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as we experience fewer problems, we don’t become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. We end up with the same number of troubles. Except our new problems are progressively more hollow.
When a new comfort is introduced, we adapt to it and our old comforts become unacceptable.
According to scientists at the University of Oregon, people who exercised in a 100-degree room for ten days, for example, increased their fitness performance markers significantly more than a group who did the exact same workout in an air-conditioned room. The hot exercise caused “inexplicable changes to the heart’s left ventricle.”
Newness can even slow down our sense of time. This explains why time seemed slower when we were kids.
studies show that real hunger now drives just 20 percent of eating.
“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life—and only then will I be free to become myself.”
American attempts to dematerialize are just another form of materialism.
To not think of death and not prepare for it…this is the root of ignorance.”
people who engaged in a mentally demanding task while exercising increased their time to exhaustion a relative 300 percent more compared to a group who zoned out while doing the exact same 12-week exercise program.
Humans over millennia developed a complex network of physical discomforts and psychological “governors” to dissuade us from effort, because effort requires energy, or calories, which in the past was precious. This is why we seemingly have an ingrained call to laziness.
exercise-induced fatigue is predominantly a protective emotion.
If a person is in a serious car accident, being in shape drops their chances of dying by 80 percent,
Many people go months without taking their joints through a full range of motion.
people who sit all day then attack the gym have higher rates of back dysfunction compared to couch potatoes.
A person born in 1990, for example, has double the risk of colon cancer and quadruple the risk of rectal cancer compared to someone born in 1950.
