Begin with the End in Mind

In the last article applying Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to your health, we looked at how to apply Habit 1 – Being Proactive. Proactive people consistently look to add to their health as opposed to waiting for a crisis to look after themselves. As a result, they are not only healthier, more vital and have more energy, they typically face fewer costly health crises as well.

This week we continue our journey and will delve into Habit 2 – Beginning with the End in Mind. Habit 2 is about knowing where you are ultimately going in the short and long term, taking a BIG PICTURE view of your health, and asking yourself what is REALLY important when it comes to your health.

Being clear on what end you have in mind is important for several reasons. First, it will prevent you from going down avenues that either don’t help or actually hurt your big picture goals. Second, it will provide you with motivation and inspiration when challenged. Finally, it will serve as your guide when faced with choices about what to do or not to do.

Let’s say you want to lose some weight. Nothing wrong with that goal if it is important to you. A short-sighted approach would ask, ‘how much weight?’ If we begin with the end in mind, several other questions need to be asked.

“What is the purpose of losing the weight? Why do I want to lose it? What value will losing the weight provide me? Opportunities as a result? What other benefits will I get? How will the weight loss impact those I care about? Is this consistent with the Ultimate vision for my life?”

Do you see the difference? The first approach MAY produce a transient short term change that may or may not have an overall benefit to your health. The second approach is much more likely to succeed in both the short and long term and actually get you what you really want.

If we took the short sighted approach to losing weight, there are many ways we could go about it. For example, starting to use heroin could be an effective strategy for achieving your goal.

‘Ridiculous!’ you say? Absolutely, yet this is why it is important to begin with the end in mind. Along the same lines as heroin – but less ridiculous – doing a fad, crash diet, working out incessantly, taking a diet drug or herb or looking for any one of the many quick fixes out there can help you with the short-sighted objective without moving you towards what you really want.

If you begin with the end in mind you know WHY you want to lose weight. Perhaps it is to have the energy and vitality to achieve other goals. Maybe you want to look more attractive. Live longer and healthier so that you can play with your grandchildren and watch them grow up. Maybe you just want to be healthy enough to dance with your spouse.

You see, if you know WHY you want to lose weight, now it becomes much clearer HOW you will go about doing it. In any of the examples in the above paragraph, taking heroin (or following any of those options) is inconsistent with what you really want and are therefore really NOT options. Different focus, different destiny.

I invite you to all spend some time to look at your goals from the perspective of Beginning with The End in Mind and I will leave you with some homework before next week. Again, feel free to apply this to ALL areas of your life – not only your health.

While this may sound a bit morbid, the first part of your homework is to write your own eulogy. Imagine you are sitting at the back of the room at your own funeral. Write the script for what you would want your eulogy to say about you and your life. What will you be remembered for? What did you value? What did you contribute? Who did you inspire and how? Spend some time on this exercise.

Once your eulogy is complete, I would like you to write a personal mission statement in regards to your health. A short paragraph with 2 or 3 sentences is plenty. When it comes to your health, what are you about, what are you committed to and what are you creating. Make sure your mission is consistent with the life vision you created with your eulogy.

Please, do this homework and next week we will be ready to Put First Things First!

No Practice is An Island

Gault Family Chiropractic used to essentially function as an island. While I did refer patients to other health practitioners and even chiropractors and received some referrals from them, that was the extent of my interactions with other professionals. They did their thing and I did mine.

This has all changed recently. I work with trainers, a physiotherapist and a nurse practitioner as a part of Project Strong. A group of health practitioners in Cornwall has been started where we can regularly communicate with each other. I recently had a great lunch with one of our newer chiropractors. I also recently began to meet with a group of “regular” chiropractors twice a month for conference calls. Finally, as I have become more involved in Olympic weightlifting I have been exposed to many injury and mobility interventions. Yes, I have stepped out of my shell!

WHY?

Being exposed to the often great work that inspires some great people has really forced me to examine why it is I do what I do. And that is a very good thing! Why do I choose to provide NSA and SRI? Why not do any of the other interventions that get some great results?

Last week I was watching a video with one of the trainers I lift weights with. In it, the practitioner was using a strange little device on a top level lifter and within seconds had drastically increased both his range of motion and strength. Very cool! This was a great service to that man at that time. I had to question myself, “Why don’t I do that?”

Cool…But!

The fact is that while I did find it cool, it just did not inspire me that much. I found myself thinking, “Who cares? What difference will this make tomorrow or next week? What difference will this really make in his life?” Understand that this is not a criticism for what was done; it just did not inspire ME to want to do it.

Inspiration

This brought me to the next question. What DOES inspire me? What is it about NSA and SRI that motivates me to travel the world attending seminars, stay up late writing articles, donate hours of my time giving workshops and exclusively provide this care in my office? Here is what I came up with.

Got Awareness?

The first quality that inspires me is increased awareness. If an intervention does not include greater awareness I am simply not interested. In any area of life, if I have a challenge I want to learn from it. Same goes for health. When we become more aware it allows us to learn which means that we take something into our future that will be of benefit to us. Unfortunately, most health interventions either do nothing to support greater awareness or even worse actively decrease it. A pain killer essentially dumbs you to what is actually happening and in this case ignorance can be bliss. NSA and SRI only work with an increase in awareness first.

Sustainability

Next, I am inspired by sustainability. The reason I first sought out NSA as a chiropractic practice was that the way I was previously applying chiropractic was not creating sustainable changes. If you have to keep doing the same thing to get the same result (or worse) the care is not sustainable. The whole idea of getting fixed until you get messed up again is based on a non-sustainable model. NSA and SRI create sustainable results because with each level of care there is a new and refined learning that occurs. This is also why a person who has achieved intermediate or advanced care strategies can come back into care after years away and very quickly take over from where they left off.

The Wholism Shebang!

Finally, I am inspired by wholism. What I mean by this is that the impact is not only physical, but also benefits the mind, emotions and spirit. Often people will sacrifice one for the other. While NSA and SRI are applied purely through the physical body they are done so in a way that produces a myriad of mental, emotional, stress, and quality of life benefits.

Your Turn

Having gone through this exercise after practicing NSA for over 10 years I highly encourage that you do the same for the different areas of your life. Why do you do what you do? In my experience people who do the things that excite and inspire them are not only very happy, but are usually the best in their respective fields. This is certainly true of chiropractors and other health professionals.

Choose Your Tools Wisely

The other thing I realized is that what I do is not really about NSA and SRI. They are merely the tools I use to achieve the results that inspire me. If I ever find another tool that is more effective at doing so I would be happy to change WHAT I do. As far as I can tell right now though, there is nothing even close to NSA and Dr. Epstein’s reorganizational healing modalities at creating the changes that get me up in the morning and keep me awake at night.

Click here for free access to the JACM paper outlining Dr. Epstein’s latest models on health and healing.

Click HERE to view a video of Dr. Epstein demonstrating a Level 1 NSA entrainment.

“To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

–       Roger Ebert