Does your social status infringe on your ability to achieve wellness? It has been my observation that efforts to achieve wellness are no longer the norm in society but the outlier, the exception, the weirdo.
Think I'm wrong? Consider this, how would your co-workers look at you if you came into work with your breakfast; a salmon filet, some steamed broccoli, and a handful of walnuts? If that's not weird to most people at 8am, I don't know what is. Now compound that experience. Your office is carpeted right and it's pretty clean, so walking around barefoot would not be dangerous to your health. Kick your shoes off, relax, build proprioception in your feet, support your arches, create more stability and flexibility around your ankle, have less back pain. Oh wait, you can't kick your shoes off, because if you walk around your office with no shoes on you are a weirdo. It doesn't matter if your shoes produce endless back pain for you and you are extremely comfortabl when you get home and kick them off... you better keep those babies on at work, don't want to be weird.
So let's assume that you are your own boss and you do whatever you please in your office. In fact, you demand that your staff eats salmon, broccoli, and walnuts for breakfast every day! Your office is all based on telephone and internet conversations so no client is ever going to meet you or your staff anyway! What will your friends think when you tell them that you go to a chiropractor? Did you know that only 7% of the population is gutsy enough to skip the medications and seek healing through natural remedies? That means that most likely 93% of your friends will think you are weird for going to see your chiropractor, even though it is the only thing that has relieved your pains for the last 20 years! Once again, socially, you're a weirdo.
This concept even comes into play when you exercise. Of course everyone knows there is nothing weird abot going to the gym and getting your sweat on. What can be weird though is how you do it. Are you like everyone else in the gym? Do you go from machine to machine and move your body on a track that the machine dictates? Maybe not, maybe you are a big muscular guy who sticks to free weights and cables, you have read all of the fitness magazines out there and your workouts fit their recommendations to the letter. Still not weird. But what if you are me? I'm the guy in the gym that doesn't come to socialize, I don't meet my friends at the gym. I rarely touch a bench press and I haven't sat down to lift something in over 5 years. You will never jog next to me on a treadmill or glide next to me on an elliptical. I'd rather run outside in the freezing cold in my snow boots. I wouldn't even know how to operate many of the fancy machines in the gym anymore and I've been a certified personal trainer for 7 years! You can find me in the gym doing power cleans, pull ups, squats, dead lifts, push presses, plyometrics, and other functional exercises. That makes me weird. I don't fit in to the social environment at the gym.
I'm not unrealistic. I run a chiropractic practice and a personal training business that are growing in their successes and I know that if I really stick to my convictions of walking around with no shoes on it would scare clientele away. That's bad socially, bad economically, and when I can't afford to buy vegetables, bad physically and emotionally too. So I get it. You can't just be a total weirdo all the time unless if you are a complete genious. The point of this posting is not to get you walking around barefoot, eating salmon for breakfast, and ignoring your friends at the gym. The point of this posting is to get you thinking. Are you making the best choices? For me, wearing shoes to work is the best choice even though I know physically it is not. That's why I take them off when I'n not seeing patients. But you bet your ass I eat fish for breakfast regularly. And when I'm at the gym it's not to make friends, it's to make progress.
Is your social standard getting in the way of your health and wellness? It's easy to see, look down, can you see your toes? If you can it's a good start. Go to the bathroom mirror with your shirt off, like what you see? If you do then you are even more on your way. Ask yourself, if you are doing everything you can to make yourself as healthy and as well as you can (a pint of ben and jerry's from time to time not withstanding). If the answer is yes, either people think you are weird and you are cool with that (which is awesome), or you might be someone who could benefit from a little more education (which is fine as well).
Patrick Henry once said "give me liberty or give me death." Well, we have liberty. Why do we take life for granted?
I wish I wrote that. So true. Although I'm not wearing dress shoes yet, I do wear dress pants on occasion in practice. Having a family that I can financially support is more important to me in the affluent area of New Jersey than it is to be my hippie self.
ReplyDeleteGreat article Sean. Part of social change is overcoming the "weirdness" of healthy habits. What's weirder, barefoot or vibrums? They are conversation starters, people learn from imitation, when you set the example and precedent, others will follow one at a time. This is how large-scale change is initiated, one "weird" convert at a time.
ReplyDeleteI agree alex, and chris good idea to keep your pants on at work. I say vibrams are weirder by the way. They are the easy way out to barefoot living. Also, a personal pet peave of mine is people who wear vibrams to the gym and wear regular shoes at all other times. Like the 40 minutes a day does the trick.
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