Creating Healthy Algorithms

Welcome to the 4Ms on Marco! I'm JoAnne Pavin, an Integrated Wellness Consultant with over two decades of experience teaching people the fundamentals of health through the 4Ms: Meals (nutrition), Movement (exercise), Meditation (breathing), and Mindset (creative visualization and motivation). Optimizing these essential pillars of health gives people a strategy to improve their lifestyle, which helps them move forward in personal growth and health mastery. I look forward to sharing how and where to experience the 4Ms on Marco Island.

Our modern world runs on algorithms. According to Yuval Noah Harari, best-selling author of “Homo Deus,” algorithms are the single most important concept to understand in the 21st century. The second most important concept is how to program our personal algorithms.

Hypothetically viewing ourselves as the ultimate supercomputer, we have to plan how we want it to run.

Merriam Webster broadly defines an algorithm as "a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end." In application to humans, let me explain it as repeatedly performed behaviors that become ingrained. For example, "if I do this, then that will happen." As we apply it to the achievement of optimal health, you can think of it like this: "If I walk a mile every morning to start my day, I will feel energized, motivated, and let go of the unwanted weight. "Or on the contrary, "If I eat a bag of potato chips and a couple of vodkas at 9:00 PM, I will wake at 3:00 AM to go to the bathroom and feel sluggish in the morning."

The four most important pillars of health are eating, breathing (plus sleeping), moving, and thinking. Mastering healthy algorithms in these four areas will undoubtedly bring a more vital life and promote longevity. You can start optimizing your health by installing algorithms with positive results and deleting those with unfavorable outcomes.

Eating: A general nutrition rule is to eat more live foods, including anything grown in the ground or garden - the solar energy contained in garden-grown food transfers directly to our bloodstream. We want to maximize our diet with vitamin, mineral, and solar content, and we don't get that from packaged food. A simple algorithm to start improving your nutrition would be to start each meal by asking: "If I eat this___, I will feel___." You can pose this question before putting anything in your mouth. I also like to ask myself, is this food living (fruits, vegetables, fermented products)? Or is it dead (packaged, refined products)? By directing your awareness towards this, you will become more mindful of good nutrition and what you're eating.

Breathing: Breathing is the most powerful thing we do every day, yet nine out of 10 of us do it incorrectly. The primary muscle for breathing is the diaphragm and is activated by nose breathing. Most of us breathe through our mouths, which recruit chest muscles. You wouldn't eat through your nose, so don't breathe through your mouth. Breathing correctly is essential because it directly affects our nervous, circulatory, and lymphatic systems. For example, a nervous system reaction occurs when you hear, see or feel something when you react. In between the stimulus and response, there is a gap. This gap is when you can stop and breathe. As a result, you can slow down your fight or flight response and choose how to react. A new algorithm to install before responding to situations may be: to stop, breathe in through the nose, out through the back of the throat, with exhalation being twice as long as the inhalation. If you choose to do that at least once and up to three times, you are sure to slow the heart rate down, feel grounded, say more positive things, and who knows, inadvertently end up with more friends! "If I focus on breathing before reacting, I will respond more appropriately."

Moving: We need to move the body. Sitting, you may have heard, is the new smoking. The research is out there; you don't need the benefits of exercise listed here. If you want to feel physically and mentally sound, write yourself a daily prescription for exercise. You can start with a 30-minute brisk walk, bike ride, stretching, yoga, dancing, etc. Get a colorful pad of Post-it notes and write an Rx for daily exercise:

To: Jane

From: The Best Version of Jane

30-minute walk from Tiger Tail to Marriott 5-7x a week.

With this habit, a new exercise algorithm is installed "If I follow my daily exercise prescription, I will feel energized, renewed and get stronger."

Thinking: “As a Man Thinketh,” a famous book written by James Allen in 1903, set the tone for self-help and the power of thought in the 20th century. Based on the Book of Proverbs chapter 23, verse 7: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The book sums up that the free will of the human mind is individually allowed to perceive every situation as they choose. You see the world as you are, not as it is. Perception begins first with yourself. Changing your thoughts can transform your life.

In yogic teaching, there is the term Citta Vritti, which means mind chatter, cluttered mind, or monkey brain. This term can also refer to an erratic mind where thoughts are uncontrolled. You can reduce stress and gain more thought control by taking time to quiet yourself, breathe, and push negative thoughts away while breathing positive thoughts in. A new algorithm to install may be as simple as "If I think positively, then good things will happen."

A helpful exercise is to list your current algorithms and decide which ones to delete, keep, and new ones to install. There is power in putting things down on paper, and it is a way to shine a flashlight on your behavior. Downloading the algorithm worksheet at www.joannepavin.com/courses can help you with straightforward strides toward making new algorithms or new healthy rhythms in your life.

I look forward to sharing more ways to optimize the 4Ms in the upcoming issues. Let's do this!