This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about one of Pilar's all-time favorite topics: Healthy Deviance. It's a favorite because it's the subject of the book she's writing, and also an idea at the core of the work she's been doing for the past 15 years or so — including this podcast!
So, what does it mean to be a healthy person in an unhealthy culture? What's required of us, and what's available to us, when we choose to reject the norms of a society that's making a lot of us sick and unhappy a lot of the time? And how the heck can you even hope to do that when there seems to be so much working against you?
These are questions that both of us are fascinated by, and that we each explore in our own work in different ways.
So here, we journey together into The Way of the Healthy Deviant, and we offer you some fun opportunities to experiment with Healthy Deviance in your own life.
"Healthy Deviance" Episode Highlights
- Pilar's personal health journey and how it led her to become a rebellious health experimenter, a media-industry disruptor — and, ultimately, a Healthy Deviant
- The evolution of Healthy Deviance as expressed through Pilar's earlier works and projects, including Experience Life magazine, her Manifesto for Thriving in a Mixed Up World, and the "101 Revolutionary Ways to Be Healthy" mobile app
- Seeing what Pilar calls our "Unhealthy Default Reality" as a real-life Matrix of sorts — understanding the challenges and rewards involved in unplugging from the dominant-culture definitions of "normal"
- Evolutionary biology 101: Seeing the origins of our health crisis in the agricultural revolution, and understanding why "Paleo" diets and workouts alone can't provide a solution to our modern-day challenges
- Pilar describes The Way of the Healthy Deviant, including what she sees as three key competencies:
- 1) Amplified Awareness (valuing, developing and safeguarding your own attention);
- 2) Preemptive Repair (getting ahead of the daily damage that causes depletion, inflammation, imbalance and illness); and
- 3) Continuous Growth and Learning (progressively building and expanding the "skills of the healthy person")
- The value of embracing the quest for Healthy Deviance as a Hero's Journey — an energizing adventure and opportunity for creative self-expression — rather than just a tough, thankless slog
