How We Respond to Life Keeps Us Healthy

Being healthy is many things but I feel the biggest player in life is how we respond to it. We all face daily situations in our personal lives and even the workplace. How we respond to these circumstances can create a healthier, happier, and stronger person.

Being healthy includes more than the physical and nutritional. It also includes our emotional and spiritual health. If anything in our life is out of place, health is just not complete.

When a problem arises, we can choose to mishandle the situation or solve it in a healthy way. Many times issues are out of our control. The truth is the only thing fixable or controllable is yourself. We're not responsible for the actions or behavior of others, but what we do have is the actions and behaviors of ourselves. Life can be made to feel complicated and depressing or carefree and happier simply by how we respond to situations.

The same principle should be applied to how we take care of our body. Do we nourish it well, exercise it enough, and provide adequate rest for it?  What are your actions telling your body and how is it responding to you?  Are you getting great healthy feedback or receiving messages of fatigue, illness, weight gain, depression, and stress?

Our body is a good barometer of how we're living life. A healthy lifestyle reflects itself from the inside out. If we're doing a great job with eating right, working out, and emotional happiness then our body will feel pretty amazing.

If we choose not to listen to our body cues to get our act together, guess what? We will be hit with weight gain, stress, illness, and usually being pissed off at the world for our problems. It's up to each of us to listen to what our body, mind, and spirit are telling us and take appropriate action. It will be the responses in life that create our health.

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Use Fitness to Work Through Emotional Upset

Life is not meant to be easy peasy and all wrapped in a pretty bow all the time. The truth about life is it can suck and be filled with very difficult emotional and even physical hardships. 

Emotional junk can weigh down our brains and bodies and cause us to retreat into a shell of self-defeat. When we're struggling with emotional upset from any life situation, it's important not to give up on you. During these times we tend to not take care of our health and fitness. We really can become our own worst enemy.

Emotional upset can happen at any given time and we can choose to handle it in a healthy or unhealthy way. It really comes down to us being responsible for our own physical and emotional health. This also includes maintaining our fitness and happiness. 

Emotional upset seeming to be the most painful occurs in close personal relationships with spouses, significant others, dearest friends, and family. It's also the most difficult to navigate feelings that may include anger and resentment. We can become so bitter it interferes with the quality of our life and health.  

We tend to walk around with unrealistic expectations of how things and life are supposed to be. We want to be in control of how people treat us and really expect others to be like us. Often times we create our own upset because things don't happen according to our own thought processes. 

These self-induced feelings can create an unhealthy person that we ourselves find hard to recognize. It can be difficult when we feel hurt, but it's also important to recognize if the hurt is real or created from unrealistic expectations. 

In the midst of emotional upset, it's important to exercise and release endorphins to help us feel better. Studies have shown exercise to be one of the best methods for stress reduction, decreased depression, and overall positive well-being. 

It would be wonderful if life had an easy button to simply remove all the drama causing us emotional pain. The closest thing we possess to make that happen is our response to what causes the upset. We can choose to walk around with a bad attitude or choose to be positive with a healthy response. A great workout can enhance our positive feelings even more.   

Having a healthy response to unhealthy situations takes learning and practice, but the reward is a healthier happier life. There is nothing worse than stewing inside and growing an emotional pimple until it bursts into ugliness. There are so many positive avenues to take care of the problem in a healthy way. Eating healthy and exercise are great ways to improve our mental and physical health. Other ways to work through emotional upset include meditation, prayer, or even reaching out to a licensed therapist.  

Life is similar to a classroom and we are students learning through each experience. Every circumstance is an opportunity to learn and grow in a positive way. With every upset, we can choose to become healthier people. Remember, life is 10 percent what happens and 90 percent how we respond to it. 

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Getting Fit Requires Breaking the Cycle of Bad Habits

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got. Henry Ford 

Getting fit requires breaking the cycle of bad habits that created an unhealthy body. That means taking responsibility for our fitness and doing what it takes to get healthy.

Changing our habits can be tough because fitness doesn't magically happen. Ready for some hard work?

Bad habits keep us trapped in a life of emotional stress, unhealthiness and unable to move forward with self improvement. Repeating unhealthy behaviors is not loving or respecting our body. In order to create good habits, ending the cycle of what you have always done will be the start of great things for you.

Bad habit cycles can include poor eating habits, sedentary lifestyle, living unhealthy in general and being in denial about it. Many turn to alcohol, drugs, smoking, binge eating or not eating to cope with life. These choices have created unhealthy people.

Being in denial about bad habit cycles is a form of nonacceptance. It is refusing to face what needs to be changed.

Repeating bad habits makes us feel unhealthy, stressed and unhappy. Unfortunatley, many of us consider this way of life normal. Why has being unhealthy become an acceptable way to live? It has become a way of existence but not really living life to it's potential.

Many of us are over fat, sick and angry but refuse to look at ourselves as the cause of the problem. Instead we choose to continue repeating bad habits keeping us in an unhealthy lifestyle.

Well, isn't it time we take our heads out of the unhealthy sand? We are our problem but we are also our solution. When we start making the necessary choices to change our health, our health will be changed. That means discontinuing bad habits and implementing a new healthy lifestyle.

Health and fitness is a process of self improvement including physical and emotional health. It will require making changes and removing bad habits. It will take mental strength to remain true to healthy choices. Reaching your goals will require giving 100% effort.

The journey will not be easy. We aren't promised easy in this life. We do have a choice on how we are going to live this life however. As long as our focus is on personal progress and becoming healthier versions of ourselves, we are good.

I believe all of us want a better, healthy life. Right? Each one of us have the responsibility and choice to make that happen by breaking the cycle of bad habits. Your life, your body and your choice. What do you say?

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Why Boundaries are an Important Part of Being Healthy

It took me many years to learn how to set boundaries and even what the heck that meant. Think of a boundary as a shield of protection around you providing health and happiness. Go deeper with the meaning and understand boundaries are an important part of self-love and not allowing others to treat you in an unhealthy way. 

When boundary setting is not demonstrated for us as children, it's usually a struggle to grasp as an adult. The sacrifice of self to the point of mistreatment by others can be the result if boundary setting is not put into place.  Boundaries make a clear statement of what is not acceptable or allowed in our life. When those lines are crossed, it's a painful process for the one that has been wronged.   Sometimes clear communication of the broken boundary can resolve the conflict. Other instances will require radical choices of removing ourselves from the situation altogether. The most uncomfortable part of a broken boundary is the trust once there before now replaced with doubt or fear.

I am all for doing whatever it takes to learn how to set boundaries: counseling, support groups, church guidance, etc. Once the art of boundary setting has been learned, it provides a self-confidence, strength, and overall feeling of worthiness never experienced before. It will seem as if life has begun in a truly healthy way for the first time. 

Once boundaries have been set, it's important to honor yourself by remaining true to those decisions. This means not allowing anyone or anything rob you of your shield of self-love. Even the best of boundary setter can backslide and be tempted into old patterns. This could mean trusting someone to the point of letting down a boundary. The old familiar result of anger, resentment, and hurt re-enters the picture. Along with being wronged is the personal shame felt for allowing it to happen in the first place. The feeling of failing ourselves can be overwhelming. 

Boundaries teach us how to respect ourselves enough to know how we want to be treated. It also dictates what is acceptable in our lives. Boundaries remove our doormat mentality and replace it with a security door of emotional ability to conquer any circumstance placed in its way.  

Emotional health is a large part of our physical health. Being able to set boundaries is an important part of being a healthy person. It's about setting limitations and expectations for your life. The journey of learning can be a tough one, but the positive result will be the ability to love yourself. 

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Fear No Longer Gets in the Way of My Story and Helping Others

For some reason hiding behind our secrets seems to be the easy and almost normal thing to do in life. I'm not immune and in fact guilty of such past behavior. Years of life and wisdom have brought me full circle to being almost too transparent. Hiding is a tiresome process unfounded and stress producing. It feels good to be free and able to share my life and who I am. 

I have learned not to be ashamed of my story because it just might inspire or help someone going through the same things. Everyone will experience circumstances that may or may not be within our control. What we learn from these experiences helps to create who we are. 

Why do we get so caught up in what people think it causes us to hide our true self? Our struggles are left in the closet for fear of rejection. Not being accepted has become more important than sharing what is happening in our life. Fear takes over our ability to share deep struggles. We struggle silently even though we may need help or a listening ear. Sadly, fear of rejection cuts off any chance of gaining a support system through difficult times. The truth is we really don't want people in our life who would reject us for who we are. Life is about building real and meaningful relationships that are positive and supportive. 

In my lifetime, I have hidden the inability to set boundaries. I allowed myself to be mistreated in early marital and boyfriend relationships keeping it all inside. I have been a closet Christian, suffered alone with anxiety, hid my cervical dystonia condition, and in my competitive fitness hid behind a ripped body as being healthy. 

In hindsight, I now see my fear of rejection kept me from being me.  During the time I was unable to set boundaries, I cared more about what people would think or say than my own health. I never wanted to be considered a failure in the eyes of another. I am embarrassed to say at one point, I didn't confess to being a Christian, and just kept it between me and God. I tried to hide my cervical dystonia condition because of the tremor that can sometimes accompany the condition. Suffering from anxiety in my life had been another closet issue I thought others wouldn't understand. 

Years have passed and accepting myself, shedding fear and shame are probably my healthiest accomplishments. Sharing the real me without being guarded has been such a relief and freeing experience. It has allowed me to help so many others suffering in the same ways I once did. My road to self-acceptance wasn't easy or something that happened overnight. Once I learned to open up and gain a support system, it re-defined my life.

I am a firm believer in faith and a positive advocate for a great therapist to assist during difficult times. Learning to love yourself and share your story is not only a healing process, but also opens the door for others to feel comfortable enough to step toward you for help. When fear of rejection is no longer an issue, it opens doors for true contentment to flood your life. 

So many hide behind relationship problems, eating disorders, medical conditions, addictions, money problems, and the list continues. Hiding and handling things alone makes being happy impossible. The majority of us walk around living fake lives with fake smiles. We are so overcome by shame, embarrassment or fear it's no wonder many of us suffer from depression and stress. Hiding behind lies doesn't promote healing or positive growth in our lives. Until we learn how to share our stories with courage, we will not be able to be happy healthy people. We are required to own who we are and to become a better person than yesterday. This takes courage. Sharing your story is the first step. It will not only open the window to healing but also open many doors to inspiring others.   

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