Brian-writing is important but holding pens is sometimes really difficult for me. Hypothesis: repetitive restaurant damage to my wrists like hot grease burns as well as using abrasive cleansing agents without protective gloves. I am more careful with my body these days because I want to rock out with it when I'm 90.
I was on some obsessive trip about graphology the other day, i forget exactly what, I'm sure ill return to it though. It suddenly seemed crucially important to me that we do keep teaching kids cursive handwriting. Something about quantum loops and information security.
anyhow In my condensed digitized list I instantly noticed and was fascinated with how long and hard I have been trying to quit coffee. I could see morphogenesis emerging as I tried to find a language structure that would disable caffeine addiction.
I still have a morning coffee, but I am at peace with that. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" observes Voltaire.
Do I enjoy morning coffee?
I can easily say now that I do not, but I still do it. I accidentally had a second coffee yesterday afternoon, which was delicious, but halfway through it I started to feel super sick, nauseated, all bodily veins expanding beyond capacity, head exploding, stomach churning.
"LEAN INTO THIS EXPERIENCE!!!" I said to myself. "Get right into how terrible this is making you feel. Feeeeeeeeel it all the way!" (this was one of my techniques for quitting smoking, which was like. a bajillion times easier than quitting coffee) I slowly sipped the rest of the filthy beverage, each time re-enforcing the heinous disgust i was experiencing.
This morning my coffee tasted & felt utterly repugnant. I am filled with remorse as it courses through my adrenal system. Yay! Progress!
Okay. So how I got here: (I've been trying to un-install coffee for about 12 years so.. yeah its been a long road)
If you went back to the moment of inception, it was when doctors told a gentleman who employed me that of all the things that were deteriorating his body, coffee was the most accelerating deleterious factor. More than cigarettes even. This idea profoundly impacted me.
There are of course, an entire spectrum of perspective, but I think if you want to understand the heart of the matter, Sandor Katz is your guy. In Wild Fermentation, he writes:
"The enormity of the economic and cultural changes wrought to the entire world by the mass production and global trade of chocolate, coffee and tea cannot be overstated. These stimulants, recognized today as addictive substances, were 'the ideal drugs for the industrial revolution' according to ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna. 'they provided an energy lift, enabling people to keep working at repetitive tasks that demanded concentration. Indeed the tea and coffee break is the only drug ritual that has never been criticized by the modern industrial state.'"
Katz then goes on to discuss sugarcane, slavery, dehumanization, forced mass export of stimulants vs maintenance of local sustainable local food production. All that depressing doom and gloom Rape the Planet stuff. I'll spare divulging deeply into it so as not to dash all of your hopes and dreams. skim skim skim and ah yes: "If the people who work the fields had any control over the land they worked they would be growing food to eat, not luxury stimulants for people on other continents."
"The first sweetened cup of hot tea to be drunk by an English worker was a significant historical event, because it prefigured the transformation of an entire society, a total remaking of it's economic and social basis" Writes [Sidney W.] Mintz . "We must struggle to understand fully the consequences of that and kindred events, for upon them was erected an entirely different conception of the relationship between producers and consumers, of the meaning of work, of the definition of self, of the nature of things. What commodities are, and what commodities mean, would thereafter forever be different"... Katz finishes off by explaining that Decadence, (from the word "decay") is unsustainability: behavior likely to contribute to a biological or social decline or collapse.
this is the part of my essay where I attempt to smoosh it back together with something I've been re-working for the last 3 years. How to anchor a peak state:
Say you want to change a behavoir. Let's switch your delicious rich steamy hot sweet creamy morning americano for a green juice. How do you make the glass of pond scum be the thing that you desire?
There are a lot of facets to habit change. First You rip that coffee maker out of the wall and plunk your juicer in the exact spot where it sat. Now. Chuck your coffee maker. get rid of it. okay just kidding. give yourself some self love and time to adjust to the new habits. have nice conversations with yourself every morning when you dig your coffee pot way out from the back of the closet like "what is this habit for? is it helping me? why? why? why? what is the point of my experience here on earth (idk those are my scripts, work with whatever feels natural for your own soul)
The point is forcing the self to get super conscious about it's decisions.
The brain, however, is super hack-able.
If you use an anchoring technique, you will notice results much faster. (30 – 90 days, in areas of your life where change would have taken years or... maybe never occurred at all)
So you get up in the morning. You make your favorite americano. But you don't emotionally associate with it like you used to. You can say something like “okay, I'm still doing this. But I want to kick this habit and this is why. It's giving me inflammation, adrenal fatigue... its damaging my teeth and my bone density. I know this behavior is wrong for me, and I have the power to change it. I give myself permission to feel good while I make the changes in my life.”
Then you make your green juice. You get associated with your favorite music. It has to be YOUR FAVORITE MUSIC! The sounds, the rhythms, the harmonies that totally get you pumped up and feeling amazing. What music does this for you? Is it the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Is it Snoop Dog? Nickelback? The Spice Girls???? There are no right or wrong answers. It has to be the music that makes your own heart happy. Start feeling amazing. Lay out your delicious organic celery and spinach. Mmmm. Look at that crispy leaf lettuce. Yeah. That's going to feel SO GREAT in your body!!! tell yourself how excited you are to put this beautiful energy inside you! “I'm so worth feeling this amazing!” you say. Rawr! get your brain pumping Seratonin! Now your brain is making magical memories of you in Love with your Green Juice!!! Spin those Awesome-y tunes! I said GOGH!
[personally i think variety is the spice of life]
AWWWWW YEAH CHUG THAT POND SCUM! MMMM SO TASTY!!!! FEEL THE VITAL LIFE FORCES OF CHLOROPHYLL ENRICHING YOUR EXISTENCE! WHOOOO! YEAH!
Drink the juice. Dance to your tunes. Create more and more positive neural associations. Get right in state and BELIEVE you are worth feeling this amazing all the time. When you make the new pattern more powerful than the old one, your bio-computer will have no choice but to comply.
