June 2015

I believe in karma.

I believe in it conceptually, anyway. Words are tricky, particularly in the English language where each one has multiple definitions. In a dictionary, you might find this on karma.

 (in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.

There are clearly some deep rooted religious connotations of our blog topic today. I’m not musing that your behavior in this lifetime directly impacts your next one. We need to look a bit deeper for a definition that fits my conception of karma as a natural “law.” From hinduism.about.com:

The theory of karma harps on the Newtonian principle that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Every time we think or do something, we create a cause, which in time will bear its corresponding effects.

This is the karmic principle that I’m sharing. Karma is energy. Our energy affects those around us and theirs, ours. What comes around goes around. This isn’t a mystical or religious idea. In fact, I trust that karma is predictable and perhaps quantifiable.

Yesterday, I returned from a road trip. As is my ritual, I stopped at the grocery store to grab some animal flesh, fruit and veggies. I was beat from traveling, and the mood of the grocery store reflected my exhaustion. Folks were seemingly moving about listlessly. When I reached the checkout line, I noticed the woman working with a bagging guy. The two of them were smiling, obviously enjoying their conversation. I approached and complimented them.

“You guys have great energy,” I said. “It’s warm and calm. I appreciate it.”

The checker made direct eye contact with me when she responded “I try.”

She obviously genuinely meant it. She puts effort into sharing positive spirit. The three of us talked about produce and such, and I strutted out of there feeling less whipped by the day. On my way to my car, a man seated outside sipping coffee boldly and energetically asked me about my day. I replied and we exchanged pleasantries.

“I’m strong, my friend, you?”

He said he was “Blessed.”

I got in my car and immediately thought about karma as I drove into the night.

I’m skeptical, scientific and proof driven by nature. If you’ve been following this blog, you know we do everything in our power to cite studies and offer up as much objective material as possible on any given day. For that reason, I would never expect you to trust a concept with only anecdotes as evidence. Sometimes, anecdotes are all we have to make our points. Karma isn’t something that can be distilled in a lab, of course. But perhaps we can use those anecdotes to create a hypothesis. I’m going to break down this karma I experienced and see if I can prove what actually happened to me at the grocery store.

Karma is energy. Energy begets energy, positive or negative.

When I walked into the grocery store, my energy was exhausted. I bounced that disposition off of others, and they reflected it back. When I reached the checkout line, my body language had not yet communicated with the checker and bagger, but theirs had communicated with me. Their energy deeply impacted mine. By the time I bounced it back to them with a compliment, our space was palpably positively charged. As I strolled into the night, I was still wearing said charge, and my man felt it. He bounced it back in my direction.

Okay, perhaps that’s not the most scientific of proof. But studies have repeatedly and consistently borne out how much our energy affects others around us. From TIME.com:

Experiments have demonstrated that people can “catch” emotional states they observe in others over time frames ranging from seconds to weeks. When college freshmen are randomly assigned to live with mildly depressed roommates, they become increasingly depressed over a three-month period… Mathematical analyses of the network suggest that a person is about 15 percent more likely to be happy if a directly connected person (at one degree of separation) is happy. And the spread of happiness doesn’t stop there. The happiness effect for people at two degrees of separation (the friend of a friend) is 10 percent, and for people at three degrees of separation (the friend of a friend of a friend), it is about 6 percent.

We may not be able to directly measure karma, but we can measure its effects. Next time you’re out, consider what energy you’re projecting out. It’s changing someone else’s.

Strong mind,

Kap

Brining bone-in pork chops is my new thing. If you want your chops to be crazy juicy and flavorful, try my recently discovered method of preparation. Oh, and if you’re that experienced brother or sister snickering because you’ve had this in your back pocket for years, stand down. This post is not for you. Go read Bon Appétit.For years, I’ve prepared pork chops in … [Read more…]

The energy of food, just like its attractiveness and tastiness in general, is subjective. Don’t believe the hype.I love my friend Susie, Boston’s best health coach. You remember her from our popular post on the many benefits of coconut oil. Susie is all holistic and stuff. She once told me that eating apples after a meal would make the apple rot in my stomach (or something … [Read more…]

I miss the days when bagels were healthy. Ignorance is bliss.I worked with a nutritionist in the early part of my playing career. I had a meal plan which I was to diligently follow. One of my breakfast options was two bagels with low fat cream cheese, smoked salmon, onions and capers.At this point, I was 24 years old with a newborn son living in my first property, a … [Read more…]

We often encourage you to challenge your assumptions around here. Usually when we do, the topic has slightly deeper energy. Today I’m going to push you to address skeptically the notion that you need chips to enjoy guacamole.We have conditioned our minds that we can’t truly enjoy certain foods without the accompaniment of others. We can unwind that conditioning with a … [Read more…]

No, eating fruit won’t make you fat. No, eating dried fruit won’t make you fat either, though it is more calorically dense.Many of my teammates and loved ones have asked me about dried fruit and its contribution to their higher body fat. These questions have come up more often through the recent years, as misinformation proliferates across the internet. Many of them have … [Read more…]

If you suffer from clinical insomnia, you’ll likely need more than an eye mask. If you’re like me and simply clamoring for one additional hour of sleep but wake up with the morning light, give an eye mask a try.

I feel like the universe is trying to tell me something. Some of the gimmicks that I’ve made fun of without mercy in the past are somehow finding their way into my environment. Worse yet, they’re proving to serve a purpose.

I have a vivid memory (a few months back) of a colleague of mine proposing using a light up, light down sleep mask of some sort. Now, this particular model had flashes and scents and other bells and whistles, giving it a truly absurd feel. I laughed at him and likely said something smug about how the company’s marketing model works. Their model, it turns out, is actually derived from simple science. We sleep better and are healthier in the dark. From thenakedlabel.com:

Sleeping in darkness helps produce the naturally occurring hormone, melatonin, in our body.  Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant hormone that is useful in preventing cancer and other conditions in the body.  Any light exposure such as a small amount of light that filters in through the curtains and hits your skin can interrupt the hormone production, causing a decrease in melatonin levels.  This in turn can affect sleep and interfere with the body’s normal process in a good quality sleep.

Fine, so I was unreasonably skeptical. Certainly not unusual until I experience the positive benefits of a product or theory myself. For a while now, I’ve been working towards the longest possible sleep. My bedroom is glorious, but it’s bright. I have no curtains and sunlight beams through my giant windows at 5:49am (this morning). I’ve been getting out of bed just before 7:00am to start making breakfast and get my young men off to school. That’s a delta of 71 minutes. I want those minutes. I will have those minutes.

This morning, I woke up with the light, and I put my black pillowcase over my eyes. I crashed quickly until 6:55am. Right, I don’t need a mask per se, but I’m going to bite the bullet and use one so that I don’t have to tie anything and get it bunched up or…whatever. Something simple is likely the right play. From dreamessentials.com:

Eye masks are designed to keep all incoming light away from your eyes and to induce a state of pure darkness.

An eye mask, also called a sleeping mask, is a device typically made from fabric that is intended to cover both eyes, the device has an elasticated strap that holds the mask onto your head. Place the mask over your eyes to induce a state of darkness or block unwanted light.

I can get with a simple product like that, as long as I can fit my cucumber slices underneath. Damn. What am I becoming?

Strong, flexible mind,

Kap

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution and action separate the pros from the Joes.

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. – Steve Jobs

Every business organization has the men and women consistently coming up with a new idea. Of course, those creative thoughts are valuable, but they’re also relatively easy. Sitting back and thinking about the next world-changing concept requires little more than closing your eyes or daydreaming while browsing the grocery store aisles. Putting ideas into motion can be a boring, consistent grind. The willingness to implement trial and error over time and stay with concepts when they’re seemingly leading nowhere is what building a business is all about. From inc.com:

Think back for a moment to the people you’ve known in your life who achieved great entrepreneurial success and ask yourself how they reached their professional zenith. Yes, some of you may be fortunate enough to know individuals whose conceptual prowess was their ticket to ride. But for most high-achievers, success comes in places that are decidedly more mundane–the doctor who built a thriving practice over time, for example.

I have a great idea for men. We don’t like to get out of bed to take a leak, right? We’re cozy and comfortable and want to stay that way. We also have this awesome appendage that allows for flexibility. What if contractors built a device that pulled out from under our beds that connected to our plumbing that we could reach down and access in the middle of the night? We could pee into it, and it would recoil back into the floor. We’d be optimizing for better sleep. Think of the demographics. Our target market is 50% of the world. We’re going to be rich.

I’m not telling anyone about this. Someone is definitely going to steal this brilliance. It will stay secret. Forever. That’s because it will take a shitload of work to put my thought into action (it’s also a really bad idea, but I digress). This is where 99% of ideas die.

We’ve preached often the benefits of taking the first step. It’s important to get started, but it’s critical to continually follow through. The most successful companies are not ones that invented an entirely new concept. Google was not the first search engine, and it wasn’t the first to put ads on its content. Google executed the concept better than every other competitor and continues to refine the process every day.

Whether you’re looking to truly impact the world or simply make that first million dollars, ideas don’t create change. They simply sit in our brains, bouncing around and depriving us of mental bandwidth for actually completing tasks. From Felix Dennis in The Narrow Road:

Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. They may facilitate success for an athlete who possesses them, but on their own they are nothing but an overpriced pair of sneakers. Sports shoes don’t win races. Athletes do.

I have lost count of the number of men and women who have approached me with their “great idea,” as if this, in and of itself, was their passport to instant wealth. The idea is not a passport. At most, it is the means of obtaining one. In some instances, a fixation on a great idea can prove hazardous, distracting your attention from the perils and pitfalls you will inevitably encounter on the narrow road.

Sorting through to find a good idea, then taking steps necessary to see it come to fruition is our only chance to leave a mark.

If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled in executing the great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams. They do not have to be your ideas — execution is all. When confronted with a great idea, your reaction should be to scrupulously analyze its commercial potential in the context of your own ability to transform that potential into triumph.

Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.

We always advocate self-awareness. Next time you have a great idea, examine it critically. Can you make this idea into something real? What can you do today, right now, to take a step and make something happen? If the answer is “nothing,” perhaps you should move onto something else.

Strong Mind,

Kap

Perpetually challenge your assumptions about what healthy means. You may be right, but educating yourself and questioning your own paradigm is a valuable exercise when it comes to health and well-being.

I had a lean towards healthy eating dating back to my days in middle school. Down the street from the “power lines,” where the after school fights would take place, was a Burger King. Frequently on 1/2 days, my boys and I would walk to the “restaurant” for lunch. My friends all gobbled Whoppers with Cheese and fries. Not me. I was up to speed on the latest trends in fitness and smugly ordered a chicken sandwich with cheese. This beauty had a fried chicken product, cheese product, mayo product and bread product. It also featured some shredded lettuce. Veggies, baby. Additionally, I ordered the lemonade while the guys drank Dr. Pepper. Psfftt.

Yes, I was young, but there is an adult version of this exercise.

A grownup strolls into the Cheesecake Factory with a group of friends, confident that he’s making a better choice than grabbing fast food from the drive-thru. Most of the table orders burgers and fries, but our friend confidently states, “I’m staying away from red meat. Trying to lower my cholesterol. Doc says to eat leaner meats.”

Scrolling through the menu, he identifies the “Parmesean Crusted Chicken Over Pasta With Mushrooms.” The mushrooms, peppers and onions will provide a lot of color on his plate, which we all know is healthy. He heard that parmesan is a lower fat cheese, and he’s right. The chicken will be leaner than the beef patty. The pasta might not be great, but it has to be better than the bun, and he won’t be eating fries. This guy has made a wise choice, right?

Not so much. This is one of the most calorically dense meals known to man and essentially a pile of heaviness largely void of nutrition. From consumerist.com:

(2,370 calories)

Here we are back at the Factory for its second entry in this year’s awards. This time, it’s for a pasta dish described as, “Parmesan crusted chicken served over pasta with mushrooms, peppers and onions in a spicy New Orleans sauce.”

CSPI says the food alone, weighs about 1.5 lbs, and between the pasta and all the breading on the chicken it’s basically a big pile of sauce-covered flour that, with the New Orleans sauce (which apparently uses butter and heavy cream), you’re well past a full day’s calories, with a whopping 80 g of saturated fat and 2,370 mg of sodium.

“For those numbers, you could have had two Fettuccine Alfredos plus two breadsticks at Olive Garden,” explains CSPI.

Meanwhile, our friend’s tablemate knows better. She’s confident in her choice of ordering a salad, ensuring that she’s going to fill up on mostly veggies. Unlike the middle school version of me, she knows that the fried chicken is bad for you, so she picks the “Grilled Chicken Tostada Salad.” Mixed greens, grilled chicken, corn, green onions, cilantro – what’s not to love?

Except she’s now loaded up with 1,131 calories, nearly twice the amount in the Whopper from BK, along with more carbs and the same amount of saturated fat.

You know we don’t count calories around here. We do encourage you to do your homework. Are these extreme examples? Of course, and I know you’re not that ignorant. But you likely still have your own version of these miscalculations. You, me, everyone has our own biases. Perhaps it’s red meat, or salt, or carbs. Any beliefs that you hold, seeing something as inherently “good” or “bad” for your body, can fall prey to becoming dogma instead of continually tested knowledge.

I’ll call myself out for assuming that we can’t overdo animal flesh, veggies and fruit. While I believe this in principle, I need to dig more and discover where my blind spots are.

Where are you off?

Strong mind,

Kap

Handling disappointment with a process is critical to navigating life with grace and class. For a successful journey, you need to be resilient.

Today, amateur players across the country will sit by the phone, anxiously waiting a call from a MLB team alerting them that they have been drafted to play professional baseball. For every man receiving that call, thousands will not. For that latter group, management of disappointment will be critical. From lifehack.com:

Learning to deal with disappointment is part of a fulfilling life. Disappointment is natural and normal, and everyone will experience it to some extent in their life because our expectations often don’t align with what actually happens.

Whether the phone call comes in or not, baseball is a game of disappointments. Learning to weather them is the difference between success and failure.

My rookie season in Detroit, I made the team out of spring training in Lakeland, Florida and began the season with the Major League Club at Tiger Stadium. A few weeks into the season, I was called into the manager’s office and sat with the GM and manager. They told me they were sending me to AAA Toledo until they could trade a current player on the roster. I was bitter. I thought I was superior to the other player, that I gave the Tigers a better chance to win every night . The other men in the room expressed the salary implications, my obvious optionality, the fact that I was several years this other player’s junior and various other variables.

None of these were soothing for me, but it really didn’t matter what I thought. I was going to play in the International League the following day. In baseball, this is a “suck on it” moment.

I had a choice at this point. I could do any number of things to cope. I could pout, drink copious amounts of scotch, bitch about my situation, point fingers or work. I put my head down and thought about Tiger Stadium constantly as I hit the cage the following night in Toledo. From Forbes.com:

Research and common sense tell us that top competitive athletes succeed because of their physical talents and their dedication to training. However, they also succeed because of their dexterity in dealing with the psychological pressures of a sport. In short, mental toughness and resilience are tremendously important for any athlete aiming to be the best in a sport.

Make no mistake; this action step didn’t remove the disappointment or the anguish of not being on a big league field. In fact, in some ways, it was like salt in the wound. Striking a baseball off a tee in silence after every other man had left the ballpark was lonely. It was me and my thoughts. Every time I hit a ball with backspin and carry off the screen, I believed that I belonged 60 miles north on I-75. That crushed me. In that moment, I had to recommit to my vision.

Disappointment is the not the end of the road, it is merely a setback on what will eventually be a great and inspiring journey. So when we have those momentary setbacks, when we feel disappointed or discouraged, it is helpful to think about our larger vision and recommit to it. A larger vision isn’t defeated by a momentary disappointment. In fact, a disappointment can be a very valuable experience because it serves as education, thereby making us more capable of dealing with what the future may bring.

A few weeks later, a trade was made, and I was called up for good. Independent of the outcome, which was very much out of my control, the process, which I steered, was sound. I took care of my body to the best of my ability and worked my mind. With this plan intact, I could remain confident and maintain accountability. From Forbes.com:

Part of being resilient is that you feel, at least to some degree, that you have control over your response to a situation (even if not the situation itself), and that you can problem-solve whatever challenges come up. When you’re out of shape physically, it can feel like you’re not in control of your body, let alone the stressors in your life. So just the act of getting in shape can be extremely empowering. “It may seem counter-intuitive,” says Ben Michaelis, PhD, a psychologist in New York City, “but you can become mentally tougher by becoming physically stronger, through cardiovascular exercise. The data indicating the link between physical and emotional health is airtight at this point.

For those players who don’t get to celebrate a phone call in the next three days, recognize that your dream isn’t dead. Not being drafted will undoubtedly change your course, but it needn’t debilitate you. Take a moment to feel the sting, then get your ass back up, recommit to your vision and fight.

Strong mind,

Kap

Grasshoppers are a strong, protein rich snack and can be crushed by the handful.

On a recent road trip, I broke bread with some colleagues at El Dorado Cantina, a well-regarded Mexican restaurant. The joint is known for their locally sourced, high quality food. Their menu included sautéed grasshoppers. I ordered them for the table, and the rest of the men just sort of glared at me confusedly.

I’m fine with the initial discomfort that a new culinary experience brings to a group. Americans, as a whole, tend to avoid eating insects, though this is not the way of the rest of the world. Remember, we preach questioning our assumptions around here. From scientificamerican.com:

When confronted with entomophagy, many people express disgust. It’s an interesting response. It has a biological basis in the form of distaste, which prevents us from consuming foods that are potentially harmful. For example, eating rotting food or food that has toxins is probably a bad idea. We interpret the ways these types of foods taste as distasteful and we learn to avoid them. But we also learn disgust through the reactions of others. Wrinkled nose, a grimace, and physically stepping back are all social cues and they can be applied to almost anything…The challenge will be to get people to see insects differently. Food perceptions can change. Right now, somewhere, there is a person having sushi for the first time. The concept of “raw” is no longer disgusting. So you know, the next time the opportunity presents itself, in the words of Andrew Zimmern, “If it looks good, eat it.

The action (read: risk) sparked solid conversation as I squeezed a lime over the enormous plate of bugs.

“They sort of taste like pumpkin seeds,” one of my partners shared. I agreed. They had that same hint of bitterness, and their preparation left them salty and crunchy, just like a good snack should be.

I exited the table thinking grasshoppers would make a good baseball snack. I envision bags in the dugout, the same way seeds are eaten now. It’s an acquired taste, without question, but once accepted, the health benefits are indisputable. From fitday.com:

Grasshoppers are commonly eaten in Mexico. After being washed, they’re toasted with garlic, lime juice, and salt. These crispy snacks are actually very high in protein. Per 100 grams of a larger grasshopper, there are about 14 grams of protein. They are also low in fat at 3.3 grams and low in carbs at 2.2 grams. They contain 3 milligrams of iron, which is about 16 percent of the recommended daily value.

Now that we’ve covered flavor and health benefits, we can address sustainability for you bleeding hearts. Suppose you want to eat less animal flesh because you think we’re running out, or you fear slaughtering your chickens because you broke rule number one and gave them names. Surely you’re down to add insects to your diet, right? From chicagoist.com:

We should all be eating crickets by now. No protein source is simply more sustainable than this gateway bug, fast making its ascendancy into mainstream diets as cricket flour-fueled protein bars and baked goods take more than TED Talks by storm. Cricket farmers, however, are struggling to meet demand and lower their product’s price in the process.

Damn overpriced crickets. Wait, I can stroll out into my yard. They’re everywhere. I’m thinking labeling, packaging and marketing at this point. Think I’m kidding? Join me.

Strong mind,

Kap