Is It Luck or Consistency?
There’s no doubt we love to try our luck every once in a while. We see on the news that the Powerball is upwards of a billion dollars and whether we see it or not the odds of winning that jackpot are 1 in 292.2 billion. Yet we still want to give it a shot on winning that jackpot. Does this sense of wanting to try our luck spill into other areas of our life? Do we drive a little over the speed limit to risk getting a ticket just to be on time to where we’re going? I know I am guilty of that. What about with our health, do we take gambles on that more than we should?
We usually do our due diligence and get screened for various diseases through routine physicals, labs, cancer screenings, etc. But what do we do to keep one step ahead of these diseases? Having routine physicals, labs, and screenings undeniably does a ton of good, but if we aren’t being proactive about staying healthy it is almost like we are waiting for something to pop up in order to address it. It is like the city taking care of a bridge, the city will do regular maintenance and inspections, they don’t wait for a catastrophic failure before addressing the problem. They are proactive about keeping the public safe.
So, what if we try to push our luck with our health, what are our odds? Let’s narrow the scope to three diseases that are the top killers in our country: heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Heart disease has a lot of different factors contributing to it like high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, heart attacks, heart arrythmias, etc. But overall, we have a 5% chance of being diagnosed with some form of heart disease. Our chances increase as we age. With cancer, men have a 42.05% chance and women have a 37.58% chance of being diagnosed with some form of cancer. Diabetes, more specifically type 2, we have about a 10% chance in our lifetime being diagnosed with it.
You don’t need to be a mathematician to decern that if we play the lottery consistently, it could take multiple lifetimes and we still might not even win. But we have much higher odds of being diagnosed with a disease that could greatly impact our lives. Once again, no need for a calculator, we should be doing things to decrease these odds.
Do you ever compare yourself to someone else who seems to be unconsciously lucky with their health? It can be easy to think, man maybe I can just be lucky like them and not have to deal with many health issues. Here’s a powerful analogy, think of when we were young and a lot of us probably dreamed of being professional athletes. As we get older, we’ve probably thought that they are lucky to be getting paid millions of dollars to play a sport and be in the spotlight. Is it really luck though? Some of you may know who Shannon Sharpe is. He was a professional football player for the Denver Broncos. He is in the football hall of fame, 3x Superbowl champion, 4x first team all-pro, and 8x pro bowler. In a podcast, he brought up a great point, we have only seen his life from 1990 and on. We don’t know the Shannon Sharpe before 1990 before his time in the NFL. He went on to share how his mom would have to choose between paying the light bill so her kids could do their homework or paying the phone bill so if there was an emergency, they could call for help. Being in the situation that he grew up in, making it through, and getting to the NFL, there was a lot more hard work than there was luck.
Consistent hard work can get us just about anywhere in life. A little luck every once in a while can come in handy, but it isn’t something we should ever depend on. Being consistent with our health can be a big determinant of the odds we discussed earlier. Making small changes whether it be diet, exercise or chiropractic, there a lot of little things we can do. Less eating out for lunch, making a healthy meal the night before and plan to make extra to pack with for lunch the next day. Determine a time to schedule in some form of exercise, it could be as simple as a 30 minute walk or committing to a gym routine. Give chiropractic care some consistency beyond just dealing with neck and back pain. Chiropractic care has influence on the nervous system. By removing subluxation, that stress that has accumulated on the spinal cord and nerves cutting off communication from brain to body can be removed and allow the body to function well. If we work hard and are consistent about removing subluxation from our nervous system, we can see great changes. We can’t guarantee what changes will occur, it is different for everyone, but with time we can expect results and not just luck.
