April 23, 2025 • 18 mins
What was your last really good day? What made it a good day? What if that were your new normal? We all have set points for what makes for average days, health, emotions, connections, productivity, etc. What if we made our prior best our new baseline? When you at your best becomes your new average, your potential rises, but it doesn’t feel like an endless treadmill of max effort. It’s just your new normal. Want to change your baseline?
Connect with me: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com & www.healthcouragecollective.com
Are you ready to give your cells their best chance to not have to stop living before they die by allowing them access to physiologic levels of hormones, but aren't sure how to even get started? Join the waitlist for my new beta program here and help me figure out how best to help wonderful women like you get the hormone care they deserve!
Come visit me: www.healthcouragecollective.com
email me: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com
Connect with me: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com & www.healthcouragecollective.com
Are you ready to give your cells their best chance to not have to stop living before they die by allowing them access to physiologic levels of hormones, but aren't sure how to even get started? Join the waitlist for my new beta program here and help me figure out how best to help wonderful women like you get the hormone care they deserve!
Come visit me: www.healthcouragecollective.com
email me: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What was your last really good day? What made it
a good day? What if that were your new normal?
We all have set points for what makes for average days,
average health, emotions, connections, productivity, et cetera. But what if
we made our prior best our new baseline. When you
(00:21):
at your best becomes your new average, your potential rises,
but it doesn't feel like an endless treadmill of Max's effort.
It's just the new normal. Do you want to change
your baseline? You're listening to The Health Courage Collective Podcast,
Episode one and ninety nine, Resetting your set Point. Originally
published September twenty first, twenty twenty two. Welcome to the
(00:46):
Health Courage Collective Podcast, the show for women who are
too busy to slog through hours of generalized and applicable
and often contradictory health information, but too smart to ignore
that a few minutes of focused attention now can prevent
years of separate in the future. I'm your host, Christina Hackett,
a pharmacist who doesn't want you to live on prescriptions,
a certified coach specifically trained to maximize your potential, and
(01:10):
a compulsive learner obsessed with preventative, cutting edge holistic and
integrated medicine. I'm on a mission to increase your physical
and mental resilience so you can fearlessly look forward to
your next forty plus limitless years. Your time is down,
Let's go. Hello, my friend, and welcome to this week's episode.
(01:30):
I'm so happy to be with you today, and I
hope everything is beyond fabulous in your life, or that
at least you're learning some important lessons. If it's not,
how are you feeling about your future chances of getting Alzheimer's, cancer,
and chronic pain. I hope you feel like you have
a good idea of how you can reduce your chances
of getting those and what you need to fall in
(01:52):
love with doing on a daily basis to enjoy the
process of tipping the odds in your favor. Today, we're
going to talk about your set point. This is hugely
important as we think about using our precious time and
energy to focus on the most impactful, highest leverage functions.
Your set point is about as high impact as it gets.
(02:14):
I'm sure you've heard of a set point before. It's
like a homing beacon. We're automatically programmed to come back
to it time and time again. A lot of people
talk about set point in terms of body weight, that
we have a set point that we'll keep returning to,
whether we gain or lose weight, we'll keep coming back
to it. But we can also have set points for happiness, productivity, love,
(02:37):
net worth, net income, life, drama, etc. Obviously it's not
a perfect theory or perfectly linear, but I think it's
worth spending a few minutes thinking about it today because
to the extent that it is running in the background,
if we can raise our set point, we can change
our entire life in that area. Pretty awesome. If you
(03:00):
remember back to episode fifty six, we talked about algorithms,
how algorithms run in the background on autopilot. The most
basic algorithm example we talked about was a thermostat. If
you set it to a certain temperature, you never have
to think about it again. If it gets colder than that,
the heat will come on. If it gets warmer than that,
the air conditioner will come on. That's a classic set point.
(03:23):
It's great if you want to stay seventy two degrees.
You've probably heard before that billionaires who lose all their
money tend to make it all back in a fairly
short period. Of time, and that similarly broke people who
win the lottery tend to spend it all and get
back to broke pretty quickly. They're returning to their set points.
There are similar set points for many other areas of
(03:46):
our life. I've read this quote to you before, back
in episode forty nine about sleep, but I think it
applies here too. This is from Matthew Walker in his
book Why We Sleep with Chronic Sleep Restriction. Over months
or years, an individual will actually acclimate to their impaired performance,
lower alertness, and reduced energy levels. That low level exhaustion
(04:09):
becomes their accepted norm or baseline. Individuals who fail to
recognize how their perennial state of sleep efficiency has come
to compromise their mental aptitude and physical vitality, including the
slow accumulation of ill health, a link between the former
and the latter is rarely made in their mind. Based
on epidemiological studies of average sleep time, millions of individuals
(04:34):
unwittingly spend years of their life in a suboptimal state
of psychological and physiological functioning, never maximizing their potential of
mind or body due to their blind persistence on sleeping
too little sixty years of scientific research prevent me from
accepting anyone who tells me that he or she can
(04:55):
get by on just four or five hours of sleep
a night, just fine. End quote. I love that quote
for the sleep importance, but more so for the idea
of baseline resetting. We can operate every hour of every
day thinking we're fine and not even understand that we've
acclimated to a lower level of performance than we're actually
(05:18):
capable of, and not just in a single area, like
I think we all get it that if we were
professional actors who get paid to look a certain way,
we could hire two personal chefs, three personal trainers, and
a makeup artist and make that happen. Have you heard
about what celebrities do to get ready for like a
red carpet event? Many thousands of dollars for the dress, obviously,
(05:39):
but thousands for a hairdresser for a single day, thousands
for a makeup artist for a single day, thousands for
a body makeup contourist, and often two pairs of spanks
on top of each other. Then we compare ourselves on
an average Wednesday to that. It's crazy, but I'm talking
(06:01):
about under our current circumstances, with the resources we already have.
We could be effortlessly operating from a different baseline than
we are now if we want to, not because we
need to to be worthy, but because it's pretty cool
to take the chance to up our game. Right, So
what's your current baseline? You're a listener of a podcast
(06:22):
about improving your physical and mental resilience for years to come,
so it's probably pretty good if you think about your
success on a scale of one to ten, or your happiness,
or your health, or your abilities to retire with energy
and strength. What would your number be on a scale
of one to ten. There's a quote I like from
(06:43):
a guy named Joe Manganello. He wrote a book called Evolution,
and he was also in Magic Mike. Not sure what
kind of qualification that bestows for inspirational quotes. Side note,
I've never seen Magic Mike, but I've always thought of
it as silly or stupid. But my opinion of Channing
Tatum went way up after I saw The Lost City
(07:04):
with Sandra Bullock. He's hilarious in that. Then we watched
Dog pretty soon after, and I was like, yeah, Okay,
I guess he's a real actor. I have no idea
if Joe Manganello is an okay actor, but anyway, he
said this truth. You think you're working out at an eight,
you're really working out at a two. I don't care
(07:26):
how long you've been training. That's just reality. If that
hurts your feelings, I'm sorry. It's time for you to
re establish your baseline in order to define intensity. End quote.
I love that, whether about your health or your fitness,
or your energy or commitment or ability to make a difference,
you think you're at an eight, but you're really at
(07:46):
a too. That's not deflating, it's exciting because it means
there's so much more that we can do. We go
from working on and worrying about what's holding us back
to working on and worrying about how far we can go.
We're not even close to our limits. We've got more
we can give, not in a masochistic way, but in
(08:08):
a joyful way. We start by realizing that we're actually
at a two, and then we figure out how we
know when we've gone from a to a two point
five and what we need to do to get there.
Then we continue to operate at a two point five.
That's our new baseline as we enjoy moving to a three. Hey,
(08:29):
I just wanted to quickly interrupt and say good for
you for being here listening to a podcast about improving
your biological age relative to your chronological age. Have you
ever thought about slowing the biological aging of your skin?
If you heard my episode fifty five about sinescent cells,
then you know that the accumulation of these undead cells
accelerates all of the problems of aging. Well, now there's
(08:51):
a topical supplement you can put on your skin that
reduces the accumulation of sinescent cells in your skin. This
reduces wrinkles, but also all other skin conditions caused by thinner, weaker,
drier skin. It also reduces the formation of age spots
and increases collagen and hyaluronic acid production within your skin.
It's a peptide called os one, and it's in a
(09:12):
product called one Skin. I use it every day on
my face and neck, and I've noticed a big difference.
I would say my skin is more moisturized, but that's
not a good enough description because it's not like when
you put moisturizer on, but your skin is still dry underneath.
It's the exact opposite. The topical supplement isn't greasy at all,
but my skin is plumper and healthier from the inside out.
(09:35):
I'm a big fan. If one skin sounds like something
you'd like to try, there's a link in the show
notes to get you twenty dollars off. All right, back
to the episode, there's a guy named Josh weight Skin.
He was a chess prodigy. The movie Searching for Bobby
Fisher is based on his childhood. He then became a
tai chi master as an adult, and he wrote a
(09:57):
book called The Art of Learning, which is great. He
talks about how what he loves more than dominating chess
or martial arts is the process of studying and training.
When he was learning tai chi, he would video his
sparring sessions and then watch them over and over for
moments when he performed better than average, he'd study it
(10:20):
in detail until he understood the difference, like that his
opponent was more vulnerable at the moment that he blinked.
That's pretty crazy, but it was his way of discovering
who he was at his best and then making his
prior best his new baseline. So who are you at
(10:40):
your best when in the past have you executed the
healthy behaviors you wanted to be consistent with. When have
you gotten great sleep? What led to that? When have
you eaten the most vegetables? What made that easy? When
has meal prepping been effortless? Is there a time when
your stress level was low? What was different then? When
(11:04):
have you truly loved your workout routine? Why? What circumstances
were different? What were your thoughts about those circumstances. What
can you learn from your best moments that would help
you get closer to making your best moments your new normal.
Getting curious about the nuances of what led to your
(11:25):
desirable outcomes can give you a lot of power to
figure out how to make those your everyday experiences. What
was your last really good day? What made it such
a good day? What gives you that sense of pride?
I like to mark a lot of things off my
to do list. That makes me happy feeling like I
(11:46):
didn't waste my time, which is just a thought, but
I enjoy feeling like I spent my few precious minutes
optimally well, like I planned ahead and I stayed on task.
I did something scary I can with another human being.
I made the world a little bit better even if
that was only improving my tiny environment. How about you
(12:09):
on a really good day? What did you eat, how
did you move? How did you sleep? How well did
you focus? What was your self talk like? How did
you connect with others? How can you make your prior
best day your new regular average Tuesday. It won't happen
(12:31):
this Tuesday, but you'll be amazed at how much you
can change after twenty or fifty tuesdays. It's so fun.
Slowly churning up the heat on your baseline is awesome,
But moving away from mediocrity can feel a little uncomfortable.
By definition, it's our comfort zone because we're comfy there,
(12:52):
But that doesn't mean that we can't slowly start to
play at the edges of our perceived safety, to go
an inch farther than our usual stopping point. If you
know who David Goggins is, he's crazy and amazing. He
says in his book Can't Hurt Me. In nineteen ninety nine,
when I weighed two hundred ninety seven pounds, my first
run was a quarter mile. Fast forward to two thousand
(13:15):
and seven, I ran two hundred and five miles in
thirty nine hours, non stop. I didn't get there overnight,
and I don't expect you to either. Your job is
to push past your normal stopping point end quote. That's
the pretty big difference in baseline abilities from being able
to run a quarter mile to being able to run
two hundred and five miles. But it all came from
(13:38):
pushing just a little bit past his normal stopping point.
William James said, most people never run far enough on
their first win to find out that they've got a second.
That's fun because the only way to know what's on
the other side of your current limit is to just
go a little bit past it and take a look around.
You might like it there. You might discover that your
(13:59):
past baseline was so far below your actual abilities that
it's laughable. One of the things that can help nudge
us out of our comfort zone is a good old problem.
Joe Manganiello, The Magic Guy, said, looking back at my life,
it was the obstacles, the shortcomings, and the failures that
forced me to fight harder, to reach inside and pull
(14:21):
something truly extraordinary out of myself that I didn't even
know existed. My failure was essential to my growth because
every time I failed, I learned that it was because
I did not fight as hard as humanly possible. Notice
that I didn't say fight my hardest. There are a
lot of people who try as hard as they can,
but their ceilings and limitations are perceived barriers that restrict
(14:44):
what they can achieve. We don't know what we can
really do until we push past the farthest point we've
ever been able to go where we've never gone before.
There is a place beyond the conscious perception of what
is achievable, and that is where we success occurs. After
years of failure, I learned that there was another gear
(15:04):
somewhere inside of me, and oftentimes it took failing to
find the upshift. I began to believe that if given
enough time and if I followed an intelligent and disciplined plan,
I could change so drastically that you wouldn't even recognize me.
I had learned to evolve. End quote. Pushing past our
perceived limits is a great way to find a new baseline,
(15:27):
and it doesn't have to be anything dramatic, but it
can be if that sounds fun to you. Another important
step in raising your baseline temperature is to block the
little double agent who keeps sneaking in and lowering the
thermostatus soon as you try to turn it up. Just
like we all have potentials that are literally unknowable, we
all have a few saboteurs loitering around that keep trying
(15:48):
to maintain our low baseline. They're scared of change. They've
been safe so far, and they don't want to have
to acclimate to a higher temperature. It makes sense, but
it also doesn't mean that we have to let them
sidetrack us. This reminds me of the mind flare or
controlling will buyers in Stranger Things. Do you remember he
likes to stay cool and Winna writer frees will by
(16:10):
turning up a bunch of space heaters. You can turn
up your space heater by one degree at a time
and it won't feel as scary as fighting a demic gorgan.
We all have a current baseline, and chances are that
we've acclimated to a suboptimal state of psychological and physiological functioning.
We think we're at an eight, but we're really at
(16:30):
it two. We think we're doing fine, but we're actually
being hindered and we don't even realize it. That's why
the little things we do really do matter our day
to day choices matter because it's completely possible to reset
our baseline little by little. Right now, we don't even
know what it would be like to live every day
from a higher baseline, where our highs are higher and
(16:53):
our lows are also higher. But can you at least
partially imagine what it would be like. The awesome thing
about working on resetting your set point is that it's
not just a one time victory. Those are fun, but
resetting your set point redefines what's normal, expected, and automatic,
and that changes your entire life. Eventually, your prior best
(17:18):
is your new baseline. That's what I want for you.
Thank you so much for listening today. Next week will
be episode two hundred. I can't believe it. Time flies.
We're going to be talking about the very basics of
where to start when coming up with your health span strategy.
What assets do you want to bring with you into
old age? Once you know that, figuring out what to
(17:40):
do on a daily basis right now gets way easier
until then, reset your internal thermostat and don't be normal.
Thank you so much for tuning into the Health Courage
Collective podcast. I am truly honored that you have paid
me the enormous compliment of your time and attention. I
would be so grateful if you would share this podcast
with someone you know and subscribe so you never miss
(18:02):
an episode. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
Statements and views on this podcast are not medical advice.
This podcast, including Christina Hackett and producers, disclaim responsibility for
any possible adverse events by use of information contained hereo.
If you think you have a medical problem, consult a
licensed Positions
What was your last really good day? What made it
a good day? What if that were your new normal?
We all have set points for what makes for average days,
average health, emotions, connections, productivity, et cetera. But what if
we made our prior best our new baseline. When you
(00:21):
at your best becomes your new average, your potential rises,
but it doesn't feel like an endless treadmill of Max's effort.
It's just the new normal. Do you want to change
your baseline? You're listening to The Health Courage Collective Podcast,
Episode one and ninety nine, Resetting your set Point. Originally
published September twenty first, twenty twenty two. Welcome to the
(00:46):
Health Courage Collective Podcast, the show for women who are
too busy to slog through hours of generalized and applicable
and often contradictory health information, but too smart to ignore
that a few minutes of focused attention now can prevent
years of separate in the future. I'm your host, Christina Hackett,
a pharmacist who doesn't want you to live on prescriptions,
a certified coach specifically trained to maximize your potential, and
(01:10):
a compulsive learner obsessed with preventative, cutting edge holistic and
integrated medicine. I'm on a mission to increase your physical
and mental resilience so you can fearlessly look forward to
your next forty plus limitless years. Your time is down,
Let's go. Hello, my friend, and welcome to this week's episode.
(01:30):
I'm so happy to be with you today, and I
hope everything is beyond fabulous in your life, or that
at least you're learning some important lessons. If it's not,
how are you feeling about your future chances of getting Alzheimer's, cancer,
and chronic pain. I hope you feel like you have
a good idea of how you can reduce your chances
of getting those and what you need to fall in
(01:52):
love with doing on a daily basis to enjoy the
process of tipping the odds in your favor. Today, we're
going to talk about your set point. This is hugely
important as we think about using our precious time and
energy to focus on the most impactful, highest leverage functions.
Your set point is about as high impact as it gets.
(02:14):
I'm sure you've heard of a set point before. It's
like a homing beacon. We're automatically programmed to come back
to it time and time again. A lot of people
talk about set point in terms of body weight, that
we have a set point that we'll keep returning to,
whether we gain or lose weight, we'll keep coming back
to it. But we can also have set points for happiness, productivity, love,
(02:37):
net worth, net income, life, drama, etc. Obviously it's not
a perfect theory or perfectly linear, but I think it's
worth spending a few minutes thinking about it today because
to the extent that it is running in the background,
if we can raise our set point, we can change
our entire life in that area. Pretty awesome. If you
(03:00):
remember back to episode fifty six, we talked about algorithms,
how algorithms run in the background on autopilot. The most
basic algorithm example we talked about was a thermostat. If
you set it to a certain temperature, you never have
to think about it again. If it gets colder than that,
the heat will come on. If it gets warmer than that,
the air conditioner will come on. That's a classic set point.
(03:23):
It's great if you want to stay seventy two degrees.
You've probably heard before that billionaires who lose all their
money tend to make it all back in a fairly
short period. Of time, and that similarly broke people who
win the lottery tend to spend it all and get
back to broke pretty quickly. They're returning to their set points.
There are similar set points for many other areas of
(03:46):
our life. I've read this quote to you before, back
in episode forty nine about sleep, but I think it
applies here too. This is from Matthew Walker in his
book Why We Sleep with Chronic Sleep Restriction. Over months
or years, an individual will actually acclimate to their impaired performance,
lower alertness, and reduced energy levels. That low level exhaustion
(04:09):
becomes their accepted norm or baseline. Individuals who fail to
recognize how their perennial state of sleep efficiency has come
to compromise their mental aptitude and physical vitality, including the
slow accumulation of ill health, a link between the former
and the latter is rarely made in their mind. Based
on epidemiological studies of average sleep time, millions of individuals
(04:34):
unwittingly spend years of their life in a suboptimal state
of psychological and physiological functioning, never maximizing their potential of
mind or body due to their blind persistence on sleeping
too little sixty years of scientific research prevent me from
accepting anyone who tells me that he or she can
(04:55):
get by on just four or five hours of sleep
a night, just fine. End quote. I love that quote
for the sleep importance, but more so for the idea
of baseline resetting. We can operate every hour of every
day thinking we're fine and not even understand that we've
acclimated to a lower level of performance than we're actually
(05:18):
capable of, and not just in a single area, like
I think we all get it that if we were
professional actors who get paid to look a certain way,
we could hire two personal chefs, three personal trainers, and
a makeup artist and make that happen. Have you heard
about what celebrities do to get ready for like a
red carpet event? Many thousands of dollars for the dress, obviously,
(05:39):
but thousands for a hairdresser for a single day, thousands
for a makeup artist for a single day, thousands for
a body makeup contourist, and often two pairs of spanks
on top of each other. Then we compare ourselves on
an average Wednesday to that. It's crazy, but I'm talking
(06:01):
about under our current circumstances, with the resources we already have.
We could be effortlessly operating from a different baseline than
we are now if we want to, not because we
need to to be worthy, but because it's pretty cool
to take the chance to up our game. Right, So
what's your current baseline? You're a listener of a podcast
(06:22):
about improving your physical and mental resilience for years to come,
so it's probably pretty good if you think about your
success on a scale of one to ten, or your happiness,
or your health, or your abilities to retire with energy
and strength. What would your number be on a scale
of one to ten. There's a quote I like from
(06:43):
a guy named Joe Manganello. He wrote a book called Evolution,
and he was also in Magic Mike. Not sure what
kind of qualification that bestows for inspirational quotes. Side note,
I've never seen Magic Mike, but I've always thought of
it as silly or stupid. But my opinion of Channing
Tatum went way up after I saw The Lost City
(07:04):
with Sandra Bullock. He's hilarious in that. Then we watched
Dog pretty soon after, and I was like, yeah, Okay,
I guess he's a real actor. I have no idea
if Joe Manganello is an okay actor, but anyway, he
said this truth. You think you're working out at an eight,
you're really working out at a two. I don't care
(07:26):
how long you've been training. That's just reality. If that
hurts your feelings, I'm sorry. It's time for you to
re establish your baseline in order to define intensity. End quote.
I love that, whether about your health or your fitness,
or your energy or commitment or ability to make a difference,
you think you're at an eight, but you're really at
(07:46):
a too. That's not deflating, it's exciting because it means
there's so much more that we can do. We go
from working on and worrying about what's holding us back
to working on and worrying about how far we can go.
We're not even close to our limits. We've got more
we can give, not in a masochistic way, but in
(08:08):
a joyful way. We start by realizing that we're actually
at a two, and then we figure out how we
know when we've gone from a to a two point
five and what we need to do to get there.
Then we continue to operate at a two point five.
That's our new baseline as we enjoy moving to a three. Hey,
(08:29):
I just wanted to quickly interrupt and say good for
you for being here listening to a podcast about improving
your biological age relative to your chronological age. Have you
ever thought about slowing the biological aging of your skin?
If you heard my episode fifty five about sinescent cells,
then you know that the accumulation of these undead cells
accelerates all of the problems of aging. Well, now there's
(08:51):
a topical supplement you can put on your skin that
reduces the accumulation of sinescent cells in your skin. This
reduces wrinkles, but also all other skin conditions caused by thinner, weaker,
drier skin. It also reduces the formation of age spots
and increases collagen and hyaluronic acid production within your skin.
It's a peptide called os one, and it's in a
(09:12):
product called one Skin. I use it every day on
my face and neck, and I've noticed a big difference.
I would say my skin is more moisturized, but that's
not a good enough description because it's not like when
you put moisturizer on, but your skin is still dry underneath.
It's the exact opposite. The topical supplement isn't greasy at all,
but my skin is plumper and healthier from the inside out.
(09:35):
I'm a big fan. If one skin sounds like something
you'd like to try, there's a link in the show
notes to get you twenty dollars off. All right, back
to the episode, there's a guy named Josh weight Skin.
He was a chess prodigy. The movie Searching for Bobby
Fisher is based on his childhood. He then became a
tai chi master as an adult, and he wrote a
(09:57):
book called The Art of Learning, which is great. He
talks about how what he loves more than dominating chess
or martial arts is the process of studying and training.
When he was learning tai chi, he would video his
sparring sessions and then watch them over and over for
moments when he performed better than average, he'd study it
(10:20):
in detail until he understood the difference, like that his
opponent was more vulnerable at the moment that he blinked.
That's pretty crazy, but it was his way of discovering
who he was at his best and then making his
prior best his new baseline. So who are you at
(10:40):
your best when in the past have you executed the
healthy behaviors you wanted to be consistent with. When have
you gotten great sleep? What led to that? When have
you eaten the most vegetables? What made that easy? When
has meal prepping been effortless? Is there a time when
your stress level was low? What was different then? When
(11:04):
have you truly loved your workout routine? Why? What circumstances
were different? What were your thoughts about those circumstances. What
can you learn from your best moments that would help
you get closer to making your best moments your new normal.
Getting curious about the nuances of what led to your
(11:25):
desirable outcomes can give you a lot of power to
figure out how to make those your everyday experiences. What
was your last really good day? What made it such
a good day? What gives you that sense of pride?
I like to mark a lot of things off my
to do list. That makes me happy feeling like I
(11:46):
didn't waste my time, which is just a thought, but
I enjoy feeling like I spent my few precious minutes
optimally well, like I planned ahead and I stayed on task.
I did something scary I can with another human being.
I made the world a little bit better even if
that was only improving my tiny environment. How about you
(12:09):
on a really good day? What did you eat, how
did you move? How did you sleep? How well did
you focus? What was your self talk like? How did
you connect with others? How can you make your prior
best day your new regular average Tuesday. It won't happen
(12:31):
this Tuesday, but you'll be amazed at how much you
can change after twenty or fifty tuesdays. It's so fun.
Slowly churning up the heat on your baseline is awesome,
But moving away from mediocrity can feel a little uncomfortable.
By definition, it's our comfort zone because we're comfy there,
(12:52):
But that doesn't mean that we can't slowly start to
play at the edges of our perceived safety, to go
an inch farther than our usual stopping point. If you
know who David Goggins is, he's crazy and amazing. He
says in his book Can't Hurt Me. In nineteen ninety nine,
when I weighed two hundred ninety seven pounds, my first
run was a quarter mile. Fast forward to two thousand
(13:15):
and seven, I ran two hundred and five miles in
thirty nine hours, non stop. I didn't get there overnight,
and I don't expect you to either. Your job is
to push past your normal stopping point end quote. That's
the pretty big difference in baseline abilities from being able
to run a quarter mile to being able to run
two hundred and five miles. But it all came from
(13:38):
pushing just a little bit past his normal stopping point.
William James said, most people never run far enough on
their first win to find out that they've got a second.
That's fun because the only way to know what's on
the other side of your current limit is to just
go a little bit past it and take a look around.
You might like it there. You might discover that your
(13:59):
past baseline was so far below your actual abilities that
it's laughable. One of the things that can help nudge
us out of our comfort zone is a good old problem.
Joe Manganiello, The Magic Guy, said, looking back at my life,
it was the obstacles, the shortcomings, and the failures that
forced me to fight harder, to reach inside and pull
(14:21):
something truly extraordinary out of myself that I didn't even
know existed. My failure was essential to my growth because
every time I failed, I learned that it was because
I did not fight as hard as humanly possible. Notice
that I didn't say fight my hardest. There are a
lot of people who try as hard as they can,
but their ceilings and limitations are perceived barriers that restrict
(14:44):
what they can achieve. We don't know what we can
really do until we push past the farthest point we've
ever been able to go where we've never gone before.
There is a place beyond the conscious perception of what
is achievable, and that is where we success occurs. After
years of failure, I learned that there was another gear
(15:04):
somewhere inside of me, and oftentimes it took failing to
find the upshift. I began to believe that if given
enough time and if I followed an intelligent and disciplined plan,
I could change so drastically that you wouldn't even recognize me.
I had learned to evolve. End quote. Pushing past our
perceived limits is a great way to find a new baseline,
(15:27):
and it doesn't have to be anything dramatic, but it
can be if that sounds fun to you. Another important
step in raising your baseline temperature is to block the
little double agent who keeps sneaking in and lowering the
thermostatus soon as you try to turn it up. Just
like we all have potentials that are literally unknowable, we
all have a few saboteurs loitering around that keep trying
(15:48):
to maintain our low baseline. They're scared of change. They've
been safe so far, and they don't want to have
to acclimate to a higher temperature. It makes sense, but
it also doesn't mean that we have to let them
sidetrack us. This reminds me of the mind flare or
controlling will buyers in Stranger Things. Do you remember he
likes to stay cool and Winna writer frees will by
(16:10):
turning up a bunch of space heaters. You can turn
up your space heater by one degree at a time
and it won't feel as scary as fighting a demic gorgan.
We all have a current baseline, and chances are that
we've acclimated to a suboptimal state of psychological and physiological functioning.
We think we're at an eight, but we're really at
(16:30):
it two. We think we're doing fine, but we're actually
being hindered and we don't even realize it. That's why
the little things we do really do matter our day
to day choices matter because it's completely possible to reset
our baseline little by little. Right now, we don't even
know what it would be like to live every day
from a higher baseline, where our highs are higher and
(16:53):
our lows are also higher. But can you at least
partially imagine what it would be like. The awesome thing
about working on resetting your set point is that it's
not just a one time victory. Those are fun, but
resetting your set point redefines what's normal, expected, and automatic,
and that changes your entire life. Eventually, your prior best
(17:18):
is your new baseline. That's what I want for you.
Thank you so much for listening today. Next week will
be episode two hundred. I can't believe it. Time flies.
We're going to be talking about the very basics of
where to start when coming up with your health span strategy.
What assets do you want to bring with you into
old age? Once you know that, figuring out what to
(17:40):
do on a daily basis right now gets way easier
until then, reset your internal thermostat and don't be normal.
Thank you so much for tuning into the Health Courage
Collective podcast. I am truly honored that you have paid
me the enormous compliment of your time and attention. I
would be so grateful if you would share this podcast
with someone you know and subscribe so you never miss
(18:02):
an episode. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
Statements and views on this podcast are not medical advice.
This podcast, including Christina Hackett and producers, disclaim responsibility for
any possible adverse events by use of information contained hereo.
If you think you have a medical problem, consult a
licensed Positions
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.