Health Homework (26) Find a way to honor yourself and celebrate your life, then do it
Wear clothes that fit and look good. Take care of your health, diet, teeth, emotions. Don’t tolerate abuse from anyone. Let yourself be happy.
Health Homework (26) Find a way to honor yourself and celebrate your life, then do it—Easier said than done for those of us who grew up in poor or dysfunctional families.
What are some of the ways we can honor ourselves?
Wear clothes that fit and look good.
Take care of your health, diet, teeth, emotions.
Don’t tolerate abuse from anyone.
If you have to tolerate abuse to keep your job or to get through medical school, then you have to 1) ensure that you tell yourself you’re just playing the game in order to finally get what you want, 2) ensure that it has a clear defined time limit, 3) have some social support from friends and family so that you can express yourself and “de-roll” from the toxicity so that it does not contaminate other parts of your life.
Protect the quality of your life.
Let yourself be happy.
Respect your time—put your time to good use whether it is productive or enjoyable. Avoid “neutral” or “no gain” experiences.
Today I hung some of my favorite photos; in the process, I realized that these have given me great joy because they were some of my favorite, rare or beautiful experiences.
I could go back and check the receipts, but I’m guessing maybe having these five pictures printed cost me less than $200. These days a person can pretty easily spend close to $100 just having lunch in Miami. So even though I try to be frugal, these are photos of memories that will last me the rest of my life.
Honoring these experiences gives me a sense of peace because they were good experiences; they were parts of my life that I either carry with me or have to acknowledge that I will never have again.
A beautiful outdoor statue in the Raval neighborhood where we lived in Barcelona.
A huge propeller from an ocean-going ship that we found by surprise on top of a mountain in San Sebastian, Spain—my favorite “home” city in the world.
My favorite wave-breaker on the beach in Barceloneta.
A large outdoor monument to open books that we found on Passeig de Gràcia (which roughly translates to Street of Grace or Street of Thanks; as I recall this was in 2016 when I had just finished the publication of Inflammation Mastery, hence the photo of me next to a huge book.
A perfect photo of my friend Tariq accompanying my wife at our wedding.
These are now the photos that I look at in my home office; I am sure you will see these again as the backdrop in an upcoming video!
If you grew-up in a poor/dysfunctional family, then you may have learned one of the following rules:
You can’t spend money on yourself—at least not without feeling shame or guilt.
You can’t let yourself be excessively happy or “too happy”, because this means you’re not carrying the burden of the rest of the [miserable] family and/or that you’re being reckless with time or money…or you’re just being frivolous and you’re on your way to Hell.
Celebrating good things in your life puts you at risk of being called arrogant or a spendthrift.
My mom’s side of the family never escaped their experience of living through the Great Depression, being poor, and then living through World War 2 (both of my grandfathers fought in WW2 [both of them in the US Navy] and my great aunt was in the early AWACS—Airborne Warning and Control System). We could be happy, but not “too happy.” We could have nice things, as long as we did not use them or enjoy them too much. I had to work for many years to outgrow those family rules; indeed, I was clear on my need to escape their mentality and this was an important part of why I moved away when I was 23yo. I had to push myself to allow myself to be happy and outgrow the mentality of misery; sometimes this meant buying something very nice but not extravagant; very clearly my second and largest tattoo was a symbol of my commitment to live creatively, which was a direct affront to my family’s monotony. One song in particular always occurred to me as rebellious as her ability to relax and be comfortable was completely foreign to anything I’d seen:
It's perfectly fine to sleep in a chair
From Monday 'til Saturday
In my early 20s, every time I heard those lyrics I felt both uncomfortable and desirous—in essence I was jealous of her ability to relax and at the same time I was trying to give myself permission to be more relaxed.
Sing your life
make no mistake, my friend
all of this will end
so sing it now
all the things you love
You’ve come a long way, baby.