Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Find Rest Before Rest Finds You – Breaking Busy

I’m a couple weeks late to the ‘New Year, New You’ talk and hype.  I have done this purposely.  You have gotten it and are getting it from every media source.  The majority of the messages these past few weeks and every time this year is that ‘YOU SHOULD DO SOMETHING to better your life.’  This year, I want you to focus on NOT DOING.

In my 5 pillars, I discuss that most people are running from bears on a daily basis.  The ‘bears’ are stressors physically, chemically, and emotionally.  These stressors are things categorized as Deficient and/or Toxic to sustain health.

One of the biggest Toxicities we have in life is being busy.  If you ask my staff, I hate the word busy.  I cringe when people say, ‘I know you’re busy….”  Busy means to be ‘foolishly active.’  My 1 and 3 year old are busy and that’s ok.  Their role right now is to experience life and the world around them for the first time.  They have no responsibilities to provide for themselves or our family.

breaking busy

Busyness has become a weird standard of measure of our attempt to keep up with the Joneses.  It’s a currency gaining more prestige than the latest iPhone, car, or NFL games attended.   The more I meet with people, hear their story, examine them, analyze lab work, and schedule them, busyness might be the #1 bear attack that causes the 5 pillars, which led them to their condition they are seeking help.  We try to cram more things into the same amount of time each day, often looking back at the day wondering what we actually got accomplished.

The solution?  We feel we didn’t accomplish that much so it means we have to do MORE.  Since we can’t add time to our day, we have to add speed.  The top reason for speed is to obtain things you don’t really need to impress people you don’t really like.

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The Not-So-Obvious Toxic Top 10

Health comes down to 2 primary categories, sufficiency and purity.  It’s easier to create sufficiency because you can keep adding good and necessary steps.  It’s tougher to create purity because you have to remove or avoid things that you most likely love.  Toxins are one of those things that are all around us and we have to be diligent to avoid.

Toxin: A substance (physical or energetic) that places a stress or challenge to the physiological systems of the body and whose net effect at a given time is inflammatory, poisonous, depleting, and/or disrupting to the harmonious functioning of a whole being. 

To make it easier, I’ve created a Toxic Top Ten of things that I feel people often overlook in their health journey.  Many focus on just the chemical toxins around us and get overwhelmed.  Start with these not-so-obvious toxic top ten to jump start your detox.   These are in no order of hierarchy.poison skull

Worry

Worry is a powerful stimulator of the fight or flight response.  If someone is constantly in fight or flight, the body will move into a series of events that rips the body apart.  Digestion, fertility, thyroid function, and immune function get thrown to the way side.  How do you combat worry?  You put things into perspective.

If I find myself worrying, I play worse case scenario of that event actually happening.  I just opened up a new office and there is a bit of worry that goes with a risk like that.   What is the worse case scenario if it flops?  Is my or my family’s life going to be in danger?  Nope.  Will my or my family’s health be in jeopardy?  Not likely.  Could we lose our house?  Maybe, but not for a year.   People live in foreclosed houses for months after foreclosures and in that time, I can go delivery pizza or something to make ends meat.

I would have life, I would have shelter, and I would have health.  There’s not much to worry about then is there?  The worry comes from comparison of your previous situation or future anticipation.  When you actually sit and take a moment to be thankful for what you have and realize, life is pretty good, worry is hard to do.  You can’t worry and have gratitude at the same time.  Someone in prison has all they need.  It’s the comparison of what they had or could have outside that jail cell that sparks worry and discontent.

Gossip

Dave Ramsey defines gossip as ‘discussing a problem with someone that can’t affect the outcome.’  If people stopped talking every time they were about to discuss a problem with someone that can’t affect the outcome, we would live in a quieter, more peaceful, and productive world. An end result would be a lot more solutions in this world.

Instead of gabbing about problems with someone that has no power, that person will take action and create change.  Less gossip, more action.  You don’t like the action?  Instead of sitting around talking about the most recent change with someone that can’t do anything about it, go make your own change.  Be the change you want to see in the world.

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