Lesson 4: The Weekly Routine

This is one of a series of lessons in the Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing

Most of what I know about medicine, I learned by watching the thousands of people who have come to me for help.

Of course, having studied medicine and chemistry and philosophy in school helped me understand what my patients had to teach; still, the lessons came from the people who trusted me with their health. So while I was teaching them, they were teaching me.

Recently, a woman asked me, “Who taught you this, who was your teacher?”

I thought for a minute, and realized the answer was everyone whom I had ever met had something to teach me–and I learned from almost all of them. But, I did not know how to explain, so I gave her another answer that was just as true, “I learned it from the sky.”

One of the lessons that I learned from the most healthy is the weekly routine: the weekly climb to better health and better focus.

I see the extremely healthy practice daily routines, but the practice that distinguishes them even more from the rest of the world is the weekly routine. The activities included in the weekly routine, even more than those in the daily routine, include actions that are important and not urgent.

So, because even these actions are less urgent than what you might do daily, and because they are not usually included in your day, it’s the weekly routine that usually goes undone.

When I get off track and feel the edge becoming dull, it’s usually because I’m leaving off the weekly climb back to better health with the weekly routine.

For example, you may be in the habit of walking most days as part of your daily routine, but if you fail to take time once a week to think about your mileage for the week, or even what that mileage should be, then you do not reach the conclusion that your mileage may not be adequate and that you are missing more days than you thought. Therefore, you do not make corrections in your schedule to get the mileage up to the 21 to 25-mile mark.

As for schedules, it’s the weekly routine where you actually make the weekly schedule that keeps you on track with your exercise and work and rest. Without the weekly routine of looking at your schedule and planning to do what should be done to be healthy, then most of it goes undone.

So, this is an important lesson, Climbing to better health with a weekly routine, because it’s here that you plan and grade yourself on all the rest of the Law of Health.

The Weekly Routine should include at least the following:

1. Rest
2. Meet
3. Grade
4. Organize
5. Metabolic Workout

Rest

You will see greater success if you practice most of the weekly routines on the same day of the week. This day will change, during your life, depending upon your work and family schedules. Most of my life, I’ve practiced the weekly routine on Sundays. But, Saturdays also work, and sometimes (during my ER years) Monday or Tuesday worked better.

The first thing that’s helpful about the weekly routine is to try and avoid any work at your main job on that day. I’ve tried it both ways and you will find much wisdom in the ancient commandment to rest one day per week.

Without this day of rest, several things happen. First, the work expands to fill 7 days, where if I plan to take a day off, then I will usually figure out a way to get the most important things done in 6 days.

All of the work is never done anyway. There’s always something else to do. But, if I work every day, even at a labor of love, then I start to feel less creative and will see a drop in enthusiasm. Even if you love chocolate cake, if you eat it every day you will tire of it. So, taking a day off, even when you have something to do, even when you do not want to take a day off and you love what you do, will make you come back to that activity with renewed enthusiasm and vigor.

This does not mean that you do nothing (though you can). Better is to have a creative leisure pursuit that compliments what you do the other 6 days. I prefer something very active physically (so I fell energized and strong) or something creative that expands the mind (so I come back with more creativity).

Everything is related to everything, so if you let your recreations “be manful and not sinful” (as George Washington advised) you will find your day of rest makes the other 6 days more productive than if you had not taken the day off.

This is also the day that you sleep a little longer, or take a nap that’s a little longer than usual. But, the most re-creating rest comes not from shutting down in sleep (and absolutely not from shutting down in a drunken stupor), it comes from swapping the attention of your mind to something fresh and worthy.

Meet

This is the time to meet with your “mastermind” group.

This is the day for clubs, for worship, to go for the long run with the friend or spouse, to go for the long hike in the forest, to sit for extra time in meditation with a group, to have the family meeting and the family feast.

This is the time to connect to those who have inside of them what you want and who want what you have inside of you.

Life is for doing, not meeting. But, weekly meetings will empower the doing.

Grade

Whatever you do, you will do better if you keep a record. Find a way to keep numbers on anything important. Sometimes the numbers may not say it all. As Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” But much of it can be.

If nothing else, keep track of the 1, 3, 5 plan.

I also find this worksheet helpful. It’s more complicated and takes more time than the 1,3, 5 Plan but I pull it out and use it regularly and find that it helps me stay focused on the important. You may skip a few days but looking at it once a week helps you refocus.

For more about how to use this worksheet, be sure and study and restudy this (one of my favorite books) by a man who coached business people and Olympic athletes about how to thrive with stress (this book helped me stay healthy and through 12 years as an emergency room physician in an inner-city ER):

Organize

Thirty-two years ago, a college professor came to the Shades Valley YMCA in Birmingham, Alabama, and taught a one day course on how to study in college. I sat in the back of a room of about 30 people and, at 17-years-old, learned lessons that continue to help me at 50.

One of the most helpful tricks that he taught was the way to schedule and think about time. Even though I do my own web site, have an iPhone, and have no fear of electronics, I still like to see every hour of my week by filling out this form, which he recommended, once a week.

Years after going to that lecture at the YMCA, I read a similar explanation of time management in Steven Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’d recommend that you review this book once a year:

Then I saw the same form again in this book, The Now Habit, written by a man who helped graduate students quit procrastinating and get on with the job of finishing their doctorate dissertation:

Are you getting the idea that perhaps this form could be helpful to you?!

So download it now, and follow these instructions:

1. Write in the hours when you will work. These are the times when you must be at your job or at school and so are unchangeable (at least for this week).
2. Put in when you will sleep.
3. Write in an hour per day, up to 2 hours per day, that belong to you to exercise and listen to recordings of lectures or to music. To stay healthy and sane, you need an hour per day that belongs to you.
4. Write in one hour per week when you will do the weekly review and repeat this scheduling event.
5. Write in any special events that you would like to attend–especially the meeting with your mastermind person or group.
6. Now look at your schedule and ask, “Do I have something to look forward to every day?” It can be simple and short, just the exercise, or perhaps the bath or sitting with a friend after the workout. But, you should have something that you look forward to every day.
7. Ask yourself, “What is the most important thing that I want to accomplish this week?”

The Metabolic Workout

This is the time to do a fast or modified fast to exercise the metabolism and use the enzymes and hormones that renew and cleanse the body.

Here’s a sample plan: The 3-Day Fat Burn, which is a modification of many strategies. If you don’t have it, then get it (including the grocery list which comes as a free separate download to help you do the plan).

I’m also a fan of Paul Bragg and think this book belongs in every home:

Important Question:

Can you see why when people walk up to me in the grocery store line or at a coffee break at a conference and ask, “What do you do to stay so healthy and fit?” I look at them tongue-tied and sad.

So many people want to make health more simple than how to change the oil in the car. Just take this supplement. Or just do this magic exercise.

Real health, the real tuning and fine-tuning of the body involves much more art and knowledge than most suppose–but the rewards are stellar.

Do not become discouraged if you must study and restudy.

So must I. So must everyone.

The continued and consistent doing of healthy practices

brings better health

even though your doings and mine

will never be perfect.

Learning and practicing the Law of Health is one such practice.

This is one of a series of lessons in the Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing