Week 12 Healing Habits (Final) 2-Minute Checklist
One body. One life. Destiny now.
In Weeks 10-12 of Checklists for Healing Habits, you will see the entire Metacardio Method summarized point-by-point at-a-glance day-by-day.
Metacardio Method’s 7 Essential Ideas
1. Restore HEALTH
2. Re-Work FITNESS
3. Resilience DE-STRESS
4. Re-Serve SERVICE
5. Recover CHOICE
6. Receive WISDOM
7. Re-Unite ONENESS
Healing Habits for a Healthy, Happy, Hasslefree Lifestyle for Life
— Working well for over 2000 people in the past 25 years
IT’S A WRAP FOR A NEW BEGINNING
In these 3 months, you have made the effort to build Healing Habits of your choice. A lasting value like this takes a month to get it, 2 months for it to sink in, and 3 months to own it—for good.
It all starts with a minor mindset reset. Then, it proceeds as ordinary daily routines. Once you live it as a habit, it takes no effort or hardship. It becomes natural and automatic.
You eat only what you enjoy when hungry and stop when full. In that way, your weight will stay stable at your comfortable new set-point. (Mine hasn’t changed in 50 years.) Only addiction to certain engineered food or repeated over-indulgence can knock you off your chosen set-point. You know water remains your best liquid asset.
You do your new habitual set of daily physical activities, whether or not you call it disciplined exercise, as a matter of routine. You feel “off” if you skip it for a day or more. You are fit for your body type as well as your circumstances. You are firm yet flexible and fun from your hourly Stand-Stretch-Smile habit. Your body-mind-spirit feels whole and optimal, i.e. healed, despite all the ups and downs out there.Breathing is no longer a taken-for-granted automation. You can double-dip into it for mindful relaxation and reset. Plenty of food for thought has been turned around to thoughts for food as mental nourishment. You readily remind yourself many old excuses are now ex-excuses you don’t need.
In our world today, we hunger for virtues like tolerance, understanding, collaboration, and better still, gratitude, forgiveness, and kindness. The trillions of cells in your own body live together just like that, as one, for one—you. This is Nature’s wisdom where artificial rules and moral impositions are unnecessary. In oneness like this, the essential virtues are natural and automatic. What an extraordinary way of ordinary living to return to!
In these Healing Habits, like many people in the Blue Zones, you are naturally living a Healthy, Happy, Hasslefree Lifestyle for Life—in your open zone. It’s easy and no big deal. And that’s the whole deal.
. . .
Footnote for The Newcomer:
Healing Habits for a Happy, Healthy, Hasslefree Lifestyle for Life are success stories collected from some 2000 of my patients and coworkers in a non-profit private clinic after-hour coaching program over 25 years. This series of posts are Metacardio Methods’ daily checklists in that 3-month program.
Pick and choose which of the items are useful for you to follow. The nutritional suggestions are as applicable to weight loss as transitioning to a healthier eating habit.
Where relevant, all suggestions have been updated to current national health guidelines and state-of-the-art expert consensus. Wisdom from sages over the ages remains perennial.
The basis for these suggestions is discussed in long-hand on 15 prior posts here. All are archived under “Metacardio”.
Metacardio©
Week 12 Day 1
Restore
MINDSET RESET
Work on An Ordinary Checklist. Wave off Any Extraordinary Wishlist.
1. HEALTH
Health is not the absence of illness or any imperfection. It is a state of wellness and wholeness where you embrace and optimize all that you are with all that you have.
Overweight and can’t diet? Eat what you’ve always liked but only ¾ of it. Squelch any hunger with small snacks of tasty, healthy choices from the Mediterranean menu, free online. Bit by bit (or bite by bite), switch in your favorites from these new choices, and sub out the unhealthy ones in your regular meals.
Water down your sweetened drinks gradually to 50%. Maybe switch to 100% water—your best liquid asset—after painlessly pulling your decaying sweet tooth. Celebrate with sparkling water—champagne for the champ with no pain but all the sparkles.
Eating sweets to feel sweetness is a delusion.
Attain greater sweetness with less sweetening by dilution.Metacardio©
an optional relaxation training/practice for a day to a week, then anytime at will
While not breathing is never an option,
practiced breathing is always a good option.Metacardio©
MOVING
Extraordinary athletes require punishingly intense and extended drilling.
Fitness for us only needs ordinary moderate activities for about 20 minutes a day.
Health benefits start accruing from 2 minutes a day.
Sedentary Sickness Stopper:
(Sadly, Sitting and Sitting is Sickly as Smoking)
Stop Sitting Still. Stand-Stretch-Smile. Smarter Still, Stroll.
Set to do this for Several minutes every Second hour or So:
Stand with confidence in your ordinary means.
Stretch to reach for an extraordinary life.
Smile at your extraordinary life with just ordinary means.
EATING
Nobody can stick with extraordinary diets, even though they may work for a while.
Everybody can eat ordinary foods they like, while transitioning comfortably to a lesser quantity but higher quality and variety, over time and for life.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Extraordinary living with ordinary means
Forced, unpleasant, extraordinary efforts may produce short-term changes that will vanish as soon as you stop.
Easy, manageable, self-chosen, ordinary actions taken progressively over time often build into extraordinary good habits for good.
REMINDER:
Another Ex-excuse
“On a crash diet, I lost 5 lbs. which wasn’t enough. So I ate 2 diets and gained 10.”
Extraordinary! I rest my ordinary case.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 12 Day 2
Re-Work
MINDSET RESET
Get fit enough to fittingly befit your destiny
2. FITNESS
Fit well into life by being attentive, adaptable, accepting of change, and renewing with whatever is at hand, until life fits you just as well. Your new habits will fittingly become your new destiny.
Can’t get yourself to exercise regularly? Integrate most of the 10,000 steps/day, or equivalent workout, into your daily non-exercise, pleasurable, no-brainer routines, like commuting, relaxing, and screen-time activities. For example, make it a habit to walk around while you’re talking on your mobil phone.
Let neuroscience do the work in molding your new habits painlessly and crowding out your unfit old habits. It is a simple M.A.T.R. of S.M.A.R.T. choices (see last week).
“It is our choices that show what we truly are,
far more than our abilities.”J.K. Rowling
Not now but later? But it will be now then.
This now is at hand. That now, on the other hand, may be out of your hands.
MOVING
Fat and fit is healthier than slim but slack, medical research has shown.
Sedentary Sickness Stopper:
Stand up to your given fate.
Stretch to fulfill your chosen destiny.
Smile as you turn fate into destiny.
EATING
By now, you should be just doing it without thinking about it—so much easier.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Now, now…
Unless you can time-travel, you’re always in the now.
Now is not the passage of time. Now IS.
Your time is always now, and only now.
Now is not forever, yet you are always in it.
Forever is only a very long time, promising the same over and over.
Forever is what you sometimes wish for, only never live to see.
Eternity is now—timeless, yet in motion, embracing the past, present, and projected future.
Eternity is where you always are, if only you live fully in the now.
It is only possible to turn your ordinary yesterday into an extraordinary today.
The only time you can make it all better is now—for there is no other time but now.
REMINDERS:
Fate has already come down upon you.
Your destiny is all up to you now.
Another Ex-excuse
“I’m busy now. Can I have that later?”
You can always have it all now, but only now.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 12 Day 3
Resilience
MINDSET RESET
What you’re resilient to, you’ve re-mastered it into silence.
3. RESILIENCE
Your internal negative reactions to unavoidable external stressful events generate all your unpleasant and unhealthy stress. Reset your mindset mindfully, so you don’t just knee-jerk to stressors by reflex or drool mindlessly to Pavlov’s dog-bell.
You have more control than you think, and less control than you want. Take command.
Begin with good intentions, do your best throughout the process, and accept that the outcome is often uncontrollable, but can be better than you intended.
“This, too, shall pass” is a blessing, not a blow. In any case, reality offers no other option. Impermanence, meaning moving on, should be a motivation and not a mourning.
Quiet breathing with no thinking (meditation, if you will) is highly effective in building stress resilience if practiced regularly. You can acquire this extraordinary experience with the most ordinary means.
“Lengthen the out-breath,
and you will no longer long for relaxation.”Steve Bhaerman
MOVING
Ordinary exercise can be an extraordinary way to build stress resilience.
Sedentary Sickness Stopper:
Stand to take control.
Stretch to let go what you can’t control.
Smile for commanding what’s yours to control.
EATING
If fresh organic produce is extraordinarily hard to get, many ordinary frozen or canned produce can be just as good. Eating too much of anything is the great equalizer—equally harmful.
Got only lemons?
Sell lemonade.Metacardio©
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Extraordinary learning from ordinary events
Good experience is a good teacher.
Bad experience is a better teacher.
So, learn from both.
To learn from your own mistakes is painful but good.
To learn from others’ mistakes is painless and almost as good.
So do both.
What matters is not how ordinary you are or how extraordinary others are,
but how extraordinary you strive to be.
REMINDERS:
“Resistance is futile.” – Star Trek
‘Resilience is fertile.’ – Metacardio©
Another Ex-excuse
“I can’t take this on, what with all the extraordinary stress I’m under.”
You mean all the ordinary stressors. De-stress your distress with the resilience you’ve built inside for the past 3 months. Then, do everything else unhindered.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 12 Day 4
Re-Serve
MINDSET RESET
Your service serves you well
4. SERVICE
In any situation, asking only “What’s in it for me?” constricts you and may restrict the big picture. Getting short-changed that way may not serve you right.
Asking, instead, “How can I best serve here—with me in it?” opens up more and better possibilities and promotes favorable cooperation from all around. Service to others often turns out to be the best way to serve yourself. It serves you right.
You won’t shortchange yourself because self-preservation and self-interest are well-baked into anybody’s decision-making. Narrowly focused on that, though, you will severely limit all options. Why not “long-change” yourself, and reap long-lasting, big-picture benefits by ‘other-serving’ before self-serving?
“The able does not forsake the unable.
The unable is the job of the able.”Laozi
Just like service to others, if you go into a breathing practice wanting what it will do for you, you won’t get it. Just relax and breathe for breathing sake, and you’ll see what happens then and in the long run.
Having come this far, you might consider teaching someone this practice. Some people who see your progress in stress resilience will get curious. In showing them how, you’ll get it down pat even more. They train doctors in medical school this way: “Watch one. Practice one. Teach one.”
MOVING
If you don’t feel like walking for exercise today, go help others do some physical chores. You won’t even have to walk in their shoes.
Sedentary Sickness Stopper:
Stand to serve yourself.
Stretch to serve others.
Smile at serving yourself by serving others.
EATING
All the ¼ food portions you’ve been saving can be of good use to others in need. If not the hungry, maybe some animals, or compost for plants. Don’t let the excess go to waste, or your waist. You’re always useful when you make things useful.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Extraordinary returns to all for your ordinary service
“To the world you may be one person,
but to one person you may be the world.”Bill Wilson
“Not all of us can do great things.
But we can do small things with great love.”Mother Teresa
“When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad.
That’s my religion.”Abe Lincoln
“He who is too busy doing good
finds no time to be good.”Rabindranath Tagore
Everything we do is to make ourselves feel better, or at least not as bad.
All the rest is mere justification.Metacardio©
In other words, what you do for others, you end up doing even more for yourself.
In so doing, you make a seemingly extraordinary virtue into simply ordinary living.
A healing habit, indeed.
REMINDER:
Another Ex-excuse
“I’ll get healthy later. I have other people to take care of first.”
Exactly. Just so you can do that, “put on your oxygen mask first”.
Also, some people get more from how you are than what you do.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 12 Day 5
Recover
MINDSET RESET
Gratifying Gratitude. Choosing Control.
5. CHOICE
Failure is not falling down; failure is facing down and not getting up.
Swallowing the sour schooling of setbacks is the stipend you shell out for savoring the sweet sauces of success.Forgiveness frees the only hostage—you. It heals you without depending on the forgiven—even better if the forgiven one is yourself.
For-giving is not For-getting.
Par-doning is not Con-doning.
Ad-mitting it’s done and over is not Per-mitting it to be done over.Gratitude gives life to all good feelings.
Your DNA, even though fated, is not fixed.
Make a choice — Volunteer to be the Victim or Vow to be the Victor.
Unconditional forgiving of others
never fails to grant you
unconditional healing for yourself.Metacardio©
If you’ve never had a bad practice session, you’ve never had a good one.
After you’ve “got it” even once, you won’t mind anymore.
MOVING
You’ll be forgiven for forgetting to work out today. Remember, though, once you’ve built your exercise habit, you won’t have to remember and will still do it anyway, just like rinsing after brushing.
Sedentary Sickness Stopper:
Stand up after falling.
Stretch to get over failing.
Smile at not failing after falling.
EATING
Some people have suffered past tragedies that left them with unforgiving toxic feelings for themselves or other people. Some even feel unworthy of a happy and healthy life, so they just “let themselves go.” Food, to them, may be an easy escape, only too much of it is actually unforgiving.
Letting go of all those who are unforgivable and freeing the most forgivable hostage—yourself—is easier than you might assume. It may work better than anything else, particularly if you do so without any condition. Any other way can give you quite a condition.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Extra extraordinary measure ordinarily not preferred
The most important person you must forgive is yourself. Your body and wellness are quite forgiving. Your mind, not so much. Still living with that “second arrow” you shot yourself in the head?
The body can be so forgiving that even in extreme cases of obesity (such as weighing more than twice as much as one should), there is Bariatric bowel surgery—a drastic, invasive option for some. After recovery, most of the unhealthy complications of morbid obesity do reverse.
This kind of surgery is the very last resort. Before that, all candidates must pass months of wellness coaching programs similar to this one here. And they must live this lifestyle for life because every ill can still come back. Forgiving is not forgetting, even for your body.
Surgery is an extraordinary means to strive for just ordinary living—the opposite of what you prefer, a last resort. Prevention and maintenance with ordinary means will grant you extraordinary living, and should be your first resort of choice.
Forgiveness is the most painless
and bloodless kind of surgery
to heal you for wellness.Metacardio©
REMINDER:
Another Ex-excuse
“I’ll forgive them if only they’d do this ___. Then, I can start healing myself.”
If you heal yourself first—to become healthy, happy, and hasslefree in body, mind, and spirit—then you might find it easier to forgive them, whether or not they’d do ___. Command complete control in your own hands, not in theirs.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 12 Day 6
Receive
MINDSET RESET
Wisdom-wise
6. WISDOM
Wisdom and wonders of the universe are universally accessible to all. All the miracles in your body speak to that. Limitless other resources are just as eager to speak to you. You only have to quiet down and listen up. If you’re still enough for long enough, you’ll hear the messages.
Keep your mind curious, your heart open, your eyes clear, and yourself still to receive the automatic downloads. Afterward, get on your feet and spring into action. If you go at it endlessly, such wisdom will come to you endlessly.
This is an extraordinarily useful stillness practice using the most ordinary means possible. Yet, don’t expect wisdom to barge in your head during your practice. It usually emerges at other times, or when least expected, and often most needed.
MOVING
A surprising finding in recent medical research, even to doctors, is walking lowers the risk of dementia and strokes. Go, figure.
Sedentary Sickness Stopper:
Stand for what you need.
Stretch for what you want.
Smile for not wanting what you don’t need.
EATING
Food can be a false substitute for what’s really lacking in your life. Filling your stomach full won’t fulfill that. Often, the more you do it that way, the more disappointed you get, in more ways than you bargain for. A full-feeling is not necessarily fulfilling. On the other hand, when your life is fulfilled, everything tastes better—no substitute needed.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Ordinarily, no-thing can match an extraordinarily experience.
Is it the land (a thing) or is it the landscape (your experience) that’s so beautiful?
Does money give you security or is it your confidence that you can always make it?
If a relationship requires only your materialistic things, is it really anything you care for?
A valuable thing you can only share with a few people around.
An invaluable experience you can share with an unlimited number of people everywhere.Whatever thing of value you cannot give away, you don’t own it. It owns you.
Whatever is in your heart, the more you freely give away, the more of it you end up owning.
Things can be wonderful and useful. Don’t get attached to or enslaved by them. Appreciate and utilize them. It can make every ordinary thing extraordinary, like nothing you ever possess.
Sharing something, whether things or not-things, makes ordinary living extraordinary.
REMINDERS:
Again, it’s not what you’re eating but what’s eating you.
Still, overeating would eat you up alive before it’s over.
Another Ex-excuse
“I know. I know.”
You can be spared from knowing if you ‘just do it’.
“Knowing it but not doing it,
you are still ignorant of it.”Confucius
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 12 Day 7
Re-Unite
MINDSET RESET
One with One
7. ONENESS
Life in today’s world is such that we are all linked together. That’s just the way it is. “We’re all in this together”, “all-for-one and one-for-all” are not just “yeah-yeah” clichés. They are existential necessities for the survival we need and the wellness we want.
Winner takes all. Take the good with the bad; and do what you can to tip the balance. It is rarely all-or-nothing. You cannot save everyone, and no one can save you, but together everyone can save one another.
Breathing practice is ordinarily an alone activity for only one. Yet, you may be astonished to experience this extraordinary kind of oneness in doing it:
“And where we had thought to be alone,
we shall be with all the world.”Joseph Campbell
MOVING
Ditto with working out alone.
Still, having someone to nudge one another may even be better although not always possible or necessary. Take a buddy as a bonus, not a bondage.
Sedentary Sickness Stopper:
Stand for being happy.
Stretch to stay healthy.
Smile at becoming hasslefree.
EATING
Like many people, you may think you’ll get slimmer if you only eat one meal a day. Research actually shows that smaller, more frequent meals are not only healthier but more slimming. The worst is one big meal just before going to bed.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Extraordinarily Ordinary Habits
Unlike diet/exercise boot-camping, building healing lifestyle habits as you have here is an extraordinary miracle by merely taking ordinary actions. It is simply ordinary happy, healthy, hasslefree living in wellness for life.
REMINDER:
Review what you can do to secure your safety belt to prepare for the “Devil Slide” that may hit you in the next 3 months or so. Having lost enough weight or belly fat, your biology’s old “set-point” will try to reset your body and regain it.
If you over-feed that backward slide, it’ll even over-shoot. If you under-feed it, your new set-point can stay set. You can even gradually re-set it lower if you wish. (But make sure your BMI doesn’t drop below 18.)
Don’t let that stubborn set-point be an upset point. Feel free to re-do this program at a graduate level, maybe as a post-doc instructor. (The tested ‘See one. Do one. Teach one.’ medical school method.)
Another Ex-excuse
“This has been great. Maybe I should keep it to myself.”
Unlike food, joy in your heart defies math and reason. The more you share with others, the more you enrich yourself. That has been the experience of the two thousand some people enrolled in this program over the past 25 years.
“So often, I cannot contain this joy.
So often, it becomes my work.
So often, it overflows into my life.”Metacardio©
FINAL WORD FOR COMMENCEMENT:
Congratulations! You are graduating as a ‘valid victory one’.
Your commencement gift is coming up next.
“Those who have achieved oneness
can now move on to twoness.”Woody Allen
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Metacardio© 2024
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