Why is so much of health and wellness thought of in negative terms, as some sort of self-flagellation leading to possible redemption, whatever that could be? It strikes me as a bit crazy that if you want to attract more people to the idea of living healthily, your base value proposition would be self-denial and avoidance of the things that give us pleasure. To deny pleasure is to deny a large part of our humanity. Taste, scent, smell, touch, and beauty are such important attributes that to say no to them without replacing them with something even better is not really a winning proposition. This is one of the huge issues I have with the bio-hack community. All that self-measurement is fine (lord knows I do a lot of it myself), but what is the benefit if our lives become diminished by it?
As my new friend Wim Hof said to me last week, “It is not crazy to be out of your mind in love with your life.” More love, more joy, more experiences. Now that is something I can get behind. To hear this from the “Ice Man” himself—someone who, because of the crushing loss of his wife, found a new, massive love of life through becoming a prophet of cold and breathing—it would seem like there is no conceivable connection there, until he smiles and tells you it is all about loving who you are, loving life, and saving your soul. This comes from a man whose idea of an easy Sunday is climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in only gym shorts and sneakers. To him—and he makes all of his work easily accessible—it is about remembering who we are and what we are capable of, which expands our ability to love. Bigger life leads to bigger love.
As I often say, we need a why. It is not enough to just be putting up numbers on a board, the new parlor game of competitive biomarkers. We need a reason. If that reason is to live a longer, bigger, more humanly involved life, then I am in. If it is just bio-hack chatter around protocols, stacks and metrics, then I get bored, as there is no why to it all. Maybe it is your kids, maybe you have ambitions, maybe you just love being you, whatever your jam is, I encourage you to have a vision of what your life could be in 10, 20, 30 years. What would that look like if you were healthy and vibrant? This is what gets me to the gym, what has me paying attention to drinking enough water, what compels me to call at least one friend every day. Together we can live larger.
Onward and upward,
David
