You may have heard recently that there are a bunch of really rich guys out there spending their fortunes on trying to live forever. They’ve even made a kind of game out of it called the Rejuvenation Olympics. The tag line: Where you win by never crossing the finish line. Anyone can take their diagnostic test, which measures your chronological age against your biological age, and if you rank among the top 25 of other participants, you get featured on the website’s Epigenetic Leaderboard. For example, I’m 41 years old (soon to be 42 at the time of this writing). That’s my chronological age. But my biological age (based on a bunch of sciencey stuff) comes in around 27 or 28. I don’t know where that would land on the leaderboard, but it’s pretty darn good. So much so that my functional medicine practitioner wants me to sign up!
But here’s the thing: You don’t need to be a multi-gazillionaire to get your body into the best shape of your life. It just takes time, commitment, a healthy dose of discipline to get you started, and most importantly, a clear vision and a strong Why. I’ve got a few bucks in the bank, but when I began my journey toward health and vitality, I was just a kid, studying martial arts and scraping together the rent money wherever I could. But even at 20, I knew how I wanted to feel, look and perform when I was in my 40s. Just as today I'm laying the foundation for how I want to feel, look and perform in my 60s and beyond.
The level of health & vitality I live in today is entirely by design. As a competitive athlete, I developed resilience, strength, muscle memory, the routine of movement, and discipline (although, I beat myself up quite a bit, so this piece may be a bit of a wash). I live a clean lifestyle (after the debauchery of my early years), and through the work we do here at IMS–Inner Matrix training–I’ve learned to manage the emotions and thoughts, and I’ve trained the nervous system to live in a parasympathetic state the majority of the time.
But enough about me. What about you? What's your vision for health & vitality in 20 years? Imagine what you could create if you started consciously building it today. And you don’t have to wait 20 years to start feeling amazing! You can start with one small thing, one new routine, and build upon it. In the course of a year, you could totally redefine your experience in the body. The key is to just start. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time.
Sometimes I look around at the world in complete wonder, all that goes on in the course of a day, the sheer scale of it! At any given moment, there are thousands of airplanes in the sky, there are millions of goods being shipped to millions of locations, bridges being built, skyscrapers being raised, entire neighborhoods being constructed. Everyday, millions of people commute to work on roads that must be maintained, shop at grocery stores that need to be stocked, fill their cars with gasoline that’s been refined and transported around the globe. Try to wrap your mind around it and it seems far more likely that we should all be living in some kind of Mad Max hellscape of complete chaos.
So how does it all work? How is it you can go to a grocery store in Seattle and buy a gallon of milk that, two days ago, was inside a cow in Wisconsin? For less than five bucks? The short answer is that someone had an idea of what they wanted to build, then they started to build it one step at a time. Take a company like Amazon, for example. Ubiquitous today, but 30 years ago it was just an idea in Jeff Bezos’ head. The Hollywood version would be something like, scrappy little underdog who just wanted to sell books on this new thing called the Internet stumbles into becoming CEO of the largest online retailer in the world. But the truth is, from the start, Bezos had his eye on much more than selling a few used paperbacks on his nifty little website.
He started small, with something manageable: selling books out of his garage. Always with a focus on what he was building toward. Within just a few years he expanded from books into music and movies. He moved into web hosting and data storage, launched the Kindle, and continued to expand the online retail products. Today? Jeff Bezos is worth 198 billion dollars and you can have a smartly designed package of Smoky BBQ gourmet roasted crickets delivered to your doorstep the day after tomorrow. That’s 100% true, I looked it up.
So, what does any of this have to do with a vision for health and vitality? Well, everything. Because you can create the body you want the same way that Jeff Bezos created Amazon. By selling books out of your garage. I’m kidding. But in all seriousness, in order to create health and vitality 20 years from now and beyond, you’ve got to name a vision of where you want to go, get crystal clear on Why you want to go there, then start with something manageable. Your version of selling books out of the garage.
For example, you could start with water. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. Take your body weight in pounds and divide it by 2. Drink that many ounces of water daily. So, let’s say you weigh 160 pounds. That’s 80 ounces, or five 16 ounce glasses of water, every day. Start by committing to drink one glass of water first thing in the morning (before your coffee or anything else) and then space the other four throughout the day. Once you've got that dialed in, which I consider to be one full month of consistent follow-through, add one more thing. Maybe focusing on your protein intake. For my level of activity I take in about 1.2 grams of protein for every pound of body weight. You can ask your functional medicine practitioner or nutritionist for the amount that's right for you (or check with Dr. Google for a quick answer), and aim for clean protein sources. After you master that one, move on to the next, and so on…
And here’s the thing, even though you’re working toward a vision of health and vitality for 20, 30+ years from now, starting by developing habits of proper hydration and protein intake, you can start feeling incredible in just a matter of weeks or months. With the body properly nourished, it’s time to start getting it into shape. What that looks like will be different for everyone. Which brings us back to the original question: Where do you see yourself 20+ years from now? Able to run marathons in your sleep? Standing on top of Mt. Everest? Or maybe something a little more down to earth. Like just being able to keep up with the grandkids or walking eighteen holes of golf. Whatever the case may be, by building a solid foundation now, with a clear vision of what you want to create, the structure will be sound for decades to come.
So if you’re ready to start building your foundation, join us for one of our Power Series programs. In fact, Power of Vision is just around the corner! Our curriculum is designed to guide you through the process of naming a vision for lifelong health and vitality and developing an action plan to realize that vision. We also train you in the tools, techniques and strategies for managing the nervous system. This is a whole mind and body approach that optimizes health and vitality, not just for today, but for a lifetime. Click HERE to learn more about the Power Series and sign up today!