Zig Ziglar On Healthy Habits and Becoming A High Performer.

This post will take you a few minutes to read, but those few minutes could be life changing for you.

It is meant to help you, your family, and others in Texarkana and beyond think of things a little differently.

It talks about one of Zig Ziglar’s most memorable stories… and he had a lot.

What does a Chiropractor know about health?

Much more than most people realize.

It’s what we generally tend to focus on as Chiropractors rather than treating disease.

Moving on to Zig’s idea…

Profound insight from the late, great Zig Ziglar used to talk about “The Million Dollar Racehorse.”

He used this concept to re-frame how we, the audience, thinks about taking care of themselves and their health.

Zig would say, imagine you had a $1,000,000 racehorse.

Putting this picture in our minds of a high dollar, high performance athlete that is a horse.

He would ask, “If you did have a $1,000,000 thoroughbred racehorse, would you let him stay up half the night drinking coffee or alcohol while smoking cigarettes and eating junk food?”

It’s an important re-frame of how we treat something that is very, very valuable.

Next Zig would ask, “Would you treat a $10 dog or a $5 cat that way?”

Interesting.

For me, my answer is an emphatic, “NO!!”

As an animal lover, I do not give my dogs junk food – no pizza, ice cream, candy, … etc.

I don’t give them these foods because it’s not what they were designed to eat,  it’s not their natural diet, and it would definitely create health problems in my little 4 legged friends.

Now for Zig’s most important question, one that you must ask yourself…

“What about your billion dollar body?“

We treat our cats and dogs better than we treat ourselves and our kids… and we are paying the price for it with massive amounts of pain and suffering.

“How Should We Treat Ourselves and Our Families?”

We lose a chunk of our potential every time we make a bad decision.

Our kids also suffer when we make bad decisions for them. I know that sounds harsh and you don’t have to be militant about it, BUT everything counts.

They’re kids. Yes they want more cookies, pizza, ice cream, video games, and tv… but they don’t understand the ramifications of each decision yet.

Here’s the truth of this entire story, you and your kids are worth far more than a million dollar racehorse.

No reasonable owner of the racehorse would treat their $1,000,000 racehorse the way that we often treat ourselves…  and if they did – the horse would certainly not perform well and begin to rapidly lose it’s health and it’s value.

Is that what’s happening in our country, our states, our cities (Texarkana), and even our own lives?

Are our kids performing poorly at school, suffering with obesity, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, asthma, allergies, attention problems, and so much more just because of lifestyle?

Unquestionably our DNA has not suddenly transformed creating mutants that instead of super-powers have super-suffering.

It’s not the genetics, it’s how our genetics interact with lifestyle – diet, exercise, stress, sleep, and environmental exposures to toxic chemicals.

Our country, the media, and politicians keep bringing up health care.

It’s generally done within the context of ‘health‘ insurance.

Health insurance is not truly for health care.

It’s for sickness and crisis care.

This means that if you have a heart attack, have a massive trauma, or have some illness – the insurance will often help pay for the care.

Insurance is starting to catch on to potential savings by encouraging healthy behavior.

Some insurance companies are helping people pay for gym memberships.

Virtually all insurance covers chiropractic care and we take the vast majority at our Texarkana Chiropractic Clinic.

Still Health Insurance is primarily for intervening late in the process. This approach to ‘health’ care is being reactive – not pro-active.

What you do every day is health care for yourself and your family.

I’m not going to lie to you. It takes discipline.

It can be difficult to overcome years of unhealthy habits.

The truth is that there are NO shortcuts.

You can’t take a pill to cover up a symptom caused by a bad lifestyle.

Well that’s not exactly true.

You can do that – millions of Americans are doing it every day for problems that could often be helped in other ways.

It certainly is true of pain and chronic pain that is literally crippling America.

The question is,

“How is intervening late in health care working for us?“

Clearly the answer is not too well as evidenced by the growing burden of chronic diseases on our country and our families.

Heart disease, cancer, auto-immune diseases, neuro-degenerative conditions, diabetes, and the list goes on and on.

We don’t need the government to fix our country’s health.

We can do it ourselves over time, in fact that’s the only way.

I know some of us unfortunately will still have serious problems.

This might even be you or someone in your family.

It’s not always within our control.

It does bring me to another question though if you happen to be suffering from a serious health problem,

“Isn’t it even more important to do what you can to improve your health on your own so that you have the best chance of recovery?”