Chiropractic is for winners! This is something I’ve been thinking about recently as I visited the Rugby World Cup in Japan. For those of you who don’t know, rugby is a bruising game where 30 men (or women) put their bodies on the line to wrestle and fight an oval-shaped ball over the opposition line.
Some say the game is crazy and after playing it myself for over twenty years I still feel pain from some of the hits I took. Would I do it all again? Absolutely!
And then there is the modern, professional game. Those pro sportsmen are taking enormous hits every day both in practice and in-game time. How do they keep going? Well, the game today is highly technical and nothing is left to chance. Nutrition, balance and conditioning, strength and resilience, recovery time and psychological analysis are all closely monitored. Chiropractic is a large part of the process, both in preventing injury and in attaining higher levels of performance.
A professional rugby tackle has the same effect as a 30 (MPH) PMG car crash!
But life itself really is like a sport. To be a winner you have to be prepared to, and not afraid to, lose. In fact, this is one thing that all winners have in common. The potential losses come in many guises and not just financial. We can also take emotional hits and we can waste valuable time. Our oft-fragile egos can also take some damage. But that’s OK, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, or so the theory goes.
I remember vividly doing my first solo parachute jump. It would have been so easy to have stayed in that plane, but the action of throwing myself through those doors into the rushing air has paid me dividends every day of my life. In fact, I still sport a small tattoo on my ankle as a reminder that there are times in life when it’s definitely best to ‘take the jump.’ The loss, had I not taken that leap of faith, would have been literally a lifetime of regret.
SOMETIMES IN LIFE YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE JUMP OR FACE A LIFETIME OF REGRET
I heard it once said that “being a spectator in life is like hoping that life rewards you for no reason.” This really needs thinking through as many default into taking the passive approach to life. As perfectly logical as it may seem to tackle life with a ‘loss aversion’ mindset, it doesn’t exactly yield stellar results. If you are not losing, it doesn’t mean you are necessarily winning, it just means you are not in the game.
We’re talking about WASTED POTENTIAL!
As a chiropractor, I hate wasted potential and our daily focus is literally helping people reach their potential in life. If your default approach, when faced with a win-or-lose situation, is to sit on your hands, then the harsh reality is that you are acting like a loser, just a different kind of loser. You are losing out in so many ways. This type of loss is much harder to qualify or quantify, its less tangible. What you are missing out on, are opportunities. This can be called your ‘Opportunity Cost’, and it’s basically all the things you could be doing that you choose not to. It could amount to hundreds of things that you aren’t doing every day, all missed opportunities, and in reality, these do add up to make one huge loss.
Not being someone you could have been still a lose
Some of these missed opportunities cost you money (some saved you money) because you didn’t earn your reward. Actually, when YOU look a little deeper into this subject we see opportunity cost everywhere. You are where you are today, despite an infinite number of directions that you could have taken, because of the choices you have made along the way. The lost opportunities are the infinite number of alternatives you could have chosen.
These Little Losses All Add Up
What might seem like a small thing at the time might rob you of a lifetime of payback. There are literally life-changing opportunities everywhere. Think about your health for example.
Pretty much everything you do has an effect on your health. We instinctively know that we must nurture our body and soul and if we fail to do so there could be consequences. But it’s all too easy to stay within our comfort zone, to put these decisions off and not make the necessary tough calls. That exercise you require to maintain strength and flexibility will take consistent effort, and it’s way easier to stay on the sofa watching sport rather than doing it. To eat nourishing food that sustains vitality and a robust immune system takes commitment and a certain focus. They don’t make it easy that’s for sure and there’s a lot to learn. It becomes too much trouble, so we put it off and retreat back to our world of convenience and bad habits.
But this wouldn’t be the way of a champion!
Passive is easy but not in the long run. You see, there are losses being made here; you just don’t feel them at the time. Eventually, the ‘passive approach’ will cost you your health. For many, it reduces their ‘health-span’ if not their life-span. If that loss is ten years of quality time with your grandkids, then that’s one big pill to swallow. The ‘active approach’ however, will cost you sofa time and perhaps a gym membership. What about future regrets? Well, this is where the big losses are to be found. No one ever regretted looking after themselves. In fact, for those who do, life becomes a celebration, a life of possibilities to explore. On the other hand, there’s the passive majority, those who let life happen to them. Rather than seizing opportunities. they play it small and simply try to minimize the downside.
This is why I love Chiropractic and why I fell in love with the philosophy on which it is based. My FOMO means I need to be vibrantly healthy for decades to come; I have a lot to do. Chiropractic is about seizing the day, nurturing life and accepting that we need to be proactive in this crazy world we’ve created or surely succumb to disease.
The world is full of people for whom ‘health’ is something in the past. But we must always remember that it’s never too late to improve our lot. What sets humans apart from the animals is our ability to rationalize and once we have an awareness of a situation we can do something about it. Chiropractic isn’t for everyone, just like organic produce or a gym membership. But for those who wish to take control and live long productive lives, avoiding the degeneration and suffering that accompanies disease and premature aging, chiropractic becomes an important part of their lives. These are people who understand their purpose in life, these are the champions of their world!