Focus on ‘being’ not ‘doing’

Editor's note: Adam Rees is Founder of GRIT GYM, a gym based on results, creating a culture and lifestyle of performance, strength, health and freedom.

By Adam Rees, community contributor

Just like the rest of the things I emphasize, this topic is nothing new. But it's rarely discussed, let alone adhered to in our society today.

The topic is as simple as balance. But few simple things are anything less than extremely difficult.

Why do you suppose everyone is looking for that magic pill when they know it's a simple matter of increasing activity and eating their vegetables?

This balance is between parasympathetic activity and sympathetic activity.

Sympathetic activity includes most exercise, work, competition, practice, fights/arguments, intense thoughts and basically anytime you're either amped up.

Parasympathetic activity includes sleep, meditation, visualization and most laughter. Not all types of 'relaxing” activities are parasympathetic because most people's 'norm” or where they feel comfortable actually is in a state of high threshold, where they are actually far to the side of sympathetic.

As a society we are very poor at 'being” and we are very good at 'doing.” There is a balance to this, obviously it is good to 'do.” The problem with this is you are not a 'human doing” you are a 'human being.” Meaning, we are much too scaled toward doing, which would almost always be a sympathetic activity.

What are the affects of spending too much time in the sympathetic state?

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is one. The bowels are coined as our second brain, partly because of the Enteric Nervous System. The gut is the only organ system in the body that has its own exclusive nervous system, and it's affect is much farther reaching than we give it credit.

Other affects are fat gain, fatigue and exhaustion, muscle loss, overall decrease in life experience, sleep issues and lack of joy. You basically feel like crap, but as a society it appears it's become the accepted norm to feel like crap on a daily basis until Saturday, then spending Sunday dreading going back to a job that you fool yourself into kind of liking.

As a whole we all do this - too much time in sympathetic, not enough parasympathetic - and we have little awareness of it or knowledge what we'd feel like if we were to start exploring the joy of being you. No one does this without a big push to leave the comfort zone, which is where you are right now whether you like it or not. Otherwise you wouldn't be there. That's another of those simple things that are too scary for people to try. And I'm not any different, my courage to take the first step took a huge push that came in a not so great way, actually it was downright awful. But the step is worth it.

Obviously a good portion of the day should be sympathetic, but there needs to be significant parasympathetic time as well. Developing more balance is not a whole solution, but it's a big part of the whole body-mind-life pandemic that currently is worse than ever.

Account for the amount of time you devote to these. That habitual comfort zone can become your life.

l For more questions on this topic, please contact Adam Rees at Adam@GritGym.com and I'll reply with resources, further explanation and strategies we use to improve the parasympathetic/sympathetic balance.