5 Coffee Tidbits - Facial Injections, Psychedelics for Christmas & Shoulders

5 things worth taking a look at while you enjoy your morning coffee (or dump)

I just arrived at a cabin in Nikko where I will be meditating for 2 days with my buddy Misha. On the train I thought I’d share a couple worthwhile tidbits.

Facial Injection I’m trying

Plenty of people inject Botox into their masseter muscle (muscle on the jaw) for aesthetic purposes. Plenty of people also get it because they have TMJ (an issue with the jaw joint that causes you to clench at night.) I will be getting the injection on Tuesday for the latter reason. I recently talked about this in my post Why my Jaw is so Goddamn Big where I explain why my jaw is uncannily large. Far more people were familiar with TMJ and experienced a similar problem to me, so I thought I’d share. Will update you guys on how it goes.

Movie I enjoyed

The Menu (In theaters)

Yesterday, for date night, my girlfriend and I watched The Menu starring that guy from Kingsman and the girl from the chess show on Netflix. All in all, I would say it was a “fun” movie. If you’re coming for a thrilling story where the main character puzzles out the intricate psychology of the demented of the villain … you’re not going to get that. It’s more of a “horror comedy.” With that in mind, it was entertaining and very well done. A must watch for fans of Chef’s Table.

Interesting Substack post I read

Why Psychedelics and Meditation didn’t prevent my Burnout by Misha Yurchenko writing under the name “The Sensitive Dude.” This was an interesting post for me to read since I’m the person he did the San Pedro with. Archaeological evidence suggests that the use of the mescaline containing cactuses San Pedro and Peyote goes back at least 5,000 years. Anyhow, Misha got the cactus as a Christmas present for us and it was the most unforgettable Christmas present I’ve received.

My buddy Misha has been dealing with the very real physiological effects from a stress induced burnout for a while now and he shares in this article how psychedelics were an effective tool for exploring the depths of how he as a person works, did not prevent his impending burnout. (Above is a paid post, but the first half of his Burnout saga is free.)

Piece of advice I’m implementing

Someone said that the key to business is the ability to act quickly without sacrificing quality. Which, is pretty obvious, but one of those things I just needed to hear. My research, writing and video making process has been very deliberate and slow ever since I started doing this. I think focusing on quality has been the backbone of my success, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that a lot of this “polishing” of my research or writing or video editing that I do is actually a form of procrastination. The procrastination is just me to cope with the worry that the video won’t be good enough. But, at the end of the day, most of the videos could have been released a week earlier with only a 5% drop in quality. (In fact, they might have been even better because they would have been less dense and easier and more enjoyable to digest.)

This reminded me of something I read a while back where a photography professor took his students and divided them into two groups. One group he told them would be graded based on the quantity of photographs they took. 100 photographs would earn you an A, 90 photographs would earn you a B and so on. The other group would be graded just on the quality of their photos. In the end, the group focusing on quantity produced the best photos.

Moral of the story? Stop procrastinating and do it. The quality you’re obsessing over is achieved through action.

Exercise that fixed my shoulder (almost)

A while back I was outside walking down some stairs wearing flip-flops in the rain. As I slipped down the stairs, I reached up with my right arm and grabbed the hand rail which yanked at my shoulder socket pretty hard as my body fell downwards. Since then my shoulder has been pretty fucked up for months. Finally, I came across an exercise that has really got my shoulder back in good shape. I suspect it’s not perfect but I can do plenty of exercises without pain now that I couldn’t do before. Ben Patrick, AKA “kneesovertoes guy” shares it here: (It’s the first exercise) Ben Patrick has done plenty for my knee stability as well - highly recommend trying his exercises.