Category: English

What does being an adult really mean? I dare to say that the perception of becoming an adult is living a boring life. Being an adult means growing up, doing “adult” things, and not doing things that children or young people are doing, because being an adult seems to demand your life is boring.

I remember, when I was about 40 years old and was on my way to go skateboarding, I walked with my skateboard an my neighbour was sitting outside, and the first thing he said when he saw me was “Hey, aren’t you too old for going skateboarding?”.

NO, I was not too old to go skateboarding. Things like for example skateboarding does not have an age limit, as many many other things in life, they don’t have age limits, even if many people live their life imagining things have age limits.

I have always said, you should do what you feel like doing because life is about living and dreaming big and NOT about living a boring life.

It’s funny how when we are young we have dreams and most of the dreams are HUGE and we believe our dreams might become reality, but then somewhere between 10 and 20 years old it changes, most people are forced into a mold where dreaming big and sometimes it feels like just dreaming in general is forbidden, and if you dare to dream and talk about your dream people shoot you down and say something like “grow up, that’s not possible, you are not a kid anymore, you are an adult and should know better”.

But something happened in my life, that I have yet to exactly determine what it was that kept me dreaming and dreaming BIG even when I got older. I’m now 48 years old and I still dream big and pursue my dreams.

Sometimes when I pursue my dreams I don’t reach them and crash and burn, but then comes the times when I succeed and my dream becomes reality. And even the times when I crash and burn, I often get up and try again, because that is how you succeed in life.

Of course life is not only about dreaming, life also has responsibilities and my take is that the difference with being a child and an adult is that as an adult we have to take a different kind of responsibility in our actions and behaviour. Of course there are times when we fail, but then we need to learn from it and try again. I believe this is also what being an adult is, learning from our failures and trying again.

But then, once a while someone comes along, a kid, who is better being an adult as a small kid than most adults will ever be AND at the same time this kid is living life as a kid and enjoying life.

I have seen a lot in life, I have experienced happiness and I have experienced pain and sadness. And already at my age (I was 44 when this happened time) I have experienced more in my life than most people will experience in their entire lifetime.  And then this happened to me, I was teaching snowboarding to this kid who has a special place in my heart. He told me these words:

If you fall, you have to get up and try again,
Because that is how you learn and succeed in life.
And that is how I want to live my life.

This moment is a moment that I will always remember, because there are no words to describe the feeling when a child becomes the wise man who teaches me about life. This moment gave me hope for life.

Be like this kid, dream big and live with the wisdom he has.

I have earlier written about how people criticise when i wear my fur coat when it’s spring or summer when you are supposed to Finnish norms, wear summer clothes EVEN if it’s cold. I have had my suspicions why this happens, but I have not had real facts to back it up and I have not realised what the harsh truth about it is, when looking into psychological behaviour of humans.

I wanted to understand more, because it happened today again. Someone disguising a “funny question” even it it’s straight out is an “attack” and between the lines I can read how they want to ask what is wrong with me when I wear a fur coat in the spring. And even if today the sun was shining from a clear blue sky, it was cold, about 4-5 degrees.

So I have dug deep in psychology and human behaviour about why people do this. Of course some people have the courage to come and say “you have a nice coat”. But most times people either criticise by saying something like the man at the car wash today, or just silently criticise, look and roll their eyes or similar.

The truth? My coat is a status-quo bomb. People attack because I expose their blind obedience to arbitrary rules. In Finland you are supposed to wear spring or summer clothes in May because it’s spring, even if it’s cold. And if you don’t do it, like me, you break the unwritten rules of dress codes. In Finland, seasonal dress codes are like tribal markers. Wearing fur in spring isn’t just ‘weird’—it’s rejecting shared suffering (‘We freeze together, so we belong’).”

But why are these rules so important for people?

Because it’s a status threat to people when I break the norms. But how can I be a threat to status of people by wearing a fur coat? It can be broken down into a couple of things:

Evolutionary psychology
System justification
Fear of change

And what wearing my fur coat does in times when you are supposed to wear summer clothes?

It forces people to confront that they are wearing summer clothes even if it’s cold just to fit in and my freedom of wearing what I want and not caring about the norms mirrors their own fear of not fitting in and possibly creating shame, which again might lead to an attack towards me.

Here’s the brutal math:
Their compliance = social safety.
My defiance = a mirror showing their fear.
Result: Hostility.
(source, Festinger, 1956)

Neuroscience of Threat Response

Going a bit deeper:
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) detects “rule violations”
Triggers amygdala-driven fear (like seeing a predator)(source Klucharev et al. 2009)
Physical reaction = primal danger response
The physical reaction is similar to when you experience danger.

So me breaking the norms by wearing a fur coat during spring or summer doesn’t just annoy people, it triggers a primal alarm in their brain.

I originally thought maybe it’s just weakness of people why people see me as a threat, but I learned that it’s not about weakness it’s about hierarchy preservation.

Basically I’m disrupting the hierarchy of society and I’m a threat to the pecking order. For example if I gain respect without fitting in the norms (just by being different) it devalues their compliance.

Another example: One employee starts working from home without permission, it makes others wonder:
Why am I still coming to the office?.
My fur coat does the same thing for seasonal dress codes.
(source Social Dominance Theory Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)

While I’m happy breaking the rules, others might ask “why am I suffering from the unwritten rules of dress codes in Finland?”. And again as a result, people attack to restore the justification of their own sacrifices of obeying the norms. (source Fear of Relative Deprivation, Walker & Pettigrew, 1984)

The tall poppy syndrome.

In Finnish culture standing out from a crowd get you “cut down”. My fur coat signals that I don’t need approval, which undermines the “social contract”. And this is not a personal thing, it’s cultural and biological programming. (source Feather, 1994)

But I have always thought that should our culture not evolve? The answer is yes, but it’s very slow. It takes 1-3% of a group to break the rules before the majority starts “following” and eventually the group starts chasing into a “new norm”. For example, me wearing my fur coat, eventually others stop noticing it, and some might even join and also wear a fur coat. And within my friends, many have stopped “noticing” it in a big way, and many friends seem to see my fur coat as a positive thing, so I guess I have managed to create a minor shift in thinking. (source Centola, 2018)

Summary:

I disrupt → They panic.
I refuse to blindly obey rules → They see their own chains.
I stretch culture -> norms adapt, but if I push too hard, the system pushes back.

A quick answer: YES positivity affects your health. The long answer, well let’s dive into it. What I write here are my own opinions and my own experience. But I still believe there is a lot of truth in what I write, even if I can’t back it up with science researches.

So, in my human experiment doing a neural reset I had 3 factors that where crucial for the neural reset.
1. Cold exposure
2. Diet
3. Strength training

A part that is not talked about that much in healthy living is positivity and how it effects your body and health. I believe that positivity, well generates positive energy which again I believe effects both your own health and also affects your surroundings.

Simple example, when you are around someone who is positive, you most of the times start feeling positive yourself, it might be just very small changes, but in general your mood is turning positive the more you are exposured to a positive person. It doesn’t have to be a person, it can just as well be something positive that is happening or you are doing something you like a lot, which makes you feel better.

And then the dark side, the negative. I think it affects the same way as the positive, but in reverse. The more you are exposed to negativity, negative thoughts, negative people, the worse you feel, and it negatively affects your health.

So there is something that I can’t explain to myself why it happens, but there is some energy that is spread through the positive and the negative.

One thing that have helped me stay healthy is that every day, even the worst day of them all, I try to find something positive, even if it’s the smallest thing I can find, it’s still positivie and it’s something that shows me that positivity excist even in the darkest times. And this mentality I have of every day trying to find something positive, I believe is a key of me being healthy.

Of course my diet, my phyiscal excersise and other things I do affects my health, but I truly believe the ability to find something positive, plays a big role to everything.

Влияет ли позитив на ваше здоровье?

Краткий ответ: ДА, позитив влияет на ваше здоровье. Длинный ответ, ну, давайте углубимся в него. То, что я пишу здесь, — это мое собственное мнение и мой собственный опыт. Но я все еще верю, что в том, что я пишу, много правды, даже если я не могу подкрепить это научными исследованиями.

Итак, в моем эксперименте на людях, проводящем нейронную перезагрузку, у меня было 3 фактора, которые были решающими для нейронной перезагрузки.

1. Воздействие холода
2. Диета
3. Силовые тренировки

Часть, о которой не так много говорят в здоровом образе жизни, — это позитив и то, как он влияет на ваше тело и здоровье. Я считаю, что позитив, хорошо генерирует позитивную энергию, которая, опять же, я считаю, влияет как на ваше собственное здоровье, так и на ваше окружение.

Простой пример: когда вы находитесь рядом с кем-то, кто позитивен, вы в большинстве случаев начинаете чувствовать себя позитивно, это могут быть совсем небольшие изменения, но в целом ваше настроение становится позитивным, чем больше вы общаетесь с позитивным человеком. Это не обязательно должен быть человек, это может быть что-то позитивное, происходящее или то, что вы делаете, что вам очень нравится, что заставляет вас чувствовать себя лучше.

А затем темная сторона, негатив. Я считаю, что это влияет так же, как и позитив, но наоборот. Чем больше вы подвергаетесь воздействию негатива, негативных мыслей, негативных людей, тем хуже вы себя чувствуете, и это негативно влияет на ваше здоровье.

Так что есть что-то, что я не могу объяснить себе, почему это происходит, но есть какая-то энергия, которая распространяется через позитив и негатив.

Одна из вещей, которая помогла мне оставаться здоровой, это то, что каждый день, даже в самый худший из всех дней, я стараюсь найти что-то позитивное, даже если это самая маленькая вещь, которую я могу найти, это все равно позитив, и это то, что показывает мне, что позитив существует даже в самые темные времена. И этот настрой, который у меня есть, чтобы каждый день пытаться найти что-то позитивное, я считаю ключом к моему здоровью.

Конечно, моя диета, мои физические упражнения и другие вещи, которые я делаю, влияют на мое здоровье, но я искренне верю, что способность находить что-то позитивное играет большую роль во всем.

The Neural Reset was 72 hours, and it worked. And now the following 3 days I have been working on implementing into my everyday life for a less extreme but still effective way to keep my nervous system healthy and also keep my brain fresh. Of course this also affects my whole body.

Differences I have noticed after the neural reset is:
– better sleep
– less stress and I handle difficult things more calmly
– easier to keep my thoughts from wandering into negative and toxic thinking
– I feel more positive
– my body feels fresh

Day 1 after:

Morning I did a cold exposure with submerging my face into cold water for 15 seconds.
Had only water to drink, didn’t eat anything.
I ate a big lunch I ate both beef and chicken style thai food with rise.
In the evening I had rasberries with cream (organic) and a coca cola.
Before bed I did a cold exposure again with the submerging my face in cold water for 15 seconds.

Day 2 after

Again submerging my face in cold water for 15 seconds.
For breakfast I had some Innocent antioxidant smoothie.
For lunch/dinner (as I eat only one real meal a day) I made chicken in the owen seasoned with 2 things, first my salt-pepper-cajun mix with lemon olive oil and during it was in the owen I glazed it with my butter-jalopeno mix. Delicious! And I drank coca cola with it.
In the evening I drank some water and sumberged my face in cold water for 15 seconds.

Day 3 after

Like the two other days, again started my day with submerging my face in cold water for 15 seconds.
Then I again had some Innocent antioxidant smoothie for breakfast.
Later I had a pizza with a coca cola for dinner.
And then again the same evening routine, drinking water and my face submerged in cold water for 15 seconds.

My take on the three first days after the neural reset.

The cold exposure relieves stress, and after doing it first thing after I wake up, it feels like I’m a new man every morning. I will keep this morning routine and the same in the evening as something I do everyday and then 1 or 2 times a week I will do the cold shower for 1 minute. With this combination I believe I have found a long term way of doing cold exposure for my nervous system without taking it to extreme measures.

Eating, I have been eating relatively healthy and yes with some coca cola, but my ideology here is the same as with the cold exposure, not to take to the over the limit into extreme, but keep a balance of both physically healthy food for my body as well as mentally happy things of enjoyment in my diet. And with this kind of ideology I believe I will maintain a healthy way of eating while at the same time enjoying what I’m eating.

With the trainin, I will continue training as I have before, so this part did not really change. I don’t train everyday, but I try to maintain a certain routine, some heavy strength training, some agility and speed training. But I will mix it up, so that it doesn’t get to booring if doing the same thing all the time.

The biggest change for me if I compare my life before and after the neural reset is the cold exposure, bcause my eating and training have been relatively healthy and good for most of my life. My diet just got some small changes. But the cold exposure seems to really work, both as a fast stress relief and also as supporting long term a healthy nervous system. And at the end a comparison of cold shower of 1 minute vs submerging my face in the cold for 15 seconds.

1. BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor)
A protein that acts like “fertilizer for neurons”, promoting:
Synapse strength (learning/memory).
Neuroplasticity (rewiring of brain circuits).
Neuron survival (protects against degeneration).

The last day started in the same manner as past days, first cold shower for about 1 min 10 seconds. It does not have to be ice cold, for the cold exposure to force vagus nerve activation and reset stress response the water has to be 15 degrees celsius or colder. My showers where about 8-10 degrees, which is cold enough, because how I see it is that is has to be cold enough to feel cold so that it at the same time as the biological effect starts it needs to psychologically feel so cold that you really don’t want to go there, because in my opinion, that itself, when forcing oneself to do something that I rather not do, is already a success and I would dare to claim it already builds mental strenght to develop, specially when you dicipline yourself doing it for 72 hours both in the morning and the evening.

After the cold shower a breakfast of one egg yolk and some water and after that of to the gym for hard training.

During the 72 hours (as the first day was a soft landing preparing for the actual reset), I minimized everything extra for the reason to try to keep my brain “protected” as much as possible to get as great effect as possible.

Food I kept the same routine, eating beef, medium rare and drinking water. And my last shower was in the eveing for about 1 min 10 seconds.

Was this experiment crazy and a bit extreme? In a way you could say, yes it was crazy, BUT on the otherhand I lean towards not crazy, but something we all should do. Because, we all know that when we exercise our muscles the sore and tired and sometimes exhausted, and its “normal” to take care of your body and muscles.

But how about our brain and nervous system? Ask yourself, do you take care of them? To be honest, I don’t, well not good enough in the past. The reason why I have not done that is that my pressure tolerance much higher than average, my awerness is also higher the average and what these do is my brain and nervous system can both take much more and still “survive” and at the same time it gets tired because of going so “deep”, and that is the reason for my human experiment, well it has two reasons.

1. To do a neural reset, so basically get my nervous system to reset and rebuild. You can imagine it like rebuilding an engine, when the engine gets worn you have to at some point rebuild the engine so that it can keep going. And if you don’t it will fail. The same goes to your nervous system and brain, it will eventually fail. But this can also happen for example if you have to endure a really difficult situation, this is different for us all, but sooner or later we burn out if we don’t take care of ourselves enough. For me I needed the reset so that I could get my stress levels down and think more clearly. And I succeeded, the 72 hour neural reset worked, I could already feel gains from it during the second day, and the third day just turbo boosted the process. It’s difficult to explain, but if feels like you feel and see so much more clearly and obstacles don’t pull you down, but you just dance through difficulties with ease.

2. The other reason is that I wanted to learn from the 72 hour neural reset and implement it into my regular everyday life as a way of not letting my nervous system or brain get too tired and stressed. Think of it as preventive care of an engine, you do oil changes to keep it going so that you don’t have to rebuild it. So basically doing things to keep it going forever. The same with my nervous system and brain, I’m now implementing things so that I can keep it going and keep my nervous system and brain to keep going fresh all the time. Of course there will be times when stress levels rise, but when taking care all the time I will be able to go through the stress with a breeze without blinking.

The crazy part is that I was ok all along, even before, just a bit stressed because a lot of difficult things I have to deal with almost everyday so I want to be able to withstand stress, toxic situations and challenges in life much better and see more clearly. Something really happened and even if it was tough to keep the dicipline for 72 hours, I’m happy that I did because I also trust my instincts better know.

Would I do it again? First time I did it because something inside me, my insticts told me I need to do something and I did, BUT I was flying into the unknown. So would I do it again? A big YES because now I woulnd’t be flying into the unknown, but I know how positively it affects me and I have experienced it.

Next mission, to implement what I have learned into my everyday life. Stay tuned for more.

Woke up and took a cold shower for 1 min and 10 seconds and after that breakfast, 2 raw egg yolks and drank water.

For me one key thing is to slow down, meaning to have enought time to do whatever I’m doing, which leads that I’m not “running” everywhere but instead I can fully consentrate on whatever I’m doing. I have been working on this for a longer time, but now with the extreme 4 days if plays a bigger role.

After the cold shower and breakfast I took my time and off to the gym for training. Normally I drive to the gym, but now I walked, to get some fresh air and just to relax my brain more, as I walk partly through the forrest, and being in the forrest with no noise just calms your mind.

Gym was I relatively hard training set, but I still keep my style in training from before, short and intensive. Today bench press and then dips and after that done, so only 2 excerises, and I have noticed this style works for me.

Eating today, after the gym I had minced meat with salt and pepper and water to drink. And then I researched some more what kind of spices and herbs I can use that helps the neural reset process, because surprisingly many things are not so good (specially when going hardcore reset).

I found out the Rosemary thrives under heat (releases more carnosic acid when cooked). What it means is that Rosemary directly protects brain fats (from oxidized oils). So you can think of rosemary as a armor for the brain.
Basil is also good, not as strong as rosemary, but the catch is that basil needs to be fresh.

For dinner I made a flank steak, seasoned with salt, black pepper and rosemary. Cooked to medium-rare. And then fresh chopped basil on top. Sooo good!

Some facts about rosemary and basil:

Rosemary:
Active compunds:
– Carnosic acid, rosmarinic acid
Neuro impact:
– Protects fats from oxidation (crucial for cooking). 
– Boosts memory (acetylcholinesterase inhibitor). 
– Anti-inflammatory (lowers brain IL-6).

Basil:
Active compunds:
– Eugenol, linalool
Neuro impact:
– Mild GABA support (calming). 
– Antioxidant (but heat-sensitive). 
– Digestive aid.

So far I have started to notice clear difference in brain activity, difficult to explain but my brain feels much sharper and agile. So it seems to be working what I’m doing. One thing helps, but doing everything together with cold exposure, diet, strength training is the key to success.

Now I have one more day in the “extreme” style of the neural reset and after that I will try to implement what I have learned into my everyday life in a way that it supports the neural system, my brain and my body and at the same time enjoying life with drinking coca cola or having a pizza.

So far a very positive impact in everything how I feel.

I’m not a phyisican nor is this a 100% fact, it is my take on what I have researched myself and doing an “experiment” to find myself a healthy way of keeping both my body and brain healthy.

My whole life I have been living relatively healthy, my worst “enemy” towards total healthyness are two things, one has to do with what I eat, the other more of a mental thing. First lets dive down into these two things.

1. Dietery issue
   In the big picture I eat relatively healthy, my alcholol consumption is almost non-existent. More or less the only thing that makes my diet unhealthy is sugar, more specific, Coca Cola. Why I drink regular cola with sugar instead of zero sugar coke is another story, but simple reason, I believe in the more natural things the healthier something is, for example sugar is procceced from a plant and again the zero sugar coca cola has artificial chemistry to make it sweet which to me is a simple “no thanks”.
   
   There is a catch with the “come from natural sources”, for example lets say vegetables, it’s not so that all vegetables are healthy for humans, but this is also another story, that I will probably get back to in later posts.
   
2. The mental issue
   It has to do with my high awarness, which has to do with two reasons, 1. born with it and 2. adapted to surrounding environmenet when I was young. Together these two things have made my awarness to a very high level. What it means in real life I register what is happening arround me more than the average person, When this happens, in the long run in tends to exhaust my brain, basically we could use words tired, exhausted, burn-out (in extreme cases), these words are to understand better what I write about.
   
   At the same time high alert and high awarness is not a negative thing, I see it myself as a very positive thing, it just drains your energy easily if I don’t let my brain “rest” enough. One example, I was playing poker many years ago at a table of about 8 people. One of the players was a former finnish poker champion from a couple of years back. The outcome was that I dropped him from the table. And when it happened he was amazed because he was a 100% sure he had found my “tell”, but he didn’t realize that I “automatically without consciously trying” reversed him trying to read me into giving him readable tells that were just a setup for him catching them and ultimately beating him, so basically I was not reading him to beat him, he thought he was reading me even if it was a setup.
   
   So unconsciously my brain has a high alert and high awerness, you might understand that it sometimes is exhausting that you see things or notice things when you just want to relax.

So back to the neural reset. The extreme way is to take say 72 hours where you implement both dietary things and phsyical things to achieve it. Is it doable to everyone? Yes. But the challenge is time, as most of us don’t have the possibility to stop everything for 72 hours so instead I will implement parts of it to my everyday life which will have more or less the same effect, but with a long term effect.

Why the neural reset?

After I was in France for a month and a half, where my goal was to get away from everything that has been stressing my mental state and to restart my healthy way of living that had been lost for about 1-2 years at least, probably even more with not eating healthy enough and not excersising enough (almost no excistent).

France was a good start, I got back on track, and now after being back for about a month and a half I want to take it even further, to became healthy and also to be able to “unleash” my brain in to another level.

Day 1

Just leaving all sugars away and eating healthy and drinking only water. And also reasearching into neural reset, how can it be achieved and what does it take and what is the cost for it. And then I started to make a plan to start implementing it.

At first I will implement it with more strength to achieve a “shock” for the body and mind, and then with time find a balance for good health.

Day 2

Started with sleeping without having any alarms to wake me up. I realized I needed sleep as I woke up at 12:30. At 13:00 I took a cold shower, I mean COLD, like jumping in icewater. I stayed in the cold shower for 45 seconds, with no warm showering after it. Just drying myself. Then making food, beef steak, medium-rare with only salt and pepper, made in butter and olive oil. And drinking only water.

For dinner I will make minced beef with raw egg (without the egg white) and water for drinking.

Today no training, but tomorrow on I will have heavy training at the gym.

Also I will try to minimize screen time (phone, social media, computer etc).

Day 2 ended with a 1 min 20 seconds cold shower.

Phase 1 explained

Cold exposure (cold showers): Forces vagus nerve activation, resets stress response.

Heavy Resistance Training (all of my training): Signals the body to upregulate BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor)—literally repairs neurons.

Diet: For neural reset optimal would be raw animal foods, but here I will keep it a bit more “normal”. But the reason for why this kind of diet is imortant is: the brain is a fat-rich, nutrient-hungry organ, and raw animal foods provide bioavailable nutrients that cooked/processed foods often lack.

Breathing in and out: I will also do breathing excercise 4-4-4-4 before and after training, working etc. I do this 10 times in a row.
4 seconds breath in
4 seconds hold
4 seconds breath out
4 seconds hold

At the end I want to state, I’m not a phyisican nor is this a 100% fact, it is my take on what I have researched myself and doing an “experiment” to find myself a healthy way of keeping both my body and brain healthy.