334. inherited outlook
Scientists originally believed that it was strictly our parents’ genes that became the blueprint for what would eventually become us, and that with just the right amount of guidance and nutrition, we would develop seamlessly according to plan. But newer research is showing that the person you have become is predicated more on the history of your parents — and perhaps more astonishingly, their parents — than simply the environment you grew up in.
In his book, It Didn’t Start with You, Mark Wolynn states that “the history you share with your family begins before you are even conceived. In your earliest biological form, as an unfertilized egg, you already share a cellular environment with your mother and grandmother… This means that before your mother was even born, your mother, your grandmother, and the earliest traces of you were all in the same body — three generations sharing the same biological environment.1 This isn’t a new idea; embryology textbooks have told us as much for more than a century. Your inception can be similarly traced in your lateral line. The precursor cells of the sperm you developed from were present in your father when he was a fetus in his mother’s womb.”2
While the particulars of the events that shaped the lives of your parents may be obscured from your vision, the residual impact of those particulars is what shapes your being as you come into existence. It’s not what you inherit from your parents, but also how they were treated throughout their lives, up until you are conceived. Everything along the way, crossing multiple generations, influences how you relate to a partner, the world around you, and the children you conceive. And for better or worse, research indicates your parents tend to pass on the parenting that they themselves received.
So, when it comes to figuring yourself out and why you feel or react a certain way about something, look back to connect the dots of your lineage rather than feel powerless about how you feel. Most of our patterns and approaches to the world begin to form before we’re even born. Looking back can provide clarity about why we do the things we do by helping us understand that our “foundation” is laid by the generational experiences that preceded it.
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C. E. Finch and J. C. Loehlin, “Environmental Influences That May Precede Fertilization: A First Examination of the Prezygotic Hypothesis from Maternal Age Influences on Twins,” Behavioral Genetics 28(2) (1998): 101.
Thomas W. Sadler, Langman’s Medical Embryology, 9th ed. (Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2009), 13.
323. unaware
If you aren’t aware that you’re unhappy, you aren’t going to do anything about it. You’re just a fish, living its life in an ocean of water, with no concept of what “wet” is. You’re unaware.
Until you become aware that you’re uncomfortable (or wet), you’re going to stay in a place of complacency and stagnancy because you’re okay with the environment you find yourself in. Some internal mechanism continues to manage your perception of what is normal and acceptable to you, which keeps you from tuning into the reality of what is happening around you.
The very small things that would otherwise alert you to problems within an unfamiliar environment have become blunted, and therefore a reason to pay attention. Unhappiness needs to be recognized, felt, and made aware of, otherwise why would you want to change? Start to focus on the small things; Have you been clinching your jaw? Is your heart constantly racing? Are you easily stressed or anxious? The body holds a lot of signals, but if you’re not tuned into them, they can’t disrupt you from the normalcy that you’ve become accustomed to.
It’s not easy to strip away the layers of what has become normal and uncover how you really feel, but it is essential for real change to take place. I think a lot of the time we get so used to a certain way of living that we forget what happiness feels like. The sooner we can recognize the signals our body is giving off, the sooner we can realize that what we’ve become used to is no longer serving us and make the necessary changes.
312. form implies function
The way we look speaks volumes about our health because of the simple fact that form implies function.
When a racehorse breeder sees obvious disruptions in healthy growth, they naturally consider the nutritional context in which the animal was raised. If a prize-winning mare gives birth to a foal with abnormally bowed legs, the veterinarian recognizes that something went wrong — asking the logical question: what was the mother eating?
Applying this example to children, rarely do physicians ask the same question, even when life-threatening problems show up at birth. And we continue to neglect the nutrition-development equation when people develop scoliosis, joint malformations, autism, schizophrenia, and other maladaptive issues later in life.
Our desire for beauty is not solely a matter of vanity. The way we look speaks volumes about our health because of the simple fact that form implies function. Less attractive facial features are less functional. Children with suboptimal skull structure may need glasses or braces, whereas those with a more ideal architecture won’t. This is because suboptimal architecture impairs development of normal geometry, leading to imperfectly formed facial features; whether it’s the eyes, ears, nose, or jaw.
For example: narrow nasal passages irritate the mucosa, increasing the chances of rhinitis and allergies. When the airway in the back of the throat is improperly formed, a child may suffer from sleep apnea, which stares the brain of oxygen necessary for normal brain development.
Frederick Douglas once said that “it’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Yet, with our complete avoidance of looking at the root of the problem and addressing the nutritional and environmental factors, it is getting increasingly more difficult to even build strong children.
285. one key element
Many years ago in the Arizona desert, scientists conducted an experiment known as “Biosphere 2.” It was a huge steel-and-glass enclosure with clean water, air that had been purified, nutrient-rich soil, and plenty of natural light. The idea behind this contraption was to create ideal living conditions for the ecosystem within. And while it was successful in many ways, there was one glaring failure.
As the trees inside the Biosphere grew to a certain height, they would simply fall over, again and again. At first, it was a confusing phenomenon, until scientists came to the realization that one key element was overlooked in the planning and construction of this idyllic environment. Wind. In a natural environment, trees are buffeted by the elements, namely wind. And they respond to that stress and agitation by growing stronger and deeper roots to increase their stability.
Like the trees, if our environment doesn’t challenge us, we’re destined to fall into a certain level of complacency. We waste a lot of energy trying to stay comfortable within our bubble, and in doing so, we fail to realize our potential. Our fear is rooted in the challenges and stressors that come along with change, but it is exactly those situations that are necessary for us to grow.
281. how do we create our Self?
How do we create our Self?
Most of us think there isn’t much we can control about our Self. We’ve been conditioned to think we come into this world with a series of preset instructions on how to be. Whatever genetics we were born with or circumstances we were born into is pretty much a blueprint for our path forward in life, with many things out of our control. We say, “this is just how I am,” but is it really?
The long held idea of genetic determinism; the concept that whatever genetics we popped out with, we’re stuck with because we can’t change, grow, or evolve from, is what keeps us stuck. It’s a pervasive thought that has taken over the way we view our Self. Inevitably leading us to believe we can’t create our Self, because it’s already been created for us.
Fortunately, the tide is beginning to turn on these long held beliefs of a fixed Self. While genetics play a part, they are not the determining factor for the life we lead. As Dr. Terry Walhs puts it; “The genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.” While we are born with a certain set of genetics and into certain cultural belief systems, it’s largely a choice to see any of them as a limitation. We can choose to put our Self into a healthier environment (proper nutrition, exercise, etc.) to change our familial susceptibility to something like heart disease, just as we can choose to put our Self into a different mindset that will allow us to see possibilities outside of what is familiar to us.
The things we do, and the choices we make, determine how we show up in this world. Coming to the understanding that the life we were born into isn’t set in stone, and that any limitations are largely self-imposed, opens us up to have new conversations about creating a Self we want. Entertaining new possibilities that would have otherwise been unrecognizable with our previously fixed mindset.
So how can we create our Self? Forget the old ideals of predeterminism. Understand that the life we lead is a choice that only we have the power to make. We can choose to believe what we’re born with is all we’re capable of, or just a starting point to where we want to go. Creating our Self starts with creating our future. To do that, we have to begin to make choices based on where we want to go instead of where we came from. And with each choice, we create a piece of our new Self.
221. find yourself
Most of us live within other peoples value systems. Ever since we were children, we were told what was valuable and what wasn’t. We took on those values because without them, we didn’t think we could be loved or accepted. We became this person who holds things of importance without ever really understanding why. But it’s because we are a product of our environment.
The values impressed upon us from a young age, carry us through life if they align with our path, and cause us great strife if they’re in conflict with the path we should be walking.
So, how can we reconcile these things? We need to take a step back and look at all the things we’re doing. Are we doing them because we should, or because we want to? There is a distinctive difference, and in figuring it out, we can find ourselves and start living the way we’re meant to.
108. modern disadvantage
Imagine living 10,000 years ago. As the sun draws down over the plains you find yourself huddled around the campfire with your tribe, where the kill from that day’s hunt is roasting on a spit. Waiting to eat the whole animal, organs and all, you gnaw on a collection of berries, roots, and leafy vegetation gathered from pristine mineral-rich soils. Your water came from a nearby stream that is fed by the snow melt from a distant mountain top. You’re outside, with sun kissed skin, in the fresh air, sitting on the ground barefoot, fresh soil under your fingernails from the day’s gathering. The day is over, and there is nothing left to do but enjoy the company of your tribe, the stars, and the sustenance of that days kill. And as darkness takes over, your body will know it’s time to rest, just as it knows to rise with the following day’s sun because that’s natures rhythm.
Fast-forward to your present life. You’re woken up at an ungodly time of the morning by the blaring of an alarm clock that hates your dreams, so that you can be up early enough to beat traffic to a job you probably only work so that you can afford the place you live and buy toys you don’t need. If you’re lucky, you have time to spare to cook a breakfast where you cut up pesticide-aided GMO vegetables, thrown into a few factory-farmed eggs — don’t forget to remove the yolks, we have to think about our cholesterol number! — that are frying in butter made from cows fed a nutrient-poor and ruminantly-incorrect diet of corn. Once the food is done, you eat, clean up with your antibacterial soap, and rush out of the front door. You go from your climate-controlled home, to your climate-controlled car, to your climate-controlled office, where you sit hunched over a desk, staring at a screen all day. You make sure to check your phone regularly to break up the monotony of your 8-hour slog with a continual stream of fresh notifications that satisfy you like a slow morphine drip. The day ends, you’re stuck in traffic breathing in the fumes from the traffic, feeling the stress from the workday and the political talk on the radio, your eyes hurt from all the screen time, and you have no energy to make a decent meal when you arrive home so you order a pizza, eat and fall into a restless sleep to do it all over again tomorrow.
The difference between these two scenarios couldn’t be more stark. We have to deal with with exponentially more chronic stress than our ancestors did, which wears heavily on us, both mentally and physically. Our ancestors weren’t stressed about bills, viruses, work emails, or taxes. They didn’t have Hot Pocket’s or DoorDash to deliver them food that stressed their digestive systems so much that they would need toxic pharmaceutical drugs to counteract the affects of a high stress, nutrient poor diet. The environment we built for ourselves is robbing us of nutrients, and microbial defenses that used to come as part of our diets by default. The way we live now is deficient and sterile. We were tricked into swapping out fat for sugar as it was meant to improve our health, yet the “food” we’re eating is so processed that not even insects will eat it.
As Aubrey Marcus put in in Own the Day, Own Your Life:
“All that artificially and hyper sterility have robbed our bodies of the natural conditioning and the necessary bacteria that come from being outdoors and eating food that grew in the earth or ran, swam, or flew on it. Instead, we become prey to the bacteria — ever sicker, ever more vulnerable. Add to that, the problems of soil that’s been overfarmed, and animals that re undernourished, and you’ve got a recipe for a food supply and an environment that leaves our bodies wanting more.”
We’ve built a society that was meant to be greater than where we came from, but in reality we’re at more of a disadvantage when it comes to our health than ever.
Why don’t wild animals get cancer?
We sit at the top of the food chain, within the wealthiest, most technologically advanced culture the world has ever known, backed by an innumerable amount of research behind what’s necessary to be healthy, YET, when it comes to the disease states of obesity, depression, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, we are bested by the most primitive ways of living in both tribal cultures and wild animals.
Do you think we’re missing something?
It doesn’t take a lot of commonsense to see that something is amiss. I think it comes down to the simple fact that there is a mismatch between the way we are currently living, and what it takes to truly thrive. Unfortunately, we’ve constructed an environment to serve our desires, at the expense of our health.