Destiny Now, Fate Never!
Your answer to reality’s ultimatum to get healthy, fit, resilient, and wise.
1-minute tip sheet
Randomly scan the news headlines about the world and your world these days. Chances are overwhelming that in the very near future, your life will be very different. Will it be for better or for worse? It’s your choice whether to leave it all to chance.
Fate is what happens to you.
Destiny is how you shape your life, given this fate.Metacardio©
Rapidly progressive sociopolitical conflicts, climate catastrophes, and techno/bio cataclysms from artificial intelligence and genetic engineering are some, and not the only, accelerators for the sure-fire sea changes to come.
How prepared are you for these challenges? Why not turn these impending crises into immediate opportunities and opt to tune yourself up? Rise above them and whatever else might come next.
Survival (and success) is for the fittest, healthiest, most resilient, and wise—always.
Fitness is being aware, adaptable, and innovative with whatever is at hand.
Health (root holos) means to be whole and wholly optimized for whatever life offers.
Stress resilience is a strength developed inside against inescapable stressors outside.
Wisdom can be streamed from limitless inner and outer sources by learning how.
You got this. You can attain all that by simple means, sensible choices, and sustainable habits. Take mini-steps to get into these habits, and they cease to be hills. The success you need will come naturally.
Let’s get real. People don’t keep doing things they dislike now for some good later. It’s only human to avoid pain and seek pleasure. But if you’re soaking in a slow-cook pot, make sure you frog-leap out of it before getting poached.
Fighting human nature is a no-win.
A win-win is to avail your natural tendencies and leverage cutting-edge science plus time-honored wisdom to build better habits that are pleasurable and purposeful, now and for life.
Metacardio©
Congratulations! Having made it through the last Covid pandemic, you have proven yourself capable of adjusting to drastic changes. Now, all you have to do is tweak your new habits a bit to upgrade to a more desirable and durable you.
Don’t go on a (another?) diet. Get into a tasty eating style that makes you feel pleased and refreshed every time, as if brushing your teeth.
Don’t force yourself (again?) to exercise. Get into an activity routine that you would miss, as if not having showered.
Don’t keep getting stressed out. With some ‘mindset reset’ practice, become resilient to stress and exuberant about life.
Taking planned micro-steps daily, you will soon become the person you want, and the changing world requires. But first, you must want it and then commit to it.
There will be a series of posts on the specifics to follow.
What you are now is what you used to do.
What you do now is who you will be.Metacardio©
So, who’s the real you?
Small and slow progress makes a mighty stream that keeps on running. Drip by little drip, a minor leak will eventually drain off a giant tank. Conversely, tiny raindrops fill up vast reservoirs over time. Daily micro-steps will become your lifestyle.
Over 25 years, I and 2000-some clinic patients and coworkers in a healing lifestyle coaching program, in effect, life-coached one another. I am sharing our experiences, insights, and solutions. All have been successfully applied and practiced in real life.
If you don’t need to lose weight, these practices will help you shed ‘weightiness’. You will still be healthier, happier, and less hassled.
1-Minute Tip Sheet
for Mindset Reset Prep
Human’s acute stress reaction saved our ancestors from saber-tooth tigers on occasion. Today, a chronically stressed state gives you ill health for life and a bad hair day every day.
The obesity pandemic is genetically rooted. Hunter-gatherers millennia ago were genetically favored by storing away food as belly fat to survive without eating for days at a time. Today, this genetic trait in habitual carb overeaters only makes their bellies fat. That gives them diabetes plus other unpleasantries, like stroke, heart attack, dementia, arthritis, and cancers.
Designating only one place at home or at work to eat cuts down mindless overeating. Take your time to savor every bite. Slow eaters eat less and enjoy more. Even food that’s good for you can also taste good to you.
To resist food that’s staring at you is hard. To desist from piling up junk that would bury you is easier. Clear out unhealthy food and snacks all around, and don’t restock them.
Out of sight, out of stomach...No waste, no waist.
Avoid roller-coastering your weight. When you lose it, it’s mainly lean muscle mass; when you gain it back, it’s mostly bulkier fat. Simply weighing daily promotes weight loss or stability, as you desire. Weighing weekly is half as effective. Evading the scale leads to weight gain. Track the trend, not the small daily variations.
Even though exercise by itself is not an efficient way to lose weight, a regular moderate activity routine is essential for keeping excess weight off and staying fit.
Raise your screen and put a sturdy block in front to step up and down frequently. Get off your vehicle a block farther and the elevator one floor sooner. Whenever you’re out, walk around an extra block. Let all that add up on auto-pilot.
Sitting and sitting is as sickly as smoking. (You’d be better off taking a nap.) Set signals to stand, stretch, and smile every hour or two. Sweeter still, stroll.
Stand, be upstanding.
Stretch, be far-reaching.
Smile, be outgoing.Metacardio©
Knowing what one should do is easy. Actually doing it may require some nudging. You might want to get my free iOS app for that.
Parting Thought
But the world is still a mess!?
Top-down political systems have not worked out so well in history, have they? Perhaps it’s time for Confucius’ teaching: Only after mending yourself can you straighten your family, then have your nation in order and peace on earth. Or in today’s speak, “Put your oxygen mask on first.”
Only after that can you hope to help others on your flight. And after a crash landing, your chance of survival goes with your health and fitness. Your recovery will hinge on your resilience and wisdom. Even if that were the fateful end, wouldn’t it be necessary that you had been happy and stress-free all the days prior?
Have a healthy, happy, and hassle-free lifestyle for life with healing habits!
Your destiny awaits.
Bonus Podcast for Mindset Reset
Topics of dreamy, wondrous, and miraculous realities usually not on our minds because our brains often take them for granted, neglect, or even ignore them:
(Each 2-3 minutes)
(1) Extraordinary Living with Ordinary Means
(2) Extraordinary Meals with Ordinary Ingredients
(3) Extraordinarily Active through Ordinary Routines
(4) Extraordinary Chaos into Ordinary Order
(5) Hell to Heaven
(6) Everything from Nothing
(7) Life Destiny, Now
This is the first stand-alone post in a series called Healing Habits for a Happy, Healthy, Hassle-free Lifestyle for Life, a minor mindset reset to prepare you for what’s to come. 2024
The photos above are curated from iStock with subscription.