Radical; adj.:
of, or going to the root or origin; fundamental, thorough, or extreme, especially as regards to change from accepted or traditional forms.
Previously, I wrote about striving for wellness, and defined it as a state of positive valence, which is agnostic to both externalities and situations. Regardless of how you achieve this state, all that matters is that when you achieve it, your brain experiences positive valence. This of course with the caveat that pursuits that are harmful to others (in the order of self »» kin »» human other »» non-human other »» environment) would not meet the definition of wellness.
Having defined wellness, I believe that striving for it in a radical, and positive-sum way is one of the most noble pursuits that one can partake in while alive. By becoming the kind of person that tends to their wellness, we find solutions to many of our problems and unintended interpersonal harm. Without the complete reliance on our external environment to dictate our everyday state of being, we become more resilient and better suited to face the challenges of daily life. Most people I meet and interact with everyday agree with this proposition, so what’s the catch? Why isn’t everyone working on this?
I've previously written about the challenge of changing any part of oneself due to having to overcome our default state of being (inertia). In addition to this challenge, we have years of pre-trained and reinforced conditioning entrenched within the deepest parts of our subconscious mind. Alltogether, this means that even a conscious pursuit of wellness is sometimes not enough. Therefore, most people who realize this either go on internal exploration journeys (spirituality, meditation, etc), seek to achieve it using external means that engage our evolutionary reward systems of pleasure/pain (career success, wealth, status gains, etc) or simply use chemicals to “reliably” create positive valence states.
All these strategies can work and most people use a combination, or all of them at different points! For all these strategies and modes of exploration, there are significant trade-offs such as a time investement, opportunity cost, ego-fixation, or other more subtle, potential downsides. Despite all of this, I would argue that these strategies are still worth exploring in some form and I will spend the rest of this essay explaining why.
The first step to wellness radicalism is often just realizing that sometimes we are our own worst enemies. And so having realized this, we strategize and find ways to maximize our wellness potential despite the self-imposed and external limitations. Wellness maximalism is a result of ardent wellness radicalism; the singular, focused, and self-detached pursuit of positive valence.
The 3 essential steps of wellness radicalism
1. Acknowledge and accept that we are the problem.
We have conditioned patterns of behavior, a default valence state and inner self-talk…all of which are not always aligned with the desire to be well. So facing these challenges is the obvious first step. The full acceptance of this fact comes with a sense of humility because we tend to lie to ourselves saying that if I could just have x or y, my life would be so much better and I would be happier. If I could just be in a better situation, if I could get this promotion, if I could go to this program, have this research published, have more subscribers, etc. The fact is beyond a certain theshold of physiologic needs and safety, most external things cannot sustainably change our internal valence state.
2. Be open to any/every avenue that produces results (i.e. positive valence)
These avenues might include things like therapy, meditation, mindfulness practices, and even psychedelics for the inclined. Broadly speaking, anything that forces you outside of your comfort zone is worth a shot due to the upside. Once you get out of your default state, you may experience different states of being that were not previously accessible within your built-in feedback loops.
This is the second step of wellness radicalism and it requires the pursuit of the unknown, the foreign, and the unfamiliar. This pursuit starts from the desire to “break-out” and get rid of our pre-conceived notions and unexplored thoughts and out of it, one can experience higher levels of wellbeing.
One of my favorite books, “The Alchemist”, narrows in on this phenomenon itself. This idea that a sincere appreciation for one's current circumstances requires one to step outside of those circumstances. And so in a similar vein, I think chasing the unfamiliar can sometimes give you a unique perspective of your own life and the things that constitute it. You need to know yourself, so embrace the unfamiliar.
For reference to what this step might look like, here is a 30-year old recording of Ram Dass speaking (from min 8:32 to 10:00) about his first time trying out psychedelics and the ensuing exploration that occured (note that this is not an endorsement of trying psychedelics, just the ethos;)).
3. Get rid of moral judgments.
This third step is a key failure point for most smart people. They say to me:
"you know, yes, I acknowledge I'm the problem, I have read the papers/books on this. And yes, I'm willing to chase the unfamiliar, but there is a line that I will not cross on the things I’m willing to try!”.
The problem with this logic is that Step 2 is not useful if you cannot let go of preconceived boundaries first. A true explorer should be skeptical of their own decision-making, especially when it comes to risk estimation (i.e. how bad can it be to try x?). This skepticism leads to the willingness to try many things within a broad range of “moral boundaries”, as long as they are not harming others.
To be considered a wellness radicalist, you must take on a lot of personal risks in the pursuit of your goal. Using drugs and chemicals that don’t increase your mortality (via addiction, or other ills), pushing your body a bit, dabbling in fringe religions and hobbies. All of these things can rewire your brain’s neural pathways and give you a better chance at positive valence states. You should try all these things multiple times. Life is about experiences and without experiences, you are less likely to be sustainably well. At least half of the time and effort we spend crafting our external success in the world (school, post graduate training, seminars) or even the time we spend on mindless entertainment should be dedicated to the radical pursuit of positive valence through exploration.
Closing thoughts
Life is short, and your default state of valence defines your perception of day-to-day experiences and what you learn from them. It also defines the types of people you interact and form bonds with. Unfortunately though, our default state is also determined by a mix of our subconscious mind and complex interactions between our neurobiology and early childhood environment. Wellness radicalism is how we begin to solve this problem in a slightly more reliable and sustainable way.
Becoming successful or wealthy is not necessarily a great strategy for this because of all the failure points along the way (recessions, fraud, etc) but also because of the wrong assumption that there is a strong linear correlation between valence and “success”. The concept of happiness can be fuzzy and hard to map out from one individual to the other, but valence state is not.
Being alive is a miracle of unlikely events and the smallest probabilities imaginable but being dead one day has a probability of 1. In realizing this absurdity, we should take ourselves a lot less seriously and do the only sensible thing with our remaining time, become wellness radicalists.
I hope this has been a good call to action and that you will join in on this quest,
May we meet on the road one day.