Building resilience: food and rhythm

We are still working on the fifth resilience factor here: namely discipline. Today we are looking at the next 2 elements of discipline. That, together with the previous 2 – healthy movement and healthy sleep – form the basis of this resilience factor.

Healthy nourishment:

I won’t claim to be a food-expert or anything, since I’m absolutely not. But I do always try to live by the basic rule: anything but with moderation. My general impression is that people who are constantly busy with their health and with healthy nourishment are often not quite the example of a healthy person. They often look stressed and slightly unhappy. They seem often dissatisfied with their (heavily paid) health, skin, weight, hair and other parts of the body (that I’ll leave up to your own imagination).

Nonetheless, healthy food is obviously a realistic and important aspect of living a healthy life. For instance, I find it rather hard to keep my ideal-weight. I manage to, but it does cost my quite some effort. Quite some discipline for that matter. And, of course a regular balance-check.

What is your ideal-weight? How can you work towards it? And, equally important, who is going to help you get there? For about 80% of all people really do need some aid in getting there! For this challenge I also strongly recommend the book ‘Keine Zeit und Trotzdem Fit’ by Gert von Kuhnhardt (I actually mentioned this book before in the blog: ‘building resilience: discipline’).

A healthy rhythm:

The AOK (Algemeine Orts Krankenkasse in Germany) did an elaborate research amongst the German population during the years 1993 and 1994. They were looking for correlations between an irregular and little structured life and various illnesses. Conclusion: about 80% of all illnesses are directly or indirectly negatively influenced by living an unstructured, irregular or chaotic life. No surprise here right? And I’m pretty sure the past 20 years haven’t changed this. If at all, they made things worse. Now that social media has penetrated nearly all aspects of life of example, you can keep on being occupied for 24 hours a day! Electronic Globalization.

Humans need regularity. They need structure. We all have an intrinsic need of rhythm. It’s hardly a coincidence that our life is more or less divided up. There are 24 hours a day. After 5 days (most people) can enjoy their weekend. Every 7 days we end up on a Monday. Which reminds me. Stalin ones tried to change this structure. He created a 9-days week. And only the ninth day would be a non-working-day. Within a year people were going mad, and soon the 7-days week was reinstated.

Our body, our soul, our mind, our spirit, we need rhythm in our lives. How could you implement some more rhythm in your life?

1. Start with a ‘day-rhythm’

The benedicts were real artist concerning a healthy rhythm in life. They changed work, prayer, dinner, social contact and sleep in an almost perfect rhythm. For instance, when the bells were ringing at 11.50 everyone (everyone) stopped with whatever they were doing, and walked calmly to the chapel. Where they, at 12.00 a clock, shared prayer and meditation. After 30 minutes they shared lunch. Etcetera.

Benedict called this the art of starting something, and the art of stopping. Who is living without rhythm doesn’t know when to stop. And if you only stop working when you are completely finished, you will probably not be able to stop any time soon (it might take your entire life actually). In practice however, it is often quite hard to live every day on a structured way. Life is chaotic. But, just try to develop a certain day-rhythm. And then try to live by it for (for starters) 2 or 3 days a week.

2. Create a ‘week-rhythm’

From out of our Jewish/Christian heritage we have (and are grateful for it) the sabbat/sonday. 1 day, every week, on which we can relax, get some rest. One day on which we don’t have any obligations. Why would you deny yourself that!? I am always trying to arrange things so that I indeed do have this luxurious day each week. And, each time that I’ve planned things well, I enjoy it intensely (and so does my family for that matter). The key here is, just like for the latter aspects of this fifth resilience factor, to be able to be disciplined enough. To have the discipline to be able to stop.

Enjoy doing nothing more often!