Monk Mode vs. 'Sicko Mode' Challenge

Harry Fletcher (indy100.com via MSN, 2/28/24); Tasty Husbands; MaryJane Daniels; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; MindSquire

A Buddhist nun followed in the footsteps of her brother who took the monk mode challenge.

(Tasty Husbands) Cleveland hates pervert Glenn Quagmire for cheating with his wife on Family Guy

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If he succeeds, I'll become a Buddhist nun.

I tried to spend a week eating healthily, meditating skillfully, reading wisely, and sweating profusely by running 5K [as tapas or "burning off" the bad by austerity] every day, all while ditching television completely, giving up social media scrolling, and turning my back and not touching alcohol at all.

I failed, but that didn’t stop it from changing my life.

Health trends are 10 a penny on TikTok, from the genuinely dangerous Gallon of Water a Day for 30 Days trend to the brutal 75 Hard Challenge and the ever-popular 12-3-20. And guys are more likely to be influenced into giving extreme ones a go more than women, according to a recent study.

• If only Doggone could write, we'd know all about it. He took a challenge with Ananda to "muscle" his way to meditation. Then he doesn't turn in his results write up.
• Male sex, high age, little physical exercise, and low levels of education are all associated with allostatic load

If I stare at this rock long enough...something?

I clearly am one of those gullible men. I wanted to throw myself headfirst into a new challenge. I've tried and failed any number of them. (Over lockdown, I stuck to the 100-pushup challenge for a little while).

But after hitting a bit of a slump at the start of the year, I wanted something that would jolt me out of it. I was exercising pretty regularly, but spending too long trapped in YouTube rabbit holes and not reading as much as I’d like. That’s where “monk mode” came in.

Going "monk mode" was far harder than I ever thought (iStock/Indy 100).

It was great living up at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center above LA as a Zen monk before music fame.

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First Western Buddhist monk was Irish

It’s a pretty far-reaching term one sees bandied across the internet from time to time, and it can encompass any number of different elements.

There are some challenges listed, including ditching caffeine, which I was afraid to do, considering I was only doing monk mode for a week and had absolutely no intention of giving up my addiction to coffee in the long run, so it didn't make sense.

But in essence, monk mode involves dramatically cutting down screen time by placing a ban on drains like social media and TV. 

And it proved to be tough – tougher than I ever imagined it would be. The exercise part was by far the easiest part.

Monks East and West are different. Travel East.

I’m a regular runner anyway, and all it took was upping the level from three 5K runs a week to every day. 

It was a bit of a blessing that I went into monk mode after a relatively heavy weekend, which had involved plenty of Guinness [a type of addictive gluten alcohol the use of which is rampant in Ireland and parts of Europe] during a trip to Twickenham, so the no drinking wasn’t much of a problem either.

The challenge taught me a lot about my habit for procrastinating, though. I don’t think of myself as a social media addict, but I found my thumb unthinkingly heading for the Instagram app – out of boredom more than anything else – and I kept having to stop myself. More

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