The discovery of your legacy can be one of the most thrilling and life-changing experiences you’ll have in your life. The vision of your life’s dream can provide you with an energy and drive that you may never have felt before, and this in itself can give you quite a buzz. But there’s a danger here, especially if you’ve never really felt this kind of motivation. It’s very easy to allow this drive to overcome your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs. When this happens you’ll find that the initial rush of energy from your legacy won’t sustain you for long. In that vein, it’s important to go back and remind ourselves of the basics of self-management and that’s what I want to do here today.
1. Go Organic!
The food you eat is perhaps the most important influence on your health and wellbeing. Because your diet has an effect on every system in your body, the food choices you make can have a massive influence on your emotional state, your ability to concentrate and your general energy levels. All of these in turn influence how you perceive the world – whether an event is stressful or benign, challenging or easily overcome – and how you react. So making the right food choices means you are better equipped to deal with the difficulties that may come your way when you’re on the road to your legacy.
Organically grown foods are the best source of nutrition to meet human needs. Science is slowly coming around to the fact that organic foods are more nutritious than commercial alternatives and they are easier for our body to assimilate. Moreover they don’t contain harmful preservatives, artificial flavorings, pesticides and herbicides permitted by commercial standards. You can learn more about the benefits of organic foods in my You Are What You Eat audio series.
While eating organic foods is an important first step in improving your diet, it isn’t enough. Your body has nutritional needs rooted in your genetic heritage that may vary in important ways from those of your friends, neighbors and co-workers. Most people don’t know this and so they don’t eat properly for their needs. Refining your diet on the principles of metabolic typing can increase your energy levels, help you to repair your body more efficiently and improve your resistance to injury and illness. If you don’t know your metabolic type, we have created an online questionnaire to help you determine it for you. You can take our typing questionnaire here. You can also learn more about the metabolic typing diet in my How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! as well as William Wolcott’s The Metabolic Typing Diet.
2. Hydrate yourself
Statistics show that the vast majority of the American population is dehydrated. Water plays a vital role in all kinds of bodily functions and failing to provide your body with adequate amounts of quality water is a great way to invite injury and illness. As a general rule, you should be drinking approximately half your body weight, measured in pounds, in ounces of water every day. And when I say “water,” I mean water! Coffee, soda, juices and sports drinks don’t count. Those drinks contain dissolved solids which trigger your body’s digestive processes and aren’t efficient at flushing the body of impurities – one of the primary functions of water.
You should avoid drinking tap water, especially if it contains fluoride. In 2005, the Environmental Working Group released a study which links bone cancer in boys to fluoride and we are just beginning to learn about other possible harmful effects of the chemical. Tap water may also contain chemical contaminants such as mercury or other heavy metals, as well as harmful bacteria or protozoa. Instead of tap water, I recommend quality waters such as Fiji, Evian, Trinity and Volvic. You can be sure that these waters don’t contain the pollutants I list above. If you are purchasing water, but can’t find any of the brands I list above, try to find water that has a hardness factor of 170 mg/L or greater and a Total Dissolved Solids of 300 or more for the best health effects.
3. Know your body’s natural rhythms
The chart to the right shows two important natural hormonal cycles in your body. The black line tracks stress/activating hormones levels and the white line tracks growth/repair hormone levels. Your hormone levels cycle in a natural circadian rhythm. Activating hormones are highest early in the morning when they are waking you from sleep, and repair hormones are highest at around midnight. This information can help you to maximize the effects of your activities during the day. For example, to take full advantage of resistance exercise you’ll want to exercise in the morning to allow the most amount of time for your body to recover. Exercise in the evening, especially cardio exercise, triggers stress hormones or activating hormones - hormones that are also responsible for awakening you in the morning. So rather than preparing your body for rest, most forms of exercise in the evening trigger hormones that keep you awake. This cuts down on your rest and repair cycle. Coffee and television can also heighten your stress/activating hormones as well, so they are best avoided at night. Paying attention to your body’s rhythms in this way can make a huge difference to your energy levels and your health, as well as to the results you see from your exercise program.
4. Get to bed no later than 10:30 pm and sleep for eight hours
Both the early bedtime and the length of your sleep are important here. Your hormonal rhythms move through a 24-hour cycle that is coordinated with the rising and setting of the sun. Getting less than eight hours of rest or starting your rest cycle too late can shorten the time during which your body repairs itself and prepares you for the upcoming day. All of the wear and tear from the playing field to the office takes its toll on your body and this is why taking full advantage of your body’s rest and recovery cycle is so important. So if you’re wondering why you don’t have much energy during the day or you have illnesses that linger, you may not have to look any further than your sleep cycles.
5. Movement matters!
Humans, like it or not, are part of nature, and everything in nature has a rhythm to it. If you watch sheep, even while they’re eating, they move all day. Fish move in consistent patterns in their schools, even insects like ants have regular patterns of movement. Ignoring our innate need for movement is another way to invite stress and diminished energy. For anyone that is actively seeking to reach their legacy, regular movement is a must. For some of you, this may sound like a real downer, but you don’t have to go to the gym in order to get the benefits of exercise. You can still get the movement you need to keep your bodily fluids moving and to stimulate healthy breathing through Chi cultivating exercises. These exercises such as Qigong, Tai Chi and Yoga are all designed to build energy, flexibility and teach you to breath properly. The zone exercises found in my How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! are also based on Chi cultivating principles and can help you to achieve the same benefits. And if these forms of exercise don’t particularly excite you, you can move your body in other ways to gain these same benefits. In general, anything that moves and pumps your body – anything that creates rhythmic contracting and relaxing of your muscles while moving blood and lymphatic fluid through body – will be effective at gathering chi. You should also be able to perform these exercises after eating a full meal. This is because a true Chi cultivating exercise will activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which aids in digestion. So for example, a nice, casual walk after dinner could be a Chi gathering exercise, so long as you aren’t moving at a pace fast enough that you couldn’t comfortably digest your meal.
Conclusion
Pursuing your legacy can take a lot out of you, even when you love every second of the pursuit. But if you follow these five simple principles you’ll have the energy to follow your legacy wherever it leads you and the health to enjoy it while you’re on your journey.