Find Your Fences and Figure Out What's Holding You Back

Let's say you are thirty years old, safely in the adult range. You have a complete set of rules of life, standards against which you can judge what is happening in the external world. You have moral codes, ethical codes, rules of society -- either legal or the sort of folk-generated herd rules that are almost as dire. These rules just dropped in like presents from a passing pigeon, did they not?

If that's the case, then where did you learn to be “you”?

In the family, for most people, is the starting point. Your parent(s) perceived the world through their own filters and applied their own rules and codes. This is right, this is wrong. This is good, this is not good. I “should” be like this, I “should not” be like that, and so on. And in the process of teaching their junior to become a senior, parents lay this wisdom down like tablets from the mount. Where did they get this wisdom from? Same place you will when you are doing exactly the same thing to your kids. They got the wisdom from their parents, our first teachers, in a long line of teachers, all with their rule books.

Okay, so what's the point?

Just this: many of the rules and standards and perspectives we apply in life are not our own, but they have been acquired from infancy and installed in our biocomputers to guide us through life. This is all very well if the rules are sound, and if the rules actually help you and serve you well.

But what worked for Great Granny when the Old Queen was on the throne may not have the slightest relevance in a totally different world and environment inhabited by her great grandchild.

In fact, the rules may fence you in.

And since the rules are automatically triggered in your subconscious mind, which is so vast and fast and powerful, you have an exceptionally vigilant secret police force at work 24 hours at day internally, and they do have penalties for infringements. Not parking tickets, but bad feelings, or a swift memo to some of the guys in the internal village in your mind to get out of bed and haul you back into line. Which means the hot line rings in the hut of the biggies with requests for help. Biggies being the characters in the village with names like “Fear,” "Guilt," Old Habits"!

You get the drift now, don't you?

So, when you use phrases like "I shoulds" casually, be very careful. The phrases do work, but not necessarily in the way you might like. They can end up as “fences” that box you in and either stop you from doing something you really want to do or herd you in a direction someone else does want you to go. This may not be the direction you want.

Okay, we now have quite a bit of theory. Let's try a practical application of how you can make your fences work for you. You can work with your fences on paper to actually clear away some of the rubble. Although there are several ways to understand and make your fences work for you, let's use a method that requires pen and paper and about thirty minutes of time.

First, jot down a list of numbers on a sheet of paper. Five will do as a minimum and ten is probably a sensible maximum.

Then beside each number, write down one of the “I shoulds” in your life. Do this until you have 5-10 of the fences on paper. Don't think too hard or too slowly. You want to grab these "I shoulds" from beta consciousness, a bit below usual conscious level.

Don't make this a school exercise that rakes your brains. Just take your line of numbers and scribble down five to ten "I shoulds" as fast as you can write, like…

I should lose weight.
I should stop smoking.
I should be more confident.
I should be a nicer person.
I should use my credit card less often in the department stores.
When you look down your list, you may well notice how most of the “I shoulds” tend to be a little negative.
Next step.

Rewrite the whole list underneath the first list, but this time write them in this form:

If I really wanted to, I could lose weight.
If I really wanted to, I could stop smoking.
If I really wanted to, I could be more confident.
If I really wanted to, I could be a nicer person.
If I really wanted to, I could stop over-using my credit card.
At this point, a funny thing has already happened. Internally, you are now looking in a different direction, a direction driven by curiosity and the desire for self-knowledge.

Interestingly, the “bullies” of your internal village -- the chaps with names like "Fear" and "Guilt" -- will tend to yawn and look at this new list and be bored out of their gourds and disinclined to say anything because they don't see any perceived threat to you.

Now, instead of the "I should" line of introspection, you are asking decent questions with the phrase “Do I, actually, really want this?”

And if every fiber of your being shouts back, “No, I darn well do not,” then it is clearly already a dead duck. To be on the safe side, just do a mental check to be sure all parts of you concur with your decision to throw out that "should." If you don't have a good reason to change, trash the “I should” and save yourself a lot of grief. Then re-write the rule that sparked it off, in your own words, and not in the words of your parents, teachers, etc, etc.

But if every fiber of your being says, "Yes, I want to make this change," then progress is being made, more progress than you may realize because you are now pointing in the right direction, and you are now ready to start the most important part of fences.

At this point, you again put pen to paper but now with each of the new sentences you ask yourself:

Do I really want this for myself? If I do, what is stopping me from getting it?

Answer that last question fully and to the best of your ability. The answer might be a single line or it might be a whole page of bullet points, done at high speed.

Visually, your list will now look something like this…

I should lose weight.
If I really wanted to, I could lose weight.
Do I really want to lose weight? I do, so what is stopping me?
I love the taste of junk food.
Eating when I'm depressed makes me feel good.
I can't seem to stop eating even when I'm no longer hungry.
I like to eat and watch TV.
I like to eat and read.
… and so on.
As you write down all the things that are stopping you, many different emotional feelings may rush through, and some of these feeling won't be comfortable. Fear, Guilt, and Old Habits will try to grab the conductor's baton to scare you away from the new music you're making for yourself!

To handle these emotional feelings, simply keep re-assuring yourself. Stick to it, and this time do not be anything less than a true friend to yourself. Write everything down. Do keep in mind that this exercise is still a game. Even after you have everything written on paper, nothing compels you to take action if you ultimately choose otherwise.

But if you keep going and play by your rules instead of by the rules that others have ingrained into your being, by identifying your fences and your choices you will have the problem and the solutions mapped out on paper, and you will see that what you thought was the real problem is not the real problem -- it is secondary, a symptom.

At this point you know the real job ahead of you, and you have on paper the areas you need to work on, so you can stop wasting all your time and energy walking round in an endless circle, trapped within your inner fences.

Now you can either dismantle the fences or build yourself swinging gates you can use to exit the areas that hold you captive.

Free to move on, your fences no longer hold you back.

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The Truth about Saturated Fats and Cholesterol
By Dr. Ben Kim
Life Essentials Health Clinic

After graduating from chiropractic school, I made my way to a small Inuit village at the northern tip of Alaska to begin my first practice as a chiropractor. One of the most impressive memories I have of my time in northern Alaska was watching the natives haul a 20-foot whale onto the beach and divide the “muktuk” (whale blubber) into three by three sheets, one per family. I learned that the natives chopped these sheets of whale blubber into small pieces, about the size of small grapes, to be eaten raw and sometimes dipped in seal oil. In addition to whale blubber and seal oil, the natives continued to eat traditional staples such as whale meat, caribou meat, fish, and goose meat.

My observations in rural Alaska are congruent with the studies of Weston A. Price, a Harvard-trained dentist who traveled around the world in the 1930s, visiting many indigenous populations and observing their diets and health. Dr. Price found that the foods of isolated primitive peoples contained at least ten times the fat-soluble vitamins A and D found in modern diets. He also found that all healthy populations had at least one source of animal fat and protein in their diets, such as fatty fish, wild game, organ meats, eggs, and butter. These healthy populations did not suffer from heart disease, digestive problems, cancer, or obesity at the rates that we do.

For the past twenty years, we have been encouraged to believe that saturated fats and cholesterol, both found in animal fats, are the main causes of chronic degenerative diseases. Ask the average North American what they know about saturated fat, and the majority will answer that it causes heart disease. Ask the average high school student what they know about cholesterol, and they will tell you that it is bad for you. For years, I would have answered the same. Are these views on saturated fat and cholesterol with merit?

Here are some facts about saturated fats:

They make up at least 50 percent of our cell membranes, providing essential rigidity and strength
They enhance the immune system
They help incorporate calcium into our bones
Some of them have antimicrobial properties that protect us against harmful microorganisms in our digestive tracts
And here are some facts about cholesterol:
It contributes to cell membrane rigidity and strength, just as saturated fats do
It is used to make hormones that help us deal with stress, as well to make sex hormones
It is converted to vitamin D, essential for proper growth, healthy bones, a healthy nervous system, muscle tone, and proper immune system function
It is used to make bile, needed for digestion of fat in our foods
It acts as an antioxidant, actually protecting us against cellular damage that leads to heart disease and cancer
It helps maintain a healthy intestinal lining, offering protection against autoimmune illnesses
Clearly, saturated fat and cholesterol are needed for many vital processes. We need both in our diets to be as healthy as possible. The danger comes when we eat fats and cholesterol that have been damaged by heat, oxygen, and unnatural farming practices. Damaged fats and cholesterol can lead to injury to the walls of our blood vessels, promoting a build-up of plaque that heals the injured areas. It is this build-up of plaque that impairs blood circulation and paves the way to heart disease and other chronic illnesses.

The following foods are likely sources of damaged fats and/or damaged cholesterol:

Pasteurized dairy products – this includes cheese and ice cream that have been made from pasteurized milk
Powdered milk
Powdered eggs
Meats that have been cooked at high temperatures, especially those that have been fried or deep-fried
Most vegetable oils
All hydrogenated oils
The following foods are concentrated sources of healthy fats and/or healthy cholesterol:

Avocado
Nuts and seeds
Cold-water fish
Organic eggs
Organic chicken
Grass-fed beef
Virgin Coconut Oil
Red Palm Oil – used throughout Africa
Cold Pressed Olive Oil
The difference in organic and non-organic animal foods is significant. As an example, let’s look at the difference between organic and non-organic eggs. We function best when we eat an equal balance of two fatty acids: omega-6 and omega-3. Having too much omega-6 and too little omega-3 leads to numerous health problems, including generalized inflammation, high blood pressure, depressed immune function, weight gain, an irritated intestinal tract, and a tendency to form blood clots. An organic egg, one that comes from a hen allowed to eat green plants and insects, contains an optimal ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids of 1:1. A commercial supermarket egg from a hen that is fed mainly grain in a factory-farm environment has a ratio closer to 15 or 20:1.

Virgin coconut oil and red palm oil are the best oils to cook with because they contain a large percentage of saturated fats that remain stable and undamaged with heat. All other vegetable oils are damaged easily with heat exposure. This is why cold-pressed olive oil is best eaten raw.

Getting back to my time in rural Alaska, I remember being impressed with stories that some of my elderly patients told me about how strong and healthy their parents and grandparents were. For Inuits living before the mid 1900s, it was a regular occurrence to use small, homemade kayaks to go hunting in cold arctic waters. Every spring and fall was time to go out on the ice or water for several days to weeks at a time to hunt for whales. Although hunting and eating traditional foods are still a part of the Inuit culture, some of my older patients remarked how sad it was to see today’s generation of Inuits suffering from numerous health problems like cancer, heart disease, horrible dental health, and crippling arthritis. By all accounts, these ailments were very rare in the recent past.

Of course, it was no surprise to discover that soft drinks and fast food have become staples in the Inuit diet. Planes flew in to our village everyday, carrying many cases of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Doritos, and most processed convenience products found in regular supermarkets. As a special treat, many people who were returning from trips to Anchorage and Seattle brought back boxes from Pizza Hut and McDonalds for their families and friends.

I can only hope that populations like this one will not mistakenly group their pizzas and Big Macs with their traditional animal foods as fatty foods that cause chronic disease. Many people I have worked with over the years have made this mistake and ended up developing health problems that were partly due to a deficiency of healthy fats in their diets. I made this same mistake for five years.

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