Commusings: Why Write a Book?

Dear Commune Community,

If you’ve ever considered writing a book, a stroll through your local Barnes & Noble may be enough to dissuade you from such a project. There are over 100,000 unique titles in a single store. Why endure the endless editing only to scream futilely into the noise? I suppose one could say the same thing about birthing children as pushing another novel out the literary birth canal. Sure, despite there being 8 billion people in the world, there is only one genius child — and, apparently, every parent has one. 

Of course, book writing is how the house of human knowledge is built – one paper brick at a time. I am the mason of GOOD STRESS, but the moment I pressed “send” on the manuscript, it ceased to be mine. Now, it belongs to everyone else. And I pray you can see some of your own story in mine.

There’s a game writers must play. Generally, we don’t really care that much about success. We’re just petrified of failure. This is why pre-selling a book is so important. If the numbers are impressive, the bookstores and publishing houses take notice. And then, if we’re lucky, we get the great honor of doing it all over again, sharing a little more knowledge and changing a few more lives. This is why I would be so deeply appreciative if you would support my work. If you buy the book now you’ll also get more than $1,000 worth of pre-sale bonuses, including courses with many of the top teachers on Commune.

Here’s a little taste of the introduction, titled “Why Write a Book.”

 • • • 

I decided to write Good Stress, my upcoming book, because I believe I have put my thumb on the amalgam of health protocols that can, as Dr. Mark Hyman quips, add not only years to our life but life to our years.

My discovery of these practices was propelled not only by curiosity but also by necessity. My health was teetering on the edge. What began as an intellectual inquiry quickly became a deeply personal journey. To my utter surprise, like most Americans, I was diagnosed with a chronic disease in 2018.

I ground much of this book in my own story, not because it’s extraordinary, but, on the contrary, because it is so very ordinary. I didn’t have Rasmussen’s Encephalitis or Alice in Wonderland Syndrome—both real conditions. I had brain fog and chronic fatigue, insomnia and a jelly belly. Brown skin tags were budding in my armpits, and, worse, I developed ghastly fleshy protuberances on my chest (a.k.a. man boobs).

Subsequent to these unflattering physical presentations, I discovered that I was diabetic and had a leak in my gut.

My aforementioned symptoms are so common and prosaic in modern life that we’ve accepted them as normal. What people don’t know is that metabolic dysfunction of the variety I was experiencing was, historically, as atypical as Stone Man Syndrome, the world’s rarest disease. But, now, 93 percent of Americans have metabolic dysfunction, a cluster of conditions that includes high blood pressure, high serum glucose, excess body fat around the middle, and abnormal cholesterol levels. This syndrome is just upstream from modernity’s Four Ubiquitous Contemporary Killers (yes, the FUCKs): heart disease, cancer, dementia, and diabetes.

As I peered despairingly into the mirror, futilely sucking in my substantial gut and flexing my non-extant pectorals, I asked myself: What is the provenance of all this disease? And how do we solve for it?

These questions prompted my own five-year inquiry into what begets real well-being, a journey that brought me directly to the protocols of Good Stress I will present in my new book. These are the protocols I adopted to reverse my onset of diabetes—one of the FUCKs—and that can be adopted by anybody who wants to recapture their agency over their healthspan and live a long and vital life.

My podcast research and conversations featured hundreds of health protocols. In response to this deluge of modalities and mushrooms, pills, and praxes, I roused myself from the interview chair and became my own n-of-1 experiment. My mind and body and, dare I say, spirit became a laboratory for both the conventional and esoteric protocols of my interviewees.

Could I engage in holotropic breathwork as I froze in a 40-degree ice bath while on a 24-hour pomegranate fast as I gazed at a mandala? Could I do 50 nude air squats while pouring sweat in a sauna as I chanted Buddhist mantras?

I tried it all. 

Sifting through the grifting was certainly part of the process. But, over the course of a few years, I autodidactically learned twice what I did in college.

Through the development and adoption of my Good Stress protocols, I was able to reverse my diabetes and insulin resistance while also losing 60 pounds. I was the chubby kid who couldn’t do one pull-up. Today, I do 20 at a time. Not long ago, the notion of reading an entire book, let alone writing one, was inconceivable. I have reclaimed my capacity to concentrate among the pings and dings of modernity. Once prone to mentally drifting away from a conversation, I now gift people the present of presence. I can already presage the eyerolls of my daughters as they read this paragraph, and I surely remain a world apart from my best self, but I am healing—moving toward wholeness. And you can too.

 • • • 

This is a modified excerpt from my new book, GOOD STRESS: The Health Benefits of Doing Hard Things. 

If you are inclined to support my work, please pre-order here. If you order now, you will receive sneak peek early access to the Introduction, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 (text and audio) and receive $1,000 in bonuses including online courses from Schuyler, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Gabor Mate, and Dr. Zach Bush.

In love, include me,
Jeff