right things, wrong order
on the importance of sequencing (so you’re not just spinning your wheels)
It’s 2016 and I’m on a 6.5 hour solo drive from Durango to Denver, listening to the audiobook my friend recommended: The Word for World is Forest, by Ursula K. Le Guin.
And I’m about two hours in, genuinely struggling with this book.
The chronology felt wild.
The story kept lurching between past and present with no real explanation.
Characters would appear and then vanish.
This was my first foray into Le Guin, so I figured this was just the nature of her writing: dense, nonlinear, and…nonsensical.
Then, after hours of this, I stop off at a gas station to fuel up, glance at my phone and realize…the audiobook had been playing on shuffle this entire time.
My first feeling…terrified…of myself. How did I not realize that for over two hours?!?
But then also, validated. I had felt SO INCREDIBLY CONFUSED.
And it made sense, because I was listening out of order, which turned a coherent story into something I couldn’t follow no matter how hard I tried.
I didn’t end up finishing that book (not because the book was bad, but because by the time I figured out what happened, I’d already spent two hours building the wrong version of it in my head).
But this speaks to something that I think is true when it comes to what makes change more easeful and doable: sequencing, the sixth principle in my Personal Alchemy framework.
“I’m doing all the right things and my health is still the same.”
I hear this constantly. People come in with a supplement graveyard on their kitchen counter (hi, that’s me), a notes app full of protocols, and genuine confusion about why none of it, despite their Herculean efforts, is working.
Often, they’ve got great instincts and great interventions on board.
But, they may not be seeing the progress they want because they may just be doing it out of order.
That’s what bad sequencing does. Everything can be there, all the right chapters, all the right lifestyle practices or foods or supports, but if it’s not implemented in the right order, it won’t work/make sense/be as effective.
Think of it like a combination lock. The numbers matter, but so does the order. 3-27-15 opens the lock. 27-15-3 is a wrong answer that happens to contain all the right numbers.
Let me show you what I mean with some people who don't exist but whose problems definitely do:
The Morning Coffee Crash
Meet Jules.
Jules wakes up and immediately makes coffee. No food, just coffee. Breakfast happens maybe an hour later, maybe never, depending on the morning.
By 10 AM, Jules is somehow both jittery and exhausted. By noon, full-body crash: foggy, irritable, hangry.
Jules isn’t broken.
Jules is actually having a completely normal physiological response to drinking coffee on an empty stomach. That spikes cortisol, which spikes blood sugar, which triggers an insulin response, which drops blood sugar, and now the body is on a glucose rollercoaster before Jules has even put on her outside pants.
The sequence shift?
Eat first. Even something small with protein and fat. Then coffee.
Same coffee, same breakfast. Different order, different quality of day.
The Gut Problem
Meet Madison.
Madison wants to “heal her gut.”
She’s assembled an impressive roster: L-glutamine, bone broth, a mucosal support formula, a probiotic with a very specific strain count she researched for hours.
All genuinely useful interventions…in certain contexts.
But here’s where it doesn’t work for her. Madison’s digestion is weak: low stomach acid, sluggish motility, not enough enzyme activity to actually break down what she’s eating. And stress has her nervous system locked in fight-or-flight, which means that she won’t be able to prioritize digestion since all that energy is going into emails (see: an evil, adrenaline-inducing, never-ending to-do list with erratic deadlines).
So she’s pouring all these beautiful repair nutrients into a system that can’t receive them. It’s like trying to renovate a house while it’s on fire. Technically you are doing home improvement. Practically, you’re wasting your time.
The sequence shift?
Step one: calm the nervous system down enough so that the body can reprioritize digestion.
Step two: get the basic machinery working: acid, enzymes, motility (oh my).
Step three: then bring in the repair nutrients.
Each step makes the next one possible. Skip ahead and you’re just funding a very expensive supplement graveyard. (Welcome to the club, Madison. We meet on Tuesdays.)
The Comeback
Meet Priya.
Priya has an autoimmune condition and they are tired of being tired. They want to feel strong again (which is a completely reasonable thing to want). So they sign up for a HIIT class, start going four days a week, and white-knuckle through every session.
Instead: more fatigue. More inflammation. More flares. Joints that hurt more, not less. And now Priya’s starting to wonder if their body just isn’t built for this type of movement anymore.
(It is. But we’re not there yet.)
Here’s what’s actually happening. Priya’s immune system is actively attacking their own tissue. That’s what a flare is. And intense exercise is a stressor. In a healthy system, that stress is productive: break down, repair, come back stronger than before (hello, muscles). But that whole process depends on an immune system that’s functioning correctly.
Adding HIIT on top of an active flare is asking a body that’s already struggling to keep up with its own repair work to also recover from intentional damage. It’s like being three months into a brand new home with no work and deciding the next best move is to adopt a blind German shepherd puppy (based on a true story…his name is Harvey).
The sequence shift?
Bring the flare down first. Not the Instagram version of recovery (a jade roller and a candle). Actual, boring, physiological repair. Get inflammation to a manageable baseline.
Then reintroduce movement. Gradually. Walking. Gentle resistance. Building slowly so the system can adapt without backsliding.
Priya can absolutely get strong again. But the path there has to include helping their immune system feel safe and regulated, not exercising through it.
So What Now
If you got to the end of this and recognized yourself in Jules or Madison or Priya or even me (the victim of iPod shuffle), I want you to hear this: not everything needs to be a big, ol’ overhaul.
Sometimes, we just need a sensible sequence to bring it all together.
Work With Me
Want to practice a slower, more curious, more kind relationship with your body?
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