6-Second Sunday: On rituals, doctor damage, and hard beds

6 Ideas. 6 Second Skim. 6 Minute Read.

Happy 6-Second Sunday!

Here are 6 ideas I’m applying that take 6 seconds to skim and 6 minutes or less to read…

Overview

1. Reframe I’m Making: Rituals > Routines

2. Idea I’m Developing: Doctor Damage

3. Struggle I’m Accepting: Fighting the Good Battle

4. Test I’m Performing: Is your bed too hard?

5. Trend I’m Observing: There are other people here

6. Quote I’m Rereading: Your Medicine Way

Let’s dive in.

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Reframe I’m Making: Rituals > Routines

Routine and ritual are not different words for the same thing.

Routines result in the compulsive need for haste. An urge to find efficiencies and compress the time the routine takes. A specific outcome that doesn’t care how we get there. A faster passing of time.

Rituals are sacred. Rituals require presence. Rituals, like song and dance, are about the act of doing, not the goal of completing.

Reframing routines into rituals—focusing on how we get there not just getting there—massively transforms how we go about the repetitive things in our days.

Cooking is no longer about putting food on the table but about the therapeutic rhythm of chopping, the smell of spices and sauces, the bubbling of boiling water and sizzling of shallots, the communal act of eating and hearing about each other’s highlights from the day, and the joy you get from seeing others relish your food.

Exercise is no longer about gaining muscle and checking a box but about awakening and reconnecting with your body, exploring the crevices of your mind, serving the parts of you that demand daily movement to thrive, being with the sensations in your muscles, and feeling force transfer from the power of your body into your hands and feet and out into the external world.

But we must not let our rituals devolve into routines.

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Idea I’m Developing: Doctor Damage

While there has been a lot of good done by science entering the mainstream and our primary sources of information coming from legitimate, reputable MDs and PhDs rather than YouTubers and influencers, it’s not all sunshine.

A fair amount of harm has been done by the amount of information circulating especially when doctors discuss complex topics for an audience with zero scientific background—an audience that includes me.

This causes what I call the Deer in Headlights Effect.

We learn enough to be worried—“If I consume too many carbs I might become insulin resistant,” for example—but do not understand the complexity and nuance of the mechanisms at play and lack the scientific know-how to dissect more studies on the topic and gain a solid understanding of what is really happening in our bodies as a result of a certain stimulus (exercise, food, fasting, etc.).

The health-conscious person can find something to worry about in everything because of an Instagram clip or podcast they vaguely recall of a doctor discussing the nuances of Master’s level science relating to some food, exercise protocol, or cold exposure.

We lose the forest for the trees and end up living in a constant state of stress and neuroticism as we try to optimize every single aspect of our health. Eventually, basic everyday decisions become overwhelming because of the thousands of clips we’ve consumed stressing the minutiae.

Like this ridiculous clip of Dr. Rhonda Patrick worrying about the negative repercussions of putting a banana in her smoothie…