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Keep the mind healthy
Although the fleeting rhythm and lack of time we carry daily are unhealthy, the very first recurring reasons for not exercising or eating them are very recurring reasons. And if we declare that we don’t have time to look after the body, we still have little room for things like meditating, seeking spiritual references, or having a creative mind. These tips are part of the 7 practices recommended by athlete and trainer Christopher Bergland, a lover of intense competitions, and the distance he covers on a treadmill for 24 hours (247.45 km) is no less than the Guinness record.
1. Daily physical exercise
It is no coincidence that sport comes first; This is an important point for Bergland. This is a minimum of 20 minutes of daily exercise, which does not require complicated sports practice, but a regular walk. The author compares our society with pre-industrial life habits or during the same industrialization: sedentary work is widespread and must be reconciled with some daily “movement.” For this runner, it’s as simple as, “You don’t have to be a fan of the sport, but nobody can sweat for you.”
2. Intellectual curiosity
Coach believes that spending a portion of our time exploring new ideas helps us achieve a mind healthy and body. As explained to El Confidential, people with personalities who are open and outgoing to new experiences “live longer and have a better functioning of the immune and cardiovascular system”, based on studies on humans and gorillas.
3. Cultivate creativity
According to Bergland, this factor is similar to previous gains. He explains that neuroscientists have long known that “puzzles’ that force a person to solve a riddle increase neuronal plasticity,” a complex term in neuroscience that refers to the ability of neurons to adapt to new experiences. Or learning. The moving and enriching environment in the novel not only strengthens the neurons but the environmental “atrophies” away from the stimuli. More than that, remember that the survival of man is due to the invention of technology, thanks to the creative ingenuity of our ancestors.
4. Create human relationships
It is beneficial to have a healthy mind, create a close social network, and maintain contact with other people. The athlete, extracting these seven elements from his book The Athletes Way, combines a sense of humanity with curiosity and creativity.
The seven practices are aimed at helping people change their lifestyle. Original or more sociable may seem “difficult,” but for Bergland, they are perfectly achievable: life is an example of how to adopt a new way of thinking, “make the decision to spend more time exploring new aspects and connecting unrelated ideas.”
The runner points out that his seven points are nothing more than a list of behaviors that people can go through to change their lifestyle, “especially if their instincts don’t include them.”
5. Have a spiritual reference
“Spiritual does not mean religious,” he clarifies. In this fifth suggestion, the authors propose that we “connect us with any belief system with some source of inspiration, which has meaning and meaning to us, and provides us with optimism and hope.” That said, it seems like a very elaborate search, but ultimately it has intellectual references, be it religious or our own patronage.
6. Achieve energy balance
This recommendation is the only physical one Bergland will establish with those who practice the sport. Coach takes a historical tour in his article published in Psychology Today to explain how inventions and technologies have made us physically and mentally more inert. Since Homo sapiens was originally a hunter and gatherer, he considers humans to be “run.” However, a sedentary lifestyle should force us to get into the habit of eating only what we wear. From an environmental perspective, it is like finding a “zero balance” between the calories consumed by our activity and those consumed.
7. Simplicity
Bergland contradicts a culture of overuse and proposes a simple and free life in which we have only the need without creating excessive needs.
Triple Ironman, the three-time winner of the world’s longest non-stop triathlon, explains that these seven practices are based on a combination of empirical observations, scientific studies, and their personal experiences. As they say, this is a philosophy, a set of healthy behaviors that go beyond diet or diet, with the mind more demanding than the body, which seems easy to fulfill, at least for those who don’t have time for sport (or so they say).
