IMO, going into a downturn in the best shape possible is to your benefit. Obviously financial health and wellness are important in an economic crisis, but I think it's also important to be in good shape physically, mentally, and spiritually as well.
Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
IMO, going into a downturn in the best shape possible is to your benefit. Obviously financial health and wellness are important in an economic crisis, but I think it's also important to be in good shape physically, mentally, and spiritually as well.
Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host Sara Causey. Hello. Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode I want to talk about hacking yourself. This is a difficult and delicate topic to even get into on a podcast episode. Because anytime you come near self improvement or biohacking unfortunately, you also open the door to some very sketchy things indeed MLMs pyramid schemes, so called gurus and teachers and experts, weird fad diets, unscrupulous practices, things that might kill you rather than help you, and so on and so on. I want to be very clear in saying that category of junk. No, not that. I am not in this episode talking about fad diets, going off and taking drugs in the desert, doing weird things with a so called guru who probably just wants to part you from your money and or who is running some type of scary Colt. None of that. I'm also going to give you my standard disclaimer. I don't give you advice. I don't tell you what to do. I sit here and I opine for your entertainment only. I'm not a doctor, a nurse, a health coach, a personal trainer, a biologist, biochemist, a nutritionist, a dietician, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, never hold myself out to be any of those things. So don't do anything. That's dangerous. And if you're concerned about your dietary habits or exercise, talk to your doctor, every single person listening to this episode today will have a different set of circumstances. I can't speak to all of that and wouldn't claim to what I want to drive home in this episode. And hopefully, I'll succeed is the idea that hacking yourself is also part of good preparation, in my opinion. You may be wondering how does all of this relate to the job market? How does it relate to the broader economy? And I'll get there. You may remember that in q4 of last year, I had an absolute health nightmare. It started off with viral food poisoning, which I had no idea that was even a thing. I thought if you had food poisoning, ipso facto, it came from ingesting bacteria or fungus, you ate something that was or drink something that was contaminated. Maybe it had gone sour and you didn't know it, or bacteria had started to take over in the food product and you weren't aware of it. I had no idea that, quote, viral food poisoning even existed. But wow, did I get an education on that. And I was so very sick. And then once that started to abate, I got very sick with COVID and strep throat at the same time. And it was horrible. It turned into long COVID I had a variety of symptoms, probably the worst of which were cardiac related. And to go to the cardiac unit, and more than once, I was the youngest person there on the days that I went anyway, I was the youngest person there probably by a good 40 years. I got a lot of looks from people like what are you doing here? As I have been committed to healing and restoration and feeling better, getting back to some kind of normalcy post, and feeling like I was pretty sure that I either was dying, or was going to die in short order. It definitely. It makes it clear to you how important good health good wellness, good vitality, how important all of those things are in order to have a full life. Which is not to say that someone with a chronic illness should just give up. I'm not saying that at all. I think back to the old timers, the grandparents and the great grandparents that would say well, if you don't have your health, you're in bad shape indeed. Your health is so important. You have to take care of yourself. And I think when we're young and we feel somewhat invincible, like we're gonna live forever. We have all of this energy and all of this pep and our that we roll our eyes and we think yeah, sure, okay. But then when something happens, to really remind you of your own mortality, and to remind you that you are not indeed invincible, you realize that maybe the old folks had a point. After all, your health is so important. It impacts your ability to work, to play, to spend time with your family, to do the types of things from a mobility standpoint that you enjoy doing. And I've always said, I don't get on here and do the clickbait fear porn nonsense. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that we're going into the apocalypse that Armageddon is going to happen tomorrow that we're going to be in Mad Max the Thunderdome overnight, all of society is about to collapse. Zombies will be eating your brains were going into World War Z, you may as well go to the underground bunker and give up. I'm reminded of that episode of South Park where Eric Cartman lies to butters and tells him that zombies are out in the street. And he locks him in an underground bunker. I'm not going to tell you any such a thing. I don't personally think that all of the western world is going to collapse overnight zombies are going to eat your brains and we're going to be in the Thunderdome. And I think some of the people that get on social media and tell you that don't actually believe it either. They're doing it for likes, clicks and shares and comments. They want to be monetized. They want the clout they want the social media. hoo ha that goes along with scaring people half to death. And some of them are true believers. I think some of those people are probably in religious cults, not your run of the mill church that you could find on any street corner in this country, but they're in freaking cults. And fitness folks are not impervious to that either. There are plenty of individuals that are in some kind of dietary and fitness cult as well, which is why even talking about the idea of biohacking can be such a sticky wicket, because then you get into the territory of weird colds, fad diets, bad practices, dangerous things that can kill you, et cetera. Nevertheless, if we can persevere and try to find something sensible, I think it's worth it. I've talked on the air before about the experience that I had in the medical system and being really disappointed, very disappointed. Not with everyone. To be clear, there were nurses and doctors that I dealt with who were awesome. You could tell that they cared about their job, they cared about their patients. I remember I had to get this scan where you go in the flying donut, not exactly sure what it's called. Some of you in the profession will know if you go inside the flying donut and it speaks to you in a British voice. Even though we're in the states of sort of odd. You can breathe now, do not breathe, hold your breath. And it's like what? So weird. So I'd go in for this scan. And I remember the radiologist telling me after I inject this dye, you're going to feel very hot, and it's also going to feel like you are about to pee your pants. And I said to her well I have to urinate right now. So I'm afraid if you inject me with this dye, I am going to have an accident inside your machine. So is there any way that you can take me to the toilet. And I could tell that she was like, she just had this look on her face like a deer in the headlights. But she did. She took me from the hospital bed to the nearest lady's room and then stood there and made sure that I was able to toilet myself and was quite weak and anemic and dehydrated and all that. But she took care of me. The point I'm making is she took care of me. She cared enough about me and her job to make sure that I didn't pee all inside her flying donut machine. And I was able to get from the restroom back to the hospital bed and back to the flying donut. Some of the people that I met were great. And some were not. Some of them flat out did not give a damn and it showed. One of the hospitals that I went to the floors were dirty. It was just gross. It looked like something that you would not expect and so called First World America, this expensive health care system that we have the king's ransom that you have to pay every month just to have health insurance. And then on top of that you're gonna get bill after bill after bill. Someone said hi to you in the hallway. So they're sending you a $50 bill in the mail for that. It's like this is absurd. But damn, you at least expect the facility to be clean. I'm old enough to remember that when you went to the hospital, everything was white and antiseptic, and it smelled like bleach, you didn't think that you would catch anything there. But man, the hospital was dirty, it was gross. The bathroom was locked. And when I went to the hospital that time I was going with the stomach crisis. The bathroom door in my hospital room was locked. And I'm like, what, that's the last thing that you want to encounter. When you're having projectile vomiting along with projectile the other stuff. You don't want to go and find a locked bathroom door when somebody finally turned up to unlock the door, so I could go in there and give birth to my own intestinal tract. The bathroom was filthy. I've seen bathrooms and gas stations and public parks that were cleaner and more sanitary than the hospital bathroom. That's pitiful. And then, when it came time to make the diagnosis, the doctor that I had to deal with it was basically like, Well, I mean, you've got long haul COVID. So that's the answer. You shouldn't really have to pro but you shouldn't really have to ask any further questions like, I don't know, do I have afib? Now? Am I at risk for a stroke? Do I have some sort of permanent arrhythmia or heart murmur? Because of this? You shouldn't even probe any of those questions, you should just lay down and accept that you have the long haul Rona. And it'll either linger or it won't. And what the hell kind of non answer is that I was so mad, so mad. And one of the things that this really brought home to me now you think for yourself, you decide for yourself, what's important to you. What it brought home to me is that I don't want to be in the system. I want to be as healthy and well and capable as I possibly can be. Because I don't want to go back to a hospital that's filthy. I don't want to deal with a doctor who acts like he doesn't know his butt from a hole in the ground and also doesn't care and wants to just make a convenient throwaway diagnosis. Again, not everybody was like that. Some of them really, truly cared. And it was obvious that they cared. But it seemed to be polarized. The people that cared really cared. And it was clear that people who didn't give a damn really didn't give a damn. And it was clear that they didn't care. overworked, underpaid burned out, I'm sure. I'm sure. It's just unfortunate that those of us who need care are the ones that have to suffer for that. I don't want to be in that system. So for me, on the road to recovery, I really started to contemplate that question. How do I get out? What are some things that I can do to make health, wellness vitality an important priority in my life? You can't see around every dark corner you're not going to know every bug that you're going to catch or any problem that might ever arise Would that it were so but you're not going to know those things. So what can I do to be better prepared when it comes to health and wellness? And that for me sparked an interest in hacking myself. But not in a creepy way. We're not talking about Harare because in his writings he talks a lot about humans are hackable animals we all like to think that were made in the image of God we like to think that we have some unique characteristic our brain and our thought process is some great mystery. But Haha, no, not really. Big tech can hack your brain and predict every damn thing that you'll do. I am not talking about that kind of creepy Big Brother surveillance the with putting brain chips in your head type of hacking. I'm also not talking about fad diets, things that might kill you subsisting on almost no calories and then binge eating the next day. None of that. As you may know, I've talked on the air before about Dr. Sandra admits books, why diets make us fat? I really enjoyed that book. And for me, it was so liberating to be off that pattern of yo yo dieting and she does such a great way of explaining why that doesn't work, why it doesn't work for you physically and why it doesn't work for you mentally and emotionally. And it seems that in the Western world, we have this obsession with going And on a diet, going off the diet, binge eating, feeling guilty, and then believing we have to pay penance, oh, I ate all of this bad food. I was naughty. And so now I need to get on another fad diet, and it's going to be even stricter and less able for me to comply to it than the last one. And then I'll fall off the wagon and the cycle will repeat and repeat and repeat. Well, who makes money off of that? Certainly the food industry, the diet industry, the fitness industry, Big Pharma does too, because if you're willing to try diet pills and injections, they've got you in their clutches as well. Getting off that roller coaster of the yo yo diet, and that cycle of I pay penance, Oopsy daisy, I fell off the wagon, there's bad foods, and there's good foods. And if I eat good foods today, and I feel slightly hangry and mad at the world all day, then I'm good, I'm virtuous. Whereas if I cave in, and I'm like, dammit, I just want the brownie. Or I just want that cheeseburger and french fries. I'm starving to death, I feel like I could nor my own arm off, I just want to eat this big rich meal. Now I'm a bad person. I don't have self control. I don't have willpower. And I'm just fundamentally a bad person that can't control my eating habits. Getting off of that, for me, was fantastic. Just saying I'll not live that way, not another hour of another day, will I go on that roller coaster ride, I'm done. I'm out. And one of the things that she talks about in the book is if you've been yo yo dieting and going through that cycle for a long time, it's going to take some time to acclimate to a different way. And you may go crazy. Some of those foods that have been for bohtan for all this time, you may finally say yeah, I'm gonna eat the ice cream and the pizza, and the cupcakes, and the cheeseburgers and the milkshakes. But at some point you'll self regulate again. For me, one of the best things that came out of that was knowing what makes my body feel good, and what makes my body feel lousy. Because for me, whenever I would go on these yo yo diets, it was always what somebody else said, somebody else that develop this diet plan says you ate a, b, c and d, but then you never eat XY and Z and you eat it the certain times and not at that time. And maybe you go to bed hungry and you do this and you do that. Being able to actually say wait a minute, I'm going to eat when I feel hungry. When my guts are growling and my stomach is empty. I'm going to eat. And I'm gonna figure out the way of eating the types of foods where I feel really good. And I have energy versus the types of food where I'm like, Oh, I shouldn't have eaten that I feel awful. Now. Having the space to do that. It was like running a scientific experiment. And that's why I say hacking yourself. I was able to hack into my own body so to speak and just say, when I eat in this manner, I feel good when I eat in that manner. I feel bad. I can't speak for everyone else for me. I will tell you if I start to feel sluggish, punchy hangry. Like I'm just I'm just hungry all the time almost and snippy about it. And I feel like I'm all belly like I'm just pregnant with something except I'm not pregnant. It starch. If I overdo it with sugars and starches, that's what happens. It's like someone walks up to my stomach and pulls a ripcord and I'm just like kaboom, all belly. And it feels like being pregnant. Or having PMS, PMS, bloating, even when you're not pregnant, or having PMS. It's just like the starches have done this to me finding that out being able to say okay, if I do this, then I feel like that without being on some kind of prescribed diet, a fad diet. It was fantastic. Because now I have a better sense of when I eat some good high quality protein, good high quality healthy fats, I feel better and I feel full, I feel satisfied. The meal feels more rewarding to me. I like what I'm eating, it tastes good. Whereas when I eat a lot of empty carbs and starches, even if it tastes good, it doesn't make me feel full for very long. I just I wind up feeling punchy and sluggish. And I don't have as much gas in the tank to give to the things that I need to do during the day when I eat in that manner. And let's be honest, there are plenty of junk foods and ultra high processed food like substances as Michael Pollan would say, that don't really offer you very much Almost like eating cardboard, however, it's usually very good tasting cardboard, because it's been laced with a lot of salt and sugar. So it tastes really good. But then it doesn't stick with you. So what happens when you got to eat again? Who profits from that? You know, I mean, it's sort of an open and shut case. If I am stimulated to eat and eat and eat and eat, then I'm buying more from big food. Well, then I get sick. So I've got to go through Big Pharma, because that's the thing. So many doctors now don't want to get into nutrition. They don't want to look at your lifestyle. I'm old enough to remember when doctors did. They would ask you about your lifestyle choices. They would ask you how often you're active. What are you eating? Now? It's like there's a pill for everything. And basically every doctor now with the exception of a few is a Dr. Feelgood. Oh, you got a headache? Here's that. Oh, you got a backache? Here's that, oh, he can't sleep at night. Here's that. Oh, you're diabetic? Well, here's that. Oh, you're eating too much starch and junk food and going through a drive thru every night for dinner? Well, you keep on doing that. And we'll just give you pill after pill after pill after pill. It's crazy. It's just crazy to me. I feel like this also encompasses things like your sleeping habits. How much water? Do you need to feel hydrated? What is your workstyle? Like? Do you need to have a little bit of time in the morning to ease into the work day? Or do you like to get right down to it? Do you like to have some time in the evening for solitude? Or to chill out on the couch and watch a movie with your family? What are the things that make you feel like you're at optimal performance? I just don't believe there are enough people in this country asking that question. What way do I need to live? What foods do I need to eat? How much sleep do I need at night? What kinds of activities do I enjoy doing? And then when I do this combination of things, I feel good. I feel like I'm at peak performance. I feel like the engine is firing on all cylinders. Instead, people get into the rat race. Well, I do this because I've done it every other day. I did it the day before and the day before and the day before I get up at such and so time, I have never stopped to question if that's what actually makes me feel good. I just do it, I get up and have a bowl of sugary cereal because that's what I've always done I'm it's easier to just eat what the kids eat. We get into these habits. And I'm thinking about how Dr. Joe Dispenza has said before that by about age 35 our personality is set. And if you want to change that program that runs on autopilot in the background, it takes an effort it takes takes a conscientious deliberate effort, you have to know that this subconscious autopilot program is going in the background and then you have to get into that program and change it. So like his book, breaking the habit of being yourself. That's what you have to do. And I think our routines are part of that as well. The things that we eat and drink what time I mean, have you ever caught yourself for example, saying well, I'm gonna eat because it's an Are you hungry? Are you starving? Maybe you were hungry at 11 and you should have eaten then because now you're ravenous and you feel like having a binge session. Are you eating because well, this is the time that we eat. This is the time that we have dinner. I don't really want pot roast tonight. But we always have pot roast on Wednesday. So I guess that's what we'll do me. I think it's important to hack yourself. Not in a creepy coat way and not in any kind of way that's dangerous. I'm talking about small tweaks to the routine. For one thing is really about attentiveness. Am I hungry right now or am I thirsty? What do I actually want? What ways of eating and sleeping and being make me feel good? These are important questions, but yet we treat them like throwaways. Think about how important it is that is a primal need. And it's a need that none of us on this planet I don't care where you are in the world listening to this and I don't care at what time this reaches you. Whether you listen to it on the day I publish it or you don't discover it for five years, it's going to be as germane to you then as it is now. You're going to have to eat you're gonna have to drink and you're going to have to sleep. This is part of the human condition. Think about how important those things are to our basic survival and yet how little regard we give to them. I eat at this time because it's what I always do go to bed at this time because is what I always do. I need to get blackout curtains because the street lights too bright, but I just never get around to it. I mean, I feel like health and wellness are so important. And it's not just from like a touchy feely New Agey perspective, like, hey, garbage in garbage out, man. I'm not just talking about it in that regard. I'm also talking about it in terms of your basic survival and your ability to weather a storm. So I'm gonna come back more or less to where I started. For me, my experience being in the system, being in the American medical system, as it exists right now sucked. And I'm like, I'm not doing this. No, no, I don't tell you what to do. You need to make your decisions for yourself. I'm talking about me. Thank God, you know, knock on wood. I'm not on any medications. I don't have any chronic health conditions. I did. So far as long COVID could be considered one. Yes. But my body has started to heal. And I'm so glad for that. I did not want to be trapped in the system. I did not want to get hooked up with a Dr. Feelgood who would just give me pill after pill after pill after pill and make me feel like a zombie. I didn't want that. I wanted to be as healthy and in as good a shape as possible. And I've made that an important priority in my life. I hear people within the emergency preparedness community talking about the value of your health. Obviously, in any situation, your health is priceless. When you start talking about an economic downturn, an economic crash, a job market crash, your health and wellness become even more important than they are when everybody's living off the fat of the land and times are easy. I told you I would connect the dots here and I'm about to do that. I don't believe that we have any 3.5% unemployment rate. I also don't think that we have to legitimate open jobs for everyone unemployed person. I think when people get laid off, they're languishing on the market a lot longer than what you're being told by mass media. I don't think that corporate America is going to bulldoze their corporate real estate wholesale. And I don't think they're going to give up universally on RTO. I'm sorry, I don't. I think some companies that have been remote for a while will stay remote, especially if they were remote. Only before COVID. If you have, let's say a small team at an MSP, which is an IT managed service provider. Everyone works remotely as they have done for the past 10 years, they're probably not going to rent an office space and demand RTO I'm not saying it's impossible that they would but they probably won't. For companies that were in office, but in seat Monday through Friday before COVID I think most people are going back. There are already rumors, shall we say that the corporate real estate market is about to take a nosedive. Some of those hedge funds and corporate investors like a Blackstone, for example. They're just waiting in the wings. They're already predicting that it's going to be as bad or worse than the real estate crisis we saw in a way. And they're waiting. They are waiting with breath that is bated to take advantage of that. As I've said before, if you want to make the argument to me that they're gonna turn those buildings into a 15 minute city, I'll listen. I will listen to that that is viable. But if you're telling me that they're going to buy that real estate and bulldoze it, no, I think you're crazy. I think most people are going back to the office, whether they like it or they don't. And if they want to quit, they want to have a sit out once they run out of money. They're going back. Now you can LARP and you can say people are really going to stick it to these companies that are demanding RTO they're really going to sit it out at home. You can LARP on that if you want to. But you're going to get steamrolled, in my opinion by what's coming. Because the people that have prepped, the people that have accepted reality are going to be miles ahead of you. By the time that you wake up and come out of Fantasyland and into reality. You're going to be so far behind the eight ball, you're going to be in trouble. Who profits from that? Well, if your your house gets foreclosed on, it's going back to the bank. A private person might pick that up or one of the investment firms might pick it up but don't get it on the cheap because it's a foreclosure. The car gets repoed if you default on your loans, your credit cards. It's not going to be you that profits off of it. You're going to have to declare bankruptcy and your credit is going to be shambolic for years to come. Think about these things. Look out for yourself. have, in my opinion, being in as good a shape as possible, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, you're doing yourself a tremendous favor. Of course, you want to be in as good a shape as possible financially going into an economic downturn. That almost goes without saying, but don't neglect the other components either. If you have the opportunity to hack yourself and to figure out when I eat this way, I feel good. When I sleep this way, I feel good. I'm in tune with my body, I know what I need and what I don't need. I feel like if you have the opportunity to do that before, before we get into a true sh TF situation, whatever that may be, we get pulled into a world war, the dollar collapses. The stock market crashes, we have something along the lines of a Black Monday, for example, we officially go into something like 2008 2009 all over again. Or something like the 1982 recession where if you want a mortgage on your house, it's 18%. If you can think about health, wellness and vitality, along with financial health and wellness before that happens. In my opinion, you're gonna go in in better shape than someone who hasn't. Stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.