By Nant Nissen: Active Entities advisory board member
Creating Optimal Health and Wellness Is something many strive for on a daily basis. We all want to feel optimally healthy. We all want to be optimally well…..it just seems that we look at it as a future event, something we will one day get to.
I’ve been asked numerous times,” When will I not have to do this anymore?” “When can I go back to doing what I used to do?”. I am usually slightly stunned at this and then I remember a time when I used to think the same way. It wasn’t until I realised, today and every day, this is my life. This is me, not the new me, but me, a way of being, that I choose. I make these choices because my life is better for it.
It’s an everyday thing
Every day we create our lifestyle. We create us again each morning and we make choices in every moment that either lead us towards our goal of strength, health, and well-being, or further away from them.
This means we understand what quality of life is for us. Is it feeling great when you wake up, with energy and feeling amazing in your body? Or is it alright with you if you wake up tired, fatigued all day and feel uncomfortable in your body? Neither is right or wrong. There is only what is right and wrong for you.
As a simple example, let’s look at brushing our teeth. You do it every day. Why? Do you clean your house weekly? Do you clean it monthly? We do the things we need or want to do each day, week or month to enable us to have the standard of life that we want. We make choices that create the internal and external environment that we wish to live with.
Many would be outraged if you said I clean my teeth monthly. Our social connections have taught us the importance of brushing our teeth. We have even been taught how to brush our teeth the right way. We follow these habits with ease because we have been taught them as we grow. We have been educated as to what, how, when and why. It’s just part of our daily routine and lifestyle to protect our teeth.
What would happen if we were taught healthy lifestyle habits as we developed? It would become something we just do. Part of daily life that supports us. We can learn new skills at any time. We learn tech, new ways to do things when we venture into a new job or career, cooking methods, how to drive a car, and more. When we start, it’s often challenging. We are out of our comfort zone until we get to a point of being capable to perform that task, and if we choose, to become an expert.
The same rules apply with health. These are skills that we can learn at any time. We can form new habits, patterns and behaviours until it becomes second nature. I often wonder why it has become so challenging for us to love ourselves? To enjoy movement? To enjoy nourishing our body? To live a joyous and wonderful life filled with energy, health, happiness and vitality!
Are we just so accustomed to feeling poorly, to feeling sad or down, to letting ourselves down by not putting ourselves first? So many of us have been taught that putting ourselves first is selfish. Even though we know logically, we cannot help anyone else if we don’t take care of ourselves first, many of us struggle with the concept of investing in ourselves.
The truth is us being our best is the only way to truly help others. We help others to be healthy by being in our best health, we help others to excel when we are excelling ourselves, we help others to love their life by loving our own life and we help others to have a life they love, by having one ourselves.
What have you been taught about health?
Have you been taught health is boring? To be healthy is to sacrifice fun? That being healthy is hard work? It’s a great eye opener to really have a look at what you believe about health. What thoughts move through your mind and what feelings move through your body when you think about health? What patterns and beliefs do you have here?
In a world of instant gratification and social media, we have become so impatient and complacent with our life and ourselves. We have normalised feeling unwell or having symptoms. How many times have you heard someone say, “I’ve got a headache” and then heard someone else say, “Oh I get them too”? Or, you hear someone say, “I’m so tired in the mornings” and someone else says “we all feel that after a certain age”
Most of us want to feel energised, happy, healthy and confident and comfortable in our own skin, yet part of us believes it isn’t possible and part of us is not willing to make the changes needed to ensure this new way of being becomes a habit and therefore a lifestyle. Why? Only you can truly answer that for yourself.
What if?
If you were guaranteed an amazing life, filled with happiness, laughter, joy, vitality and a lean body, would you do the daily activities needed to make that happen? If not, why not? If each day you made small changes that contributed to your life in such a massive way, that in 1 year from now, you would be living a completely different life, would you?
It can be done and for those wanting to do it, it is there for the taking! Our natural state is one of health, happiness, vitality and a beautiful lean body. (a lean body within your own shape and frame). Our natural state is very often one that many of us have not felt for quite some time, and it’s time that stopped!
Tips for creating Optimal Health and Wellness
1. Surround yourself with the right people
If you really want to be optimally healthy and well, surround yourself with supportive and like-minded people. We have all heard the saying “we are the sum of the 5 people we spend the most time with”.
We really do need to ensure that we surround ourselves with likeminded people who lift each other, who can agree to disagree and have different opinions respectfully, who truly want to see you succeed and who bring out the best in each other.
2. Only get qualified advice
This means that you receive advice from those who are either experts, have experience or are actually talking the talk and walking the walk. You wouldn’t take financial advice from someone with a nice car in the driveway but is living pay to pay or ask strangers on social media, what supplements you need to take? That’s like going up to every person in the supermarket and asking them questions about your health.
Be guided by those who know well-being! Those who live it and breathe it day in day out, those who have the knowledge and those that are truly passionate about it! This doesn’t mean they are perfect, far from it. It means they know the challenges and they push through anyway. It means they have a big enough why. It means they have bad days and do the activities they need to do to get to where they want to be, even when they don’t feel like it.
3. Choose the lifestyle
The steps to creating optimal health and wellness is not something we have been taught. Many of us have had to learn them the hard way, or through knowing deep down that there is something better.
I have always had a deep underlying belief that we are made to be healthy, happy and vital. This was nagging at me when I was ill and no one could help me. I knew deep down that we are meant to have a wondrous experience through life.
Our natural state is one of health, happiness, vitality and a shape that suits us. It means we not only strive to be our best, but our natural state is to thrive and be the very best version of ourselves.
We weren’t taught to be optimally healthy and well, however that doesn’t mean we can’t achieve it now! Changing the narrative starts with us. Why not start today?!