Find your Medicine and use it

I really dove into Nahko & Medicine for the People’s musical medicine this summer.  I learned a lot, I felt a lot, I smiled a lot, and I cried a lot.  The song in my heart of late has been Manifesto, especially the following verse:

“They sang, ‘Don’t waste your hate,

Rather, gather and create.

Be of service,

Be a sensible person,

Use your words and don’t be nervous.

You can do this—you’ve got purpose.

Find your medicine and use it.'”

from Manifesto

And so I’ve been trying to find my medicine.  I’ve come to believe that medicine isn’t something only certain people have access to. It’s not necessarily a pill or a plant or a cure or a good meal; it is all of these things and more.  Medicine is what works.  Everything can be medicine at the appropriate time.  Some medicines will work better than others, but it’s set, setting, and internal state dependent.  It’s not one philosophy of medicine vs. another. Medicine is more.

Blood Sugar Crash Course

Though blood sugar has a dramatic impact on your life, you may be one of the people that doesn’t understand it at all. If this is you, be not afraid. I’m going to give you a simple explanation of blood sugar, insulin, and its effect on your behavior in a few paragraphs. No scientific jargon or necessary data. A basic, plain-spoken blood sugar crash course.

You take a bite of chicken and rice. As your stomach begins digestion, signals are sent to your pancreas telling it to produce insulin. Insulin is a hormone necessary to allow cells to use glucose—the simple sugar that makes up carbohydrates—for energy. Insulin ensures that blood glucose / sugar levels don’t rise too rapidly. As food digests and blood sugar levels rise, so does insulin. Eventually, insulin causes blood sugar to fall.

Have you ever just had orange juice for breakfast? You were probably hungry in 10 minutes. Orange juice is full of easily-digestible simple sugars. These spike blood sugar levels, making the pancreas work hard to rapidly produce insulin (blood sugar this high isn’t safe for your body). Insulin is produced and blood sugar, quite dramatically, crashes. You begin to feel hunger—food will surely raise your low blood sugar back up again. You grab a snack, like a bagel. And so the roller coaster continues, keeping your body in this never-ending, stressful cycle.

Is it any wonder why Type II Diabetes is at epidemic levels in America? Our breakfast staples are pancakes with syrup and cereal with milk—food containing massive levels of simple sugars. The insulin roller coaster of the Standard American Diet (which tells you carbohydrates are good and fats are bad) is devastating Americans every day.

Here’s three surefire ways to make your pancreas happy and avoid the insulin rollercoaster:

  1. Eat less often – Suppose you eat 3 meals a day and have only 2 snacks. This means your blood sugar and insulin will only spike 5 times.
  2. Eat balanced meals – Instead of only eating a bagel, maybe you eat a more balanced meal, like avocado last with an egg. Fat and protein eaten with carbohydrates slow down blood sugar levels, so eating healthy fats with carbs is a simple way to regulate blood sugar and produce less insulin.
  3. Try intermittent fasting – Take the concept from number 1, but this time skip breakfast and the snacks. If you finish dinner at 8pm, don’t eat until the next day until 12pm or 2pm. Your body has loads of energy stores it’s just waiting to use. It’s easier than you think.

In the end, the goal is for you to become cognizant of your food choices. Maybe only eating an apple for breakfast may sound “healthy” but isn’t metabolically appropriate. That coffee full of sugar might be a bad first choice of the day.

Start to experiment. See which meals provide you lasting energy. Notice which meals make you feel like crap in an hour. Become your own scientific study. It will help you out in the long run.

Are you Irreplaceable?

So tonight I’m presenting in my Perspectives in Leadership class. My classmate and I were asked to “enhance a discussion” on Trait Theory. This leadership theory says that effective leaders possess similar characteristics, such as intelligence, determination, self-confidence, and integrity. Makes sense. Trait Theory has its flaws, too. One flaw is that good leadership is always developed.

All things considered, we will be talking about being irreplaceable. Like the Beyoncé song. Here’s some guiding questions:

If good leaders have innate qualities, are they considered irreplaceable? Should they be irreplaceable? If a good leader dies and nobody replaces him or her, were they really a good leader? Or is leadership something more profound, something less ego-driven, something that ought to be replicated, replaced, and modeled?

If Bill Belichick died tomorrow, would the Patriots be dominated?

If LeBron couldn’t play on the Lakers, what would the team look like?

If Serena Williams disappeared, what would happen to Women’s Tennis?

Here is my theory: Good leaders are replaceable. They work to set up systems to ensure organizational success and they spend time developing their followers into leaders. Their loss should not be the death of their company.

But this theory is temporal. It doesn’t mean you should strive to be replaced. It means quite the opposite. You should be irreplaceable by becoming a leader and building up those around you; then you may be replaced.

It’s a team approach, an ego-less pursuit. It’s something I will be struggling with my whole life.

I am uniquely irreplaceable. That is why I must be replaced.

Naked iPhone

I’ve been careless with technology in the past. I’ve dropped and broken phones, computers, watches, and Xbox controllers. I recently bought a new iPhone 8 and have been using an old iPhone 6 case to protect it; however, the past few days I’ve been carrying it around without a case. Naked.

Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t have a case on his iPhone. His reasoning is metaphoric yet simple: medieval soldiers respected the swords they carried for the weapons they were. They were careful when handling them. They didn’t throw them around or forget them. Without their swords, they would not be soldiers but strategists.

Is an iPhone not more powerful than a weapon? A sword can kill; a phone can create. A sword opens chasms; a phone is a bridge. A sword is a select class; a phone is for everybody.

Imagine how the world would be different if we treated phones for the weapons they were.

Yin or Yang?

I heard a podcast today. This guy said success is only attainable if you push forward against the odds and do difficult things. Makes sense. I typically default to this way of thinking. It’s how I’ve gotten to where I am in life: hard work.

Last week I listened to another podcast where Joe Dispenza talked about quantum energy fields. He says you can enter into these fields in deep meditations and, with a clear intention and an elevated emotion, you can attract what you want towards you. And it comes. I’ve done some of his meditations and can feel what he’s talking about.

So which is it? Should I chase my dreams or attract them towards me?

On the golf course, I always told golfers to stop trying so hard. Sounds funny, but the harder you try to have a good score the worse your score will be. At track practice, my coach often reminds us to run fast, not hard. And then there’s the Daoist principle of Wu Wui, also called Trying not to Try.

But what about David Goggins, Bedros Keullian, and Ed Mylett? What about Gary Vee? Don’t I have to put the work in to get what I desire? How likely is it that it will just come to me and I will be complete?

Yeah. So probably both.

Made with Love

You’ve heard it said a thousand times from mom, grandmom, and that snarky barista: “I made it with love.” But what if the attitude of the chef or creator actually has an impact—biochemically—on the food we eat?

It’s not an unreasonable claim. My anatomy professor says the heart is merely a pump and that all emotions, be it love or anger, come from your head. But there’s millions of people around the world who believe the heart produces electrochemical, magnetic resonances that extend into the space around a one’s body.

What if those people are right? Suppose it’s true. Suppose the aura emitted by your heart is dictated by emotions. Suppose that aura has electric and magnetic charges. All food is made of elements and molecules (like water) that change in structure and behavior if charged. Thus, the aura of the chef changes the meal while it’s being prepared.

Maybe that aura resonates different frequencies for gratitude and distress. Maybe food responds likewise.

Maybe “Made with Love” makes more of a difference than we think.

Winners Write History

We tend to think history is unbiased, that the facts we learned in history class are true events and stories of the past. But who wrote those records? Who documented those stories?

Long story short: it was rich white men. Men who were learned, literate, and able to keep records safe for many years. That doesn’t sound unbiased.

Maybe we should start looking at what we “know” through a more critical lens. Not everything is as it seems. There’s a lot more to these stories that we don’t understand yet.

The 3 Foot Giant

Sean Stephenson has transitioned from this life to the next. He was born to rid the world of insecurities. He may not have achieved his goal, but he helped millions of people rid themselves of their insecurities and learn to love themselves again. The world will miss his big smile and enormous heart.

Here is his most famous youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaRO5-V1uK0

Lesson 1: Never believe a prediction that doesn’t empower you.

Lesson 2: You are not your condition

Lesson 3: The real prison is in your mind; freedom is within yourself

Wisdom beyond stature. Love beyond all odds.

Rest in peace, Sean. I love you, too.

Open Your Mind

An intelligent professor with nothing else to learn lectures to a class too disinterested and uncomfortable to challenge him.

A learned professor is slow to make assumptions while discussing controversial perspectives of reality with her thoughtful, respectful class.

Which is higher education?

Mother Earth is Stubborn

“We’re killing the planet” is common jargon these days. Translated, this means that we have to do something to save the environment from manmade pollution. There’s no doubt we are devastating the natural world. Even if you don’t believe climate change is real, it’s hard to dispute the Pacific garbage patch, a collection of plastic in the Pacific Ocean larger than Texas. For centuries we have been ravaging Earth’s natural resources and exchanging them for pollutants. These pollutants end up in our water, our livestock, our food, and, subsequently, our bodies, causing illness and disease.

Mother Earth surely cares about our destructive ways. She wants to be treated with more respect, but she’ll be around far longer than any of us. Though the sentiment of “we’re killing the planet” is true, it isn’t accurate. Mother Earth has survived many extinction events: comets, meteor showers, drastic weather changes, etc. She has survived and will survive again.

We are the ones who won’t survive. We are fragile organisms building a prison around ourselves with walls made of plastic and oil and styrofoam and shit. Mother Earth provides for us and loves us. She hopes we make better choices—not just buying paper straws.

But if we don’t? She will still be here, waiting for us to return to her and pay homage.