Use Self Deprivation & Detox to Improve Your Mental Strength
My experiments with mental diets.
I come from a conservative, religious, orthodox family. My parents and grandparents strongly believe in the values and principles of Jainism.
One of Jainism's key principles is Non-Attachment, also called ‘Aparigraha.’ To explain it broadly, Aparigraha means minimal attachment to material and worldly possessions. It recommends very limited possession of property, relations, and emotions. This principle's key idea is that unchecked attachment to possessions (material & psychological) results in direct harm to one’s personality.
While it is difficult to follow and comply with this recommendation completely, my family did make an effort to follow it to the extent that they could. They engage in occasional self-deprivation wherein they stayed away from food (fasting), water, electricity, speech, etc. for a fixed time duration periodically (Quite similar to Shabbat).
I remember my mom turning off the fan on a peak summer day because that was our ‘No electricity day.’ She fasted (had nothing but water) on major festivals and occasions. She even had her ‘No speech’ days and ‘No TV’ days. While she and other family members never pushed any of these on us, kids(On no electricity days, we were asked to go to a friend or relative’s place), their behavior did influence us. We tried to appease them (and God) whenever we could by joining them in these acts.
Yes, It feels as uncomfortable as it sounds. These fasts, be it food, electricity, or speech, tested our limits. We started with full gusto and saw our energy levels (and patience) dwindle every passing minute. These occasional fasts were hard, really really hard. They made us question the logic of doing them.
We belonged to the Indian middle class, and while we didn’t lead a luxurious life, it definitely was a comfortable one. Giving up those comforts, even temporarily, felt useless. However, that’s not how my parents saw it.
My mom used to remind us that if we didn’t practice giving up these comforts, we’d grow addicted to them. “Tomorrow, if a calamity strikes, and we lose everything, how would you survive?” was her stern reminder every time I complained against these ‘irrational’ acts. That didn’t really change my thinking, though.
Fast forward to today. We are witnessing a rapid increase in mental health conversations and discussions around mental toughness. Stoic philosophy, which primarily focuses on your overall wellbeing and moral improvement, has recently seen an uptick and found many followers. Everyone right from your favorite celebrity to your friends and relatives are openly talking about these issues.
Like physical strength, we are suddenly seeing an entire industry being built around helping us improve our mental strength. One of the key advice that we keep getting is the power of venturing outside our comfort zones and embracing hardships to enhance our mental growth.
When it comes to our physical growth, we all know the power of running that extra mile or hitting those additional 3 reps. They test our limits, but we nonetheless go for it. We do so because it helps with our physical growth & transformation. A transformation that we can see.
However, when it comes to our mental strength & growth, we are yet to get there. Recent research and studies in Neuroplasticity have suggested that our brains are capable of changing themselves. Like our physical bodies, our brains transform, and our mental strength grows when we push it to go beyond its comfort zone: When they do the equivalent of running an extra mile or performing those 3 additional reps. However, because these changes are slow (in many cases, slower than physical transformation) and, more importantly, invisible, they aren’t widely advised.
Let’s look at the factors that contribute to our growth.
The way we challenge our body is by
- Increasing our output (Exercise)
- Decreasing/Reconfiguring our input (Diet/Detox)
Growth happens best when both of these components play effectively.
Going by the same logic for the brain, its development best happens when it is subjected to
- Increasing output (Mental exercises/Reading & Learning)
- Decreasing/Reconfiguring inputs (Deprivation/Detox)
While a lot has been written about the power of reading and learning, not much can be found out about deprivation and detox.
Yes, there are articles that describe it, there are these occasional trends and social media challenges that focus on it, but by and large, we haven’t really seen mental diets go mainstream the way food diets have.
This is where I go back to my mom’s advice and the principle of Aparigraha (Non Attachment). Sometimes we give religious principles lesser credit than they deserve. There are areas where they share common grounds with scientific teachings.
I decided to relook those occasional self-deprivation fasts and wanted to understand if they helped with my mental toughness.
I decided to experiment in these areas
Phone Deprivation
One of the first things that I targeted was my phone. I have been trying to reduce my phone usage for months now and have made steady progress (you can check the article below), but I knew I needed to get better.
I tried the phone detox on weekends. I started by staying away from my phone for 6 hours on Saturday over one weekend, followed by a complete phone free Saturday on the weekend after that. The next weekend was a complete phone-free weekend.
This act of phone deprivation hit me really badly the first time I tried it. It made me realize the depth of our addiction to technology. I felt like a fish outside water for the first few times I did it (despite my phone usage being already so low).
TV Detox
The next on my list was Television. TV is called Idiot Box for a reason. My TV viewing had spiked since the time COVID forced us to stay indoors. Before Covid, my TV habits weren’t really worrisome, but they changed drastically after it set in.
I realized the problem but never worked on it. What made it worse was that I have a 20-month-old at home and could have probably spent that time with him. Yes, I needed the occasional reprieve from my day to day, and TV provided that. However, it ended up being much more than an occasional reprieve and turned into a full-fledged time waster in no time.
Again, with the TV detox, I started gradually and improved the intensity slowly. I started by quitting TV on Wednesdays for 3 weeks and then added Thursdays to it. I increased it one day at a time and just 2 weeks back had my entire week off the Television. Yes, I spent the entire week without turning on the TV.
Food fast
This was the final step in my journey. I’ve wanted to try this out for a while now. I had observed full-day fasts previously in my teenage years. Fasting is very commonly practiced amongst Jains. In fact, my mom fasts for a week every year on the occasion of Paryushan, the most important Jain festival. She eats nothing and drinks boiled water from sunrise to sunset for 8 days.
Going 8 days without food is an impossible feat for me, but I’ve tried my hand at the single-day fasts with mixed results. Some of those days, I could go at it fairly well. While on other occasions, I’d give in and ate something at night.
It’s now been more than a decade since I last tried fasting and decided to give it a shot this time as a part of my detox and deprivation experiment.
I wanted to see if depriving myself of food helped me get stronger and changed my relationship with food. The first time I tried it, I failed. My head throbbed, and I couldn’t fall asleep. I cheated and ate a bag of peanuts.
I tried it again the next week and almost had a repeat of the first time. This time, however, I managed to stay in bed for longer and eventually fell asleep. I followed up with another fast two weeks later, and it worked really well. There were no headaches or hunger pangs.
I continue to follow this and have fast every alternate week. It has become progressively easier to comply with it. The results, as you’ll see below, have been amazing.
Impact
Unlike physical health, mental health does not render itself well for measurement and tracking (at least in the short term). Hence, it isn't easy to provide objective data on the impact of these fasts and detox activities. However, I have seen some minor to major subjective changes in myself since I started doing these.
#1 Increase in willpower and self-control
Researchers who study willpower describe it as being like a muscle that gets fatigued with heavy use. Similar to a muscle, it can be strengthened by regular exercise. The more we practice it, the better we get at it.
Like most other areas in life, it is a slow and gradual process. You can’t go from zero to hundred in a week. You progress gradually and consistently. When I started with these fasts, they were hard. There were moments when I wanted to give up and give in. I had to distract myself to avoid those situations (and they worked). Over a period of time, however, these testing moments kept decreasing. I could feel the improvement in my ability to sustain and persist.
My ability to control impulses and remain disciplined (despite the distractions) is the single biggest improvement I have seen in myself.
#2 Ability to detach from the outcome
Detachment from outcomes is hard. When you work towards a goal, that goal can overwhelm you, and that’s completely counterproductive. Goal obsession impedes our execution and our ability to do what it takes to achieve that goal. Also, when you are too attached to the outcome, you cannot enjoy the journey of getting there.
When I started on this path, I kept looking for short term wins and immediate validation. They were hard to come by. I was too consumed by the ultimate goal and kept getting disappointed when I didn’t see quick results.
However, once I got into the rhythm, I stopped caring about the overall goal and kept my focus on the next day. I stopped thinking about months and years and focused on days and weeks instead. Slowly and gradually, I started seeing my results improve and saw my goalpost nearer. This motivated me to persist and get better. It is a virtuous cycle.
The best part is that this ability has transferred to other areas of my life. It doesn’t mean that I am not goal-oriented. On the contrary, I spend a decent amount of time defining my goals and the path to get there. However, after I’m done with the goal setting, I keep that goal sheet away and focus on the execution without worrying about the results.
#3 Ability to deal with setbacks
A career in Sales had already prepared me for this, but these fasts and detoxes amplified my ability to handle minor and major setbacks.
My relationship with these activities changed completely. No, I’m not giving up on TV or the phone or food completely, but I don’t feel dependent or addicted to them. Yes, I have to eat food to stay healthy and fit, but I can go without it for a few days if the situation calls for it.
It is a very liberating feeling. You can take everything away from me, but you can’t take away my thoughts and my mindset. Humans are capable of surviving in extreme situations. This self-deprivation gave me a glimpse of that.
#4 Enhance Sense of Gratitude
People never really appreciate what they have until it’s gone. Be it our jobs, relationships, possessions, or comfortable life; we rarely take time to acknowledge what we have and be thankful for that.
Yes, we must look for ways to improve and ways to grow. However, that journey is never-ending because that goalpost is ever-shifting. We think that we are climbing a mountain and that peak up there is our goalpost. However, in reality, we are on a hedonistic treadmill wherein hidden behind every such peak is another mountain with a different peak to tame.
When I deprive myself of some of these basic luxuries, I realized how lucky I was to have them in the first place. There are so many people out there who struggle to get food on their plates. It gave me a weapon to fight against my negativity bouts.
We don’t realize it yet, but we are addicted to our lives and our status quo. That is what makes change so difficult for us. We don’t want to give up what we have already, even if that is the right thing. The best way to get over this addiction and become a better version of yourself is to step out of this world occasionally and live outside this comfort zone that you’ve created for yourself.
This journey changed my relationship with everything I have in my life and made me feel less miserable about what I don’t.
