the wrong goals
In the United States, healthcare consumes 17.5% of the gross domestic product. By comparison, residential and commercial construction combined makes up only 7.5%. From the pharmaceutical industry to insurance companies to hospitals to medical device manufacturers, it is a massive—and massively profitable—business. The health care industry is booming, and Americans are sicker than ever. The thing that most people don't understand is that industry is focused more on the bottom line than on patient care. It’s not that the people who work in these industries are evil. It’s that the companies involved have become very good at making decisions in service of a goal. And they have the wrong goals.
128. get out of your mind
We’re living in our head. Acting, and feeling, not according to what things really are, but how we perceive them. The world we see is an outward projection of the thoughts and feelings going on in our head. Just like how a movie shows up on a screen; we are projecting the world we see. We maintain certain mental images of ourselves, the world, the people around us, and behave in response to the way we see the world, rather than what the world really is. If we have internalized ideas around fear, stress, or failure, we are going to see a world composed of such things, instead of one filled with hope, success or opportunity.
The brain and nervous system that automatically react to the environment are the same brain and nervous system that tell us what the environment is. Constant feelings revolving around negativity can never serve us because they will only manifest a world of negativity. It’s never going to be a simple process to change your outlook, but a good way to think about it is; what you appreciate, appreciates. If your perspective is continuously from a victim standpoint — oh why me — then the “movie” you are projecting will “cast” your role accordingly. Alternatively, if you project a positive mindset — I’m grateful for this because… — then doors will open.
127. egotistical utilitarianism
We all talk about how the world is headed in the wrong direction, and that someone needs to do something about it. Yet, we never seem to elect ourselves to right the ship. None of us do much of anything unless it becomes personal. Intellectually, we talk about doing this or that because it makes sense, but realistically we don’t take action until it trespasses our walls and begins to affect us, our family, or those who we hold closest. Some might say that is a selfish approach to solving the world’s problems, but what if that action we hold off on taking, the one we have a personal investment in, no matter how selfish it may seem, is the right choice each of us can make to create a better world, today?
Instead of complaining about the rising tide, why not learn to swim. The seemingly selfish effort put into developing an individual skill, can just as easily be seen as selfless when we use it to help those caught in the current.
126. less impressed, more involved
In turbulent times, we always adjust our focus to what we find most important. The rather ridiculous reverence we give to celebrity, money, and status is easily supplanted by what is truly important to us with the introduction of any shock or jolt to our sense of normalcy. Whether it’s relationship issues, death, career problems, or health concerns, our focus will always be brought back to eye level in an effort to steady ourselves.
No longer blinded by the glamorous, we see the world differently. It becomes smaller, more intimate, relatable, malleable, and connected. Without a focus on mendacious bullshit, we regain a connection to a world we can truly influence and benefit from. The things we are so often impressed by aren’t simply what we wish to manifest in our own lives. It isn’t fame and fortune we’re after, but the love and freedom they represent.
Unfortunately, for the majority of us, the attention we pay to those living the high status lives we admire, comes at the expense of cultivating it for ourselves. We need to be less impressed and more involved. Instead of a far off focus, find what truly matters. Ask yourself, “if everything fell apart, what would be nonnegotiable?” That’s going to be where you need to place your attention to build the life you can admire.
125. moments
We rush through life, driven by a belief in our own insufficiency. Dissatisfied and restless, we continuously look for better days ahead without noticing the beauty in the moments we’ve been given. We’re no longer happy with what we have because the novelty has worn off, and the future’s promise of another sunrise is always waiting for our gaze. We’re convinced that something better is just around the corner, but in doing so we neglect our moments. We trade in what we have for something that might be and in doing so we miss the point that life happens in moments, not in the future.
124. saving the wrong life
Let’s be honest, we’re not saving a life worth living by wearing masks and social distancing. At best we are trying to reduce the burden to a faulty lifestyle. Despite the numbers you hear on the news, very few people’s lives have been taken specifically by the corona virus. Instead, they have fallen to the detrimental effects of their poor lifestyle choices that led them to be susceptible to something slightly worse the the common cold. If we want to continue with the narrative of “saving lives” why don’t we define what life is? It surely isn’t dragging your stressed out and fatigued self through the day on stimulants and processed foods, seeking alleviation from the pain we feel in our body and soul with medications only to find refuge, not in the natural world, but in relaxation in front of the television. Is this the life we want to save? Surely, no one wants to live like this if given the choice, yet so many people do. And so many people choose to socially distance themselves away from the real problem, which is the way we are living.
The natural way of life is advanced by taking the last iteration and improving upon it. Call it evolution or some divine plan but it’s easy to see we consistently change over a period of time. We can always argue whether it’s for the better or worse but there is momentum in one direction nonetheless. Unfortunately, with our fervent denial of the health implications of the way we choose to live our lives, we are simply trying to extend the last iteration in this progression as long as possible. It’s obvious that it is a failed belief as all of the ardent followers of the Standard American Diet have been exponentially more affected than those who have chosen a different path, and therefore a different life.
The default in nature is health, so life should be defined as one of vibrancy, enjoyment, positivity, and growth. Anything that works against this is not serving you, which is probably why you’re frightened for your health during this pivotal time. The glaring systematic failure of our current approach toward capturing health is necessary to provide the opportunity to reflect, to learn, to grow, and to overcome. This whole “crisis” we face is based on living a lifestyle where inflammation, stress, depression, etc., has become normalized. Where “health” is relative. But that’s not how any of this works. It seems like we are missing the forest through the trees.
The very life we want to save is the fundamental reason we’ve become susceptible to this health crisis to begin with. It isn’t so much the matter that covid is bad, but that the lifestyle we’ve chosen is making our connection to this virus worse. At a very basic level a virus is information the body uses to become informed to shifts in the environment. There are millions of viruses floating around at any given time that find their way into us and “rewire” our genome to better match us to our environment. Through something called Horizontal Gene Transfer, the genetic information contained within any given virus provides the body with certain genomic information to make epigenetic changes to better prepare us for an ever changing world. If we’re not aligned with the natural world because of a continued insistence on medications, or antibiotics, or any vast array of technological advancements, we are not going to receive these viral “updates” very efficiently, and as a response, they can and will cause sickness.
We’re never going to be able to optimize our health by continuing to think within the same paradigm that led us to poor health to begin with. The “life” we are trying to save needs to die.
123. start now, adjust later
We all have something we want to do. Instead of diving in with what we have at our disposal, we find reasons to wait until the perfect time when we have all the gadgets, supplies, or time we think we’ll need to start. But that isn’t how the nature of the world works. It is the nature of things to progress through acting, making mistakes, and correcting course.
A tree doesn’t plan its ascent to the sky, it just grows. Continually adjusting its path toward the sun along the way, it finds the best course.
To do anything, it’s best to simply start — right where you are. You cannot correct course if you are standing still, pondering on vicissitudes of life. You cannot change or correct “nothing.” Your absence of movement, and lack of momentum, is the reason you haven’t accomplished that think you want to do.
It’s like asking a photographer, “what is the best camera to use to capture a picture?” The best one’s will say, “the one you have,” because they know that all moments that aren’t captured are lost.
The best way to get anything done, it to start with what you have, in the moments you have them.
122. the beaten path
The trouble is not that life is short, but that we waste so much of it following someone else’s directions while searching for our happiness. Rarely do we sit with our thoughts and truly ask ourselves, “what would be the next best course of action for me to take that will put me on a path to create a better life?” Instead, we find a guru, we google, or youtube, or ask our friends how they did it, or follow any number of narratives put in place by society that are deemed acceptable ways to live your life and find your happiness. But that’s the problem. Your path shouldn’t be defined FOR you, it should be define BY you. Sitting on the shoulders of giants is different than mirroring the footsteps of those that came before you.
Matsuo Basho, a famous poet from the Edo period in Japan, said; “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.” Too often we become blinded by the narrative espoused by the “wise” to realize that the path they’re walking isn’t always in alignment with the direction we need to take in life. Even though we may be searching for the same thing, it is important to understand that there are many roads that can lead to the same place.
121. expectations of health
For two million years man was a success. His journey through time efficiently living as a hunter-gatherer might have seen him through another million-year anniversary. Yet, for us, the chances of our way of life seeing us through another passing century is diminished with each day’s activities.
During our transition to modernity from the hunter-gatherer life, those few thousand years have revealed to us that we can master our environment, but not without consequence. Our efforts to create a world based on desire has wreaked havoc upon the natural order of the world and managed to bring into disrepute the highly evolved good sense that guided our behavior throughout the entirety of our coevolution with this planet. Led by the subjective and uncomprehending gaze of scientific thought, our instinctual competence has seen an increasingly diminutive role over time. Our innate sense of what is best for us has been superseded by the scientific theory, letting intellect serve as the foundation to decipher what should be done — surgery, medication, suppression of symptoms — without taking our real needs into consideration — proper nutrition, lifestyle, aligning ourselves with nature.
We were not formed by the intellectual thought processes theorized and borne out of a lab setting, that sought to guide us toward a better tomorrow. Our successful march forward was only achievable through the adaptation of our environment, led by the expectations of the past. In a sense, we came out of the world, thus are adapted to thrive within it if given the permission to listen to our instinctual needs, instead of the loudest opinions on what should be done to capture health. Therefore, aligning ourselves in accordance to what the body expects by looking to the past to design programs and initiatives, versus the tragic narrative composed by the popular opinion of the day, will best serve us in our efforts to recapture our health.
In the Continuum Concept, author Jean Liedloff speaks to this very fact, in that “Expectation… is founded as deeply in man as his very design. His lungs not only have, but can be said to be, an expectation of air; his eyes are an expectation of light rays of the specific range of wavelengths sent out by what is useful for him to see at the hours appropriate for his species to see them; his ears are an expectation of vibrations caused by the events most likely to concern him, including the voices of other people; and his own voice is an expectation of ears functioning similarly in them.” She goes on to say that his list can be indefinitely extended; “waterproof skin and hair — expectation of rain; pigmentation in skin — expectation of sun; perspiratory mechanism — expectation of heat; coagulator mechanism — expectation of accidents to body surfaces; reflex mechanism — expectation of the need for speed of reaction in emergencies.”
It is this sense of expectation that led our body to its robustness and resiliency over millennia. The slow transition granted us the time to easily adapt to the environment we found ourselves within, living in good health and harmony with the natural environment. The sudden shift over the past few thousand years created significant changes to our environment as we pushed toward modernity. With it, we saw lifespan’s expand and at the same time healthspan’s reduce. Instead of understanding the reason behind our declines in health were due to a mismatch in our environment — one divorced from nature and all its wisdom — we used our intellect, guided by scientific thought to suppress our instinctual urges, further separating us from the health that was so easily found by those of past generations who’s success was afforded by succumbing to the natural way of doing things.
How is it that we got things so wrong? How is it that the forces of nature that put us together in good health to begin with knew what we would need? As with mastery of anything it comes down to experience. The lineage of experiences encountered from the first single-cell eukaryote to the multi-trillion cellular structure we recognize as human is vast enough to defy comprehension, and at the same time obvious in the sense that the only way to become proficient at anything is through repetition. In the millions of years preceding this pivotal point in our history, what you and I have become is the culmination of experiences ranging from environmental changes resulting in everything from temperature fluctuations to the availability of nourishment. All of which gave our body the data to inherently know what it needs to thrive, transmitted by means still unknown to science.
The intellect of scientific thought has largely suppressed the instinctual urges of what we inherently know is right. The epidemic rates of poor health, disease, and obesity have been brought upon us by differing consistently to the idea that what we read is better than what our body is telling us. Our continued reliance on a system that has constantly failed us is nothing less than insanity.
120. the system is broken
According to a John’s Hopkins study, the number one cause of death in the U.S. is heart disease, followed by cancer, and then death from medical interventions - either through misdiagnosis in treatment or negligence. In other words you’re more likely to die from going to the doctor in some cases than if you didn’t at all. In some respects, the allopathic medical model is phenomenal, but where it excels in some areas, it falls short in others. We have the ability to transplant a heart into someone else’s body, but we don’t have the know how to keep a heart healthy within a single person. It’s amazing as it is asinine.
We are the most technologically advanced society we know of, and the best advice we have against an infectious disease is wearing a thing piece of fabric across our face and stay away from that other person doing the same. We think we are so evolved, but we’re lost when it comes to the fundamentals of health.
We’ve been hearing the same thing for the last 7 months now — “wear a mask, and social distance” — instead of any real advice about how to actually improve your health. The problem, and the reason the conversation hasn’t shifted is because the system isn’t constructed to focus on the things that matter most. The medical system is good at majoring at the minor things. The CDC published a report saying only 6% of those ~200k that died didn’t have a chronic disease, the other 94% who died had an average of two or more chronic diseases. How the fuck are these people alive already? You would think we wouldn’t need a pandemic to come to the realization that the ways we are continuously told to bolster our health aren’t worth listening to.
The system has mastered the art of missing the point. Perhaps these people wouldn’t have died if they didn’t get the C O V I D, but if we had a system focused on taking care of your health vs. taking care of your sickness, one that was based in the fundamental principles of health — eating well, sleeping well, moving well — then the outcome of this scenario would likely be significantly different. Instead, we’re left waiting in a socially distanced line for a vaccine with a mask that really does fuck all for anyone’s overall health and wellness.
119. revisions
We come into this world as one thing and leave it as another. The time we’re granted in between can be described as our journey. A finite amount of time to figure out how to leave our mark on the world. We have ideas, expectations, and interests we hope to fulfill, but as in any great story, they’re all challenged by the tensions of an ever changing world.
Where we thought we would be at any given point in our lives doesn’t always match the reality that the world doesn’t always work the way we expect it to. It pushes us to overcome obstacles, by going through or around them. These roadblocks can certainly discourage our progress, yet it is in the moments of tension, or conflict, or hardship that allow us to discover who we are and what we can become.
We either figure out how to make the thing we’re after work for us, or change directions and create a new path. Neither is inherently right or wrong. Evolving, or becoming a better version of ourselves, is a never ending process, it takes hard work — including failure, adversity, and heartbreak — and so many revisions from the original idea of who we thought we would become that sometimes where we end up is barely recognizable to where we thought we would be. And that’s not a bad thing, so just keep making your revisions.
118. why do you do what you do
If we look at all the things we do for the sake of something else, is there an end to it all? Why do we work? Why do we need to pay bills? Why do we want to look a certain way? Where do we hope to arrive with our decisions? The inevitable answer at the end of a lengthy string of why’s is happiness. Everything we do is an attempt to find happiness.
On the surface, it’s really hard to argue with this conclusion. We work to earn money so we can trade it for things that give us happiness. This comes in the form of possessions and experiences that we’re continually reminded by with those monthly bills we have to pay. We want to look a certain way to attract a mate. And no matter what we seek out of the relationship, it is in another person we’re searching for happiness. The distant hope of Happiness shines as a guiding light on our journey through life. Whenever we’re faced with options, we choose the one that leads to the most happiness.
Except we don’t, at least not in the longterm, for the simple fact that our brains aren’t wired that way. We are wired like a straight line; the quickest way to happiness being the “best” choice. Too often we choose what makes us happy in the moment, because it’s much easier to just do what we want. Rarely do we sit down to consider the outcomes of our decisions, weighing one against the other, and seeing what would create more happiness longterm. It’s tiring work, and the immediate outcome is hardly satisfying — and the main reason why we don’t always make choices that lead to happiness. Think of how many people you know “fell into” their career. Think of how many people stay in relationships. Think of how many people trade their long-term happiness simply because it requires a little bit of effort for an exponentially more fulfilling experience, for the short-term ease of being happy now.
One of the hardest lessons we’ll have to learn is to make sure our short-term choices are leading us in a direction for long-term happiness. In the end, it will be worth enduring the modicum of struggle to create a more fulfilling life.
117. don’t limit the positives
We all encounter feelings of anxiety or apprehension because we are always thinking about the result. Somewhere along the line we learned that the love we receive is based on external motivation. We’re not loved for who we are, so much as what we accomplish. We learned this behavior from a family member, coach, or someone we looked for approval from. They saw the the excellent grades or the way we scored the game-winner and showed their approval through their expressions of adulation.
Early in life, we came to understand that the better we did in school or on the field, the more love we received. If you brought home a bad report card or lost the game, the love that you needed in that moment was replaced with devastating silence. We learned to equate love, or acceptance, or belonging, not with who we were, but how we performed, internalizing the idea that love is predicated on what we outwardly accomplish. So now we’re grown-up, anxious, walking around in the world, afraid to bump into things, completely missing the point of having experiences because we’re worried about the outcome. We’re still worried about the result of our performance, without recognizing that the fear we pay attention to is attracting the worst case scenario. We all want to live our best life, but we’ll never find it if we are limiting our performance by thinking about what might happen.
Don’t limit the positives of your life because you’re afraid of the negatives. Don’t dampen your enjoyment of something simply because you’re worried about the outcome. Don’t approach your day with anxiety because of uncertainty. Don’t shy away from loving someone with your whole heart because you’re afraid they’ll leave you. Give it all, otherwise you’re betting on the worst case scenario.
116. fit within the world
When we grow up, we’re taught to see the world as it is and the best way to proceed is to find a life that fits within the world. Try not to be too disruptive or make too much noise, but feel free to move things around if you need to, just don’t mark up the walls set in place before you arrived. Follow the rules. Go to school. Get an education to qualify you for a job that allows you to fit within the confines of what most people call acceptable. And in no time you’ll have the life you never knew you wanted! This approach might work for some, but for other’s it limits the opportunity that life can offer. Happiness, love, fulfillment, success shouldn’t be defined for you, they should be defined by you.
Life can be much broader and more fulfilling, as Steve Job’s put it, “once you discover the fact that everything around you that you call life was made by people no smarter than you.” You have the power to break down the walls that aren’t serving you and change your place in the world.
Like a fish, we are often the last to realize we are swimming in a massive sea of ideas, beliefs, and practices. Some are beautiful, while others are frighteningly normal. Likewise, we’re often blind to the fact act the path laid out before us — the narrative we’re implored to follow — is simply a collection of agreed upon thoughts of all those who came before us. They took no input on how you or I would want to captain our lives, yet all their ideas completely saturate and influence the entirely of our lives. So, if the path you’re walking isn’t fully your own, don’t be afraid to question the direction you’re going because you ultimately have the power to change it.
115. when things aren’t working
When things aren’t working the way we like, some of us place too much emphasis on the negative thing we want to change. We give it power by complaining to our friends which only reinforces the negative thoughts and emotions associated with the event. However, this never works in our favor because we aren’t able to see what we want clearly. We are blinded by our negativity. Instead of complaining and speaking about the negative, turn it around and talk about what you want in a positive way. In other words, state what you want, not what you don’t. This gives your mind a clear intention to work towards. For example, rather than saying things like… “I don’t want to be depressed,” “I don’t want to be fat,” or “I don’t want to be poor,” say something like “I want to be happy,” “I want to feel healthy,” or “I want to be successful.” The latter statement differs from the former because it redirects the focus in the direction of where you want to go, not where you currently are, ultimately providing you with a clear intention of where you need to place your next steps toward improving your situation.
book thoughts: Regenerate by Sayer Ji
TL:DR Challenging the standard of practice, pill-for-every-ill approach to healthcare, Sayer Ji dives into the history of how the modern medical establishment came to be, as well as explores the alternative to the “sickcare” system by looking into ways of optimizing health through holistic practices and functional medicine tactics, rather than managing illness.
114. habitual thinking
We’ve all developed habits by consistently performing something a certain way, over and over again. Whether, it’s the most effective way to accomplish something doesn’t cross our minds because after a certain number of repetitions it’s far easier to simply turn on autopilot and complete the task at hand. However, issues can arise when we struggle to tell the difference between habitual thinking and intuition. When habits start to feel like intuition, it has the tendency to keep us stuck in the familiar, which isn’t always the best way to get things done. If we’re struggling to overcome something in our life — weight loss, relationship woes, career stagnation — using the same habitual thought processes that led us to this point, it may be time to step out of the familiar line of thinking you’re accustomed to by listening to the voice of intuition. Therefore, it becomes important to realize that you can’t change something with the same line of thinking that got you there to begin with.
113. the chase
We’re all chasing something. Dreams. Money. Status. Success. Hell, some of us are even chasing people for their love, attention, or admiration. With all the talk about the perseverance and consistency needed to achieve our ideal lives, we also need to live with the reality that no matter what endeavor we choose to pursue there still exists the possibility that it can fail. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, despite how difficult that realization might be. Not everything is meant to work, nor last forever. It’s all part of the lesson that serves to guide us through the next chapter of our lives.
So, how do we know when to stop the chase? There’s no right answer. If there were, it would allow the transition to come and go more fluidly and with less trepidation. Instead we’re left with the murky waters of interpreting events and justifying outcomes to fit whatever narrative that allows us to hold on to the idea of what we pine for. You think, “oh, what if I do this, or that?”, when what really needs to be done is to step back and take an objective look at the situation. Is there a possibility that the thing you’re chasing is holding you back from finding what you desire somewhere else? Has contributing ever greater resources — whether it’s time, money, love, or attention — provided any significant return on the thing you’re after? If the answers are no, perhaps the direction you should be focusing your attention on is simply being blinded by the glimmers of hope you continue to chase after.
112. identity
One thing people don’t think about is how they have assumed a particular identity. We think we freely define ourselves, when in fact, we are the sum of where we place our attention. Everything from the harping of our parents and the influence of cultural norms, to the constant messages of inadequacy we hear from social media and television.
All these things have embedded us with a certain identity. The hardest thing to do is enable a person to see themselves as who they are, not who they’ve been taught to be. Identity, by it’s very nature, is manmade and exclusive. If you’ve been socialized to identify as poor based on where you come from or what you look like, you are no longer rich. The same goes for if you’ve been convinced you’re fat, you no longer can perceive yourself as skinny. All these little words we use to identify and define ourselves only put us in a box, they don’t free us. They don’t give us the power to see ourselves as who we are — completely free to do and be whatever we want, no matter our starting point — and therefore keep us confined to living a life within the limits of the words we use to define ourselves. These words impact our decisions and are the underlying force that drives our inner narrative in a particular direction. So, it becomes very important to understand where you’re placing your attention because it has the power to create or reinforce an identity that really isn’t who you are.
111. excuses are valid
Your excuses are valid. You’re not imagining your reality. You’re not imagining that you started out poor, fat, or uneducated. That’s all real. You can choose to live with the negative emotions, brought on by the excuses, that come along with the situation, but what happens when the next day comes and you haven’t moved an inch out of the mindset created by the excuses? You continue with the same line of thinking, which produces the same negative emotions, leading to the same results. The situation you find yourself in isn’t negotiable, what you do is. If your life has dedicated so much time and energy to a feeling that isn’t getting you to where you want to be, then you have to decide whether you’re more attached to the excuse than the progress.
Who do you need to be? You need to be a person that starts to think and act different, so that you can start to feel different and see a path forward. Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, is quoted as saying, “the path won’t appear until you start walking.” There are no right answers, but there is a wrong one, which is giving too much credence to your excuses and allowing them to dissuade you from changing your life.