Fasting, Opportunity vs Obligation, Proactivity

Avthar's Weekly Newsletter #4 (5/22/2020)

May 22, 2020

Hello from New York City!

Welcome to the edition #4 of Avthar’s Weekly Newsletter. I’m your host, Avthar and this is where I share lessons and experiences about startups, learning, health and happiness, all to help you level up your own life.

I’m working on finishing up some new long form essays on my experience in the startup world and my advice to job-hunters, so I’m trying something new in this week’s letter. This letter is a curation of short ideas inspired by my life experiences. Let me know if you like it over the long form essays.

Here’s what’s in this week’s letter:

Philosophy and Fasting
Opportunity vs Obligation
Building a Proactive Life
Plus my book highlight of the week and a 1 minute survey

Please enjoy!

Question for you: What would you like to hear most from me?

I want to hear from you which topics you’d most like to hear me cover in future newsletters. Take this 1 minute survey to let me know!

1 Minute Survey

Fasting and Philosophy: What I’m Thinking About After a 36 Hour Fast

“All pleasure comes from suffering. Depression comes from satisfaction.” - Firas Zahabi

In addition to daily intermittent fasting (usually 16/8 or 18/6), once a month I do an extended multi-day fast, usually for greater than 36 hours. For those interested, here’s my fasting dashboard in Zero, the app I use to track my fasts:

After my latest 36 hour fast, I thought back to the words of world renown MMA coach Firas Zahabi, where he reflects on why fasting is not just good for the body, but for the mind as well.

Firas Zahabi (R), coach of UFC Champion Georges St Pierre (L)

FIRAS: There are a lot of benefits to fasting, but the number one benefit...is the psychological benefit. People think that pleasure, happiness or fun comes from the outside. But actually pleasure and happiness and fun all come from a type of suffering. All pleasure comes from suffering. Depression comes from satisfaction.

This is a surprising claim, but Firas goes on to explain its truth, using the example of eating.

FIRAS: For instance, if I’m very hungry and I eat a steak dinner, that dinner relieves my pain of hunger, now I’m gonna have a sensation of pleasure. However, if I eat another streak, I’ll enjoy it, but not as much. Then I eat a third, a fourth and if I’m forced to eat it .. now the same steak that gives you pleasure is making you ill. It becomes torture. So that tells us where pleasure comes from, it comes from your appetite.

My takeaway from this is that the absence of food makes us appreciate food more. It is in this way that fasting is actually a form of building gratitude for the food we do eat.

Choose Opportunity over Obligation

There’s often times in life when we’re faced with something we have to do, but don’t feel like doing it. This could be a work assignment, school project or even attending a family event.

There’s a powerful principle I remind myself of in situations like these in order to reframe my perspective:

Focus on the opportunity, not the obligation

Obligation = I have to do this

Opportunity = I get to do this

By taking this mindset, we transform the way we view life.

We go from focusing on scarcity, to focusing on abundance.

We drop the weight of our burdens, and relax into gratitude.

If you’re enjoying Avthar’s newsletter, why not share it with friends? That way, you’ll have topics for interesting conversations and they’ll admire your good taste in newsletters. It’s a win-win!

Theme I’m applying to my life right now: Proactivity vs Reactivity

“So they live this reactive lifestyle. Their creative processes are dominated by external noise as opposed to internal music.” - Josh Waitzkin

Modern life can be relentlessly reactive. We wake up and the first thing we do is check our phones. When we feel stressed or anxious, we stress eat. When we feel fearful, we avoid the situation by scrolling social media or binging netflix. I know I’m guilty of all of the above.

In an effort to combat reactivity, I’m trying to design my life around being proactive. The specific methods I’m using come from Josh Waitzkin, the chessmaster, tai-chi push hands world champion, brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt holder and advisor to top performers.

JOSH WAITZKIN: [When working with coaching clients we] have ways of revamping their daily architecture, the way they live their life. So that they're...aligning their peak energy periods with their peak creativity work. They're building lifestyles that are relentlessly proactive as opposed to reacting to inputs.

What does it mean to be living a reactive lifestyle? Josh elaborates, using the example of checking email (or social media) during your breaks from work:

JOSH: So what you see is whenever [people are] coming back from something after a break, they're soaking in inputs. So they live this reactive lifestyle. Their creative processes are dominated by external noise as opposed to internal music.

Reflection and Journaling are a core part of building a proactive lifestyle

JOSH: A lot of what I work on with guys is creating rhythms in their life that really are based on feeding the unconscious mind, which is the wellspring of creativity information and then tapping it...This is a core habit [that manifests itself in] journaling, post-mortem processes, ending your day with a reflection of the quality of the work [and the] complexity that you're wrestling with.

That’s all for this week!

If anything from this week’s newsletter resonated with you, let me know by replying to this email or tweet me at @avthars. Or better yet, leave a comment:

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