What will it take to feel great this year? Feeling great is not just an absence of symptoms, but a feeling of vitality! It is the ability to do what you want in life without being encumbered by how you feel. When you can get up in the morning, feeling alive, alert and ready to take on the day, you’ve accomplished something few people experience today. That feeling must be there without the need for coffee or other stimulant to get you going, and last you throughout the day.
In order to acquire great health, there is a certain effort required. We live in an era where good health is something you have to work at! We can no longer take it for granted that it will be there just by existing. Out of necessity, many times we have to schedule in good health. However, whether scheduled or not, it is a choice. The choices we have to make today are sometimes brutal and other times it simply take some forethought.
When it comes to food, for instance, we are barraged with foods that plainly are not wise to consume if what we are after is vital health. We have traded off wholesome, nutritionally dense foods for pre-packaged convenience “foods”. In fact, many people don’t even cook anymore! We think “cooking” is opening a package and sticking it in the microwave.
One misconception I frequently find is that we think the government is protecting us. We have been lead to believe that they’ve done exhaustive studies on the effect of convenience foods on our health. There are few studies that have been done and they show convenience foods worsen our health. So our best choice is to get back to the basics and start buying, fresh, whole produce, grains and meats and learn to cook again.
Another choice is our physical wellbeing. In times past we didn’t have to go to a gym to exercise. When we worked in a field and raised our own food, the work was laborious, but kept us physically fit. We walked or rode horses instead of riding in motorized vehicles. Now we overwork our brains and our bodies have become sedentary. I was in a seminar recently where we were discussing obesity and degenerative diseases. An interesting comment was made that stuck with me. We were challenged to think of the reasons why “old people diseases” were so prevalent amongst the young today. Amongst the answers were: inadequate nutrition, toxins in the environment, kids & young adults so scheduled they don’t have time to go out to play, etc. What was emphasized is that in the past, “old people diseases” occurred as the adult became more sedentary. Today, kids start out sedentary. They are so enwrapped with video games, the internet, computer games, electronic games, etc. that they are no longer out and playing hard in the streets or in the hills as they used to be. They sit longer in classrooms and “P.E” is wrongly downplayed in its importance in the schools.
If we don’t make a conscientious effort to get physical exercise, it doesn’t happen. We have good intentions: we buy fancy workout machines thinking if it’s in the house it will get used. With unbelievable rarity it does. More frequently it becomes a glorified clothes rack. We decide to take walks on a daily basis, which is good. But time schedules many times interfere and the good intentions are soon overwhelmed by other “more important” things that must be done. Unless you have a system in place that holds you accountable to keep exercising, life simply gets in the way.
Which brings me to the next choice. We live a life too busy to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. We are so busy that we don’t even see life. Days just turn into weeks, months and years and the next thing we know is we’re another year older and nothing has changed. We’ve plodded along and we forgot to play. We forgot to take advantage of some of the wonderful activities this area offers. Life is just slipping by.
Doing a good reality check the first of the year (or anytime) is a much needed block of time. Do we really need the big luxuries, the big toys, the best of the best? If simplifying our life and evaluating need versus wants would free up some physical energy, would it be worth it? Would we need two members of the family to work to keep up with it all? When we have debt we have stress. Stress kills. If you had any idea what stress did to the body, you’d change things in a flash. Stress will prevent you from feeling great!
Everywhere we turn, we have choices to make. The water we drink, the job we go to everyday, the foods we eat, the foods we choose not to eat. And the running around to perfect our life to the point that we no longer even enjoy life. When we evaluate the amount of time spent to go to the doctors’ offices to offset the illnesses produced by the choices we’ve made, we probably will find that time spent getting healthy is time better spent. A colleague of mine had a sign in his office that read “You will either pay to be sick, or pay to be well. Either way you will pay”. The choice is yours. I for one invest in my health – it is a dividend that continues to pay out on a daily basis.
© 2008 Holly A. Carling, O.M.D., L.Ac., Ph.D.
