Somewhere to start
Health
One of the five branches: the life being lived now.
How your body, mind, energy and ability to recover are affecting the life you are living.
Health is usually discussed either as a set of numbers or as a warning. Neither describes the thing people actually live with, which is how much they have in reserve on a normal Tuesday.
For plenty of people this branch is in good order, and knowing that clearly is worth as much as spotting a problem. For others it is the constraint everything else has to work around, and naming that honestly is a relief rather than a defeat.
The point of looking is not to produce a regime. It is to see the state of your energy, your recovery and your mind as they are, and to know which parts you can influence and which you carry.
What this can help you notice
- What is working: strength, sleep, appetite, steadiness, whatever is holding.
- What recovery is actually like now compared with a few years ago.
- Which demands on your energy are chosen and which are simply habitual.
- The difference between something to act on and something to live alongside.
- That noticing your health is in reasonable shape is a complete answer.
The book insists on separating what can be changed from what has to be carried. Health is where that distinction earns its keep.
Where people usually start
Workshop, around twenty minutes
What you are actually measuring
Work out what you are comparing your life against when you answer that question.
Why it is relevant here: Establishes what you are really measuring before anything gets judged against it.
Workshop, around thirty minutes
The parts that are working
Build an honest account of what is good, in enough detail to protect it.
Why it is relevant here: Names the parts of daily life that are sustaining you, which health talk usually skips.
Reading, a few minutes
My life looks good and something still feels wrong.
On paper, there is no complaint to make. You have checked.
Why it is relevant here: For tiredness that has no obvious cause attached to it.
If you want to go further
Four things made by other people, chosen because they are useful rather than because they agree with us. None of them is homework, and none of them is a view TAIU is asking you to hold.
READ · Matthew Walker
Why We Sleep
Why this may be useful: Sleep is the part of health most easily traded away for everything else, and this explains what is being traded.
penguin.co.uk ↗ (Opens in a new tab)LISTEN · Dan Harris with Steven C. Hayes
Steven Hayes on psychological flexibility
Why this may be useful: Steven Hayes on psychological flexibility, an hour on living alongside difficulty rather than waiting for it to pass.
tenpercent.com ↗ (Opens in a new tab)READ · Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz
Recovery from Job Stress: The Stressor Detachment Model
Why this may be useful: Research on what actually restores somebody after work, which turns out to be more specific than resting.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com ↗ (Opens in a new tab)READ · Stephen Kaplan
The Restorative Benefits of Nature: Toward an Integrative Framework
Why this may be useful: On why attention recovers outdoors, and what that suggests about the ordinary hours of a week.
sciencedirect.com ↗ (Opens in a new tab)
Reading it, and keeping it
Everything listed on this page can be read and worked through without an account. Nothing you write in a public session is sent anywhere or stored by us.
Signing in adds one thing: your own words stay, in My Tree, so that when you come back in six months you can see what you thought at the time rather than reconstructing it.
Take this in any order, or take one and stop there. Deciding that nothing needs changing is a real answer, and it is worth knowing why.