November 21, 2023 • 36 mins
For the first 18 years of your life, your parents were responsible for ensuring that you had adequate food, clothes and shelter. Once you reach adulthood, it’s you, not your parents, who hold this responsibility. But unless we’ve been show how to perform acts of self-care, and why we need to, they often elude us....
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
They're literally treating themselves
worse than a dog. The mind and the
body are one thing. So, even the attitude
that you bring to healing will change how
fast you heal. We suffer. We have deprived
lives
and that to me is what makes it
a need. Life persists and they adapt. There
is such a thing I I would argue
as aging gracefully such that you can be
(00:21):
the welcome to how to be an adult,
a show made for people just like you
who've inadvertently become adults
and don't know what to do about it.
I'm Luke Chao. And my name is Pascal
Langdell. And this is the trail guide to
adult life that you never got when you
reached the age of majority.
We publicized these ideas, we put them out
there in order to democratize
(00:43):
a key component,
which is self assurance. Today's episode is gonna
be about how to care for your physical
body,
which once you became an adult, you gained
stewardship of. We will talk less about tips
and tricks, which you get from other podcasts,
and more about some of the philosophical principles
that lead to self care being normal. To
(01:06):
kick off with then, so, why bother?
I'm gonna make an assumption Mhmm. That our
listeners
value
any form of life that is under their
care. So if I were to gift
my listeners a house plant,
they're not gonna just toss it in the
trash. At least if they do, they're gonna
(01:27):
feel pang of guilt. They're maybe they're not
gonna eat it,
but they'll probably at least make an effort
to make sure it gets enough water, to
make sure it's in a sunny spot
just because it's alive. I I would hazard
to guess that most of our listeners, if
they found a broken winged bird on their
windowsill,
that they're going to make some effort to
(01:48):
take care of that bird. Mhmm. Because once
once life comes under your guardianship,
I would suggest it's a normal human tendency
to want to take care of of that
life. So I want to answer the question
Yeah. Which is that it's consistent with most
people's values
Mhmm. To fulfill their duty of self care.
(02:09):
And you can see that sometimes it's clear
clear that people don't necessarily
fulfill that value, but they're not for themselves,
but they can do that for other people
or even for their own pets.
So you can look after a dog. You
can feed it. You can water it. You
can take it to its vet when it's
sick. But,
I know that statistically a lot of men
don't take themselves to the doctor for example,
quite as readily as they would take their
(02:30):
their pet to the vet. They're literally treating
themselves
worse than a dog. Yeah.
And, you know, we treat our dogs fairly
well. But I would suggest that if we
are the the ones loved the most by
our pet animals,
we also deserve that high level of care,
of diligence,
and of of conscious
(02:51):
effort to preserve our lives and our health
and the quality of of our lives. There's
also a fundamental obstacle, I suppose,
which would be that humans
developed
to basically take things easy. Or that's the
the goal is to take things easy. Because
before we, sat at computers
and led a relatively
(03:12):
sedentary life,
our life itself was filled with exercise, was
filled with
effort and a penalty for not actually being
fit. Whereas now we spend most of our
day sedentary. And it's almost like we we're
paying for our ease of life
by the fact that we have to therefore
make an effort to exercise. And that's actually
a relatively unnatural thing to do
(03:33):
from a sort of evolutionary perspective. So much
of what we do as hypnotherapists
is to help people be better adapted to
the actual environment that they're in.
And it had been an adaptation in the
past
to,
I guess, imagine threats in the unknown.
And these days, civilization is well padded enough
(03:54):
that
most places we choose to sleep, we don't
have to sleep with one eye open.
It's well padded enough that most of us
don't have to fear
starving.
So it's kind of become such that it's
adaptive to tolerate
hunger, and it's maladaptive
to eat whatever food is in front of
you even if 10 or of 20000 years
(04:15):
ago, even a few 100 years ago,
even today in some parts of the world,
the the this had not been the case.
Just as a hamster needs a wheel Mhmm.
To create
a little bit more of its natural condition
of being able to run freely in a
field. Just like the dog needs to be
walked a few times a day so that
they're not sedentary on the couch, just like
(04:37):
literally every other animal on the planet,
we human beings need to create these
natural or something simulating natural conditions
Yeah. For
us to be happy and for us to
fulfill our duty of self care. Now I
don't use the word duty lightly,
but because I would be negligent
if I forced the dog to just stay
(04:59):
within the confines of of an apartment or
a house.
And I believe, I feel that it's negligent
if I act like my body could be
abused or neglected without consequences.
And, again, I use these terms intentionally. Mhmm.
I think it's abuse and neglect.
If a person being the steward of their
aliveness
(05:20):
then treats themselves
as though they're not even alive, Like they're
a plastic plant, not the living plant, or
a stuffed animal, not a real animal. You
also repeated a few times the word need.
So you've argued before and I agree
that
exercise perhaps is a need on the Maslow's
hierarchy of needs,
(05:41):
but I can say that
partly because I believe that it's a
psychophysical
or it's a it's a fundamental need for
the human organism to exercise.
And if you don't, then your body which
is an equal partner with your mind starts
to let you know.
Your body is always trying to heal, it's
always trying to,
(06:02):
to maintain homeostasis
and a lack of exercise
will result in eventually in ill health.
And so your your body has its own
wisdom if you like. If you injure yourself,
you can start to really pull against and
protect the area that you've injured. This is
a largely a mental protection of something. But
(06:22):
it can get so bad that you end
up having referred injuries elsewhere because you're protecting
this area.
But the the body is capable of moving
still with some injury, but around it if
you're attentive to what the body is trying
to let you know. So if I have
a shoulder injury,
the answer is not to not move it
(06:43):
ever possibly, unless instructed by a doctor. But
it may be to move it just enough
within what's possible according to listening to what
my body can tolerate and is asking me
to do. That's why I say the body
has a certain amount of wisdom about it
because it's not necessarily the case that your
brain or your exercises you know, if I
do if I do exercise in a certain
(07:04):
shape, well, I've just been told to do
it. That's my brain making that particular shape.
But the body can go into an infinite
number of positions and shapes and forms.
And a lot of people restrict
their idea of what their body can do,
restrict their idea of what
wisdom might lie in their body's messaging.
(07:25):
But I but I would say that possibly
for many people the
status quo is that again the mind is
separate from the body, that when the body
goes wrong then it must be fixed almost
by a third party. You go to a
physiotherapist
and that the mind is somehow separate.
And yet the mind and the body are
one thing. So you're even the attitude that
you bring to healing will change how fast
(07:47):
you heal.
As I had alluded to,
so many of us treat our bodies like
it's a thing as opposed to a living
being. So like a plastic plant, not like
a real living house plant.
And there's there are tremendous differences between how
we treat a thing versus how we treat
life.
And life has a long list of needs
(08:08):
that must be met.
Now we don't have to kind of micromanage
ourselves and our healing
when we are already creating the right conditions
for healing. So healing is gonna take whatever
timeline it's
gonna take. And you can't
speed up that timeline, like, 5 times or
10 times, but you can create the right
(08:30):
conditions for the wound to heal. Mhmm. Let's
say that you go through some kind of
emotional wound, some kind of loss or heartbreak.
There's going to be a grieving period.
It's gonna last on a certain timeline,
but there are also some some thoughts you
could think to reassure yourself and soothe yourself
as as you go through that timeline.
(08:50):
Just as we'd create the right conditions for
the living plant to thrive in,
and and then we, you know, can give
ourselves credit for doing our part without trying
to rush the growth of that plant. Just
like we can create the right conditions
for for for for the child or for
the cat or for the dog to be
happy and healthy in. And then if they
(09:11):
have anxiety anyway, we can't blame ourselves too
too much. We also kind of had to
treat ourselves
in the same way where we we have
to recognize we have the same long list
of needs that life has, and additionally, the
same long list of needs that human beings
have. And additionally,
being adults,
we are the
highest authority in ourselves such that we have
(09:33):
to fulfill this list of needs. When we
recognize
all of this,
fulfilling our duty of self care obligates us
to make sure that every need, including
physical needs like exercise, physical needs for sleep
is fulfilled.
And also then for us to feel negligent
(09:53):
if we are not sleeping well enough, if
we're not eating well enough, if we're eating
too much as though, like, we've overwatered the
plant.
That also, I would suggest, is appropriate given
that your your life is under your stewardship.
Yeah. And I I think that the idea
that perhaps the fundamentals,
you know, of, you know, water, light, and
(10:14):
soil,
You could say there is a fundamental
level of self care which
which is absolutely right as a living being
to give yourself.
But that doesn't mean that there's not differences
between plants. There's differences between the peculiarities
of what might be necessary. One plant,
might need more light, one might need less,
or you say you might overwater, for example.
(10:35):
And the actual perfect combination of how you
look after that plant may be slightly different
between one plant and another, just like every
human has different needs. You might be more
bitumency, you may have an intolerance for something.
This is these are the details. But the
fundamental remains. And I I think that so
many people focus on their individuality
and so little on the commonalities they have
(10:56):
with their fellow human beings that they make
excuses for not exercising. They they make excuses
for not sleeping well enough or not caring
for themselves well enough. It's because they think,
oh, well, I'm different. And one thing you
keep hearing me argue
is the the the universalism
of us human beings such that there are
so many commonalities when you're looking at them.
We all do need to sleep. We all
(11:17):
do need to exercise or else we suffer
because of it. Just as every dog, regardless
of the breed, needs to sleep well and
exercise well
enough, even if some dogs need to exercise
more, they still all need to be walked.
Yeah. So one principle that I think applies
universally,
whether you're taking care of a child or
take taking care of yourself,
(11:39):
is that quality as opposed to quantity
of the thing that fulfills the need
should be the rule.
Quality of sleep
matters more than quantity of sleep.
Quality of life on the, you know, 70,
80, 90 year timeline of a human being.
I would suggest quality of life matters more
than just quantity of life And, you know,
(12:00):
living past a 100 but being miserable during
it might not be a worthy trade off.
But when you also talk about quality rather
than quantity, you could you can even take
it down
to the exercise. You could for instance say,
well okay, I have to exercise. I'm just
gonna run a marathon. Well maybe you can't
do that. Maybe if you do set yourself
that task, the quality of your training or
(12:21):
your approach to it is not gonna be
great.
Whereas
maybe doing 15 minutes a day before, you
know, that you get a better quality of
workout and that's
better than failing at a bigger idea of,
you know, the the the the quantity of
exercise you need.
Often we feel that
exercise
(12:42):
is a nice to have when you can
get around to it or that choosing quality
foods
is
when you're able to afford the time or
or the expense.
And, you know, getting enough sleep sleep, getting
high quality of sleep, or just getting rest
in general,
these are nice to haves. I would make
the argument that these count among the needs,
(13:04):
and you might or might not find them
on Maslow's hierarchy,
but still,
without
good enough sleep,
without
enough activity,
without quality food, without self love and self
respect, which we've talked about in prior episodes,
we suffer. We have deprived lives,
and that to me is what makes it
a need. When we do fulfill
(13:26):
these essentials, our lives are always happier and
healthier.
One distinction
between being among life on planet Earth
versus being like a plastic plant or being
like a stuffed animal
is that when you're alive
you don't quite
break, at least not until the very end
(13:46):
of your life.
Throughout a lifetime,
we might become injured. We'll usually be injured
regularly if we're adventurous enough.
And we'll be ill, at least if we're
social enough and adventurous enough,
but then we heal from the illness or
the injury. And this healing is predictable.
(14:07):
So a lot of my clients who have
health anxiety, for example, the, the, they're kind
of anxious about the possibility of, of getting
sick. They're anxious about the possibility of,
perhaps being injured in a way that's irrecoverable.
But at the same time, they've healed from
cuts and flus and colds and burns and
(14:27):
heartbreak and and and loss even in a
large way, sometimes from trauma.
And this is characteristic of being among living
beings.
And that the human being who's been through
so much over their lives, as long as
they're alive, they're gonna have it tomorrow.
And in this tomorrow, they'll be a little
bit more healed up from past injuries. And
(14:48):
this is, again, predictable on the timeline of
a human life. When people treat themselves like
it's possible to be broken
or even irreparable,
they're incorrectly classifying them themselves among, like, the
plastic plants or the stuffed animals as opposed
to trees and tigers and wolves.
(15:09):
A couple of thoughts.
One is that you could
argue that even maladaptive behaviors are an effort
for the organism to heal
in some ways. Trying to fulfill a need
at least. And it's actually providing something
which
may not be the right,
medicine. It may not be even the right
information.
(15:29):
Or it may be something that was suitable
in a previous situation but is no longer
accurate to the present day. And so in
many ways, how we look at the process
of healing needs to be constantly updated. The
the tips, tricks, the things that worked in
the past maybe for a short period of
time or maybe they never worked,
need to be updated. And this and if
(15:50):
if you are constantly
in a position of self caring and self
loving, then then this will be naturally updated.
But if you if you think that your
behavior just shows that you're broken, then that's
it.
Then you're you're not giving yourself credit for
being so you,
you mentioned a tree, for example. Trees are
extraordinary in that if they have
(16:11):
a virus or bacteria or a parasite that
gets in underneath the bark, the tree can
actually
surround that particular infected piece with hardened wood.
And so with that's what what that's what
happens when you when you cut a tree
and you can see this sort of section
which is not the same as the other,
is that it protects itself to such a
degree that it just sort of separates it
entirely and keeps on growing. Throughout nature there
(16:34):
are
examples of incredible adaptations and healing which is
why I always say that life always persists.
You drive down a highway and you'll see
in the cracks, you'll see
plants that are striving to live and striving
to flower. And this just seems to be
an incredible power. Among human beings, we can
think of people who've lost their sense of
sight. Mhmm. And they're still able to navigate
(16:54):
down the street with a cane.
And some people who've lost their sight even
develop
a capacity to echolocate.
And we can think of people who have
lost use of their legs, and yet they're
able to function in the world. They're able
to, you know, have friends and laugh and
contribute.
I've said that healing
is predictable.
I would say that one way or another,
(17:16):
if if you allow this of yourself,
adaptation is inevitable.
It's true there are some injuries that we
don't heal from. So let's say I'm, you
know, confined to a wheelchair because of a
spinal injury. Trees don't decide where they grow.
No. Right? So they may have
fundamental challenges. The fact that their roots can't
go deep enough or they're they're more exposed
to one thing or another, but life persists
(17:39):
and they adapt. Adaptation's inevitable. Mhmm. So going
back into this of the mind body connection,
it has been
shown that stress does not work well with
healing.
Right? Stress doesn't really work well with almost
anything,
to do particularly to do with health.
And so
when you're sick
(18:00):
or injured, one one way of of reacting
is, oh, I hate my body for being
frail. I hate my body for succumbing to
this sickness. I'm so frustrated. I'm so annoyed
that I'm sick because I can't do x
y and z.
And then you say, who who on earth
would talk to you like that? I mean,
if your friend turned around and said, oh,
you're sick.
Oh, that's so annoying.
(18:21):
Now you can't do the thing we said
that we planned. How do you know? You
wouldn't treat a friend like that. So instead
what works better and has shown to allow
yourself to heal quicker and faster
and actually just generally be happier while you're,
you know, while you're injured or sick is
to actually be more forgiving, compassionate to yourself.
(18:42):
Even sending
loving thoughts to yourself. Imagine that the that
that there's so many cells in your body
and every part of your body is doing
its best to heal, doing its best to
recover from this virus. That even that sense
of forgiving aliveness or having a feeling of
of love sent to those areas that need
that need it
(19:02):
actually helps expedite and speed healing. Because and
and it it completely takes away the idea
that stress should be part of that. Often,
when I think we're angry at ourselves or
we're stressed with ourselves, we treat ourselves like
a cell phone that's not functional. Or maybe
a robot we've purchased to perform a function
and which is no longer performing that function.
We objectify ourselves. I don't mean sexually objectify.
(19:23):
I mean, we objectify ourselves in the sense
that we neglect our aliveness and we incorrectly
categorize ourselves
among like tools or objects.
This is so, so common
in in
in the mindsets and the worldviews that I
find among my clients that I'm comfortable saying
to all of our listeners that in some
ways, you probably are treating yourself as less
(19:44):
than
a dog, less than your favorite cat or
tree, and that if you even just begin
by treating yourself as well as and loving
yourself as much as a dog, a cat,
or a tree, that's a really good starting
point for how you might talk to yourself
in your own head so that you are
giving yourself compassion when ill and not giving
(20:05):
yourself too much grief when ill.
So
what you need to do in order to
care for yourself properly will change over time.
Just like as your your dog ages,
you might need to add some kind of
food to help with bone density or teeth
or something. Right? So so it naturally changes.
And I've heard this before that when people
(20:26):
look in the mirror and they've reached a
certain age, they're shocked at the old face
that is staring back at them. Right?
And the human fact of it is that
we're gonna die. We're gonna become
less fit over time. Now the degree I
still think is, you know, quite how unfit
you're gonna be is you still have a
certain amount control over that. But one way
(20:47):
or another,
life is gonna kill you.
And in the in the best case scenario,
we don't die young and leave a beautiful
corpse. In the best case scenario,
we die when we're very old and our
corpse has wrinkles on it. Oh, and we
die very old having lived a good life
and been as fit as possible, enjoyed what
(21:07):
we had rather than hanker after what was
impossible or regretted or
resented what we don't have. I mean that's,
you know, that going going back again to
the the, you know, I can't stand that
I'm sick. It's quite easy to look in
the mirror and say, you know, I can't
stand I'm getting wrinkles or that I'm getting
gray hair. And you can resent it. But
then
there's 2 things. 1 is the stoic idea
(21:28):
of memento mori, which is saying, well, you're
gonna die, so enjoy the now as much
as possible. But there's also this question of
acquiescence as well. It's that this is the
way things are. This is what happens.
And if you can acquiesce
to it, if you can accept that this
is the natural process of things and that
this is the natural progression of a body
(21:49):
through time,
then you can instead of railing against it,
you can
accept it and within those terms do what
you can to self love, self care,
and and not not rage
at at time. But there is such a
thing as aging gracefully.
Mhmm. Because a middle aged man acting like
he's 25
(22:09):
is, you know,
not that admirable or respectable. I I think
a little bit of youthfulness as you as
you get older. Well, when I say, like,
25, I mean, like, we're in the backwards
ball cap and like dating 21 year olds
and
that that that kind of thing.
There is such a thing, I I would
argue, as aging grace fully such that you
can be the very best 40 year old
(22:30):
you can be and the best 50 year
old you can be, and you don't have
to be a 50 year old acting like
you're 20
5. I mean, obviously, there are qualities that
are timeless that youth have and that are
worth keeping for the rest of our lives.
And it's quite possible that you might be
swayed to believe that somehow your
age is making you less relevant or that
your age is less attractive because, of course,
(22:50):
what sells and what we're shown through most
media
is an ideal that is perpetually young,
is perpetually fit. You know, these are the
things that sell. These are the images that
we culturally we feed ourselves is that and
that the hero this is the other thing,
that the hero is
a naturally
fit, you know, y shaped
(23:11):
strong person, you know. And that is the
physical manifestation of a psychological truth about a
hero. But
that doesn't mean that a 40 year old
can't be a hero, just not in necessarily
a, you know, Disney hero body. It doesn't
mean that an 80 year old can't be
a hero in the same way,
but just not in a 20 year old
body. I've seen some some some men and
(23:32):
women who are in their forties and fifties
and they look fantastic.
Fantastic. I don't wanna say for their age
because they just straight up look fantastic.
It takes a lot of hard work Yeah.
To to kind of, you know, be in
that kind of shape, but
still I wouldn't place it outside the realm
of possibility
to to kind of imagine that, you know,
(23:52):
if if you care enough to put that
much effort into it, to to to to
look fantastic in your forties, fifties, and and
even beyond. And that that I think is
part of aging gracefully. It's not to give
up on yourself. Yeah. And you don't need
a 6 pack to,
you know, really like what you have to
see in the mirror and have a partner
who really likes what they they see as
(24:12):
well.
When people get married, right, they know that
in the best case scenario,
they're watching their partner grow old and get
flabby and develop wrinkles and gain gray hair
in the best case scenario, but they do
it anyway.
It's not like people just, you know,
have the stars in their eyes and illusions
(24:33):
that their partner is gonna be youthful in
their forties and fifties and sixties.
They they know it but they value something
other than, you know, that superficial
youth and appearance.
No. I'd go even further and say that
actually facing
aging
well
with these values of self care and self
(24:54):
love enable you also to create and work
on those aspects which are,
not based on
youthful physical attractiveness.
But in some ways youthful attractiveness you can
get away with, you know,
certain things. Whereas when you're older, you're not
going to do that. And
in some ways it gives you the momentum,
(25:14):
if you like, to work on aspects of
your character that you haven't really needed to
up until that point. Whenever I onboard a
client
who wants help to to quit smoking, to
lose weight, to quit drinking alcohol,
to exercise more, one of the points
that I feel like I have to make
universally
is that you need no motivation to do
(25:35):
this thing
other than that
you are human life that's under your care.
So it's not to look good for your
partner. It's not to
appear
not bloated in front of a camera. The
reason to care for yourself is the same
reason you'd care for a dog or a
cat or a child or a friend or
an aging partner or parent.
(25:57):
It's that you're a life that's under your
care. The only way to treat yourself is
by fulfilling that duty of self care
and then treating yourself according to the rules
for for how we have to treat life,
which means we recognize that it's got needs
and we we fulfill the needs of life.
And your list of needs
is just as long as the list of
(26:17):
needs for a child
or an aging family member because you're fully
human
too.
So it's it's one thing to know that
your mindset can affect your healing, but that
doesn't necessarily mean that you should askew
outsourcing
care to other people. Right? Well, you you
should definitely involve professionals
in in your care.
(26:39):
And having involved professionals in your health care,
you
actually don't have to do their jobs for
them.
It is true that medical errors happen. It
is true that even the professionals can make
mistakes. I'm not saying to blindly trust them
if in your gut you feel that they've
misunderstood your situation.
(27:00):
What I'm saying is that if a doctor's
looked at the issue and they say that
you're gonna be fine,
and it's only your anxious thoughts that think
otherwise, then maybe the anxious thoughts would do
well to kind of remember what the doctor
has said.
And then you're kind of outsourcing
diagnosis.
(27:20):
You're outsourcing
treatment to the professionals who are licensed to
diagnose and treat, and you're not kind of
trying to do that yourself in your own
head. What you can do instead then is
what you can't outsource, in other words,
to
pursue happiness, to pursue
health.
(27:40):
So
the healthcare professionals,
they're paid and quite well to think about
illness all day long.
I mean, without that level of compensation, why
would someone think about disease and illness all
day long? Well, you can also you can
also point out that doctors are trained
to intervene when things are wrong. So there
there's not a lot
in a in a doctor's training to do
(28:02):
with prevention. And to some degree, you could
say, well, the prevention, but it's actually on
us.
And when you see a doctor, it's because
they're actually trained to look for what's wrong.
They're actually they're there is that at that
point. Exactly. So if you have information that
there is nothing, you know, evidently wrong and
that indeed your body's going to heal from
whatever temporary pain or ache you're experiencing,
(28:24):
then redirecting your focus on how to live
a happy life, how to live a healthy
life, how to pursue
your vision of what a quality life looks
like. This is something that's completely your responsibility,
and that cannot be outsourced.
So while you can outsource diagnosis and treatment,
and health care professionals get paid well to
think about illness,
(28:44):
it is for you to think about
what you're gonna do with your health, what
you're gonna do with your life, what you're
going to do with your capacity
to be out enjoying the sunshine
or or to read a good book or
to to listen to to a good song.
That's definitely completely within your power
to manifest,
and I would say it's part of your
(29:05):
obligation to yourself, your duty of self care
to live a happy healthy life. Even doctors
will tell you just before you you leave
the swag, you know, get more sleep, drink
more water, eat healthy, and do some exercise.
And and there's no pill for that, you
know.
That's on you. That's, you know. And most
doctors will also lament that that's the best
bit advice that is most often ignored.
(29:27):
It's creating the conditions for life to thrive.
If you've got a plant and it's not
been watered well enough or it's been overwatered,
it'll be out of order to medicate the
plant.
Somehow we as human beings, because medicines might
be available, you know, we we neglect the
basic needs, and then we try to take
medication even though our bodies are not lacking
(29:48):
in that medication. It's lacking in something else.
When it comes to planning for for our
futures, right,
a lot of us kind of, you know,
wanna live in the moment. A lot of
us kind of think we're not gonna live
past 30.
And then we live past 30 and then
we're like, uh-oh. We've had too much alcohol.
We've not taken care of our financial futures.
We've, you know, forgotten to live like an
adult.
(30:09):
So I would suggest to everyone
that it's best practice
to expect that probably
you'll live into
your early eighties.
When you know you're gonna probably, on a
balance of probabilities, be around
when you're that old, you're gonna be treating
yourself differently.
If you live as though you're not gonna
(30:30):
see tomorrow, then sure, drink all you'd like.
Use all the drugs. Well, if you think
about why do you clean your teeth? I
mean, cleaning your teeth is an ongoing thing
to make them last as long as possible
basically.
On the other hand, you can also say
well life is kind of a balance between
the two because you also have to live
in the moment and
not anticipate
(30:50):
an unknown future.
But it's
also
worthwhile to behave as if that was going
to be your future? I would argue that
the the the 2 can reconcile. The the
the 2
viewpoints can reconcile
Because when you are old,
at some point you're going to realize that
your time is going to be up soon
(31:11):
and you're not going to be able to
have adventures any longer.
In that situation, it's easier to face the
inevitable
knowing that when you were younger, you took
chances.
When you were younger, you went on your
adventures. When you're younger, you did stuff so
that, you know, when you're bedridden at the
age of 90,
you're like thinking,
(31:32):
I have had a good life.
See, it's not a tragedy
if an old man or an old woman
dies
having lived a rich life and they have
few regrets
on their deathbed. That the tragedy is to
reach the age of 80
anyway
and then you've got no more time Mhmm.
To live in the moment. To take chances.
To get stuff done. Which is the flip
(31:54):
side of the coin because you say well,
you know, tragedy is to die at 30
having planned to live to 80 and not
done all those things that you could have
done because it may have jeopardized an unknown
future. So there's always that
balance. Well, I think we're talking about different
examples because I you might be talking about
like riding a motorcycle without a helmet.
I I I'm talking about writing that
(32:16):
book. Going on that trip. So daily exercise.
Right? So the way I see it is
that for instance daily exercise
delivers a present and immediate benefit and an
intermediate benefit as well. It will,
it will make you feel good, it will
give you more energy,
it will
improve your mental
health. And on top of that, it will
also improve the likely ongoing health into old
(32:39):
age. So it's a win win.
Right? There's plenty of things in life where
actually
preparing
to reach 80 years plus
requires activities that are also beneficial
right now. That there's actually, in many cases,
there isn't a contradiction. When there is a
contradiction,
you know, it is like riding a motorcycle
without a helmet. Mhmm. That's where the contradiction
(33:00):
arises.
So from this discussion on how to look
after yourself physically, I think that we can
safely say that there's an awful lot in
your control.
And that what you have in your control
may vary between one person and another.
But that if you treat yourself with
the bare requirements that you would treat any
(33:20):
other life, a a plant or a pet
or even a friend,
And if you
use that as the basis for your,
your physical,
health,
then you are both preparing yourself for a
long life, which is highly likely,
but at the same time making the most
(33:40):
of the now and the now and the
now.
I sound like a broken record every time
I talk about self love and and that
being tied in with self care. Say it
again.
Well, I'll make the point I'll make the
point like this
If you know how to care for the
child
but you don't love them at all it
doesn't matter how much you know because your
(34:01):
knowledge is not gonna translate
into action.
You have to both know what to do
and love that form of life
to then have your knowledge translate into action.
And I think this is why so many
people that they know what they should and
shouldn't eat. They know they should work out
3 times or 5 times a week. They
they know exactly how to care for themselves,
(34:22):
but the missing piece of the puzzle
is
self loving.
When that missing piece of the puzzle is
filled in,
then
you can't watch yourself suffer under neglect.
And there's there's a desire. You might even
say the motivation
to care for yourself and it's gonna be
an intrinsic
(34:44):
motivation.
So if there's one thing I wanna leave
our listeners with, it's that you are definitely
life.
And if you're an adult,
then you're human life that's under your care.
It's never a mistake to treat yourself accordingly.
The the mistakes come in if you treat
yourself as other than human life that's under
your care even if that's so normalized
(35:05):
in in our world.
So we hope to set a new normal
for you and have you take care of
yourselves.
Thanks for listening. That wraps up today's episode.
If you wanna hear more of what we
have to say 1 on 1, Pascal Pascal
and I are both available for hire through
the Morpheus Clinic For Hypnosis where we take
this kind of practical philosophy you've heard today
and make it into your thoughts
(35:28):
too. To connect with us, please contact the
Morpheus Clinic for hypnosis@morphisclinic.com
and ask for a free consultation.
And if you like these ideas and you
like these thoughts on where we're going with
this podcast, please subscribe
on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is that you
get your podcasts. And, of course, we're on
YouTube as well at Morpheus Hypnosis.
(35:51):
We look forward to, sharing with you some
of our thoughts on how to, approach and
deal with your career and your finances.
They're literally treating themselves
worse than a dog. The mind and the
body are one thing. So, even the attitude
that you bring to healing will change how
fast you heal. We suffer. We have deprived
lives
and that to me is what makes it
a need. Life persists and they adapt. There
is such a thing I I would argue
as aging gracefully such that you can be
(00:21):
the welcome to how to be an adult,
a show made for people just like you
who've inadvertently become adults
and don't know what to do about it.
I'm Luke Chao. And my name is Pascal
Langdell. And this is the trail guide to
adult life that you never got when you
reached the age of majority.
We publicized these ideas, we put them out
there in order to democratize
(00:43):
a key component,
which is self assurance. Today's episode is gonna
be about how to care for your physical
body,
which once you became an adult, you gained
stewardship of. We will talk less about tips
and tricks, which you get from other podcasts,
and more about some of the philosophical principles
that lead to self care being normal. To
(01:06):
kick off with then, so, why bother?
I'm gonna make an assumption Mhmm. That our
listeners
value
any form of life that is under their
care. So if I were to gift
my listeners a house plant,
they're not gonna just toss it in the
trash. At least if they do, they're gonna
(01:27):
feel pang of guilt. They're maybe they're not
gonna eat it,
but they'll probably at least make an effort
to make sure it gets enough water, to
make sure it's in a sunny spot
just because it's alive. I I would hazard
to guess that most of our listeners, if
they found a broken winged bird on their
windowsill,
that they're going to make some effort to
(01:48):
take care of that bird. Mhmm. Because once
once life comes under your guardianship,
I would suggest it's a normal human tendency
to want to take care of of that
life. So I want to answer the question
Yeah. Which is that it's consistent with most
people's values
Mhmm. To fulfill their duty of self care.
(02:09):
And you can see that sometimes it's clear
clear that people don't necessarily
fulfill that value, but they're not for themselves,
but they can do that for other people
or even for their own pets.
So you can look after a dog. You
can feed it. You can water it. You
can take it to its vet when it's
sick. But,
I know that statistically a lot of men
don't take themselves to the doctor for example,
quite as readily as they would take their
(02:30):
their pet to the vet. They're literally treating
themselves
worse than a dog. Yeah.
And, you know, we treat our dogs fairly
well. But I would suggest that if we
are the the ones loved the most by
our pet animals,
we also deserve that high level of care,
of diligence,
and of of conscious
(02:51):
effort to preserve our lives and our health
and the quality of of our lives. There's
also a fundamental obstacle, I suppose,
which would be that humans
developed
to basically take things easy. Or that's the
the goal is to take things easy. Because
before we, sat at computers
and led a relatively
(03:12):
sedentary life,
our life itself was filled with exercise, was
filled with
effort and a penalty for not actually being
fit. Whereas now we spend most of our
day sedentary. And it's almost like we we're
paying for our ease of life
by the fact that we have to therefore
make an effort to exercise. And that's actually
a relatively unnatural thing to do
(03:33):
from a sort of evolutionary perspective. So much
of what we do as hypnotherapists
is to help people be better adapted to
the actual environment that they're in.
And it had been an adaptation in the
past
to,
I guess, imagine threats in the unknown.
And these days, civilization is well padded enough
(03:54):
that
most places we choose to sleep, we don't
have to sleep with one eye open.
It's well padded enough that most of us
don't have to fear
starving.
So it's kind of become such that it's
adaptive to tolerate
hunger, and it's maladaptive
to eat whatever food is in front of
you even if 10 or of 20000 years
(04:15):
ago, even a few 100 years ago,
even today in some parts of the world,
the the this had not been the case.
Just as a hamster needs a wheel Mhmm.
To create
a little bit more of its natural condition
of being able to run freely in a
field. Just like the dog needs to be
walked a few times a day so that
they're not sedentary on the couch, just like
(04:37):
literally every other animal on the planet,
we human beings need to create these
natural or something simulating natural conditions
Yeah. For
us to be happy and for us to
fulfill our duty of self care. Now I
don't use the word duty lightly,
but because I would be negligent
if I forced the dog to just stay
(04:59):
within the confines of of an apartment or
a house.
And I believe, I feel that it's negligent
if I act like my body could be
abused or neglected without consequences.
And, again, I use these terms intentionally. Mhmm.
I think it's abuse and neglect.
If a person being the steward of their
aliveness
(05:20):
then treats themselves
as though they're not even alive, Like they're
a plastic plant, not the living plant, or
a stuffed animal, not a real animal. You
also repeated a few times the word need.
So you've argued before and I agree
that
exercise perhaps is a need on the Maslow's
hierarchy of needs,
(05:41):
but I can say that
partly because I believe that it's a
psychophysical
or it's a it's a fundamental need for
the human organism to exercise.
And if you don't, then your body which
is an equal partner with your mind starts
to let you know.
Your body is always trying to heal, it's
always trying to,
(06:02):
to maintain homeostasis
and a lack of exercise
will result in eventually in ill health.
And so your your body has its own
wisdom if you like. If you injure yourself,
you can start to really pull against and
protect the area that you've injured. This is
a largely a mental protection of something. But
(06:22):
it can get so bad that you end
up having referred injuries elsewhere because you're protecting
this area.
But the the body is capable of moving
still with some injury, but around it if
you're attentive to what the body is trying
to let you know. So if I have
a shoulder injury,
the answer is not to not move it
(06:43):
ever possibly, unless instructed by a doctor. But
it may be to move it just enough
within what's possible according to listening to what
my body can tolerate and is asking me
to do. That's why I say the body
has a certain amount of wisdom about it
because it's not necessarily the case that your
brain or your exercises you know, if I
do if I do exercise in a certain
(07:04):
shape, well, I've just been told to do
it. That's my brain making that particular shape.
But the body can go into an infinite
number of positions and shapes and forms.
And a lot of people restrict
their idea of what their body can do,
restrict their idea of what
wisdom might lie in their body's messaging.
(07:25):
But I but I would say that possibly
for many people the
status quo is that again the mind is
separate from the body, that when the body
goes wrong then it must be fixed almost
by a third party. You go to a
physiotherapist
and that the mind is somehow separate.
And yet the mind and the body are
one thing. So you're even the attitude that
you bring to healing will change how fast
(07:47):
you heal.
As I had alluded to,
so many of us treat our bodies like
it's a thing as opposed to a living
being. So like a plastic plant, not like
a real living house plant.
And there's there are tremendous differences between how
we treat a thing versus how we treat
life.
And life has a long list of needs
(08:08):
that must be met.
Now we don't have to kind of micromanage
ourselves and our healing
when we are already creating the right conditions
for healing. So healing is gonna take whatever
timeline it's
gonna take. And you can't
speed up that timeline, like, 5 times or
10 times, but you can create the right
(08:30):
conditions for the wound to heal. Mhmm. Let's
say that you go through some kind of
emotional wound, some kind of loss or heartbreak.
There's going to be a grieving period.
It's gonna last on a certain timeline,
but there are also some some thoughts you
could think to reassure yourself and soothe yourself
as as you go through that timeline.
(08:50):
Just as we'd create the right conditions for
the living plant to thrive in,
and and then we, you know, can give
ourselves credit for doing our part without trying
to rush the growth of that plant. Just
like we can create the right conditions
for for for for the child or for
the cat or for the dog to be
happy and healthy in. And then if they
(09:11):
have anxiety anyway, we can't blame ourselves too
too much. We also kind of had to
treat ourselves
in the same way where we we have
to recognize we have the same long list
of needs that life has, and additionally, the
same long list of needs that human beings
have. And additionally,
being adults,
we are the
highest authority in ourselves such that we have
(09:33):
to fulfill this list of needs. When we
recognize
all of this,
fulfilling our duty of self care obligates us
to make sure that every need, including
physical needs like exercise, physical needs for sleep
is fulfilled.
And also then for us to feel negligent
(09:53):
if we are not sleeping well enough, if
we're not eating well enough, if we're eating
too much as though, like, we've overwatered the
plant.
That also, I would suggest, is appropriate given
that your your life is under your stewardship.
Yeah. And I I think that the idea
that perhaps the fundamentals,
you know, of, you know, water, light, and
(10:14):
soil,
You could say there is a fundamental
level of self care which
which is absolutely right as a living being
to give yourself.
But that doesn't mean that there's not differences
between plants. There's differences between the peculiarities
of what might be necessary. One plant,
might need more light, one might need less,
or you say you might overwater, for example.
(10:35):
And the actual perfect combination of how you
look after that plant may be slightly different
between one plant and another, just like every
human has different needs. You might be more
bitumency, you may have an intolerance for something.
This is these are the details. But the
fundamental remains. And I I think that so
many people focus on their individuality
and so little on the commonalities they have
(10:56):
with their fellow human beings that they make
excuses for not exercising. They they make excuses
for not sleeping well enough or not caring
for themselves well enough. It's because they think,
oh, well, I'm different. And one thing you
keep hearing me argue
is the the the universalism
of us human beings such that there are
so many commonalities when you're looking at them.
We all do need to sleep. We all
(11:17):
do need to exercise or else we suffer
because of it. Just as every dog, regardless
of the breed, needs to sleep well and
exercise well
enough, even if some dogs need to exercise
more, they still all need to be walked.
Yeah. So one principle that I think applies
universally,
whether you're taking care of a child or
take taking care of yourself,
(11:39):
is that quality as opposed to quantity
of the thing that fulfills the need
should be the rule.
Quality of sleep
matters more than quantity of sleep.
Quality of life on the, you know, 70,
80, 90 year timeline of a human being.
I would suggest quality of life matters more
than just quantity of life And, you know,
(12:00):
living past a 100 but being miserable during
it might not be a worthy trade off.
But when you also talk about quality rather
than quantity, you could you can even take
it down
to the exercise. You could for instance say,
well okay, I have to exercise. I'm just
gonna run a marathon. Well maybe you can't
do that. Maybe if you do set yourself
that task, the quality of your training or
(12:21):
your approach to it is not gonna be
great.
Whereas
maybe doing 15 minutes a day before, you
know, that you get a better quality of
workout and that's
better than failing at a bigger idea of,
you know, the the the the quantity of
exercise you need.
Often we feel that
exercise
(12:42):
is a nice to have when you can
get around to it or that choosing quality
foods
is
when you're able to afford the time or
or the expense.
And, you know, getting enough sleep sleep, getting
high quality of sleep, or just getting rest
in general,
these are nice to haves. I would make
the argument that these count among the needs,
(13:04):
and you might or might not find them
on Maslow's hierarchy,
but still,
without
good enough sleep,
without
enough activity,
without quality food, without self love and self
respect, which we've talked about in prior episodes,
we suffer. We have deprived lives,
and that to me is what makes it
a need. When we do fulfill
(13:26):
these essentials, our lives are always happier and
healthier.
One distinction
between being among life on planet Earth
versus being like a plastic plant or being
like a stuffed animal
is that when you're alive
you don't quite
break, at least not until the very end
(13:46):
of your life.
Throughout a lifetime,
we might become injured. We'll usually be injured
regularly if we're adventurous enough.
And we'll be ill, at least if we're
social enough and adventurous enough,
but then we heal from the illness or
the injury. And this healing is predictable.
(14:07):
So a lot of my clients who have
health anxiety, for example, the, the, they're kind
of anxious about the possibility of, of getting
sick. They're anxious about the possibility of,
perhaps being injured in a way that's irrecoverable.
But at the same time, they've healed from
cuts and flus and colds and burns and
(14:27):
heartbreak and and and loss even in a
large way, sometimes from trauma.
And this is characteristic of being among living
beings.
And that the human being who's been through
so much over their lives, as long as
they're alive, they're gonna have it tomorrow.
And in this tomorrow, they'll be a little
bit more healed up from past injuries. And
(14:48):
this is, again, predictable on the timeline of
a human life. When people treat themselves like
it's possible to be broken
or even irreparable,
they're incorrectly classifying them themselves among, like, the
plastic plants or the stuffed animals as opposed
to trees and tigers and wolves.
(15:09):
A couple of thoughts.
One is that you could
argue that even maladaptive behaviors are an effort
for the organism to heal
in some ways. Trying to fulfill a need
at least. And it's actually providing something
which
may not be the right,
medicine. It may not be even the right
information.
(15:29):
Or it may be something that was suitable
in a previous situation but is no longer
accurate to the present day. And so in
many ways, how we look at the process
of healing needs to be constantly updated. The
the tips, tricks, the things that worked in
the past maybe for a short period of
time or maybe they never worked,
need to be updated. And this and if
(15:50):
if you are constantly
in a position of self caring and self
loving, then then this will be naturally updated.
But if you if you think that your
behavior just shows that you're broken, then that's
it.
Then you're you're not giving yourself credit for
being so you,
you mentioned a tree, for example. Trees are
extraordinary in that if they have
(16:11):
a virus or bacteria or a parasite that
gets in underneath the bark, the tree can
actually
surround that particular infected piece with hardened wood.
And so with that's what what that's what
happens when you when you cut a tree
and you can see this sort of section
which is not the same as the other,
is that it protects itself to such a
degree that it just sort of separates it
entirely and keeps on growing. Throughout nature there
(16:34):
are
examples of incredible adaptations and healing which is
why I always say that life always persists.
You drive down a highway and you'll see
in the cracks, you'll see
plants that are striving to live and striving
to flower. And this just seems to be
an incredible power. Among human beings, we can
think of people who've lost their sense of
sight. Mhmm. And they're still able to navigate
(16:54):
down the street with a cane.
And some people who've lost their sight even
develop
a capacity to echolocate.
And we can think of people who have
lost use of their legs, and yet they're
able to function in the world. They're able
to, you know, have friends and laugh and
contribute.
I've said that healing
is predictable.
I would say that one way or another,
(17:16):
if if you allow this of yourself,
adaptation is inevitable.
It's true there are some injuries that we
don't heal from. So let's say I'm, you
know, confined to a wheelchair because of a
spinal injury. Trees don't decide where they grow.
No. Right? So they may have
fundamental challenges. The fact that their roots can't
go deep enough or they're they're more exposed
to one thing or another, but life persists
(17:39):
and they adapt. Adaptation's inevitable. Mhmm. So going
back into this of the mind body connection,
it has been
shown that stress does not work well with
healing.
Right? Stress doesn't really work well with almost
anything,
to do particularly to do with health.
And so
when you're sick
(18:00):
or injured, one one way of of reacting
is, oh, I hate my body for being
frail. I hate my body for succumbing to
this sickness. I'm so frustrated. I'm so annoyed
that I'm sick because I can't do x
y and z.
And then you say, who who on earth
would talk to you like that? I mean,
if your friend turned around and said, oh,
you're sick.
Oh, that's so annoying.
(18:21):
Now you can't do the thing we said
that we planned. How do you know? You
wouldn't treat a friend like that. So instead
what works better and has shown to allow
yourself to heal quicker and faster
and actually just generally be happier while you're,
you know, while you're injured or sick is
to actually be more forgiving, compassionate to yourself.
(18:42):
Even sending
loving thoughts to yourself. Imagine that the that
that there's so many cells in your body
and every part of your body is doing
its best to heal, doing its best to
recover from this virus. That even that sense
of forgiving aliveness or having a feeling of
of love sent to those areas that need
that need it
(19:02):
actually helps expedite and speed healing. Because and
and it it completely takes away the idea
that stress should be part of that. Often,
when I think we're angry at ourselves or
we're stressed with ourselves, we treat ourselves like
a cell phone that's not functional. Or maybe
a robot we've purchased to perform a function
and which is no longer performing that function.
We objectify ourselves. I don't mean sexually objectify.
(19:23):
I mean, we objectify ourselves in the sense
that we neglect our aliveness and we incorrectly
categorize ourselves
among like tools or objects.
This is so, so common
in in
in the mindsets and the worldviews that I
find among my clients that I'm comfortable saying
to all of our listeners that in some
ways, you probably are treating yourself as less
(19:44):
than
a dog, less than your favorite cat or
tree, and that if you even just begin
by treating yourself as well as and loving
yourself as much as a dog, a cat,
or a tree, that's a really good starting
point for how you might talk to yourself
in your own head so that you are
giving yourself compassion when ill and not giving
(20:05):
yourself too much grief when ill.
So
what you need to do in order to
care for yourself properly will change over time.
Just like as your your dog ages,
you might need to add some kind of
food to help with bone density or teeth
or something. Right? So so it naturally changes.
And I've heard this before that when people
(20:26):
look in the mirror and they've reached a
certain age, they're shocked at the old face
that is staring back at them. Right?
And the human fact of it is that
we're gonna die. We're gonna become
less fit over time. Now the degree I
still think is, you know, quite how unfit
you're gonna be is you still have a
certain amount control over that. But one way
(20:47):
or another,
life is gonna kill you.
And in the in the best case scenario,
we don't die young and leave a beautiful
corpse. In the best case scenario,
we die when we're very old and our
corpse has wrinkles on it. Oh, and we
die very old having lived a good life
and been as fit as possible, enjoyed what
(21:07):
we had rather than hanker after what was
impossible or regretted or
resented what we don't have. I mean that's,
you know, that going going back again to
the the, you know, I can't stand that
I'm sick. It's quite easy to look in
the mirror and say, you know, I can't
stand I'm getting wrinkles or that I'm getting
gray hair. And you can resent it. But
then
there's 2 things. 1 is the stoic idea
(21:28):
of memento mori, which is saying, well, you're
gonna die, so enjoy the now as much
as possible. But there's also this question of
acquiescence as well. It's that this is the
way things are. This is what happens.
And if you can acquiesce
to it, if you can accept that this
is the natural process of things and that
this is the natural progression of a body
(21:49):
through time,
then you can instead of railing against it,
you can
accept it and within those terms do what
you can to self love, self care,
and and not not rage
at at time. But there is such a
thing as aging gracefully.
Mhmm. Because a middle aged man acting like
he's 25
(22:09):
is, you know,
not that admirable or respectable. I I think
a little bit of youthfulness as you as
you get older. Well, when I say, like,
25, I mean, like, we're in the backwards
ball cap and like dating 21 year olds
and
that that that kind of thing.
There is such a thing, I I would
argue, as aging grace fully such that you
can be the very best 40 year old
(22:30):
you can be and the best 50 year
old you can be, and you don't have
to be a 50 year old acting like
you're 20
5. I mean, obviously, there are qualities that
are timeless that youth have and that are
worth keeping for the rest of our lives.
And it's quite possible that you might be
swayed to believe that somehow your
age is making you less relevant or that
your age is less attractive because, of course,
(22:50):
what sells and what we're shown through most
media
is an ideal that is perpetually young,
is perpetually fit. You know, these are the
things that sell. These are the images that
we culturally we feed ourselves is that and
that the hero this is the other thing,
that the hero is
a naturally
fit, you know, y shaped
(23:11):
strong person, you know. And that is the
physical manifestation of a psychological truth about a
hero. But
that doesn't mean that a 40 year old
can't be a hero, just not in necessarily
a, you know, Disney hero body. It doesn't
mean that an 80 year old can't be
a hero in the same way,
but just not in a 20 year old
body. I've seen some some some men and
(23:32):
women who are in their forties and fifties
and they look fantastic.
Fantastic. I don't wanna say for their age
because they just straight up look fantastic.
It takes a lot of hard work Yeah.
To to kind of, you know, be in
that kind of shape, but
still I wouldn't place it outside the realm
of possibility
to to kind of imagine that, you know,
(23:52):
if if you care enough to put that
much effort into it, to to to to
look fantastic in your forties, fifties, and and
even beyond. And that that I think is
part of aging gracefully. It's not to give
up on yourself. Yeah. And you don't need
a 6 pack to,
you know, really like what you have to
see in the mirror and have a partner
who really likes what they they see as
(24:12):
well.
When people get married, right, they know that
in the best case scenario,
they're watching their partner grow old and get
flabby and develop wrinkles and gain gray hair
in the best case scenario, but they do
it anyway.
It's not like people just, you know,
have the stars in their eyes and illusions
(24:33):
that their partner is gonna be youthful in
their forties and fifties and sixties.
They they know it but they value something
other than, you know, that superficial
youth and appearance.
No. I'd go even further and say that
actually facing
aging
well
with these values of self care and self
(24:54):
love enable you also to create and work
on those aspects which are,
not based on
youthful physical attractiveness.
But in some ways youthful attractiveness you can
get away with, you know,
certain things. Whereas when you're older, you're not
going to do that. And
in some ways it gives you the momentum,
(25:14):
if you like, to work on aspects of
your character that you haven't really needed to
up until that point. Whenever I onboard a
client
who wants help to to quit smoking, to
lose weight, to quit drinking alcohol,
to exercise more, one of the points
that I feel like I have to make
universally
is that you need no motivation to do
(25:35):
this thing
other than that
you are human life that's under your care.
So it's not to look good for your
partner. It's not to
appear
not bloated in front of a camera. The
reason to care for yourself is the same
reason you'd care for a dog or a
cat or a child or a friend or
an aging partner or parent.
(25:57):
It's that you're a life that's under your
care. The only way to treat yourself is
by fulfilling that duty of self care
and then treating yourself according to the rules
for for how we have to treat life,
which means we recognize that it's got needs
and we we fulfill the needs of life.
And your list of needs
is just as long as the list of
(26:17):
needs for a child
or an aging family member because you're fully
human
too.
So it's it's one thing to know that
your mindset can affect your healing, but that
doesn't necessarily mean that you should askew
outsourcing
care to other people. Right? Well, you you
should definitely involve professionals
in in your care.
(26:39):
And having involved professionals in your health care,
you
actually don't have to do their jobs for
them.
It is true that medical errors happen. It
is true that even the professionals can make
mistakes. I'm not saying to blindly trust them
if in your gut you feel that they've
misunderstood your situation.
(27:00):
What I'm saying is that if a doctor's
looked at the issue and they say that
you're gonna be fine,
and it's only your anxious thoughts that think
otherwise, then maybe the anxious thoughts would do
well to kind of remember what the doctor
has said.
And then you're kind of outsourcing
diagnosis.
(27:20):
You're outsourcing
treatment to the professionals who are licensed to
diagnose and treat, and you're not kind of
trying to do that yourself in your own
head. What you can do instead then is
what you can't outsource, in other words,
to
pursue happiness, to pursue
health.
(27:40):
So
the healthcare professionals,
they're paid and quite well to think about
illness all day long.
I mean, without that level of compensation, why
would someone think about disease and illness all
day long? Well, you can also you can
also point out that doctors are trained
to intervene when things are wrong. So there
there's not a lot
in a in a doctor's training to do
(28:02):
with prevention. And to some degree, you could
say, well, the prevention, but it's actually on
us.
And when you see a doctor, it's because
they're actually trained to look for what's wrong.
They're actually they're there is that at that
point. Exactly. So if you have information that
there is nothing, you know, evidently wrong and
that indeed your body's going to heal from
whatever temporary pain or ache you're experiencing,
(28:24):
then redirecting your focus on how to live
a happy life, how to live a healthy
life, how to pursue
your vision of what a quality life looks
like. This is something that's completely your responsibility,
and that cannot be outsourced.
So while you can outsource diagnosis and treatment,
and health care professionals get paid well to
think about illness,
(28:44):
it is for you to think about
what you're gonna do with your health, what
you're gonna do with your life, what you're
going to do with your capacity
to be out enjoying the sunshine
or or to read a good book or
to to listen to to a good song.
That's definitely completely within your power
to manifest,
and I would say it's part of your
(29:05):
obligation to yourself, your duty of self care
to live a happy healthy life. Even doctors
will tell you just before you you leave
the swag, you know, get more sleep, drink
more water, eat healthy, and do some exercise.
And and there's no pill for that, you
know.
That's on you. That's, you know. And most
doctors will also lament that that's the best
bit advice that is most often ignored.
(29:27):
It's creating the conditions for life to thrive.
If you've got a plant and it's not
been watered well enough or it's been overwatered,
it'll be out of order to medicate the
plant.
Somehow we as human beings, because medicines might
be available, you know, we we neglect the
basic needs, and then we try to take
medication even though our bodies are not lacking
(29:48):
in that medication. It's lacking in something else.
When it comes to planning for for our
futures, right,
a lot of us kind of, you know,
wanna live in the moment. A lot of
us kind of think we're not gonna live
past 30.
And then we live past 30 and then
we're like, uh-oh. We've had too much alcohol.
We've not taken care of our financial futures.
We've, you know, forgotten to live like an
adult.
(30:09):
So I would suggest to everyone
that it's best practice
to expect that probably
you'll live into
your early eighties.
When you know you're gonna probably, on a
balance of probabilities, be around
when you're that old, you're gonna be treating
yourself differently.
If you live as though you're not gonna
(30:30):
see tomorrow, then sure, drink all you'd like.
Use all the drugs. Well, if you think
about why do you clean your teeth? I
mean, cleaning your teeth is an ongoing thing
to make them last as long as possible
basically.
On the other hand, you can also say
well life is kind of a balance between
the two because you also have to live
in the moment and
not anticipate
(30:50):
an unknown future.
But it's
also
worthwhile to behave as if that was going
to be your future? I would argue that
the the the 2 can reconcile. The the
the 2
viewpoints can reconcile
Because when you are old,
at some point you're going to realize that
your time is going to be up soon
(31:11):
and you're not going to be able to
have adventures any longer.
In that situation, it's easier to face the
inevitable
knowing that when you were younger, you took
chances.
When you were younger, you went on your
adventures. When you're younger, you did stuff so
that, you know, when you're bedridden at the
age of 90,
you're like thinking,
(31:32):
I have had a good life.
See, it's not a tragedy
if an old man or an old woman
dies
having lived a rich life and they have
few regrets
on their deathbed. That the tragedy is to
reach the age of 80
anyway
and then you've got no more time Mhmm.
To live in the moment. To take chances.
To get stuff done. Which is the flip
(31:54):
side of the coin because you say well,
you know, tragedy is to die at 30
having planned to live to 80 and not
done all those things that you could have
done because it may have jeopardized an unknown
future. So there's always that
balance. Well, I think we're talking about different
examples because I you might be talking about
like riding a motorcycle without a helmet.
I I I'm talking about writing that
(32:16):
book. Going on that trip. So daily exercise.
Right? So the way I see it is
that for instance daily exercise
delivers a present and immediate benefit and an
intermediate benefit as well. It will,
it will make you feel good, it will
give you more energy,
it will
improve your mental
health. And on top of that, it will
also improve the likely ongoing health into old
(32:39):
age. So it's a win win.
Right? There's plenty of things in life where
actually
preparing
to reach 80 years plus
requires activities that are also beneficial
right now. That there's actually, in many cases,
there isn't a contradiction. When there is a
contradiction,
you know, it is like riding a motorcycle
without a helmet. Mhmm. That's where the contradiction
(33:00):
arises.
So from this discussion on how to look
after yourself physically, I think that we can
safely say that there's an awful lot in
your control.
And that what you have in your control
may vary between one person and another.
But that if you treat yourself with
the bare requirements that you would treat any
(33:20):
other life, a a plant or a pet
or even a friend,
And if you
use that as the basis for your,
your physical,
health,
then you are both preparing yourself for a
long life, which is highly likely,
but at the same time making the most
(33:40):
of the now and the now and the
now.
I sound like a broken record every time
I talk about self love and and that
being tied in with self care. Say it
again.
Well, I'll make the point I'll make the
point like this
If you know how to care for the
child
but you don't love them at all it
doesn't matter how much you know because your
(34:01):
knowledge is not gonna translate
into action.
You have to both know what to do
and love that form of life
to then have your knowledge translate into action.
And I think this is why so many
people that they know what they should and
shouldn't eat. They know they should work out
3 times or 5 times a week. They
they know exactly how to care for themselves,
(34:22):
but the missing piece of the puzzle
is
self loving.
When that missing piece of the puzzle is
filled in,
then
you can't watch yourself suffer under neglect.
And there's there's a desire. You might even
say the motivation
to care for yourself and it's gonna be
an intrinsic
(34:44):
motivation.
So if there's one thing I wanna leave
our listeners with, it's that you are definitely
life.
And if you're an adult,
then you're human life that's under your care.
It's never a mistake to treat yourself accordingly.
The the mistakes come in if you treat
yourself as other than human life that's under
your care even if that's so normalized
(35:05):
in in our world.
So we hope to set a new normal
for you and have you take care of
yourselves.
Thanks for listening. That wraps up today's episode.
If you wanna hear more of what we
have to say 1 on 1, Pascal Pascal
and I are both available for hire through
the Morpheus Clinic For Hypnosis where we take
this kind of practical philosophy you've heard today
and make it into your thoughts
(35:28):
too. To connect with us, please contact the
Morpheus Clinic for hypnosis@morphisclinic.com
and ask for a free consultation.
And if you like these ideas and you
like these thoughts on where we're going with
this podcast, please subscribe
on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is that you
get your podcasts. And, of course, we're on
YouTube as well at Morpheus Hypnosis.
(35:51):
We look forward to, sharing with you some
of our thoughts on how to, approach and
deal with your career and your finances.
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