March 2023

Hey all,

After over 5 years of meditating daily, my streak has come to a close. And it couldn’t have come in a less climactic way. I just forgot to meditate one night last month.

The main reason I meditated for those 1,800+ sessions, totaling nearly 400 hours, was for the true difference I felt from meditating. I’d be lying, though, if I said I didn’t like the streak. I used my competitive mentality to my advantage which forced me to push through many times I would have otherwise not hit that play button on my Headspace app.

Regardless of the motivation, I never ended a motivation thinking “that’s wasn’t worth it.” Each session, in one way or another, taught me something. Here are some things i learned from those 400+ hours of meditation:

• Meditation is hard. In all of the years I’ve been doing it I’ve probably achieved a true bout of flow less than 20 times.

• While flow is nice, the biggest benefit was improving my interception and self-awareness. Whereas years ago I had no concept or awareness of this, I can literally tell what part of my body I feel certain emotions and what those sensations are.

• These formal meditations have nudged me to be more mindful, especially when I’m at emotional extremes—happy, sad, angry, frustrated. This has, in turn, made me less judgemental of myself (and others) when the emotions become heightened.

• The environment has a strong influence on me. I’ve meditated in saunas, airplanes, on beaches, and on a bench early one morning at a bachelor party. At times I use my surroundings as a way to embrace mindfulness and other times I use it as a challenge to overcome the external influences. Through this, I’ve learned to voluntarily seek the positive environments that have a net positive, often subtle, sway over me,

While I’ll eventually start another streak, right now I’m going to fill that mindfulness meditation gap with more mindless sleeping.

Have a great week.

Brian 

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March Blog Posts

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Mind

• Atlas of the Heart: 3 Takeaways

• Supermarket Psychology: Sneaky Influences To Get You To Spend Money

Body

• The 5 Worst Shoulder Exercises (& What To Do Instead)

• 8 Tools For Better Sleep

• Q&A: What’s The Best Way To Stretch? (And Do You Even Need To?)

• The Body by Bill Bryson: 3 Takeaways

• How To Improve Your HRV Score: 8 Ways According To Science

• What Are The Healthiest Fish To Eat? (And The Ones To Avoid)

• What’s In My Water? Health Concerns, Water Tests, And The Best Filter

Dad

• The Secret Of Happy Families: 3 Takeaways

• The New Nordic Diet: The Best Diet For Kids’ Mental Health?

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The MBD Corner

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Mind

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“You can gauge someone's ignorance by the number of phenomena they explain with the same answer.

Those who blame many different issues (e.g. war, poverty, pollution) on just 1 cause (e.g. capitalism) are recycling explanations because the demand for answers outstrips their supply.”

— Gurwinder Bhogal

The foreign ways of life that Americans would embrace. Surprised that the minimum paid vacation allowance didn’t get more votes.

Why do so many action heroes’ names begin with J?

Emotional granularity in a picture.

Body

The Satiety Index: foods that are the most filling according to a study by the University of Sydney, Australia.

Most Filling

1. Potato (boiled)

2. Ling fish

3. Oatmeal

4. Oranges

5. Apples

6. Brown pasta

7. Beef

8. Baked beans

9. Grapes

10. Whole meal bread

Least Filling

1. Croissant

2. Cake

3. Doughnut

4. Mars bandy bar

5. Peanut

6. Yogurt

7. Crisps (chips?)

8. Ice cream

9. Museli

10. White bread

Walk often and walk faster. A study on 78,000+ adults in the UK found:

• “Those who walked 9,826 steps a day were 50 percent less likely to suffer from dementia within seven years.

• People who walked more than 40 steps per minute slashed dementia risk by 57 percent with even less steps — 6,315 to be exact.”

The greatest iPhone health Hack of all time? You be the judge.

This is a great Endurance Planet podcast and article by the Sock Doc on the hamstrings. One of the biggest takeaways for me was how the back and the shoulder (specifically the lats) are related to hamstring activation.

Dad

Dad jokes are good for kids apparently. According to Marc Hye-Knudsen, a humour researcher and the lab manager at Aarhus University’s Cognition and Behavior Lab,

• “It is worth considering dad jokes as a pedagogical tool that may serve a beneficial function for the very children who roll their eyes at them. By continually telling their children jokes that are so bad that they’re embarrassing, fathers may push their children’s limits for how much embarrassment they can handle. They show their children that embarrassment isn’t fatal.”

The average price that the Tooth Fairy pays has skyrocketed.

Best parenting advice. A list of 345 of the top tips from ParentData. My favorites:

• Kids need 3 things from parents and other caretakers: nurture, structure and latitude, different amounts in different moments, for different kids. Latitude is the hardest and the one you're probably providing too little of.

• there is good enough parenting. you don't have to be perfect, and your children will not be either. that's okay.

• Start how you wish to continue.

• Almost all parenting advice you receive is terrible.

Children are compassionate unless there’s a reward at stake, according to one study.