Transitory Inflation

Inflation is a technical word but let us freely ignore whatever our banking overlords believe inflation to be. Let us freely ignore whatever our political overlords believe inflation to be.

Inflation is an erosion of our average standard of living. Increasing taxes is an erosion of our average standard of living. Shortages also have a negative effect upon our average standard of living, which are hopefully short lived shortages.

Many of us are aware of shortages of chips, steel, lumber, chicken, fresh produce and whatever it is that you have personally noticed or friends have informed you of. A builder friend of my father is unable to complete various projects as the basics he needs are randomly unavailable. Bags of plaster were available recently, not at the normal £5 but at £30. How does he price his projects accurately?

We are led to believe that these shortages will go away soon but soon has become a while, which has become a year which will soon morph into a couple of years. That is quite a hit to our collective standards of living that we haven’t collectively noticed yet.

Another major impact to our standards of living is the price of holidays and their availability. Due to ‘reasons’ many haven’t had a holiday. That is a major hit to our collective standard of living that we collectively think is temporary but this may prove to be the ‘new normal’ we keep hearing about. Did you get a holiday? Did it cost two or three times more than normal? This could also prove to be the new price of holidays rather than a ‘glitch’.

We are told that inflation is currently high but that this is transitory and inflation will go down soon. Predicting the future is difficult but our political and financial overlords do this frequently and then update these predictions regularly because they are generally ‘inaccurate’.

Now are these transitory price increases and shortages the ‘new normal’ or a ‘temporary glitch’?

If we are all suddenly much more productive then the price increases will ‘stick’ but inflation will go down rather than up.

If we are all going to do 50 hours work in 40 hours for 30 hours pay, then prices will go back to where they were and inflation pootle along at or around 2%

What if we are less productive, extending a decades long trend? Well then the price increases stay with us as do the intermittent shortages. Worse than that, inflation remains high.

Well, that is bad news for us all as our collective standard of living remains where it is now, less than what it was before the global pandemic response.

Brace, brace, brace. It could get worse if our collective central banks start creating currency and exchange it for ‘impaired assets’ at ‘non-impaired asset’ prices. It could get much worse if our collective central banks start creating vast amounts of currency, gifting it to our collective governments in exchange for whatever nonsense you wish to believe.

Unfortunately, all this is already happening and has been happening since the 2009 financial misstep. However, we are now at ludicrous speed and about to invent another word for accelerating this currency creation even harder.

This ‘temporary glitch’ depressing our collective standard of living is only temporary if several impossible things happen as described above. It is not temporary and is likely to accelerate. By accelerate, I mean a speeding up in the crushing of our collective standard of living.

Most members of the public will be very slow to understand this. Most members of the public will simply shrug and say ‘well covid this and that’. Well, not really. Covid is just the current scapegoat. Our next scapegoat could well be those who aren’t double jabbed. The scapegoat after that could be those who aren’t triple jabbed. The actual scapegoat is unimportant.

As our collective standard of living falls our political overlords and financial overlords will be pointing fingers at various scapegoats that they have just invented. In the end, should we get there, the final scapegoat for our political overlords will be the financial overlords. The final scapegoat for our financial overlords will be the political overlords and the ‘great reset’ will finally, if not before, be ushered in. We will be assured that none of this will ever happen again.

Normally, my motivation for actually writing a blog post is anger, frustration and outrage. This will likely make itself felt in my word choices and sentence construction. I have written this from a point of view of kindness. This will likely all come to pass and history will show that it was all definitely the scapegoats fault. So be it. I was going to publish this as soon as I do a spell check. It is currently the day after 9/11. I could publish this in a years time and it will still be considered to be ‘fake news’ or whatever the main stream media deem clear views of actual reality to be.

Anyway, thanks for reading and be observant.

Perhaps have a critical think about what would increase our collective standard of living.

Perhaps have a critical think about what would decrease our collective standard of living.

More importantly, how can you increase your own enjoyment of life?

For myself, I am attempting to treat all of you with kindness. This includes our financial overlords, political overlords, members of the press, members of the public but more importantly – me.

Some will view my kindness as weakness. Most will appreciate it. How others react will merely ‘show me their hand’.

I might be wrong, let us hope so but be prepared for me to have undersold the ‘difficulties’ because I have. Do please be observant.

Thanks for your time.

Stress

 

My last blog post concerned itself with the concept of weightless weight training and in it I mention food and sleep as foundational. I ought to have mentioned stress.

Stress

When a lion is chasing us or the office printer jams, many of us release a potent cocktail of hormones which breakdown the body to supply us with immediate fuel and some natural protective ‘circuits’ are over ridden. Thus the pregnant lady can overhead press a car that we about to crush her toddler. Well, something like that.

Repeated stress, repeats the above and over time we are effectively shutting down the very functions that keep us alive. Repeated stress ages us rapidly towards an early death.

Weight training and even my weightless weight training covered in last weeks blog post also count as stress. As does poor sleep and poor quality food, like what the American people eat.

Conquering stress

If you would like to age far slower then you must sensitise yourself to when you are feeling stressed. I am going to try and be kinder to other people. Particularly those I work with, which will be challenging. Very challenging. Probably impossible. However, in attempting to be kinder I am less likely to respond to them with anger. I am likely to find them less stress inducing. Well, practising being kind ought to be something we do anyway. Especially me.

I have noticed that my ‘focussed movements’ / physical training does produce an effect, a stressful like effect upon me. I have been acknowledging this and gently breathing through it. I am training myself not to have a flight or fight response to physical exertion and I am being successful.

My point is that there is a fine line between a stress response to a stimulus and a purely positive adaptive response. We need to identify which is which and increase the one and decrease the other as we see fit.

Perception

You cannot control all external events but you can have an effect on how you perceive them. I have conditioned my body / central nervous system to view my physical training as a stimulus to adaptation rather than a stress to temporarily overcome.

You might not have critically thought about that statement but imagine a pair of identical twins who are indeed identical. They both lead identical lives and train identically. One perceives the training as stressful and reacts accordingly to it. The other views the training as a pleasurable way to enjoy their own body. One ends up looking more like Woody Allen and the other starts to look more like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Please be aware of how your perception alters both your physical and mental state which are one and the same anyway.

Adaptive systems

We are all adaptive systems. No-one is able to actually understand how all our systems iperceivewith each other. Sensitise yourself to yourself, others and your environment and realise that you have a conscious system, an unconscious system and automated systems. All intertwined in ways beyond the comprehension of all. Go with your gut instincts and notice when you appear to be correct and when you are not. As you get more sensitive you can tend towards being right more often than wrong.

You are an adaptive system which has perfectly adapted to your environment and how you percieve that environment. With some critical thought you can determine if you wish to make changes and how to achieve those changes, all it takes is time and critical thought.

You take care

Exercise

 I started exercising at the age of eight after seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger win Mr Universe, or some such like. At age fifty I had tried it all and got nowhere.

You could say that I am a hard gainer, why is that?

I wrote a book about food and exercise and after reading it, I read the other books that I wrote.

I changed my diet by eliminating processed carbohydrates for three months and then intentionally keeping them quite low. I made a better effort to sleep well. I attempted to ‘listen’ more to my body.

None of this is easy. I found listening to my body to be impossible. I tried some new training philosophy that was centuries old, light dumbbell exercises. For two years my joints hurt from the light dumbbell exercises.

Physical changes were slight to none and I was getting increasingly unhappy with continuous joint pain. I thought the unthinkable. I continued with the light dumbbell exercises (Eugene Sandow) but didn’t use the light dumbbells.

So, after 44 years I listened to my body. After two intense years of attempting to listen to my body, I actually listened. Via pain my body informed me to stop using the 3kg dumbbells. I used 2kg dumbbells. The pain continued. I listened. I used 1kg dumbbells. The pain continued. I listened. I have not used dumbbells. for six months. My gains have been slight but better than the previous 44 years.

This is a critical thought blog, what I describe above is a true and accurate record of events but how can weight training without weights work when nothing I have tried in 44 years did anything?

Food and sleep are likely good foundations but exercise is needed to stimulate the body to make physical changes to adapt to the exercise. Is weight training without weights sufficient stimulus? It must be because my body has adapted, a little.

I am going to explain my modest success as a combination of three things-

1) Conscious thought

I don’t just wave my arms about ‘curling’ fresh air. I move my limbs in traditional weight lifting patterns with great focus of thought. This is known as the ‘mind-muscle’ link. I contract my muscles with as great a force as they can muster and move them throughout their full range of motion. I also ‘listen’ to my body in real-time. I don’t contract my muscles hard enough to cause pain. I don’t push my limbs beyond their pain free range of motion.

This develops a two way communication between my conscious will and my body. I deliberately contract a muscle whilst noting how that contraction feels.

2) Unconscious thought

My body has it’s own mechanisms for monitoring itself, as does yours. Medical science is beginning to realise how little it actually knows but the general population is beginning to notice. That said, these focussed movements reveal to the body / unconscious thought which parts of the body are working correctly and where resources are needed the most.

This is the adaptation to exercise that I am after. Do my nerves need to be ‘upgraded’, are my energy systems impaired in some way, do I need more brain neurons involved in movement, are my muscle cells arranged in the right plain, the right direction, are they tangled and knotted? Are my tendons springy and properly fed with nutrients and oxygen?

These focussed movements allow the bodies systems to recognise that various systems are lacking and which are most in need of resources. Then respond accordingly.

3) There must be a third thing. There always is.

Proprioception, YouTube search ‘The Bioneer’, this is where the body takes feedback from its environment and from within itself. The body will always seek to protect itself as best it can. Take my poor joints. Perhaps I am a hard gainer because my joints were never supple, springy and strong. Perhaps Arnold Schwarzenegger always had really good joints, a really good central nervous system, lots of brain neurons involved with movement and a whole host of really good mental and physical systems. Arnold would move a heavy weight and his body would green light everything but determine that larger muscles were required and so he would get them. I would lift a heavy weight and my body would have sirens sounding, klaxons blaring, red lights across the board and have my energy systems crashing and my body going into an emergency shut down. How would larger muscles be the answer to that ‘stimulus’?

If you are a successful weight lifter, body builder, ballerinist or just happy with your physical condition then my ‘focussed movements’ should not be traded for whatever it is that you are doing. You could use focussed movements as a pre-workout to really activate the ‘mind-muscle’ connection. Or perhaps post-work out to really stress the muscles to the max. Or use the focussed movements when you are away from suitable equipment or in solitary confinement for a misdemeanour of some sort.

If you are a hard gainer then perhaps one or more of your bodies systems is compromised and these focussed movements, without weights, will allow your body address these issues.

If you are old, infirm or not as good as you would like to be, try these weightless focussed movements for three to six months. Remembering that any pain or discomfort is a signal to amend what you are doing to not be in pain or discomfort.

After six months, what next?

This is my reason for writing this blog post, as I am at the six month marker and wish to read about what to do next.

I do three reps of about 20 exercise movements daily I do a mixture of one exercise when convenient and another later, when convenient. Or the entire workout in one go, if that is convenient to me. What next? Should I do six reps or more? Do the movements twice a day? Both?

No, this would make my muscles larger as they would need to store more energy to do more reps. I would like larger muscles but not as a ‘pack animal’ to do more work. I want to be physically stronger and effortlessly exert a large force ‘on demand’.

Critical thought has allowed me to fully understand my goal(s) and the solution is obvious to me. Well the solution for me is obvious to me. You will be considering how all this may or may not be true and if you can use and modify any of it to benefit yourself.

Moving forward, I shall be contracting my muscles harder throughout the full range of pain free movement that each of my limbs is capable of. I will be purposefully generating as large a force as possible. I will monitor how this feels. I can do this because I have six months experience of doing this. I thought I was contracting my muscles powerfully. I will make a greater conscious effort to contract them harder. For those who know their stuff, I expect this will mean, over time, doing each movement slower, thus increasing time under tension.

I will consider making a YouTube video demonstrating the twenty or so movements and I will put the link here when that happens. I have no equipment, dislike being photographed or filmed and have no desire to be seen shirtless – so it may not happen.

Do or do not, there is no try—Yoda

Mark Twain

Hi Gang

I trust that you are all well.

I recently came across one of my favourite Mark Twain comments and I wish to add a little of my own flavour to it. Here goes.

If you read the press, then you are mis-informed. - Mark Twain

This includes mainstream media, government announcements and the rest. You are likely to be in a higher state of anxiousness than you otherwise would be. Slightly more stressed than you need to be and this is 24/7/365. This is not good for your long term health and will increase the frequency of your momentary losses of emotional control. This is not good.

If you don't read the press, then you are uninformed. - Mark Twain

You will be likely less stressed than the average Joe and more in control of your temper, reactions and actions. You may well be considered as 'simple' by the mis-informed masses. As a man, you are likely to carry more muscle than the continually slightly stressed average Joe and be known as a 'hunk' to women who are atracted to such calmness. As a woman, men will find you more attractive as you will be far nicer to spend time with. You will be a better person regardless of whichever of the three million gender profiles you more closely relate too.

Twain and I agree on which is the better situation, not just for you but for the general population at large.

You all take care - of yourselves and each other.

David

Reality

 Most believe that reality is fixed and never give it another thought. Perhaps we ought to give it a few moments of critical thought.

I work with ‘big characters’ and as such our collective work reality is created by these ‘big characters’. After talking with each of these ‘big characters’, you would form your own opinion of our work reality. You would also notice that each of these ‘big characters’ views our collective work reality differently. Therefore, even this small example should be sufficient to give you a moments pause, to think about your reality. In an ever changing set of circumstances and events also known as life, reality is not fixed and is subject to opinion.

Each of my ‘big character’ colleagues have their own version of our collective work reality. Should you develop your own personal awareness, awareness of others and an awareness of reality, then you can develop a greater awareness of your own realities.

For example. My ‘big character’ colleagues have all decided that if I work harder, then their own work lives would be a little easier. This has created a work reality where it is collectively believed that I don’t work hard and I am also unhelpful.

It has been a difficult situation for me and this ‘reality’ of my ‘lazy unhelpfulness’ seems impossible to resolve but is it? I suppose that it is just a reputation but still, it is also our work reality.

I have had the following thought, if perceived reality and reality are closely matched then all is well. However, what if the widely held belief of my work reality is not closely matched to reality then much energy is wasted maintaining the false reality as actual reality.

More importantly, reality will impose itself every time the false reality falters. The ‘big characters’ will ignore all these impositions of reality because they don’t match up with what they believe reality to be. They will collectively explain them away and back up each others collective beliefs.

Can anything be done?

Aligning yourself with reality requires no energy, whereas the mental gymnastics required to believe unbelievable things is vast. In time, my ‘big character’ colleagues will become increasingly stressed and unflinchingly believe unbelievable things. It will become increasingly obvious for any outside observer to notice that the ‘big characters’ are behaving increasingly ‘odd’.

Basically, the further away from reality my ‘big character’ colleagues drift, the more anxious they become, the more stressed and the more bloody minded that they are correct.

The more I ground myself in actual reality, the more content I become. The further away from reality my ‘big character’ colleagues travel, the more they throw themselves under the bus.

My ‘big character’ colleagues are throwing themselves under the bus with alarming regularity. I have done nothing and I need do nothing.

Can anything be done?

I need do nothing. They will eat themselves. All I need to do is not be dragged into their collective false reality and that has taken me a year to understand.

That small example readily scales up to cover your country and the entire global population.

This wasted energy is also known as time and money. In a business these losses will be felt as a loss of profit and ultimately destroy the business. In a country these losses will be felt as a loss of productivity and ultimately be felt as high and then very high inflation. Globally, we can hide all this waste for decades then we will experience crashes in confidence if institutions and ultimately, the currency.

Good luck with that.

You are welcome.