“To Know Thyself is the beginning of Wisdom.” ~Socrates
Your health depends on your lifestyle. Your lifestyle depends on your health.
If you want to do physical things, you must prepare your body just as you would prepare your brain to learn programming or biochemistry.
For whatever you want to achieve in your life — first you must envision accomplishing it, then you must plan and prepare to achieve it.
Take Care of Your Body — It’s the Only One You Get!
This may be as simple as cutting out one unhealthy food from your daily diet — donuts, sweet processed granola bars, sweetened yogurts, soda (diet or regular), fast food, etc.
Your goal may be, as mine was, to simply sleep through the night and wake up without pain in your neck, back, knees or other joints. This is possible without taking analgesic, anti-inflammatory drugs with their undesirable long term side effects.
Or you may have a large goal to backpack the Appalachian Trail, so your preparation is bigger. You may need to lose the extra pounds, get fit, learn how to avoid bears and snakes and how to make fire if your matches get wet.
This may seem out of the range of natural health, but if you have a dream, a yearning, it’s important to go for it. Maybe you really don’t want to spend the summer roughing it in the mountains but like the idea of traversing a famous trail. If so, read about others’ adventures. Watch a film — get your fill and either move on to the next thing or take a day to hike along the trail to experience it. Just do one thing to find out if the effort will be worth it for you. Set yourself up for success.
Take Care of Your Emotions — Find What Makes You Happy
Often we romanticize a lifestyle. One time when driving through a tiny New Mexican town off the beaten path, my husband and I fantasized about having a small shop like the one we visited. “Wouldn’t it be great to have a store like this?”
We kicked the idea around for a few months when we realized how much we valued our freedom to come and go as we pleased. Being tied to a retail store just wouldn’t suit us.
We lived in Illinois at the time and what we really wanted was to move to the West — which we did a short time later.
When I was young, Cheryl Tiegs was the “the” celebrity fashion model. She was so beautiful, confident — radiating health. I realized that my 5’4” frame would never look like that — no matter how much makeup I applied or how fit I got. Acceptance set in.
I came to realize that I was more like Popeye than anyone else. “I am what I am!” And thank God for that.
We’re all unique. Find YOUR special gifts and qualities and develop them. We can’t all be professional dancers, athletes, artists, but we can dance, play, paint or design at some level. When you admire someone who is at the top of their game, it doesn’t mean that because you can’t compete with them, you shouldn’t participate in that activity. Competition with others is overrated. The highest performers compete with their personal bests, and you can, too.
Your Mind Deserves Your Attention — Give It Fun Things to Do!
But first you have to start, take that first step, learn the basics. Whether it’s gardening, golf or gold prospecting — you have to start somewhere. If you like traditional learning, you may read a book. Perhaps that’s too slow for you, so watch someone on YouTube or Vimeo doing what you want to do. It could save you a lot of frustration, if you find out what’s involved before you start.
Perhaps you doubt your ability to accomplish what you want. That’s okay, too, because if you never start, you’d definitely fail. If you start and don’t like doing the activity — now you know it’s not for you.
What does trying new things have to do with being naturally healthy? Well, everything. As humans, we are cursed with the knowledge that we have choices. When we deny those choices, we create imbalance, so are not as healthy as we can be in our physical, mental and emotional bodies.
Our mental and emotional states are affected by our physical health; just as our physical state is affected by our mental and emotional health. Each is dependent on the others. There’s no separation. Just as our organs and systems work together to keep the body alive — our emotional, physical and mental bodies work together for optimum health and happiness.
Banish the CAN’T!
Each time you say, “But I can’t…” stop yourself to discover what you CAN do today to get one step closer to your vision of natural health and happiness.
What is ONE thing YOU can do TODAY as your first step to a naturally healthy lifestyle?