20 Timeless Truths of Health and Wellbeing
Morgan Housel's new book got me thinking about some of the timeless truths related to health and wellbeing.
Over the long holiday weekend, I read Morgan Housel’s wonderful new book Same As Ever.
Housel identifies universal truths, mostly about finance and business, that remain timeless and unchanging in a world where change only seems like it's accelerating.
I enjoyed it, because it’s filled with great stories that are wrapped in wisdom without getting lost too much in the weeds of why.
Same As Ever got me thinking about some of the timeless truths related to health and wellbeing.
There are so many fads and rabbit holes these days in the health advisory space. A lot of it is just fitness porn and it is exhausting.
I am much more interested in simple truths that have always been and that serve as guideposts for a thriving health journey for anyone.
So here are 20 Timeless Truths of Health and Wellbeing. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments below. There are many more.
1. The Elements of Good Health are Simple - Silly humans, we overcomplicate the world and try to explain things that are way beyond our comprehension. Meanwhile, the elements of good health are timeless, simple, and straightforward and deep down everybody already knows them.
Eat real foods with plenty of protein.
Move your body daily.
Prioritize sleep and rest when you are tired or achy.
Grow strong relationships with your closest people.
Unless you are an elite athlete training for the Olympics, that’s 95% of what you need to know in 28 words.
2. Health Compounds Just like Wealth - The longer we consistently behave in ways that follow the elements of good health described above, the healthier we get.
This is mostly true on an absolute basis and especially true on an age adjusted basis. Just keep living clean and over time you will be astounded by this principle and how your health improves.
3. All Our Parts Are Interconnected - Over brief periods, our body, mind, and spirit seems impervious to simple abuses, especially when we are young.
An otherwise healthy person might be able to get by on too little sleep for a bit before it catches up, but eventually, pow! It catches up and we get exhausted or moody or sick…
All the parts of us are intricately interconnected. This is holism and we are all holists by nature.
How we eat affects how we sleep. How we sleep affects our mood and our ability to think. Our mood affects our performance. Etc etc ad infinitum.
So we want to get all the parts of us moving in the same direction.
4. Role Modeling Is the Single Greatest Teaching Tool - When our children or students or teams (if we are coaching) observe us making healthy choices day after month after year, they internalize what we do.
This is why quiet role modeling is infinitely more powerful than lecturing or finger wagging.
So if you want your kids to grow strong and healthy,all we have to do is live strong and healthy.
Lead by example, they will internalize all of it, and you will avoid 90% of the power struggle endemic to the Standard American Parenting.
5. Injuries Loom Larger than Fitness - Kahneman & Tversky once famously said, Losses loom larger than gains, which became a bedrock idea of behavioral finance.
That is, losing money feels worse than gaining money feels good.
The same is true with injuries. Injuries are twice as bad as being fit is good, because it hits you twice. First, you can’t workout or run or whatever so you stop compounding health. And second, you actually backtrack. Maybe you lose some muscle. Maybe you lose some of your wind or time on your fastest 5K etc…
This one is especially important as we age, because recovery time increases as we get older.
The upshot here is, avoid injuries. Don’t overpush, let yourself rest, get good sleep and so forth.
6. You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks - Humans are adaptive animals. We can attune to the elements of good health at almost any age and improve how we feel and our future health prospects.
We can reverse even years of bad habits. Just get started today 😉
7. Child Is Father to the Man - If you are very active and healthy when you are young, it will serve you well as you age. You can learn & habitualize the elements of good health and wellbeing and your mind and body will always remember.
You give your lungs, muscles and bones a good start and there is plenty of research suggesting that this good start tends to endure over the lifespan.
And even if you stray, getting back to a healthy lifestyle again becomes that much easier.
(Another reason why number #4 above is so important.)
8. Everybody is the Same and Different -
This is one that seems like a dichotomy but it is really a dialectic.
In some ways we will be similar to others and will approach the median on factors measured in those large health meta-analyses that get oversimplified in rags like Men's Health & the NY Post.
But at the very same time, we are individuals and respond to different habits, foods, routines etc very differently.
Many people stand to benefit like crazy from making plain Greek yogurt a staple while others cannot tolerate it.
This is why learning what works for you becomes so important.
9. You Are the Scientist AND the Subject - You are the chief scientist and the lone subject of a continuous case study experiment that is more important than any other experiment you will ever be involved in.
You try things on yourself like plain Greek yogurt or morning walks or CrossFit or a Magnesium Threonate supplement and you observe how it affects you and then you continue if the effects are favorable and extinguish if they are unfavorable.
This one is a biggie so pause for a second or maybe read again 😉
10. Use It or Lose It - When you stop taking good care of yourself, the health benefits you previously experienced while you were taking good care of yourself begin to deteriorate almost immediately. This is one of the reasons why…
11. Consistency Trumps Intensity - Sticking with the good health habits you form forever and ever is more important than exercising with insane but unsustainable intensity.*
You can have a lackluster workout and you can miss one or two when you are a little achy or exhausted. You don’t have to rep to failure.
You just want to make sure you keep coming back and you keep compounding slowly but steadily over the long run!
*Unless you are training for an event or an elite athlete, and even then the point is still arguable.
12. Data Are Overrated - Seventy years ago, Roger Bannister was the first human to break the four minute mile running it in 3:59.4. He was faster than me and you.
He did not have a Whoop or an 8 Sleep and he did not monitor his heart rate variability or count sateps in real time.
The intricate data we now have access to is cool but it doesn't really matter that much if you are tuned to the four elements of health and wellbeing described above and if you are making gains even gradually.
Data might be important, especially when it comes to diagnostic medicine, and they are fine if they motivate you or if you are competing at an elite level, but most of the time it’s just marketing by the quantitative self companies.
(That was a hottake? lol!)
13. Feelings Are the Gatekeepers - Your Body tells you everything you need to know even if we don’t always listen.
We all have a sixth sense but it is neglected so badly these days that nobody even knows about it.
The fancy word for it is interoception and it covers internal bodily cues that tell us how we are feeling.
Are you hot or cold, tired or energized, grouchy or agreeable.
When you are tuned into your body’s internal cues, you intuitively know when to go hard or ease up or take a rest day.
14. Lifestyle and Mindset Over Routines and Diets - Good health is a lifestyle and a mindset and even an identity.
If you go on a diet or follow a routine, you can lose weight or get fit temporarily. But it might not last, because you are just following something somebody gave you to follow. You are not following your own path.
This is why people yoyo all the time. They go on some crazy diet, lose a bunch of weight and then gain it all back again. It’s outside-in.
But when we decide that we are a healthy person and we make it who we are, and how we think, and what we do, then we will endure.
It’s inside out.
15. It’s Aerobic AND Anaerobic - It’s a cliche by now when muscleheads and marathoners debate which will get you healthier, resistance training or distance running.
The truth is that some of both are best. You want the aerobic AND the anaerobic. That way you improve both your ability to take in oxygen and get it to your muscles to use and you improve your muscle mass and bone strength.
And all three tend to improve quality of life and increase healthspan.
16. The Multiverse Is Real - Almost everybody reading this is going to wake up one year from today on November 30, 2024. You’re going to take a pee, brush your teeth, and put on some clothes.
That day is as real as today is real, it just hasn’t happened yet. And that future you is as real as the present you reading this right now.
There’s also a future you waking up 5 years from today and ten years, etc etc. So in reality, there’s all these future you’s.
And it just so happens that the things this today you does affects all of the future you’s.
17. Bad Things Are Bad - When I was a kid I never really thought about why sugar rotted your teeth. It was just a thing.
Now I think about it and it’s all so obvious. Sugar rots your teeth because it’s bad and it rots a lot more than your teeth. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.
All the bad things are bad. sugar, alcohol, tobacco, pot etc.
A little bit here and there is fine, maybe, and enjoyable, but the more you take, the more damaging they all get.
18. We Are All Born to Thrive - We all have an inherent instinct for growth. It is built-in. It is innate.
The great humanistic psychologist, Carl Rogers, called it The Actualizing Tendency.
We are born to thrive, to improve, and to succeed.
This is an incredible thing about being human that connects us all, though we might minimize the universality of it or maybe some of us have simply lost touch with our natural instincts.
This one can be powerful to meditate on when we are struggling to get healthy. It’s in you and that is undeniable no matter how dark things appear now.
19. Nature Feeds the Soul - Getting out in nature promotes health from the core out.
This is undeniable and there is an abundance of parks in this great nation that are free or very inexpensive to enter.
The more we get out, the better we will feel.
20. There Is Only One True Benchmark - There is only one true benchmark and he/she is looking right at you in the mirror every morning when you brush your teeth. lol.
Whether you are preparing for some type of competition or just trying to stay healthy as you age, the only comparison that is worth a damn is the comparison with your former self.
If you are comparing yourself to others, you will always be miserable, because no matter how much better you get, there will always be someone better. This is true for everybody who ever lived except for three people - Usain Bolt, Michael Jordan, and John Coltrane.
But if you are comparing yourself to your past self, and you are improving even a little, then my friends, you are winning!
I am running a Workshop Series called Crushing 2024 & Beyond that begins in December. It will be excellent. If you have made false starts or yoyo’d in your health journey but you want to succeed this time around, this is for you.
Really good, Phil.
Love this list. Especially 19 - 'Nature Feeds the Soul'