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(Disclaimer: I listened to the podcast in english, wrote this post in french, then relied heavily on Google Translate to translate it back into english. So the original terms might have been lost in translation, sorry about that.)

Huberman is an American neuroscientist whose podcast has become extremely famous in the United States. He shares tips on well-being and productivity based on his knowledge of the brain. I listen to it from time to time, usually while driving.

Today he had a conversation with Jocko Willink (pretty much unknown in France): a former Navy Seals officer turned author and consultant. They talked about motivation, discipline, how to reach your potential, go beyond your limits, etc. A very interesting podcast. Here are some of the main ideas I took away from it:

Don't rely on motivation. Jocko Willink, who gets up every morning at 4AM to exercise (sometimes for five to six hours if you count Brazilian jiu jitsu) explains that motivation is a poor basis for action. He says (I'm summarizing and paraphrasing here):

Motivation comes and goes. Happiness comes and goes. If you rely on this to act, you won’t do anything.

He continues (still paraphrasing): “In the morning, I don't think a bunch. I don't weigh the pros and cons. I do what I have to do. Discipline is what matters.“

Words expected from a military officer, you might say.

But on many levels, this reminded me of what Rob Burbea (not a military man) says about impermanence in Seing That Frees, which I'm reading now. If you pay attention to your sensations moment to moment, he says, you realize that they are constantly changing, regardless of your circumstances. Yo go from joy to sadness, from confidence to anguish, without anyone – neither oneself, nor others, nor the situation – being necessarily responsible for it. It's the nature of things. (Although it's always easier to blame the outside world.)

Jocko Willink takes the example of walking in full gear through the desert. The first 20 minutes - regardless of training, habit, fitness - are always tough. You’re going to have a bad time. But passed a certain threshold, it becomes mechanical and you can keep walking for hours. Hence the importance of not relying solely on immediate perception for motivation.

Energy is the source of action. But not caloric energy, says Huberman. He speaks about mental energy which is related to the balance of different hormones and neurotransmitters in the system. This balance depends more on activity – sleep, exercise, rhythm, etc. – than on what we eat (calories). This implies the following paradox:

Exercise creates energy.

The idea that exercise « burns » the energy we accumulate through food is misleading. It is true at the caloric level, but fatigue, inattention and difficulty concentrating are rarely due to a lack of caloric energy. ("Have at least one good meal every 24 hours and you'll be fine," says Huberman). They are due to a lack of mental energy which, on the contrary, can benefit from fasting, intense exercise, regular sleep and rest schedules, etc.

I was so convinced by their arguments that when I got home, I dug out my bike from the cellar, pumped up the tires, and went for a ride. Then buried it back in the pile.

This website will become my facebook, instagram, twitter and youtube all in one.

I’m tired of letting a profit-based algorithm choose what I can and can’t see, and decide what my friends see of what I do. And if that wasn’t enough, Mark Zukerberg’s and Eldon Musk’s latest tribulations convinced me that I didn’t want to leave them in control of what I share.

Here, I’ll build my corner of the internet that I control from A to Z.

I’ll create a feed where I can share my texts, photos, videos, brain farts, favorite links (…) and improve it step by step to make it pleasant to read, easy to share, and a place where you and I can interact with ease.

Yes, as you may point out: I won’t benefit from the network effect that dedicated platforms bring with them.

So be it. I’ll find another way. Probably a mailing list. Maybe I’ll look into the aggregators again, which allow readers to gather several blogs in one feed that they can control. Because in the end, it’s all about control.

Also, nothing prevents me from using social networks to promote my site. But the content will stay here. The conversations will take place here. Or on *your* website, if you’re game.

I’ll have fewer readers and they’ll grow more slowly. I’m fine with that. Let’s focus on the quality of our interactions rather than on the quantity.

One minute of stork during Muezzin:

And one minute of Beldi (undomesticated) dogs playing in the Garden of Koutoubia. At the end, the seem surprised by their friend's arrival. Thant they all leave together, leaving the frame like professionnal actors:

Two very bad reasons not to act.

And yet: the two main causes of our inaction.

To the point where, now, when I feel I’m about to not do something, big or small, I ask myself: « am I giving up out of fear? ». If I realize that fear is the only (or main reason), I think twice about it. Or, at least, I try to analyze that fear, make it more apparent so it doesn’t control me in the shadow.

And if it isn’t fear, I ask myself: « Am I giving up out of comfort? ». Is the warmth of my cozy nest preventing me from going on an adventure? The nest in question isn’t necessarily materialistic: it can be a comfort of thought, an attachment to some habits, or an excessive satisfaction with what I already have. Here, same treatment: I try to shake myself out of it, or, at least, I try to become aware of it. Once you’ve seen the trap, it’s easier to avoid it.

Fear repels us from the new. Comfort ties us to the status quo.

Let me be clear: there are a thousand perfectly good reasons not to act. Sometimes, not doing something is the real courage. But if those reasons boil down to fear or comfort, it might be worth looking into it a bit further. 

I could tell you the history of how I started meditating and why it changed my life but we’ll do that another time. It’s a mistake I’ve often made: when I create a new website or a new notebook, I want to start over from the beginning and explain the genesis of everything. But soon enough, I’m overwhelmed by the task and I give up.

So let’s talk about the present.

A notable progress I’ve noticed in my practice is being able to recognize more and more inner contents as thoughts.

You probably know that meditation is all about taking a step back to realize that a particular anxiety,  fear or anger is actually “just a thought” which will pass like a cloud in the sky. This shift in perspective is often enough to get rid of it. When an existential anguish is seen for what it is – a brain fart – it looses its power.

But we don’t always succeed.

If some apprehensions are soon recognised for what they are – intellectual constructions – some others are more insidious and harder to let go. As if in the game of “thought spotting”, these particular thoughts didn’t count. “This is not a thought, it’s reality.”

These thoughts which won’t let themselves be classified as thoughts are often the most intimate. The ones we’re most accustomed to, the ones we’ve been dragging around in our head for years, sometimes since childhood. They’re part of us, part of our mental construction and often play a huge role in the way we react to everyday life. They’re like a wallpaper glued to reality for so long that it becomes impossible to imagin the world without it.

Progress in meditation, for me, is the process by which we manage to put these contents into question as well.

Day after day, the frontier of consciousness expands and what we thought to be the fabric of reality, the essence of things, fatality (…) turns out to be just another item of our inner world. Just another brain fart.

Until the day when, faced with an anguish so familiar we thought it was inescapable, we find ourselves in the the position to utter these magic words:

“That, too, is just a thought.”

(PS: I wanted to illustrate this by a picture of a cloud passing in the sky but, of course, no clouds today. Just the blue sky. Not that I’m complaining. Oh well: I guess as my metaphore goes, it works too.)

The video is really small but I don’t know how to make it bigger yet. (Update: I kinda found out.) And it’s so quiet, it looks like a still picture (it’s not).

The garden is beautiful. I’ve walked by it dozens of times but today, I went it. Calm, manicured, peaceful. I was delighted.

You can imagine that a pagan like me is not particularly concerned with the birth of Jesus Christ. As for New Year's Eve on the 31st, I'm too much of a snob to want to celebrate at the same time as everyone else.

Yet, I really like the holidays.

Precisely because (almost) everyone celebrates at the same time. Kind of like Sunday. We agree not to do anything on the same day and everyone chooses how. Parks, walks, vacations, biking, family, Satanist masses.

So little we agree on.

New website.

I usually spend months tweaking with the appearance, the menus, the code (so far I’ve coded all my websites in php myself). Never mind all that!

My resolution for 2023: content first.

I’ll post once a day, no matter what. An image, a text, a sound, a drawing… anything. Who care about the website? I mean: I care, but it comes after the content.

So I’ll start publishing something every day and I’ll improve the site little by little, under your eyes. It’s part of the « learn in public » trend but we’ll talk about that later.

It’s also a special day for me because it’s the first time this year that I haven’t posted my daily vido improvisation. Since January 1st, I’ve posted a 10-minute improvisation video each day except on weekends (in french). Never missed one so far. And yesterday, because of a delayed flight on a trip (photo related), I didn’t post anything. And you know what? It’s fine.

I don’t know about you, but I, for one, am ready for something new.