Akrasia — Not doing what we know we should be doing.

So, I was planning to write a super science packed post about all the ways exercise is helpful for stress. I had the books out and some nice studies up my sleeve, heck I even thought about creating an actual workout to go with it!

But then I was struck with the realization that I left out a really important part about the Stress-hydras anatomy…

Because let us be honest here, I would not the first person you have ever heard talking about how exercise is good for you, would I?

See, there is a big problem with exercise, and it is something that has occupied my mind for about seven years now. My first encounter with this problem was when friends asked me how to get in to shape.

I would tell them how to do it, or if I were so lucky, I would go home and sit down to write up a fully personalized workout and diet schedule. I would even go so far as to optimize for small details by guesstimating for how long their individual muscle protein synthesis would go on based on their training history and how many grams of fat and carbs they would need depending on their work and overall lifestyle. I even did this for my dad, although to be fair to him, that was without him asking for it. But the persistent problem was that people did not follow these recommendations.

Then I started to work as a personal trainer, however, the length of this career came to be shorter than the amount of time it took me to go through the education to even start it, mainly because of this very thing, that I still kept facing the same realization as before:

Some people, probably most people, do not do what they know they should be doing.

I could have a client with whom I would go through an exercise, set up the perfect routine, double-check that everything was understandable at the end and wave them off. The week would go by and I would see them again, and surprise surprise, they had not done a single workout since I saw them the last time. And remember, these people even paid me for it, they both had the good old “sunk cost fallacy” and the “commitment to another person” working in their favor, two things that usually go a long way to make people do stuff, but still nothing changed.

So, the reason that I stopped before I even started with the whole exercise post was because of what I forgot to mention about the Hydra. See, the Hydra that Heracles fought had an immortal head, and just like the Hydra so does stress.

This head in the case of stress is what I would like to call “the meta head of you not doing what you know you should be doing”, the old greeks themselves called it “Akrasia”. The reason why it has the meta in it is because it will interfere with the act of trying to take on all the other ones. And trust me, it really is immortal.

It gains its immortality from the fact that we find ourselves bound by time, with a head full of wishes of what would be fun, enjoyable or cool to do, and all the while also having the plain necessarily stuff of life to deal with.

So, whatever I will say will have to compete for that limited time with all the other stuff you and your life already got served for you, risking to cause even more stress. This is not the whole source of its immortality tho, it also draws from the fact that we all have days and times during each day where we just do not feel like doing stuff, and this is especially true for the harder stuff, like going for a run. Apart from these two big ones, it most likely also has some other more personal sources in you, but whatever the case may be, the important thing to remember is that it is immortal.

But what did Heracles do to the immortal head of the Hydra you might ask?

Well, he just put it under a stone.. Sounds simple enough I guess!

Me, still not having read the full story about Heracles, do not know how this stone solution worked out for him. But the whole thing being a story with the head still alive and all, my imagination would love for there to be a bad sequel where he has to fight it again. And after that bad sequel, there would be yet another one where they fight again, and so on. Throughout these sequels, the monster would just keep coming back to cause trouble, think of it, it would be just like the Anaconda franchise, how cool that be!

Oh, you did not know they had made more than one Anaconda movie?

Well, I guess I would not know either had it not been for the fact that I recently spent time in a cabin high up in the Andes. In this cabin, the host just happened to be seemingly obsessed with bad sequels to horror films, so much so in fact that that was the only genre I saw on the tv during the days I stayed there. Granted, this might just seem like the weirdest sidetrack yet but I am getting somewhere with it, trust me.

The Hydra sequels, just like the Anaconda sequels would still keep coming although there is no understandable reason as to why (I honestly have a really hard time seeing how they thought they could make money out of a franchise when even the first movie was that bad?), at least with my imaginary Hydra sequels, it would make more sense since the damn thing was immortal.

The takeaway is this: From now on, let us just count on the fact that there will be yet another Anaconda movie. And also, that stress due to “the meta head of you not doing what you know you should be doing” will stay around forever.

But, maybe the stone actually worked for Heracles and there were no sequels?

Good point, although it kind of ruins my whole Anaconda rant, but sure, let’s also go down that path.

If the stone actually were to work in the case of stress my best guess to what the equivalent would be is — “to accept what is”, simple as that really, and just like Heracles stone, BAAM, no more “meta head of you not doing what you know you should be doing”!

Well yeah, about that, stone or no stone, the head was still alive due to its immortality remember… What the stone did, however, was to stop it from causing more trouble, but since I guess no trouble, or stress, in this case, was the goal that is all good.

Well, as luck would have it, there have been a bunch of people trying out this stone approach, and they even been kind enough to write full books on how to go about it!

Two of the foremost schools of stone wielding throughout history are called Buddhism and Stoicism. And since I just happen to be a big fan of both, so I can even save you the stress of having to read through the books that they wrote and cut straight to the good stuff! The good stuff is that the one we need here is Stoicism.

Below I will portray them both in a super short, unnuanced and undetailed way if you have never heard of them to make you see why we need Stoicism and not Buddhism:

Buddhism was created about 2400 years ago by the Buddha, he said that the main goal was to attain Nirvana and that this was to be done by acquiring acceptance of what is.

Stoicism was created about 2300 years ago by Zeno, he said that the main goal was to strive to attain Apatheia and that this was to be done by acquiring acceptance of what is.

So, they pretty much seem to be the exact same thing, and to be fair, any real scholar of the two would tell you that they actually do have many striking similarities.

But for the detail-oriented few out there that noticed the difference, this is where it is at!

See, a great litmus test if you ever happen to come across a person that seems a bit too chill and wise is to ask them what they think about striving. A Stoic would say that they love it whereas the Buddhist would say it is folly. The act of only accepting it, as the Buddhists would recommend, would still just mean not doing it, and stress could still be there. And that is one of the things that I really like about Stoicism and why it is a better fit in this case.

Stoicism actively acknowledges the paradox that we should both accept what is and keep on striving to become better.

That is what we have to do in order to beat this head, we have to know we will not do all that we know we should be doing and be fine with that, but still try to do some of it.

Rambling on like this while talking about the Stoics made me think of what Seneca used to say before he finished writing in his great “Moral Letters to Lucilius”, to quote the great man himself:

“But I must stop, and pay my customary contribution, to balance this letter.”

So, my contribution would be this: Some general points that are consistently showing up when looking at successful behavioral change (i.e. implementing ways to deal with stress in this specific case) are goal setting, breaking it down into actionable parts and having adequate instructions of how to perform said behavior.

That was it really, at least this is the way I go about the immortal “meta head of me not doing what I know I should be doing”, I both accept that I usually end up not doing it but I also still try to do it, however paradoxical it might sound.

Now I finally think I am ready to start chopping off more heads!

P.S. If you are already getting sick of me talking about acceptance, just see it as a great way to practice acceptance! Because I will most likely keep on talking about it since I believe it to be one of the profound keys to a good life.

P.P.S No hate for Buddhism, I for one love it and they do have their own ways of dealing with stress and life that also works wonders, which I will get to.