A Runner's "High"

According to Scientific America , "a Runner's High is a feeling of euphoria coupled with reduced anxiety and a lessened ability to feel pain."
I'm not the biggest runner around. When I do cardio, i'm usually only on it for 30 minutes in order to put a "check in the box" and call it a day. In other words, I don't care for it that much but I have experienced a Runner's High and totally understand why some of you like to run that much.

What did it do to me?
I'm a pretty anxious person and that reduced anxiety, mentioned above, was definitely felt. It's almost like the clouds in my mind had gone and I could think clearly for the first time in a while. As a kid, I would get that feeling while playing soccer but never really paid attention to it.
The feeling started to fade roughly an hour after the workout. As I write these words, it's been roughly 8 hours since I was at the gym and only have distant memories of how it felt.
I remember feeling like that as a kid while I was playing soccer but I never really paid attention to it until today. As we get older, we get less and less of those euphoria moments because life doesn't really push us to move all that much.
But I get it.

I "get" why some of you crazy folks are running for hours on end. You guys are chasing the feeling.

How Mature are your Finances?

Budgeting, saving, investing can be difficult to some. Personal finances is almost as important as a family member and it needs a higher degree of attention than what most people are currently doing. In this blog, I will compare finance to the 3 stages of human life.

• As a Baby - This is where your personal finance is the most vulnerable. Money is your master - the slightest life mishap can derail your life significantly. As a baby, your personal finance needs to be nurture and taken care of. This means that you have to make sure that a big chuck of your money goes towards your savings and paying off debts. This is when you start figuring out a budget that works for you.
• As a Teen - As a teen, you personal finance is starting to be comfortable. You have savings, your debt is reduced to a minimum and you started looking at insurance to protect what you've accumulated. Unlike the baby phase, if you were to loose your job at this point you could go a few months before needing another one.
• As an Adult - Money is your slave. Your personal finance is matured to the point that you no longer need to check on it every second day. Some of your money has been invested and is working for you. Your budget is optimized. If you were to loose your job at this stage, you have other avenues that generates money for you. You could take a job that pays you less and still have a comfortable lifestyle or you could retire altogether. You have insurances to protect your assets.

The finance of most people never really leaves the baby phase. Some are able to reach their teens but only a few is ever going to reach adulthood. Which stage do you identify your finance?

Less Self-Help & More Philosophy

I get pretty annoyed with LinkedIn nowadays because most post you see on there are from some random people giving some superficial "a la Self Help" type of advise. Don't get me wrong, it's great to have so many people dedicated to personal improvement but my problem is that they don't seem to be adding anything new to the conversation. If all they do is share 2-3 quotes then what's the point?

Stop putting 2-3 quotes together and calling it a day (I can be guilty of this too).

There was a time in my life where I spent roughly 3K a year on self-help materials. I read/viewed/listened to my fair share of them. What I want now is to listened to people that have actually put some thoughts into what they say. Give me your perspective rather than reading the back of a book.

When I travel, I always bring the same book with me. "Living Issues in Philosophy" as been my travelling companion ever since I bought it for a buck 10 years ago - best book I ever purchased.
The reason why I like this book is because it takes a deep dive into various philosophical ideas. Think of it as Self-Help on steroids.

I see the self help industry as a deluded form of philosophy and maybe that's the problem. Just a bunch of superficial ideas duck tapped together for the purpose of making the reader happy by giving him hope. Hurray! It works and it sold well but it ultimately didn't change anything.

We need to figure out what it means to be human, find out what our core values are and continuously listen to them. To me, this is only achievable by reading philosophical material.