You’re not an idiot

It’s so easy to get lost in self help books and TikTok. It’s so fun to start a new routine, habit, diet or exercise regimen. But often lurking behind the extortionate energy you’re spending “healing and improving” yourself. Is a nasty habit masking itself as will power. Avoidance.

When creating a satisfying, balanced, healthy and happy life. You have to begin with self regulation. A mistake I am guilty of making is chasing dopamine disguised as self help. Buying a new book, never to read it. Using dopamine as a reward and enjoying it as it flows in when we are achieving is perfectly fine. But be careful not to forget that taking care of yourself is important in of itself. Not simply a thrill or pleasure seeking behaviour. Taking real care of ourselves reaps benefits maybe you’re not even anticipating yet.

Your problems will grow with you, you will never out grow them. But learning to self regulate will help you break away from identifying with your problems. You can’t live awaiting for a life defining day. It’s not coming, graduation will fill you with emotions. Pregnancy can be a miracle, marriage maybe the most beautiful day of your life so far. There’s nothing worse than that feeling, hitting a milestone and it doesn’t quite feel as good as we anticipated. Doesn’t feel real, doesn’t feel special. Embodiment is essential to feeling and making the most of your life. Just as well your body is often prepared to work with you on this one.

Let’s just remember, your mind and body have adapted and evolved from microscopic organisms. Our prehistoric ancestors merely a recent glimpse of our full past. Before you were a toddler learning to walk, processing language, or producing sounds. You were a collaboration of cells, learning that they needed to processes the world around them to survive. Plants display the same genius with some developing colourful patches resemblant of butterfly’s. To deter real butterfly’s laying eggs on them, with the caterpillars then eating the plant.

The plant had to detect the threat, analyse a pattern of events and miraculously as nature so effortlessly does time and time again, evolve. The cells that make you had to learn their jobs too, long before you learned how to consciously operate them. Before you could learn to read your body had to evolve and produce eyes, create the systems required for vision. Learning never began in childhood, the womb, or even as a cell in your parents or grandparents body. It began millions and millions of years ago.

With microscopic organisms having a go, exploring in the ways they could, evolving and learning. Becoming you, so understandably with the very limited knowledge I have of just how impossibly brilliant human life is. I have a rather profound fondness for learning to understand and work alongside my mind and body. After all they are the experts here, I’ve only been in charge for 22 years.

We face stress, the body develops responses, assists us in evacuating from predators, even provides the potential for down regulation once we are safe. Yet we watch our stress rise at an inconvenient time and we hilariously, innocently project that there is something inherently wrong with us. Human functioning let’s not forget involves shitting out what we don’t need and vomiting up what we can’t take. It’s a rather humbling experience isn’t it. We have an immune system designed and devoted to taking care of us, instincts that prepare us for things our the driver aka conscious you hasn’t even experienced. Our cells carry information from generation to generationkeeping us safe and help us survive. We fall in love, display maternal instincts, we build communities.

We eat super processed food, spend too much time in doors, in artificial light, read the news and before it’s even 11am know of the worldwide current horror stories polluting the planet. We smoke when we need a deep breath, drink to avoid thinking (hysterically only to think more). We watch reality tv, deeply invested in the gossip, engaging in it only for it to fuel our anxiety regarding how we must be perceived. We don’t move nearly enough, we don’t utilise our body and mind the way we could and should.

Then have the audacity to say there’s something wrong with our brain or body.

People far more intelligent than me and maybe you discovered cells, bacteria and medicine. So you can take antibiotics, or antihistamines. Intelligent people designed electricity, Bluetooth, engines, door hinges, Jesus how annoying would life be manually moving doors all of the time. We live in an age where we are lucky enough to have access to so much information. So much help, support, science. Use it, really use it, start with box breathing, start with drinking more water. Something manageable.

Because yes, sometimes our bodies make mistakes, autoimmune and anxiety disorders for example. But give yourself some grace, your bodies consist of tiny little cells. Fighting tiny little cells, navigating bacteria, alcohol, free radicals, artificial additives, micro-plastics. We can sometimes fight of cancer before we’re even aware it exists in our bodies. Our mind and body are managing so much more than we realise on a daily basis, give them a hand, and have a go. Make it count, by making sure it’s tangible. Because I reckon when we start to lend a helping hand to our bodies, they begin showing us just how impossibly incredible they really are.

Remember your body doesn’t care how you feel, the world doesn’t owe you life. But miraculously, we seem to get along pretty well. Your body wants to be free of disease and move freely. As do you, isn’t that remarkably lucky.