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DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 2 days ago

You’ve probably come across the term mitochondria. Mitochondria are little organelles that live inside your cells, and they’re involved in energy production, particularly ATP, or adenosine triphosphate.

But let me explain what mitochondria have to do with your vitality, your wellness and your energy levels, because it’s an interesting journey.

A couple of billion years ago on the planet, before the Great Oxygenation Event, there was sulfur from volcanic activity, and microorganisms were living primarily on mechanisms involving sulfur, not oxygen. Oxygen was toxic to those earlier cells.

Earth’s atmosphere contained very little free oxygen. Tiny organisms called cyanobacteria used sunlight to make food through photosynthesis, releasing oxygen as a by-product.

Initially, that oxygen reacted with substances such as dissolved iron in the oceans, essentially causing the iron to “rust.” Eventually, oxygen began accumulating in the atmosphere.

This changed life on Earth:
As the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere grew, it initially killed cells, but some cells adapted and created certain enzyme pathways that allowed them to survive in this toxic oxygen environment.

The theory is that that a cyanobacteria was consumed by another cell. But instead of digesting and eating it, the two cells formed an endosymbiotic partnership. That was part of the mechanism involved in the transition from bacteria to eukaryotes, which are cells that have nuclei.

As a result of this evolution, you now have mitochondria living inside all of your cells (except mature red blood cells). The differentiation and specialization that eventually allowed human beings to develop depended on this. Without the Oxygenation Event and the cellular changes that occurred with it, you would not be here.

What Do Mitochondria Have to Do With Your Energy?

As is commonly known, the mitochondria in all living cells are what give you your energy to fuel all cellular function from muscle driven movement, organ function, digestion, mitosis, excretion, and brain function etc.

Earlier cells used glycolysis, which is a less efficient form of energy production. Your cells with their mitochondria now also use oxidative phosphorylation, which involves a series of enzymes that eventually produce ATP and generate more ATP than glycolysis. So, you’re able to have more energy. 

What’s particularly interesting is that when you’re living by priority, congruently and in line with your unique set of highest values, what’s most meaningful, important and fulfilling to you, the mitochondria, particularly in the medial prefrontal cortex, your forebrain, grow in number, and the output of ATP and energy goes UP.

But if you’re doing something low in priority, something that’s unfulfilling and meaningless to you, and you feel trapped doing something you don’t want to be doing, and you perceive you’re stressed, your mitochondrial function goes DOWN.

 

Here’s one of the reasons why.

When you’re living congruently with your highest values, your blood glucose and oxygen tend to go up into the forebrain. Your forebrain allows you to be more reasonable. It’s System 2 thinking, where you use more objectivity, more reason, less emotion, more rationality, and you tend to have a more balanced view. When you balance your perceptions, your mitochondrial function and ATP production go up.

But if you’re doing something low in your values, the blood glucose and oxygen move into your subcortical brain which includes your amygdala. That’s System 1 thinking, when you tend to be more emotional, attempting to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

In other words, you try to avoid predator and seek prey, and you go into a more primitive kind of response (evoked potential) and regress your overall physiology and cellular physiology.

When you do, your mitochondria go into what you might call a cell danger response. The moment you’re trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure, you tend to become attached to the pleasure and detached from the pain. You dissociate from the pain associated with the pleasure, fear the loss of the pleasure and fear the gain of the pain.

And you get a stress response.

That stress response reduces mitochondrial function and regresses the cells towards an earlier physiological state where there was less ATP production (it literally decapitulates the cell to a more primitive cell type). So if you’re not living by high-priority actions that inspire you and increase your energy, where you have spontaneous actions in the forebrain, you’re likely to be activating your amygdala’s survival response, System 1 thinking rather than System 2.

Survival is basically the fear of loss of that which you seek and the fear of gain of that which you try to avoid. You’re now putting out fires, which are perceived as stresses.

That’s why when you’re doing high-priority actions and you’re really doing what you love in a day, your energy goes up, the day goes by really quickly, and it seems like you’re not even noticing time.

But when you’re doing lower-priority things, it feels like a long endless day and you’re drained. And the reason you’re drained is because your mitochondria are giving you feedback.

When you’re doing lower-priority things and experiencing stress, you regress and go through a reversion, activating, you might say, ancestral aspects of your genome and cellular functions. You go back into a more primitive response.

So under stressful circumstances, you can REGRESS and lower your mitochondrial function, or if you perceive you’re inspired, you can PROGRESS forward by doing what’s truly priority to you.

 

How Your Priorities Affect Your Energy Levels

You can live by design or by duty. Living by design means prioritizing and organizing your life.

Think about it this way. Have you ever got up, made a priority list for the day, got on with it, stuck to it and focused on it? At the end of the day, you felt on top of the world. You knocked everything out, you were ready to tackle one more thing, and you felt adaptable and resilient.

Or have you had a day when fires came at you and you put out fires all day long, never got to your priorities and thought, “Whoa, what a day. Man, I’m drained.” Then you came home highly emotional and took it out on your family.

If you’re not prioritizing your life, you’re not going to get the full benefit of your mitochondria. If you’re doing lower-priority things, you’re going to scatter and frustrate yourself and become bored or burned out.

So, it’s wise to prioritize your life. Dedicate your life to what’s most important. Delegate what’s least important.

If you’re not delegating, don’t expect a self-actualized life. Don’t expect a high-energy life. Energy is relatively infinite once you recognize the source, and the source is simply prioritization.

As I mentioned earlier, you have a unique hierarchy of values. The very top value has been called the telos, the end in mind, the chief aim, the priority or primary mission in life. If you stick to that, you’ll maximize your energy potential. You’ll have a more balanced mind, and your autonomics and epigenetics will be more balanced. Your mitochondria are duplicating and growing, creating ATP for you, and you’re energized.

In other words, you’re doing what you love and loving what you do on a daily basis. And you have access to that. It’s simply prioritization.

William James said, “The greatest discovery of his generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their perceptions and attitudes of mind.”

If you’re not prioritizing your perception and asking, no matter what’s happening, “How is this helping me fulfill what’s highest in priority?”, if you’re not making decisions to stick to priority and you’re not delegating lower-priority things so you can get on with higher-priority things, don’t expect maximum potential, maximum energy or maximum vitality.

Your wellness quotient is proportional to how well you prioritize what you do on a daily basis.
So take the time to prioritize your daily actions.

Anytime you’re not in your highest priorities and you go into your amygdala, you’re likely to be avoiding and seeking. When you avoid and seek, you’re in your sympathetic response of challenge or parasympathetic response of support, and you cause autonomic dysregulation.
Your physiology creates symptoms to let you know it, and it’s trying to guide you back to priority. Every symptom in your body is really trying to guide you back to priority, sustainable fair exchange and a state of equanimity where you’re poised and present, purposeful, patient and productive.

If you do that, your energy and wellness quotient goes up, and your mitochondria go up. Your mitochondria are basically feedback mechanisms to let you know when you’re living authentically according to priority.

So take the time to prioritize your life.

If you haven’t yet done the Demartini Value Determination Process on my website, you may want to do that. It’s a free resource I’ve made available for you to use to help you get clear on what’s most important to you so you can build your life around that. Make sure you answer as honestly as you can, take a look at what’s really important to you and what your life demonstrates, and start asking yourself:

“What is the highest-priority action I can do today to fulfill what’s most meaningful and inspiring to me?”

Ask yourself:
“What’s the highest-priority action I can do today that will serve the greatest number of people in the most efficient and effective manner with the resources I am aware of that are available today?”

If you do that, that’s the most any human being can do. And if you stick to that, your energy levels go up.

 

Just know that your vitality in life is directly proportional to the vividness of your vision, the clarity of your mission and the priority of your actions.

Those with a vision flourish. Those without a vision perish.

So give yourself permission to live by priority.

Your mitochondria will reward you with vitality and wellness. Your autonomics will come into balance, your physiology will normalize and the symptomatology will subside, and you’ll progress towards your maximum potential instead of regressing to more primitive cellular responses.

ATP is your energy currency, and ATP floods your brain the second you’re living by priority.
You want to make a difference in the world. You make a difference by standing out and being your authentic self, more than simply fitting in and living by duty.

You’re living by design. You’re prioritized. You’re the one who takes command.

Nobody is getting up in the morning and dedicating their life to your fulfillment. So, if you’re not living by design, don’t expect anybody else to do it.

Everybody is projecting their values onto you, and if you try to live in everybody else’s values, you’ll experience non-sustainable futility, and you’ll knock out your mitochondria and your energy levels. You may wonder how you can tell if you’re living by your own versus an outside authorities values, listen to your language.

If you hear yourself saying: I have to, I must, I ought to, I should, just know those are signs of attempting to live by an outer authority’s set of values. When you’re doing what you love, when you’re congruent, authentic, aligned with your highest values you say: I love to, I’m enthused to, I can’t wait to do it. Your language, your energy, your physiology are all guiding you to authenticity where your mitochondria maximally produce energy and you thrive.

It’s there to give you feedback, to let you know you’re not being authentic and you’re not being the leader you’re capable of being.

So give yourself permission to live by priority, live with vitality, and go after the mission you feel called to do in the world.

To Sum Up

• Mitochondria inside your cells and are involved in producing ATP, your energy currency. How well they function has a direct relationship with your energy levels, vitality and, your mindset.
   
• When you’re living by priority, congruently with your highest values and doing what’s most meaningful and inspiring to you, your mitochondrial function and ATP production go up.
   
• When you spend your time on lower-priority actions, feel trapped doing things you don’t want to do and move into a stress response, your mitochondrial function can go down. Your mitochondria are giving you feedback.
   
• You can live by design or by duty. Living by design means prioritizing and organizing your life around what is truly most important to you rather than continually putting out fires or attempting to live according to other people’s values.
   
• Dedicate to what’s most important. Delegate what’s least. The more effectively you prioritize your daily actions, the greater your potential for energy, vitality and fulfillment.
   
• Ask yourself, “What is the highest-priority action I can do today to fulfill what’s most meaningful and inspiring to me?” Your vitality in life is directly proportional to the vividness of your vision, the clarity of your mission and the priority of your actions.
   
• Give yourself permission to live by priority and live with vitality. Be your authentic self, take command of your life and go after the mission you feel called to do in the world.

 

Are you ready for the NEXT STEP?