It started from a desire to change, I needed to rewire my brain; I was lazy and unfocused and I hated it. It was like it was on fire; I had started to relax and meditate that had helped my focus, however I needed more, much more.
I came across a site called Bold And Determined, it was my first contact with the manosphere, but more importantly, it was my introduction to the concept of bio hacking. This new discovery resonated with me on so many levels.
The bio part, spoke to the latent scientist in me, that has always been there lurking in the dark recesses of my mind. The hacking, bit relates to me having always having had a fascination with coding, that I haven't yet managed to match with ability.
So I decided to take the Bold And Determined 30 day challenge, the site's owner Victor Pride call's it the bootcamp for winners, I was intrigued.
30 Days Of Discipline
One of the things you have to do in the 30 Days Of Discipline program, is to have cold showers every morning, the thing is, I don't have a shower. So every morning, I would take a sub-lukewarm bath, ending with me dumping a bucket of ice cold water over my head.
The irony was not lost on me, that I had decided to do this whilst The Ice Bucket Challenge was at its height. Everyday I would watch a new set of people getting doused in freezing cold water and thinking to myself, that I'd have to do that the following morning.
Another aspect of the challenge was regular exercise, each day I would have to complete; 100 situps, 100 pressups, and 100 squats. The rule was, I could do them in as many reps and sets as I wanted, but each day, I was to add one to my rep.
On day one, I could barely do ten push ups in a row; by day thirty, I could rattle off 40, without hardly breaking a sweat. There were a few other aspects to the challenge, but I won't reveal them here, as it is worth discovering for yourself.
Why?
I got asked that question a lot; "Why?! Why on Earth would you do that to yourself?
The question was usually accompanied by wide-eyed incredulous stares, I gave them all the same answer;
"Because it is hard."
That was the thing, I was sick of doing easy things, taking the easy route, had become for me; like so many others, the norm. Avoiding difficult things, preferring instead to seek the easy life, even starting my own videography business was about attaining the easy life with as little effort as possible.
The thing about the difficult things in life, is they are usually the most rewarding, I knew that, but I just couldn't motivate myself to do anything about it. So I realised I had to break out of homeostasis and rewire my brain. Fool it, trick it, hack it, so that doing hard and difficult things, would become the norm.
So each morning, as I sat in the bath that I had just emptied of tepid water; staring at my blue/green bucket full of freezing water. My brain screaming at me, echoing the questions of my friends;
why the hell are you doing this to yourself? Come on, today leave out the water and do the rest. You're torturing yourself; DON'T DO IT!
At that point I would silence my erroneous thoughts by paraphrasing President John F. Kennedy's famous moon speech in my head.
We choose to do 30 Days Of Discipline, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
Note: My President Kennedy impersonation is actually an impersonation of Mayor Diamond Joe Quimby from the Simpsons; who is clearly based on the former US leader.
As soon as I thought the word hard, I would swiftly and instantly dump the entire freezing contents of the bucket on my head.
C-c-cold! Cold! Cold!
...and you know what?
It was never that bad, by the end, it became quite enjoyable.
I'll never forget day 25 of the challenge, I had gone to a friends place in the country with my daughter to take a break and get some crab fishing time in.
That morning I woke up at about 4:30, I couldn't get back to sleep so I got up. did my exercise and cold shower (he did have one) and was done in 25 minutes and felt like I could do more. It just felt; normal.
From that point on I realised the power of the 30 day challenge, the 25 day barrier which I had gone through. seemed to fit with the common thinking for how long it takes to consciously form a habit.
My life has changed as a result of the challenge that I took back in the chilly autumn of 2014, I have set up websites and done things that I wanted to before, but felt unable. I wound up my business and I make more money now than I did then, even though I am not where I want to be yet.
Though, none of that is the point, the point is, I'm happier and healthier, I have had my eyes opened to the fact that you can tell your brain to do pretty much anything you want and depending on how much training your brain has had. It will just get on and do whatever you have asked of it.
Shaping The Universe
In this way bio hacking can be seen as a way to shape the universe around you, not in any mystical or Matrix; sense, but in a very practical and real way. I have told myself I want to do certain things; and the discipline I gained from the course enabled me to get up of my arse and educate myself in those things. Whether it was setting up a website, or learning German, or writing more, I owe it all to bio hacking.
Things didn't stop there though, I wasn't satisfied with being better, I wanted to be better in all the areas I could possibly hope to be better, so I started to devise my own 30 day challenges. I decided that I would change my perception of the world, from an unfair one, where I had been dealt a bit of a shit hand, to an amazing one, full of opportunity, ready to be experienced and consumed.
The 30 Day Man
30 Days Of Observation: This challenge came about from me contemplating the fact that, the vast majority of our lives are spent on auto-pilot.
What a waste!
Whether it is driving or walking along a familiar route, having a routine small talk conversation, engaging in a repetitive job. We spend a lot of time on auto, not really noticing subtle changes in our environment. So I decided to really try and observe new things everywhere I went, especially in places I was used to.
At the time, I had just got a sales job to fill my time and bank account, while I decided what to do next. As with most jobs, I got the same bus and train and walked the same route to and from the office, every day.
So I started to really scrutinise what I was seeing, I started to notice little features on buildings that were right outside my house that I hadn't noticed in four years of living there.
I noticed the way on some streets, all the windows on the first floors of the houses would be designed exactly the same, except for one. Probably as a result of WWII bombing in some cases, in others I had no idea.
I wasn't only noticing physical objects and feature in the world around me, I was also paying more attention to people, the way they walked, talked, interacted with me and each other. I took more notice of my girlfriend, highlighting to myself areas where I had been previously neglectful.
The big one for me; was that I started noticing advertising a lot more, I would notice advertising in places where I had previously only registered on a sub conscious level. The most dangerous level to register advertising!
I suddenly was seeing the intent behind the message, that was hiding in plain sight...
Results: More insightful, less impulsive, less bored.
Conclusion: Needs to be constantly revisited, awareness is a hard habit to form.
30 Days Of German: This was made easier by the fact that I love languages, can speak a little German, and was working in a place that required me to call Germany almost everyday.
You may think that it was an obvious move to brush up on a language when you are being employed to call the country where they speak that language. And you'd be right if the particular language you were speaking about wasn't German and the country wasn't Germany.
It is a sweeping genaralisation to say everybody in Germany speaks English, but enough of them are able to, so much so, that my bosses who also called Germany everyday, could utter a few broken phrases in German and they had been doing it for 5 years.
I had always regretted not being as good at German as I am at Spanish; the two teachers I had on the subjects were the polar opposites of each other and I often use them to illustrate the difference between a good teacher and a bad one.
In German, our teacher who I shall spare him from naming, would teach German like maths, whereby he would write a sentence on the board (we used blackboards and chalk, for anyone reading this born after or around 1990), he would then divide the sentence up by drawing vertical chalk lines at particular intervals.
Herr Chicken as we called him, for reasons which will remain obscured, would then proceed to write little abbreviations above the sections he had formed along the sentence; the abbreviations were things like;
INF
PP
DAT
ART
VB
CON
He would then point at the various parts and say things like;
"This goes after this, when you're putting this before this unless you put this at the end of the sentence, in which case you must put this after this. Does everyone understand?
If at this point you said no, or asked any questions that he felt he had covered at any time in the last few years, he would fly into a rage.
"I TAUGHT YOU THAT IN THE SECOND YEAR, IN LESSON 25! YOU SHOULD KNOW IT BY NOW!!!"
No matter that the lesson he was talking about had taken place over 2 years previously and no matter that none of us had any idea what those abbrieviations meant (still don't), he would then move on without answering your.
2 people passed his class, one was a maths genius, who could attribute numbers to letters of the alphabet, like A is 1, B is 2 and so on. You could then ask him very complex sums like;
"Simon, what is H times 2, divide by B - 4?"
and he could give you the answer almost instantaneously in letters and or numbers.
The only other person to pass German language, was a Bulgarian kid who had learnt English in around 3 months...
Good Will Hunting
Our Spanish teacher on the other hand, taught us all about what those abbrieviations meant, without us even noticing. He also ninja-taught us Spanish history, he made the 800 years war between the Christians and the Moors into a weekly soap opera, that we were gagging to find out what happened next.
By the end of our course before exams, he was teaching the entire class in Spanish, pausing rarely to explain a particular use of a word or phrase. Our German teacher did the same, the only difference was we actually understood everything our Spanish teacher was saying.
In Spanish everyone got a C or above...
30 Days Of No Facebook: The reasons behind this one are fairly obvious to everyone; pretty much everything you do on Facebook, is a complete waste of time. Along with wasting moments of your life you'll never get back, the site is designed to induce you into a trance, where you click away your afternoon.
This one was hard, I had gone down to 15 minutes a day, but it had crept back up to over an hour and sometimes more. I always felt pretty shitty after coming off Facebook, because I was 100% aware of the fact it was stopping me achieve something much more worthwhile.
Days 1-10 were the hardest, some times I would sit there, literally and I mean literally, not figuratively; wrestling with myself, trying to avoid going on to the dreaded blue site.
Like with all the challenges, by day 25 or so, not going on there was a habit, however, unlike a lot of the other things I have cut out of my life. I still actually missed Facebook, for no other reason than, most of my friends have all but stopped communicating in any other way.
When I did get back on it (I logged in the moment after the final second of the 30 days had elapsed), I found that I'd missed a few parties and also a friend that had come to London and was in town for 2 nights and wanted to meet for a drink.
Apart from my friend's visit, I wasn't any worse off for missing any of the; so-and-so has liked messages, or pictures of my friends on holiday, and/or their children.
Results: More focussed, less likely to waste time online.
Conclusion: Tough one to keep up, I now use Stay Focused App which stops me spending more than 10 minutes a day on Facebook and other time wasting sites.
The Future
So I am still into the idea of bio hacking, I don't only use challenges, I also use notropic drugs like caffeine and Modafinil and meditation and self-hypnosis. At the moment I have just finished 30 Days Of Yoga, which has been very pleasurable and is now part of my daily routine.
I am deciding on my next challenge and am not sure whether I will do a physical or mental challenge, but what I do know; is whatever it is, I will be a better, stronger, happier person for doing so.
Remember a problem shared is a problem halved; tell me in the comments below what challenges have you faced and how you have dealt with those challenges.
Till next time
Take Care and Keep Steeming