In the movie “Ford vs. Ferrari”, the driver of the Ford GT was advised not to push the RPM too hard, because the physical body of the car couldn’t handle how powerful the engine was.

Sometimes, it feels like that’s what I’m consistently doing; pushing mental RPM to the max, and in the process putting a lot of strain on my physical body.

For context, I’ve been experiencing some health issues in the form of gut problems, fatigue, and brain fog. My best guess for that today is excess inflammation, triggered by my immune system, influenced by my nervous system, because I am constantly wired, which is interpreted as being in danger thanks to a constant spike of cortisol.

Someone recently told me that our bodies don’t know the difference between mental or physical stress, when it comes to cortisol and the effect on the nervous system at least.

If that’s true, then, well, fuck. That would mean that as far as my body is concerned, I’ve been running an ultramarathon pretty much every day for the past 10 years.

See, I don’t feel “stressed”. I just know that I’m operating with my maximum mental energy. Which means that my mind is solving lots of problems. Problems = danger. Subconsciously, my brain probably thinks that my life depends on solving these problems, hence, stress.

Back to the topic: my mental RPM is continuously at +7,000 while my physical body doesn’t get enough maintenance to handle it.

I refuse to believe that I can’t keep running at +7,000 RPM all the time.

I’m addicted to that feeling of being extremely wired, making progress, solving problems, etc.

But in reality, my body has been showing signs of fatigue.

The last thing I would want to do is to lower my RPM, and that’s what everyone keeps telling me to do.

It might be necessary for a bit, but I refuse to believe that there isn’t a way for me to develop and optimize my physical body to become stronger and handle all that mental RPM.

That’s the mission. If there’s a will there’s a way.

I recently had to push my RPM extra hard as it’s been a year with some tough challenges.

This should mean that I should also push my maintenance activities to be able to keep running my engine efficiently.

Sharing this as a public health journal – if you know me closely you know that I’ve been struggling with this.

A friend put a positive twist on this when I told them about this analogy “good problem to have”.

It’s such a good problem to have to be so immersed that you don’t want to slow down.

I remember reading about Thomas Edison and how he used to sleep under his desk because he didn’t want to waste any time away from thinking about invention. I remember reading about how Nikola Tesla and his fellow scientists used to compete on who can sleep less because they found sleep to be a waste of time away from doing what they are obsessed with. Most people would look at them as being crazy, I look at them in awe and go like: how lucky must’ve they been to be so immersed in something. Most people would never experience something close to this.

My drive, passion, insanity, call it whatever really makes me not want to slow down. I probably have to fight it because resting is the smart thing to do in order to win.

Physical athletes know the value of rest and recovery for them to win. I need to develop the same understanding.

Food for thought.