You Can't Always 'Try Harder'

Frequency & Oscillation

Many of us are well on the gas pedal of our "sympathetic" nervous system; meaning that we are regularly ready for stress.

But what if the results you want aren't the product of working through stress, but rather by recovering from it.

It's not enough to just cool down your "fight, flight, or  freeze" sympathetic mechanisms, you must activate your "rest and digest" parasympathetic mechanisms, too.

The "Unsustainable" graph below demonstrates how many people focus only on stress, and whether they're experiencing a low or high amount of it; but that accounts only for the RED line.

Just because you feel "low stress" doesn't mean you're in "high recovery".

A great example of this is going to sleep intoxicated. It's not difficult to fall asleep when drunk,...your voluntary-sympathetic system goes nearly entirely off-line; but does that mean you get great recovery during a night of ethanol-induced sleep?

In this case, no matter how hard you step on the gas pedal of your RED line, the gravitational pull of your BLUE line, won't allow for lift off.

So, herein lies the problem: We need stress to grow; but our ability to contend with the stress is hinged upon our ability to recover from it; BUT...and here's the problem; almost NO ONE is focused on their BLUE line of recovery.

And it's not just the RED or just the BLUE line that will deliver the results you want, it's the relationship between the two that does.

Imagine your RED line (fight or flight) is a space shuttle in outer space, and your BLUE line (rest and digest) is the Moon--stick with me here...

It's no secret you're willing to drive the shit out of your space shuttle and work your RED line to its fullest value; but what if you could use the Moon's gravitational pull (BLUE line) to "slingshot" your shuttle to greater speeds, without having to step harder on the gas pedal?

That's what your BLUE line is, it's the recovery gravity of your parasympathetic system (Moon) that slingshots your sympathetic system (shuttle) to new performance highs.

What this means is, many of you are just "trying harder"; doing the same thing you've always done, just doubling down on it hoping for a different outcome.

But, you already KNOW this is unsustainable. This is what most people do when they do their 30-day, 60-day, or 90-day challenge…

They become SUPER strict, over-suppress their tendencies for a duration of time, and by the end they're bursting at the seams.

They never address their BLUE line, they just keep driving their RED line harder and harder.

We all know where this leads. It's time for you to address the BLUE line of your recovery mechanisms and processes.

And so, the logical next question: What do quality recovery mechanism and processes look like?

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