SerpApi.Org
For most people, an evening spent unwinding with three glasses of wine constitutes little more than a relaxing way to end the day. But for Diary of a CEO podcaster and bro-whisperer Steven Bartlett, doing just that “ruined” his life for three days, he says.
How exactly? As Bartlett told his podcast guest Chris Williamson, a health-tracking device on his wrist alerted him of poorer sleep quality after drinking, and he saw that his “dopamine… and cortisol system was all messed up”.
To be fair to Bartlett, who among us has not woken up bleary-eyed and heart-racing after a night of drinking, only to be met with the horrifying realisation that we had, erm, temporarily and slightly disrupted our hormone levels?
Bartlett, who goes on to describe his run-of-the-mill hangover symptoms with the sort of sombre tone more befitting someone in Alcoholics Anonymous recounting a traumatising rock bottom, is part of a generation of influencers promising to lead men towards self-optimisation.
Self-optimisation influencers, who can attract millions of followers on social media, promise Gen-Z men that the keys to happiness lie in rigorously disciplined dietary and exercise regimes, expensive supplements (for which they may, or may not, be sponsored to sell), long morning routines beginning with 5am wakeups and countless ice baths.
My Instagram recommendations often fill up with videos from this ilk, regardless of how many times I press the little “not interested” button that seems to have little to no effect on my algorithm.
Particularly unavoidable are “day in the life” and “my morning routine” videos, which show the oft-hilarious lengths these men will go to in pursuit of attaining what they consider to be physical and mental excellence.
In a viral video watched nearly 60 million times on YouTube, Ashton Hall, a fitness influencer, shows his 18-step morning routine, which begins before 4am and involves plunging his face into ice water, wearing mouth and nose tape to promote better breathing and hitting the treadmill and pool all before eight in the morning.
But is living life this way really the key to happiness, or is it just a one-way road towards self-obsession?
In most of these “day in the life” videos these influencers post, there’s a striking lack of other people – particularly, of partners and close friends. Presumably, there’s limited appetite to date a man whose alarm wakes you up in the middle of the night so he can spend the next four hours navel-gazing, or who refuses to go out to dinner lest he depart from his diet of plain rice and unseasoned chicken designed to maximise his gains at the gym.
To any young men in any way enticed by the lives of such self-optimisers, I caution: living life this way may make your Fitbit happy, but it’s a sure-fire way to ensure everyone involved is thoroughly miserable.
Yet, Gen-Z seems to be taking on board much of the lifestyle advice offered by their podcasting overlords. And, sure, some of it is to be commended – regular exercise, prioritising of health, building self-discipline.
But it’s also creating a generation of risk-averse men who are missing out on the foundational experiences of being young, a generation becoming too self-conscious, anxious and neurotic to go out for a few drinks or take the risks necessary to put themselves out there and form relationships.
Gen-Z men record lower levels of alcohol consumption and sexual activity compared with previous generations of young males, and unsurprisingly also record higher levels of self-described loneliness, anxiety and depression than their older counterparts.
And it is this fact that exposes the fallacy at the heart of the self-optimisation culture – that if you focus on yourself more, not less, and if you can perfectly fine-tune yourself into a fully “optimised” state, then you don’t need other people.
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It’s why the Bartletts of the world can’t see the value of a night out drinking with friends if it disrupts your cortisol; they don’t fully understand or appreciate the importance of relationships, and of the messiness, risks and uncertainty they entail.
Bartlett likes to remind his followers that the “only thing we can control in life is ourselves”. And, certainly, it is scary to become reliant and invested in that which is outside our control (such as other people).
So it can be tempting to focus all our attention on that one thing which is in our control – ourselves. But this is no way to live a fulfilling life – even if a health tracker on your wrist tells you otherwise. It is our relationships with other people that truly make us happy.
