I was contemplating the core motivators for human behavior, safety and belonging. I have long thought that these two motivators were at the bottom. Dig deep enough into why a person does anything and I thought safety and belonging were the basic drivers behind this. Without safety, nothing else has an opportunity to matter. But we readily see folks willing to risk their lives in order
to belong to something greater than themselves – a family, tribe, clan, nation. Well as such things go, as soon as I think I have something figured out, new perspectives and information comes along and disturbs my whole mind set. In this case, imagine a poor starving man stealing food to feed himself. This could be a high risk situation for him in certain times and countries. Yet his hunger will override his caution.
Once that example snuck into my head, a dozen other situations came to mind that demonstrated that something deeper than mere safety drives people. I relaxed my focus and allowed the quieter more global part of my brain to show me what I was looking for. Once I let go, what came in was a need to simply feel okay. That answer seemed underwhelming at first. I expected something more profound and impactful. But as I
settled in with it, I began to see how feeling okay is fundamental. Your brain is checking the big switchboard of warning lights in the mid and hind portions of the brain that keeps track of every function in your body. Everything likes to be running in its optimal zone of functioning – not too much and not too little. If it is in the optimal zone, the green A Okay light is shining. This balance point in our physiology is called homeostasis.
When you are hungry, your brain may register that your blood sugar is too low. Perhaps you have overexerted yourself and your body is asking for more protein with which it can make repairs. Sometimes your hunger is not for a body need but instead for a way to rebalance or suppress neurotransmitters in order to change your mood or to change your feeling of not being okay. Your body is seeking homeostatic balance every
minute of every day. My current thought is that this is the most basic motivational drive we have. We don't think of this as a motivator as it lies beneath our conscious awareness most of the time. But it does pop its head up with feelings like hunger. Other times you might feel it when it shows up as a panic attack. But most of the time these types of subconscious drives express themselves through seemingly unrelated physical symptoms.
One of the more modern names we have given to the feeling of imbalance in our system is stress. Stress has its emotional manifestations with feelings like hopelessness, frustration, sadness, and so on. But it has even more manifestations in the body as an endless stream of physical symptoms such as a tight neck or low back, acid indigestion, bloating, cramps anywhere, sinus congestion, headaches, asthma, hives,
exhaustion, weight gain, cancer, or immune system issues. Almost any body symptom can be due to or at least partially caused by stress. And stress is just our way of saying that we don't feel okay. We are not in balance on some level. Our needs are not being met in some way because we are not doing or not able to do what we need to do to get them met.
That last sentence is critical to understanding how to tackle homeostasis issues. There seems to be a widespread belief that someone outside of ourselves is supposed to meet our needs. This was true when we were 6 months old, and failure to update those expectations from that temporary state of affairs is the source of most of the suffering we experience in this life. It is our job to take care of ourselves. No one
else is capable of knowing just what we need at any moment because our inner needs are invisible to others. Only we can know what we need so only we can proceed to do what is required to meet those needs. Other people can guess what we want or need based on their personal experiences, but their personal experiences are not our experiences.
The outcome of this faulty expectation that others should meet our needs produces the desire to have power over the actions of others; to control others. We believe that only when we can make people be the way we want will we feel okay again. It does not work, but we keep believing that it will. This battle for control is where most of that suffering I was mentioning earlier comes from. I wrote a few weeks ago
about how much I liked the book The Games People Play. This is because it describes so many of the crazy things people do to try to get others to meet their needs. Part of the essence of this book is the understanding of how these perceived needs are created in our childhoods because of needs that we did not get met because we did not know how to go about meeting them. We have to develop life skills to be able to meet our needs – both self-nurturing skills and social skills – for
participating with others successfully.
How to meet our physical needs is largely built into our system. When we are hot, our body knows how to sweat to cool us down. When we are cold, we shiver to warm us up. We get feeling signals that tell us when we need to eat, sleep, stretch, or even seek out companionship. We have all sorts of feelings to guide us toward feeling okay as much of the time as possible. Here is the secret message of this article – we
have feeling-messages that can guide us for most of the actions we need to make to get our larger interpersonal needs met as well. Our problem is that we block out these messages most of the time. We use alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, behaviors, and emotions to block out these messages. Why do we do this? Because these feelings not only urge us to try new actions, but they also let in the feedback when we fail. Learning skills is mostly about lots of failure as any new learning is a trial and error
process. Error is a big part of learning, and if we block out those bad feelings we stop our learning process. That leaves us stuck with our infant skills that usually amount to believing others are responsible for our okayness. We invent illusions like entitlements and try out tyrant-like demand games or victim games. Unfortunately, as I explained earlier, trying to get others to make us feel okay never works for very long. None of them are mind readers. They can not anticipate what we need in
the way we want it. The end result of this path is chronic disappointment and unhappiness.
The only answer I see is to take the reins of our own life and go about learning how to meet our own needs. That includes learning how to participate positively and respectfully in win-win relationships with others. Yes, learning how to participate with all these other strange creatures that don't see life the way we do is scary and frequently does not work out well. But with trial and error, constantly trying new
ways of acting and being, we will work out a persona that works to empower us to get along successfully. This won't happen if we block out the negative feedback that highlights our failures with substances and attitudes. Learning requires humility. It requires accepting that you don't know, but want to learn.
There is an almost infinite supply of self-help books and probably podcasts that can inform and inspire you on this learning path. My suggestion is to trust your inner guidance and go for what attracts you. I believe you will be guided to exactly what you need if your request is sincere. Spirit/God/the Universe helps those who help themselves.
Take care,
David
C15 is finally in! By buying a large bulk of C15 I was able to get it for you at one quarter of the price the other producer of C15 charges for it. I can now sell it at the office for only $25 for 6 grams. Fatty 15 charges $49 for only 3 grams. Plus mine is combined with 6 additional grams of C18, another wonder fatty acid
that improves mitochondria health, fights cancer, lowers cholesterol, and improves skin conditions. I take one level scoop per day which equals 200mg of C15. A minimal option is 1/2 scoop per day equaling 100 mg per day which would make the jar last 2 months. Take C15 on an empty stomach either directly into your mouth or into a hot beverage.
Ellen
We did not get it together enough to have an Ellen piece this week.
New understanding of the cause of autism
When I was a kid autism was rare - 3-4 per 10,000. Now it is up to 1 kid out of 36 is diagnosed with autism. That is a 1000% increase! New research is pointing to the exposure of infants in the womb to BPA, the plastic that leaches out of water bottles into our water supply. Efforts to eliminate BPA have only replaced it with different chemicals that act exactly the same way.
"Respect yourself if you would have others respect you."
~Baltasar Gracian
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AI tongue diagnosis
The ancient science of diagnosing disease by looking at the tongue is getting an upgrade by teaching an artificial intelligence how to do this. Amazingly the AI is showing a 98% accuracy in diagnosing a wide variety of diseases this way. The hope is to some day make this a phone app. Take a picture of your tongue to find out if you have some terrible disease!
"Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way. "
~Baltasar
Gracian
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DNA damage from low magnesium levels
Homocysteine is a gene damaging toxic agent formed in the body as it tries to fight free radicals. The body then has to recycle the homocysteine to neutralize it, but it needs magnesium to do this. Blood tests of adults has shown that those with the lowest levels of magnesium had the highest levels of homocysteine. Although magnesium is the 4th most common mineral in the body, it is also
the most common deficient nutrient in the average diet.
Our address is 9725 Fair Oaks Blvd. suite A Our hours are M, Tu, Th, F 10 to 3:30
Finding our location is very easy. Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block. We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop. If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.
If
you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek. It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3 more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left. Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center divider ends. We are on the left.
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Referral doctor for when we are out of town: Jennifer Webb DC
