April 30, 2025 • 19 mins
If you don’t want to slowly stop living before you die and you want to be capable of joyfully living and giving more as you age, you know you’ll have to do some things differently than most people right now. But if you don’t have a masterful thought process, you’ll always feel like you’re on a hamster wheel of trying really hard but still never doing enough. So let’s fix that and make life way more fun.
Free Bonus Exercises: Asset Framework Guide
at www.healthcouragecollective.com/200
email me: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com
take my Udemy Course about Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy
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
Free Bonus Exercises: Asset Framework Guide
at www.healthcouragecollective.com/200
email me: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com
take my Udemy Course about Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy
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):
If you don't want to slowly stop living before you die,
and you want to be capable of joyfully living and
giving more as you age. You know you'll have to
do some things differently than most people right now, But
if you don't have a masterful thought process, you'll always
feel like you're on a hamster wheel of trying really
hard but still never doing enough. So let's fix that
(00:23):
and make life way more fun. You're listening to the
Health Courage Collective Podcast, Episode two hundred, Remove confusion and
overwhelm from live life health Choices. Welcome to the 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
(00:46):
a few minutes of focused attention now can prevent years
of suffering 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
a compulsive learner obsessed with preventative, cutting edge, holistic and
integrated medicine. I'm on a mission to increase your physical
(01:08):
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 today's episode.
I can't believe it's number two hundred. I hope that
you have had a great week this week. How's your
set point? Did you think of an area of your
(01:29):
health or life where you might want to set a
new baseline. It doesn't have to be grueingly hard, but
when you can make your prior best your new baseline,
there becomes no limit to what you can watch yourself do.
That's pretty fun, right. We all have set points of
what feels normal, so why not dial it up by
one degree. You'll still be living life mostly on autopilot
(01:51):
once you acclimate to your new climate, so why not
make your life environment a little bit higher vibe. Today
we're going to talk about the most important piece of
the eaching at an elite level puzzle. Get this dialed
in and all of the confusion and overwhelm and constant
barrage of recommendations and feeling like you don't have the
channel capacity to keep up with it all goes away.
(02:12):
Then you can enjoy your forties fifties and sixties and beyond,
with confidence knowing you don't have to slowly stop living
before you die, and you don't have to buy or
do a bunch of unpleasant stuff or keep looking for
something outside of yourself to save you. If you're ready
to turn off all the fear based chatter and create
a future you're excited about, let's get you a clear
(02:34):
thought process that leaves you feeling left out when everyone
else is complaining about getting older. If we had a
friend who came to me for advice about planning financially
for retirement, I would tell her to go talk to
someone who's actually qualified to give advice. But if for
some reason the only people left on the earth to
ask were me and Lindsay Lohan, then I would say
(02:55):
that if we're the only people left on earth, maybe
your biggest problem isn't long term financial p planning. But
if you or I were to advise this person, we'd
probably come up with similar common sense directions for her.
The first one is that the sooner you start, the
less stressful and intense the process will be right. Compound
interest is the eighth wonder of the world and all that,
(03:18):
But we'd also get into the valuable things that you'd
actually need to possess for a comfortable retirement. Assets. Of course,
financial assets are things like cash, stocks, bonds, income producing businesses,
investment properties, gemstones, gold houses, farms, tupperware, beanie babies, etc.
(03:39):
When we went through everything at my parents' house after
they died, I ended up with a car and a penny,
and the penny is worth more than the car. True
story SVD or VDB or something you can't remember, Okay,
So I'd want to help our friend understand that just
accumulating a lot of assets isn't really enough. That we
(04:00):
need to be diversified assets to mitigate risk. And more importantly,
your net worth isn't just the sum of your assets.
Your net worth is your assets added up minus your liabilities.
Added up. Liabilities are debts and money pits that drain
your resources, So we'd tell her to dump those asap.
You're not in a good financial possession if you own
(04:22):
two boats together worth two hundred thousand dollars, but you
also have two hundred and one thousand dollars in credit
card debt? Are you with me? Do you agree with
this fictional advice that we're handing out that more assets
and fewer liabilities create a higher probability that you will
enjoy a financially secure retirement. Do you think this advice
also applies to putting more years lived in good health
(04:43):
into your future? I sure hope so, because it's like
all we're talking about today, more assets, fewer liabilities, and
the earlier you start, the less daunting it's going to be.
I think so. So back to our fictional friend, let's
call her Sheila. She's now empowered with the knowledge that
she needs assets. So when Sheila comes and asks you
(05:05):
what assets she should put all her effort into acquiring,
what would you tell her Crypto climate futures, Russian rubles,
antique barbies, and how many of them does she need?
Amma guess you'd say it depends depends on what Sheila needs.
To back it up, You can't know what assets you
(05:25):
need until you know what you're trying to do. What
kind of future is Sheila trying to create. That's what
will determine what kind of assets and how many of
them she'll need. She's going to need to get really
serious about high value financial asset acquisition of her. One
true dream is to live out her retirement years on
(05:46):
Park Avenue in New York and become a lady who lunches,
whereas she can be less concerned with the total value
of her assets or their rate of growth. If her
one true dream is to be an off the grid,
subsistence homesteader in the Czech Republic, How about you? What
kind of future do you long to create and what
(06:07):
assets will you need to be able to make it
a reality? Not chanel bags versus Slavic nannygoats, well maybe
that too, but more importantly, what kind of physiological assets
will you need in order to live out your one
true dream? The only way to know that is by
knowing what kind of future you want to create and
(06:28):
working backward from there. Since this is the two hundredth episode,
I have a special free bonus for you so you
can follow along and actually sit down and do this process,
not just half. We think about it while you're walking
or cleaning the litter rocks, or chopping vegetables or whatever
mysterious and important work you're doing right now. There will
be a link in the show notes that you can
(06:49):
click on later or go to www. Dot Healthcourage Collective
dot com. Slash two hundred. I'm hoping this episode and
its accompanying bonus will help you create a shatterproof framework
in your mind of the way to think through all
of the wellness slash longevity slash menopause slash health slash
(07:10):
fitness advice that gets shouted in your face all day
every day. It's overwhelming and it feels pretty daunting, and
it can make you feel like a weak person if
you're not able to follow all of it flawlessly. But
guess what. The reason why it feels so hard and
overwhelming is because almost everyone is doing things backwards and
trying to get you to do it backward too. Health
(07:32):
advice usually starts with things you should do or buy
or use or take, and why from here on out
you're not going to fall for that anymore. You're going
to start from the end the specifics of what you
want to create, and from that objective decide on a
strategy of how to get there. Then from that strategy
(07:52):
you'll determine the specific tactics that will best serve that strategy.
Those are doctor Peter Attia's terms objective, strategy and tactics,
and I think that they're incredibly useful if you can't
clearly describe why you're spending sixty minutes in a sound
bath or sixty dollars on a supplement, or all of
your most productive morning energy juicing celery. Of course, doing
(08:15):
all that, plus feeling like you have to do bicep
curls and glut bridges and eat microgreens and run eight
miles and take spurillina and never ever eat dairy or
accidentally drink unfiltered water or breathe unfiltered air while prepping
twenty one perfectly macrobalanced organic meals for yourself in non
plastic containers every week. Feels daunting because it is and chaotic.
(08:36):
But when you're clear on exactly what you want to create,
you know what assets you're going to need to get there.
From there, you can create a clear and impartial plan
of how best to acquire those assets. Then it's pretty
straightforward to prioritize where to spend your resources of time, attention,
energy and money to acquire those assets and move the
(08:59):
plant form. Doesn't that feel so much better? I love
following a logical and well defined plan. We all have
what Jason Selk and Tom Barta, who wrote the book
Organized Tomorrow Today call channel capacity. No matter how awesome
you are, and I know that you're awesome, there's still
a limit to how many things you can focus on
(09:21):
and commit your resources to at once. What if you
used yours on the highest leverage actions first, the ones
that practically guarantee you'll have the exact assets you need
to live the future you want. It'll make ignoring a
lot of what you hear you should be doing to
be healthy way easier. Whether you go through the whole
(09:41):
process of getting really clear about what you want your
life to be like in your nineties with me or not,
which I hope you do because I want you to
have the best life ever. I hope your wheels are
turning about what assets you're going to need for the
future you want. It's really powerful to know. It's how
you can be sure that you're spending your precious resource,
says Wisely. When you're thinking about financial planning, you use
(10:03):
your net worth as kind of an overall picture of
your financial wellness total assets minus total liabilities. I think
it makes sense to do something similar for your physiological
assets and liabilities. People can get pretty emotional about financial stuff,
and I think making a biological balance sheet could perhaps
be even more fraud, but I also think it's worth
(10:25):
it inasmuch as you use it to help you plan
your highest leverage actions that are actually worth spending your
energy on, without blaming yourself or beating yourself up or
anything at all. It's definitely useful to take responsibility for
the fact that racking up seventy thousand dollars of credit
card debt was not the wisest thing to do for
your future self and make a plan to change. And
(10:46):
maybe there's some crossover to doing something similar for any
physiologic liabilities that you might have. But I'm kind of
not so sure because I believe that you've done the
best you could, and I don't think blaming your past
self for your current problems will drive your life forward,
but changing some things might. Then, of course, we all
have liabilities that our past self have zero control over, genetics, injuries, trauma, etc.
(11:13):
Then there's the even more nebulous issue that a lot
of the obstacles and issues that we have actually make
us stronger and better people than we would have been
without them. So calling your attention deficit or your migraines
or your gluten intolerance. A liability is actually exactly backward.
It's so complicated. Here's how I think about it, and
(11:33):
you can decide what serves you best. What I'm referring
to as liabilities are not bad in the sense that
if we can't hurry up and reverse them all, we
have no choice but to declare biological bankruptcy. They're more
like some areas that require extra attention and resources. Counterpoint assets,
if you will. We're all going to have our own
(11:53):
unique required assets for the future we want, and there
are some assets that will be pretty commonly desired among
all of us. Like Wise, will each have our own
unique liabilities and some pretty universal liabilities that we all
share as a consequence of getting older and being women.
But see that sounds really bad calling being female a
liability when it's totally freaking awesome. Our vintage feminine biology
(12:18):
just needs a bit of expert attention. The way you
wouldn't take a Rolls Royce to Jiffy Lube or storeaming
base in the rickety shed out back. You just need
some extra assets. In this framework you're going to map
out either by yourself or guided by me, you'll know
what's most important to you, ranked in order of importance.
That will help you figure out what assets you'll need
(12:39):
to maintain and or develop in order of importance. It's
also where what the considerations formerly known as liabilities are key,
because those tell you the countermeasures you need in place
if you want to avoid them. Hormonal fluctuations around the
time of perimenopause and menopause, metabolic dysfunction or subop insulin
(13:00):
and blood glucose levels will increase your risk of every
chronic disease there is, and our metabolic health typically gets
worse with age. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause
of death for women. Cancer and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's
are risks of getting older. Most women who live long
enough are at a big risk for falling and becoming
unrecoverably injured, and their immune systems are not very strong.
(13:24):
Many live with chronic pain. Knowing all of these common
things helps us so much because there are countermeasures or
assets that we can bring with us into our next
decades to prevent or drastically delay them. Some assets you
might want to consider putting on your list to work
toward our optimal insulin levels and insulin sensitivity, high functioning
(13:46):
mitochondria which gives you energy, optimal hormone levels, optimal cardiovascular
risk metrics, and excellent brain function. I'm a huge, huge
fan of one of the most underappreciated but most powerful
assets you can possibly acquire, which is muscle mass. Strength
and bone density usually come along with that, and having
good balance and mobility are also fantastic assets. I could
(14:10):
keep listing assets forever, cardio, respiratory endurance, excellent sleep habits.
But the only thing that's really important is what's important
to you. And as much as I love your muscles
and mitochondria and liver and kidney function, what the science
shows should be at the top of your list of
developed assets are emotional health, good relationships, and a sense
(14:31):
of purpose. So I hope those things are things that
you remembered to include too. Once you have your awesome
list of assets, you're in a great place to see
the big picture of your future and what you want
to focus your best efforts on now. You might also
be tempted to be overwhelmed with having to acquire all
of these seemingly impossible things. It's a bit like feeling
(14:51):
like you need to be extremely well informed about one
hundred different companies on the S and P five hundred
so that you can individually invest in the best ones.
All about intermediate term bonds and how they might perform
over the next ten years. Which long term bonds are
the best, How strong of a position the US dollar
has compared to foreign currencies right now, what inflation protected
securities are, the current price of gold, and which commodities
(15:13):
hold their value the best. That's daunting. Similarly to how
you can invest in different index funds that sort of
let you buy the whole market if you choose the
right high leverage actions, just a few key actions will
help you acquire an astonishingly large number of assets. This
is where it gets fun. You can buy the majority
(15:34):
of twenty or thirty assets with one action and the
majority of another twenty or thirty assets with another action. Then,
when you're tempted by the next shiny objectors or to
spend a bunch of time on the newest wellness trend,
you can ask yourself how many assets it will be
the highest impact driver of. If it's not majorly impactful,
(15:54):
but it's something you really want to try because you
think it's fun. That's cool, Just don't fool yourself into
thinking it's going to be half as effective as tracking
and making sure you consume the right amount of high
quality protein every day, or whatever your key action is.
When you're clear about this framework, keeping everything in its
proper perspective and making decisions about what to spend your
(16:15):
energy on will be obvious. So I hope you take
the few minutes to go through these exercises. Remember you
can find them at www dot Healthcourage Collective dot com
slash two hundred two zero zero. Once you're clear about
your key actions and how to assess whether they're actually
working to create your desired assets, all you have to
do is fall in love with doing those things. Easyps right.
(16:40):
My favorite quote ever is from the Roman Stoic philosophers Seneca,
who said, how much better is it to pursue a
straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things
that are pleasant and the things that are honorable finally
become for you the same? I love that one because
I believe that you can tweak and massage the genuine
(17:02):
enjoyment you get from certain actions, and you can tweak
and massage the actual actions necessary to create the assets
you want. Until those two things are in alignment, then
the things that you most enjoy doing are the things
that are best for you, and creating the future you
want is really fun right now every day. Getting clear
(17:23):
about what you want in your nineties is the first
step to figure out what assets you need to have
to make that happen. Then getting clear about what actions
are most likely to create those assets is the first
step in being able to ignore a whole bunch of
stuff that isn't worth your limited time and attention. Like
many things, thinking backward to forward will be a game
(17:44):
changer for your long term health. Starting with specifically where
you want to end up and then figuring out the
asset portfolio you need to be able to create that
outcome is crucial. What assets are you going to acquire
and or maintain for yourself? I'd love to know. Send
me a message at Healthcourage Collective at gmail dot com
with your ideas. Don't forget to come over to www
(18:07):
dot Healthcourage Collective dot com slash two hundred and go
through the free asset guide exercises so you have a
framework to decide what's worth your effort and will actually
help you create a future where you live more as
you get older, rather than less. Next week, we're going
to talk about waking up in the middle of the
night and three ways to fix it until then, sync
at an elite level, backward to forward, and don't be normal.
(18:30):
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
an episode. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
Statements and views on this podcast are not medical advice.
(18:51):
This podcast, including Christina Hackett and producers, disclaim responsibility for
any possible adverse events by use of information contained hearing.
Do you think you have a medical problem? Consult a
Licensed Positions
If you don't want to slowly stop living before you die,
and you want to be capable of joyfully living and
giving more as you age. You know you'll have to
do some things differently than most people right now, But
if you don't have a masterful thought process, you'll always
feel like you're on a hamster wheel of trying really
hard but still never doing enough. So let's fix that
(00:23):
and make life way more fun. You're listening to the
Health Courage Collective Podcast, Episode two hundred, Remove confusion and
overwhelm from live life health Choices. Welcome to the 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
(00:46):
a few minutes of focused attention now can prevent years
of suffering 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
a compulsive learner obsessed with preventative, cutting edge, holistic and
integrated medicine. I'm on a mission to increase your physical
(01:08):
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 today's episode.
I can't believe it's number two hundred. I hope that
you have had a great week this week. How's your
set point? Did you think of an area of your
(01:29):
health or life where you might want to set a
new baseline. It doesn't have to be grueingly hard, but
when you can make your prior best your new baseline,
there becomes no limit to what you can watch yourself do.
That's pretty fun, right. We all have set points of
what feels normal, so why not dial it up by
one degree. You'll still be living life mostly on autopilot
(01:51):
once you acclimate to your new climate, so why not
make your life environment a little bit higher vibe. Today
we're going to talk about the most important piece of
the eaching at an elite level puzzle. Get this dialed
in and all of the confusion and overwhelm and constant
barrage of recommendations and feeling like you don't have the
channel capacity to keep up with it all goes away.
(02:12):
Then you can enjoy your forties fifties and sixties and beyond,
with confidence knowing you don't have to slowly stop living
before you die, and you don't have to buy or
do a bunch of unpleasant stuff or keep looking for
something outside of yourself to save you. If you're ready
to turn off all the fear based chatter and create
a future you're excited about, let's get you a clear
(02:34):
thought process that leaves you feeling left out when everyone
else is complaining about getting older. If we had a
friend who came to me for advice about planning financially
for retirement, I would tell her to go talk to
someone who's actually qualified to give advice. But if for
some reason the only people left on the earth to
ask were me and Lindsay Lohan, then I would say
(02:55):
that if we're the only people left on earth, maybe
your biggest problem isn't long term financial p planning. But
if you or I were to advise this person, we'd
probably come up with similar common sense directions for her.
The first one is that the sooner you start, the
less stressful and intense the process will be right. Compound
interest is the eighth wonder of the world and all that,
(03:18):
But we'd also get into the valuable things that you'd
actually need to possess for a comfortable retirement. Assets. Of course,
financial assets are things like cash, stocks, bonds, income producing businesses,
investment properties, gemstones, gold houses, farms, tupperware, beanie babies, etc.
(03:39):
When we went through everything at my parents' house after
they died, I ended up with a car and a penny,
and the penny is worth more than the car. True
story SVD or VDB or something you can't remember, Okay,
So I'd want to help our friend understand that just
accumulating a lot of assets isn't really enough. That we
(04:00):
need to be diversified assets to mitigate risk. And more importantly,
your net worth isn't just the sum of your assets.
Your net worth is your assets added up minus your liabilities.
Added up. Liabilities are debts and money pits that drain
your resources, So we'd tell her to dump those asap.
You're not in a good financial possession if you own
(04:22):
two boats together worth two hundred thousand dollars, but you
also have two hundred and one thousand dollars in credit
card debt? Are you with me? Do you agree with
this fictional advice that we're handing out that more assets
and fewer liabilities create a higher probability that you will
enjoy a financially secure retirement. Do you think this advice
also applies to putting more years lived in good health
(04:43):
into your future? I sure hope so, because it's like
all we're talking about today, more assets, fewer liabilities, and
the earlier you start, the less daunting it's going to be.
I think so. So back to our fictional friend, let's
call her Sheila. She's now empowered with the knowledge that
she needs assets. So when Sheila comes and asks you
(05:05):
what assets she should put all her effort into acquiring,
what would you tell her Crypto climate futures, Russian rubles,
antique barbies, and how many of them does she need?
Amma guess you'd say it depends depends on what Sheila needs.
To back it up, You can't know what assets you
(05:25):
need until you know what you're trying to do. What
kind of future is Sheila trying to create. That's what
will determine what kind of assets and how many of
them she'll need. She's going to need to get really
serious about high value financial asset acquisition of her. One
true dream is to live out her retirement years on
(05:46):
Park Avenue in New York and become a lady who lunches,
whereas she can be less concerned with the total value
of her assets or their rate of growth. If her
one true dream is to be an off the grid,
subsistence homesteader in the Czech Republic, How about you? What
kind of future do you long to create and what
(06:07):
assets will you need to be able to make it
a reality? Not chanel bags versus Slavic nannygoats, well maybe
that too, but more importantly, what kind of physiological assets
will you need in order to live out your one
true dream? The only way to know that is by
knowing what kind of future you want to create and
(06:28):
working backward from there. Since this is the two hundredth episode,
I have a special free bonus for you so you
can follow along and actually sit down and do this process,
not just half. We think about it while you're walking
or cleaning the litter rocks, or chopping vegetables or whatever
mysterious and important work you're doing right now. There will
be a link in the show notes that you can
(06:49):
click on later or go to www. Dot Healthcourage Collective
dot com. Slash two hundred. I'm hoping this episode and
its accompanying bonus will help you create a shatterproof framework
in your mind of the way to think through all
of the wellness slash longevity slash menopause slash health slash
(07:10):
fitness advice that gets shouted in your face all day
every day. It's overwhelming and it feels pretty daunting, and
it can make you feel like a weak person if
you're not able to follow all of it flawlessly. But
guess what. The reason why it feels so hard and
overwhelming is because almost everyone is doing things backwards and
trying to get you to do it backward too. Health
(07:32):
advice usually starts with things you should do or buy
or use or take, and why from here on out
you're not going to fall for that anymore. You're going
to start from the end the specifics of what you
want to create, and from that objective decide on a
strategy of how to get there. Then from that strategy
(07:52):
you'll determine the specific tactics that will best serve that strategy.
Those are doctor Peter Attia's terms objective, strategy and tactics,
and I think that they're incredibly useful if you can't
clearly describe why you're spending sixty minutes in a sound
bath or sixty dollars on a supplement, or all of
your most productive morning energy juicing celery. Of course, doing
(08:15):
all that, plus feeling like you have to do bicep
curls and glut bridges and eat microgreens and run eight
miles and take spurillina and never ever eat dairy or
accidentally drink unfiltered water or breathe unfiltered air while prepping
twenty one perfectly macrobalanced organic meals for yourself in non
plastic containers every week. Feels daunting because it is and chaotic.
(08:36):
But when you're clear on exactly what you want to create,
you know what assets you're going to need to get there.
From there, you can create a clear and impartial plan
of how best to acquire those assets. Then it's pretty
straightforward to prioritize where to spend your resources of time, attention,
energy and money to acquire those assets and move the
(08:59):
plant form. Doesn't that feel so much better? I love
following a logical and well defined plan. We all have
what Jason Selk and Tom Barta, who wrote the book
Organized Tomorrow Today call channel capacity. No matter how awesome
you are, and I know that you're awesome, there's still
a limit to how many things you can focus on
(09:21):
and commit your resources to at once. What if you
used yours on the highest leverage actions first, the ones
that practically guarantee you'll have the exact assets you need
to live the future you want. It'll make ignoring a
lot of what you hear you should be doing to
be healthy way easier. Whether you go through the whole
(09:41):
process of getting really clear about what you want your
life to be like in your nineties with me or not,
which I hope you do because I want you to
have the best life ever. I hope your wheels are
turning about what assets you're going to need for the
future you want. It's really powerful to know. It's how
you can be sure that you're spending your precious resource,
says Wisely. When you're thinking about financial planning, you use
(10:03):
your net worth as kind of an overall picture of
your financial wellness total assets minus total liabilities. I think
it makes sense to do something similar for your physiological
assets and liabilities. People can get pretty emotional about financial stuff,
and I think making a biological balance sheet could perhaps
be even more fraud, but I also think it's worth
(10:25):
it inasmuch as you use it to help you plan
your highest leverage actions that are actually worth spending your
energy on, without blaming yourself or beating yourself up or
anything at all. It's definitely useful to take responsibility for
the fact that racking up seventy thousand dollars of credit
card debt was not the wisest thing to do for
your future self and make a plan to change. And
(10:46):
maybe there's some crossover to doing something similar for any
physiologic liabilities that you might have. But I'm kind of
not so sure because I believe that you've done the
best you could, and I don't think blaming your past
self for your current problems will drive your life forward,
but changing some things might. Then, of course, we all
have liabilities that our past self have zero control over, genetics, injuries, trauma, etc.
(11:13):
Then there's the even more nebulous issue that a lot
of the obstacles and issues that we have actually make
us stronger and better people than we would have been
without them. So calling your attention deficit or your migraines
or your gluten intolerance. A liability is actually exactly backward.
It's so complicated. Here's how I think about it, and
(11:33):
you can decide what serves you best. What I'm referring
to as liabilities are not bad in the sense that
if we can't hurry up and reverse them all, we
have no choice but to declare biological bankruptcy. They're more
like some areas that require extra attention and resources. Counterpoint assets,
if you will. We're all going to have our own
(11:53):
unique required assets for the future we want, and there
are some assets that will be pretty commonly desired among
all of us. Like Wise, will each have our own
unique liabilities and some pretty universal liabilities that we all
share as a consequence of getting older and being women.
But see that sounds really bad calling being female a
liability when it's totally freaking awesome. Our vintage feminine biology
(12:18):
just needs a bit of expert attention. The way you
wouldn't take a Rolls Royce to Jiffy Lube or storeaming
base in the rickety shed out back. You just need
some extra assets. In this framework you're going to map
out either by yourself or guided by me, you'll know
what's most important to you, ranked in order of importance.
That will help you figure out what assets you'll need
(12:39):
to maintain and or develop in order of importance. It's
also where what the considerations formerly known as liabilities are key,
because those tell you the countermeasures you need in place
if you want to avoid them. Hormonal fluctuations around the
time of perimenopause and menopause, metabolic dysfunction or subop insulin
(13:00):
and blood glucose levels will increase your risk of every
chronic disease there is, and our metabolic health typically gets
worse with age. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause
of death for women. Cancer and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's
are risks of getting older. Most women who live long
enough are at a big risk for falling and becoming
unrecoverably injured, and their immune systems are not very strong.
(13:24):
Many live with chronic pain. Knowing all of these common
things helps us so much because there are countermeasures or
assets that we can bring with us into our next
decades to prevent or drastically delay them. Some assets you
might want to consider putting on your list to work
toward our optimal insulin levels and insulin sensitivity, high functioning
(13:46):
mitochondria which gives you energy, optimal hormone levels, optimal cardiovascular
risk metrics, and excellent brain function. I'm a huge, huge
fan of one of the most underappreciated but most powerful
assets you can possibly acquire, which is muscle mass. Strength
and bone density usually come along with that, and having
good balance and mobility are also fantastic assets. I could
(14:10):
keep listing assets forever, cardio, respiratory endurance, excellent sleep habits.
But the only thing that's really important is what's important
to you. And as much as I love your muscles
and mitochondria and liver and kidney function, what the science
shows should be at the top of your list of
developed assets are emotional health, good relationships, and a sense
(14:31):
of purpose. So I hope those things are things that
you remembered to include too. Once you have your awesome
list of assets, you're in a great place to see
the big picture of your future and what you want
to focus your best efforts on now. You might also
be tempted to be overwhelmed with having to acquire all
of these seemingly impossible things. It's a bit like feeling
(14:51):
like you need to be extremely well informed about one
hundred different companies on the S and P five hundred
so that you can individually invest in the best ones.
All about intermediate term bonds and how they might perform
over the next ten years. Which long term bonds are
the best, How strong of a position the US dollar
has compared to foreign currencies right now, what inflation protected
securities are, the current price of gold, and which commodities
(15:13):
hold their value the best. That's daunting. Similarly to how
you can invest in different index funds that sort of
let you buy the whole market if you choose the
right high leverage actions, just a few key actions will
help you acquire an astonishingly large number of assets. This
is where it gets fun. You can buy the majority
(15:34):
of twenty or thirty assets with one action and the
majority of another twenty or thirty assets with another action. Then,
when you're tempted by the next shiny objectors or to
spend a bunch of time on the newest wellness trend,
you can ask yourself how many assets it will be
the highest impact driver of. If it's not majorly impactful,
(15:54):
but it's something you really want to try because you
think it's fun. That's cool, Just don't fool yourself into
thinking it's going to be half as effective as tracking
and making sure you consume the right amount of high
quality protein every day, or whatever your key action is.
When you're clear about this framework, keeping everything in its
proper perspective and making decisions about what to spend your
(16:15):
energy on will be obvious. So I hope you take
the few minutes to go through these exercises. Remember you
can find them at www dot Healthcourage Collective dot com
slash two hundred two zero zero. Once you're clear about
your key actions and how to assess whether they're actually
working to create your desired assets, all you have to
do is fall in love with doing those things. Easyps right.
(16:40):
My favorite quote ever is from the Roman Stoic philosophers Seneca,
who said, how much better is it to pursue a
straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things
that are pleasant and the things that are honorable finally
become for you the same? I love that one because
I believe that you can tweak and massage the genuine
(17:02):
enjoyment you get from certain actions, and you can tweak
and massage the actual actions necessary to create the assets
you want. Until those two things are in alignment, then
the things that you most enjoy doing are the things
that are best for you, and creating the future you
want is really fun right now every day. Getting clear
(17:23):
about what you want in your nineties is the first
step to figure out what assets you need to have
to make that happen. Then getting clear about what actions
are most likely to create those assets is the first
step in being able to ignore a whole bunch of
stuff that isn't worth your limited time and attention. Like
many things, thinking backward to forward will be a game
(17:44):
changer for your long term health. Starting with specifically where
you want to end up and then figuring out the
asset portfolio you need to be able to create that
outcome is crucial. What assets are you going to acquire
and or maintain for yourself? I'd love to know. Send
me a message at Healthcourage Collective at gmail dot com
with your ideas. Don't forget to come over to www
(18:07):
dot Healthcourage Collective dot com slash two hundred and go
through the free asset guide exercises so you have a
framework to decide what's worth your effort and will actually
help you create a future where you live more as
you get older, rather than less. Next week, we're going
to talk about waking up in the middle of the
night and three ways to fix it until then, sync
at an elite level, backward to forward, and don't be normal.
(18:30):
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
an episode. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
Statements and views on this podcast are not medical advice.
(18:51):
This podcast, including Christina Hackett and producers, disclaim responsibility for
any possible adverse events by use of information contained hearing.
Do you think you have a medical problem? Consult a
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