The Art Of The Fine-Tune
Show up to any performance early and you’ll see the band warming up. You'll likely hear a few notes played out of tune or mic volumes being adjusted. Singers will belt out some lalaLLAAAAAAs and memeMEEEEs before they settle into the right key.
We're not born into this world singing glorious harmonies in perfect pitch. In fact, from the moment we arrive, we're constantly taking on information and experiences from the world around us - these experiences shape us. We learn how to behave, view our bodies, make dietary choices, pick partners, and climb the ladder, not necessarily in the ways that are best for us, but rather, in whatever ways are bestowed upon us by well-intentioned parents, teachers, and peers.
Well-intentioned or not, all this bombardment leaves very little time and space to reflect on, "What's actually right for ME?"
That's why you'll often hear about wellness journeys and spiritual growth as a series of UNlearnings, rather than learnings. Growth requires us to deconstruct embedded life-long lessons, clear our slate, and then… experiment - continual experimentation and constant adjusting. A little more bass, a little less reverb, two octaves higher—actually, make that one octave!
That’s the art of the fine-tune - an essential skill - the ability to isolate a specific area of improvement in your life, then slowly peel away the excess, add in the missing, and be willing to keep adjusting on a minute-by-minute basis.
Think of it like an old-fashioned car radio. A round dial is what guides you to available stations. You turn the dial slightly this way, then that, going past any station that only emits static, until you find a song playing clear as day. Ah, there we go! And when you find that station, you pull your hand off the dial right away! For that brief moment in time, you found your zen, your flow, your alignment.
But it really is just a moment of bliss because, imagine you're doing this same process while driving on a cross country road trip, where the station you landed on that sounded so clear just a moment ago is now slightly out of range. Maybe you entered a landscape with lots of trees, making the signal unclear, or maybe you crossed over into a different state where 95.5 FM is no longer "The 80's Greatest Hits," but rather, "The Best of Kenny G" station. That’s life. That’s how nuanced it is and how quickly our needs change.
Here are just a few dietary examples of how this process has shown up in my life, forcing my hand to be constantly on the tuning dial.
When I was diagnosed with SIBO, eggs were a staple of my diet. But I soon realized that eggs were making me feel sick for reasons that had nothing to do with the bacterial overgrowth. So, I turned the dial and eggs came out of rotation.... until I decided to keep turning the dial in new directions. I experimented with boiled eggs vs. scrambled, whole eggs with yolks vs. eggs whites, until I found a solution that seemed to make sense for me at the time.
On a limited diet due to my IBS, I discovered that carrots and sweet potatoes were okay to keep eating. They made me feel good. However, during a routine stool test, I discovered I had too much beta carotene (vitamine A) in my stool, which can be toxic. Orange foods are high in beta carotene, so, once again, it was time for a tuning.
These are just two out of countless examples of tweaks that had to be made over the years. There's no limit to the amount or combination of dietary changes one can make. But you can clearly see how these dietary examples might apply to the many non-food related ways we have to fine-tune our lives.
It's in how we communicate with others, how we approach dating and sex, the nuances of our relationship not only with others, but with ourselves. It's in finding ways to be active and engaged in life that overlap with how we earn a paycheck. It's in the way we choose to move our bodies so that we're sweating as much as we need to without pushing ourselves too far. It’s a perpetual journey in which we can never really take our hand off the dial.
That perfect pitch in song, that clear radio station in your car, that delicious meal that feels good going down and brings your labs into a normal range, that process of finding your voice while knowing when to embrace silence - it's all a moving target, because you're constantly moving and you’re continually growing.