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Healthy Heart Main Text

Hi, this is AJ, welcome to the next lesson. This one is called “Healthy Heart” and I’m going to talk about, again, a section from Healthy at 100 – the book Healthy at 100 – by John Robbins. I’ve already talked about it a little bit and I’m going to talk about a different section this time.

And in this section John Robbins talks about another factor that contributes to a long and healthy life. Now before we talked about diet and what you eat and how that can really affect your health, your longevity, meaning how long you live, how strong you are, everything.

Well there’s another very important factor other than diet. Diet is very important, but another important factor that John Robbins found when he studied all these people who were 100 years old or more and they were still strong, still healthy, well he found something else.

So a kind of vegan diet, that was number one, but the next thing he found was these people have strong social ties. They have rich social lives. It means they’re not alone. They have friends, they have family. They have communities. They’re connected to other people in many, many ways. And so what he found was that emotion and love and caring and connection were equally important to diet and exercise. They’re both very important.

So let me read a section from his book - the same book -Healthy at 100 and then I’ll talk more about it. Here we go.

”’We cannot live for ourselves alone,’ wrote Herman Melville. ‘A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men. Perhaps this explains why we are often moved by people caring deeply for one another. ‘There are also medical implications to whether we think of others or only of ourselves,’ as Larry Scherwitz found when he conducted a most unusual study. He is now the Director of Research at California Pacific Medical Center’s Institute for Health and Healing in San Francisco.

“Dr. Scherwitz taped the conversations of nearly 600 men. About one-third of these men were suffering from heart disease, the rest were healthy. Listening to the tapes, he counted how often each man used the words I, me and mine. Comparing his results with the frequency of heart disease, he found that the men who used the first person pronouns the most often had the highest risk of heart trouble.

“What’s more, by following his subjects for several years thereafter, he found that the more a man habitually talked about himself the greater the chance he would actually have a heart attack. Apparently, counting the times a person said ‘I’ was an ingenious way to quantify self-absorption. It seems that the less you open your heart to others the more your heart suffers.

“Dr. Scherwitz counsels, ‘Listen with regard when others talk. Give your time and energy to others. Let others have their way. Do things for reasons other than furthering your own needs.’ This is sound medical advice and it speaks also to our spiritual and emotional needs. Many religions have taught that being trapped in the illusion of separateness is the source of much of our suffering.

“Modern Western society, of course, has become highly competitive. You see it, perhaps, most conspicuously in sports. ‘Winning is not the most important thing,’ said the famous football coach Vince Lombardi, ‘it’s everything.’ Another coach said ‘Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.’

“I’m sure these coaches were trying to urge their players onto greater effort and to motivate them. But when we become hyper-competitive we may lose touch with honor, decency and sportsmanship and we almost always lose touch with each other.”

So this is quite interesting. That’s a nice little section from John Robbins’ book. So he’s talking about the medical effects of being totally selfish or too competitive. So very competitive people, very selfish people, people who only think about themselves, they have a much higher rate of heart attacks. They live shorter lives, they’re less healthy. Interesting…

So the opposite is also true. People who care more about other people, who think about other people, who are connected to other people, who are more grateful and loving, they live longer and they’re healthier and stronger. Pretty amazing, so maybe we should think about this and start applying this to our own lives.

I know I have found this to be true in my life, as well. As I have developed Effortless English, the company, I’ve had the opportunity to connect with more people. And in the beginning…I’ll be honest, in the beginning…I was more focused on myself because I hated working these terrible jobs and I wanted to be free. You know I wanted to be free from jobs. I wanted to be free from bosses. I wanted to be free from working other people’s schedules. So I was really focused on my needs.

And those needs were important. And I’m happy that I started the company and I’m happy that I solved those problems. I’m happy that I now am my own boss and that I have satisfied my own needs. Certainly that has given me happiness. But what has given me more happiness lately is that I have changed my focus because now I have met my individual needs, I’m fine. I have plenty of money, I am free, I am my own boss, I have, you know, lots of opportunities in my life, it’s great.

But once that happened I started to focus on other people because now what motivates me is connecting with other people, helping other students. I want to excite my students. I want to excite the members of the Effortless English Club. I want you to be happier. I want you to find your dreams or remember them and achieve them. I want you to meet all of your needs. I want you to be happier, healthier, more successful. The more I think about other people, the more I think about helping my friends, helping my family, helping you, the happier I become. I get more and more and more energy in my life.

So when I was only thinking about myself and growing my business for myself, sure, that was motivating, it was definitely inspiring for me, but now I’m at a much higher level because now I’m thinking about other people. Now I’m connecting to other people and it’s such an incredible boost of energy. It’s so much higher than before when I was just focused on myself.

So I encourage you to do the same thing. Now, first, you must meet your own needs, you cannot ignore yourself. If you just try to please other people, just help other people and you ignore yourself then you feel empty and you won’t feel energized and you won’t feel healthier and you won’t feel stronger.

So, absolutely, you must take care of yourself, you must meet your own individual needs, certainly. That will give you the power and the energy then to be generous, to start thinking about other people, but that’s the next step and that’s what you must do if you want to be healthy and strong and live to be 100 years old and feel great or if you just want to be healthy and happy right now. Start thinking about other people, how can you contribute to other people, also? How can you make yourself happy and yourself successful and at the same time help other people be happier, help other people be more successful.

The reason I’m so excited as a teacher is because I love to see my students succeed, it gives me amazing energy to see that. Now sometimes, for example, I’ve had a bad class. Maybe I come to a class and, ah, you know maybe I have a bad lesson or it’s a bad day for me, I don’t know, something happens. And I’m teaching the lesson and I’m trying hard, but I’m looking at the students and the students are not responding. They’re not learning, they’re not excited, they’re not having fun.

And what happens to me? Well my energy goes down, I feel terrible, even if it’s not me. Maybe it’s the students, maybe they’re just not motivated or they’re lazy or something, I don’t know. But when that happens I feel terrible. Even if I’m making money, it doesn’t matter, I feel bad because I’m not contributing to them. I’m not helping and that really bothers me, it upsets me, I hate it.

And so that’s why I try so hard to have a lot of energy, to do everything I can so that my students learn and grow and succeed because when you succeed I feel fantastic. It gives me so much energy and it helps me to succeed more, too. There’s so much more power when you’re helping other people.

And when you see them succeed and you know that you helped you feel fantastic. It gives your life incredible meaning and energy and passion and health.

And so that’s why I want you now to think about this. Think about all the goals you have in life, think about all the dreams you have, all these great things you want to do or be or accomplish. And look at them and then, think, how can I also help other people by doing these things?

If you want to be rich, great, be rich and think about all the great things that being rich will, you know, give to you. That’s fine. But also think about, how will you help other people by being rich? How can you contribute to your friends, your family, to your community, to the world by being rich? How will you help other people, also?

Or your goal of learning excellent English, speaking fantastically well, being a fluent English speaker. Now you thought a lot about strong, powerful, compelling, emotional reasons for yourself, why you want to learn English, how it will help you, how it will help your life. That’s great, well now I want you to go to the next level, the next step. And I want you to think very carefully, how will English fluency help other people? How will you use it to help other people?

I’ll give you a great example. Our number one member right now is Inca on our Members Forums and she is fantastic. And her English is excellent, she is a fantastic student. She has gotten a lot of personal benefits from speaking English very well. For example, she wrote about a big success she had because of English where she helped her friend and business partner get a new contract. And, you know, they both are succeeding and their company is doing really well because Inca could communicate so well with English.

So she’s made more money and she’s succeeding with business because of speaking English well. But here’s the thing about Inca, she’s not focused just on herself. Because even in that story - when she wrote that story - she focused mostly on how her friend benefited from her English speaking because her friend got this great new contract for the business.

And her friend is going to make more money, her friend is going to be more successful and that made her feel great because she helped him. Her English ability helped her friend get this new customer, helped her friend build his or her business.

But that’s not all. Inca constantly helps other members on the Forums, she’s always answering questions.

Whenever somebody needs help, whenever somebody is discouraged, Inca is there giving them encouragement, giving them advice, giving them answers.

She starts topics where she answers questions for other members. If they don’t understand a lesson she’ll help them.

And we have a lot of members like that it’s not just Inca. We have several members like this. They’re contributing, they’re helping other people. They’re using their English skill to help other people be happier or more successful.

They’re using their English skill to help their friends improve their businesses. So they’re using their English skill to contribute and connect with other people, to help other people and that gives them tremendous power. And you can see their energy, you can see and feel their motivation because they’re not just learning for themselves, they’re learning for other people, too, they’re helping other people, too.

That’s why they are the top members in our club, that’s why their English improves so quickly, that’s why they have such high motivation. So whatever your goals are in life I hope that you will add this other level, this other step and think about, how can I help and contribute to other people while also helping myself.

And that is the end of the “Healthy Heart” lesson. I will see you next time. Bye-bye