We all occasionally daydream of always getting our own way, but Nature's rules are there to keep us healthy and happy!
I absolutely love watching the Olympics, seeing the best of the best compete. I can hardly wait for this next summer to watch the games in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. I remember watching the 2012 Olympic men’s volleyball competition and noticed one of the star players on the team representing Italy had a large tattoo that said “MY LIFE, MY RULES.” The phrase does sound kind of catchy, confident, even cool, doesn’t it? But, I also saw several competitors penalized, or disqualified, and witnessed events lost because someone broke the rules.
Living your life under only your own rules can ruin things for a lot of people. It can even ruin things for yourself.
That tattoo reminded me of the old Frank Sinatra song, “I Did It My Way”. I love the song, but what would be the consequences if everyone chose to live like that? “I Did It My Way”, “MY LIFE, MY RULES”, and some even say “Rules are made to be broken.” How’s that working for us? I’m convinced that you break the rules, and the rules will break you. The reason for this is simple: you may be able to choose to act in any way you desire, but the consequence of that action is something out of your control.
Every action has a consequence. Even something as simple as a smile has a consequence. If you smile at someone, chances are good that they will smile back. But they won’t always. Why? Because you can only control your action. You cannot control the consequence.
What are some of the major consequences for breaking the rules? Well, how about crime, jail, addiction, injury, divorce, and all kinds of conflicts. In fact, prisons, hospitals, and even cemeteries are full of those who did it their way, by their rules, or thought the rules didn’t apply to them.
“MY LIFE, MY RULES”
Do the names Bernie Madoff, Pete Rose, Lance Armstrong, Lyndsay Lohan, and Charlie Sheen mean anything to you? These were people who had a lot going for them, who seemed too big to fall, but they made choices their way, by their rules. Those choices carried consequences. Let me say something about the my way approach. Some rules or laws are imposed by society: speed limits, taxes, and laws against stealing, vandalizing, rape, and murder. Others are manifest in nature: gravity, the inability for humans to breathe under water, fire burning when you touch it, and muscles needing to be used in order to stay in prime functionality. Trying to break those rules never goes very well.
There are also rules of nutrition. And the real ones are not man-made, they are as immutable as the law of gravity. The movie “Supersize Me” documents how a healthy thirty-two year old man ate only fast food for thirty days, and the drastic effect it had on his physical and mental well-being. He said he felt like he was going to die. What’s the penalty for breaking nature’s nutrition rules? How about obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and poor health for starters? Nature’s rules are simple and surprisingly few. They don’t take a PhD or special training to master. They go something like this:
1 – Eat real food. Real food is food that is closest to the way it is found in nature; preferably raw.
2 – Eat a variety of foods, stay balanced with your food choices, and eat everything in moderation with plenty of fiber and protein.
3 – Avoid any foods that are highly processed, have chemical additives, or anything artificial.
4 – Avoid tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.
5 – Drink plenty of clean, pure water.
Is this an over-simplification? Possibly, but It becomes obvious that the ideal diet is largely organic plant-based or at least what I call flexitarian. I believe that the ideal way to fortify a healthy diet is with Sunwarrior Superfoods. So let’s restate the obvious more correctly, MY LIFE, NATURE’S RULES, I Did It Nature’s Way, and Rules Are Made to Protect Us.
