or if you’re not a Rocky fan, take one a million inspirational Steve Harvey quotes…
“When you change something small. Like, I have to work out, I have to go shopping for dinner, i have to go to my kid’s sports with that one word. Get. I Get to work out, I Get to go shopping, I Get to watch my kiiiiids (Steve Harvey accent)- well that changes your whole mindset and your world.”

things like this – and I could put thousands of these ideas that I like up here. But let’s get to the story…

 The other day, I got some terrific advice while listening to a podcast on the way to work.  Man, I start a lot of my articles off like this. But that’s OK – this site is built on sharing good information, so you can do exactly what I have.  Digest it and use it your way.  Make it yours if it fits, and make your life better.  Or, if it is unneeded, disregard it and know where to look for it if you are searching someday.

Anyway, it was rock-solid advice, but it didn’t set in stone until I started to put it into practice.

That’s just the way real life works.

Life-changing awareness can come from a “short” of the famous yogi dropping words of wisdom – I love that guy.

Or it can be a meme that makes us pause for a second and stop.  Trying to fathom what a few words with an appropriate picture really means.

Nearly all of us in the Facebook, Insta, and TikTik, world look for these and find them while scrolling nearly daily. However, in the modern entertainment world, which is what our social media is about, we don’t get nearly the knowledge dropping that we think we do.

It can be something profound and deep that has an immediate and tremendous impact on our life. It can make the hairs on the back of your head stand out and give you a tingling feeling.  However, within two seconds, we will scroll to the next, and the essence of the message is lost.

I don’t hate it. I don’t even fight it. Instead, like everyone, I copy it and send it to my family or save it to my photo reel because I know I will return to it sometime.  It’s just what we need when we need it, but the message is short-lived and often forgotten. 

My son, Braylon, did a fantastic job educating me when he was younger. I was going off on him about YouTube videos on how much time he was spending, and he told me, “Dad, I’m not wasting time. It’s accelerated learning.”

I was skeptical, but he was right. There is a tremendous amount of learning that can go on, and the generation currently in school can absorb exponentially more information than I did. For example, he once showed me these funny history shorts with little character’s that look similar to South Park animations.  It’s crazy how much I could take in during a ten-minute “fun history” with cartoons.  What used to take me a week of class!    It’s a substantial reason kids are bored in school.  They realize the intel is out there is a more absorbable dose.

The trouble is the finding and even in some aspects, the absorption and retaining of information isn’t the same as LEARNING. And even with that, in a proper argument, I would even take it a step further and say perhaps learning isn’t practicing.

It’s not until you put these ideas into practice that you really get to run the experiment on life and see if it fits are not.

Today’s article is entitled:

It’s not in the doing but in the listening.

It sounded great the first time I heard it.   Profound.   

It’s the direct quote that made me pause.   I created a note on Siri because…”Wow!”  that’s deep, then hit play and continued.

Let me explain with a story about myself.

Over the last two weeks, I have been getting different body aches, and pain, although not severe, other than what I’ve ever felt. I wake up in the morning, and it feels like I have just got done doing a work out. My muscles seem primed and ready to go but sore.

I haven’t felt like this since my college football days while going through fall camp,  where we all  just wake up every day and feel muscle soreness. I am sure the guys going through basic training know precisely what I’m talking about. It’s not even super detrimental, and you get used to it. It’s just not the norm for me.

Many of you know that I run two different websites. I have this one BeAwesome365, but I also have a sports performance website called SportsDocDc.   

I live for human performance, so I have a more extensive toolbox than most for ideas, tips, and tricks that I can use to combat why I have the soreness.

 I ran the usual protocols: Electrolytes, yoga-type movements, a few recovery days, and four and 5 mile easy runs. During the day, I felt great, but I would consistently wake up in the morning feeling the same. So it’s time to try some more effort.  Better types of fixes.

I went through a 48-hour fast to reset my body.

Here’s the thing. I felt a ton better within 24 hours and nearly entirely resolved this issue within 48 hours.

So what does that mean? Did the fasting fix me? It could be run, electrolytes, or the perfect combination of everything I needed to be done in the exact moments that allowed my body to get better information and reset the muscle tension. Here’s the thing it wasn’t doing- that fixed me.

Yes, I did a lot of things.

I tried a lot of things.

But unless I listen to my body to see what things tend to aggravate it, as well as what things seem to give me an improvement, I don’t get to make the right decisions and therefore wasted effort. Listen to your body.

For instance. There are 100 different things I can do to make your body feel better as a Sports Based chiropractor. So there were 100 different options I could’ve gone to when I wanted self-treatment.

Here’s the first thing I did.

I took 800 mg of ibuprofen.  This dose is often called “ranger candy” because it is a preferred dose of high-intensity training with many of our special forces.

But I never take ibuprofen just to take it. I am looking for a yes or no answer. I am looking to be a detective and have track on the imaginary flow chart that is my recovery.    Did ibuprofen help?  Yes No Maybe —->  these each lead to the next box. 

800 mg of ibuprofen did nothing for me. So if I listen to this information, I can reasonably assume that I am not inflamed because the anti-inflammatory at a high dose really didn’t help me at all. 

If I don’t listen, I’m doing it. I could take three doses of 800 mg ibuprofen for a month.

“I’m doing stuff.”   I think I’m helping.   But I’m not paying attention.   I’m not moving forward.   And we all DO way more often than we listen.

 I see patients doing stuff every day. 

They will tell me they are on an ibuprofen dose and have been for over a month.

They are stretching.

They are meditating.

They are taking turmeric and have gone gluten free and changed their diet.

They are going for walks and doing that exercise the PT showed them 16 years ago.

I asked, “Is it working?”

“I’m not sure?”

Hmmm.   Not listening.

And this article isn’t even about health.  It’s about letting these profound meme’s and great advice and pictures of something amazing that COULD change us, and relocating it to our photo reels.

So the message of this entire article.   Memes, fortune cookies, grandma’s advice, cliches, maxims- sometimes they are exactly what we need.    Not a full blog article with silly stories and crafted quips concocted like a kolache in Kawaii.  But simple.   Changing.    Ahhh.   

Brevity is an art, not a saga.

But when you find that one hit on social platforms, this is my shout-out to make some time in your life to come back to it. Meditate on it. Use your imagination to apply it in a way that works rather than just scrolling.

Just Do it! Yes! 

But listen too.    Modify.    Experiment.    Live!

That’s where improvement and happiness lie – in the application.    And sometimes, it is as simple as listening.