Week 8 Healing Habits 2-Minute Checklist
In Control of Your Destiny, Not Leaving It to Fate
Week 8 Day 1
In Control, Just Enough
Image created by DALL-E. (None of the text is AI-generated.)
MINDSET RESET
Be in Command: In or Out of Control as You Choose—Wisely
Identify what you can control and what you can’t.
Confusing the two leads to gain in stress and loss of control.
“Incredible changes happen in your life
when you decide to take control of
what you do have power over instead of
craving control over what you don’t.”Steve Maraboldi
“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future,
but from wanting to control it.”Kahlil Gibran
Since you can’t control your need to breathe, work on controlling the way you breathe to get the most out of every breath you take.
MOVING
If you can’t control what time you get to workout, control the time you gift to yourself to do it today. At least some portion of the 24 hours in your life today must be yours to own and control. Claim it. Live it.
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 and tell it like it is.
Stretch and take it as it comes.
Smile and taste how it feels.
EATING
What's better: a sweeter drink or a sweeter life?
Pour off and water down sweet drinks by ¼ before this week’s end,
so you can control going onto ½ starting next month.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Podcast (DESTINY) Extraordinary Living with Ordinary Means
Textcast –
Wars, climate disasters, the economy… Any such crisis is a warning, if not an ultimatum, to get healthy, fit, and stress-resilient. They are hopeless catastrophes if you give up all that you can control or hold on to what you can’t.
“To be uncertain is uncomfortable.
To be certain is absurd.”Voltaire and others
Fate is what happens to you. You have no control over it.
Destiny is how you shape your life given this fate. You can have as much command of it as you choose.
“Be the change you wish to see.”
Gandhi
REMINDER:
Take your selfie this month, full body, front and side, for later comparison.
You may not be able to control how you look today, but you can still control how you will look in a month, a year, or the rest of your life.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
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 “Healing Habits Bolg”.
. . .
Week 8 Day 2
Positive Control Is Possible. Negative, Not So Much.
Image created by DALL-E. (None of the text is AI-generated.)
MINDSET RESET
Food Control. Positively In Your Hands.
Positive food control is easier, e.g., control major food cravings by minor environmental rearrangements—get them out of your sight and footprints.
Negative food control (your “won’t-power”) is often unreliable. Keep palm-size healthy snacks handy so in a hunger strike you won’t lose the hunger game.
Exercise your “will” power to eat the healthier food items first. In that way, they crowd out the guilty ones; and you feel satisfied, not deprived.
One-stop shopping:
Make it easy to push the YES button to this,
which should be pre-linked to the NO button to that.Metacardio©
Take the control that “I will do this now” so that later “I won’t feel so stressed” and out of control.
MOVING
If you absolutely cannot make it to your workout, at least put on your exercise outfit to facilitate your stand-stretch-smile routines. That way you’re not letting your healing habit loop unspool out of control.
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 to be useful for what’s worthwhile.
Stretch to be usable for what’s worthwhile.
Smile, it’s useless to resist what’s worthwhile.
EATING
Trimming 1/4 off your portions will trim 1-2 pounds off your body a week.
If you don’t need to lose weight, make up the difference with healthier food items.Control your actions to get there by the end of this week (2 months from the beginning). After that, it’ll just be maintaining the habit—an autopilot requiring no control.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Podcast (DESTINY) Extraordinary Meals with Ordinary Ingredients
Textcast –
Inflation, economic downturns, and disease isolations are golden opportunities to tweak your stay-home menu to make it tasty yet healthy and sustainable, with whatever limited supplies at hand.
Many canned and frozen plant-based foods maintain their nutritional values on top of cost and convenience advantages. Spiff them up with spices, steaming, or roasting. It is easy to re-grow fresh scallions, ginger, herbs, celery, and other veggies at home.
In hard times,
no food should go to waste or your waist.Metacardio©
REMINDERS:
Under your control:
1. Dedicate only one place at home or office to eat.
2. Assign a set time everyday for your meals.
3. Prepare palm-size healthy snacks for hunger strikes between regular meals.
4. Don’t let extra food lie around for mindless snacking.
Another Ex-excuse
“Since the pandemic, my diet and exercise have been thrown way off. I can’t help it.”
Good, you must have used that opportunity to exercise more control over
the way you eat at home, and the time to workout while working out of the office.
If not, you can do it now since things are back to normal.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 8 Day 3
Auto-Pilot Control
Blue Zones World Map
MINDSET RESET
Activity Auto-Control
‘Blue Zone’ people live healthy lives of over 100 years. They don’t “exercise” regimentally, as in a gym. They do many daily, routine, physical activities that are easy, convenient, and pleasant, with no need for demanding controls, often together with buddies.
Invite someone to walk with you as “step-brothers” or “step-sisters” and make big strides together.
Link workout with watching your daily videos, for example. Make two activities inseparable auto-co-pilots and forget about (air traffic) controllers.
If you keep losing control of ‘exercise disciplines’, forget forced control and just do physical activities. Whether you call it exercise or not, the benefits are the same.
“If you only do what you’ve always done,
You’ll only get what you’ve always got.”Anonymous
Surfing channels with the remote control but nothing relaxes you?
What you can control with consistent breathing practice isn’t remote.
MOVING
In the previous pandemic, you have proven capable of making changes in your routines. Now, couple an obligatory daily activity to your daily workout. Once it becomes a habit, you don’t even need control.
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 and vow to be no victim.
Stretch and vouch to be the victor.
Smile and volunteer to bare your virtues.
EATING
The sugar-salt-fat 3-prong-pitchfork in junk food can alter your brain chemistry and take away your control to resist, like a narcotic. Progressively adding fiber, like nuts and whole grains, while cutting down the serving size will gradually wean you off, like detox. Reclaim control!
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Podcast (DESTINY) Extraordinarily Active through Ordinary Routines
Textcast –
Use a 6-inch stepper for ‘binge’ exercise while ‘binge’ watching. Alternate with sit-ups or bend-downs. Do reps on the couch with large muscles, like arms and thighs. Keep servicing your body while surfing on-screen. Double-dip a double-header.
Walking stairs or outdoors lowers your infection risk of any bugs caught from riding elevators and public transportation. Start the habit by riding fewer floors and stops, and striding the rest.
Every physical movement you make is not only a step toward your healthy goal but a move away from a nasty disease.
REMINDER:
Another Ex-excuse
“I observe social distancing. No gym, so no exercise.”
After 2 weeks you’ll feel it, after 4 weeks you’ll see it, and after 8 weeks you’ll insist on socially isolation, not only distancing.
There are many ways to workout in-home. Join digital-media exercise or dance classes. Play exercise games in here if you want to get back in the game out there.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 8 Day 4
You Made It. Now Use It.
MINDSET RESET
Flip The Controls You’ve Learned
You can turn your “fixed” genes on/off by flipping their ‘epi-genetic’ switches, which are sensitive to food, activity, and stress.
Eat healthy by controling your food choices to replace what you no longer eat.
For exercise, use the M.A.T.R. method to build an auto-control activity habit.
To be resilient to stress is to free how you feel inside from the control outside.
You can’t control all the crazies out there.
How you feel inside is your business alone.
You are nobody’s robot under remote control.Metacardio©
As much as you can’t control your need to breathe, controlling your breathing pattern can strengthen the control of your internal stress reactions to uncontrollable external stressors.
MOVING
Going back in time is never in your control, going forward always is.
So, keep on moving today.
Now is the time
– because it’s too late to do it sooner.Steve Bhaerman
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 to do work that’s meaningful.
Stretch and keep good work durable.
Smile, for your work is love made visible.
EATING
If you cannot control your urge to eat that, exert your control to eat this first. Afterward, if you still feel like it or have room for it, go ahead and eat backward.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Podcast (DESTINY) Extraordinarily Chaos into Ordinary Order
Textcast –
Sort out which of your “critical tasks” are merely self-made busy work. Your new “must-do” list may be short, but it all gets done.
After getting through a very tough time, such as a pandemic, you must have let go of some items from your old “must-have” list. Decide which items are “eh, too bad”, or “just as well”, or “even better without”. Your new must-have list maybe short, but it is all attainable, and it means more.
If you really miss having something you’ve lost, by all means, try to get it back. A need can be stressful, but a want can be motivational.
“I can be changed by what happened to me.
But I refuse to be reduced by it.”Maya Angelou
REMINDER:
Hurry-Sorry-Worry is only a sickness if you can’t tell which factors you can control from which you cannot. Hit RESET. Convert the chaotic and frantic energy of your ‘past life’ into order and simplicity. Don’t be surprised that, by doing less, you can accomplish more and better.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 8 Day 5
Control Stress, Not Stressors
Image created by DALL-E. None of the text is AI-generated.
MINDSET RESET
Stress Control Is Not Remote.
Can’t change the world – change your world, your mind.
Can’t erase bad memories – displace them with good ones.
Can’t reform the bad guys – forgive and move on, do your own good deeds.
Can’t control the outcome – set your intention and proceed on your own terms.
“If I was meant to be controlled,
I would have come with a remote.”Kushandwizdom
Unless you are a grand master at it, you can’t control the thoughts that keep coming to your mind while meditating. Let thoughts come—and go—without trying to control it. Watch your thoughts like watching birds fly by. Just don’t let them keep hanging over your head or drop on you.
MOVING
Whatever you’ve gained or lost in the latest disaster, your workout today will still give you the same health benefits without costing any more.
Try this Tai Chi posture:
Stand with knees slightly bent to make your legs less tired.
Hold one hand over the other and rest them below your waist.
Shift your weight onto the tailbone.
Hold the top of your head high, act like an antenna downloading messages from above.
Soften your eyes, look into the distance, don’t focus, and watch your visual field widen.
Put your attention on breathing normally.
Let things happening around you pass without comment or judgment.Waiting in line, you might even enjoy standing like that longer.
From Metacardio©
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 and X all hesitancy.
Stretch and X all restraints.
Smile and X all resistance.
EATING
Quality should count the most.
Quantity should amount to the least.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Podcast (DESTINY) Failure and Success. Hell to Heaven.
Textcast –
After the latest catastrophe (be it a pandemic, economic downturn, mass shooting, or even war), so many of yesterday’s ills have been exposed, forcing your hands to fix them today for a better tomorrow. After balancing your life and wellbeing on a high wire, your feet are back on the ground now. Why restore the old that’s broken? Build anew for longer-lasting good.
On ground zero, the playing field is more level and clear than before. Rise from the ashes like a phoenix; the sky is no limit.
The phoenix that does not rise from the ashes
is just another roasted duck in the window.A fortune cookie from Golden Phoenix Restaurant
Image from iStock with subscription
Rock bottom became the solid foundation in which I rebuilt my life.
J.K. Rowling
REMINDER:
Another Ex-excuse
“What’s happening to this body? Oh no, I shouldn’t eat that. Damn, I’d better exercise. Sh+!, I’m so stressed out.”
And you’ll be that.“I am happy, healthy, stress-resilient. I choose not to eat that because it doesn’t serve me. I feel much better after my workout. I’m jazzed to meet the next challenge.”
And you’ll be that.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 8 Day 6
Internal Security Over External Safety
From Metacardio©
MINDSET RESET
Command Over No Control. Let It Be.
Total control comes with total responsibility. You really want that for everything?
Common things happen commonly. Prepare for, not presume the worst every time.
You can’t change the past. Try the future instead.
If nothing good is left, leave.
“Give up all hope for a better past.”
Carl Buchheit
I either let my baggage drag me down to the bottom
or I stack them up for stepping to the top.
My baggage, my control.Metacardio©
If you lose control and fall asleep at your meditation, that may be the best nap you’ve had in a while. Your body needed it. Now get up, refreshed and in control.
MOVING
Do your workout today and just wonder how you’ll feel afterwards, instead of expecting anything beyond your control. And be pleasantly surprised.
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 to be young at heart.
Stretch to be young in action.
Smile to be young at any age.
EATING
Use smaller cups and plates, and they’ll look nice and full.
Use over-sized holders, and you’ll get over-sized with them.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Podcast (DESTINY) Zero to Infinity. Everything from Nothing.
Textcast –
You can learn the best of lessons from the worst of times. Don’t overlook what’s not there.
It’s the empty space inside a house that makes it livable. Totally drained out is when you can take in the most. If you feel hollowed out and punched through all over, that’s how a wooden stick becomes a flute. Now make music.
“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
Bob Dylan
From zero, you can reach for infinity and beyond.
How much further can you go from ‘FULL’?Metacardio©
REMINDER:
When you’re hungry, all food tastes better, so you can enjoy more.
When you’re full, you can’t taste anymore.
When you’re over-stuffed, well, you know.
See you tomorrow.
. . .
Week 8 Day 7
Keystone Habit In Control
Image curated from iStock with subscription
MINDSET RESET
Your Life under Master Command
Control is more a state of mind than of affairs. Building a healthy lifestyle is a keystone habit. Most people can’t because they don’t know what you know. So if you can, you can do almost anything.
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Delight in moderation. If you don’t need to shed weight, shed weightiness.
Build a healing habit as a master drill to build confidence and gain control over your life.
“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Most people find sitting in silence and stillness for a few minutes the most difficult thing to do, ever. So, if you can do it little by little until it becomes easy and natural, you’ll be way ahead of the crowd. But, by then, you won’t even care.
MOVING
Most people find exercise a very difficult discipline to master. Bit by bit, perhaps using our M.A.T.R. method, you’ll get it. You won’t even consider it discipline. (You don’t have to tell people it’s really no big deal either.)
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 to show you’re zesty.
Stretch to show you’re zippy.
Smile to show you’re zingy.
EATING
By billing it as a deprivation, most people fail to stay on any diet.
By building it into a fulfilling habit, you will like what, and how much, you eat.
All the good that does to your body is for you to live with and for others to envy.
THOUGHT FOR FOOD
Podcast (DESTINY) Your Destiny, Now.
Textcast –
The multi-year Covid-19 pandemic, or similar disasters, must have made you experience, in real life, what little you actually need to get along well. Go for only what is truly important, now that you know better what that is.
If you had a fear of loss, now that you have weathered loss for real, you’ve proven how strong you are. Having seen that everything changes, you aren’t afraid anymore. In a calamity, impermanence is a promise, not a threat.
Either actively change your world to the way you want, or passively let the world change you in ways you don’t want. You can live your life by accident as fate falls upon you. Or you can take fate as it comes—a new opening to shape your own destiny.
All that comes with health, fitness, and stress resilience.
The best time to become all that is now.
“When you find yourself in a ‘shituation’,
turn it into fertilizer for what you really want to grow.”Steve Bhaerman
REMINDERS:
Health means wholeness, not perfection. Healing means optimizing it with what you have, as best you can.
Fitness means living fully with adaptability and appreciation, no matter how it is anywhere.
Stress resilience empowers you to be ok inside, whether or not things are ok outside.
Health, fitness, and stress resilience take you beyond surviving any given fate to thriving in your chosen destiny, now.
Imaged curated from iStock with subscription
See you next week.
Metacardio© 2024
. . .
Coming Up Next :
Week 9 - FAIL, TO SUCCEED
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