptoms

• Newness can even slow down our sense of time

• Studies shows that dementia significantly dropped in people who dedicated more of their lives to learning

• A rule of thumb: the higher population density wherever a person is, the less happy they will likely be

• Fear is apparently a mindset often felt prior to experience

• Despite the fact that people today are rarely alone, we are increasingly lonely. Nearly half of Americans say they are lonely

• The average American each day touches his phone 2 617 times

• The lack of boredom is burning us out (among many other things)

• Our brains essentially have two moods, focused and unfocused. Focus mood is a mind at attention. It is on when we are processing outside information, completing a task, checking our cell phone, watching tv etc. Unfocused mood is on when we are not paying attention. It is inward mind-wandering, a rest state that restores and rebuilds the resources need to work better and more efficiently in the focused state. To kill boredom by watching tv is making our brain a disservice. Modern life overworks the hell out of our brains

• The way we treat boredom today is like junk food for your mind

• The paradox is that the mechanisms that helped keep us alive historically are now hurting our health 

• The key to improve productivity and performance might be to occasionally do nothing at all. It prompts us to think distinctly, in a way that delivers more original ideas

• More than half of Americans don’t go outside for any type of recreation at all

• The world is full of sick people, the number increasing rapidly the closer one gets to a sofa or soda fountain 

• Another survey found that Americans increasingly see the TV not as an entertainment device but as a companion

• Silence is more relaxing than most of the “relaxing” products marketers try to sell us

• Continuously trying to add more stuff on top of what you are doing and constantly experimenting with shiny new things is almost never the answer. It just adds another layer of stress and complication. I believe people should be doing less and eliminating limiters to progress

• Hawthorne effect: People change their behaviours when they know they are being checked

• Nowadays real hunger just drives 20% of what we eat

• Find some calorie negative way of dealing with stress. For example, take a walk (instead of eat) when you are stressed. Many people eat when they are stressed to get rid of the discomfort

• We fully metabolise our last meal after 12 to 16 hours, depending on how much we ate

• Many of us are so unaware of our impending death that we forget to live true to ourselves, which is one of the most common regrets of Americans on their deathbeds

• You act like life is fulfilling a checklist. “I need a good wife/husband, a good car, nice house, good job etc. But this plan will never materialise perfectly. And even if it does, then what? You never settle you just add more things to your list

• This checklist plan does not do you truly happy

• People who have not thought about death tend to be the one with regrets on their deathbed

• The average American adult sits for 6.5 hours per day and the kids are sitting for more than 8 hours per day

• Just ten days of not using a muscle significantly weakens and shrinks it

• Pain was and still is an evolutionary advantage. It is our brains way of telling us we are doing something potentially dangerous. Yet we mute it with pills, surgeries, or rest