Personal Health Where You Don’t Expect It: In Your Mind
Throughout my life whenever I thought of personal health, I thought of all the right, “healthy” things: eating right, getting enough exercise and maintaining sufficient sleep. What I’ve come to learn, however, is that personal health begins where you don’t expect it: in your mind.
You can eat well, exercise your heart out and get enough sleep, but if you’re stressed out, your body cannot operate as efficiently as it could, eventually leading to an unbalanced, and unhealthy, state of being.
Stress begins with how we assimilate information in our daily life. Perhaps we allow people to make us feel bad. We may blame someone else or something else for our financial condition, for our careers or for our relationships. We put pressure on ourselves as deadlines approach, and in some way or another, we feel our lives must be perfect.
The above stressors can be mitigated by first changing our perception of them. Others cannot make us feel anything unless we’ve given them permission to do so. What we don’t often realize is that we needn’t react to the actions of others. When it comes to the results we are getting in life, we are responsible for them – no one else is.
We’ve been raised to believe that the conditions in our lives in whole or in part result from actions outside of ourselves. It’s someone else’s fault, doing – you fill in the blank. This is a misnomer that, once reversed, can put you in a place of power; one where you realize that perfect is in fact in the mind of the beholder. Perfection is what your perception says it is. It begins and ends with you.
My own personal stressors caused me to have a headache every day of my life for over 30 years. During this time, I worked out, ate well and got sufficient sleep. However I’d left my mental health out of my personal health. Once I made a conscious decision to change the way I looked at life, my life changed. I began to accept other people where they’re at, without judgment.
Everyone is allowed their own point of view. Mine doesn’t have to be theirs, and vice versa. More importantly, I began to accept myself. I removed the “perfect” from my vocabulary, and decided I will be fine so long as I am committed to growth in my life. Growth is a conscious decision; one that begins in your mind.
Looking back at my life, I recognize some of the ‘someone else’ programming I received while growing up. I challenge those programs by asking myself if they are serving me. If they aren’t, I change them.
This process, just like diet, exercise and sleep, requires a conscious commitment. If you’re able to do this, your personal health will skyrocket!
– To your health, Wendy