Author: newstasis_waavrk

Interesting Stuff About Conflicts of Interest – Post Revisited

In early October 2012 I posted Interesting Stuff About Conflicts of Interest and have decided to take another run at the topic because my feelings have intensified and evolved since then.

Heather likes sales people – well, she likes listening to their pitch and she completely admits that she is open to being taken on the “what would your life be like if you owned this” ride that skilled sellers can take you on. But she doesn’t buy anything she doesn’t want to buy. She is open, but always in control. Sellers like her up until when she says “no thanks.”

I’m the opposite of it this – I hate it when people try to sell me stuff. I rarely allow myself to consider the benefits that buying their product will bring me while I am in front of the sales person. I’m on guard constantly when I shop. It can take me a long time to buy something and I rarely use the items I buy on an impulse or was “sold”. The buying (the sales) process for me is about collecting information that I will consider later.

Both approaches work, but Heather’s seems to deliver a more joyful experience than mine.

Heather is extremely strong and has a clear vision of what she needs in her life. She is able to go along with the sales process to see if the object fits her vision. Items that do, are bought, items that do not are not. It’s very simple. At her job she says “no” to a lot of vendors so she doesn’t seem to fear the consequences of saying “no” and she is already primed with the knowledge if someone is selling something they cannot be trusted to speak objectively about the negatives of that item. She buys when her mind is made up, and she ONLY buys when she wants the thing that is being sold.

I’m different here. While I’m strong and have a vision of what I want my life to be like, I need to try things on in a more reflective way. The reason I believe I am like this is because I have spent a lot of time selling in the fitness industry and am aware that effective selling can be about doing something to the other person vs. doing something for them. Be it a gym membership, personal training sessions or supplements, these items are sold the same way, on the hope of a better life or some improvement if someone ends up buying. While I was selling, I had a conflict of interest that biased my view of what was true.

Much of how I see the fitness world now is based a need for me to live with myself. Given that, as revealed in the clip of my initial post, IF I have a conflict of interest I will have a tough time being honest, in order to live with myself I need to remove the conflict of interest.

What I’ve stumbled on, through experience and conversation with my brother and Ben, is that the industry as it presently exists is incompatible with my views. Most of the people in the industry are selling something OTHER than what the industry is offering. They are selling the hope of a better life disguised as a short-cut. Regardless of their conscious or mindless intentions, very few of them are actually being honest about what they are doing. “Join this gym and you will lose weight”, “eat this supplement and you will gain muscle”, “train with me for 6 months and you’ll become a brand new person”, etc…..

Some of what they promise might actually come true, but that doesn’t make their sales pitch an honest one because most of the people who buy from them do not achieve their goals. In the fitness industry, the sellers are leaving out two very critical pieces of information that one must keep in mind when someone is attempting to sell them something:

1) The seller stands to gain from them buying. Even if the seller is a very moral person, they will lie, manipulate, pressure, etc…. to get the other person to buy their product or service (P&S). IF the seller honestly believes their (P&S) is effective and amazing, and will help the other person get what they want, can they really be blamed for playing hardball to get them to get them to buy? After all, they are acting in the other persons best interest even if the other person doesn’t see it that way. While not necessarily malice, it does imply that the seller does actually know what is best for the other person and knows with absolute certainty that their (P&S) is the best. In the fitness industry this is rarely the case.

2) The future actions of the buyer are what will determine if a (P&S) is actually helpful. In fact, the (P&S) is essentially interchangeable for any similar (P&S), equally effective or useless depending upon the actions of the buyer. The responsibility for the outcome is solely on the buyer.

Consider these for a moment.

If it is the actions of the buyer that determine the value of a sellers (P&S), can the seller really make any statement about the efficacy of what they are selling? The answer is almost always no. The fact that so many people in the fitness industry fail to recognize and mention that their P&S are useless without the consistent effort of the user makes it a dirty industry, loaded with salesmen, cheats, lairs, charlatans and the otherwise “need to be ignored”. Given this it’s easy to understand why so many gym rats dislike the personal training industry. They don’t care that the clients are using the equipment, they don’t like seeing people getting taken advantage of. The gym rats clearly understand that the individual works hard to get the results and that no mentor, coach, trainer or paid companion will ever do the work from them.

Death Of A Loved One – Revisited

A couple of years ago my father died from a brain tumor. It was a very quick process, just over 6 weeks from the first inkling that something wasn’t right to the morning he died. It sucked; it’s going to suck when someone you care about dies, that is the grief process.

My aunt died last week. We weren’t close and hadn’t spoke for a very long time. I’m not sure of the nature of her illness, but she spend the last 16 weeks of her life in hospital and the last few weeks of them basically in a coma. I’m sad for her life ending and for her family.

Heather’s dad has cancer. He was diagnosed in late October of last year with stage 4 esophageal cancer. There is nothing they can do to cure it, only treat the symptoms. He has just finished off his second round of radiation to reduce some of the swelling and improve swallowing. We’re hopeful that he’ll stay around for a long time but the death march has started and a growing number of cognitive cycles are being devoted to processing the inevitable.

Death is not the same for those who are left behind. A friend Ben, who lost his mom to cancer a few years ago, mentioned once that he can’t honestly say to people who are suffering from grief “I know how you feel” because he doesn’t. He explained that everyone has lived a different life so how they experience something isn’t likely going to be the same – and even if it is the same, we’re never going to know that it is the same.

With that, when Heather asked me what it is like when a father dies all I could say is that it is going to be hard in ways that you think it will be easy, easy in ways that you think it will be hard and a whole lot of unknowns. That is rather trite, but is the truth. There are times when I feel terribly sad that my dad is gone. There are times when I’m filled with gratitude for having grown through the experience. There are other times when I feel lost having no idea what the correct way to move forward is, because I can’t ask my dad how to do it. Before he was gone I understood that he played a huge role, after he died I realized exactly what this role was.

I can only imagine what my uncle and his family are going through right now, as I can only imagine what is upcoming for Heather and her family. But I can’t ever know, the journey for them is their own. The only thing I can know with certainty is that their experience will be different from how they can imagine it to be.

Exclusivity Agreements – What They Indicate

These are a dirty little secret in the fitness field and, with few exception, they are put in place to benefit the employer. The person or company offering the job to the fitness professional will usually make a seemingly reasonable claim to justify the need for one, but rarely do the claims stand-up to closer scrutiny.

The reason an employee might want to sign an exclusivity agreement is to ensure that the company does not go out and find another person to perform the role that they have been hired to perform. For example, a nutrition practitioner may ask their employer to sign one ensure that they get the full opportunity to service an existing client pool without concern or fear for their job. The same would apply to a personal trainer or group fitness instructor.

A brand manager, marketer or sales professional could benefit from getting the employer to sign one covering a predetermined length of time to give them the chance to get their efforts up to full speed, given that it can take a little while to gain traction. Without one, there is nothing stopping a company from working with multiple people on the same task to get a larger footprint yet prevent any one person from being successful. I’ve seen this done and it is demoralizing for the worker and confusing for the clients / public.

The challenge within the fitness industry is getting a company to sign one of these. They simply won’t do it unless you are a keystone figure for their business. Most of the people who work directly with clients / members are regarded as expendable by most owners / managers and replaceable.

Within this industry, exclusivity agreements are one way – the employee is asked to sign it saying that they won’t work for another company while they are working for company A and many of the agreements have a clause that states the employee cannot work for another company in the same industry in the same geographic region for a period of time after employment ends. You are free to not sign the agreement, but then you won’t get hired.

While I support a companies right to protect their intellectual property, the way exclusivity agreements are used with fitness professionals has nothing to do with this. They are used to control the actions of employees and to provide the biggest supply of workers so they can pay a lower wage. A company may have no problem scheduling someone for 2 hours a week yet prohibiting them from working anywhere else. Your overall income doesn’t matter to them and if you don’t like the hours you are being offered, don’t sign the agreement. The problem is you are asked to sign BEFORE you know your hours.

The best gym I ever worked at, Fitness Etc. in Milton, did not ask me to sign an exclusivity agreement. The owners knew that I needed to earn a living and simply asked that I act in the best interests of the gym while I was at the gym. It wasn’t until I had been working there for a while that I realized the impact that NOT having one had on me. It was positive because I was free to work anywhere else, so I had options, it was positive for them because I viewed them as loyal and caring for my well-being so I worked more intensely, and it was extremely positive for the members because they got the best of me and what I had to offer. There was no ill-feelings at any point and it was win:win:win.

I came to realize that asking someone to sign an exclusivity agreement when working with public domain knowledge makes a negative comment about the company. First off, they are setting the tone by saying that you may not be happy here, you may not get enough hours, you may not get paid what you are worth. We know this already so we are preemptively addressing the consequences to this being a lousy place to work. Next, they are saying that they manage relationships with staff using paper work vs. building relationships – you are a number in a spreadsheet and we need check boxes checked so we don’t have to think about you anymore. They are saying that their profit is their primary objective and that employee satisfaction and customer service take a back seat to these. It is saying that they would rather rely on fear to get what they want than to create a work place that brings out the best in people.

The current business model benefits only the owners – when a company regards their staff with such low regard, they cannot passionately care about their customers. They are paying lip service to their members while compensating those who work directly with them poorly. This is why there is an exodus of highly qualified and passionate trainers and coaches from the fitness field and it is the very reason why most people do show little improvement when they work with a trainer. It’s why the average age of a fitness professional remains the same, and it is why their average years of experience seems to be unchanging. It is why people leave the industry and do not retire from it.

Thoughts Are Things

Tony sent me a text the other day, it was a quote from a text book he is studying, and it basically stated that words are things and as such, they have can have an impact on others. He and I have been having an ongoing conversation about healing and the contribution that other people make. In the recovery setting, words can make a huge difference in one direction or the other.

At the very minimum, 25% of people will so some improvement simply because of some interaction with a healer. Be it the placebo effect, bedside manner, or the simple caring offered by a health care provider, just telling someone that they are going to improve is enough for a quarter of them to improve. Real pathologies are likely not going to just spontaneously correct themselves but a lot of the things that do get people down can be addressed simply by believing they are going to get better. NOTE – it is always best to get checked out by a professional if you are sick or suspect that you are as positive thinking is NOT a substitute for medical intervention.

It works by using cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT helps people get better because thoughts impact feelings and feelings impact actions. If we’re able to change the thoughts, the actions we take will change. It is very simple and has been proven to be effective at treating a variety of psychological disorders in otherwise healthy people.

What gets me excited when I think about all of this is the realization that thought are thing in both a metaphorical sense and in a physical sense – thoughts are made-up of nerve impulse and therefore have a mass. Given that they have a mass, having a repeated thought is going to have a cumulative effect on an individual. Over time, the mass moving in a particular way is going to change the course of all the matter that surrounds it.

The brain adapts to repeated thoughts by increasing the amount of neural branching in the area that is responsible for the thoughts and the subsequent feeling and actions. This makes all of these things more likely in the future and effectively conditions the thought to become the baseline.

For things that make our lives better, this occurrence is exactly what we would hope for, but for things that make our lives more challenging, it isn’t what we want and it makes changing behavior a lot more challenging that creating brand new behaviors; the old pattern will remain hardwired in the brain for years and can be triggered easily.

But given that thoughts are things and that we have conscious control of them, enough consistent effort will change the course of matter and establish a new baseline. For me, this is a much more appealing way to look at life. It gives us the power because we can control the flow of matter, we just need to choose.

How I Have Been Wrong

There is this thing people do that used to annoy me but that I now use as a vetting tool and that is a persons ability to admit that they were wrong. Regardless of their motivation, if someone isn’t able to say that they were wrong they are not a scientist, so their inflated opinion of what they know is tainted by an unmentioned emotional need and biased by something that isn’t an objective truth or reality.

I have been wrong a lot, even if it was well intentioned and based on everything that I knew at the time. And it is important to be wrong and to admit it because only the divine and the foolish do not change.

Here is a list of some of the ways that I have been wrong and changed over the last 15 years in the realm of the fitness industry:

Believing that nutrition is more important than food. This mistake, like a number of the ones I have made while in the fitness industry, was based on the need to make statements that sounded correct, were thought provoking, and that were sticky. But it is nonsense. Human beings NEED to eat food to get nutrients, they cannot thrive consuming the nutrients alone. Whole food is a natural concoction of 1000’s of chemicals that work in a synergistic way inside the body. When these chemicals are taken in one at a time, they have a different impact on the body and there is no certainty that this is going to be a health promoting.

Believing that the program is more important than consistency. I used to believe a lot of the hype and I would dispense this advice as though it was scientific fact. The fact that my clients were getting good results I interpreted as proof that the programing was effective. But over time I started to notice that the clients of some other trainers who programed using the same methods were not experiencing the same results. Furthermore, I noticed that clients who were using extraordinarily simple programs were experiencing great results. What I had missed was the fact that doing small things consistently will generate better results than a perfectly crafted program that is done occasionally.

Believing that by creating an emotional response a transformation has occurred. This one is false, completely false. While there may be times when an emotional response indicates a readiness for change or that a person has started their transformation, setting out to make a client cry is not helpful and will usually permanently damage the relationship. This is not to say that there is no useful information revealed when a client has a spontaneous and organic emotional response, there is just very little useful information to be gained by setting out to create an emotional response. It’s a sales tool that is used to breakdown defenses so someone can sell their services. It’s unforgivable and anyone who sets out to do it is trying to help their own bottom line and doesn’t care about the well-being of the person they are trying to take money from.

Believing that EVERYONE should workout and become more healthy. Morally I struggled with this one for a while. I believe that everyone is entitled to live an amazing life, rich in health and vitality BUT they must choose to live this life. Any coercion or pressure that forces them to choose it will usually result in more suffering as they fail to achieve success and feel worse than they would have had they not tried. I am always enthusiastic and possibility driven with anyone who is suffering the effects of poor health choices, but I’m only at their service when they choose to transform their life. Everyone CAN be more healthy but people shouldn’t be pressured into it.

Believing that what gurus said was more useful than what I knew. Within the fitness industry the gurus have a field day selling their wisdom to anyone who is looking for a shortcut. These people in turn make money dispensing this wisdom to the people they convinced would benefit from it. The problem with believing the gurus is that they rarely have any scientific basis for supporting their claims, and given that they have a financial motive for stating anything, there is a conflict of interest that motivates them to lie. Their well of wisdom in poisoned and unless science supports their claims, you shouldn’t buy into them. After 15 years in the industry, the formula for success is very simple, consistent intense work through a full range of motion, moderate amounts of good quality food (mostly vegetables), adequate rest and recovery, and a positive outlook on life in general. This isn’t flashy and it won’t make me millions of dollars, but it works for everyone and it is based on science.

Tell Us How Much – We KNOW the Context

Just received an email from a mailing list that I joined telling me all about this great opportunity that is going to close on Friday. Thing is, I need to act soon because there are only 60 spots left and it would be a shame if I was to miss out on it. I got a very similar email from them a few months ago about the same program so I’m confident that if I miss this chance another one will come along before the end of spring. Opportunity sometimes keeps knocking.

My challenge with the email and the mailing list in general is that they never say that price of anything; it might be available on the information video clip they link to, but I haven’t watched them because I don’t feel like watching them. There is also an email address that I can send any questions to, but I don’t feel like doing that either.

When I worked for Canada’s big chain gym, they forbid us from giving out prices over the phone. If someone called, our job was to book them in for an appointment to tour the facility because a membership coordinator (sales person) would be able to create the proper context for the price. We were trained on how to paint context and everything we did was based on statistics. It was better to not book someone in for an appointment while not giving out the price than to give out the price over the phone.

And I think this practice is pretty stupid; not just for big chain fitness clubs but for anyone who believes that they’ll be able to create a context by which the price isn’t actually what the price is.

In this day and age, if you are concerned about price, you’re probably going to buy based on price vs. any other variable. It doesn’t matter who is sitting across from me, if they work for a company, they have a conflict of interest that is going to have them act in a way that serves this interest BEFORE my needs. This happens not because they are bad people but because most human beings cannot act in any way contrary to their best interests.

Take the big gym for example, their biggest selling features are that they are the largest in the country and that their group exercise programs are well standardized – you can workout at any club and will get effectively the same class experience from any of their particular classes. The price of the club doesn’t really matter because almost every club in the country costs about the same price. The equipment is basically the same, the weights weigh the same, they play the same music, they are clean, they have parking lots, sell water and other drinks, and they offer child minding and personal training at additional fees. The big companies are corporation, they pay their staff poorly and they are profit centered. This being said, the reason they want you in front of them is because they want to sell you a membership for their club and their sales tactics cannot be employed over the phone.

The same thing applies to the coaching course I just received an email for, the personal training company I used to work for, the sports conditioning centers I used to work for, and the self-help organization I participated in a few years ago. They exist to make money so getting you to sit down and talk to one of their representatives is critical for them to create the context that gets someone to buy a service. Some of what they will say is accurate – in most cases, some professional coaching will end up being safer and faster than doing something uncoached, and there is greater accountability when someone else is helping you stay on track.

BUT the price is the price and the context is that they are trying to sell you something. If your program costs $1497 put that on the literature. Doing that will actual mean people like me will be more likely to buy. Put another way, if you don’t put it on the literature you aren’t going to sell to me because I’m not calling. And I’m not calling because your context is obvious, and you have no problem wasting my time.

Fitness Professionals – What They Should Be Doing

Entropy is defined as a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.

A humans life is the perfect example of entropy. We are born with 100% of our potential available to be actualized; all that we can do and everything we can achieve exists only during the first few years of life. Our bodies and brains are primed to be shaped by the environment, to learn how to exist within it in a symbiotic, fulfilling and life-sustaining way. This period of time is not impacted by our intellect as we do not have a high level of consciousness.

Our perfectly developed bodies move naturally, through a full range of motion, uninhibited by overuse, dysfunction or injury.

We are in a state of maximum order and this state can be maintained easily with deliberate action of thought and movement. Entropy, while unavoidable, can be postponed if the individual does the things that sustain order.

Very few people do these things. Most tend to float through life passively, doing what is easy, what feels good and what takes them off course, guided by impulse and repulsion into an unplanned future. Their body and brain become broken-down systems advancing ever faster to the final state of chaos (death).

The essential role of fitness professionals is to help the individual delay entropy. At the root of their practice is the wisdom that people are born perfect and learn to behave in ways that expedite ‎the consequences of increasing disorder. They know, or should know, that they facilitate the clients realignment but that they are not a critical or unique catalyst; their intervention is to shape the actions of the client but the client is in control of everything.

It has been my experience that most of the people who are involved in the fitness industry do not understand or accept their role. ‎It is humbling maybe for an expert to see themselves as a servant to those who do not possess their knowledge but humility is a key characteristic for anyone who is attempting to alter the course of someones life without creating a relationship of dependency.

And these may be the biggest problems with the fitness industry; the egos of those experts and their perceived need to create long term clients.

User Guide for the Mind – unconscious/conscious mind

The body – your actions – takes commands from the brain. It will do everything that it is told to do. It’s the work horse that takes the brains wishes and tries to make them the reality.

This is a simple concept and it has massive ramifications when trying to improve your life.

The brain works on two levels. There is the conscious level – thoughts that we are aware of or actively controlling – and there is everything else that the brain does that we have no awareness of. Any time we are not using our conscious mind or directing attention towards something, the unconscious mind has full control over our body. Most of our actions are generated unconsciously and they reflect the will of a part of our brain that we have no awareness of.

This is a more complicated concept with massive ramifications with maintaining an unsatisfying life.

The issue is that what UM deals almost exclusively with things that have happened in the past.

It is going to process the daily information assimilating it and looking for patterns and threats. The goal is survival so creating a world view that is consistent and based on what has already happened makes complete sense because if one is still alive what they did before worked. But we aren’t in the wild anymore so we can be a lot more open to the experience and information we allow our brain to process.

Look at it this way, it’s what the brain does anyway so put it to work and create positive change.

You don’t want to prime it with things that aren’t working or things that you know are not right and won’t work for you. But doing this is going to take conscious effort and directed attention because the UM deals with things that have happened in the past and created behaviors that are based on the survival lessons learned. Given that the body takes most of its actions from the UM, these actions tend not to serve a creative or forward-looking function. If you need to change your life, you need to change the type of information that is being feed into your brain. After a period of time, the UM will begin to seek out this type of information and start to generate actions that reflect a positive change.

It doesn’t take very long for goal directed actions to begin to shape the way you view the world and overtime it can become self-reinforcing. But it does take sustained and active attention on the things that will bring you what you are looking for.

Prime the UM with new experiences and new information. Actively seek out the things that you want. Be or act and have the experiences that you want to have.

About Science and Research In The Field of Fitness

Interesting read by Helen Kollias via Dr. John Berardi’s web site.

It is mostly about the relationship between eating breakfast and changing levels of body fat. But it is so much more!

The thrust of the article is that researchers have a conflict of interest and will observe what they want to observe, report what they want to report, leave-out what they want to leave-out and put forward conclusions that reflect their bias. Regarding eating breakfast and reducing body fat levels – the findings have more to do with overall behavior and very little to do with breakfast alone; if someone begins to eat a good quality breakfast, they tend to change other behaviors so they become more inline with how they start their day.

A few weeks ago they posted an article about nutrient timing and how workout shakes make no direct long term difference to the results people get. Supplements can, however, play a role in changing behavior (in much the same way starting to eat a good quality breakfast can/does). Anyone who makes a claim that a supplement will do anything more than good quality food can is either deliberately lying, blinded by a conflict of interest or clueless. The role of supplements is to supplement a good diet so their use in some instances is helpful but never a substitute to one.

If you are, however, looking for a shortcut to better health and willfully accept someones recommendation that buying supplements from them will provide you with this shortcut be aware of two things:first, you are making them money, which is their role in the interaction and two, in the long run the shortcut is actually to eat moderate amounts of good quality food, mostly vegetables, get moderate amounts of safe exercise, keep life in perspective and get sufficient amounts of rest / recovery.

While the truth isn’t sexy, it is the truth REGARDLESS of how biased the loudest point of view may be.

How I Changed My Life – Part Two

In the post How I Changed My Life – Part One I spoke about the reasons why I changed my life; moving from compulsive escapist behavior towards a more direct and purposeful course. The intention of this post is to paint a clearer picture of the specifics and to unpack some of the more practical / experiential components of it.

My life was a mess. I worked-out a lot, did hours of cycling each week, taught cycling fitness classes and was training people. I looked really good, lean and muscular and seemed to have an abundance of energy. But I was eating at least a box of cookies a night and on weekends I’d gorge until I passed out and drink too much. I had started smoking again as well. While these behaviors didn’t seem to impact my teaching or training, I wasn’t doing what I was asking my clients or participants to do. I was being a hypocrite by advocating lean eating and avoidance of alcohol then doing those things. My justification was that I needed to re-feed to make-up for all the training I was doing.

That wasn’t workable. The most effective people do the things they advocate for. My integrity in this area was nonexistent. Worse than that was the fact that I would ride my bike to escape life vs. to improve my cycling or health. Cycling helped release a lot of the anxiety that my behavioral choices created. But since it was a form of medication / therapy, I was abusing it and was in free-fall with the cyclical nature of my choices.

Exercise causes an increase in physiological pollution within the body. This pollution can be cleaned-up through proper nutrition – green leafy vegetables and nutrient rich foods will eliminate a lot of the bi-products from exercise. However, there is a limit to the restorative potential of high quality food; moderate amounts of exercise are easily handled but there is a level at which some of the pollution remains, causing damage to the body. I wasn’t eating well enough to clean-up the mess I was making with all of the exercise I was doing. While I looked healthy, I was starved for recovery and nutrients.

It’s safe to say that anyone who is engaging in escapist behaviors has created an identity that mandates their actions; given that people act only in a way that is congruent to their view of themselves. I was running out of track when it came to the stories I was using to justify the life I was living. Logically, I knew things weren’t right. Emotionally it was starting to feel more and more wrong. Once you notice these things it is impossible to forget them. Change was the inevitable outcome, it just became a matter of when.

Looking back on all of it, it sure seems like the change occurred quickly when I woke-up one morning and said “this is the last day of this life” and that was the last day of that life. But that’s only the day I made the decision. The change had been occurring for a while with the foundation of a new life being created just below my consciousness.

Change can take a while, big changes tend to take even longer. In a few instances, massive transformations are instant – some people learn to operate this way and simply go about doing the big things on a whim – but for most things, there is a process of building unworkability and increasing awareness before the moment of decision. With my life, the instant of decision had been fueled by about a year of growing turmoil.

The change itself was easy in the ways I thought it would be tough and tough in ways that I hadn’t even considered. The first 2 days were a lot easier than I thought they would be – I was full of power and intention to make a new life, so I just did what I had to do. The time between day 3 and day 20 were the tough parts. First off, whatever state change I had been getting from my behavior was chemical in nature so the eliminate of those chemicals caused withdrawal symptoms – an increase in anxiety, boredom, sleepiness, loss of appetite, changes in mental functioning. There was a monkey on my back, a few of them, and they were pounding on my consciousness in an attempt to restore things back to how they used to be. I wasn’t craving anything, I just felt wrong, aware that things were not as they used to be.

From about three weeks on everything just got easier. The withdrawal symptoms were gone, a new baseline, my natural baseline, had been established. The process of the transformation had been rather unremarkable; especially when compared to what I had thought it would be like. It was possible and I had done it. I had been correct that I was living a life that wasn’t fitting for me and I had been correct that I didn’t want to live it anymore. It had taken some time to prepare for the decision to change, but once that decision had been made and become something that I must do, it had been done.