Nothing In Excess

Hey everyone, 

Happy New Year to all of you! I hope you had a great holiday downtime, even if it was short for most of us.

As we step into 2023 and start working on a great year with things we want to achieve & change, we need to be aware of the notion of doing things in moderation. 

This article will help you with that. It takes less than 5 minutes to read it.

But before you do that, subscribe to get all new posts in your inbox directly - and some more benefits coming later this year for subscribers.

These days, we are all bombarded with messages telling us to consume more, acquire more, work harder and achieve more.

And this is exactly what we do.

We overeat and overdrink, so we get fat and become unhealthy.

We overspend, so we go broke and take more debt.

And, of course, we also overconsume trash content on social media, so we become dumb.

But also tend to go excessive with the things that are supposed to grow us.

We overwork, as we believe it will be a quick win & shorter path to success, so we burn out quickly and become miserable.

We also overtrain our bodies to speed up our fitness progress, but we eventually get injured, and the opposite happens - we block our progress.

"We pushed the bike too far" - says one of my favorite Hungarian sayings.

And it happens to all of us. Even with me. (Just recently, with all the holiday feasts we had...)

We take good things too far that they stop being fun and cease to be good things anymore.

And as we see in our everyday life, the lack of discipline is usually why we do things in excess. 

We overeat, overdrink or overconsume social media because we cannot say no to those extra doses of whatever happy hormones they release. 

When it comes to our work or physical training, we overdo those things as we believe that behavior will expedite our growth process or as we fear that we don't do enough. 

All these reasons can be traced back to one point: the lack of self-worth.

We don't value ourselves high enough, so we let some external phenomena take control over us.

We don't own them. They own us. 

Again, social media is an excellent example of the perfect algorithm that will always recommend the content you are interested in. 

They know your taste and interest before you get conscious about it. So you keep scrolling endlessly and always desire to return for some more.

Build Your Self-Worth And Aim For The "Golden Mean"

In one of my previous posts, I already quoted one of the Delphic maxims:

The importance of temperance and moderation in all things are one of the key things we can learn from the Ancient Greeks.

Aristotle believed in the "golden mean", which is the idea that the best way to live is finding the balance between two extremes.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, he wrote, "The middle state, then, is the best, as we have found; therefore the virtue also which is concerned with pleasures and pains is a mean since it aims at what is intermediate."

More simply, according to Aristotle, the spectrum has two ends: one is cowardice, and the other one is recklessness with too much courage.

None of those ends is ideal. Aim for the "golden mean."

3 Tips on How To Reach The "Golden Mean"

1) Apply The Pareto Principle To Your Everday Life

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, suggests that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In other words, a small number of factors are responsible for most of the impact of results.

Aim to apply this principle in most aspects of your life. Some examples: 

Work:

1. Identify the 20% of tasks that are most important or have the greatest impact and could bring the majority of results.

2. Focus your efforts on those.

3. Look for ways to streamline or eliminate 80% of tasks.

It won't be easy for sure, but the key is to aim for it.

Nutrition: 

1. Calculate your daily calorie and macronutrient intake.

2. 80% of your daily calorie intake should come from nutrient-dense foods, and 20% can be anything else you enjoy.

3. Refrain from overcutting the "bad" macros like carbs or fat. Your body needs good carbs and good fats. Educate yourself about it. (Remember, "nothing in excess" - not even cutting carbs & fat).

2) List Your Energy Drainers & Energy Gainers

Time-to-time, I review all the activities, habits and other things I have in my everyday life and place them into two categories: Energy Drainers & Energy Gainers.

For those items, I also describe how they affect my energy positively or negatively.

For example: excessive social media scrolling makes my brain lazy and sucks all the energy out of me through its trash content. Social media and news consumption can also increase my anxiety as most of the news are "doomsday" clickbait articles.

But there can be a lot of other energy drainers: smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, too much junk food, emails in the morning, etc. 

You name your own subjective list of those.

The Energy Drainers list aims to understand which activities, habits, or things you need to limit or fully cut - and potentially replace them with good habits.

Therefore, you need to turn to your Energy Gainers List to identify what energy drainer could be replaced with some of the energy gainers. Energy gainer is something that makes you feel good, energetic and less stressed during AND after. 

For me, some energy gainers are reading, going for a walk and listening to Lex Fridman's podcast, or even going for a workout (even if it's often hard to begin). 

(Some of my less prominent energy gainers: driving in the countryside, going to a spa, deep conversations with friends, going to a vineyard, or even writing!)

Now that you have the list of those bad and good habits, you need to identify how to replace the energy drainers with gainers. 

I.e., if you always start your day by scrolling through social media in your bed, then put your phone away in your living room, bathroom, etc., so you won't have that trigger. 

(And don't come with the BS that your phone is your alarm. Buy a fucking analog alarm or a cheap Alexa that will wake you up)

I recommend reading James Clear's Atomic Habits book to learn more about replacing bad habits with good ones. But as a starter, just read his article on this.

3) Practice Gratitude & Mindfulness

Often we do things in excess as we lose sight of the present. 

Overbuying is a perfect example. We fall into the trap of acquiring more things than we truly need. 

Therefore, before making another purchase, stop for a moment and think through what you already have.

Do you really need that fifth coat, tenth shoes, or the next gadget?

Does it really serve your everyday life well?

Or do you try to deal with stress through "retail therapy"? 

If you do, just stop for a moment. Appreciate what you already have and understand that having more stuff usually leads to more stress.

Practicing mindfulness is also essential to ensure that you can apply the other tips mentioned above effectively. 

You need to identify your self-worth. Do you really let devices, food, or work to own you and your consciousness? 

Do you really want to spend your limited weeks alive by letting excessive behavior drain your energy?

You are better than that!

So go live your life as you deserve it - with high energy, self-worth and mental freedom.

Máté - The Mindful Guerilla

💡 My Weekly Recommendations 💡

Stuff I Recommend You This Week

• Ryan Holiday's great article with 100 very short rules for a better life. Read it, it's worth it!

• A great video from Till Musshoff on how generalists can win the current Information Age or the Digital Renaissance. Watch it and learn why to become more hollistic and multidisciplinary.

• If you want to get smarter every day in various fields of interest, sign up to Refind and let the algorithm send you 5 valuable links every day, curated from 10k+ sources.

Newsletters I Read Every Week

• Young Money - Jack writes inspirational & insightful posts on finance, career, and life. I learned a lot from his work, which was also a great motivation for me to start my own newsletter. 10/10 recommended!

• International Intrigue - A valuable newsletter on diplomacy & geopolitics delivered every weekday. Rather read this than all those shitty clickbait articles on mainstream media.

• Exec Sum - A daily newsletter on the major stories from the financial world. It's fun, entertaining, and informative. Better than those finance outlets with shitloads of ads.

• Snail Mail by Slow Growth - a weekly newsletter delivered every Monday by Matt D'Avella's team with great motivational content on productivity. It's not the usual productivity bullshit that you find everywhere else.

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