I LOVE THIS from Malcolm Gladwell’s book titled Outliers:
“Biologists often talk about the ‘ecology’ of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other tress blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid? This is not a book about tall trees.” Malcolm Gladwell, Chapter 1, Outliers.
This series of blog post is not going to be about Gladwell’s book Outliers.
(nor is it about tall trees)
These posts have been inspired by the above paragraph and this passage servers as a groovy metaphor for the resiliency (think pliable, malleable, mobile – cells, tissues, muscles, nervous system, digestion, movement, thinking…..) that each of us carries with us as we forge through life on planet Earth.
In Outliers, Gladwell is interested in what makes a person successful.
I, on the other hand, am interested in what makes a person resilient and of good vibrant health.
Both, being successful and having good resiliency, does not stem from ONE THING alone.
They also do not stem from following a step-by-step protocol of “how-to’s” guided by recommendations from The Center for Disease Control or the National Institute of Health, nor the countless popular press magazines that promise better “X” with these simple and easy peesy steps (the exceptions here would be for stuff like not contracting infectious disease, scurvy and the like…but I digress….)
How to find good resilient-vibrant health and nervous system functioning is an art form that is UNIQUE to EACH INDIVIDUAL and requires careful curation from those who are in the helping professions. It is a job that should not be taken lightly.
Over these series of posts, I’ll bring some ideas forward to you so you can begin to ponder how resilient and vibrant you are, and also, what might be needed to give yourself a little boost.
I’ll parallel the above mentioned factors that make the tallest oak in the forest the tallest, with a factor that matches quite nicely with human growth and resiliency.
1. Let’s first start with that hardy acorn shall we?
OR: How was your birth? And MOST importantly, how was your time for that 9 months in utero?
I’m going to cheat and send you to another’s site to follow-up this point.
Chris Kresser, of the Healthy Skeptic and now The Healthy Baby Code writes about this on a blog post titled:
//
Followed by this nine months, would be:
1) Your actual birth process and the 2) initial bonding and social engagement stages that we have with our primary caregivers.
more soon…..
be sure to sign up for blog posts so that you don’t miss the next pieces……
Irene.
