Build Resilience by Intermittent Living and Seeking Discomfort: the Stoic Way
Wisdom how to recover quickly from difficulties and toughness. My video including 5 tips on building your confidence. And some other great quotes, visuals and videos I stumbled upon this week!
💪 Building resilience by seeking discomfort
I had an interesting conversation this weekend about extreme sports such as bungee jumping or skydiving. It’s actually a way of challenging yourself, a way of seeking discomfort.
📜 The Stoic way
The concept of voluntary discomfort is thousands of years old. It’s one of the basic principles of stoicism. The idea behind it is that if we put ourselves through difficult situations, then we're prepared for the misfortunes that might come in the future. We build resilience!
While all excesses are hurtful, excess of comfort is the most hurtful of all. — Seneca, On Providence, Book IV
If we experience discomfort and get through it, then we realize that "Oh this isn't actually so bad". This makes us more restful throughout life.
From a stoic point of view, we have to really embrace discomfort. F.e. if we forgot to wear a jacket and it’s cold outside, instead of seeing it from a negative perspective, we should think that we're choosing the embrace the cold air. That's how you minimize feeling negative emotions.
⚖ Intermittent living
The modern concept which is developed on this is the concept of intermittent living. It’s based on the Hormetic Window which basically says that the right amount of stress is making you stronger instead of weaker.
Some examples of intermittent living
Intermittent drinking: not drinking for longer periods during the day and instead bulk drinking 3-4 times a day decreases stress
Intermittent fasting: this is probably the most known concept of intermittent living.
Disclaimer: do not use this as a way to lose weight. This is great for a short-term moment of discomfort, but in the long term, this can have a severe impact on your cortisol levels. Take a look at my previous post on intuitive eating vs. dieting for more details on the disadvantages of diets and fasting.Intermittent cold: f.e. the Wim Hoff method or cold showers (showers below 15 degrees of 30+ seconds give you more energy and boost your immune system)
Intermittent hypercapnia: f.e. take deep breaths in a plastic bag of +-5 L for 3 min. (do it seated!)
Intermittent heat: f.e. sauna
…
Another, more fun, example is the Youtube channel “Seek Discomfort” by Yes Theory where they challenge each other into fears and uncomfortable situations such as cliff jumping, a 36-hour mountain summit, or a road trip through Syria.
So, seeking discomfort through intermittent living, daily uncomfortable situations or extreme sports build resilience and prepare us for future bad days and misfortunes.
🎬 Video: 5 tips to build your confidence - how I improved my self-esteem
After a break, I picked up Youtube again. For now, I’m not targeting any release schedule. The goal is just to publish 1 good video at a time.
😍 My Favorite Things of last week
🎭 Improv Jam: I went to my first improv jam in Brussels last week. You attend a jam as part of the audience but can participate in the show as well when you feel it. It was really fun to do!
📺 Advertisement - language: I’m not the biggest football fan and definitely not a fan of betting, but I have a weakness for language and good advertisements. I absolutely love how they play with the language in this “We all Speak The Same Language” ad! (NL/FR)
💻 Artificial Intelligence - I saw this post about how they asked an AI engine to create images of “a salmon swimming in a river”. This is what the machine regenerated…
📚 Book What We Owe The Future: I didn’t read the book yet, only the book review of ‘What We Owe The Future’ by William MacAskill. One of the main ideas of the book is longtermism: the idea that it should be a key moral priority of our time to positively influence the distant future. One of the questions that stuck to me was: “If you could safe today 1000 people, would you do it? What if these people can only be saved 100 years from now? 500 years? 1000 years? Does it matter?'“
🗨 Quote of the week
“You often feel tired not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks that light in you”
by Alexander Den Heijer
✏Visual of the week
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Xeno hormesis is another cool concept on where you consume plants that have been stressed before and they are much healthier than the normal plants. They often show stress by showing a more vibrant colour. So eat your dark green and dark red veggies and fruits! ;) check out David Sinclair for more on this topic.