208: Why Do All of this Healthy Stuff?

If doing the healthy behaviors that you feel like you should do always feels like an endless, joyless uphill battle, maybe it’s because you think {q} “being healthy,” -whatever that even means-, is an end in and of itself.  An end that you should obviously want.  That you should be scared of not achieving.  But that’s backward.  Keeping our reasons for creating a healthy physiology in the proper perspective is so easy to overlook.  But seeing things clearly changes everything about how it feels to do the hard work of putting more years lived in good health in your future.

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In episode 208 of the Healthcare Collective Podcast, the host explores the deeper motivations behind striving for a healthy lifestyle. Instead of viewing health as an end goal, the discussion focuses on using health to enhance one's life and character. The episode dives into the concept of character development through the lens of famous figures and the distinction between 'resume virtues' and 'eulogy virtues.' By caring for one's physical body akin to a musician caring for their instrument, individuals can better engage in life's challenges and personal growth. The importance of maintaining perspective on health and utilizing it to mature morally and spiritually is emphasized, ultimately aiming to add more years lived in good health.00:00 Introduction: The True Meaning of Health00:46 Welcome and Magnesium Check01:29 Caring for Your Instrument: A Metaphor for Health02:53 Challenging Health Norms and Values06:05 The Deeper Purpose of Aging Well08:58 The Struggle for Character and Virtue13:20 The Importance of Humility and Wisdom19:32 Final Thoughts: Health as a Means to an End

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If doing the healthy behaviors that you feel like you
should do always feels like an endless, joyless uphill battle.
Maybe it's because you think quote being healthy, whatever that
even means, is an end in and of itself, an
end that you should obviously want that you should be

(00:20):
scared of not achieving. But that's backward keeping our reasons
for creating a healthy physiology in the proper perspective is
so easy to overlook, but seeing things clearly changes everything
about how it feels to do the hard work of
putting more years lived in good health into your future.

(00:40):
You're listening to the Health Courage Collective Podcast, Episode two
hundred and eight. Why are we doing all this healthy stuff?
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

(01:00):
smart to ignore that 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

(01:21):
to increase your physical and mental resilience so you can
fearlessly look forward to your next forty plus limitless years.
Your time is now. Let's go. Hey, so glad to
be with you today. I'm so happy you're here. I
hope you're doing something fun right now as you listen,
and how's your magnesium? There's about an eighty percent chance

(01:46):
that you're low in magnesium, and moving into the twenty
percent of people who aren't will help all of your
cells and enzyme pathways and hormones and neurotransmitters and everything
else function more smoothly. Today are going to talk about character,
but before we do, let me ask you this. Do

(02:06):
you play any musical instruments? I wish you could tell
me if you do play piano or guitar, or cello,
or the recorder or the kazoo. What kinds of things
do you do to lovingly care for and maintain your instrument?
Do you have to blow spit out of it or

(02:27):
wipe it down every time? Does it need a humidified
or dehumidified case? Can you tune it yourself. Does it
have components that need occasional replacement after being worn down?
Are these musical maintenance tasks? Joyless? Time sucks that you resent?

(02:48):
What would it mean to you to be able to
upgrade your instrument to a world class instrument if you did?
What kinds of things would you be willing to do
to take care of it? And why would you even
care about having a Strativarius or a Gibson or whatever
is the top instrument to you? Is it just because
that's what you should want to have? Do you think

(03:12):
that all of your life's problems would evaporate if you
owned Ludwig Brand drums? As you probably know by now,
I'm all about you putting more years lived in good
health into your future. I think that what we've all
been told to accept as normal parts of aging don't

(03:32):
have to be. You don't have to stop living before
you died, despite what you've been led to believe by
society or the medical establishment. You don't have to fade
into the background as you weaken and whither away. You
can write your own health narrative differently than how you've
seen the stories of your parents or grandparents play out.

(03:54):
I love this stuff so much. I think that the
time you invest in up leveling your thinking frameworks and
healthy actions have enormous payoffs, like not having to spend
all of your retirement time and money on drugs and
doctor visits, managing diseases that could have been prevented or
drastically delayed. But I know I'm not always clear about

(04:16):
why I want that for you and think that you
should want it for yourself. I think the health and
wellness industry is almost always guilty of this, myself included,
especially the fitness industry. Everything that you're told is a
good idea to do is based on the assumption that
you want what their supposed end goal is. Fitness, hotness,

(04:40):
abs thinness, muscliness, enviableness. There are so so many recommendations
of healthy things to do that we all take for
granted are the best way to behave, whether we can
get ourselves to do them or not. But why what
if you don't care about making thousands of women hate

(05:03):
themselves because their bikini body isn't as impressive as yours?
What if your highest value isn't nickel and dime arms.
I don't even know what that exactly is, but I've
heard of it before, and it was said in a
way that made it sound like everyone on the planet
should do whatever this exercise is, because clearly everyone on
the planet's top priority is having enviable arms. It's a

(05:27):
little easier to see with fitness recommendations. So many of
the exercises shoved in our faces are just cosmetic, and
so many of the food recommendations we're taught to buy
into are for losing weight, but not everyone wants to
or should want to lose weight. Purposefully teasing out the
end result and critically thinking about whether that's actually what

(05:50):
you want goes a long way. It's a great scale
to get in the habit of. Then if you decide, yes, actually,
I do think that's what I want. The next question
is why why do I want to lose weight or
have calves that look like I staple the t bone
steak to the back of my leg. I assume, if

(06:12):
you're listening to this, you do want what I'm hoping
to help you achieve, which is putting more years lived
in good health into your future aging at an elite level. Okay, good,
we're in sync. But why I often take for granted
that you see the value in wanting to age differently

(06:32):
than the population at large, But I don't often dig
deep about why. But I think that you should, and
I'm attempting to correct my oversight in a small way today.
I think it's easy to just believe that we want
to age well because our life will be easier if
we don't have to take eight medications a day. Our
life will be more enjoyable if we don't have to

(06:53):
rely on someone else to help us safely get to
the toilet. It's funner to have enough energy to get
through the day that aging is hard, but we won't
have to struggle or suffer as much if we've done
the work to age well. Following healthy recommendations now will
exonerate us from pain and uncertainty in the future, and

(07:13):
will live a life of constant bliss. Only we won't.
I think you can feel that deep down. No matter
how fastidious we are about living healthfully and doing all
the preventative practices we can find, we're never going to
get to a life free of uncertainty, pain, or hard work.

(07:34):
There will always be some kind of suffering or sorrow
or struggle. So what's the point, then why bother? What
do you think this gets to some deep meaning of
life type stuff? Right? I think that their questions worth
grappling with. I love the quote that's attributed to Pablo Picasso,

(07:57):
but like a lot of quotes, whether he really sat
it or not is not for sure. The meaning of
life is to find your gift. The purpose of life
is to give it away. Have you heard that one?
I love it, but I don't think it's the fullness
of the meaning or purpose of life. I'd invite you
to really consider what you think is the meaning and

(08:20):
purpose of life. I assume if your answer is maximal
hotness or wealth, this probably wouldn't be your go to podcast.
But what are you out to achieve? I want you
to decide for yourself. What I believe is that our
life is kind of like act two in a three

(08:41):
act play, even though the actual play doesn't have a
beginning or end, which is hard to wrap my brain around. Anyway,
This is the messy middle of something bigger, and the
goal is to keep evolving into the best and Christinaist
version of myself. And that's not easy. To evolve my
moral qualities into something better than they are today. Which

(09:05):
is better than they were yesterday. As I chronologically and
biologically mature, my goal is to mature my character. In
episode one hundred and forty three, I read this quote
from phil Stets. We have forgotten that time is sacred.
To the ancients. Time was a gift of the gods

(09:26):
to be treated with awe and reverence. Elders were respected
because they had aged in the stream of time. Time
was to be appreciated. In time, all things are in
a rhythmic nature, ebbing and flowing. In our culture we
have a contempt for all things that take time. Youth
is prized because it hasn't been exposed to time. Success

(09:50):
one after long effort is less desirable than instantaneous good luck.
End quote. As women were particularly conditioned to see the
passage of time as a bad thing, especially if you
can see evidence of time on your face. Youth is
the ideal. Anything less than that is a disappointment. But

(10:12):
that's ridiculous. Time makes us better because it's an opportunity
to mature our character, to become someone more proud of
an opportunity that, once it's gone, will never get back.
So if you feel like I do that the great
work of your life is to refine your character. How
do you even do that? Where do you start? I

(10:34):
bet if you were given some time to think about it,
you'd come up with some pretty stellar answers. I wanted
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(10:55):
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(11:19):
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(11:40):
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back to the episode. In the book The Road to
Character by David Brooks, he tells the stories of people
you've heard about in history, including Francis Perkins, Dwight Eisenhower,

(12:04):
Dorothy Day, George Marshall, A Philip Randolph, George Eliot, Saint Augustine,
and Samuel Adams. None of them were perfect. Some of
them did some pretty abhorrent stuff, honestly, but they stayed
in the game and they kept trying despite all their
imperfectness and their poor choices. Their struggles with their own

(12:26):
weaknesses made them great in the ways that the world
needed them to be great. As the chief of Staff
of the US Army during World War Two, a social
justice advocate, a president of the United States, and an
organizer of the Boston Tea Party. One of the things
I love most in the book The Road to character
is David's distinguishing between what he calls resume virtues and

(12:49):
eulogy virtues. The world is pretty oriented toward building up
your resume virtues and projects the message that acquiring a
lot of resume virtues will exonerate you from pain, uncertainty,
and hard work. They'll be what ultimately makes you happy.
Resume virtues are what impress other people, even though most

(13:11):
of us know deep down that in the end, it's
the eulogy virtues that we deeply want. It's eulogy virtues
that leave the world better than we found it. It's
eulogy virtues that we want people to remember after we're gone.
It's eulogy virtues that are worth orienting our life toward

(13:32):
devoting our best efforts, energy, time, and money to worth
suffering for enduring pain, uncertainty, and hard work to be
able to develop them. Some suggestions David Brooks gives for
developing a mature character are to first recognize that we're
all inherently flawed human beings. We all have a tendency

(13:56):
to see ourselves as the center of the universe. We
all give in to or term desires even when we
know we shouldn't we all know what's best and still
do the opposite. Sometimes we can delude ourselves into thinking
that our moral and spiritual needs can be fulfilled with
material things. We all have a tendency to be prideful,

(14:16):
and David points out that pride makes us more certain
and more closed minded. Pride could even allow us to
become cruel. Even though it's not a religious book at all,
he says that the central drama of life is the
struggle toward virtue and against sin. And he said it's
that struggle against sin, which he describes as selfishness, prejudice,

(14:41):
or insecurity, that gives meaning and shape to our life.
I'm going to say that again, it's the struggle against
sin that gives meaning and shape to our life. He
says it's possible to fight the battle against weakness or
what he calls sin well or poorly, and the purpose

(15:02):
of the struggle is not to win, because that's not possible.
It's to get better at waging the battle. The importance
isn't how well you do, but whether you're willing to
keep engaging in the struggle. What do you think if
a life well lived means to engage in a perpetual

(15:24):
war against weakness, where our only job is to stay
in the game and fight a little more skillfully every day.
How do you think your daily battles will go if
you have very poor cellular energy production versus great cellular
energy production, if you're frail, fragile, and delicate versus if

(15:47):
you're resilient and strong. If your channel capacity for hard
work is spent managing physical ailments versus managing your moral weaknesses.
David points out that even though we're all inherently flawed,
we are all also amazingly able to recognize that and

(16:08):
overcome our shortcomings. While we are weak, we're also strong.
While we are bound, we are also free. He says,
the greatest virtue in the struggle against ourselves is humility.
Humility is having an accurate assessment of yourself and your
strengths and weaknesses. Humility is recognizing that your own abilities

(16:32):
are not enough to be able to overcome your weaknesses.
We all need outside help. Only when we are humble
can we see the world clearly. Humility helps us to
mature our character. He also says something I love that
wisdom starts with modesty, and that wisdom is not knowledge.

(16:55):
It's knowing how to behave when perfect knowledge is lacking,
and that experience is a better teacher than pure reason.
I love that wisdom is knowing how to behave when
perfect knowledge is lacking. The exact things you should do
to increase the number of years in your future that

(17:17):
you will be in good health are not usually very clear.
You can for sure use wisdom to navigate what to
do about that and seek out guides with experience rather
than just reason. While we have a natural tendency to
seek out pleasure, we also feel a natural and innate
responsibility to become more moral over time to forsake pleasure

(17:44):
in pursuit of excellence of the soul, purpose, and virtue.
We naturally long to develop our character. David Brooks points
out that people with character are capable of committing themselves
to long term things that matter over short term things
that don't. He defines character as a set of dispositions, desires,

(18:06):
and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against
your own weakness. He says that you become more disciplined, considerate,
and loving from a thousand small acts of self control, sharing, service,
and friendship. If you make small, disciplined, caring choices. You

(18:32):
are slowly engraving certain tendencies into your mind. You are
making it more likely that you will desire the right
things and execute the right actions. But if you make selfish, chaotic,
or cruel choices, then you are slowly turning this core
thing inside yourself into something degrading, inconsistent, or fragmented. You

(18:56):
can harm that core thing with nothing more more than
ignoble thoughts, even if you are not harming anyone else.
You can elevate this core thing inside yourself with an
act of restraint that nobody sees. Behaving with self discipline
makes you dependable. What I get out of this is

(19:16):
that character is built in the course of your inner confrontations,
whether anyone else is aware of them or not. So
if our life is about developing our character and becoming
more moral over time, and the only way to develop
a mature character is through our ongoing struggles against our

(19:37):
natural humanness, and our physical bodies are the only instruments
we have to experience our humanness, it seems to me
that being a good caretaker of your physical body is
a little bit like taking meticulous care of your Strativarius
violin or Steinway Baby Grand or Fender starcaster guitar. Professional

(20:03):
musicians don't resent having to wipe the rosin off their strings,
wipe the moisture out of their mouthpiece, or control the
humidity in their case. They don't think of themselves as
a weak person with no self discipline if they forget
to check their pads or trust rod. Sometimes they don't
think that being the best at wiping their instrument with

(20:25):
a clean cloth every day makes them a better person
or will make musical perfection effortless. Can you see the
parallels I'm trying to make here. We often forget that
care and maintenance of our instrument is not an end
in and of itself. We're not here to be the

(20:46):
best wipers or tuners. It's something we do so that
we have the opportunity to play to the very best
of our ability. So our instrument isn't the thing holding
us back from the best performance we're capable of, and
maybe also out of gratitude for the opportunity to play
at all. I hope this is a helpful reminder about

(21:11):
why caretaking your physiology from a cellular level up matters.
It's not the endgame, and it's not because it will
make all of your problems magically disappear. It doesn't make
you a morally superior person, but it might give you
more opportunities to discover that you're capable of more than

(21:32):
you thought you were. There's a richness and a beauty
inside of you longing for the opportunity to be expressed.
There's also a little side effect that your instrument usually
looks cosmetically better if it's well maintained, but that's not
really the point either. An added benefit is that, since
character is about self confrontation and a million tiny, unseen

(21:57):
acts of overcoming our natural weaknesses, optimizing your health is
a very excellent opportunity to practice your mature characteristics. Whatever
is hard for you about optimizing your health, it's different
for everyone. Is a wonderful graduate level course in developing

(22:17):
mature character. I love in the book How David Brooks
explains maturity. He says it isn't about being better than
someone else, It's about being better than you used to be,
and that maturity is about being dependable and straight during
times of temptation. It's about going from fragmentation to centeredness.

(22:40):
It's about making decisions without worrying about admirers or detractors.
I'd invite you as you come to your next health
choice point, whatever that's going to be, whether it's about
standing up from your chair every twenty minutes, something you're
going to eat, whether you do or don't work out today,
going to bed on time, dictating. Remember that small choices

(23:03):
engrave certain tendencies into our minds and make us more
or less likely to desire doing the right things in
the future. The more we repeat things, the easier they
get to do. Thank you so much for being here today.
Health is not an end. It's a means to an end,
one that has lots of little opportunities that allow us

(23:26):
the gift of being able to practice in all our imperfectness,
developing the characteristics of a mature character. I love this topic,
so I hope you enjoyed it. Next week we're going
to talk about snacks. Until then, use all of your
life experience to develop a mature character and don't be normal.

(23:50):
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.

(24:11):
This podcast, including Christina Hackett and producers, disclaim responsibility for
any possible adverse events by use of information contained hearing.
If you think you have a medical problem, consult a
licensed Positions