Your Health and Life Begin with YOU
When I started my journey of later-life health and longevity roughly 16 years ago, it began with a deep stirring inside me. Call it soul or conscience, a presence that I knew was the most important part of me, grabbed me by the lapels and gave me a good shake. “Hey you! Wake up! You’re almost 60 years old. If you are lucky, you might have another 20 or 30 years left on this planet as the living person you are. You have two very little daughters who need you to stick around. Once you get sick or die that’s it. There are no second chances. It’s over for you – and they will lose their father forever.”
All the health advice in the world would have been worthless without the motivation and insight that started at this moment. Simply being healthy because someone tells me I should be wouldn’t have worked to get me where I am. Changing my life and my health had to come from ME, from down deep inside, from the essence of who I am and what I wanted, from what mattered most to me. My approach to health comes from that place. It is not just random advice to be followed. Health is the foundation for what matters to me in life. Your good health only matters to you. You will only practice it, as if your life depended on it, if your life matters to you.
This is YOUR Life
Unfortunately, we live in a world that is filled with countless diversions from the simple experience of being alive, of following our inner guides for how to live. We also fill our lives with fiction; of instant change, of glamorous happy endings, of positive results without effort, and of indulging comfort without consequences. Someone always seems to have a quick fix for your problems when you are confronted by things going wrong or not being happy with life. Change does not come from the outside, it comes from the inside. Your life circumstances and experiences have shaped you up till now. And that is where the healing lies. Change is not that easy, but it is possible. It takes a lot of work and tons of time and involves looking at and feeling things you have been programmed not to see or feel. It is an uncomfortable process with huge rewards, the biggest of which is realizing who you are. The place to start is accepting yourself and your life as they are, right here and now, without blame or judgment.
Ask yourself these questions, and give yourself time to think deeply to arrive at your innermost thoughts:
· What matters to you?
· What do you want from life?
· Do you appreciate the sheer wonder of being alive?
I frequently ask myself these questions directly, and I know they are in the background on virtually all other days. The answers are the fuel that keeps my passion for health alive, because staying healthy will give me more quality time on this planet. Naturally, this includes more time with my daughters, which was a huge, clarifying point in my wake-up call 16 years ago.
One of my favorite quotes from author Joseph Campbell (most famous for his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces and his interview series with Bill Moyers The Power of Myth) is, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” We are all extraordinary beings and lead extraordinary lives.
One of the wonderful things I’ve discovered recently was that comparing myself to others, the way I did from my teenage years through most of my working life, was a way of mostly feeling inadequate, less than other people. I always needed to achieve more to feel superior, or simply feel worthwhile. It never ended and it never worked. Now that I’ve changed, grounded in the practice and belief that life itself is wonderful and my experience of life is full of wonder, most of that noise and distraction goes away. The miracle of daily life, and all that goes into that process, is all I need to keep me filled with gratitude and appreciation for just being alive.
It's Not About the Advice – It’s about “Why”
There is so much advice out there about how to improve or maintain your health, and no one could possibly follow it all. The answer to the questions, “Who do I trust for advice?” and “What should I do?” ultimately have to come from inside you. They need to be part of your life and feel right for you. The centerpiece of that decision is clearly understanding your own priorities in life, the “why” of putting in the time and effort for better health, which gives you the extra time and energy to do what you want. Once you’ve answered those 3 questions and decide you want more quality time on this planet, the “how” will become much clearer.
