Strong Roots Make You Happy, Healthy, and Confident

If you’ve ever tried to knock down a little tree, you’ll know that a green, healthy tree is way too strong to be knocked down with sheer muscle strength. You can, however, knock down an old, dead tree with ease—because it lacks strong roots. I did some yard work on the weekend: displanting old, dead thujas and planting new ones, and I found this to be a parable of human life: Without strong roots, we are weak and rot to death.

Are you connected to your true nature? Are you firmly grounded in the earth? Or do you lack strong roots and get pushed over, knocked down easily—like an old, dead tree?

You can’t have core confidence, mindcoolness, and bliss if you’re dead inside. You can’t be strong, healthy, and happy if you don’t have strong roots.

What are your roots?

Your roots are your phylogenetic and ontogenetic history: everything you’ve inherited from your evolutionary ancestors, your cultural upbringing, and your individual development.

Body

Strong roots come from using your body as it evolved to be used: be physically active, squat, pick up heavy shit (deadlift), throw objects, sprint, and jump or pull yourself over obstacles.

By sitting in front of a computer all day, you chop off our bodily roots.

Nutrition

Strong roots come from fueling your body as it evolved to be fueled: vegetables, nuts, fish, meat, eggs, and oils.

By eating sugar and fast food all day, you chop off your nutritional roots.

Behavior

Strong roots come from doing stuff humans evolved to do: explore nature, gather food, hunt animals, build and use tools, refine a skill, fight, and fuck.

By looking into a screen all day, you chop off your behavioral roots.

Sexuality

Strong roots come from accepting and expressing your sexual core: as a man, create something new, work hard to build social status, strengthen your muscles, bang feminine women, learn how to fight, spend enough time in a tribe of only men, and seek freedom over love.

By optimizing your looks, going shopping, and using social media, you chop off your masculine roots.

Culture

Strong roots come from embracing the culture you grew up in: live and celebrate its values, traditions, and history.

By embracing multiculturalism, you chop off your cultural roots. (Have you ever wondered why nationalists typically appear stronger and more grounded than liberals? Strong roots mark the difference.)

Spirituality

Strong roots come from having some sort of a spiritual conviction: connect with nature deities, worship God in Nature, take psychedelic drugs (caution: this is neither medical nor legal advice!), walk into solitude, or practice some form of mindfulness meditation.

By praising yourself as an atheist or—more intellectually arrogant—as an agnostic, you chop off your spiritual roots.

Heimat

Strong roots come from living in an environment that you viscerally know inside out and that gives you an identity: you know your way around and you know the nature, the seasons, the people, the culture, the language, the dialect.

By moving to a foreign country, you chop off your native roots. (Although migration could be necessary to realize your full potential, it will disconnect you from your true nature.)

Family

Strong roots come from having a loving family: always make some time for your grandparents, parents, siblings, spouse, children, and best friends (whomever you have a loving relationship with, even if it’s just one or two people).

By isolating yourself from those closest to you, you chop off the strongest of all roots.

Core Values

Strong roots come from having strong core values: principles of your moral behavior, how to live your live in the moment as well as in the long-term, and a basic life philosophy that structures your opinions, convictions, and the new information you’re confronted with every day (including principles on the selection of sources from which you receive that information).

By not reflecting on your core values, you chop off your roots of wisdom.