Breaking out of Homeostasis: The Lifestyle

Summary of the main points of my book Breaking out of Homeostasis:

Learn what it means to break out of homeostasis (BOOH) and how the lifestyle that most people lead is harmful to their brain, body, and ultimately their long-term growth.

Learn why you can’t trust your brain and body as much as you think you can.

Introduction

Homeostasis is the process by which all the things about you (your brain and body) remain the same.

Homeostasis is embedded deeply into every living being as a mechanism for saving energy. We cannot survive without it. But at the same time it is a major pain in the ass – the biggest obstacle – to realizing your true potential.

Homeostasis is why people are inherently lazy.

In my experience there are very few people that have any idea about this stuff and as a result they live their lives on autopilot to a higher degree than those people those who do know about it.

There are both good and bad things about this autopilot of operating as it saves us a lot of energy, by allowing us to get by with thinking less and doing less.

But we don’t need to save energy… We have it in abundance in modern society, so ultimately homeostasis isn’t very rewarding for an intelligent and ambitious person.

You will not be able to become a remarkable human being if you do not understand and gradually overcome some of these obstacles that are wired into you.

Overcoming those obstacles is the purpose of living a lifestyle that is conducive to breaking out of homeostasis.

The following are the key attributes of living a lifestyle that is conducive to Breaking out of Homeostasis:

To Exert More Energy than You Have to in Today’s Easy Society

This means to put in more effort than your brain or body wants you to. Everything else in this post stems from this first principle and is a sort of variation of this.

Activating your Brain as a Default State

As opposed to wanting to mentally go to sleep like most people.

This means constantly thinking and exercising one’s mind by following goals or doing other things that have to do with activating the brain.

Instead of dumbing yourself down to get comfortable in the short-term you put yourself through things that are challenging and initially painful but end up making you comfortable and happy in the long-term as a result of becoming more intelligent and being able to stay focused on things for a longer amount of time.

The three main ways of activating the brain are that of intense focus, triggering adrenaline, and using drugs.  The two first alternatives are to prefer but the third one is still better than not activating your brain at all.

Using your Brain and Body Instead of Letting it Use you

YOU have a brain and a body, they do not have you.

To think or not to think

To act or not to act

These are choices that go completely unanswered by many.

It’s possible to dumb yourself down and avoid thinking or taking action very easily in modern society and it’s very tempting to do just that as it has become the norm.

Most People Trust their Brains Way too Much

This is one of the main reasons why transformative and lasting change is hard and improbable to most people.

One of the most fundamental truths about human beings  is that they unconsciously want to maintain homeostasis and do the things that require the least amount of energy and discomfort.

Because people don’t understand this it means that they have no idea of why they do many of the things they do.

Because they trust their own mental and emotional feedback too much they are unable to change for at least three major reasons:

  1. Change happens gradually and it takes a while to adapt – The Plateau
  2. Your prefrontal cortex
  3. Your brain’s reward system

1. Change Happens Gradually and it Takes a While to Adapt.

It takes a while for homeostasis to shift in the long-term and it takes a while to develop a habit or a new hormonal pattern. This means you almost always MUST overcome an initial inertia where you lack motivation or feel very uncomfortable.

You must persist through this period on a plateau while not trusting in the feedback given to you by your body and brain and act on the beliefthat you have the ability to adapt to the situation.

If you are consistent in forcing yourself through this initial period, things will change soon. Let me illustrate this by two examples:

  • Exercising. It is very uncomfortable and painful at first and your body wants to quit due to wanting to maintain homeostasis and remain comfortable, passive, and save energy. But soon you notice that if you up the ante a bit every session you get stronger and your body adapts to it.
  • Intermittent fasting. Most people who try IF fail due to not sticking out the initial period on the plateau where your hormonal patterns have to adjust to your new eating schedule. This can take 1-4 weeks. Most people quit the second it feels uncomfortable and go off running to eat a snack like weaklings.

The principles behind the two above examples can be applied to any type of change, and this is explained by…

The Plateau

Whenever you are on the verge of breaking out of homeostasis  you will get uncomfortable and your brain will try to trick you in any way it can to make sure you don’t do it.

It will come up with all sorts of fucked up thoughts about how you absolutely should not continue down the path of action that you’re currently headed toward.

This is the brain’s last resort to keep you in homeostasis by means of convincing you through excuses and rationalizations.

The brain is going to tell you all sorts of fucked up things in order to get you to slow down and not break out of homeostasis.  It might tell you that everyone will hate you, that you might seriously hurt yourself, or it may get you to freeze up in fear.

If you do not know that this is simply standard procedure for how your brain maintains homeostasis you will definitely react to this, think that it’s true, and stop. But that’s the wrong action because you can’t trust your brain in this situation.

What you’re doing is probably not dangerous at all, but your brain will frame the situation in such a way to get you to stop so that you don’t change, because change requires a ton of energy, and your brain doesn’t want that. It is only concerned with saving energy.

On the flip side, EVEN if you truly understand this, it’s still going to be tough to pull through due to…

2. The Prefrontal Cortex.

Very few people are able to endure this discomfort because their brains are in poor shape from getting influenced by constant information and instant gratification. Their willpower, their ability to stay motivated and focused are all at a low level as a result of not activating their brains enough. This hampers their prefrontal cortex.

Prefrontal cortex.  The prefrontal cortex is a part of our brain that really sets us apart from other species because it has enabled us to learn things and adapt to circumstances quicker than other animals. The PFC is imperative to willpower, motivation, decision making, and staying focused at a task by sustaining concentration.

It is nearly impossible to become a highly capable person without exercising it somehow. Sadly, very few people in our society have any idea of this and as a result they don’t practice it much.

Many people do things that are harmful to the PFC – multitasking and constantly checking social media are prime example because both diminish your focus and lower your ability to concentrate in the long-term. They also fuck up your brain’s reward system, which I’ll get into in the next section.

Without focus, willpower, and motivation – how are you going to get anything done?

You’re not.

There are two major reasons why the prefrontal cortex is incredibly important to practice:

  • First of all, fundamentally speaking EVERYTHING significant ever accomplished by human beings have stemmed from focusing on a task for a long period of time. Einstein didn’t exactly come up with his theory of relativity in the course of a day. If he hadn’t been able to focus on thinking about it consistently every day for a very long period of time he probably wouldn’t have conceived of it and we wouldn’t know who he is.
  • Secondly, any value you are able to create for yourself or others stems from learning things and adapting to circumstances. A company that cannot adapt to the trends of the market is going to perish quickly. A person who cannot learn the things he/she needs to learn to perform in order to accomplish his/her goals is going to become unhappy.

Without exercising your prefrontal cortex you’ll become a less competent person and as a result you will have a harder time in life, it’s really as simple as that.

3. Brain’s Reward System

The brain’s reward system plays a major part in determining the actions that you take on a daily basis.

You do the things that make you feel good  – things that flood your body with stimulating neurotransmitters and hormones –  and you avoid  the things that make you feel bored or uncomfortable.

Boredom can be defined as being in a state of deficiency in terms of these stimulating hormones and neurotransmitters, where dopamine  is the most prominent neurotransmitter associated with pleasure.

As soon as you encounter a new experience your brain’s reward system is going to determine how this thing made you feel. Depending on whether you felt good or not your brain will want to either reproduce the same experience, or it will try to avoid it.

What do you think it does to your brain’s reward system when you pursue instant gratification and multitasking?

It floods your system with E.G dopamine and makes you feel good. Your brain quickly realizes:

“Oh, I can feel good and stimulated by doing XYZ, and it was REALLY EASY too. From now on I am only going to do XYZ because that is going to make me happy!”

But you cannot entirely trust your brain’s reward system to find out what is going to make you happy and competent in modern times because our society is so different from when we were cave men.

When we were cave men the brain’s reward system was probably a really good indicator for our survival. The things that made us feel good – for example sex and food – were really important for our survival and these things were usually scarce so it made sense to focus on getting them.

And it made sense to conserve energy too.

In modern society this is not the case. There are many, many examples of this, some major ones are:

  • An abundance of food, especially unhealthy processed food that stimulate you in the short-term but make you feel bad in the long-term as a result of harming your brain and body.
  • Sugar. Sugar feels great to consume as it gets you stimulated instantly, but it is immensely unhealthy. There is probably no single “substance” in the world that does more overall damage to society than sugar. Cave men did not come across much sugar at all. According to Mark Hyman human beings evolved eating no more than a few spoonfuls of sugar per year – equivalent to 1-2 cans of coke – and that came from eating berries. Imagine what it does to your brain’s reward system to eat more sugar than that every day, which is what most people do.
  • Porn. You can sit by your computer and get huge amounts of dopamine by masturbating to ten different women without having to put in the work to become worthy of such a woman in real life.
  • Multitasking. Porn is really the most powerful example of multitasking because by watching a new video before finishing the last one you get a lot more stimulated. Checking your phone, Facebook, and email for notifications while you watch TV is another powerful example of multitasking.

brain feedback loop

Ultimately, these things raise your threshold for stimulation and you will soon feel bored if you don’t do it constantly. This lowers your ability to  focus and sustain your concentration on one task at a time and as a result your prefrontal cortex gets weaker.

This becomes a negative spiral that makes you weaker and weaker until you become a complete loser who is completely run by his brain as it wants to maintain homeostasis.

The only way to break this pathetic cycle of addiction is to rewire your brain’s reward system to get addicted to the things that are good for you in the long-term and find ways of activating your brain so that you are producing these positive hormones and neurotransmitters without having to become a pathetic fiend to instant gratification and multitasking.

With a shitty reward system you’re not be able to accomplish anything significant because you’re not going to draw any enjoyment from the hard work required to produce something of real value.

Conclusion

The end result of this logic is still the same as most other philosophies of self-development and success:

Put in the effort, challenge yourself, follow your goal and you will live long and prosper

But the reasoning is different.

By learning this you will see how it all connects in a feedback loop that is either positive for you or negative. Things stay the same by means of homeostasis and it’s very hard to change this if you don’t understand the power your brain and body have over you.

You will not get the motivation, courage, energy and willpower to break out of homeostasis consistently unless you believe in the validity of the theory behind it. It’s too uncomfortable.

In this case you might say that unless you know the WHY  then you will not give a shit about the what or the how.

You must have a reason for doing the things you do or you will not do them at the end of the day. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel to chase after when things are miserable in the present, which they definitely are on the plateau.

But ultimately, it’s worth it.

It’s worth it not being a confused weakling who reacts to his brain and body at any whim of wanting to maintain homeostasis.

It’s worth it to avoid being unconsciously influenced by bullshit things.

It’s worth it to activate the brain and become focused; to produce positive neurotransmitters and hormones in your body without having to get it from outside sources of instant gratification.

It’s worth being strong, capable, self-reliant, and happy.


Breaking out of Homeostasis: Get the book

I worked for over two years and read more than 200 books as part of the research to complete my long-awaited book Breaking out of Homeostasis. It became a bestseller in its first week.

Get the book or read more of my articles about homeostasis.

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Comments

  1. Do you have an audio book version?

  2. Ludvig,

    Is there anyway to get a physical copy or paperback of this book? I see on Amazon it is only available for kindle; I would really prefer to have a physical copy. Great article!

    Than you,

    Nick

  3. Great article. “threshold for stimulation” is painfully real…
    Another word for homeostasis is “comfort zone” which describe the feeling, but it does not explain the process like you do.

  4. I’m looking forward to the return of this book.

  5. Where can I get this book?

  6. Ludvig,
    this is a masterpiece. really awesome. Now i understand why staying in bed feels better than waking up and getting things done. Point to note, my brain needs a lot of rewiring. Do the uncomfortable things and get greater rewards. I NEED TO JOIN THAT TEAM AND GET THEM GIRLS.

  7. I’m not that much of a internet reader to be
    honest but your sites really nice, keep it up! I’ll go ahead and
    bookmark your website to come back down the road. All the best

  8. Clash of clans stool says

    Hi, just wanted to say, I liked this article.
    It was practical. Keep on posting!

  9. Ludvig,

    Really informative post on brain functionality and how it’s main goal is in today’s society to push you towards the fast food restaurant and then the couch.

    I agree with your comment that you need to have a WHY or a vision of what you want to be come. My favorite quote on that comes from Nietzche, “He who has a why can bare almost any how.”

    Chad
    BuildTheFire

  10. Michal Stawicki says

    “unless you believe in the validity of the theory behind it”
    Jim Rohn called it a personal philosophy. It doesn’t have to be scentifically proven, as long as you believe it. That’s why Law of Attraction works for some people. They really belief this stuff, it’s their personal philosophy, so they do the action and got the long-term reward.

    • True. It’s the placebo effect.

      I think the main problem with the Law of Attraction is that a lot of people.

      There’s many neurological reasons why it works though. When you focus on a thing (like positive opportunities) your brain will start interpreting the information you come across in a way that will make you see what you want to see. And that’s great, but people who believe in the Law of Attraction shouldn’t expect the proverbial “checks in the mail” to start randomly plopping up.

      You get money by producing value and working hard. Not thinking about it.

  11. Ludvig, i just read your book (and this summary post as well obviously).
    This is some very useful stuff you’ve gathered and I am and will apply much of in my own life.

    I see how the BOOH lifestyle – as you call it – contrasts to how average Joe leads his life, and how I have spent most of my life as well.
    But Fuck it. Ive tried that way of living for way too long. And what do i have to show for it but mediocrity in all ways imaginable.

    Im glad i stumbled across this blog a few weeks ago when I was casually browsing the internet killing time.

    How ironic that i would find this book.

  12. Wan Muhammad Zulfikri says

    Man…your concept blew my mind. Really really good, Ludvig.

    I am also a victim of instant gratification and ‘addiction’ to dopamine.
    Do you have any post that can help me overcome weak willpower?

    Btw, subscribed because you’re awesome.

    • That’s good.

      It’s a shitload of information to take in at once, believe me, I know.

      This one:
      http://www.startgainingmomentum.com/make-a-lasting-decision/

      If you read the book you’ll find that about 30-50% of it is directed at your question.

      I’ve got a lot of semi-philosophical posts coming up that will give an insight into the mentality you’re looking for. It’s really hard to get out of this addiction, it really requires a complete shift in lifestyle.

      Awesome, thanks for that!

      • Wan Muhammad Zulfikri says

        I still haven’t checked the book because I’m busy. But I’ll definitely look at it. I haven’t absorbed this post yet so gonna focus one by one.

  13. I took a look at some of the vids. It’s a cool initiative. How did you go about it?

    I’m considering doing the same for a little company project I’m doing and sharing it with my team members on my team’s facebook group.

    • Ah, Thanks a lot Rohit!

      I just took a video camera, put it on a tripod, and shoot a bunch of videos in different places. I’d already written the book so I knew pretty much what I would say, though I didn’t prepare that well as you can see. I didn’t do that many “re-takes” as you probably noticed. But it was a learning experience, very cool to do.

      I think you should do it!

  14. I really agree about the whole brain part.

    – Activating the brain:
    I think you’re right, but probably exaggarating a bit. Or maybe it is I who is myopic due to hanging around with intelligent people who certainly do “activate their brains” frequently.

    — Trust their brain:
    This I think is very true. If you haven’t watched/read Dan Ariely, here’s a google link to many of his ted talks:

    https://www.google.se/search?q=dan+ariely+ted&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=cr&ei=7Y6LUqLkBeWJ4ASU-4CACA

  15. How long time does it take to “BOOH”?

    The part about the brain’s reward system was particularly interesting. What you’re saying about not trusting the brain makes a shitton of sense.

    • When I use the term BOOH I usually mean it in a short-term period, maybe a few hours or up to a day, and it has to be “earned”, meaning that it won’t happen automatically. A good example could be going to the gym and really pushing through plateau of pain and feeling unstoppable afterwards, but I’ve really had the same experierence in MANY other activities – even reading and writing.

      As for the long-term…
      You cannot constantly be in a state of having broken out of homeostasis because your body has to be somewhat in balance and you will run out of your supply of neurotransmitters and hormones that make you feel awesome eventually.

      Does that make sense?
      Otherwise I recommend you read the book.

  16. A very interesting read!

    A question: Do you think that homeostasis is an equally powerful foe when going from bad to good (for instance, no exercise to some exercise) – as when going from good to great (for instance, from fit to super-fit)?

    Cheers
    Kenneth

    • Thanks Kenneth!

      It’s a very hard question. In my experience I would say “no” in terms of the motivational & psychological aspects of a behavior or skill (as with feeling like shit or not believing in yourself), but in terms of physical aspects I would say “yes”.

      In terms of exercise I would say that while the physical aspect of getting stronger/fitter is by far easier in the beginning, it is harder psychologically speaking. But this actually reverses when one becomes good & consistent at exercising.

      I never ever have any motivational or psychological issues that pose resistance to me working out. But even though I am more motivated than ever to work out I am not seeing the same quick physical gains as before. I think that has to do with that I’ve reached a high level of my genetic potential already.

  17. +1.

    Just like your last post. Very long read, but worth it. Ill get the book during christmas when school slows down and I have time to really get into how this works, because I can definitely see most of the main points you’re making here and how it all fits together but I don’t quite understand it all…

    Nevertheless fascinating shit. :)

    Regards

    • Thanks Eric,

      Let me know if you wonder have any wonders about the book, or if you just thought something was cool/strange.

      • Hey Ludvig!

        I just finished reading the book. Very inspiring to read actually im going to spend about half of 2014 dedicated to the things you have taught me in your book namely to BREAK OUT OF HOMEOSTASIS!!!

        I am going to go to the gym and go 5 MORE MINUTES. I am going to practice metacognition. I’m going to eat less and drop 15 kg!

        And I’m making the lasting decision to do this!

  18. Great job, Ludvig. There are many blogs out there, but I love the way you get straight to the point. Rock on

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