elainegrey

A diagram showing my perceived interrelationships between my health -- fundamental and at the bottom -- and some very embodied capacities of physical energy, cognition, executive function, and "ground and center." "Ground and center" points toward embodied emotional health, but opens to a more spiritual understanding. I know comfort and stress interact with my health; i used the term perspective to denote a positive capacity that has the opposite quantification of stress. Joy and creativity, meaning, and gratitude all have strong coupling with "ground and center." It takes being grounded and centered for me to engage in connection; connection feeds back to joy and meaning. I should also have a line showing connection supports cognition (per aging research).

I've drawn confidence having an uncertain relationship with executive function. I added confidence because confidence, self esteem, recognition and some other concepts came up in some systems i saw, and i felt a stirring that these are concepts i disregard. In drawing the connection to executive function and the question mark, i felt a deep ache.

Health is, i admit, an extremely broad topic, and there were versions of the diagram where it was not treated so differently. As i read about strength and resistance training improving executive function capacity, aerobic fitness improving cognition, the emotional health impacts of exercise, diet and nutrition having effects, sleep.... the care of this aging structure seems critical beyond the positive impact of not aching and not itching and not coughing.

Not all connections are drawn. Comfort includes the absence of clutter irritations which also reduces stress (increases perspective), which also improves health.

That's a tidy little system to think about: to deal with clutter requires executive function, which -- like the other basic stocks of physical energy, cognition, and ground & center (or "emotional capacity")-- is a finite resource that get replenished, more or less, by a good night's sleep. So, investing in addressing clutter may cost exec function for the day, but may mean more over the long run.

It would be nice if there was a dungeon master manual for this: invest 5 points of exec function over seven turns in decluttering and earn an additional 2 exec function points per future turn, plus one point that rotates randomly around the other capacities per turn.

Exec function doesn't point to many things, but basically it's needed to do the things that improve all the other things. Want to meditate? Reach out to others? Exercise? Develop a system that makes it less expensive to do things on the list? Spend your executive function points!

It's possibly a telling gap that i didn't point connection back to perspective and ground & center. When distressed, it is helpful to turn to others for more perspective, which then helps one find that center or grounding.