Tag Archives: Master of Change Brad Stulberg

A5R: A Practice to Ground and Grow

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Allostasis: Maintaining stability through change.
Order – Disorder – New Order.

Attune. Attend. Assess. Adjust. Adapt. Repeat.

I’ve thought of this undulating process for some weeks now. The ideas are still a work in progress, and today I feel moved to introduce them here. A5R.

Healing Through Connection turns ten years old in a couple weeks. When I look back at early posts, those words still resonate; I’m still the me who wrote them. And ten years on, of course I’m not the same me! Ha!
A year ago in Be Myself, Change Myself, Be the Change, I wrote, “We are who we are from a very early age, maybe even before we are born. AND, we also constantly evolve throughout our lives. This is one of my favorite paradoxes.”
In Root Down to Branch Out in 2021: “Sturdy, anchored stability | Supple, limber mobility | In dynamic balance | Life of healthy growth | Evolution in action”

Technology, environment, culture, and human relationships change exponentially faster now, and we are not physiologically equipped to cope. –Or are we?

Early humans who survived into old age had naturally energy-conserving metabolisms. When calories were scarce, tribal elders who stored more fat could eat less and live long enough to pass on their communal wisdom to younger generations. I’m convinced this is why most of us tend to gain weight with age, especially if we are not finely attuned and attentive to body signs like hunger, satiety, and non-physiologic drivers of eating and (non)movement (more on this in another post, maybe). Who among us can eat at 50 the way we ate at 20 and not feel almost immediate consequences now that never occurred then? Movement, sleep, mental acuity, hearing, and vision, among other things, all change over time, naturally, predictably, in nature’s most efficient and effective way, all so the species can survive.

Which traits of modern humans will allow us to persist healthily into the 22nd Century and beyond? Whose progeny will thrive five and ten generations from now, and why?
More importantly, what traits, practices, and skills will help each of us, and all of us collectively, thrive now, in this lifetime?

Stable. Strong. Flexible. Agile. Resilient.
I still think of these as the five attributes of fitness of any kind—physical, mental, emotional, relational, organizational, cultural, …and political.
“Be stubborn with the [mission]. Be flexible with the [method].” I riff from Jeff Bezos here, I think.
Is the way we’ve always done it the way that will keep working? Is it optimal?
Is change for its own sake–taking sledgehammers to old ways just because they are old–the best way forward? Can we honestly assess methods passed down through tradition, improvised in response to crisis, and advanced by those in charge, and see/admit both benefits and flaws clearly?

A5R happens anyway. Everything changes eventually, and we change with it, willingly or not. Sometimes we drive, other times we can ride. Getting dragged is most painful. So if we can be a little more intentional–Anticipate and Act in Advance (omg its all A words?)–how much smoother might life all go for us, individually and collectively?

Conservation and Progress.
Youthfulness and Wisdom.
Strong and Soft.
Living toward Death.
What other relevant paradoxes and polarities do we grapple with today and forever?
How can we do it better, suffer less, and get to inner and outer peace sooner?

Attune. Attend. Assess. Adjust. Adapt. Repeat.

Be and live Stable. Strong. Flexible. Agile. Resilient.

Stay open, curious, humble, honest, and accountable.

Learn. Grow. Evolve.

Celebrate the Wins

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53# kettle bell, 15 swings, 2 rounds (after one round at 44#), as part of the Ethos HIIT circuit this morning. It’s the heaviest kettle bell swinging I’ve ever done in this setting, woohooooooo!

Got to spend quality time with Son yesterday. Watched two movies together: “My Spy: The Eternal City,” which is the sequel to “My Spy,” which we watched during our 2020 pandemic summer trip, and “Ride On,” a heartwarming father-daughter reunion film starring Jackie Chan and spoken all in Mandarin (highly recommend!).

This post makes 32 in 32 days, my longest blogging streak ever, and #663 total. When I started I thought I’d be happy if I lasted a year. Win.

It occurs to me that four weeks on from the election, political and interpersonal tension may have eased a bit? Possibly the holidays have an abating effect? Another thing to be thankful for, yes? And now I have multiple notes to self, all linked in last night’s post, for when I feel the agitation coming back on–29 anticipatory admonishments to walk my talk.
Once again I’m humbled to realize that I take for granted how easy it is to be open and curious in some contexts. I also too often fail to realize how exponentially harder it is in others–and that is when I fail. But that is why I train–so I may execute more easily and effectively exactly then. This weekend I managed to do better than before–WIN!

Finally finished What Is Health? by Peter Sterling, referenced in Master of Change by Brad Stulberg. What a dense and intense review of basic science and human physiology (basically the first two years of med school), and then the most validating exposition on how it’s our systems that make us sick far more than our individual failings. Listening to the acknowledgements has pointed me to Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, currently restimulating my non-fiction brain with authority! I wonder if I can muster the attention and focus to finish The Fourth Turning by Strauss & Howe before year’s end? That would be such a win! And I look forward to many more exciting non-fictions in the queue: I Never Thought of It That Way by Monica Guzman, The Amen Effect by Sharon Brous, Possible by William Ury, and Trust by Pete Buttigieg, among others!

Tonight I get to write snail mail, journal, and prepare for a new workweek renewed and refreshed from a lovely long weekend connecting with people who make my life better. So much to look forward to this month, my friends. Now I’m going to light the Christmas tree, make myself a hot beverage, and settle into more words.
It doesn’t get much better than this.

Balance

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How do you think of balance? In what contexts? What do you picture in your mind? How does it show up in your life? Where do you wish for it?

Chatting with a biology teacher friend last weekend, we agreed that ‘balance’ may generally be perceived as static state–or a goal of such. So to convey the fluidity of nature and the apparently paradoxical concept of stability in constant movement (think of bicycling), we agreed that ‘equilibrium’ may be a more accurate word for what we mean.

I have long thought of balance as a dynamic rather than static state. And now I recognize that it can be both. Of course!

How do I already do balance well?
–Physically, I like doing single leg movements. Squats, dead lifts, hinges. Tree and warrior yoga poses, lunges–I love them all because I feel powerful when I hold them. When I feel particularly confident, I close my eyes for an extra challenge.
–I’m good at letting go unimportant and non-urgent things when life gets chaotic and dense. Hence I live in a relative pigsty, because hello, life is constantly in one state of chaos and wonder or another and housecleaning just does not interest me. I now trust myself, however, to sense the need to reprioritize occasionally, such as clearing off the writing space for a 30 day blogging challenge.
–I allow periods of immersive obsession (eg romance binge [140/180 titles this year], washi art), heavily leaning phases that happily threaten but don’t actually topple life functions. It’s my way of living life on the edge.

How could I do it better?
–Maybe I could tighten my swings, dampen the amplitude of some extreme-ish behaviors, like buying/hoarding books and paper, OH and time spent on social media, definitely yes.
–Tone down, mitigate my agitation at certain things that grate on me, like the brokenness of our healthcare system… get to better equanimity about it…
–This really reminds me of polarity management–Bob Tauber over at Polarity Partnerships gave me such thoughtful and enlightening feedback tonight on that post:
“we suggest referring to poles in a polarity as seemingly opposed (or seemingly antagonistic) because in reality, values, competencies or strategic objectives are always part of an interdependent pair.” So I can monitor how I frame things to be ‘balanced’ in the first place!

How/what does society balance well?

Homeo/allostasis. We haven’t killed ourselves and the planet yet, so there is some kind of balance happening, yes? Some of our systems exist in homeostasis–stable states of being that return to form after a disruption. In his book Master of Change, Brad Stulberg introduces the idea of allostasis, wherein an initially stable state meets disruption and disorder, and instead of reverting to the prior order, evolves to a new, ‘reordered’ state, adapted to consequences of the disruption. I highly recommend the book for its illustrative stories and practical skills for elevating our resilience and joy in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world. So I’d say that homeo- and allostasis already occur, regardless and sometimes in spite of our direct participation in any of it. Do you know anyone who is already aware and in front of the best of these states?

How could we do balance better?

Mindfulness and Acceptance. Ooo, just think if we did mindfulness better, how much more easily we could see with equanimity the possibility in what is, and move more seamlessly toward what could be? We could see where/when/how homeostasis is possible, and when not, respond rather than react, and perceive more options, invent them, co-create them. Progress and conservation relate this way–as change inevitably occurs, we are contantly faced with (invited to) choices in tension to flow with or resist. If we made our choices with clear and acute intention rather than by default, wow, how would that be?

Creativity. We get to invent it!! “Fly as we test, test as we fly,” says NASA. Make the thing knowing it’s imperfect but functional. Anticipate flaws and prepare for consequences, ready the teams to respond. Then launch, monitor, adjust, repeat. Start with pilot, alpha and beta trials, scale iteratively. Life is change; the future is neither known nor guaranteed. Embrace it with the best of our ingenuity!

Collaboration. On a societal level, as each of us processes the violent swings of local and global life individually, balance collapses into oblivion when we only fend for ourselves and ignore one another. Societal balance feels like ‘world peace’–yikes, how trite. I’ll stick with it anyway: Ebbs and flows, scarcity and abundance, mitigated extremes. Horizontal and vertical integration of government and business, public and private, personal and professional participation… Huh.

Ooo, fun. That is not where I thought this would go. I had no idea where it would end, honestly. I’m happy with this. Perspective tomorrow! Good night!