Does it work?
— Dad, the good mood ran out! What do I do?
— Happy New Year, Sensei!
— I gave it some thought and changed my mind.
— People ask me, “You don’t drink? Then what do you do?”
— Dude, write a book.
— I’ll be more intentional with my time. Thanks!
— Since Thailand I haven’t been able to stop thinking.
Fair question: does any of this actually work? A year ago I went all in on my own insights and the will of the universe. It was also a chance to test whether any of it holds up.
We ignore what we don’t know, so let’s start with something you can measure. Once I understood what I’m writing about here and started practicing and meditating, my resting heart rate fell almost at once, from 70 to 51. My watch started warning me it was too low. All from realizing that none of this is happening to me.
Freediving came later, and it taught me more ways to step out from under my character’s control. Put your face in cold water and your heart slows by itself. That’s the dive reflex, and every mammal has it. Freediving also raised my heart rate variability: how flexibly the heart shifts its pace from one beat to the next. The higher it is, the faster the body moves from stress to rest. I calmed down. Calm body, calm mind.
Heart rate is just the easiest number to show. Everything else I tested the way a miner does: does the reward keep coming? The mood I live in now was mined from a plain routine: the same wake-up time, meditation, the sea. Put in the work and it shows up. Skip a few days and it’s gone.
The strangest result is luck. I catch myself saying it out loud: what can I tell you, I’m always lucky. Things start happening the moment I move. Events stack up so fast they overlap, and I’m jumping from one to the next. Friends around the world keep inviting me over. Even bad news turns out, a few months later, to be the best thing that could have happened. In a happy universe things tend to work out somehow, because there’s no such thing as failure.
All day we play a game: “How does this day get even better?” And the universe keeps delivering. I hate to end the day. Something else might still show up.
Proof of work is just another word for the proof that it works. Mine joy every day. Yesterday’s is already gone.
I can’t prove it for you. The best I can do is pass it on.