More rambling about self help books like Hooked and A Liberated Mind and mentality/religion of self-improvement

Golly how time flies and it’s been almost a week since I wrote here. I wanted to do this maybe three times a week on average. I have told myself that I need to come back here and write whenever I finish another book. I want to talk about every book that I listen to on audible to maximize their retention and positive impact on my life.
Anyway, finished Hooked by Michael Moss and it was a fantastic book but I don’t really know what i can say other than I’m disgusted by the ethics of the processed and fast food industry, well I guess I did really get to thinking about how so much of our sense of right and wrong in our society and certainly our sense of what’s a crime vs what’s not a crime, is based not so much on what’s actually best for society in the long run or what actually reduces overall suffering of humans in the long run, but instead it’s based on like precedent, like previous laws, like we say, oh we do it this way over here so that’s the way it needs to work there or like “I had to suffer through xyz so they should too” and that kind of mentality. I really thought about that when all those lawyers kept making their points in defense of the processed food industry, like all they cared about is legal and illegal and what is and isn’t “personal responsibility” and actual real human consequences and suffering meant nothing to them.
Reminds me of why I fell in love with Elon Musk’s perspective five or ten years ago as he was always talking about first principle thinking, where you need to really look at the actual goal you’re trying to accomplish instead of just following some script you have in your head or were given by society that only seems to move you toward your goals. (I want to make a post about old Elon and go through why I both love and hate him, why we need to as a country simultaneously support him and fight him. It sucks that he has become so mean and nasty and that our culture has become such that I feel I can’t mention him in a positive light without also mentioning that I am deeply opposed to certain aspects of him.)
Anywhoo, it’s so freaking often that we forget what’s really important, what we’re really trying to accomplish in our regulations and life choices and just about everything.
Hooked has been motivating me to improve my eating habits. It’s like every self help book I read helps like 2%, most like barely noticeable, but over time if I do like one or two a week, they add up to me being someone who is a few hundred percent more capable, confident and happy as the person I was ten years ago.
So I ate beans and veggies today at home, then later walked out for some dinner and was gonna go to Moe’s for a burrito but wound up at Eat n Park and just got a salad bar…
okay so full confession here: I did something kind of rude. At Eat n Park I love their salad bar but often they only have iceberg which of course doesn’t have hardly any nutritional value. Today they had two bins of nothing but iceberg but with some spinach sprinkled over top of one of them, so I went through and I picked out all the spinach for my plate and kind of left none for anyone else. Their salad bar is actually pretty good otherwise. I wish there was like some way for me to know when they put out the good real green lettuce or spinach cuz it’s always a crap shoot there. I’d actually eat there like once a week if I could just reliably get real lettuce on the salad bar.
Okay so continuing to babble on and still kind of finding my voice for how I do this. I’m thinking I’ll write this out first in a way thats okay for public posting, then post it, then go back and add to it anything that might involve individuals who might not want to be named or other topics that aren’t appropriate for public posting.
Anyway, did a couple super intense (at least for me) exercise routines last night and again this morning with a friend and thought I’d be destroyed and in pain but I actually feel damn great. Like instead of draining my energy, intense exercise like I haven’t done in months actually energized me. I was feeling under the weather yesterday, like I had a bug or something but I pushed myself through it and did the exercises anyway and today I feel fantastic, like my muscles definitely feel like I worked them hard but it’s not like a soreness, it’s like a weird body high, like a satisfaction.
Mowed the lawn with my all manual lawn mower. Only took like 40 minutes. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but then I found it exhilarating. We actually have a battery powered mower but I try to avoid unnecessary luxuries like that, especially when they make me weaker and contribute to noise and air pollution.
So I got even more good exercise. I was running half the time but it was still less intense than the workout.
Then I went for a swim. Overall had a damn good labor day.
Clearly I need to exercise more. I need to remember this feeling next time I am dreading the workout.
Just like this feeling as I write this. I feel like this journal is the same kind of thing where I put it off and don’t really want to do it, like wonder if there’s really a point but then afterward feel good about it like it really is helping and worth the time a whole lot more than watching Little House on the Prairie or Solar Opposites or Mash or… okay Bob’s Burgers is still worth my time.
And oh yeah, I started a book called A liberated Mind by Steven C Hayes and so far it’s really good– like weird I got four really good books in a row, although I wonder if that’s because of the books or because I’m getting better about accessing and using the information. I remember I started reading self help books in 2016, or I came back to the idea after a few years and really started exploring them and okay, I’ll admit that it all started with Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life. This was back in 2016 before he’d become totally mean and nasty and rejected half the rules in his own book. And I guess I thought of him since he’s so similar to Elon–like he’s so mean and nasty and downright hateful toward people like me, but at the same time, he changed my life in a massively positive way. When I read his book, it was like the best book I’d ever read. The way he talked about life and values and goals was something I’d never really heard before and really spoke to me even though I sensed it was more for a conservative traditional mindset. I started listening to other self help books and soon found that there’s tons of other books that are just as good and many of which are tailored to my mindset of science, empathy and community.
But for those first few years of reading them, it was like yes they were helping improve my life enough that I kept listening to them, but in 2019, I really got into the Pittsburgh kink and LGBTQ community and my personal relationships suddenly changed, and something around then just clicked for me.
Oh, it must have been The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr. That book did more than 2% improvement on my life. It completely changed the way I look at addiction and my own problematic behavior, and got me to quit smoking after 20 years and yes it actually was fucking easy. And it’s like after that, after like nearly 3 years of listening to these books is when something really clicked and it was like to use a religious metaphor I finally had my actual come to Jesus moment, where I thought I was a true believer before but now I’m actually all in.
Now I get how life works.
But that’s how I felt in my early twenties, so I know there will always be more to go, more to learn and explore.
Oh lord, how do I decide when or where to stop writing?
I guess it’s almost midnight so stop Kalin, just stop writing now. It’s time to stop.
Seriously we’re done now.

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