Rule No 2 revisited.

Rule No 2 (Dr Jordan Peterson) “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping”

Taken directly from my own copy of Dr Peterson’s book 12 Rules For Life and from Dr Peterson’s first public lecture in the UK back in 2018 in which he talked through the 12 Rules (only later did I find that it was originally to have been the 42 rules for life which always reminds me of The Hitchhikers Guide)

Anyway…..a long time ago in a distant galaxy…..actually it was the village of Topsham near Exeter but hey ! it’s one way of starting a story so….

It was another bitterly cold night aboard my little Hunter Liberty lying (just) afloat in an inside mud berth at Topsham on the river Exe, it was still dark when my alarm clock woke me up to make the short drive into Exeter to catch the London train there. That was a highly unusual thing for me to do as i’m a mainly rural creature and feel greatly out of place in a busy city London was as stressful as I had imagined it and my overall feeling was that of incompetence – I didn’t know how to go about the simple things that I would have known years before when I often worked shifts as an agency nurse. Anyway, I escaped to the science museum for the afternoon and then, just as the late afternoon rush hour began I risked the London underground and made my way round to the lecture venue half a block away from the House of Parliament.

I’m pleased to say that Jordan Peterson received a warm and generous reception – standing ovation even before he started speaking – and he was visibly moved by that. One of the strangest things with me being in London was that I was one of the first to arrive at the venue and my earliness got me a front row seat.

By all accounts every Peterson lecture is different, the one he gave that night was based around the subject of his newly released book – 12 Rules For Life, I got an early copy of the book as part of the ticket price and I thought to read it during the long train ride home : I didn’t though as firstly I was exhausted from just being in London and my mind too active after the lecture.

Anyway, what’s rule No 2 all about ?

When I came across Rule No2 – remember I heard if first and only later did I get to read about it, I read the rule in terms of my direct experience in healthcare : that for instance my job at the time was helping people (caring for people) when they were incapable of helping themselves in any way – that pretty much sums up my life as an intensive care nurse. What I didn’t read it as in any real way was applying self care to myself in any significant detail way as in my slightly younger self I thought I had that base covered with the mount of hard exercise that I took.

My self perfection of care was wholly incomplete but then what self image isn’t ?. I knew for instance that I was overweight and barely controlling that with my exercise routine : I completely ignored though that I had high blood pressure even though I was briefly treated for it and the two features combined may well have contributed to the first clinically significant stroke – I attribute the previous events that I had, without realizing what they were, as closely time associated with me having the Covid 19 vaccine – I have no way of proving that and it could just have been the same kind of undiagnosed early warning that both of my late parents had. It seems as though I have some element of small vessel disease the symptoms of which in both of my late parents and me being hypertension and Cerebro Vascular Events (CVE).

Those of you that have read any of my previous posts will know that I was a bit jokey about my first ,clinically significant, event this year in that I often used the line from the docu-film about Chernobyl – “not great, not terrible” to describe the way I felt about it. It was “not great” in that it left me with poor strength and balance – although good enough to work on one of my boat projects and “not terrible” when compared against other patients in the same stroke ward at that time – one old fella was so badly affected by his stroke that he had no movement and no way of attempting to communicate except with his eyes.

The second event (for me) was more significant in that it pretty much chopped me off at the knees in terms of my self identity (as an outdoorsman) and I took to describing the experience as an Animal Farm kind of way in that “all days are horrible but some days are horribler than others” – that’s just me mashing the spelling and grammar of course.

Just recently I had a big clear out of my drafts folder and one result is that I decided I needed a break from churning out mediocre material and instead compacting the ideas from several potential posts into fewer and better ones. One of the first examples of that is my recent winter projects one which now gives mention to everything that’s going on with boats here but which would have still been too long if I also included my major personal projects – in short what me is doing about me – and yes I can already hear my long dead English teacher spinning at high revs in his grave !.

Most of what iv’e written so far in this post is stuff that iv’e talked about before so I thought it best to finish this one with the things that are new. Firstly then i’m having a go at improving, or at least not allowing to get worse, my health issues. Today, as I write, is the fourth day in a row that iv’e managed a short walking circuit of around forty minutes and obviously I am trying for a whole week : if I can get above the 15 minutes a day minimum of exercise recommended by health writers such as Dr Peter Attia then at least not simply allowing things to get worse is a real possibility. I’m also in the fifth cycle of quite long (50 hour plus) fasts which I think is slowly impacting my brain fog and lack of mental clarity – the research isn’t great but does point to some positive benefits.

Lastly, best to leave these ideas until last I think, I have a different view of my strokes now and can only use terms that I am uncomfortable with : the first is to think of my strokes as a ‘big reset’ and I use the term a bit cautiously given how much I detest the usual use of the Big Reset – associated as it is with the hypocrisy of the super wealthy flying off to conferences in their private jets and then lecturing us about climate change…….sighs…. The final word comes about mainly because right now I am following Bishop Robert Barron’s lecture series at the Peterson Academy and the word that comes to mind is Grace….in that I might view the strokes as a chance to turn some sort of corner and a chance that most likely couldn’t have happened any other way.

The big what if part 2.

In terms of what I call blog time – I wrote and edited this post several weeks ago but then largely forgot about it while I gave attention to my longer writing project – I then started writing a second ‘what if’ post and the subject was, once again, my own health problems. It would help – me if nobody else – that I occasionally go back and see what I have recently written about rather than writing an entirely new post on essentially the same subject although in this case iv’e simply folded both posts into the same envelope and the tl.dr here is the question of whether I, by my own efforts, could improve any aspects of my health and fitness and the short answer is that I don’t know but I am working on it.

As I write, once again, i’m at day 21 of living and working to a whole new regular routine that includes one episode of physical exercise per day and at least one complementary session of harder physical work ; yesterday for example I took my usual constitutional around the lanes and then spent an hour shifting and sawing some logs for the woodburner. This morning, it’s a Monday as I write so I also go into a fasted state, I aim for 50 hours plus although it’s been less than that for the previous 2 cycles. Speaking about cycles I also included, as part of the weekend heavy work session, enough space to get my recumbent trike out of the workshop and around the end of the big workbench which is now back under my boatbuilding shelter and ready for the next round of winter work here.

The tl’dr to my own question is that I don’t know but I am working on it.