Tag Archives: Health

How Self-Development Protects You

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We often think of self-development as a pursuit that builds positive capabilities such as courage, ambition, or a success mindset. And of course it can generate many positive results if we truly invest in it, such as loving relationships, a meaningful and lucrative career, and a rewarding lifestyle.

But we can easily overlook just how beautifully self-development protects us from major problems in life, including serious but common problems that drag many people down for years, if not decades.

Preventing Self-Destruction

I originally got into self-development as a path away from self-destructive behavior when I was younger. I turned my efforts towards personal growth largely because I wanted to shift away from who I was and towards becoming someone better.

If I hadn’t done this, I could very well have spent much of my 20s in and out of jail. Later in life I met someone whose story started out similar to mine, and he did just that, spending eight years of his life behind bars.

Instead of letting my life continue to slide in that direction, I started reading books and listening to audio programs. I built up my self-control and discipline, went back to school, and earned two degrees in three semesters. Self-development invited me to invest my energy in a constructive direction, and I’m grateful for that. It saved me from many problems.

While some people may take this for granted, sometimes I find it gratifying just to count how many years it’s been since I was last arrested – more than 29 years and still going. There was a time in my life where just staying out of jail was a pretty meaningful benefit of self-development, and I still like to pause to appreciate this from time to time.

Preventing Addictions

If self-development work prevents even one addiction, that’s a huge payoff, especially since any addiction will weaken your self-control, which drags you down in other areas of life.

I’ve never had to deal with a nicotine addiction because I’ve never tried cigars or cigarettes. I don’t have to deal with alcohol addiction. The worst I’ve had to deal with addiction-wise was shoplifting, which I got over decades ago; and caffeine, which isn’t as hard to give up as some substances. I’m currently caffeine-free (and chocolate-free too since that’s a stimulant as well).

When I see the depths that people struggle with serious, long-term addictions, such as smoking – stealing many years from them, wasting so much money, and boxing in their social lives – I feel grateful to have avoided such a trap. I poured a lot of energy that could have been invested in various addictions into learning, reading, travel, relationships, and other beneficial experiences.

Preventing Loneliness and Depression

Think of how much time and energy people lose to loneliness and depression, including all the side effects such as more sick days, lower performance at work, and various relationship problems. If your investment in self-development helps you prevent or overcome such issues, that’s a huge (yet often invisible) gain.

I wasn’t the happiest person when I was younger, but I’ve learned to become happier over time by investing in habits that make depression unlikely and happiness more likely: a vegan diet with lots of raw foods and whole foods, regular exercise, lots of human touch and cuddles, doing meaningful work, and building good problem-solving and coping skills. I couldn’t just access those habits immediately. It took many years of working on myself to get my behaviors to align with creating happier results.

A lot of depression is caused by physical imbalances. The brain does something we don’t want it to do. If we can study and understand those patterns better, we can steer the brain towards better balance. Cardio exercise, for instance, is among the most effective mood boosters.

Preventing Health Problems

Lifestyle illnesses are commonplace these days, and many are highly preventable with sufficient investment in self-development. If you live a long and healthy life without having to deal with cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, or other lifestyle illnesses, you may be tempted to take that for granted, but realize that most people do not prevent such illnesses and eventually die from them.

You may not be able to control even aspect of disease, but you can control many inputs that can prevent or reverse disease, assuming you build your self-discipline to the point where you have enough conscious control to especially healthy, long-term habits.

Imagine how many drugs, surgeries, and other medical interventions could be prevented if we all invested more in self-development. We might reduce the need for such interventions by 90% or more. Lack of investment in self-development creates not just a huge individual burden but also a huge societal burden. And which is easier and more accessible? To invest more time and energy in personal growth and encourage others to join us… or to fix the healthcare system?

Imagine also how many problems we prevent when one person who might otherwise decide to start another junk food business, pauses and reflects on her life purpose before making that decision, choosing instead to open fitness studios with plant-based food and juice bars, thereby helping people to raise their standards and build more self-control. More self-development investment means more socially responsible businesses.

Preventing Major Setbacks

Setbacks happen, but many are preventable or predictable. It’s predictable that surprises will happen in life. We just don’t know what the surprises will be till we experience them, but the existence of surprises points to the need for preparation.

When you prepare well, a potential setback becomes an opportunity, or at least it’s just a pivot. You roll with whatever life throws at you, and you keep flowing your energy in the direction of growth. You learn to maintain a growth mindset instead of wallowing in a fixed (or victim) mindset.

You may not even realize how valuable self-development work is till you notice how well you’re managing a challenge that would have stifled you in the past, but now you’re able to handle it with grace and poise by developing qualities such as preparedness, resilience, and trust.

Preventing Stagnation

How many years of our lives could we lose to stagnation if we’re not careful? How many years have you been stuck in a misaligned job or relationship? It’s hard not to think about what more could have been created with those years.

A key aspect of self-development is awareness. You learn to look at many parts of your life to seek out areas of stagnation, bring them into the light, and work on them till you get unstuck and start progressing again.

Imagine what a little more awareness and a little more courage can do for you in terms of preventing stagnation. This could potentially save you from decades of being stuck in a misaligned situation.

Self-development can also help with defining your purpose, so you don’t stagnate due to a sense of meaninglessness. You can develop yourself into a person with a rich and meaningful life instead.

Preventing Clutter

Sometimes the benefits of self-development are simple and right in our faces. Do you get to live and work in clean, clutter-free environments? If so you probably have self-development to thank for it, either yours or someone else’s.

When clutter piles up, it’s due to a lack of skill, a lack of attentiveness, or both. Organizing skills and attentiveness can both be trained up.

While the achievement side of self-development may seem sexier, it’s important to acknowledge just how much misery and struggle you may be saving yourself by investing in a lifelong journey of personal growth. Even a modest investment could save you decades of difficulty by helping you lean away from a single bad decision. Consider the value of never smoking that first cigarette.

Sometimes I like to pause and consider the many preventative blessings of this path. I’m not addicted to drugs. I don’t need any medications. I’m not depressed or lonely. I don’t have heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. And I got to write this article in an uncluttered office by candlelight in the early morning time, which is way nicer than trying to write from jail.

I started getting into self-development about 29 years ago. I like that because of that investment, each decade of my life keeps getting better, and more delightful memories are being accumulated. It’s not about the quick fixes. Very little changes over the span of weeks or months. But with years and decades of investment, the benefits really add up when you consider all the problems you successfully dodged. What really drives this home is when you see people your own age still struggling with the consequences of problems that you avoided but they didn’t.

And of course another benefit of self-development is that many problems that you didn’t actually prevent can be remedied after the fact. Focus on developing the personal qualities you need to create better solutions. Do you need more courage? More self-discipline? A deep dive into self-awareness through character sculpting? Where would a long-term investment pay off for you? You may as well start today. Starting anywhere is better than not starting.

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5G Coronavirus Conspiracies

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Why do so many people seem to (mistakenly) think there’s a connection between the 5G rollout and the coronavirus, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary?

In this case the evidence points to this originating from a Russian disinformation campaign much like we saw leading up to the 2016 election in the USA. The 5G one in particular has been very effective in duping many people and persuading them to spread the disinformation. Such campaigns breed distrust among citizens, which plays into Russia’s political advantage. Same goes for the anti-trust campaign related to “the media.”

So the 5G hoax is really just a disinformation campaign that many people are succumbing to. It’s what happens when geopolitical maneuvering infects social media. To the extent there’s an actual conspiracy, it’s a lot more basic and common than the 5G one, and this sort of behavior is certainly not limited to Russia. Humans have been using disinformation campaigns for thousands of years. It’s a prestigious line of work with a long and glorious tradition.

Ironically the people spreading this 5G-coronavirus idea are behaving like viruses themselves by infecting others with similar falsehoods. While you may think that such people are being too suspicious, the reality is that they’re actually being too naïve and trusting. If they were more skeptical, they’d evaluate the evidence rationally (instead of emotionally) and quickly realize that it’s untrue since it doesn’t mesh with readily available facts.

When I see people spreading disinformation campaigns like the 5G one, I will generally quarantine them from my social sphere by adding them to my block list. I prefer to prevent further risk of contamination within my slice of social media. I won’t interfere with their personal deep dive into disinformation campaigns if they choose to experience that, but it would be inconceivable to join them in the pit of despair.

Yes, human beings can do evil acts sometimes, and they’re often negligent and expedient, which can cause a host of problems. But humans also tend to be too simplistic to rise to the level of fanciful hoaxes that require them to perform like an organized team of Lex Luthors.

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Six Things You Need To Know About Coronavirus Today

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How to Cook Brown Rice in an Instant Pot

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Here’s an updated version of my hugely popular How to Cook Brown Rice post from 2007, but this version is for people who have an Instant Pot.

Here are the instructions:

  1. Add 2 cups brown rice to the Instant Pot. Don’t bother rinsing the rice since that’s just anti-starch propaganda.
  2. Add 2.5 cups water to the Instant Pot.
  3. Stir the water and rice for a few seconds to even out the surface of the rice. Just use a finger if no one is looking and if you’re not infected.
  4. Secure the lid onto the Instant Pot, making sure the steam valve is closed.
  5. Push the Manual button, and set the timer to 22 minutes by holding or repeatedly pushing the + button. If you can get the timer to stop at exactly 22 minutes with a single button hold, you’re a superior human being. Most people will freak out and stop too soon, like at 19 or 20 because they think it’s like blackjack.
  6. The machine will start automatically. Hence no Start button. So the action for this step is really to take no action at all, which could mean that it’s a paradox.
  7. Wait about 40 minutes (initial heating time, 22 minutes cooking time, and 10 minutes more to see how many people got infected while the rice was cooking). You could wait significantly longer if you want, even an hour or two, and the rice will stay cozy warm. But I wouldn’t push it to three hours – that’s just wrong.
  8. Release the steam valve if needed. Don’t burn yourself like an idiot.
  9. Remove the lid.
  10. Eat and enjoy! Put it in a bowl first though. Don’t eat it straight out of the pot.
  11. Put the lid back on the pot, so you can be lazy about putting the leftovers away. Ideally offer some of the rice to someone else before it gets cold. There will be more than enough to share. Then you can claim that since they were the last to eat some, they should put away the remaining rice and clean the pot and give you a nice head scratching. It’s fair.

For a more interesting way to eat the rice by mixing it with other stuff, be sure to read The Ultimate Rice Bowl.

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Is It Possible That You Had The Coronavirus Earlier This Year?

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NHS Medics: We Aren’t Being Protected From Coronavirus – We Fear We’ll Infect Our Families

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Finding Comfort in Predictions

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On March 11 I wrote the following notes in my personal journal:

The coronavirus is currently in outbreak mode around the world. There are 125,865 known infections worldwide, with almost 81K in China. In the USA there are already 1281 infections, 7 of them in Nevada. But that’s largely due to severe under-testing.

I think the USA is in for a big reckoning, especially with Donald Trump being a complete idiot in his response to this, clearly caring more about the economy and his own self-interests than about people’s lives.

The death rate of this virus seems to be about 3-4%, a lot deadlier than the flu. There’s a good chance I’ll get infected at some point, but I’ll probably be fine. Many people won’t be fine though.

Within a matter of weeks, hospitals will be overwhelmed with patients since about 15-20% of the infected require hospitalization – for about 2 weeks. When the virus kills, the average is about 17 days till death.

This is a big deal for the planet. It’s about to become a really big deal for the USA and for Las Vegas. I doubt that enough people see this yet though.

In that same entry, I also made the following predictions as a way of wrapping my head around what I thought could be coming up:

  • The virus will spread quickly because the government response is severely lacking.
  • It will hit Las Vegas hard, especially because the Mayor is behaving cluelessly, attacking the media and defending the economics of the city more than aligning with the truth.
  • Within about 3 months, if not addressed massively and intelligently, around 1M Americans could be infected… and 100M within 4 months. But if serious countermeasures are taken soon, those numbers could be curtailed a lot.
  • Hospitals will be overwhelmed with serious cases sometime within the next month or two.
  • Many more live events and conferences of all sizes will be canceled, including sporting events, music festivals, and really anything with a substantial audience.
  • Large parts of the country (and many other countries) will go on lockdown, prohibiting unnecessary travel or public gatherings.
  • We won’t be able to go to our new fitness center at some point.
  • Lots more people will wear face masks and gloves and practice social distancing.
  • More and more people will get a clue about this with each passing week, realizing that this is real and serious.
  • Many doctors and medical staff will become overworked, and many will get sick themselves. Some will die.
  • Some people that I know will pass away this year, killed by this virus or its complications.

I often use my journal for writing down my personal predictions. I do this for a number of reasons:

  • Predictions help me wrap my head around what’s happening. It’s a way to get aligned with truth.
  • Sometimes my predictions are accurate, and sometimes they aren’t. Most of the time they’re mixed. By recording what I’m predicting, I can go back and review my predictions later to see how accurate I was and to ponder why. When I’m wrong, this helps me identify biases or mistakes and to accept that sometimes the future is unpredictable.
  • Even when predictions seem disconcerting, they’re actually comforting. They help me relax into acceptance and surrender regarding some possible futures.
  • Predictions are often actionable. If I gain some clarity about what may be coming up, I can better prepare for it, and I can help other people prepare too.
  • Predictions help me separate truth from power. I like to take a step back and consider what’s unfolding, separating from this from concerns about what I might be able to do about it. This helps keep me away from the trap of denial. It’s so easy to fall into denial when we merge truth and power, refusing to even look at truths when we’re worried about whether or not we can handle them; that’s when we fudge the data to fool ourselves.
  • Predictions help me discover when my mental models are good enough, too complicated, or too simplistic to be reliable and useful.
  • Predictions give me a base for assigning meaning intelligently, so that I can preserve and even improve my relationship with reality without resisting reality.

I felt that my third prediction from the top list was inaccurate since it was too much of an off the cuff estimate. So four days ago I went over the actual growth rate of reported cases in the USA, and I made more a detailed prediction of how I thought these numbers would unfold.

I shared the following post in Conscious Growth Club’s forums on March 20:

The USA is currently reporting 16,796 coronavirus cases. Based on the growth curve I’m seeing, I predict we’ll pass 100,000 cases in about 1 week. And I predict that we’ll pass 1,000,000 cases in about 2 weeks (from today).

If we move to total countrywide lockdown immediately, we can slow this, and we must. Each day we wait is a huge mistake.

Note that 1 week ago we were at 2247 cases, and 2 weeks ago we were at 319 cases.

Where we are today is still early, early, early game for the virus. If we don’t lock down right away, we’re looking at tens of millions of infected within a month.

Here’s a shorter prediction: I predict that we’ll pass 50,000 reported cases for the USA in just 4 days, sometime on Tuesday, March 24. This could happen sooner though if there’s a significant increase in testing.

Here’s the formula I’m using:

Infected on Day N = (Infected today) x e^( 0.288 x N )

So if we use today as the baseline, then this becomes:

Infected on Day N = 16,796 x e ^ ( 0.288 x N )

Hence our infected for the days ahead:

16,796 (today)
22,402
29,879
39,851
53,151
70,891
94,551
126,108 (March 27)
…
946,850 (April 3)
1,262,868 (April 4)

You can also plug in negative numbers for N to go backwards in time, which will show you that this tracks the historical data with decent accuracy.

This formula will be more accurate when the numbers of infected are still low relative to the total population. And of course a total lockdown can slow it down significantly.

Also note that these numbers work only for the USA since the growth rate for other countries is different. I think the UK rate is really close to ours though, so if you want to try some projections there, you could potentially use the same formula.

It’s been noted that the death rate may be more reliable for predictions than the reported infections, and I agree that’s true. I did this mainly as an exercise to help wrap my mind around what could be coming up.

So far the first three predictions were right on target, and we’re set to reach today’s prediction of passing 53,151 cases as predicted. At the time of writing this, we’re at 50,860.

While there may be a certain morbidness to this practice under the circumstances, I still find it useful and even comforting. It helps me see what’s coming up, so I can mentally and emotionally prepare for it as best I can. This includes going into personal lockdown two weeks ago, mainly to reduce the risk of further spreading the infection.

Sometimes I do this sort of practice in business. I make predictions for the months or years ahead based on trends that I can see today. Many people are doing this now by looking for business opportunities within the current crisis. While I do think it’s possible to take this too far, such as by buying hand sanitizer or medical masks and then reselling them for more, others are looking to provide genuine value in ways that people would appreciate during this time.

For instance, we can predict that many people will be spending more time at home in the weeks ahead. So they’ll be doing more cooking than usual since they won’t be going out to eat. So there will likely be extra opportunities for people teaching online cooking classes. Moreover, since veganism has been trending upwards as well, the combo of veganism and cooking classes could be especially good. Many people are free of the social influences that could otherwise prevent them from making such a lifestyle shift, so I would expect that a lot more people will experiment with veganism and vegan meals during this time. The opportunity is there. The time is there. And the objections are significantly reduced for many people.

I’ll make some current predictions regarding the coronavirus situation:

  • Veganism will increase during lockdown at a faster rate than it was previously increasing. More people will have time to make this kind of lifestyle change. More people are growing concerned about their health and immunity. And more people will have time to research this online.
  • Within 30 days, India will have the most coronavirus deaths of any country in the world. They’re currently ranked 31 with only 10 deaths right now. Italy, China, and Spain are 1, 2, and 3 right now. Partly I’m basing this prediction on India’s population size and population density, partly on their healthcare system, partly on their culture, and partly on their government.
  • Some well-known celebrities will die from coronavirus in the next 30 days, and there will be news stories about each one.
  • Someone I know personally will pass away from coronavirus by the end of May, possibly by the end of April.
  • The Vegas Strip casinos will still be closed 30 days from now. (This is longer than the planned closure.)
  • The USA will have rolling waves of coronavirus infections and deaths surging in different cities and states at different times throughout the year. Some individual states’ lockdowns will suppress it locally for a while, and they’ll eventually get it under control, but not long after they ease up their restrictions, they’ll have to deal with other waves and fresh surges, especially as people travel from other states and countries and bring the infections right back in. The countrywide response will be inconsistent for a while, a patchwork of different states applying different strategies.
  • Among Democrats and Republicans, the virus will infect and kill more Democrats first because it’s spreading in the bigger cities faster and sooner, and those places tend to have more Democrats. But in the long run, it will kill a higher percentage of Republicans as the infection inevitably spreads to more rural areas. Those rural areas typically have worse healthcare than the bigger cities, especially with respect to ICU beds, ventilators, and transit time to hospitals with ICU beds. Republicans tend to be older, and the virus is more deadly for older people. Women lean more Democrat than men, and the virus is much deadlier for men. Polling has shown that a much higher percentage of Republicans still don’t take the virus seriously and aren’t practicing social distancing, so it’s more likely to decimate their communities when it arrives. When you add it all up, there are a lot of factors suggesting that COVID-19 will be more deadly for Republicans than Democrats. One advantage for Republicans is that many Republican bulwark states will see this virus surge later in their communities, but if they’re wasting time on denial, that’s going to whittle away their head start and could negate this advantage.
  • Some lawyers will see a booming business in coronavirus related lawsuits. I expect there will be lots of lawsuits against businesses like Amazon or Costco as some of their employees get infected and die due to work-related activities. I imagine that Fox News will likely get seriously sued over this as well.

Time will tell. Under the circumstances, I would truly love to be wrong about the above.

What are your predictions about what’s coming up? You don’t have to share them, but I encourage you to just make some predictions for yourself in your own private journal. It can help you come to terms with your own thinking.

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Coronavirus Adaptations for Local Businesses

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In Conscious Growth Club, we’ve been discussing the coronavirus situation since February 26, and our discussion thread called “Coronavirus preparation” is now up to 325 posts and still growing. Perhaps a half-dozen related threads have been started as well, as members are discussing topics like self-care in isolation, immunity boosting tips, and sharing updates on what’s happening in different countries. So we’ve had some visibility on it this sooner than most, which gave us a head start on mentally and emotionally preparing ourselves for it.

Contrast this with various local businesses that haven’t been as aware of what’s coming up and were thrown for a loop at the speed and surprise of changes coming at them.

Let me share some local Las Vegas businesses how have been adapting.

Casinos and Hotels

The casinos and hotels are shut down statewide. So the Vegas Strip is shuttered. This essentially turns off the flow of money coming into the city.

The larger operations seem to be paying their employees for the next 2 weeks up to 30 days, but the smaller ones are already laying people off. I read that about 206K casino employees are out of work now.

This is going to crash the cities economy, badly enough that I think it will take years to recover. When we reach the point that the bigger casinos have to start laying people off, it will take them a long time for them to rebuild afterwards. And it will take a while to rebuild tourism to the city.

These larger operations don’t have a lot of good adaptations right now other than laying everyone off. It’s not like they can convert their large spaces to other social uses. They’ve had to turn off just about every revenue stream: hotel stays, gambling, shows, restaurants, night clubs, spas, arcades, etc. The entire resorts are closed.

Some local places have remained open 24/7 for many years, so they literally had to hire a locksmith to come over and install locks. They’d never had cause to lock their front doors because they had never closed before.

Additionally Cirque du Soleil, which has many shows in Vegas, laid off 95% of its global workforce, basically letting go of all of its performers.

Presently the casinos seem to be begging the federal government for bailout money, along with many other businesses.

Some resorts actually have to pay rent because they don’t own the land they’re on. The Bellagio is in this situation, for instance. So what happens when rent is due, but there’s no money coming in?

Fitness Studio

My local fitness studio has adapted to this situation quickly. They converted their in-person classes to online streaming classes. They provided all active members with access to a private area of their website where we can watch streaming classes online. Each day they post a schedule of classes.

Today, for instance, there are 11 classes include various forms of yoga, pilates, bootcamp, and barre. There’s even an indoor cycling class, which I guess is suitable for people who have exercise bikes at home.

It looks like they may stream a class live the first time and also record it. Or maybe they just record them all – it’s hard to tell. But they’re streaming on a schedule with only one class available at a time, and you cannot pause a video in progress, so it simulates the feeling of live classes. It’s less flexible though because if they’re recording these anyway, they could just make all recordings available at all times.

They must be in a tough situation though. Rachelle and I have each done a few of the streaming classes. They’re well done, and I like that this option is available so I can continue what I started in February in some fashion. But it’s not as good as the in-person experience at the studio.

This studio is part of a growing chain across several states, so they can pool resources to create the online classes. The ones we watched looked like they’re being recorded in Vegas though. Some people were wearing Vegas shirts in one video, and another was done by an instructor we know from our local studio.

This must be a tough situation for them. If the online classes are only needed for a few weeks, hopefully it will help members keep their memberships going and not cancel. But if this situation goes on for months, I think more people will conclude that they should cancel their memberships. I think people will find it hard to justify paying as much for online video workouts as they do for the live in-studio experience.

One issue Rachelle and I both noted though is that on some of the videos they’re creating, they’re clearly not practicing good social distancing. They have an instructor and several students on yoga mats within arm’s length of each other sometimes. That’s a concern. I think a lot of people are having a hard time noting just how disciplined we need to be about social distancing.

Rachelle and I stopped going to classes at this studio about two weeks ago. We were sad to stop, but we saw this situation coming a while before it began to unfold locally. Initially after we stopped going, the studio tried to adapt with fewer classes and more sanitation procedures, but I knew it wasn’t going to matter.

That’s a pattern I’ve seen a lot locally. Businesses are trying to incrementally adapt, but often by the time they figure out their incremental adaptations and announce them to their customers or clients, the situation has already moved beyond that.

Music Store

Initially the local music store where I take guitar lessons tried to keep their stores open but with more limited hours. Fortunately our Nevada Governor shut that idea down by ordering (instead of merely requesting) all nonessential businesses to shut down.

I did my last lesson there more than two weeks ago and canceled all upcoming lessons indefinitely, having a glimpse of what was about to unfold. I told someone at the store that I expected the store would be closed by the end of the month. I don’t think he believed me at the time.

During the past week, the store sent out a couple of emails announcing reduced hours for their physical locations and added the ability to continue lessons online, saying that the guitar teachers would follow up with their students individually about this. Their plan was to still have the teachers stream the lessons from the stores.

I knew this wouldn’t last long. A few days later the store had to completely by Governor’s orders.

I’m not sure if they’re going to try adapting to this now by letting their music teachers team and stream lessons from home. That seems a bit risky for them because they take a cut of the lesson tuition. So it’s like cutting themselves out of the loop, although they could still handle booking and billing lessons.

I like the in-person lessons, but I don’t think I’d want to do them remotely if given the options. There are other ways I could take online lessons that are more flexible. And I’d miss the face-to-face aspect.

Farmers Market

Close to our house they’ve converted the usual weekend farmers market into a drive-through version, so people can get fresh produce without leaving their cars. There’s a short video of it at the link below if you want to see how it works.

This seems like an okay adaptation at first, especially since the helpers wear gloves when they handle the produce and money. But the video still shows some examples of people not applying good social distancing as they move around the area, so while this may be better than going to an overcrowded grocery store, it’s still showing risky behavior.

An even worse issue is that when a local food bank announces that they’re giving away food, like in a parking lot, people swarm the area to acquire the food. These giveaways may be well-intentioned, but there’s a serious lack of awareness or discipline about the criticality of social distancing, which makes it easier for the virus to spread.

If we keep seeing this pattern locally, it’s just going to make the situation worse.

Strip Club

Vegas has a lot of strip clubs, and this situation puts many of them out in the cold. One local club quickly tried to adapt by offering drive-by strip shows. The idea was that patrons would stay in their cars, pay $100, pull up to a window, and a stripper would perform for them from a distance for 10 minutes. No touching allowed of course.

This idea generating some local press, maybe for its creativity or simply for its desperation, but was dead on arrival. The club didn’t have a chance to implement it before the it was ordered fully closed by the Governor, along with all other nonessential businesses.

Earlier today I learned that a strip club in Portland came up with a different idea. Partly as a joke, the club’s owner suggested on social media that they should convert to a food delivery service and have the strippers deliver food to people. Some people started to seriously inquire about the idea, so the owner decided to do exactly that. Now they have strippers with drivers (who also serve as security for them) taking food orders and delivering food. They say they’ll even deliver food to the coast (about an hour’s drive from Portland) if people are willing to pay enough for it. The name of the new service: Boober Eats.

Since strippers typically work as independent contractors, they’re not eligible for unemployment benefits. So while it’s to be expected that they may try to create new income streams, reporters have noted that the place in Portland isn’t practicing social distancing.

One source noted that while the owner is providing masks, disposable gloves, and sanitizing wipes, there are major problems present with social distancing:

But social distancing seemed to be a struggle for the women themselves. The club has turned into the headquarters for Boober Eats, and on Friday, it remained full of dancers, delivery drivers and members of the media. Some of the dancers greeted each other with hugs and took selfies together.

Source: Oregon Live

So there’s a genuine risk that this could become a coronavirus delivery service.

Problems with These Adaptations

These adaptations, while understandable, creative, and perhaps even admirable in some situations, aren’t without issues, especially when it comes to social distancing.

I think we’ll likely run into more local businesses trying to make similar adaptations, and I caution everyone not to ignore social distancing since it remains so critical right now.

Some of these problems can be solved with better attention to detail. For instance, we don’t not need lots of students on a streaming yoga video to demonstrate the postures. One or two would be sufficient, separated by a generous distance. And the Farmers Market could assign one person to one or two tables, so their paths aren’t crossing each other and they stay in their own zones.

The USA has now surpassed 42K reported coronavirus cases. Three days ago (on March 20) we were at 16K cases, and on that day I predicted that we’d surpass 50K cases sometime on Tuesday (tomorrow). Unfortunately we’re right on schedule, even slightly ahead of schedule.

My other predictions were that we’d reaching 100,000 USA cases on March 27 and that we’d reach 1,000,000 cases on April 3rd. Of course it’s possible that we may not do enough testing to achieve those predictions on the reporting side, but the virus is still showing abundant momentum to get there whether or not testing can keep up with it. Many experts suggestion that the true cases are likely to be at least 10x higher than the reported cases, so we could be looking at 10M+ true cases (or more) sometime next week. That can and will overwhelm many hospitals.

I’ve also noticed that this virus is moving socially closer. Last week I learned that a friend of a friend of a friend died from it. Then last night a friend’s niece passed away from it. More people that I connect with on social media have been reporting their own confirmed or likely infections.

Now imagine all of this being 25X higher sometime next week. And then it will flow right into 50X and then 100X without stopping.

If the adaptations seem reasonable, they aren’t. If they seem ridiculously strict, they may be just barely adequate.

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Can We Have Sex? Here’s When You Can (And Can’t) Do It In The Coronavirus Outbreak

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Trusting the Virus

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In November when I did four days of ayahuasca ceremonies in Costa Rica, the first night was really rough. About an hour after drinking the tea, I started feeling very strange, and this feeling continued to intensify. My body began to feel really heavy, and after a while I felt like I was mostly paralyzed and could hardly move. I couldn’t sit or stand up. All I could do was lie down.

It was reasonably cool in the room, but I was sweating profusely. Soon I started feeling like it was hard to breathe… like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I began to feel concerned. This was my first ever experience of this nature, and I hadn’t heard of anyone having breathing issues, so I didn’t feel prepared for that. I had the sensation like something was pushing down on my chest. So I started pushing myself to breathe harder and faster, which made me sweat even more.

The shaman’s helpers came over to check on me, probably because they could hear me struggling, encouraging me to try to relax and slow my breathing. But it was like listening to them through a fog. Mentally I was telling myself that I’d be okay, but my physical sensations were very confusing and unpleasant.

Meanwhile my mind was flooding with vivid, brilliantly colored fractal imagery at the same time I was trying to get my breathing under control. The feeling of discomfort kept increasing. I started wondering if I was going to pass out from not being able to breathe. What if no one realized what had happened in time? What if I died right there?

The worst was feeling so physically paralyzed, not 100% but maybe 90%, while trying harder and harder to get more air in. I was breathing really loudly and forcibly, almost like a woman in labor, yet I still felt like I wasn’t getting enough air.

But then when I feel really uncomfortable, disturbed, and concerned, I reminded myself to seek out my primary source of grounding, which is my relationship with reality. Despite the labored breathing and the psychedelic imagery, I found immediate comfort in remembering that relationship. And I reminded myself of the importance of trust in reality.

I didn’t know if I’d be physically okay. I hoped so, but it didn’t feel like things were okay in that moment. So I decided to trust on a different level that the experience was spiritually okay. In my mind I just began repeating: I trust you. I trust you. I trust you. I did my best to let go and surrender to my commitment to always trust reality. This included trusting that if it was my time to die, then it was my time to die, and fighting that wasn’t going to help.

This effort to lean towards trust started making me cry, not from desperation though. It was a feeling like I was linking up and opening a communication channel to some aspect of life that runs deeper than what I normally experience on a day to day basis. It felt like the tears were just my body’s reaction to what felt like an energetic response from reality. In some ways it felt like I was really just remembering that this channel is always there. It’s a similar channel to what I often experience while writing, but the frequency range was a bit difference.

Never in my life have I had to lean so far in the direction of trust before. Intellectually I can trust reality because I’ve reasoned out that it makes sense to do so. But it was something else entirely to lean into trusting reality when I wasn’t sure which way my body was going to go in the next hour. I didn’t have much control over my body in that situation, and even the contents of my mind were a bit out of control too, but I still had the ability to acknowledge this relationship with reality and to commit to trusting it no matter what happened.

Somehow when I leaned into trust, my body began to follow. My breathing started to ease up. My heart rate came down. It was still uncomfortable, but I began to relax into internal rhythms that felt safer to me. Soon I could tell that I was out of the woods and would be okay physically.

Afterwards I still had several hours of deep imagery and intense emotional processing to go through, including a storm of tears, but that was the easy part relative to the physical sensations. I still spent hours feeling semi-paralyzed and super dizzy like the room was spinning, so I needed help just to walk to the bathroom at one point.

And then I went through three more ceremonies in the next three nights. As you might guess, it took a lot of trust to drink the tea again after knowing what happened the first night. But I also felt that since I’d gone through it once and learned that trusting reality helped a lot, I was perhaps better prepared if I had to go through something similar again.

It turned out that each night was a different experience. I only had the labored breathing, profuse sweating, and semi-paralysis on the first night. The other nights were so different, with some of the worse nausea and dry heaving I’ve ever experienced, including retching over a bucket for more than an hour – quite the ab workout.

Overall that week was a physically difficult experience but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually beautiful. I may even go back again this November, but we’ll have to see if that’s possible.

For some time after that experience, I’ve been wondering about that night where I felt like I could barely breathe. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I understand the purging aspect, which most people experienced during that week, some more than others. But I didn’t hear of anyone else struggling to breathe like I did, at least not among our group of about 40 people. And why did I have to endure that only on the first night? I saw so much evidence of rich meaning in other parts of the experience, but this part stood out to me as a piece that didn’t seem to fit.

At the time I decided to just trust that reality was giving me that experience for a reason, but I didn’t know why. It did help me appreciate life afterwards, and it also shifted my relationship with death. It reminded me that if death is approaching, it’s best to relax and do my best to trust reality rather than tensing up all over.

What I didn’t know or expect about ayahuasca is that it seems to leave a permanent trace effect behind. I feel like it opened up some kind of communication channel has never fully switched off or closed since November. Most of the time it’s muted, but it’s still present, and I can tune into some threads of information or energy currents that remain accessible.

As the virus situation has been escalating this month, I’ve been feeling this channel open up more, as if the ayahuasca energy signature is tapping me on the shoulder and trying to get my attention. I also keep hearing music looping in my mind that I heard during the ceremonies.

When I learn about people being on ventilators and struggling to breathe, this channel opens up more clearly, and it reconnects me back to the vivid memories of when I felt that I could barely breathe. I even feel some of the sensations in my body, like I’m acting it out again. Sometimes it becomes so uncomfortable that I have to pull my attention away for a while and allow my body to relax.

Meanwhile the reason why this is happening comes through clearly as well – empathy.

Whenever I think about the people who are struggling to breathe – and the many more who will soon be joining them – I can’t help but feel some of those physical sensations myself. I’m reminded of how terrifying that can be, and all sorts of emotions come up. And I have to keep surrendering to those feelings and reminding myself to relax into trust again.

Even though a virus isn’t a plant, this open ayahuasca channel is somehow showing me that plant intelligence and viral intelligence are connected. Maybe they’re linked via the energy patterns or intelligence of nature. I can’t really explain it. I just sense that this viral situation isn’t some random or chaotic event but rather that there is an intelligence behind it, and it’s part of the same intelligence that I danced with during the ayahuasca ceremonies.

These realizations have been guiding my behavior in recent days. On the one hand, I’m strongly motivated to encourage people to practice good social distancing, and I want us to move towards stronger measures faster and sooner, partly because I don’t want anyone to have to go through the experience of feeling like they can’t breathe. Knowing that more and more people will soon be gasping for breath brings up a flood of emotion, especially this feeling of connection to the fear and stress they’ll experience as they go through it. Putting my attention on this creates strong sympathetic sensations in my body.

And yet there’s this other aspect of trust as well, which has multiple layers to it. One part tells me that if people have to go through this experience, then it’s best for them to lean into trusting reality as much as possible, even going so far as to trust that it may be time to die. Mentally and emotionally resisting and tensing doesn’t seem like it would help, but letting go and allowing the body to respond with its own intelligence just might help.

Another layer, which might sound odd to many people, includes trusting the virus itself. This doesn’t mean trusting that it won’t infect me and running around risking people’s lives.

By trusting the virus, I mean trusting that it’s part of nature and part of reality, and so if I lean into trusting reality, that includes trusting the purpose of whatever this virus is doing. I can’t say exactly why, but I do sense that this virus has a purpose, both for us as individuals and for the world.

So while one part of me empathizes with seeing it as a threat and wanting to prevent harm, another part of me trusts that it’s not really here to vanquish us. When I look at it this way, even death doesn’t look like a form of harm per se, just a type of transition.

Because of this perspective, I feel that if I got infected, one part of me might want to frame the virus as an invader that I have to defeat in order to survive. But another part of me somehow knows that this level of perception isn’t accurate and that it would only fuel more tension and make the experience worse. It makes me consider that perhaps I should welcome the virus as a form of intelligence, to let it do its dance with my body and trust my body to respond appropriately. Maybe its purpose is to teach me something or to give me an experience that might actually be a precious gift.

So presently I don’t feel aligned with the “war on virus” frame that I’ve been hearing lately. To me that sounds about as ludicrous as declaring a war on kale. I don’t think the virus is declaring war on us. I sense no hostility or belligerence in its intention.

I do think the virus has a positive purpose to serve, and I don’t think that going to war with it acknowledges that purpose. I’m not 100% sure what it’s purpose is, but I’m pretty sure that it isn’t here to make everyone stock up on toilet paper.

I sense that this new virus is here to teach us something. I see its presence in the world as an invitation – a complex invitation with many layers to it, both individually and collectively. I know that I’m not the only one who’s considering this perspective right now.

Whenever I write a new blog post, I pick a frame and write from within that frame. This virus situation has many layers to it, which makes this an especially big challenge because no single frame can address the entirety of the situation. One day I may write from a frame that encourages social distancing, which may be a rational course of action within that frame. Another day I may write from a frame that suggests the rationality of acceptance and surrender. Some people may see these as being in conflict. I don’t. They’re just different lenses for viewing the same reality, and when we consider multiple lenses, we discover deeper levels of rationality that make sense across multiple frames.

Recognizing the value of surrender doesn’t make me want to abandon social distancing, for instance. I can and do practice both. I can do what I can to reduce suffering, even while feeling intense sympathetic emotion. And I can simultaneously accept and align with where this story wants to go without feeling like I’m fighting reality. What binds these together is trust. When we trust, life plays us like instruments.

I think a common objection to trusting reality is that it will make you passive, complacent, or foolish. I think that’s an irrational objection though.

If you consider this virus situation as an invitation for you, what kind of invitation do you think it is?

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