[gchamonlive]

We all talk a lot about the mind over the body and emotions, so you can act stoicly regardless of your internal experience and how your body feels, and it's all fine, but it's important to make a point that your mood is more dependent on your body health than you think at first. How depressed you are can for instance be linked to the last time you went to the loo and how great your turds look (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10....)

So take care of your mind, but also take care of your body. Don't be treating your body like crap and expect you can only will yourself into acting better.

[cgriswald]

Willpower can be used to suppress emotion and act in a particular way. This can be useful but isn’t an effective long term strategy. Willpower is finite and sometimes fickle, in part because of the physical reasons you describe.

For most stimuli, our strongest emotional reactions are to our thoughts about the stimulus, rather than the stimulus itself.

A better application of willpower is to reject and replace the thoughts that lead to those emotions. Over time those thoughts are replaced entirely and the emotional reaction is changed.

[anechouapechou]

Stoicism: dichotomy of control; Buddhism: tale of two arrows; Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living"; I'm sure there's more...

Humanity has produced a great deal of knowledge on how to live well. Modern society is just too distracted to learn about it.

[vacuity]

A change in mindset must happen, but the proper mindset in which to change one's mindset is elusive. Even if my mindset today is flawed, what specifically should stay and what should go to make myself a better person? It feels like leaping from a safe harbor into the unknown. Can you convince a person to kill themselves and let a near-copy-but-not-quite live their life instead?

That being said, I think some positive change can be produced with diligence and care, even if the methods and details are hazy even to the person enacting them.

[analog31]

>>> and how great your turds look

I do not want to know how they turned this into a double blind study.

[gchamonlive]

I'm married to a medical doctor and talking to her is incredible, they tread the body like it's nothing at all, from excretion to horrible wounds, it's just another day at the office.

She's sometimes telling me how it was bad at work because someone disagreed with the treatment of some 22 year old that got shot in the stomach and I'm like dying inside.

[stronglikedan]

> How depressed you are can for instance be linked to the last time you went to the loo and how great your turds look

That really hit home. Thanks for the link.

[hectdev]

To loop it together, I would say that taking care of the body is the mind over the body. Making conscious decisions to put yourself in the right place. Mind over body, body is inherently over body, mind takes care of body, body takes care of mind.

[gchamonlive]

On the one hand, the body has needs and it communicates over sensations and instinct to the mind. On the other hand, without the mind the body would just be a vegetable.

One and the other, together in harmony. Nothing is above anything. Separation is learned, it's a useful concept, but it's not necessarily natural.

[snikeris]

"It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright."

- Benjamin Franklin

[sxndmxn]

Gut mind connection