Irvine - Uncover Your Innter Power to Improve Health, Happiness, and Performace

I am writing this introduction as we begin our seventh week of isolation during the COVID - 19 pandemic. I hope I am not stirring up horrible memories for you. In Canada, it seems we have weathered this life-changing event fairly well so far, while some countries have experienced devastating death tolls along with massive economic turmoil.

Totum Life Science, a health and sports medicine business that I co-own with my husband, has been closed for the duration of this time. Our lives, as well as the lives of our many employees, have been thrust into a stressful waiting game. We have no idea when it will be safe to reopen, or what that will look or feel like. Even in just the first few weeks, the number of small business closures in our neighbourhood was shocking. Our time in isolation has been one of extreme stress, with lots of tears and emotional outbursts. We do our best to contain these expressions within the walls of our house. Our three children are all too aware of what is happening because our home is now our office, and the continued conversations with the bank and landlords can be heard by all.

Together, the world has celebrated birthdays, weddings and even Earth Day in isolation. I mention Earth Day because the repeated narrative that day was something along this theme:

Along with the pandemic, we experienced a rise in race-related and Black Lives Matter protests in response to the murder of George Floyd. There have been many lessons learned from our time in isolation, along with a constant streaming of videos, jokes, TikTok dances and protest chants that are constantly sent to our inboxes and social media feeds. One video that went viral early on was called The Great Realisation, a poem (now book) by Tomos Roberts that was read as a bedtime story. This poem was set in a time post pandemic, and it described how humanity learned to appreciate what was important and improved ourselves and our future as a result. Many of us can relate to Robertss inspiring words, and I was amazed at how much the sentiment was familiar and inspiring to me as I was writing this book. Here are a few lines that particularly resonated with me.

The tone of the poem then changes to describe how, because of our time in isolation, we slowly began to change: sometimes you get sick... before you start feeling better and your old habits became extinct.

One of the lines actually got me to stand right up out of my chair almost cheering (also because, during this time, I found myself sitting way too much on Zoom meetings, conference calls and so on, so I embraced any excuse to stand and move):

I felt as though Roberts was talking directly to me! How did he know I was busy toiling away at this book, trying to find a good way to explain to everyone how important our instincts are to our ability to thrive in life?

This simple, brilliant line and the concept of dust[ing] off our instincts captures exactly what I hope this book can be for everyone. Our instincts are a part of us and always have been. Over the last couple of centuries, much of humanity has created structures and systems that allow us to ignore our instincts, and not even attempt to develop them to their full potential. The goal of this book is to help you understand how important it is to honour your basic human instinctsfor the sake of your health, your performance and ultimately your happiness. Your instincts will serve you through good times, bad times and even pandemic times.