UNLEASHING YOUR HEALTH POTENTIALS

In May this year, for the first time ever, I delivered a whole training on the Neuro-Semantics of Health. While I had presented various presentations of Meta-States for Health at IASH in Denmark, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, this was the first time for devoting an entire three-day program on health.

Health is an interesting “state” or “experience” because it differs from those experiences that we normally call “a mind-body-emotion state” in that unlike confidence, joy, relaxation, anger, curiosity, fear, and so on, health is not a state that you “access, amplify, and apply.” Wouldn’t it be nice if it was? Wouldn’t it be great that when you are feeling tired, achy, fatigued, or down with a cold or flu—you could just accessed a state of health—remembered a time when you felt great physically or imagined what it would be like to be in a state of health like an Olympiad, and then amplified it—and then suddenly find yourself in an optimal healthy state?

But sadly, it doesn’t work that way. Health is not that kind of a state. The energy, vitality, the relaxation, the feeling of well-being, etc. results from a great many things: your eating, exercising, sleeping, relationships, career, finances, values, etc. It results from the genes you inherited, from your health or ill-health habits, from the accidents or diseases that you have experienced, from the care or lack of care that you’ve received from doctors, nurses, and other health practitioners. It results from the meanings in your life and the quality of the meaningfulness of your everyday life.

Your body, as a whole mind-body-emotion system, operates systemically. And that means that many variables of the system interact to create your level and quality of health. Your physical- mental well-being results from how well you are aligned in all of these factors. To effectively unleash your potentials for health and well-being you need to create a systemic congruency. To do everything well except one thing (perhaps not eating right, or not exercising regularly, or not having a passion to devote yourself to) and you can undermine your health.

In this, health is similar to wealth. Wealth also is a systemic experience that is not created instantaneously by merely “remembering a time” or “imagining what it would be like” and stepping into the state. It is created out of a whole set of variables over a period of time—development of skills, identification of a passion, devotion to a career, intentionality, effective habits in handling money (budgeting, saving, investing), in handling work (fitness of skills to job), in handling relationships (creating rapport, caring about others, giving good

service, selling, negotiation, etc.).

It is this very systemic nature of health that requires a whole different approach to it. It requires first of all that you think long-term and that, second, you think in terms of healthy habits. And of course, this means that you develop sufficient intentionality to be healthy in order to create sufficient self-discipline to get yourself to do what you know you need to do. This is especially true of eating, exercising, relaxing, and sleeping—the four biggest factors for your everyday long-term health.

And about each of these you probably already know lots and lots and lots of stuff that if only you could get yourself to regularly and consistently do, you’d be in much, much better health. Your weight would be well-managed, you’d have plenty of energy and a sense of vitality for the activities of your life, you’d wake up each day well-rested and ready for the day.

Now if by chance you happen to not know how to eat moderately and intelligently, or how to move your body and give it sufficient and moderate daily exercise, or how to relax after you expend energy, to stretch, recoup, and take care of yourself with rejuvenating activities, or how to give yourself 8 or 9 hours of delightful sleep— then there are hundreds if not thousands of books in your local library that will give you that information. Really! Go and look. Or, if you’re too lazy to get to the library, on online and let your fingers do the walking to the thousands of websites full of this basic knowledge.

But my guess is that knowing what to do about eating, exercising, relaxing, and sleeping is not your problem. It’s not mine. Mine like yours is implementing what I know. It is integrating and executing my knowledge. It is getting my neurology wired so that I transform what I know into unconscious habits. Then it becomes my way of moving through my days and through the world.

If that’s your problem—then you may need some new frames for winning the outer game of well- being and vitality. So dust off your copy of Winning the Inner Game (2006, previously titled, Frame Games 1999) and develop the frames. Or get out Games Fit and Slim People Play (2001). Or if you want a whole book on getting yourself to do what you know —purchase the brand new book, Achieving Peak Performance (2009).

Or get yourself a Meta-Coach and have that Meta-Coach coach you through the Mind-to-Muscle pattern again and again until you can put “Implementor of What I Know” on your business card. When you translate what you know mentally into neurological patterns of your body (mind-to- muscle), you close the knowing-doing gap. Put that on your business card: Closer — of the Knowing-Doing Gap.

Unleashing Your Health Potentials #2