Dear Fam, Dear Friend, Dear Reader, - thank you for taking this time to engage in thoughtful discussions on health and wellness from a holistic health advocate - aka me, Jonathan Isbill aka Jonathan ZaZa still in some circles.
I very much appreciate you for being here. ☺️ More than you know, you are the reason for the writing, the mission for the submission 😉
Today, I’m looking to share a quick tip for summer fun with cooking more as well as dive a little deeper into our soulful search for meaning and purpose, pushing past the gold and riches in order to find a better sense of what it means to be human.
First off, FOOD
My friends over at Cook Smarts are running another special right now to help home cooks, especially those short on time and trying to put food on the table for their busy families learn a little bit more about flavorful food and cooking with ease and comfort and headache free! 🌿 🧠 🍅
Sale ends 6/30/21
You can check out their services here with my Cook Smarts affiliate link if you’re looking to ramp up your kitchen skills this summer or show off during weekend house parties or your next grilling weekend. Either way, most of us could learn a thing or two about food and flavor - especially in the land of “meat and potatoes” midwest where I live! 🙃 I’ll also add that I HOPE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY ARE ENJOYING FAMILY MEAL TIMES TOGETHER THIS SUMMER!! ☀️
Family meals are so important, and they’ve taught us a lot about human health and even childhood development.
Families who eat together, share stories, testimonies, experience, and develop shared values more than families who eat alone. Furthermore, families who eat at home at the kitchen table more often eat healthier foods such as having greater intake of fruits and vegetables and less fast food or highly processed convenience foods.
And this seems somewhat intuitive, if you’re eating at home, you’re not eating out… but I’m just going to add the little reminder to sit at the table, to sit together, eat together, share together, pass some plates, be a little more mindful, and put down all devices around mealtime.
Screens and devices serve as panic-inducing, stress-provoking, biological distractions for your brain-gut mealtime experience. FOR INSTANCE,
Your gut listens to your brain that hears from your eyes…
“WOW!!! Look at this delicious dish tonight, I’m so hungry, this is going to be so good!” - and then your mouth starts salivating, your stomach acid starts gurgling in preparation and your liver, gallbladder and pancreas among other GI system friends start preparing their own unique roles for optimal health and digestion.
But if we eat in front of screens, distracted by devices, we cut off that communication and our body isn’t able to properly prepare for digestion, absorption, or even excretion properly. Most of us are breathing incredibly shallow (aka not deep breaths that expand the gut and send proper bloodflow to our digestive tract) when we are engaging with screens interestingly enough. This is just a small but important warning sign that the screen time is leading us into what we call SNS as compared to PNS, which we want more around mealtime. SNS stands for sympathetic nervous system - aka fight, flight, or fright - which you may remember us talking about before. PNS stands for parasympathetic nervous system - aka “rest and digest.”
PNS = calm, compassion, proper bloodflow to the gut and the brain, adequate supply and production of happy hormones in the gut and opportunities for healthy digestion and healing
SNS = action, reaction, distraction I like to say. The SNS is triggered when we need to attack a problem, conquer and obstacle or pull up a car that had collapsed on top of a child (yes, this actually has happened #SuperMoms)
So with all that being said, if you’re looking to have healthier, happier better family meals, then I still highly recommend you reach out to Cook Smarts for some insightful guides and easy to follow tips and strategies as well as meal plans and recipes for you to use to help equip and empower your family to live your best lives possible - together :)
Still, quite honestly the best meal plan service I know - absolutely love and appreciate everything they do, all they are doing and working towards AND the diversity of cuisines they highlight. I mean like seriously, talk about cooking smart, am I right?
Check out their Instagram Television or IGTV spotlight video walkthrough to take a brief tour through the service they provide. Even if you don’t need their help with planning nutritious and delicious meals, I mean just watching their Instagram channel is enough to get me hungry and excited to learn to try new things. I love it!
AND I must say they are doing a wonderful job to highlight the role of food waste in many of our kitchens and actively fighting the frustrating reality that we all face when it comes to throwing way too much food away. There’s always room to get better with resourcefulness and sustainability in my opinion.
AND Jess is doing a great job sparking creativity and creative problem solving for many families in more ways than one - in her recent instagram post discussing ways to encourage a healthy happy mealtime with kiddos, allowing them to have a safe and comfortable exploration of food as they grow up and we try to introduce new foods and flavors to them (as we hope and pray to make sure they like their veggies) [haha]
Just as a reminder, here’s my affiliate link for their services to help you help me by supporting my work, this newsletter, and any further value I can add to you as you explore living your best life possible - and OBVIOUSLY that includes enjoying splendid food you can feel good about.
This isn’t a sleezy sales letter, just a natural share I would offer you even as a stranger on the street, being like - “Yo! did you know about these awesome infographics for using herbs and spices?! These are so legit!” 😂
But of course, if you know me at all you know it’s not about the money, it’s about the movement.. ZigZagging in the right direction.
It’s about the journey, not the destination.
It’s about the connection we have from heart to heart, not the amount of cash we hold in our hands and wear on our sleeves.
Money is meaningless to me - without motion, leverage, influence on education and improving all people around me. Money helps support our missions in life, our ability to survive, to grow, and help others to do the same. That’s why this is a FREE newsletter, because MONEY IS NOT MY GOAL… but supporting you is.
I freaking love you, okay there - I said it.
Now, let’s go on while I settle down a bit..
Loneliness
- as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or even chronic alcoholism
An old Harvard study - found greatest and only predictor for healthy aging is healthy relationships.. so no wonder loneliness is deadly.. we literally have to stay together to stay alive.. consider life when if you got lost in the wilderness as a child.. you were literally risking your life. Time alone provokes our danger response, can light up our amygdala for fear, panic, anxiety, and spark up that common “fight, flight, or fright“ stress response.. however, time spent together can fuel our oxytocin (love chemical) and help release and maintain a prolonged, stable sense of pleasure by serotonin vs. some short-lived, short-fused dousing of dopamine like lighter fluid to our hearts’ flaming fires, which can often come in the form of Instagram scrolling, (and scrolling, and scrolling, in hopes to fill a void), the quick-fix sugar fat and salt formulated foods that surround our vulnerable hearts everyday. Yes, I’m calling out that ice cream, those cookies, that bowl of late night cereal, and even those potato chip or tortilla strip munchies for the crunchies.
“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”
— George Vaillant
Do genetics play a role in one’s lifelong health and happiness, well of course… BUT in fact, the value one places on their relationships is actually MORE important than any other factor
how much you like your job, your ppl, yourself
Number of emergency department visits for self-harm injury: 312,000
The latest data from the CDC shows us:
All suicides in the US alone
Number of deaths: 47,511
Deaths per 100,000 population: 14.5
Cause of death rank: 10
This is freaking sad, depressing, and disastrously true. While the world throws infinite pressure, stigma, criticism, and shame at you, me, and the innocent children all around us, it’s clear something isn’t quite working with how we are living our lives as humans. This is messed up people, like seriously. I didn’t even want to share the numbers for teens or the elderly, as those numbers are even worse. And in places like china or in some uniquely overwhelming professions or those post-military.. the numbers are scary there too. And for most of us, we live our lives in this constant churn or energy, more often stressed and burned out than calm, relaxed, and restored.
Our normal should not be normal. This is disgusting, and if you’ve been affected by suicide or have had thoughts yourself or someone you know has - my freaking heart pours out to you right now because loneliness, darkness, and depression hits all of us, and for some it hits with incredible force.
I want to encourage you and yours, this week and every week to take care of yourself and your mental health, emotional strength and stability. Reach out when you need a hand, ask for a phone call or a walk in the woods to connect when you can.
A simple walk n’ talk can actually have a profound improvement on your mental health so I seriously encourage you to reach out in your times of need. I’m always down for a walking buddy myself so if you’re around and need someone to walk with, let me know.
Wherever you do live and work though, I guarantee there’s people just like you and me who are hungry for human connection, and seeking a chance to improve their holistic health - from mind, body, and soul. So, I encourage you to reach out to your local arena, post on Facebook or Instagram for a walking meeting time you can gather for with your friends or find a buddy in your life that you can coordinate schedules with.
IT might sound frivolous or frizzy even, but it’s profoundly important to make sure you keep good people around you in your times of need as well as on a regular basis for practicing steps of prevention and resilience for your overall health - no matter what life throws at us, we are stronger together than alone.
What’s the true meaning of your life?
It’s not stereotypical success.
“After being at the top of the world with Linsanity, I can tell you that success without community is absolutely meaningless. Getting somewhere without being able to bring someone up with you isn’t worth it.”
— Jeremy Lin 🏀
So ask yourself, what does success look like to you?
Let me know here by leaving a comment 💭
We’ve seen the grand pursuits of fame and fortune fail us time and time again, from personal anecdotes from Ecclesiastical descriptions by King Solomon “chasing after the wind,” 🏃 🌬
or “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl filling us in on the human truths that no forms of gold can give us the greatest of all pleasures in life. 💰
A wonderful studio album by Dre Murray also tells this story in the tremendous portrayal of King Midas, most known for being able to turn everything to gold, and then he himself turned to gold and he lost his life as he became exactly what his heart desired so much. Listen to the album on Spotify here. 🎧
Listen with introspection from beginning to end, and guaranteed your perspective will be shaped for the better. Let me know any reflections you might have after listening. Consider this personal meditation or therapy as you reflect on your own money-mindset or how you interact with gold and riches in your life. And again, this goes back to our values discussion we like to have
The Science Speaks for Itself. We Die either way, but I’d rather die later and together than die sooner and alone. Wouldn’t you?
• Stop Hating and Start Hugging
• Stop Yelling and Start Listening
Stop Searching for Healing from Broken People and Start Realizing We’re All Pretty Freaking Broken People at The End of The Day
• Start Loving
• Start Serving
• Start Asking Questions
• Start Going, Growing, and Learning and Stop Staying in Your Personal Safety Bubble of Perspective.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
- 1 Corinthians 13:13
And I’m not here to press upon religion, but rather lean into stories, listen and learn from storytelling that has lasted centuries and allow us to push ourselves better together from what we as a human race and interconnected biology has lived and learned from since our first beginnings.
We as humans crave human connection, that’s partly why we are attracted to social networks and social media engagements so much. But the problem is, these “environments” were not made for our biological connections, but rather for our consumption and repetitive addictive use of their platforms.
Technology is a tool, but if we begin to think it to be the answer to our problems or a solution to our deprived souls, we will continue to suffer the bone-drying desert feelings of a cold night alone deep within our hearts when we turn off the screens and look up from our devices, realizing we’re still sitting alone by ourselves.
Technology and digital engagement can be tools and catalysts for in-person experiences, but they will never provide the deepest forms of human engagement such as human touch.
Like when my PT PhD friends (that is Physical Therapy) began ranting to me about all the “new and catchy” digital PT platforms for people in healthcare and they were a little upset because they wanted to touch their patients. They wanted to embrace them with a hug during the loss of their partner or the miscarriage of their newborn.
They wanted to take their hand during times of pain, and allow for the natural emotional trauma release to occur through the power of human connection. You see, these experiences we cannot fully attain through our screens.
They may be temporary bandages to our deeper void of IRL social connections, but they will never fully heal those wounds.
Humans have an incredible way to fill-in each other's gaps when we bring our hands together and live life together. We grasp our palms together and our fingers slip tightly together in a solid bond that makes us feel more strong, bold, brave, and safe.
Together > Alone
At the end of our lives - we die.
If we live life alone - we die.
If we live life together - we die.
But the REAL difference here is if we live life together - we live MUCH LONGER, HEALTHIER LIVES.
I’m striving to Choose Together - not against.
What about you?
With peace, grace, a good family meal and a walk in the woods and a virtual hug from me to you… I send you off this weekend and for the rest of this upcoming week to conquer what needs to get done, to not neglect your self-care and to reconnect to a human you love. 💙