Over the next few days I am going to discuss the second corner stone which is your “Physical” being. This does mean exactly what you think it does. We are talking about taking care of your body.
My questions for you are:
What does taking care of my physical being mean to me?
What are the benefits to taking care of myself?
Who or what else receives benefits when I take care of myself?
I would like you to be very honest with yourself and answer this one question. How healthy am I? On a scale of 1 to 10 where do I rate myself? Where would my doctor rank me?
Boldness is what is really needed here and a great deal of tough love. If you are not within your ideal weight for your height, and age within 5 pounds; if you are not below healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels, if you do not exercise within a target heart range, if you do not get 8 hours of sleep every night, if you do not get the recommended calorie intake for you age, gender and so on, if you do not have a happy place, hobby, person, or pet, and if you do not take a regular vacation, take at least one day off during the week and have your financial house in order; you are not healthy.
If you push back on any of these, it tells me that you already know that you are not healthy. If you drink, use drugs, smoke and are in toxic relationships and job situations, these are things that you have chosen to drain health and vitality right out of your body.
You do not have to agree with me for these things to be true.
If you life is wonderful and you have it all together and you are maintaining a healthy lifestyle; I give you a hearty congratulations and a well done. I would follow it up with another question. Who are you teaching how to maintain that wonderful healthy lifestyle? If you are one of the few who has cracked the code then I am elated with you! Teach it to someone else.
When this corner stone is not firmly in place it is just like a three legged chair. It is very difficult to maintain your balance and you are constantly adjusting something in order to get other things done and in place.
If you are ill and not healthy, regardless of what it is, this corner stone may take some concentrated effort in order to stabilize and shore up and gain strength.
Have no illusions here. This takes lots of time. This takes lots of effort. This takes perseverance. There are no quick fixes. The most important thing you can do is to teach “how to be healthy” to your children so the mountain is not so steep to climb once they leave home and start to make their own choices regarding health.
Learning what “Healthy” is for a male, a female and at each age level is huge. This is easily found on the Internet these days and from your own family doctor. Start at where they are right now and where you are right now. Make it a family project. Create a check list of what “Healthy” is and then look at how you and your family eats, uses money in food choices and purchases, look in your own pantry, start to read labels and so forth.
If you put a fourth grader to the task of putting all the food products in your home with contain “high fructose corn syrup” or “hydrogenated……” you will find that your kitchen table is full and very little on the shelf in the pantry.
Yes, there will be times when you think you really need to eat something or to celebrate with alcohol and so on, but when you think about the long term damage this does to your health; things look differently.
Regular exams for the items which are specific to each gender are needed. That means, teeth, eyes, hearing, physicals, mammograms and the like. If a child does not know that these are yearly things he/she must learn to put into their own schedules when they go out into the world, who is going to teach them.
A final word about “finance” and how it leads to stress which leads to many of the aliments and disease that we as Americans suffer from. Yes, we “suffer” because this is a choice. The use of your hard earned money is an art. Who did you learn how to manage finances from? My guess is you didn’t really learn more than how to use a check book ledger in middle school. Money decisions 101 is not a class in high school or college. When we are in any financial trouble we have created voluntary stress for ourselves and our families. This stress in turn leads to other poor decisions and they tend to grow and breed. Eventually you have a financial crisis, stress crisis and a health crisis.
We have only this one body to live out our lives here on earth. Take very good care of it. Say no to the things which do not keep it healthy.
Next time we will discuss the topic of “Physical” and how it relates to your “Career”.
As always, I would really love to hear what you may think about how the “Physical” corner stone impacts you and your every day life.
