Your Call to Arms
““A ton of talk weighs less than nothing if it is not backed by action.””
We are amid a period of marvelous advancement in terms of technology and how it impacts our daily lives. We have an app for everything, a handheld device that connects us to all our friends in an instant, the latest news and you can buy virtually anything without leaving your chair. We in the developed world have infinitely more creature comforts than any generation before; everything is being made easier for us. We now seek to ‘hack’ or shorten any task that seems laborious or too difficult for our modern busy lives.
Things have reached a point where we exist in digitally crafted bubbles of warmth, comfort, and our preferred materialistic toys. So many things that would have required our attention and development of skillsets are no longer required.
You can start your car from the hallway and wait for it to heat up, so you don’t have to deal with a few minutes of being cold. You can have your food delivered to you and not even have to go to all the trouble of getting cash out to pay the delivery driver.
Things for us in the developed world could be said to be easier than they have ever been, so therefore we should all be happier, healthier, and wealthier. This is not the case.
We are not happier and there is a wealth of medical evidence and studies that frighteningly show increases in the rates of mental illnesses and increases in the rates of suicide. Happiness is so often something we now seek out rather than seem capable of creating. We feel like cogs in a new industrial age of technology where you can work with people all over the world without ever having to leave your desk or in some case your own home.
For our mental illnesses we are prescribed anti-depressants or other pills, we are told to rest and get away from things to recharge for a while. We are told that maybe we should move jobs or try and find a new place to ease our daily commute, perhaps retail therapy.
In terms of our physical health there have been increases in cardiovascular and obesity related diseases. Because of our mental illnesses, we develop physical ailments such as addiction and associated diseases from the myriad of over the counter and prescribed drugs we pump into our bodies.
So, we in the collective sense are neither truly happier nor healthier. Wealth as it always does fluctuate among nations, classes, and time periods as we see bubbles arise and bubbles burst, whilst a prosperous nation results in greater consumerism and visible wealth it doesn’t guarantee or provide for certain that people would be happy.
In fact, many of us feel that we have become blinded by consumerism, advertising and a culture or wanting more and seek to ‘get a break’, from these or ‘get away’ for a period. How do we get a break or get away?
We seek to travel and to see the world so to speak. We head to far off destinations in Asia, the Middle East, the USA, or Europe in search of ourselves. We hope to find our true selves and return enlightened and ready to face the daily toils with a newfound vigour and purpose.
This type of travel can serve as a tremendous growing experience and add layers to your personal story and experience, travelling to certain countries may fulfil a dream for you or it may change your life.
However, most of us who embark on our annual or if you’re lucky bi-annual holiday merely use these as a brief escape from the pressure of our day jobs, from arduous decision-making and seek a form of separation from society in whatever way we feel will serve us best. How often have you heard, ‘I just need a week on a beach somewhere warm, with my book to chill out for a while’? This isn’t right and it’s because of the stressful lives we lead.
We commute to work in traffic, we arrive at work, and we are mentally challenged and create our outputs through computers or electronic devices. We eat at our desks and the food and drink that we consume leaves us ill, bloated, gassy, lethargic, and possibly leads to our health and weight issues.
We’re softening up, we’re losing the hard skills that we used to have and we’re moving toward a digital age of having the world’s knowledge at our fingertips and perhaps someday directly interfacing with our brains.
So, what’s the problem?
The problem is that whilst we have a myriad of ways to stimulate our brains to alleviate the monotony of our daily jobs, we don’t have a corresponding physical outlet or mechanism that requires labour. We have not evolved to sit in chairs for 8–10-hour days. We’ve not evolved to stand stooped over smart phones and we have not evolved to move from climate-controlled building to climate-controlled car to climate-controlled house.
We evolved with a need for physical capabilities to survive and thrive in the world. Your physical activities including the food you eat are intrinsically linked to your mental wellbeing, Food directly influences mood. Physical activity causes hormones to be released in your body aids the digestive process and results in a ‘high’ or good feeling when complete.
Granted you might feel terrible during hard exercises but afterwards you will be aware of the positive endorphins released. We spend so much of our day with our thoughts, introspectively analysing every single moment or conversation, self-criticising any decisions that were wrong, having internal arguments that we’ll never actually air in public to the party we so want to prove that we are in fact correct in the argument, these thoughts serve no purpose other than to upset you.
Our Great Challenge
The solution to our mental toils is not an app, and it’s not a book or course you need to learn or complete. Many of us today seem absolutely determined to mentally imprison ourselves in a sort of mental paralysis through constant over analysis. We’d rather read a self-help book about how to do something than do what the book says we need to do.
We’d rather go to a convention and be inspired for a day only to have that inspiration seemingly evaporate and our solution is to go to another convention and chase the same high and hope we can feel it again.
Our culture today has a fascination with the ‘Warrior Mind-set’ of old. So called mental gurus are charging eye watering fees to sell you on the principles of this methodology or that warrior culture.
Navy SEAL’s and Special forces books are bestsellers time and time again as we seek to learn about and admire the physical, mental, and emotional challenges many of these men and women have faced as we again introspectively chastise ourselves and re-read our embossed mental catalogue of mistakes and failings.
We question whether we have the mental fortitude to be a Warrior like those we’ve read about. We wonder could we ever pass their rights of passage and wear the proud badges they display.
Newspapers, articles are full of terminology like a heroic performance, brave loss or talk about sports professionals’ mental strength in the face of adversity. We lap this up and we adore and follow sports personalities in a cult like manner, wanting to be them.
Is there a solution?
The solution is that we need to be tested. You need to be tested. You need to face physical, mental, emotional, and tangible challenges. Things that you may not believe you can do, things that will beat you down and make you break, things that you need to overcome, not by circumventing the problem with some technology fad but instead through the development and cultivation of the age-old virtues like mental toughness, honour, fidelity, morale courage, physical courage, playfulness, and inventiveness.
These are not gained through a screen with better resolution than your own eyes they’re gained from going out and doing something. They’re not gained through a book, through a conference or through talking.
Theodore Roosevelt once said, ‘
“A ton of talk weighs less than nothing if it is not backed by action.”
As it stands you might very well be mentally completing the equivalent of an iron man race daily in your job but if you’re not carrying out some sort of physical activity, you’re not balancing your internal chemical based books. Whether you like it or not you are biologically and chemically complex being and as a result you require more than just one form of stimulation.
This is especially true if you don’t derive any pleasure form the mental iron man you do for your employer. If you hate your job, you’re basically expending a fierce amount of your energy for something you intrinsically have no care for and you won’t even be able to see a tangible physical output e.g. if you had hand crafted an object.
Even just by reading that statement is enough to depress anyone.
Physical activity although it is not the lynchpin of living a happier, healthier, and wealthier life it is a fundamental pillar from which one can build and rely on. It is a strenuous voluntary activity through which you can look to nurture, grow, develop, and master your body and mind. You can defeat the mental ailments; you can give yourself a purpose beyond just being a cog in someone else’s wheel through rigorous training and challenges.
To grow and develop as a person you will unfortunately have to feel pain. Your approach and your willingness to face this pain and come out the other side will define you as a person. Doing this through physical activity may not be the overarching solution to our cultural issues, but I can guarantee you it will be a core pillar behind the eventual solution.
Remember, chin up, chest out and handle it.
Yours,
Stephen