Don’t Make Out a Wishlist - Just Carry Out a Checklist

Doing the extraordinary with the ordinary, year after year, as Healing Habits

December 15, 2023                     5 min read

How did your January New Year resolutions work out? Couldn’t quite work them in? Oh, well.

How about undoing your wishlist of extraordinary “un-doables” and doing a checklist of ordinary “do-ables” that are sure to get done year after year? You can achieve extraordinary results using ordinary means, leaving no room for excuses or regrets. Yes, you’ve got this.

Few of us have exceptional gifts and resources. Yet, all of us have ordinary, handy abilities we can count on. It only takes a small mindset reset to use them for extraordinary living every day.

I developed the following checklist of 7 life strategies with some 2000 patients and coworkers over a span of 25 years in a safe and effective lifestyle program in my clinic. I hope you find it as useful as they all did.

Most people “know” the right things to do. Many just can’t get themselves to do them all the time, especially if they experience unpleasant effects. For instance, 50-90% of people drop out of weight-loss programs, including gym memberships, all but every diet, and the latest anti-obesity drugs.

Our healing habits managed to heal this Achilles’ heel. Over 90% of our 2000 enrollees completed the 3-month program. Many lost weight, if desired. All, including me, lost ‘weightiness’. Each day, we delightfully gained lightness and ‘enlightening’.  

This introductory posting offers only pointers to the goalposts. The roadmaps with step-by-step ‘how’ will be in the following posts. Various podcasts and videos in them should prove helpful, and at least entertaining.

You will find the principles and logic behind my Metacardio Method simple yet sensible and never madness. After that, you will see Day-by-Day checklists for your 12-week journey. The suggestions are hyperlinked to validated scientific source material and credible wisdom of the ages.

Feel free to use my iOS mobile app, Metacardio - Wellness Coaching. It is free with no ad or in-app purchase. It may help nudge you to keep at your daily micro-step actions.

The whole shebang on a silver platter will be out in my book. Healing Habits for a Happy, Healthy, Hassle-free Lifestyle for Life will soon be published. It will be free for my early subscribers, paid and free alike.

I am paying it forward for the profound gratification of my life’s work. I hope you subscribe now for free. Perhaps you can also pay it forward. How about forwarding this to those you care to pay good wishes?

A CHECKLIST OF 7 LIFE STRATEGIES

1.   HEALTH

Health is not the absence of illness and imperfection. It is a state of wellness and wholeness where you embrace and optimize all that you are with what you have. 

Tips:

• Overweight and can’t stay on any diet? Eat what you’ve always liked, but only ¾ of it. Squelch any hunger by eating palm-size snacks of tasty, healthy choices from the Mediterranean menu. Many such websites are free and reliable. Over time, switch in these new favorites to replace your less healthy old selections in your regular meals.
  

• Progressively water down your sugary drinks, even the artificially sweetened ones. Water is your best liquid asset. Figure sparkling water as champagne for the champ without the pain.

2.   FITNESS

Fit well into life by being aware, adaptable, and innovative, with whatever is at hand, until life fits you well. Your habits will become your destiny.

Tips:

• Can’t get yourself to work out regularly? Integrate most of the desired 10,000 steps into your daily non-exercise, painless, no-brainer routines, such as commuting, decompressing, and screen time.
  

• Let Neuroscience do the work in molding your new, healing habits and crowding out the old, unhelpful ones. The open secret is to automate yourself to take unbroken, consistent, micro steps day after day.

3.   RESILIENCE

Your conditioned internal negative reactions to unavoidable external events generate most of the harmful stress in life. Re-examine this reaction chain and reset your mind. Choose not to drool to the ‘Pavlov dog bell’ and knee the wrong jerk all the time.

• You can reach all real-life requirements and dismiss all delusional demands.

• You have more control than you may think—and less control than you may want.

• Begin with good intentions. Do your best throughout the process. And accept the reality that the end result is far less controllable, yet possibly better than intended.

• Impermanence is a blessing, not a curse. “This, too, shall pass...” is a motivation, not a remorse. Besides, reality offers no other option.

Tip:

Quiet, easy breathing with no thinking involved (call it meditation if you wish) is highly effective for building stress resilience if practiced regularly. Remember, it’s the slow out-breath that relaxes you more. 

4.   SERVICE

Only asking, “What’s in it for me?” restricts you and may jeopardize the bigger picture. Asking, “How can I best serve here—with myself in it?” opens up better possibilities for all, especially in tough situations. Surprisingly, service to others often turns out serving yourself best. It can also give you solace even if things don’t work out.

Tip:

Don’t worry about shortchanging yourself by serving others. Self-preservation and self-interest are well-baked into our decision-making. Narrowly focused on that, though, you will severely limit your options and potential.

5.   APPRECIATION

• Gratitude gives life to all good feelings. Grievance chokes it.

• Forgiveness, without waiting for apology or retribution, frees the only hostage—you. It heals you without participation by whomever you’re forgiving. Even better if the forgiven one is yourself.
  
  For-giving is not For-getting.
  Par-doning is not Con-doning.
  Ad-mitting it’s done and over is not Per-mitting it to be done over.
  

• Failure is not falling down; failure is not getting up. Swallow the sour schooling of failure; then, you can savor the sweet nectar of success.

Tip:

Even our DNA is not fixed. Nurture can change Nature.
Make a choice — Volunteer to be the Victim or Vow to be the Victor. 

6.   WISDOM

Wisdom and wonders of the universe are universally accessible to all. The miracle of life in your own body is a testament to that. Limitless other resources are just as eager to inform you. All you have to do is quiet down and listen up.

Tip:

Keep your mind curious, your heart open, your eyes clear, and yourself still to receive all kinds of automatic downloads without limit.   

7.   ONE

Life in today’s world is such that we are all linked together as one. “We’re all in this together” and “All-for-one and one-for-all” are not “Sure, whatever” clichés. They are existential necessities for the survival we need and the wellness we want.

Tip:

Winner takes all—the good and the bad. Then, do what you can to tip the balance. It’s rarely all-or-nothing.
You cannot save everyone, and no one can save you. But, together, everyone can save one another.

(This checklist is also available in an audio format.)

Knowing but not doing it,
You don’t yet know it.

Confucius

You are the only one who can make the journey to reach your own destiny.

It all starts with your first step—now.

Coming Next:

Destiny Now, Fate Never