Welcome to the Monday Muse, a short round up of stuff that I found interesting in the last week. If you have comments or ideas you want to share, feel free to drop me a message.
1/ Leisure sickness
Do you ever go on holiday and then come down with a cold? If you’re a student do you notice that you often get sick after the exam? This might seem strange because you would think that you would get sick when you’re stressed out, but that’s not always how it works.
Usually the time before a holiday or a test are very frantic and busy. The theory is that during those times before a holiday or during an exam you are in an elevated sympathetic state, or fight-or-flight mode. This gives you energy and lets you push through, finishing up last minute tasks before taking a holiday or pulling a few late nights.
The reason you don’t get sick during, and rather after, is that when cortisol is elevated for a short period of time it actually increases your immune system function and has an anti-inflammatory response. This is why they give you cortisone shots for your bad knee, which is a man-made version of cortisol. This explains why you’re not getting sick if you’re just working in short, intense bursts followed by rest. High-interval-training style or 90 minute sprints with proper rest in between boosts your immune system and makes you feel calm.
The problem is after being in this sympathetic state for too long (a few days without rest), when you finally give your body a chance to rest, your cortisol drops. Your hormones try and rebalance, but they are all out of whack. You immune system also plummets in response, which leaves you as a prime target for viruses. There’s a name for this – ‘leisure sickness.’
The solution to prevent this? Before a holiday, look at your calendar and try to knock off all the big things way in advance to avoid the “last minute rush.” The reason I slip up on this is usually because of 1) bad planning and 2) the rush can feel really pleasurable. Like when you drink that first cup of coffee and are pounding away at your keyboard. And then you drink another cup of coffee to sustain the high. And then you think of all of the other things you should do before taking a break, ahh!!! My biggest tip is to schedule breaks in your calendar and take them, even if you feel good and energized.
2/ Jim Carrey’s Spiritual Emergence
I grew up watching movies like Dumb and Dumber and The Mask, movies I’ve watched probably a dozen times. Jim Carrey has always been one of my favorite actors and has been making fewer movies the last few years, so I haven’t really thought about him until a couple of weeks ago when he spontaneously appeared in a dream of mine. He wasn’t doing anything special in the dream, he was just there. Huh, strange I thought, I wonder what he’s up to?
Around the time he filmed Man on the Moon, he was starting to have a spiritual emergence, which is defined as “the movement of an individual to a more expanded way of being that involves enhanced emotional and psychosomatic greater freedom of personal choices, and a sense of a deeper connection with other people, nature, and the cosmos.”
Why does a spiritual emergence happen? Was he meditating a bunch in the mountains? Not really. More like taking Prozac and trying to figure out what the hell was wrong. Jim Carrey said that transformation emerged from the “midst of utter confusion, disappointment, and the realization of all his aspirations.” I read a great post about his Spiritual Emergence here.
Once the filming of ‘Man on The Moon’ concluded, Carrey explains how he forgot the person he was before. It was as if the experience of playing Kaufman washed away his personality; a sort of rebooting of his mind to reveal a blank slate. He observes his own ego with poignant clarity. “Who’s Jim Carrey? Oh yeah, he doesn’t exist. There’s just a relative manifestation of consciousness appearing, and then somebody gave him a bunch of ideas; a name, a religion, and a nationality, and he clustered those together into something that is supposed to be a personality.”
What’s he been up to? He turned to painting to express himself.
A midlife crisis, burnout or mental breakdown can actually be Spiritual Emergency in disguise. Once we have all the shiny things and promotions and money that we wanted and sill feel empty inside, we know it’s time to look in different places — and that place is inside. These challenging events in our lives can serve as the catalyst for a much greater transformation. Check out this video to learn about the signs of a spiritual crisis/transformation.
3/ What I Read Recently
The book “Quit like a Woman” by Holly Whitaker (you don’t need to be a woman to read it!) which I got from my friend Chiara who wrote the Tokyo Vegan Guide. This is a radical take on quitting alcohol and why Holly chose to go sober. It’s raw, honest and mixes in the history of alcohol and the lies that we have been told by the Big Alcohol industry. Personally, I stopped drinking alcohol about a year ago (apart from a few beers at my wedding) and it’s been one of the best decisions in my life. And, I’ve been able to make a lot more progress in letting go of old conditioned habits, transmuting negative emotional patterns, and deepening my meditation practice. I wrote about my experience about quitting alcohol here.
One of the beliefs I had to overcome to quit was what I call the “alcohol myth.” The alcohol myth is a belief that "alcohol helps me with X," even though there is little, no or contrary evidence to these claims. The most popular ones are that alcohol helps you sleep, even though it actually disrupts sleep patterns. Or that it helps you relax, which is true in the short term but false in the long term, as it increases anxiety and stress. And of course the belief that alcohol is safe in moderation. However, every individual is different and there is no agreed upon "safe" level of consumption that can be applied to all people. In fact, a 2018 study in the Lancet concluded that “No level of alcohol consumption improves health.” If you want to explore more, I highly recommend the book.
4/ Videos I Recorded
The Three Types of Burnout
Burnout researcher Dr. Barry Farber says there are three types of burnout — frenetic, under-challenged, and worn-out. Check out my video where I explain the differences between the three and how to identify which one you might be experiencing.
5/ Quotes I’m Pondering
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
― Gospel of Thomas