2946: How To Create Personal Health Anchors For Your Best Health AND Short, Sweet, and Simple Daily Changes in Perspective by Bret Gornik and Jason Loebig of LiveBetterCo

[00:00:00] Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep.

[00:00:24] So, press play on Good Sleep Tonight because a good tomorrow starts with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Health Daily. How To Create Personal Health Anchors For Your Best Health AND Short, Sweet, and Simple Daily Changes in Perspective, both by Bret Gornik and Jason Loebig of LiveBetterCo.org.

[00:00:53] And I'm your host and narrator, Dr. Neal Malik. Hey there, happy middle of the week Wednesday and welcome back to Optimal Health Daily, where I read to you from popular health and fitness blogs to help you optimize your health. Now, today is Wednesday and like I do every Wednesday, I like to share a little bit of inspiration with you. And today's inspiration is actually perfect for the two topics we're going to discuss today. So, here we go. Quote,

[00:01:20] To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often. Winston Churchill Oh, and today I have two posts for you. I normally read two posts when each of them is a bit on the shorter side. After all, I want to make sure that you get the amount of content you expect from this show every day. So, with that, let's get to today's two posts and start optimizing your life.

[00:01:45] How to create personal health anchors for your best health by Brett Gornick and Jason Loebig of LiveBetterCo.org. Let's first start with an assumption. Good health is subjective to every single person on the planet. What feels good to me might feel horrible to you. For example, I like running, you may hate it. What tastes good to me might not taste good to you.

[00:02:15] We have vital biomarkers that allow the Western health system to make sure our heart is beating properly. But wellness goes far beyond our vitals. And there are many ways to improve them that might be different for each person. The health landscape and most of its participants try to force you into a category. These include certain types of movers, eaters, thinkers, and doers.

[00:02:39] They commoditize health to sell you goods or services leading with the newest hack, fad, or trend. It makes you feel like you need a to-do list or self-care routine of a hundred items just to keep up. The truth of the matter is that you need to find your health baselines or anchors that feel the best for you.

[00:03:00] This includes what you do for movement, what you eat, what you think about, like how you manage stress, mental, and emotional health, and how you go about living your life. You don't need to complete a marathon, do CrossFit, eat paleo, meditate 45 minutes each day, do 20 face peels, drink celery juice, and sleep 9 hours to live a healthy life. Here's a quick example for Jason, who wrote me this email.

[00:03:26] As soon as I can no longer run multiple six-minute miles, my running conditioning feels out of shape. My left knee hurts. I'm running too much. If I can't complete 20 straight pull-ups, my strength is falling behind. If my right elbow feels cranky, I'm doing too much grip work. If I feel sluggish by 12 p.m., I didn't sleep enough the night prior, prompting me to take a nap if possible. If I get a migraine, I'm too stressed overall.

[00:03:54] If I don't get time to read a book at least three days a week, I packed my schedule too tightly. In these quick examples, you can tell some of these anchors are day-to-day checkpoints, and some are broad. Obviously, you can't change some of these overnight. They are simply performance benchmarks that allow us to compare how we feel to our ideal state. So, what are your anchors? They might include being able to hike your favorite trail without knee pain.

[00:04:21] Maybe it's setting aside 30 minutes to enjoy your lunch sitting down at a table with your food on the plate. Maybe it's time to call your parents or friends, watch a sunset, attend your favorite class, lift a specific weight, weigh a specific amount, and so on. One helpful tip is to make sure these anchors allow you to perform a specific function, and make that function as objective as possible, like yes or no answers, so you can test in the future.

[00:04:49] When you veer too far off course, these anchors help you return home to your version of optimal health. You might need to course correct at transition periods in your life, like changing jobs, changing workout goals, changing schedules, and so on. An anchor is a state you know will bring you back to a feeling of well-being. Add up enough of them, and you've got the fuel for a best day ever.

[00:05:19] Short, Sweet, and Simple Daily Changes in Perspective by Brett Gornick and Jason Lobig of LiveBetterCo.org This blog post is also going to be short, sweet, and simple. Here are daily changes you can make to change your perspective on things to have the best day ever. 1. I don't have to work out today. I get to work out today. It is a blessing to move your body freely and explore the world.

[00:05:47] With this intention, I invite you to do a workout that brings you joy. 2. I don't have to eat healthy today. I get to eat healthy today. Stop making excuses and start developing better habits. In fact, Feeding America projected that 42 million people, about 1 in 8, including 13 million children, about 1 in 6, may experience food insecurity.

[00:06:13] We take for granted the fact that many don't even have access to healthy food. At the same time, we actively decide not to consume it. At the same time, Feeding America is an organization to give better too. We invite you to take action. Donate your time, money, or energy to help food insecurity in America. 3. The world is not out to get me. It's simply happening around me.

[00:06:40] It is our response to stressors that defines our behavior. This can be extremely challenging at times, but we can learn to react better each time, until our default response is positive and optimistic. 4. I don't have to help others today. I get to help others today. If you're suffering, go out and help someone else suffer less. Surely, they'll feel better and be grateful. You'll feel better, and the world will be better for it.

[00:07:11] These four simple perspective changes make up our pillars at Live Better. Move, Eat, Think, and Give. All together, they are simple, daily changes in your perspective that can help the way we move, eat, think, and give to make today the best day ever. You just listened to the posts titled, How to Create Personal Health Anchors for Your Best Health,

[00:07:41] and Short, Sweet, and Simple Daily Changes in Perspective, both by Brett Gornick and Jason Lobig of livebetterco.org, and I'll be right back with my commentary. When we started this podcast, it felt like diving into the deep end. Each day brought new challenges, and we were drowning in decisions. Finding the right tools became our lifeline. For millions of entrepreneurs, that essential tool is Shopify. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide

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[00:09:37] I want to talk more about the author's second post. Short, sweet, and simple daily changes in perspective. The perspective change they suggested that said, I don't have to help others today, I get to help others today, reminded me of a personal story. There was a day when I was feeling a bit down. I couldn't figure out why, but I was just not feeling hopeful about much of anything. I was trying to do something about it,

[00:10:03] and racking my brain thinking about the suggestions I share with you on this show all the time. Like, maybe I should go for a walk. Well, I'd already worked out really hard that day and was exhausted, so that's out. What about taking some deep breaths? I tried it, but didn't seem to get me out of my bad mood. What if I did something constructive, like read another chapter out of the book I was in the middle of reading, or keep listening to the audible book I had started? Nah, wasn't in the mood to do that. Then it hit me.

[00:10:33] I forgot one of the most effective actions I could take to improve my mood. Try and bring joy to someone else. So I picked up my phone and messaged an uncle that was recovering from surgery. I hadn't checked in on him in a while. My uncle, luckily, responded right away. He gave me an update on his recovery. Luckily, it was going really well. And we ended up spending the rest of our time catching up on other things, like how his favorite baseball and football teams were doing.

[00:11:00] He's in Texas and I'm in California, so you can only imagine the friendly rivalries we have. And we talked about the next time we were going to see each other in person. It brought me joy and got me out of my funk. More importantly, though, it seemed to bring him joy, knowing that I was thinking about him and cared about how he was doing. So just as today's authors, Brett and Jason said, simple perspective changes truly do make our lives better.

[00:11:28] All right, that'll do it for another edition of Optimal Health Daily. Thank you so much for listening and sharing this show with someone. That really goes a long way to keep all of this going. I hope you have a great rest of your day. And of course, I'll see you back here tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.