When You Align With Your Nature, You Feel Good

We have been learning about tools and skills you can use to build a better life. The next tool we can use is to align with your nature. There are two important concepts to take away from this align with your nature tool: (1) You are human (2) When you align with your nature, you feel good. When you align with your nature, you feel good First, let’s reflect for a moment on being human. Many humans have trouble accepting and embracing their animal nature. Too often this is the case: humans often don’t see themselves as part of the animal kingdom. Humans would like to think that they are civilized and dignified. Humans don’t see themselves like chimpanzees, gorillas, or orangutans. We shave. We shower. We put on deodorant; perfume; cologne. We listen to the news and watch the markets and turn on the bathroom fan to get rid of smells. We hold our farts. We apologize, perhaps a little embarrassed, at a grumbling stomach. We get our hair dyed. We get hair implants; breast implants; do comb-overs; run for President. We wear expensive clothes; dine in fine restaurants. We don’t think of ourselves as being in the Hominidae family. Heck, most humans don’t even think of themselves as animals. There are animals, and then there are humans. Animals are creatures you buy as pets; see at the zoo; eat. We are humans. Acknowledging that you are an animal, and aligning with your nature, allows you to come to peace with your animal nature. You don’t have to look far to find people confused and twisted up about being a human animal. Take for instance, sexuality. For many people, their sexuality is a mess: they either aren’t enjoying it, or they’ve got strange ways of enjoying it, or they feel guilty about it, or they’re compulsive about it, or they feel like they can’t enjoy it, or they adhere to certain rituals and beliefs to practice it. Likewise, with pooping and farting, there are bunches of human animals hung up on this even though it is totally natural. Just what happens! You eat, then you fart and poop. That’s how the entire animal kingdom works, including human animals. The most beautiful models on the planet, farting and defecating big turds, that’s what they do, just like the rest of us. Yet I’ve met so many people, and I am related to some of them, who are all tense and tight and literally even constipated because they haven’t made peace with this very enjoyable aspect of being human. Go lay a big turd, rip some huge farts, and be happy about it. You’re living! Eating, again, so many people get hung up on eating. Only organic. Only paleo. Only egg whites. Sniffing, inquiring, demurring — literally I just laughed out loud —this used to be me. It’s food, people. If you like it, eat it. Yes, try to eat healthy. Yes, try to eat natural and not processed. Yes, try not to eat too little nor too much. But enjoy it. Be an animal. Watch a dog and how they love eating. Enjoy it. Love that food. Eat it. Get into it. Mmm, yum. Sometimes I think about all of this with this as "eat cupcakes and fuck." In moderation, of course. Don’t eat 30 cupcakes, or even 5 in one sitting, but eat them, enjoy them, and enjoy your sexuality, too. Don’t rampantly engage with as many partners as possible, this can lead to bad health consequences, but find a partner and enjoy your sexuality. This is what you were designed to do: fuck and eat cupcakes. Enjoy it. Funny story. My wife is very chill with being an animal. How is that for a sentence? Pretty great, eh? Perhaps that conjured up some salacious images? Well, I’m not going to tell you about our sex life. The reason I am sharing this, and the part which makes this a funny story, is that my wife is 100% comfortable with poop. Being comfortable with poop is actually a great thing when you have kids. There’s a whole lot of poop and diaper changing when you have kids — and I’m talking about diaper blowouts and poop getting all over you and your kid, and then your wife steps in to help and gets all poopy because the kid has by now reached into their diaper and —anyhow, some of what you have to look forward to when you have kids, getting 100% comfortable with poop. But here’s the funny part of the story. When my wife and I were first living together (in sin, some might say, to which I would add,delightfully so), I was not as comfortable with pooping. Perhaps I was at maybe a 63% comfort level with poop at that point in my life. Pretty hung-up. So I’m pooping when my wife-to-be opens the door and walks in. "Hey," I say. "What are you doing?" "I need to ask you a question." "Yeah, but I’m pooping." "I can see that," she says. "How’s it going?" "I don’t want to talk about my poop." My soon-to-be wife laughed, then asked me her question. Point being, she’s totally comfortable with poop. Just part of human nature. She needs to pass gas, she passes gas. Just like me. Just like our kids. Just like dogs. Just like every other animal.No big deal. Again, these are principles that we are learning here. Use these principles to help make skillful choices and take skillful actions. Don’t use the principles as excuses to act like an asshole or hurt others or indulge in something that will harm yourself or others. Have a long-term perspective. Have a balanced perspective. Use the principle (not yet discussed) of moderation. Like Goldilocks: not too much, nor too little. The middle way, people. Right in the middle. Eat well and enjoy it. Be sexual and enjoy it. Embrace your animal nature. Hung up on pooping? Start farting around your significant other. It’s liberating. So that’s the first part of align with your nature — embracing your animal nature. The second part of align with your nature is tuning into the fact that nature built you to do certain things and that, when you do them, you feel good. This is how nature is encouraging you to engage in certain behaviors. This is the pleasure principle; classical conditioning; Nature rewarding you for certain behavior. when you align with your nature, you feel good Eating, sleeping, pooping, exercising, drinking water, reproducing, being social — all very pleasurable. Nature makes you feel good when you do the things it wants you to do. When you align with your nature, you feel good. Again, these are principles. Yes, vanquishing an enemy and realizing vengeance also has a certain amount of pleasure associated with it, as does schadenfreude, but we use principles to help make skillful choices and take skillful actions that will be in our long-term best interest — a life where we are healthier, wealthier, and happier — and that entails being kind to others, and being kind to yourself. So why is it important to know this? The mind is a tool. The mind was built to operate a certain way. The mind has core directives: survive, procreate, belong. The mind operates on the pleasure principle: grasping after the pleasant; aversion to the unpleasant. Nature uses these aspects of the mind to get you to do certain things, and not do other things.That which Nature wants you to do is pleasurable. When you align with your nature, you feel good. You can use this knowledge to know how to live the life you were intended to live. Take being social, for instance. I’ve shared about this before in other Medium articles: The Harvard Study of Adult Development. The most important thing you can do to have a meaningful and fulfilling life, and the most important thing you can do to increase your health and longevity, is to be important to others and have others be important to you. You were built to be social. When you are social, your life is better. Even for someone like me, who has a deep mistrust of humans, I am strongly and instinctively drawn to human connection. It takes me a long time to establish trust and have people becomemy people, but believe you me, if there hadn’t been a deep instinctive drive to human connection, I would have walked away from relationship a long time ago. Knowing that you were built to be a certain way, knowing that you are an animal with certain functions to be carried out, knowing that there is a design to who you are, this is all important to know because it will help you align with your nature and this will help you be healthier, wealthier, and happier. Eat cupcakes. Fuck. Exercise. Be social (even if it’s hard for you, like it has been hard for me in my life). Exercise. Sleep and get good rest. Drink water. Poop. Embrace who you are. Embrace your animal nature and live it. Align with your nature. Here’s a fun exercise. This exercise will make you feel good. I call this exercise, "Project Do-Good." This exercise is built on research that shows that we are happier and we feel better when wetake actions which are prosocial (for the social good; for the good of others). This reinforces the idea that when you align with your nature, you feel good. When you take prosocial actions, you are aligning with your social nature, and this makes you feel good. To do the project all you have to do is (1) take prosocial actions and (2) notice how you feel. For instance, you might do things like push in your grocery cart instead of leaving it in the middle of the parking lot (like an asshole). Or you might pick up some trash and throw it away; or you might hold a door for someone; or say something kind and true to three people. To do this "project-do good" exercise, take a prosocial action, then you notice how you feel. That’s it. What you will find is that when you align with your nature of being social, it makes you feel good. Any time you align with your nature you feel good. Reproducing feels good. Eating feels good. You get the idea. We are learning this because the mind is a tool. The more we understand the tool which is the mind, the better we will be able to use the mind. Again, these are just principles. Just because something feels good, doesn’t mean you should always do it. For example, in the 1960’s in America there was a saying, "If it feels good, do it." But if you take that advice concretely, that is actually very bad advice. There are plenty of things which feel good but which are not good for you in the long-term.Opiates, for one. Cigarettes, another. Promiscuity, yet one more. Vanquishing an enemy and schadenfreude, two more. All of those might feel good in the short-term, but in the long-term they will not move you towards more health, wealth, and happiness. There are also things which do not feel so great but which are good for you in the long-term.Exercising, for one, usually feels great after you have finished it. Studying, another. Moving out of your comfort zone, yet one more. All of those might not feel so good in the short-term, but in the long-term they will move you towards more health, wealth, and happiness. Again, we are learning about principles. Principles are not edicts or rules to be blindly applied. Principles govern our behavior; they help us make decisions then take action. The principle that we are learning about here is to: Align with your nature This principle helps us know ourselves. This principle helps us align with the reality of who we are as animals. This principle provides the understanding that we have been built in a certain way to do certain things. This principle provides the general understanding that when you align with your nature, you will feel good. We are learning about this in the context of "cultivating the garden which is your life." Aligning with your nature is a tool you can use to more skillfully cultivate the garden which is your life ― to plant skillful seeds; to not plant unskillful seeds; to make skillful decisions; to not make unskillful decision; to take skillful actions; to not take unskillful actions. I hope you find this interesting and helpful!