Hello friends! This week David dives in to share Part One of his quickstart guide to Living An Enjoyable Life, wherein he distills as best he can the most valuable lessons he’s learned and insights gained over his past 40+ years of living. I know that many of these wisdom nuggets have come to be key components of my own framing, and others have prompted me to figure out my own thoughts on life and living well. We hope this gives you some good stuff to chew on this week. Thanks for reading!

-Mindy

Living an enjoyable life

I wrote this as a quickstart to help our 19-year-old son, Clive, and our other children. Clive is on the autism spectrum; part of my endowment to him. Some of the framings of this advice seek to appeal to our way of seeing the world. Still, it will be helpful to anyone who can relate to any of the feelings I've struggled with on my path to becoming a person capable of navigating my life happily. When we build software, we create comprehensive documentation of all the functionality in the software, but it can be burdensome to write and laborious to read. So, we've come up with a clever shortcut called Quickstarts. A Quickstart is the minimal knowledge needed to start productively using software.

While anyone can glean insight from what I'm sharing, anyone blessed with a touch of 'tism powers, as my children like to say, may find some of this framing more relatable. 

Tip 1: Enjoy life; remember, enjoying life is downstream of relationships.

I wish that the first thing everyone learned in life is to enjoy being alive. It would be beautiful if everyone truly believed that life is theirs to enjoy and that they can be in loving relationships with others who enjoy life. 

I was raised by parents who thought this life was a test or a trial in preparation for something that comes later. Many people in my life now believe that this life is a part of a much more extensive experience of multiple lifetimes. No matter what your or someone else's belief system may be, there is no avoiding the reality that this experience that we have being alive is unique, distinct, and finite. If this life is unique, it is a waste to squander it being miserable. And if it turns out there's something else going on, then what better use of this time than to enjoy the fuck out of it as preparation for enjoying the fuck out of whatever comes next. And if enjoying this life forecloses your chances of celestial paradise, consider that that place will be full of people who didn't like this life; do you really want to spend an eternity with dull lumps who don't know how to enjoy life?

As a teenager, my early-morning seminary teacher taught me about Pascal's wager. I thought about it for the rest of the day. When I came back the next morning, I told her that I had invented the inverse Pascal's wager: If some supreme being is so petty that they would damn me to an eternity of misery simply because I didn't abide by some arbitrary metric of holiness, then, fuck him.

A belief system that treats this life as unimportant, disposable, or merely a stop along the way to something else fails to honor the first anchor in this section, and therefore, it is a poor belief system. 

I do not have a worldview or belief system that solves for my existential demise. I believe in immortality but only of the evolutionary variety–children are my approximation for immortality, and I don't even worry about "my line" going on forever. It is enough that I get to experience my children's lives, and nothing is more enjoyable than seeing them enjoy their lives. My work is my legacy, and I know that even if it outlives me, eventually, all will be forgotten. 

Existential demise is an intense fear and force operating in everyone's life. So, you must develop skills to deal with that fear. To enjoy life and address fear, you can learn to embrace some truths I find very anchoring. Being grounded and anchored to a solid emotional and psychological foundation is extremely important—the only thing I've found that helps me quickly return to a happy state and deal with the fear that accompanies existing. We can't change that life is like an ocean, tossing and turning, but we can have anchors and ground ourselves when we feel lost at sea or when someone in our life is a tempest.

Anchor 1: You will do well to keep your survival concerns constrained to the present moment. Worries of the past have just as many possible "what if" scenarios as what lay in the future, but the past comes with a side-helping of regret.

The first and most helpful question one can ask themselves is: When am I?

Are you in the present moment? Have your thoughts slipped into the past, worrying and ruminating about what you might have said? Are you in the future, worrying and imagining all the possible ways things could go poorly? 

Time travel is not for the faint of heart, and it is not to be done without understanding the first rule of mental time travel:

You can't change the past!

You can't change the past, but you can change how you relate to it. I changed how I related to the past by intentionally delving into memories of the past and figuring out what was going on when I started to form protective responses to specific situations. So, if you really want to get specific, you can ask: How old am I? when a part of you gets triggered.

It turns out our inner emotional self has no concept of time. 

I can be going about my day as 46-year-old David when an interaction or experience triggers something inside of me, and suddenly, I'm 3 years old feeling just as I felt 43 years ago. The part of me that understands time is flummoxed. If I don't ask myself, When am I? I will struggle to get grounded because I mistakenly think that how I feel is a function of the present moment and not the burdens of the past that I still carry. 

The second rule of time travel is about the future:

You can't predict the future accurately enough at a large enough scale to make a difference.

When we unintentionally slip into the future, we worry. Sometimes, it is specific. Often, it's just generalized anxiety. Slipping into the future and being anxious gives the illusion of control. The amount of things we control is so small that it's ridiculous to make it your primary focus. If you want to be miserable, try to control your life. If you're successful, you will create a tiny little existence primarily obsessed with routines. You know that I know what that is like. That, unfortunately, is the man I was through my 30s, and that is the model I raised you with through your pre-adolescent childhood. 

If you want to be happy and enjoy your life, you need to do it in real-time, and you will engage in time travel with intention and preparation.

A touch of the 'tism allows us to see ourselves slipping outside the present moment better than neurotypical humans. Neurotypical humans mentalize and empathize their existence. They do not get outside of themselves; instead, they project their emotional state onto the world. While not true, a helpful framing for me has been to think of most people as mildly schizophrenic; their internal state becomes their experience of everything. The world around them is constantly morphing; a form of hallucination transforms the benign and banal into insidious, or worse, welcoming and inviting when nothing could be further from the truth (think men hitting on women they believe want to be with them because they want to be with that woman).

An autistic framing under-mentalizes and under-empathizes, which means we see and often treat people (including ourselves) as objects. It feels cold and heartless, and in a sense, it is. BUT it can be super helpful in getting started on the path to accurately answering the question: When am I?

It's totally normal to not be fully present. Being totally present is an animal state of being, and while delightful, it's not a reasonable way to live life. I experience full presence rarely and only in specific scenarios:

• Running hard

• Dancing

• Sex

• Meditation

As anyone with a practice of getting present (see the above list) can attest, even one's best effort will only result in being present for relatively brief periods. I doubt that I've experienced being fully present for more than a few minutes without getting pulled a little into the past or future. I can return to being present, but staying there for very long is neither easy nor desirable or practical. Familiarity with and developing skills to drop into the present moment for brief moments is enough to make life enjoyable.

The rest of the time, I'm slightly in the future, influenced by things I've learned, or slightly in the past, reflecting on what just happened. This is normal. You can't be fully present in most of your life, including chatting, driving, working, etc.

But my concern for my survival must be kept to NOW. Something might happen that could endanger my life at literally any moment. I can't change that. You can't change that. So, let it go and enjoy what is happening more fully.

Anchor 2: Everything you need to get grounded is already a part of you.

The second most helpful question is: Where am I?

Therapists often teach the skill of grounding by noticing the ordinary things around you. This can be very helpful when we feel overwhelmed. Noticing the world around you can be very grounding, but I think this question is best answered by going inward.

Are you in your head?

When we get in our heads, we can still be entirely present, but we are detached from what's going on around us. We might be dialoguing or ruminating. If you are in your head and feeling stuck, move.

The more you move, the harder it is to be in your head. Movement gets you in your body.

Moving your body strenuously or taking on strenuous movement (e.g., going fast, doing something highly technical, doing something that requires flow to execute, etc.) gets you out of your head and into your body.

Are you in your body?

When we get inside our bodies, we can still be quite present, but we can get stuck "only on the surface of ourselves." Usually, we are stuck in some part of our nervous system.

• It's too loud

• It's too scratchy

• It's too bright

• It's too hot

• It's too cold

• I can't stand the smell of that perfume

• I don't like…

• I can't…

If we are stuck in our body, it helps to breathe.

All nervous systems can get into a loop. The best loop ends in orgasm. But most loops are not sexy. 

When we feel anxious, we can notice it in our rapid heart rate and shallow breathing. Learning to control one's heart rate takes years of practice. Even babies can control their breath. The most remarkable thing about breath is that it is one automatic function of our body that we can do willfully and, in so doing, effect change in our nervous system. The relaxed, parasympathetic state of our nervous system is referred to as "rest & digest" or "feed & breed." We can access this by taking hold of our breath and breathing in ways that engage our vagus nerve, and that signal our body to relax. The simplest breath exercise to help you get there is called box breathing:

• Breath in deeply to the slow count of four: 1,2,3,4

• Hold to the slow count of four: 1,2,3,4

• Breathe out completely. Like all the way. I mean all… the… way… out to the slow count of four: 1,2,3,4. This is the most crucial step in telling our nervous system to relax. 

• Hold to the slow count of four: 1,2,3,4

Do this at least four times. Keep going if you're still agitated or if you want to relax more.

You can vary the times and see which works best to help you find a relaxed state. Some popular variations, each describing the time in seconds for inhaling, holding, exhaling, and pausing, are

• 4:4:6:2

• 4:7:8:4

You can experiment with other forms of breath exercises and notice how they affect your emotional state. Wim Hoff is a form of Holotropic breathwork and breath holding that can be profoundly relaxing and mood-elevating. Pranayama are breathing exercises that can help put your body into various states from relaxed to ready to exert yourself. Kundalini Yoga focuses on matching breath to movement. Try stuff. Do what works. Don't get caught up in doing things because they're supposed to work. Life is too long to spend doing things that don't work.

I've had profound experiences working with my breath. It is the simplest medicine around, and getting good at breathing has unlocked deep calm in my life.

Once you're right here, you are equally relaxed in your mind and body. Calm and alert. This is a great place to respond to anything in your life.

This is where you can really lean into being autistic: you can do this anywhere, anytime, and it doesn't matter how weird you are. Autistic people get weird sometimes; lean in. This is effectively stimming, but it's really excellent for actually getting relaxed and not just good for shedding excess energy.

Pro Tips

• A ritual of strenuous movement, ideally one you engage in daily, can result in being happier and being more fit or more capable than you might imagine possible.

• A ritual of examining your survival concerns regularly, which I usually do once a month, can result in significant gains in your overall well-being and a sense that you're on a good track.

• A practice of journaling (I do audio journaling) can reveal where you go when you're not present. It can result in a more thoughtful approach to getting present; do you need to be more in your body? Less in your nervous system? Less in the past? Or less in the future? Think of journaling as a log of your adventures through time and space. Where do you go? What did you experience? If you were to go back to the same place, how would you improve your trip?

• Breathing from the diaphragm can help keep one in a more relaxed state. Many adults have forgotten how to breathe from their belly and instead breathe from their chest–does your belly stay put when you breathe? Then you're breathing from your chest. A default diaphragmatic breath will steady you, improve your mood, and improve your use of oxygen.

The next installment in this series will dive more into what's required in great relationships.

-David/Gonzo

NEAT!

Stuff we think is neat enough to share! (David⚡️ & Mindy✨)

• The Handbook of Mindfulness: Theory, Research, and Practice provides a comprehensive review of current knowledge about mindfulness. ⚡️

• UCLA has a Mindfulness research group with free programs. ⚡️

• I’ve listened to I Am - Krishan Liquid Mix for a couple years, especially when getting ready for takeoff on a flight. It’s perfectly timed to support box-breathing.

• Just a great happy to be alive song. ✨

• I think I was late to the game on reading Lessons in Chemistry, but I don’t read a lot of fiction lately. I will say that I very much enjoyed it and recommend it if you’re looking for a good novel this summer. ✨ 

SOMETHING TO TRY

The power of intention 

I’ve been trying out the power of intention for smaller, everyday things. Like if I’m going for a walk with my dog Phoebe, I can set the intention of the walk. Maybe it’s to give her a lot of chances to sniff, or maybe I’m going to think through something that’s on my mind, or listen to some music to elevate my mood, or get lost in my current audiobook, or have a meditative walk listening to the sounds. If I’m deciding on something to eat, I can think whether my intention is more for nutrition or pleasure. I can shower with the intention to feel refreshed and rejuvenated. I can play a game with one of my kids with the intention to laugh and connect. A lovely thing I find is that setting intentions prior to an activity almost ensures that I’ll be more present during it and increases the likelihood that it turns into mood/energy booster instead of just something I did.

-Mindy

PARTING

WORDS

PIC

That’s all for this week! If you’re into this, share this newsletter with all your friends. Connecting with new subscribers is magical! 🧚🏻‍♀️

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice.