Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
What Lights Your Health Fire? Exploring the Core of Motivation
What truly motivates us to pursue health? As someone battling cancer and guiding others through their wellness journeys, this question has become central to my understanding of healing.
Drawing from my experiences as both patient and healer, I've discovered that motivation comes in many forms. Most fundamentally, a sense of purpose drives our health decisions—whether it's our love for family, dedication to a mission, or simply valuing our own lives. When I provide cannabis oil to cancer patients, I'm often surprised by how many struggle to use it despite its benefits, revealing how crucial purpose is to enduring temporary discomfort for lasting health.
My approach to medical decisions exemplifies another form of motivation: seeking maximum benefit with minimum harm. As I prepare to meet with my oncologist about further treatment, I'm bringing questions about why we would use radiation that risks causing more cancer in the future. This thoughtful skepticism isn't about rejection but about finding the wisest path forward.
Personal experience has shaped my motivations powerfully. After witnessing my father—a surgeon who should have known better—succumb to preventable health issues, I recognized I was heading down the same path. This realization, coupled with my daughter's wedding challenge, motivated me to lose 50 pounds and transform my approach to wellness. Now as CEO of Gardens of Hope, a therapeutic horticulture non-profit in Perris, California, I'm building a community dedicated to holistic health through permaculture, education, and healing modalities.
Whether your motivation comes from longevity goals, disease prevention, or solving specific health problems, finding your personal "why" is essential. If you're struggling to stay motivated, I encourage you to examine what might be holding you back—the answer could reveal deeper issues worth addressing on your journey to wellness. Join our growing community by subscribing, leaving a review, or reaching out to be a guest as we continue exploring the foundations of true health.
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Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we're going to enter into a conversation that will probably go through a few episodes. I think it's really important. Just to start off, I want to first of all thank everybody who has supported this show as it continues to grow and our guests continue to rise up and be interesting and informational and riveting, and the subscriber content continues. More subscribers have been coming in and I just want to thank everybody for that. This is a dream of mine to build a community based on our goal to be healthy, and it's happening and the podcast is a part of it, so I'm really excited. For those of you who don't know, I am the CEO of Gardens of Hope, a 501c3 non-profit that provides therapeutic horticulture and education to those in need. We're based out of Paris, california, and we've got a two and a half acre botanical garden and small farm and we teach permaculture techniques, all sorts of healing modalities or practice here retreats and all sorts of good stuff, and that's sort of the hub of this healing community and I welcome you to investigate. Come on out, take a tour or just, uh, maybe set up your own little garden of hope. It's your place.
Speaker 1:Lately my brain's been getting clearer and clearer. I have finished my third round of chemotherapy and hopefully I won't need any more of that. Um, my cancer battle is and my cancer battle is prevalent in this podcast, but we're starting to shift into more open-ended conversations about different things and solving problems and finding answers. A lot of this is about getting to the core of what makes things happen. You know, we have problems with Western medicine because generally it's symptomatic, it doesn't generally go after the core of a problem and it covers up symptoms and you end up with, you know, these drug cocktails of so many medicines to combat the side effects of the first medicine, and on and on and on and cascading effects and problems and short-sightedness and not ever really getting to the root cause of things.
Speaker 1:And so today I want to talk a little bit about motivation and, as my brain's getting a little clearer, I'm thinking more and more about really health and what does it mean and why are we even seeking it? What causes people to do the things they do? What causes people to do the things they do? And so, first of all, I typically will look at myself when I'm asking a question like this because that's the one thing I can know. And so, for example, today I'm going to be meeting with my medical oncologist to go over a plan, and it's going to be a zoom meeting and I'm going to record it and it'll be featured in a subscriber episode so that you can hear firsthand how this goes and how somebody can communicate with the physician, instead of just going okay, okay, okay, whatever you say, or being combative and saying I won't do it. You know, trying to find a practical solution to complicated problem. And this doctor wants to go forward with radiation and chemotherapy as a follow-up to the chemotherapy I've already had and the primary tumor is basically gone. We're going to go over the recent CT scan I got and I will listen to what she has to say, but I've prepared a pretty involved presentation and series of questions to hopefully get her to see things my way. And my way is simply that I want the most amount of good with the least amount of harm in the long term to my body when it comes to solving this cancer problem, and that's a pretty straightforward motivation. And the things that she's proposing to do have a very clear risk of causing more cancer. And so to me. I think why would I do that, when her fear is that the cancer is going to come back and okay, well, maybe if it does, then we go and treat it again, instead of let's go ahead and do a thing that will likely cause more cancer in the future, and then I got to have to deal with that. So, anyways, for those of you who are interested or are subscribers, I would encourage you to listen to that, because it should be pretty interesting. So, motivation, you know that is a simple, straightforward motivation. I want the most good to be for my body and the least amount of harm. I would have to say that for me that's a motivation for many things I do, and not just my body, but my mind, my spirit. There are, sometimes I'll do, things that you know push the boundaries of what, let's just say, normal people might do or want to do, and I think, if we're wise, we'll weigh out the risks and the benefits and or at least potential benefits, and make a decision based on those things. So that's sort of the beginning of this motivation. So I would say, you know what causes people to want to pursue health? And in thinking about this I really came up with a lot of motivations and I thought to myself well, it's going to be a bit of a conversation, so we'll probably go into a couple of different episodes talking about this, because there's just a lot of information that I want to get into and I think the first thing would be A motivation.
Speaker 1:I think a sense of purpose is an important factor in motivation. Illnesses is that a sense of purpose is, I believe, a motivating factor. In fact, I'm certain of it. But it's critical. And what I've learned and you know, I struggled with this, with the cannabis side of things, for a long time, because in making cannabis oil and offering it to people who I knew I could help if they were just to take it. But I also know that it's a difficult task to take that much cannabis oil. A lot of people have a hard time with that, and it kind of blew my mind the first time. Somebody told me I just can't do it, it's too much. And I thought to myself wow, so you're willing to risk dying instead of just being really stoned for a while.
Speaker 1:And when I began my cancer journey, that was the first thing I did, is I started taking my own oil and it was rough, but I never questioned it. I just did it because I love my life and I have huge purpose in my life and I, you know, want nothing more than to have a long and fulfilled life with the best quality I can afford. And apparently that's not something that everybody shares, and apparently that's not something that everybody shares. And so, and I could see, you know, as my cancer was progressing and it was really sucking the life out of me and all of the things I was trying to do to solve it were just overwhelming. I was really there were times when I thought to myself I can see how somebody would let go and just say, man, I just can't do this anymore and just let go, and especially if you're not afraid of death, it's like you know which I'm not it's like I could see it. And I actually had to reel myself in one time, not because I was depressed or anything, I was just exhausted and all the things I had to keep track of every single day and just in an effort to stay alive, and I could feel myself sort of floating downward and going, wow, I could just let go and just float away and I had to reel myself back in.
Speaker 1:So I think a sense of purpose is hugely important and I think that if you're considering making a change or taking an aggressive action towards or against a thing, whether it's a disease or a condition like obesity, or there's just so many bad relationship or any number of things that are going to be a difficult task I think having a clear sense of purpose is important. So some people, you know, it's your own life. For me that was simple. Some people, it's a spouse or family member, children, even, who knows, maybe even pets and animals. You know, I can't let them down. Maybe that's a good sense of purpose. Some people, it's more than that. It's like with me. I believe I have a gift and a tool to help people find their way and find answers and find their best version of themselves and find their healthy life, and that means mentally, spiritually, physically, all of those things. And I believe I've got the ability to do that and it's starting to happen and people are starting to find me and I'm able to interact and I'm watching positive benefits happen, you know. And so eventually, you know, we'll have a nice consulting service built up and the gardens of hope will be thriving, we'll have sessions going on every day and and retreats and all these things happening in such a meaningful way that will fulfill the dream that I have of that. But meanwhile the purpose is simple. You know we just keep going towards these goals.
Speaker 1:There are so many different types of sense of purpose that one person could have that. I just think it's important to pay attention to that and maybe look and see do I have one or am I just floating, drifting in life? So another motivation is, you know, longevity. That ties to the sense of purpose. But specifically, I want to live a long life. That's something I want. So therefore it would make sense to go after a healthy lifestyle. The more healthy you are, probably the longer you're going to live. And you know they've got all sorts of anti-aging tools nowadays and they range from, you know, compounds, supplements, practices, all sorts of different things to increase longevity. And if that is your purpose, I think that you can accomplish it even with a small amount of effort, and I would encourage you to do that, simply because I think everybody should live a long and healthy life.
Speaker 1:Another sense of purpose might be to remove a problem. So, for example, I found out I had cancer. So my renewed sense of purpose was I need to remove that cancer from my body and replace it with a fully restored, genetically reset, healthy body. And so that's a huge task, a huge sense of purpose and, frankly, a lifetime of work. It doesn't really go away. Once you've found that you have this, you have a likelihood of getting it again. So you've got to keep solving that problem and I think sometimes a condition that could cause health problems, such as obesity, weight management, is a huge motivation. I know that my healthy journey, or my journey to health, has ebbed and flowed over the years.
Speaker 1:When I was young, I was into fitness. I liked my body, I liked the way I looked and felt. I worked hard. I physically toiled to make money. As a kid I used to run long distance Well, for me, it was long distance. I used to run long distance or well, for me, it was long distance, but I used to run and I used to work out and I used to, you know again, just work hard in the garden, and I, you know, paid attention to my physique and my health and my abilities. I also had a lung disease that I've struggled with all my life, so that was another factor in this, was mitigating that, and ultimately that's what led me to studying herbs and natural medicine, and becoming a formulator was my desire. My motivation was I didn't want the Western medical treatments anymore. I didn't want the allergy tests and allergy shots and medicines that made me feel all weird and the trips to the emergency room and all of those things. I didn't want that anymore and so I began studying herbs and growing them and formulating, and that was a clear motivation.
Speaker 1:When my father died about eight years ago, at one point I reflected and I realized that he was overweight by a lot at least 50 pounds, probably more than that. He had heart disease from a fairly young age, from younger than I am right now. So when my dad was my age, he had already had a heart episode and a bypass heart episode and a bypass and ultimately he got diabetes, more than likely from his weight. He had sleep apnea, which I also had or probably still have, but I manage it now but he wouldn't treat it, he wouldn't handle it. He had a very stressful life and I looked at myself. Now remember, if you know or don't know, he was a surgeon and had a lifetime of medical training and he knew better. He knew the things he did were likely to cause him harm and he did them anyways. He didn't have a motivation to avoid those things. He would rather have he rathered to do those things than to avoid them, for whatever reason. And when he passed, I was there with him when he passed and you know that's a pretty powerful experience to share with somebody. And sometime after I realized I looked at myself and I said, holy shit, I'm going to be him pretty soon if I don't do something about it. I'm going to be him pretty soon if I don't do something about it.
Speaker 1:And I began a journey of starting out with weight loss. I was a good 50 pounds overweight and initially my motivation was my daughter. She was getting married and she said hey, dad, why don't we lose 20 pounds? And I said, ok, let's make it interesting and let's make a bet. And I bet her a chunk of money that I would lose the weight before she would. And I did. I whooped her ass and that was my motivation. I knew that I'm a pretty competitive person and that if I put myself in a position where I was going to be directly competing with somebody, I would give it more effort.
Speaker 1:And once I got that first 20 pounds off and I began learning about food and really working on my diet, my nutrition, nutritional intake. I saw results and when I saw results I got more motivated and ultimately I lost 50 pounds and managed to maintain it. And sort of what I did is I kept, I set a line and if I crossed that line I had to fast until I got back below that line. And that was my deal I made with myself. And subsequently, when I got cancer and I had took on a even more rigid diet, I ended up losing a whole lot more weight than that. And with this diet I'm at right now it's very difficult to get weight but keep it on, but I'm slowly building it back. I have sort of the opposite problem now. It's easy to drop weight with this diet that I'm on and difficult to gain it. So that sort of weight management is a good sense of purpose and that ties into, let's say, disease prevention. We decide we want to be healthy and avoid. You know I don't want diabetes. My grandma had diabetes. I have a genetic predisposition to it. Now I'm motivated to keep cancer out of my body and I've learned a lot of tools and techniques to do that, and so it's a great motivation.
Speaker 1:Some diseases you can't do anything about, in the sense of you know, genetic diseases, ms and a lot of different diseases that are just a genetic flaw, and if you get them, you know, you know whatever there's a treatment, or maybe there isn't, or there are things you can do to mitigate your problem, but you can't necessarily avoid it. But many diseases are avoidable. You know, STDs are totally avoidable if you have safe practices and again, a huge one. There's heart disease, there's genetic factors to it, but certainly your health practices are going to be a big factor in this, and so I think, I think keeping your body healthy, avoiding diseases, avoiding ailments that could be prevented, having a good long life, a sense of purpose, all of that, I think, is some powerful and primary motivations for being healthy, and I would encourage anybody who's listening to this to consider any of those three as a challenge, as a goal. You know, think about that for yourself and, if not, maybe question and find out why, like, if you don't feel motivated to live a long life, well, why Maybe examine that and maybe figure out that you've got some mental, spiritual issues that you need to deal with and maybe that'll take you down that road.
Speaker 1:I think I'm going to wrap it up here. I've got a lot more material to cover, so this will probably go two or three or four episodes in the motivation of being healthy. So I thank everybody who supported the show and remember you can leave a comment, you can leave a review. If you're interested in being a guest on the show, reach out. I'm glad to book you. I love to have these conversations and let's find our way to health folks. We will spend another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast and we will see you next time.
