 | Steer Gently Towards Health! |
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 Our culture right now is saturated with messages about health and wellness. On a daily basis we seem to be flooded with news stories on everything from preventing obesity to treating arthritis. School systems have been putting in place cutting-edge nutrition curricula and these days it seems that a great many people, kids and adults, now know what it means to be "healthy". But does having access to the best health information always draw us towards improving our actual behaviors? Not necessarily. Most of us are interested in being healthier, but sometimes have difficulty implementing the changes we need to make. There are many reasons for this - both societal and personal - but understanding all the reasons may be less important than what to do about the problem. I'd like to take this month's Tune-Up to look at our barriers to getting healthier and to offer some ideas on how to move past them. We've all heard the expression: "Life is good as long as you have your health". Perhaps as a community, we can nudge each other ever closer towards that "good life". |
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What would you like to be doing differently?
All of us have aspirations when it comes to our health. Perhaps they have to do with being more habitual with exercise or improving our nutrition. For many of us, we tend to focus a lot of our mental energy on these goals but then end up falling short. One of the biggest barriers to getting healthier is not in our our physiques but between our ears. Perhaps because of all the health advice around us or in spite of it, we tend to have a lot of negative inner-talk when it comes to our health behaviors.
This negative self-talk voice can be likened to the old-style of gym teacher who berates his athletes, calling them lazy bums or worse in an effort to "motivate" them to work harder. Of course, this method never leads to success. When we feel bad about ourselves, we actually revert to more negative health behaviors (pint of ice cream, anyone?) to try to feel better. This doesn't motivate us; in fact it's a vicious cycle!
Unfortunately, we can't completely banish the old gym teacher voice from our heads, but we can get ourselves less attached to that voice by simply noticing it when it comes up and allowing our minds to let those thoughts pass. In this way, we are practicing being more gentle and forgiving with ourselves, with an ultimate goal of treating ourselves very well: as a much-loved person - body, mind, and spirit.
Here are a few more ideas as you gear up for some gentle health improvement: - First of all, buddy up with a supportive friend to set health goals together. Get your calendars together to write down some benchmarks and even schedule in regular support phone calls. If you can't get a buddy to commit to mutual goals, one-way support may have to do. Ask someone close to simply be your support person.
- Think of your health wholistically. Mental and spiritual health are as important as physical health. Evaluate without judgment where things are for you with these three factors. If stress or lack of sleep is a concern, for example, how do you want to address that?
- Make tiny, incremental changes and then celebrate them when you notice that they have become habits. The smallest changes can make a huge impact!
- Frame your health changes as actions you want to begin instead of behaviors you want to stop. This subtle change in language is important for positive reinforcement, ie. "I want to start taking my vitamins daily" instead of "I need to stop being a slacker about my vitamins".
- Good health should be enjoyable! Make every effort for your improvements in nutrition and activity to be ones you actually enjoy and give you pleasure. If you hate going to the gym, why do it? Do an activity you like instead.
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