Hardcore Health

Something that comes back again and again in the financial freedom-sphere is health. Perhaps because there is a similarity between breaking free from misconceptions about finance and misconceptions around health.

Our conclusion is that we need to be as radical with health as with finance. Actually, health came first for us, and we discovered investing later. The same concept still applies - what is considered 'normal' has gone far away from what is in our own interest.

The 'normal' has inactivity as its goal, inventions that remove discomfort (e-scooters, really?) and convenience as its means. The 'normal' markets health as a commodity, with roughly the same mediocre results as listening to financial advice from the old banks.

When one has been indoctrinated to the normal for too long, the break seems hardcore. Just like with finances. 

The body below the head is not a dead appendix sewn on under the shoulders. It's something that requires attention!

And a really nice butt. Hermes, quick runner.

Marble Statue (~200 BC),  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Go Hardcore!

1) Sell the car. Just get rid of it, give it away if need be. Get to everywhere within 12 kilometers (7 miles) from where you live with muscle power. Kids? They can bike. We're not kidding.

2) Go up at 6:00 every morning and go for a 5-km run (2 miles). It's not so short that it doesn't matter, but long enough to make you really happy, and healthy. And the heart is a super-Godlike-fabulous muscle, that literally keeps you alive from second to second, so give it Respect! The secret to getting up at 6 (or 5:30)? Start with going up early! That's how one gets sleepy in the evening and gets into the habit.

3) Office? Stand up! At least 4 hours a day. And go for a lunch walk or run.

4)  Don't underestimate micro-training. Do pull-ups in that outdoor gym when running. Do 50 pushups, squats and sit-ups when you can.

5) Always have ready access to training. Have kettlebells at home. Running shoes by the door. Live close to a swimming pool. Get rid of the gym card, that's just a silly excuse, draining costs and worth nothing by itself. Get real, get out and get going instead.

6) Surprise the body. Go for the odd long run. Swim in lakes. Jump. Dance.

Don't fool yourself that hand-eye-control and kicking or throwing things is training. It's not. It's just eye-hand-control and throwing things. Benefit? Unclear. Grow up. 

Where to start?

Don't let the Ego be the Enemy. Run 1 km, walk 1 km, and progress slowly until you can run a complete 10+ km. Do push ups, squats and situps with body weight. Do yoga. Keep on until your body starts to respond.

We keep some metrics:

- Our BMI:s should always be in the 20-25 range. 

- We log training. In a year we should accumulate 10000 minutes. 

- We should run 80 mornings, and we have some stretch-goals to strive for: go for a long run at least every month and crawl +3km 3 times a year. 

Food? 

Some suggestions:

- Breakfast is a stupid invention of modernity, made up by the food industry to make us consume junk food (don't try to excuse yourself in thinking your breakfast is an exception) and pooring in useless, low-quality calories. Have a coffee in the morning, learn not to fear some hunger that keeps you sharp - and eat an early lunch with real food instead.

- Bread was invented by the Devil.

- Cole and broccoli were invented by the Gods. 

- Give up meats. It's as stupid to let a cow eat grass and then eat the cow as one might think. Did we mention hardcore?

- No alcohol. Not kidding. Why the heck would you?

- Popcorn is underrated.

- Use sweeteners if you like, or stevia. The criticism is machiavellian propaganda to the uninformed and mentally behind by the sugar and farmer industry. Sugar is the worst cancerogenous substance we habitually consume now, after alcohol. And you will be able to decrease sweeteners as you learn not to expect food to be so sweet.

- Think about how much energy you put in (nuts = much, cole=not much), and how much you use up by training, moving and being active during a day.  

- For GODS SAKE: the MOUTH should NOT be a path to great pleasures in life! We would recommend scenic runs, happy kids, good art, a meaningful vocation and a fun sex life instead. Stop whining and get serious.

Leaning in too much

As with finance, one can go too far, and let the ego-complex-nerd, the inner little person fueled by insecurities and control-needs take over. Then, just as with finance, one's compensatory behavior quickly becomes unhealthy. No, you don't have to run EVERY morning. No, don't run marathons, ultramarathons, iron-mans or any races for that matter. Who are you competing with? Why should you? 

And no, don't go and lift a mammoth three times in the gym to get biceps as big as your legs. 

There's healthy, and there's too much.

Even Seneca recommended just jumping around, to avoid the excessive eating that comes with excessive exercise. 

A Hardcore Break

There's no excuse. Just as we can realize that the 'normal' in finance is anything but healthy and requires a radical break; the same applies to an even more important asset - our body, heart and butt -  and the approach needs to be just as thorough, consistent and radical. 

Good luck and get going!

//antinous&lucilius

Balancing The New Year's Resolutions - Part 2/2

This is part 2 of 2 about our overly ambitious way of making New Year's Resolutions for 2021. 

We've divided our resolutions in 4 areas with Epic Mission Statements and all! 

• Job: Leaving Earth's Gravity
• Fun: Enjoying the Ride
• Body: Building our Temples
• Soul: Expanding our Stories

How we think about focusing on the journey and how we set the mission in Part 1. Here comes our resolutions on the last two areas - Body & Soul.

Body: Building our Temples

Keeping the ambitions realistic

As said in the beginning, we are very keen on training and fitness, both of us. 

In the last two years we've improved a lot in our fitness (increasing muscle-mass while staying lan, hitting records on our running). But still - let's make it a focus. 

We've just put in a time goal, of 9000 minutes of deliberate training. And topped it up with at least 3 times 2 mile crawls. We like swimming. Running comes natural. 

If we keep that up, we probably can pull of the odd 42 km run as well. 

Soul: Expanding our Stories

So the last area. Perhaps the most nebulous one, but on equal terms with the rest. What stories do we tell ourselves about ourselves? And, more importantly, what stories do we tell ourselves that we are NOT? 

A question worthy of exploration.

So in the search for expanding our stories, we put things like:

- get a lifestyle / work-life coach

- take the fearless and tougher choice 2 times

- at two social events, having a (tasteful) focus that is 180 degrees contrary to our main personality traits 

- identify three stories we tell ourselves that diminishes us

- improve 1 language

As many non-English speakers do, we already speak a bunch of languages, but why stop there? To a certain extent, as Goethe puts it, those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own. And perhaps less about the world as well. If we think of where we will land, our story will probably include a touch of Socrates cosmopolitan - he who is at home everywhere and nowhere.

Antinous German is not quite were it should be, so he should basically be able to have a conversation in the end of the year. He will aim for reading four books and listening to four audiobooks. Lucilius Mandarin is rusty, so he will focus on building vocabulary and basic sentences, and should be able to survive everyday situations in Mandarin at the end of the year.

A word about that thing about going counter to our personality traits. It sounds strange. It should sounds strange! 

Two Examples: 

• For Lucilius, who naturally is very goal and result-focused, this means going to a social event, outside of work, with the sole purpose of being really nice to everyone. No other results needed, no learning telling mingling with ulterior motives. 
• For Antinous, who naturally is a very likeable person, it will mean putting his own will in the centre of a social event and make something happen that just depend on that he wants it. So it's "Expanding our stories" that have snuck into this category a little bit as well. 

What about that tougher choice? It's about at least twice taking a choice where we first feel like "nah, this is nothing for me" and say "yes, I'll do it!". It's probably related to worklife, but not necessary. The idea is to push us to expand our story of who we tell ourselves that we are. 

We will also try to get a coach this year. We've found a way to finance that, so it's not as expensive as it sounds. We will try to use the coach to identify a few stories that we tell ourselves that diminishes who we are. And just being open to getting new perspectives and ideas.

Let's see how this works out for us, but we hope this way 2021 will become more intentional for us. 

What are your missions and how do you go about to reach them?

Balancing the New Year's Resolutions - Part 1/2

We occasionally run marathons. It's not like we aim for it, but for us it's a proof that we stay reasonably fit. 

How do we pull this off? By loving the process, as the saying goes. Those 42 km:s become the outcome of early morning runs, good food, blissful swims and long, long runs in the woods.

Not a forest per se, but still very good for running

So how does this relate to New Year's Resolutions? 

It's about avoiding wishful thinking. Don't fall in the b*llshit trap of magically wishing for a goal (run a marathon). Wish for the journey!  

A good resolution moves us in a desired direction. Who exactly cares where we might end up, as long as it's in that direction? Super-fit but didn't run a marathon, would that really be a problem?

For a few years now we didn't have any New Year's Resolutions. 

We have been coasting along on our journey towards financial independence, and we didn't feel the need to think about where we were heading. That overarching goal blinded out all else. But this year, it feels like the coasting part has changed. 

Our lives will need to transform again, and start to prepare us for landing at some sweet spot outside  gravity's pull of the paycheck. 

Our New Year's Resolutions 

So how can we avoid losing sight of the horizon? After some thinking and some more running in the woods (snow included) we decided to split our resolutions up in four areas.  

And what the heck. Epic mission statements can't be wrong. Here they go:

• Job: Leaving Earth's Gravity.
• Fun: Enjoying the Ride
• Body: Building our Temples
• Soul: Expanding our Stories

Job: Leaving Earth's Gravity

In the job category, we put things like:

- Work more than 4+, 3 Sundays 

- Work more than 12h+ days, 8 times 

- Establish Total Budget Control, for each of the 12 months 

We try to stick to the motto that our jobs must feel worthwhile. Lo and behold, we are at work places were we think humanity is one nano-iota better off if we show up at work. When we haven't believed in work - then we've done all we could to wiggle ourselves out of that situation.

And with probably a much, much shorter work life than the average Joe - we don't have to get disillusioned to put in hard work every now and then. It's more amusing to go all in. So instead of seeing that as a sacrifice - we turn it around and make hard work a promise. 

We shall stand up and fight (when necessary!). Much more fun.

And on another note, related to that paycheck. We've never really had complete budget control. We have just stayed very frugal, and summed things up roughly at year's end. Usually we hit our budget.  

The thinking here is that if we better know where the money goes, it will actually allow us to spend more. We should feel allowed to actually spend what we've set off as our fun budget.

Which opens up for the next topic; the Fun Area.

Fun: Enjoying the Ride

One danger with the quest for financial independence, or rather financial freedom, is that we tend to become so goal oriented that we just forget having fun. We forget everything that doesn't have an obvious payoff. Like piano. We are never going to play the piano at Carnegie Hall, let's put it like that, but it's still fun to play!

So this year we decided to have a spotlight on Fun as well. 

In this area we put:

- 1 long-haul flight for fun only

- making the socially adventurous/interesting choice, 3 times

- able to play two songs well on the piano

- put in the time necessary for at least three close friends

I think the list speaks for itself. 

Why all the social stuff? We score somewhere on the middle between introvert and extrovert, hence some focus at the social side, as we know we enjoy it but need a push to take initiative. It's also an area that was somewhat sacrificed under our financial bandwagon during the last few years. So it's about coming back to something we used to have. I suspect we share that with many in this community. 

Related to that we also put an explicit focus on our close friends. It's tragic, but we admit that we tended to play down the time for friends while aiming stubbornly for financial independence. That is probably nothing that will serve us well in a financially free future.

Let's save the two last areas, Body and Soul for Part 2.

How are you going with your resolutions so far?