Book I am highly recommending: The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter
Aligned Life Community! This is the best, most behavior changing book I have read in 2021! Please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. I love this book on so many levels, however here are a few of my favorites; 1) Easter includes a background story in which he travels to the Arctic backcountry and hunts caribou which is inspiring, insightful and funny. 2) He brings up all of the topics that I believe are devastating peoples health in the modern world and gives easy to implement solutions for each. 3) He has done the research on each of these topics by speaking with the world’s foremost experts in anthropology, anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, psychology and more. 4) He brings up the topic of a yearly “misogi”. A misogi is a “right of passage” experience that has only two rules 1) It has to be incredibly difficult, with a 50% chance of completing the task 2) You can’t die. This experience is not done to compare your effort to others, so he encourages a quirky or unique challenge. He also stresses that this is meant to be an inward journey, meaning this is not done to then post pics to Instagram or brag to your friends. A misogi is meant for you to find out or remind yourself who you are and what you are really capable of doing. LOVE THIS!
Daily email I am reading: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
Recently I subscribed to Ryan Holiday’s daily blog called “The Daily Stoic”. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of stoicism it embodies the regular practice of attempting to be a better human being by thinking of others, being patient, being humble, remembering that death is coming for us all and that life is filled with ups and downs. Holiday, in 3-5 paragraphs written in his blog, gives you some nuggets each day that help to remind you of these “virtues”. To subscribe is free and you can get to his website by clicking the link above!
Quote I am loving: “We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, under-challenged, safety-netted lives.” by Michael Easter in “The Comfort Crisis”
I believe in the modern world we have become obsessed with finding the shortcut to everything. We always want a “hack” to get to our desired outcome easier, faster and without pain. Unfortunately, this approach goes against thousands of years of evolutionary bias. It makes us unhappy, anxious, scared, weak, susceptible, over-leveraged, tired, chronically in pain and living a life deprived of meaning. I believe it is one of my responsibilities to remind the Aligned Life community of this growing concern. I also believe that we are fully capable of finding a happy medium between the modern world with all of it’s convenience and creature comforts and the hardened, challenging lifestyle of the past. It is in this blend of old and new in which, I believe, true happiness exists. Health, satisfaction, connection, strength, confidence, and deep meaning live in this space. If this sounds like something you are interested in, please pick up a copy of this book, reach out to me via email to discuss it and let’s start moving towards this way of living!
Have a kick ass week everyone!
In Health,
Dr. Devin Shea, DC
