Developing The Four Bodies

While reading James Altucher’s book, Choose Yourself, I became familiar with the concept of developing the four bodies. Learning about this concept led to me creating new daily habits.

Essentially we all have four bodies that we have to care for and nurture — emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. Working on each of these bodies can play a pivotal role in helping one to create a great life. After a few weeks of working through this strategy I have noticed significant improvement. I have been more productive with my time, and both my mental and emotional state have been generally upbeat. The habits I’ve created feel like an overall great way to be and approach life.

Through personal storytelling, Altucher speaks about the power of developing the four bodies. He’s experienced many highs and lows in his personal and professional life. He attributes an intentional effort to develop the four bodies to helping him fight threw dark times in his life, and getting to a place of thriving. Altucher mentions in the book that whenever he’s neglected to work on the four bodies, his life has taken a turn for the worse.

As with any strategy though, you have to do what works best for you. The following are a few of the habits from the book that resonated with me.

Some of the daily habits that Altucher mentions to help build the emotional body are expressing gratitude to the people who are good to you, not gossiping, and surrounding yourself with people who love you.

The past couple of weekends I’ve been fortunate enough to go on fun hikes and trail runs with friends. It’s our relationship with others that can create a rich life.

I am a classic ambivert. I value time alone for reflection and to recharge. And yet, I also love being around people and enjoy fun social outings. The key is for me to be around people I love or like a lot. It’s those friendships where both parties can be authentically who they are and feel loved for it that are good for the soul.

The human brain is beyond impressive. It has the power to influence how we feel and how we show up in the world. To get the most from our brain, we have to be intentional about how we develop it.

To build the mental body, Altucher has a habit of reading two hours a day, and writing down ten ideas a day.

The concept of reading for two hours a day is about constantly exposing yourself to new perspective, and being a life long learner. This habit reminds me of the famous Henry Ford quote:

Maintaining a healthy diet is also an important aspect of developing the physical body. When our diet is clean we feel better. And when we feel better we are able to do the things in life that bring us joy. A healthy diet is great for our immune system. And when our immune system is in tack, we spend far fewer days sick on the couch.

I am convinced that sugar is bad for me and wreaks havoc on my immune system. I am notorious for getting sinus infections throughout the year. A lot of people have this problem when the season changes from summer to fall, and the temperature fluctuates from hot to cold, but I also get them during the summer as well. It’s such an inconvenience. To overcome this problem I made a choice to cut desserts completely out of my diet almost a year ago. And as a result, I haven’t had a sinus infection in over a year.

In the book, Altucher speaks to the power of practicing mindfulness to develop the spiritual body. When we think of mindfulness, many of us immediately look to meditation. But Altucher speaks to the idea of not “time traveling”. Which is another way of saying live in the present.

Our minds can easily oscillate between what happened yesterday, what needs to happen tomorrow, and everything in between. We are constantly allowing our thoughts to live in the future and past instead of living in the present. When we can conquer our thoughts and remain in the moment, we engage in our life and the world around us.

Engaging in play is a great way to practice mindfulness. A couple of months ago I joined a “cup in hand” adult kickball league. In this league, you have to play with a cup of liquid in your hand at all times. And the liquid can’t be below a certain level while you’re on the field. The cups are see-through and have a thick black line indicating the minimum level of liquid that one can have while playing. I never would have imagined how difficult it is to catch a kickball while holding a cup in your other hand. It’s quite comical to watch and experience. When I’m playing kickball, it’s all I’m thinking about. I’m truly living in the moment and having fun. That’s mindfulness in its simplest form.

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