The Difference Between Healthy and Unhealthy Individuals:

It doesn’t matter what you are trying to become better at, if you only do the work when you’re motivated, then you’ll never be consistent enough to reach the quality of life you desire.

The ability to follow your prescribed treatment plan, stick to the schedule, and do the prescribed home therapies — especially when you don’t feel like it — is so valuable that it is literally all you need to become better 99% of the time.

I’ve seen this in my own experiences…as well as observing it in my practice.

When I don’t miss workouts, I get in the best shape of my life.  When I travel and take my camera out every day, I take better photos.  When I prepare my own meals my G.I. tract is so happy.

It’s simple and powerful. But why is it so difficult?

The Pain of obtaining quality of life:

Approaching your goals — whatever they are — with the attitude of a quality of life isn’t easy. In fact, being a healthy is painful.

The simple fact of the matter is that most of the time we are inconsistent. We have goals that we would like to achieve and dreams that we would like to fulfill, but we only work towards them occasionally; when we feel inspired or motivated or when life allows us to do so. It’s just easier that way.

I can guarantee that if you set a schedule for any task and start sticking to it, there will be days when you feel like quitting. When you start a business, there will be days when you don’t feel like showing up. When you’re at the gym, there will be sets that you don’t feel like finishing. When it’s time to prepare food for the week there will be time restraints and distractions.  But stepping up when it’s annoying or painful or draining to do so, that’s what improves quality of life.

Quality of life requires sticking to a schedule.  Unhealthy individuals let life get in the way. Healthy individuals know what is important to them and work towards it with purpose, Unhealthy individuals get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.

You’ll Never Regret Starting a treatment plan.

Some people might think I’m promoting the benefits of being a workaholic. “Professionals work harder than everyone else and that’s why they’re great.” Actually, that’s not it at all.

Quality of life is about having the discipline to commit to what is important to you instead of merely saying your health is important to you. It’s about starting when you feel like stopping, not because you want to train more, but because your goal is important enough to you that you don’t simply go through the motions when it’s convenient.  Quality of like is about making your priorities a reality.

There have been a lot of sets that I haven’t felt like finishing, but I’ve never regretted doing the workout. There have been a lot of unhealthy food choices I have declined when I haven’t felt like cooking, but I’ve never regretted eating healthy. There have been a lot of days I’ve felt like relaxing, but I’ve never regretted waking up and working on the different facets of a healthy life that are important to me.

Becoming a healthy doesn’t mean you sacrifice all things. It means that you’re going to be proactive and put forth effort to reach the quality of life you desire— especially when you don’t feel like it — instead of playing the role of the victim and letting poor health happen to you.

How to Become a Healthy

Obtaining and maintaining quality of life like a pro isn’t easy, but it’s also not as complicated or difficult as you might think. There are three steps.

1. Decide what you want improve.

Purpose is everything. If you know what you want, then getting it is much easier.  Hopefully your purpose in seeking treatment with me is to improve your condition.  This sounds simple, but in my experience even people who are smart, creative, and talented rarely know exactly what they are working for and why.

2. Set a schedule for your actions.

Once you have identified what is required of you to heal , set a schedule for actually doing it.

Note: Don’t make this mistake, which is setting a schedule based on results. Don’t map out how much weight you want to lose each week or how miles you want to run this week.   To “lose 5 pounds” is not an action you can perform. “Do three sets of squats” is an action you can perform.  Or it might require you to modify your training or activities to promote the best environment to heal.  I often prescribe decreasing the intensity, duration, frequency by 50 % until your condition has improved to a Stage I.

You want to set a schedule based on actions you can do, not results that you want.

3. Stick to your schedule for one week.

Stop thinking about how hard it will be to follow a schedule for a month or a year. Just follow it for this week. For the next 7 days, don’t let distractions get in the way.

Setting a schedule doesn’t heal your condition, following it does. Don’t be a runner.  Be running.  Don’t be a lifter, be lifting.  For one week, do the things you want to do without letting life get in the way. If life gets in the way then next week start again.

To your BEST health,

drshawnie

www.drshawnie.com

918.249.1535

Does exercise keep your brain healthy? Yes it does!

How do you stimulate your lymphatics to purge?  What about old fashioned 'get movin' to purge your lymphatics?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/politics/brain-drain-missing-link-discovered-in-the-brain/2015/08/17/03df9332-44ef-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html

Success and your mindset, "FAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT"

“Fake It Until You Make It”
There is a bidirectional connection between your mindset and your success.
For example:  If you're wanting to be healthier then ask yourself what would a healthy person order from a menu? Then choose to order it!

BE AN INFORMED PATIENT PRE-TREATMENT

As a patient it is your responsibility and right to know your diagnosis, treatment options/alternatives, risks and that you get to make the decisions.

There are seven basic elements of informed consent.

·         The patient knows that they have a role in the decision.

·         Discussion of the issue and decision at hand.

·         Discussion of the alternatives.

·         Discussion of the pros and cons of the alternatives.

·         Discussion of the uncertainties.

·         An assessment of the patient's understanding.

·         Exploration of patient preference.

Elements of the discussion affected patient choice. If patients knew they had a role in the decision, they were fivefold more likely to avoid intervention. Simply exploring alternatives led to a 10-fold greater chance patients would choose no intervention. And if uncertainty was mentioned, patients were 20 times more likely to choose medical therapy without diagnostics. The presence or absence of symptoms did not affect the decision. Overall, better-informed patients were less likely to choose invasive procedures.

The research team noted the power of the physician. When the physician recommended intervention (49 of 59 cases), 90% of patients followed the recommendation. When the physician recommended no intervention (six of 59), all patients chose not to have it, and in four cases where the physician made no specific recommendation, all patients chose no intervention.

drshawnie.com

918.249.1535

Watch T Cells Hunt Down And Kill Cancer Cells | IFLScience

Watch T Cells Hunt Down And Kill Cancer Cells | IFLScience

Goals vs Systems

Goals vs. Systems

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives — getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.  And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently.  I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business.  What I’m starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things.  It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

What’s The Difference Between Goals and Systems?

      If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice.  

      If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each

      week.

If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month 

      If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales

      and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:  If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results?     I think you would.

Let’s talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals.

1. Goals reduce your current happiness.

When you’re working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.”  The problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.”

SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. Can you imagine if I had made it my goal to write two books this year? Just writing that sentence stresses me out.  But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.  When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.

2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s not always true.  Consider someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?  This can create a type of “yo-yo effect” where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results.

I was training at the gym last week and I was doing my second-to-last set of clean and jerks. When I hit that rep, I felt a small twinge in my leg. It wasn’t painful or an injury, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout. For a minute or two, I thought about doing my final set. Then, I reminded myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a day.

In a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don’t reach it, then you feel like a failure.

But with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it’s about sticking to the process and not missing workouts.

Of course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will lift bigger weights in the long-run. And that’s why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the end, process always wins.

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You can’t predict the future. (I know, shocking.)  But every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

SOLUTION: Build feedback loops.

Feedback loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments.  A signal that gives you feedback would be the scales if losing weight is important, or keeping a running log of your mileage.

Fall In Love With Systems

None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.  Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win for longevity. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

Systems require developing a habit of doing something and plausibly becomes easier to do as a result.

drshawnie.com

918.249.1535

www.drshawnie.com

Shawn Achor on happiness as a competitive advantage

Stress perceived as a positive challenge can be beneficial to your health and decrease your symptoms.