One Second, Time, and How to Increase Your Brain Power

1. One-Second Decision to Stay In the Fight

“When I was teetering on the brink, I was able to physically calm myself down with a few deep breaths, and that helped me see through the adrenaline rush. My heart rate was still elevated, and panic continued to creep in, but I’d regained enough of my composure to make a conscious, one-second decision to stay in the fight.”

— David Goggins, Never Finished

A reminder that breathing won’t make a challenging situation go away, but it will help us regain our composure and make that one-second decision to “stay in the fight.”

2. Movement is an Imperative on the Spiritual Path

“Energetic movement is not an option, not a luxury, but an imperative on the spiritual path if we are to do the work that needs doing. Young people require strenuous activities, such as jogging, swimming, and hard work, that tax the heart and lungs. And nearly all of us, of course, can walk, as briskly as our condition permits.”

— Eknath Easwaran, Passage Meditation

A good reminder that physical activity is also a spiritual practice. As Caroline Williams says in Move, “We need to move to be still, and only from that place of stillness can we move well.”

3. We Are Time

“But the deeper truth behind all this is to be found in Heidegger’s mysterious suggestion that we don’t get or have time at all—that instead we are time. We’ll never get the upper hand in our relationship with the moments of our lives because we are nothing but those moments. To ‘master’ them would first entail getting outside of them, splitting off from them. But where would we go?”

– Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

We don’t “get time” or simply have “a limited amount of time.”

We are time.

We’re not separate from the passing moments; we are those moments.

How’s that for a Monday morning mind-bender? Ha.

4. How to Increase Your Brain Power Before a Problem

“You can increase your brain power three to fivefold simply by laughing and having fun before working on a problem.”

– Doug Hall

I’ve shared this one before, but just a nice reminder that laughter is the best nootropic around.

“The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is.”

— Viktor Frankl

In good breath,

Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”

P.S. don’t be average

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