Here’s A Way To Practice Health Decisiveness

This only works if you have a pretty good idea of what you need to work on.

Luckily, there’s a good chance you already know. And if you don’t, in the age of ChatGPT and Perplexity, it’s the work of a few good prompts to get a framework for getting yourself better.

Sidebar: I emphasize the following with my own patients:

• Seeing their primary care doctor periodically (yup)
• Prioritizing the biggies: heart attack, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, sarcopenia
• Minimizing infectious disease risks
• Accounting for accidents
• Prioritizing inner work

With whatever you need to work on in mind, here’s the practice:

1. Close your eyes, take a cleansing breath to settle down, and listen
2. Listen for that little nudge towards a health and fitness direction. It may be wordless, it may be an actual phrase
3. But listen for a little inner hint that sounds like, “Well, since you’re asking about health, you probably should do XYZ”
4. The moment you translate the nudge, act on it

I’m writing these words after midnight, squinting at the cursor on the screen, and when I take a settling breath and close my eyes, the inner voice is rolling its eyes at me: DUDE. Close the laptop and go to bed, already.

I just wrote a piece about fearlessness correlating with decisiveness. You’ll make beaucoup progress by not caring how odd you’ll look, breaking off from your standard routine to go for a walk, do some calisthenics, hydrate, or go to bed.

But if you have a longer way to go before you get healthy or fit enough, you could probably use more consistent action and a little less propriety.

Life will blow things in your path. You don’t need practice picking up leaves. You need practice remembering which way is up, and getting right back on track.

Closing the laptop, now.