OnMyWay 2 Charge Up

"Here you will find the basic ingredients of your human user manual."

"Our search for balance"

In our search for balance, we often become unbalanced. We tend to look for it outside of ourselves, and in doing so, we lose contact with ourselves. Without our own important navigator, we are like in the frog myth. The myth claims: if you throw a frog into boiling water, it jumps out. But if you place the frog in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, it stays.

Most of us are already soaking in pretty warm water. We are so preoccupied with everything happening around us that we don’t realize how hot the water has become. The key is to adapt to change without putting yourself in danger—without staying in the water until it burns you.

You do this by staying in touch with yourself, being aware of how warm it is for you, and whether it still feels comfortable. Dealing with that water and searching for balance is a continuous and conscious process. The ideal balance changes every day, sometimes even every hour.

Life is like a pile of pebbles

Stacking stones like this seems very difficult. However, with a little attention, it turns out to be much easier than expected. You never stack them the same way. They always find a new balance. Sometimes it goes easier than other times. Sometimes they stand firm, and sometimes they topple over at the slightest disturbance. Life is much the same!

It can help to see life as a stack of stones: the stones are the ingredients of your life, and you are the only one who can stack them. If you don’t choose, if you have to stack 100 stones, what happens then? If you try to glue them so they never fall, you’ll eventually be disappointed when the whole stack collapses or when no new larger stone can fit. You decide. You create the stability you need or want. The first, bottom pebble is you. That’s where your foundation lies.

How do you ensure that foundation is strong? That you feel safe and stable? For that, you need to know your own personal user manual. Unfortunately, you didn’t receive it anywhere—not at birth, not at school, and not during your upbringing. You have to gather its ingredients yourself. The Charge Up helps you with that.

It starts with taking our human apparatus seriously, understanding and listening to the signs it gives us. Read more below about the background of your personal user manual.

Your personal user manual

It’s important to understand why your personal user manual is the way it is. This is especially important because our bodies aren’t designed for the life we lead today. Evolutionarily, we are far behind the demands that society places on us. Your body still uses the same system as in prehistoric times. However, the way we live now is very different from how we lived back then:

Lots of movement, like hunting for food	Lots of sitting due to modern conveniences
Living outside with natural light	Living indoors with artificial (blue) light
Natural food	Processed food (with lots of sugars)
Few stimuli	Constant stimuli

Our stress system is also based on prehistoric times. Back then, it was useful. When we experience stress, several things happen:

Our heart rate increases, sending more oxygen to our muscles.
Adrenaline rises, making us feel more alert and experience less pain.
All non-essential organs, like the digestive system, shut down, so all energy is directed to the muscles, heart, and lungs.

This is an ideal stress mechanism when faced with acute danger, such as predators in prehistoric times. We would focus entirely on the threat, enabling us to run faster or fight, while temporarily delaying pain signals. After the danger had passed, we could fully relax and recharge.

Unfortunately, today we experience stress due to entirely different challenges: negative thoughts, (work) pressure, conflicts, etc. This 'old-fashioned' stress system doesn’t help at all in these situations. Moreover, one stressful moment follows another, leaving little to no room for genuine relaxation and recovery. On top of that, modern temptations such as lack of movement, eating sugar, and spending a lot of time indoors, constantly activate our stress system in various ways. In short, we’re continuously tempted to work against ourselves.

When you know your personal user manual, it becomes much easier to experience balance and create a healthy foundation to fall back on. This is the basis for all the tips and tools you’ll find in the Charge Up. We all have a mind, a heart, and a body. They are not separate but function as one system. If one part isn’t working optimally, it affects the rest. Take good care of yourself and take all the signals seriously. The Charge Up helps you with that. It’s not difficult. Once you understand how it works, you can do a lot without the risk of negative consequences.

OnMyWay 2 Charge Up

"Here you will find the basic ingredients of your human user manual."

"Our search for balance"

Life is like a pile of pebbles

Your personal user manual

Take care!