Aristic Expression, Endurance, and Habits

How I Express Myself Artistically

Firstly, allow me to clarify what art means to me, considering that it is subjective. Art is the free expression of an abstract idea, concept, or movement. Art can be anything you can engage in or escape into that provides you with solace from stressful, externally-induced negativity, whether or not that inspires, excites or pleases someone else is entirely irrelevant.

My particular form of art involves movement. It involves freely experimenting and exerting my biomechanical vessel which permits enormous freedom unto me. The freedom to move allows an unthinkable amount of possibilities within this physical world. The world is no longer a separate, independent landscape, but a canvas.

It has been in the midst of the forest canopy where I discovered myself, not as this character that we all selectively assemble for social interaction, but rather as an animal, as the bipedal naked ape that I am. Not to assert that our social characteristics are futile, as an animal we depend on our allies, our social tendencies allow us to thrive. The developed thought and invention that occurs between two or more apes working in conjunction is a beautiful phenomenon which has put man on the moon. Yet, I only seem to discover who I really am on a very deep and fundamental level when I am alone with myself, exerting myself to and past my limits.

Evolutionary Endurance

Our bodies are incredible and magnificent machines, engineered through millions of years of evolution. Our particular form of physical prowess is in the realm of endurance, which also happens to be the most difficult, both physically and mentally. After a couple hours of running, everything hurts for everyone, no matter how much you practice or train. That is why it is called endurance, you don’t necessarily cease feeling pain, you just learn to endure it and befriend it.

Our ancestors engaged in a method of hunting known as Persistence Hunting. It is exactly what it sounds like. You persistently pursue a prey until you exhaust it. Quadrupeds can’t sweat; therefore they have a tough time regulating their internal body temperature. The only way they can cool themselves is by panting and they’re unable to pant while they’re running.

Everything about our body, literally from head to toe, indicates that we are an endurance animal, engineered to run distance and run it efficiently. As an animal, we possess the most slow-twitch muscle fibers; most animals possess very many fast-twitch fibers. This is good, if you’re a cheetah. Cheetah’s however, can’t run more than a kilometer at full sprint, otherwise they will literally die of a heart attack. You must secure your prey within that first burst otherwise you physically must stop and let the prey escape while you’re glycogen stores replenish.

Habits 

Our character is essentially a large collection of various habits. Most are subconscious and unknown to us, some we consciously choose to engage in day after day. Habits are the brains way of simplifying tasks, reducing the amount of thought-energy that must be spent on particular tasks.

Making breakfast immediately after you wake-up should be a rather simple habit. If you’ve discovered a specific food that you enjoy eating every morning, you don’t even need to think about how to make it. Tying your shoes becomes a habit, you just do it. It’s very similar to training muscles for a particular task, at first you need to consciously be aware of every movement until it eventually becomes automatic.

Knowing that we have a set of habits that ultimately determine the course of our life allows us to change the deleterious ones and preserve the beneficial ones. Some people get consumed by deleterious habits because they reward immediate gratification, such as junk food. Becoming aware of the habit and then further, the catalyst which sets the habit in motion, allows us to excise certain habits we could live without.

The most effective form of controlling habits is routinely journaling each day. Journaling is an exceptional time to format your ideas and also identify certain things about yourself. It’s a time where you can evaluate and assess your ego and the way it behaves, allowing you to make steps in order to change it. I typically write on no particular topic for about ten minutes, to get the cogs spinning, and then I write down three habits that I don’t receive any benefits from. Next, you need to identify what causes those habits to start in the first place. When I am bored, I resort to my IPod so I can mindlessly scroll through various social media pages to occupy myself. I identified that habit and now I am consciously working towards excising it permanently. It doesn’t happen instantaneously, you need to progressively excise them. If you attempt to instantaneously stop, you risk relapsing soon thereafter or acquiring a new, but not much better, habit to replace it. After I became aware of what caused me to resort to my IPod, the boredom, I targeted that first, not the IPod. I usually write down two things that I can do to cure the habit that are productive. Not three because having too many options causes me to become overwhelmed and gives me difficulty deciding. Two things is easy because it is one or the other, if you don’t want to do one, you do the other.

A habit that has incurred a tremendous amount of benefits to me is the daily morning-walk. I typically go on walks that range from 5km to 10km on an empty stomach, besides 600ml of water and my mug of coffee I bring with me. I will usually listen to a podcast, but sometimes I just put on some instrumental music and let my mind wander. Not only does the walk keep you physically engaged while stretching off the eight to ten hours of stiffness from sleeping, it allows me to format my ideas and plan my day. I've lost four pounds through walking three times everyday for only the past week! Not that I was dealing with weight issues, but being as light as possible allows me to be as fast as possible on the bike. Besides the weight loss and idea formation, it's helped me cure the morning fog that many of us suffer from by stimulating the metabolism and causing an increased amount of circulation. The walk is the most basic, primal, human thing you can do which will benefit you in every way.

That's all for today.