Getting healthy requires hasn’t been easy. But are you overcomplicating what should be simple? Here are five truths to change your health.
I’ve spent some time pondering how many things in life I overcomplicate. The conclusion came to nearly everything. In the past, I have complexified my health routine, how it should look to spend time with God, and overthought nearly every hard conversation I’ve ever had.
I spend so much time in confusion that I suffocated any new idea or thought that might pull me out. It wasn’t until I realized confusion was the fuel keeping me stuck that I stopped letting confusion be an answer. I stopped letting it be the final say.
Health happens to be considered one of the most confusing topics of today. But I’m arguing it shouldn’t be. Confusion is only holding you back from living out health. But doing that means breaking down what you thought about health, redefining it, and choosing to live it even when you don’t fully understand it.
Health is an action.
Inside this podcast, I break down the five critical tools of healing and how to use them to change your health.
How To Change Your Health
I’ve come to realize that our beliefs, no matter how true they are, control most of our lives. Your beliefs filter your thoughts, determining the perspective and lens through which you view your life. Those same beliefs also create the action you take. Opening you up to engage with ideas you believe are true while dismissing those you don’t.
I’m not saying all of our health beliefs are faulty. But I do think it’s important to take the steps to challenge your beliefs. Especially if they aren’t working or, worse, are making you ill.
I’ve spent a lot of time challenging my own beliefs when it came to health. Not to throw shade on any diet idea, but to better understand the body. I’ve learned the goal is not to jump from one external idea to the next but to let go of the external chase and look at your internal health.
When I started doing that, I realized health is much closer than we know. Because one, it’s inside of you. That means you have the tools you need to heal. Two, it’s something you create more than a destination you achieve.
Simple shifts in what you believe can change your health and everything about what you achieve.
Here are five simple ideas that can change your health
01. Health is a choice (like all things)
Health doesn’t just happen, even if you attach yourself to the next best diet. And it’s certainly more than whatever genetics you were blessed or doomed with. Like everything in life, even the stuff you’re relatively unaware of is a choice.
Everything is a choice.
I know that can feel wildly overwhelming partially because we’ve understood choice to mean finding the perfect decision. We’ve wrapped up our ‘choice’ in finding the perfect route. This process leads to overwhelm and analysis paralysis, most likely ending in confusion. But when you start to understand there is no perfect choice.
All choices come with their own set of pros, cons, and variables you can lean into deciding the best choice for you. Then, take action on it. In the process, you can learn from it.
You are not confined to one choice. But like most things in life, that choice is fleeting, opening the door for another decision. In the end, you are always choosing, even when stuck in confusion.
The question is, are you controlling what you are choosing, or are you allowing overwhelm and stress to choose for you? What would it look like for you to choose health right now?
02. Health is created by you
I spent many years chasing health, believing that I would experience everything I thought health would mean if I could reach my goal weight. I thought I would be happy, free of all disease, symptoms, and illness. Really, I thought I would be free.
But that chase never ended, even when I did hit my goal weight. I never felt free. There was always a new goal. A new destination that prevented me from living healthy.
That’s when I worked to uncover a new definition of health. Health is not an arrival. It doesn’t magically appear when you hit the next bar of success because health is not a noun but a verb. It’s an action more than a destination. That action may lead to the destination, but it’s the action that is health. And that action is to be created every day.
When you shift the definition of health from an arrival to an action, you realize how many ways you can create it in your everyday life.
For example, health is not when you finish a 5K. It’s every day you wake up to train, eat a good breakfast, and stretch. Health is not hitting your goal weight. It is eating a healthy meal and focusing on getting a good night’s sleep. It’s taking action to support your energy by doing more things that make you feel alive and vibrant. Health is the millions of ways you create health that support your healing.
Stop focusing on the end goal and start focusing on what you can do right now to create health.
03. Health requires a healthy community
I once heard the saying, “You are only as healthy as your most unhealthy relationship.” I don’t think I’ve heard anything more true. Humans are naturally tied together. We are a unit that exists to support one another.
Our survival is interdependent on other people.
Yet, we often overlook our community chasing the idea that independence is best. But independence is lonely and isolating and lacking what fills you and gives you purpose to live. That happens to be other people.
If you want to experience health fully, you must foster healthy relationships. Building a community that supports one another rather than competes with each other. Competition is a sign your ego feels threatened, causing it to enlarge, isolating you while simultaneously slowing the healing process.
Health isn’t just about what you eat and how you move. It’s arguably more about who you spend time with, how much you laugh, the touch you receive from others, and the community you surround yourself with.
In the book, What Happened To You by Dr. Bruce Perry, he states:
“Our major finding is that your history of relational health—your connectedness to family, community, and culture—is more predictive of your mental health than your history of adversity. This is similar to the findings of other researchers looking at the power of positive relationships on health. Connectedness has the power to counterbalance adversity.”
How you relate to others is how you relate to yourself and the experience you live out. Take time to nurture healthy relationships. It’s critical to your health.
04. Live Confidently (even if you don’t feel confident)
Confident, like health, has been understood as an outcome of reaching an arrival. We’ve often heard that confidence happens when you reach your goal weight or hit your financial success. But confidence is the fuel that allows you to arrive at those places. It’s not something that happens because of them.
Confidence is a way of life, a belief, not an arrival.
It is also the energizing fuel that motivates you to continue. Instead of waiting for confidence, build it within you.
You build confidence by getting comfortable with the parts of you that you don’t always like. The places you hate, or the past story you tried to outrun. Not to live here, in surrender to these places, but to grow through them.
A true sense of confidence owns who you are, no matter what box you step into or out of. In the process, it allows you to see outside yourself. To see a life full of purpose ignites a deeper passion to live right where you are, no matter how far you have to go. You show up just as you are.
05. Continue forward movement (again and again and again)
Step into the journey. Health is a process. It’s an adventure from the start of your life until the end. When you stay in it, you’ll experience the results you’ve sought in the quick fix.
I know this isn’t the easiest task because it involves change. And change is always hard. But change is part of life and your biology.
Supporting your health means acknowledging how it’s changing and working with it instead of fighting it. That means showing up for your health in a million ways over your lifetime. It’s living flexible to the ebbs and flows, shifting as you shift and surrendering to the present.
There is something beautiful in recognizing life as a series of seasons. Embracing change allows you to be more present. To live right where you are rather than attempt to control life-fighting the natural process of change.
Keep showing up, taking action, learning from your mistakes, and growing through the change. This will keep pushing you forward to better things.
We’re far too quick to run and jump to new things. But can you imagine how far you could get if you stay and stick with it? I’m challenging you to stay in your life and get consistent with healthy action. It will pay off.
Learn More About How You Can Change Your Health
How You Heal is an 8-part podcast series devoted to understanding and healing the mind-body connection to create wholeness in your life. I encourage you to go back and listen to all eight, creating a new understanding of how to change your health and heal.
Join The Weekly Fill as we dive deeper into the topic of emotional mastery, inner child healing, and practical tips on how to heal. Join The Weekly Fill Here!
Check out these additional resources to help you heal:
- How You Heal: Shifting Your Perspective on Health
- How You Heal: Regulate Your Nervous System
- How You Heal: Healthy Ego + Self-Love
- How You Heal: The Human Energy Field
- How You Heal: Emotional Mastery
- How You Heal: Eat Healing Foods
- How You Heal: 5 Radical Truths About Forgiveness
- How Healthy Are You? Take the quiz to find out…
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