Exercise Should NEVER BE an Intervention

IS THE WORD “EXERCISE” A CURSE WORD IN YOUR LIFE? DOES IT CONJUR IMAGES OF PAIN AND SUFFERING? When you read the title of today’s episode, are you celebrating? Today, I’ll unpack this for you and give you an alternative.

✅ Key Points in this Episode

[00:00]    Welcome to the Genesis Zone Show
[01:24]    Is EXERCISE an Intervention?
[03:12]    The Dismal Effects of a Sedentary Lifestyle
[03:44]    We are Designed for Movement!
[06:38]    Challenge Your Cognitive Bias for Exercise
[07:27]    Reframe the word EXERCISE
[09:14]    2 Minute Reframing activity

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🧬Find more information about genetics, epigenetics and how they impact your overall health and performance🧬 in Dr Brian's FREE Master Class on Gene Hacking https://drbriangbrown.com/genehack/bootcamp

Transcript

Exercise Should NEVER BE An Intervention!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

exercise, celebrate, gratitude, gym, cognitive bias, biases, intervention, information, muscles, improve, sedentary lifestyles

 Dr Brian G Brown  01:00

The mission is simple: to help high achievers naturally eliminate emotional and physical obstacles, so they can optimize their life for higher achievement. 

Welcome, you have just entered the Genesis zone. Good day and welcome to the Genesis zone show. This is Dr. Brian Brown. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us on this beautiful Thursday. 

Does the word exercise seem like a curse word to you? Or has it seemed like a curse word over the over the grand scheme of your life? Does it conjure up images of pain and suffering? When you read the title of today's episode;  are you celebrating, or are you dreading this topic? 

Today I'll unpack this for you and give you an alternative. So, let's jump right in. My relationship with exercise has been an on again off again, love affair. There have been times when I've been divorced from exercise. We've just simply been on the outs for sometimes years at a time. And then there have been times when we've been in a torrid love affair together and just can't get enough of each other. The one or both of those scenarios sound familiar? 

Well, so here's the reality, as we know it. Exercise is often viewed as an intervention, because we're told, maybe even programmed, to believe that it can be used to prevent or treat various health conditions or diseases. 

Intervention

What is the term intervention anyway? Well, an intervention as in this example of exercise, refers to an action taken to improve or maintain health. Now, study after study has shown that the action of regular exercise has numerous health benefits such as:

-Reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, 

-Improving bone density, 

-Enhancing mental health, 

-And even reducing the risk of some types of cancer. 

In certain situations, research even shows that exercise can be used as an actual treatment for certain medical conditions such as:

-Diabetes, 

-Obesity, and 

-Depression. 

Sounds like good medicine, doesn't it? I mean, after all, exercise is a deliberate action taken to improve your health outcomes. Therefore, it has to be an intervention, right? I mean, don't most health professionals recommend it along with their other therapies, prescriptions and treatments? Yeah, most good ones do. It has to be a good thing to do, right? 

If everybody's on board with this? Well, that would be correct if we were human doings, instead of human beings. But we're not we're not human doings. We're not simply defined by what we do and how we do it. We exist and we need to be present in this moment. 

A recent study published in the journal Antioxidants about seven days ago, found that cultures and societies across the western world have normalized sedentary lifestyles. But worse yet, this normalization of sedentary lifestyles has created a major mindset shift in people toward belief patterns that view exercise as simply an intervention. The research goes on to explain that human physiology in other words, our bodies original design, our makeup, our structure, was created for movement and they point out that movement, the way our body was designed to move as critical for preserving the health of your mitochondria function at the genetic level. 

Now, just in case this sounds like a lesson in Greek to you, quite simply, this means whether you believe it or not, that your body was made for movement, and lots of it. And movement is needed to maintain not only your brain, heart, blood vessel, muscle and metabolism health. But movement is needed for making sure that your mitochondria are running in tip top shape. So that these trillions of mighty little power houses, these little factories of power within each cell of your body can keep you healthy. 

Cognitive Bias

So, here's the rub. There's this not so little phenomenon called cognitive bias. Now cognitive bias refers to a tendency for your mind to make judgments or decisions in ways that sometimes are not completely rational, objective or unbiased. This usually occurs on the subconscious level, though it can also occur on the current conscious level as well. 

These biases can be influenced by our personal experiences, our emotions, and our beliefs. Unfortunately, these experiences, emotions and beliefs can lead us to make errors in judgment and perception. 

For example, we might favor information that confirms our preexisting beliefs, and ignore information that contradicts it all together. In the example of exercise, and this new information that's come out in the past week that I just described from the study. This means that some people listening to this show right now will continue living a sedentary lifestyle, which means they'll continue to slowly decay, the function of their mitochondria at the genetic level, and place themselves at risk for all kinds of health problems and challenges. 

Maybe you developed your biases as a child, there was just never that much importance placed on exercise in your family among your peers. Maybe you developed your biases as an adult, because you feel like you look foolish when you attempt to exercise. So therefore, you just give up and you don't try. 

Here are three things you can do to challenge your cognitive bias related to exercise, so that you never have to view it as an intervention, a curse, word, pain, suffering, or a have to do event ever again. 

Challenge Your Cognitive Bias

1)    Be aware of your biases towards exercise. Being truthful with yourself is the first part of resolving stinking thinking. Now honesty goes a long way towards healing. And it allows you to begin to adopt newer, more productive and more healthy ways of thinking. So be aware of your biases, take inventory of them often. 

2)    Reframe the word exercise, meaning look at exercise from a different perspective. Now I want you to do an exercise with me if you're listening live, if you're listening to the recording, it works just as well. But go ahead and close your eyes. And you can do this anytime that you feel any resistance about the word exercise, the concept of exercise, the emotions, the beliefs related to exercise, any resistance that you experience at all, related to getting out of bed in the morning at 5am to go to the gym or walking in the door, the gym, because you don't want to embarrass yourself anytime you get resistance. If that happens, guess if you're walking in the door to the gym, turn around, go back, get in your car and do this exercise takes literally less than a minute. Okay? 

Remove the Resistance Doing this 2minute Activity

I want you to close your eyes. Right now. Sit quietly, I want you to place your dominant hand. So if you're right handed, it's going to be your right hand will resist rather we'll go on top of your left wrist. Okay, if you're watching this, I want you to turn your wrist down toward each other where your palm to palm and your thumbs are pointed down and lace your fingers. Then you can place your hands up into your chest or you can sit them down in your lap. 

Okay, so while you're sitting quietly dominant wrist on top of nondominant wrist, turn the palms down, lace your fingers together Sit like that. And now I want you to take your dominant side ankle and place the dominant side ankle, just on top of the non-dominant side ankle.

Dr Brian G Brown  10:12

Okay, once you're in that position, I want you to sit with your eyes closed, I want you to sit with the word exercise, any images, beliefs, emotions, or concepts related to exercise, I just want you to sit with it. You know, while you're in this moment, there may be some discomfort that comes up, that's okay. Allow for it to come up, recognize it, acknowledge it, eventually, it's going to reach a place where there's no more negative feeling towards it. It's magical how this process works. 

Then, once you feel that place of peace settling in, where you no longer have any negative connection to the word exercise, or the concept of exercise, with your eyes still closed, I just want to reposition the term exercise for you. And I want you to repeat silently in your head. Exercise is a benefit and privilege for me. If you need to repeat it again, repeat it again, exercise is a benefit and a privilege for me. 

All right, you can open your eyes. That's a simple exercise. It took us less than two minutes to do because I was doing a lot of talking, you can do that exercise in less than a minute. And it works remarkably well. And you can use it anytime you feel resistance about exercise coming up. 

Now I want you to repeat this process as many times as it takes until you feel like you have reached a place of peace related to this concept or these beliefs or feelings around exercise. All right, 

3)    Give gratitude for the physical body that you have. This is huge, I can't tell you how huge this is. Start at your toes and work your way up to the top of your head. give gratitude, gratitude for every working part. Even the non-working parts and we're going to talk about that in a minute. Give gratitude for your toes, your feet, your nerves, your joints, your muscles, your blood vessels, your liver, your lymphatics, your ligaments and tendons, your brain, your senses, your organs. 

You can even name these one by one if you want to your intestines, your bladder, your kidneys, your liver, gallbladder, heart, pancreas, lungs, you get the idea. I'm not bragging, but I reached the place two years ago, where going to the gym, working out exercising whatever you want to call it no longer felt like I have to. But I can tell you one thing, I spent a lot of time and that number two that I gave you, where I'll often had to sit in that posture, where I had to get to a place where I had this, this nonattachment, no emotional attachment whatsoever ever to the word exercise. And I spent a lot of time in number three, and I still do it to this day, on my drive to the gym every single morning, I'm giving gratitude from head to toe for every part of my body, even the parts that ache. 

Now, I gotta be honest with you, I enjoy going to the gym now. I'm not doing it out of fear. I'm not doing it out of shame. I'm not doing it out of guilt. And trust me, there were many years that I did it for all three of those reasons. I'm doing it because it's good. And I have been blessed with a working body that lives with the distinct privilege of being able to move and move well. Have there been days where I didn't want to get up and go to the gym? Sure. There have been many of them. 

In the beginning, I was embarrassed because of other people at the gym. They just seem to have it together. They even looked good while they were doing it. I mean, it's just crazy. The insecurities that we get when we think about exercise. And I had all of that. But I kept challenging those thoughts. And I eventually came to the point where I just didn't care. In other words, I didn't have any emotional connection to it. I didn't have an emotional connection to what other people were thinking. What other people were saying, what that little devil that was sitting on my shoulder trying to whisper negative stuff into my ears was saying I didn't it didn't matter. I ignored it. I ignored it all. And I doubled down on my gratitude, and I kept marching forward. 

I also began to celebrate the smallest of milestones. I mean, woohoo, one pound this week, two inches this month, more energy during the day, better sleep, I actually dragged myself out of the bed at 5am. When I didn't feel like even going, I celebrated it, no matter how big or small the win was, I celebrated it. I learned to recognize the wins every single time, no matter how big or small, and celebrate them, and then immediately give thanks for them all. 

If there's one thing I know, having formally been 390 pounds, you've got this, you have more potential in your little toe, then you can even fathom, learn to love yourself and respect yourself, for where you are right now. Celebrate you, not just your accomplishments, celebrate you. 

And the last thing I'm going to leave you with is that gratitude exercises about giving thanks for a body that is in working order. Even if you feel like crap, even if all of your joints are aching, even if your muscles are so sore, you can't even think straight, even if your ligaments and tendons are stiff because you're quote unquote, over 40. And that's just the way it is even if your muscles feel weak. And even if your body just seems like it's not cooperating with you,

                                                 Give Gratitude for it Anyway. 

You know, the Bible says plainly speak of things that aren't as though they are. Sometimes you have to meet yourself in the middle somewhere between the rubble of where you're coming from, and the reality of where you're about to be. Speak life over yourself. Guard your tongue, guard your thoughts challenge them at every waking moment. When that negativity creeps in, and trust me, it's going to creep in at your weakest moment. It happens all the time. But challenge it every single time. And never, ever, ever give up the fight, because you are worth every ounce of energy you put into the fight. 

If you struggled with weight issues, like I have most of my life. And it's seeming like that you just can't get your diet dialed in, you can't get your exercise dialed in. There's a tidbit of information I want to share with you right now, a lot of people don't know this, I've never advertised this because I didn't want to be known as a weight loss Guru, I still don't want to be known as a weight loss guru. But it's a natural consequence of what we do atherogenesis and there are genes there specific genetic profiles that I can check that eliminate all the guesswork. It tells us what type of exercise your body responds to. It tells us what food groups and what eating patterns your body responds to. 

So if you're sick and tired of spinning your wheels and just want to accelerate your progress with your weight loss goals, then I want you to message me at Dr. Brian G brown on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, you can get me at that handle and any of those places. 

That's all I've got for today. I'll be glad to answer any questions that you have. Please, please. Again, don't let fear get in your way. Reach out and let's have a conversation. Let's talk through your possibilities. Talk through your potential. Let's talk through what it looks like to get on track with your genetics and get these things taken care of once and for all. 

As usual, most informed, most trusted and most grateful that you spent this time with us today. I know you could have been to a million other pace places. Until next time, stay in the zone. I'm Dr. Brian Brown.