One of the downsides of staying in the one place for too long is that your ‘s thoughts start to stagnant, and also, your overall worldview starts to stagnant.

Takeaway point — once you feel like your thoughts are starting to stagnate, you must move, travel, etc.

You are the brand, you are the product.

Seneca playing with water, and also my approach to weight lifting?

Isn’t this insanely optimistic and insanely epic? And awesome?

Rather than trying to “keep in touch“ with people, it is best to simply prune the people that you interact with and engage with.

Keep your distance, or don’t interact with people who give you a unsettling feeling.

Vlog

Lifestyle Thoughts

After all of my world travels, nomading around, experimentation with lifestyle etc … this is what I have discovered:

Honestly, all places suck.

Even more,

I don’t even think there’s any place which is more “optimal“ for anything.

What do you care for?

The first thing to address is first, critically think about what you really care for. For me, I care for the gym, weight lifting, hypelifting, the Costco business Center for meat, thinking, blogging, vlogging, etc. Also traveling and entrepreneurship.

I think with a lot of people try to do is chase some sort of lifestyle, mode of living, or place which they consider “successful”. For example, think about all these people who moved to the Bay Area, San Francisco, the city, New York, Brooklyn, London etc.

With a lot of these cities, it seems that people desire this:

I desire to become a more interesting, influential, and more important person. If I move to more important cities, I shall become more important.

But is this true? No.

I forget which great Greek philosopher said, “I would rather turn my own city into an Athens, instead go to Athens.”

Back in the day, Athens was essentially the New York City in ancient Greece. All of the happening things were in Athens.

However in terms of mentality, I do find it much more interesting and noble to strive to turn your shitty city into an Athens, instead of just moving to Athens.

THE NEW ATHENS?

How can you create your own new Athens?

I’ve found my paradise?

Maybe instead of wasting time and meandering around, just set down your feet, fuck it, and just start getting shit done.

Don’t wait for optimal.

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Critical lifestyle thinking?

Once again, what we need to critically think and consider is this:

What is it that I really desire out of my life?

For more critical thinking, have a chat with WHY APP? ZEN OF ERIC KIM.

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The ideal life?

Some more critical thinking:

What is the ideal life, for me?

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assuming you’re going to be traveling in the summer anyways.

Maybe you could be a barbell; live in an insanely boring suburb, and live a maximally interesting life during the summer time in the city in a foreign place?

Something funny I have discovered; honestly, all places suck. Knowing this, the question that is, how can you best extract the maximum upsides out of wherever you live? Whatever your lifestyle is?

As an experiment, today I worked out early in the morning. I woke up at around 6:30 AM naturally, drink a bunch of coffee, Deathwish coffee, and then headed to the gym.

The gym in the morning is actually very interesting. First and foremost, the facilities and bathrooms are way cleaner. Also starting off the day with a hot sauna after a nice caffeine buzz is surprisingly nice.

One rep max:

When is it that things go south? When we rush things, and don’t take our time.

For example, all of the injuries I’ve got at the gym or weightlifting have always happened when I tried to rush a workout, and didn’t sufficiently warm up etc. stretching.

Maintenance is for losers!

The difference between a growth mentality and a maintenance mentality.

Boring is not virtuous!

Almost everything is lame.

Insane optimism is good!

What is the point of existence? To fuck shit up:

Fuck up the world!

To fuck shit up, to fuck up the world! (FUTW as JAY Z says)

If you feel adrenaline, and maybe some fear, this is a good thing.

A lemming is “wise”, a savage is “foolish”.

Lemmings “do their research“, while savages simply experiment for themselves.

Lemmings do “proper form“, and ask for critique and feedback and get coaches and trainers. Savages disdain what is proper.

Perhaps in life and our equipment, we want to have overconfidence in it.

Better at the gym.

The basic idea is every day, increase the weight by 1%.

The world adapts to you — the Steve Jobs approach.

In praise of lamb meat! Costco Business Center has lamb meat in the frozen aisle chopped up into cubes for super cheap!

For example, countries starting to accept bitcoin as tax payment?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein

When people see me, they are shocked, to see my full body tan, etc. People are surprised to see I healthy human being?

The funny thing is at the gym, everyone wants to become super big, buff, “put on weight“, etc. But, I don’t think this is the goal. The goal is simply not to be a weakling and puny.

For example, my physique and my look. Whenever I atlas lift 895 pounds and beyond, and I strap on more than nine plates, and max out the barbell, I am always kind of a spectacle. I think this is the shock that people have:

I do not look like this huge, steroided out guy, yet, I can lift a demigod amount.

The only knowledge, wisdom, ideas, etc. that I have gleaned from reading, reading philosophy, reading literature, or even from documentaries cinema movies etc. is when the things I learn are useful.

Maybe a thing with education and life and things is this; it isn’t about having positive “good” role models, but simply, to keep your kids, and also keep yourself away from bad influences, bad role models, etc. Or in other words, your kid doesn’t have to go to the best private school, or the best school in general, just make sure that they don’t go to a bad school or a ghetto school.

For example, where is it that kids learn bad behavior, bad words, bad behaviors, etc.? Once they go to school, and they meet other kids, and when kids exhibit “bad“ behavior, it is not their fault, simply a reflection of their parents. For example, if you got elementary school kids cursing, saying bad things, doing bad things etc., the parents are probably doing it in the house around them.

A very simple and good workout and strength training exercises this: only using chalk, grab the heaviest dumbbells at your gym, lift it up, and just see how long and far you could walk it out.

For example, at my local crunch fitness gym, the dumbbells go up to 150 pounds. This is what I thought:

All of these guys at the gym what they try to do with heavy dumbbells is that they try to overhead press it, or they tried to shoulder press it, or they try to incline press it, or they try to do flat dumbbell press with it, or some sort of lying down or seated or elevated exercise with it.

But the simple funny thing is this; it is much easier and more efficient and in terms of leverage, more straightforward to simply pick it up, and carry it, in terms of moving the weight. Because, my thought:

Isn’t the point to simply be able to use the most efficient and effective mechanism of movement, an action, to simply manipulate and move a weight?

For example, I could pick up 150 pound dumbbell, lift it off the rack, hold it in my hand, grip it, and also walk with it, whereas I cannot lie on my back, and do a floor dumbbell press with it.

What’s the point?

Then, people might think,

“What’s the point of doing this?”

A lot of people say it is good for a “grip strength training“, but that doesn’t really mean anything. Nobody really cares for “grip strength“, look at all of these guys call instead of using chalk, simply use the hand wrist straps when weight lifting, whether it be doing rock pools, deadlifts, shrugs, rows, etc.

Is there any problem to using wraps?

The reason why I am anti-wraps is this:

It prevents you from getting stronger.

The ultimate point is it to lift heavier weights, it is to become stronger. By using wrist wraps, you do not give your body, your hands, your fingers, your forearms, your grip, your hyped and focus to effectively choke the barbell or dumbbell.

My simple thought:

Grip strength *IS* strength.

For example, how strong your grip is might be the greatest indicator of how strong you really are. Just overall strength.

Even as a thought, maybe the best way to judge the strength of men is to simply challenge them to the farmers walk with the heavy dumbbells. The simple competition:

Only using chalk, no wrist wraps, how far can you farmers walk the heaviest dumbbells?

Another example

Another good example I have is the legendary 330 pound golden dumbbells at golds gym Venice Beach. I mastered it.

Grip strength *is* strength:

Instead … what do we want?

Greater adventures, dangers, challenges, conquests.

Notions of “time”, “efficiency”, etc … just modern day Taylorism in action?

For the ancient Greeks, there was no real notion of “time“. There were no stopwatches, no clocks, no notion of seconds, minutes, hours, etc. There were only notions of sunrise, sundown.

Even when it came to speed, the closest thing that we have is looking at the Iliad, the funeral games, in which there was a chariot race, as well as a sprinting foot race.

Also, no real good measurements of weight. The way that Homer describes the strength of Achilles is his ability to lift a stone that barely even two strong men could lift.