ThriveCurve.com

10 traits and stay alive and thrive, and the power of visual thinking

I’ve always been a fan of John Tickell. He is an Aussie doctor with a sense of pragmatism grounded in front-line experience coupled with an easy manner and a knack of presenting ideas convincingly and easily. His most well known book Stress for Success has the byline of “Everything in moderation except laughter, sex, vegetables and fish”.

So his “stay alive to thrive” is centred on staying healthy - with or without the help of good genes. He talks about 10 traits of long living people. His descriptions of them add an urgency to “doing the right thing” for your body, spirit and mind. While for some people a simple checklist would have sufficed, I’m not sure how many of the ten traits would be remembered at the moment of having that extra chocolate or glass of wine, choosing lamb over fish or blowing one’s top at poor service again from Jetstar… It made more sense for me to visually package them up in ways that are easier to keep in the mind’s eye that shows the connection between the traits…

The ten traits can be arranged around three interconnecting themes:

• PRESETS - genetic and environmental impacts that we can do the best (or worst with)
• MENTAL - ways we think of things that can wind us up and stress us, or build confidence and energy
• PHYSICAL - how we look after our bodies

These themes interact and impact on each other. To me, the value of the model is showing how the consequences (good and bad) of how I think and behave are interconnected and impact on a reasonably important goal - staying alive, thriving and being happy!

I’ve had two useful wakeup calls in the last five years that give me a sense of urgency on making trait progress. Here is how I think I’ve done…

Visually, it has helped me to see and track progress. Deliberate action and thinking continues to drive progress, with my goals now being to turn the light greens to dark greens, despite my unhelpful genes. So examples…

• getting myself out of business “line of fire” operational stuff that can wind me up
• more attention to meals at supermarket/deli time, to get the right combos of food into the house
• regular raw salmon 
• living the ideas in thrivecurve.com
• replacing tea (with sugar) with juices and water during the day
• bloody minded about minimum levels of exercise and time in nature - daily, weekly and monthly
• starting and sustaining interest in Les Mills “Body Balance” - a combo of tai chi, pilates and yoga inspired stretch and strength exercises. A really good example of “flea” behaviour - all I have to do is turn up…

Tags: health, living longer