Being happy and healthy isn’t easy. As a species we spend an enormous amount of time, energy, and money trying to figure out how to do as little as possible. We want to be healthy and fit but we keep developing technology letting us move as little as possible. I am sure most of my readers can remember when you actually had to roll down a car window or physically open a garage door. Everyone says they want to be healthy, and eat healthy, but yet no one want to eat “real food” we all want convenience food in a cute package that wont perish preferably that we can “drive through” to get or grab in the gas station (and don’t tell me you haven’t done that). Then we spend we spend our free time watching mindless television, play video games, or bury ourselves in social media. All things that encourage unhealthy, sedentary low energy, low frequency behavior and then wonder why we are overweight, unhealthy, and unhappy.
There are thousands of self-help books that sell millions of copies because so many are wanting to find that joy in life again but do they really? This requires giving up old habits that are easy, comfortable, convenient not to mention highly addicting. I am not sure what is worse right now, the food that is strategically designed to make you eat more by combining sugar, fat, and salt in perfect proportions making food taste fabulous, easy to digest, and not at all filling, only leavening you hungrier. Or….the normalizing the consumption of alcohol for every possible meal or occasion…its dinner..have a cocktail, it lunch lets have a beer, breakfast…mimosa, bad day…have drink, great day…let celebrate and drink, he broke up with me…I need a drink, she wants to go on a date with me let go have cocktails….omg is there every a reason to not drink? I am not a teetotaler but I sure sound like one right now. The reality is that alcohol never makes things better, it makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do, say things you wouldn’t normally say, and eat things you wouldn’t normally eat….oh, and it is technically poison to the body, it has no physiologically health benefit at all. For more information on alcohol that includes research from real studies on the effects of alcohol on the body this is great educational podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000576901433
Then there is the negativity of the news, TV, social media….it’s important to know what is going on in the world, but drowning yourself daily, hours a day for some, in the woes of the world especially the things you can do nothing about will only bring you down. At some point you must turn away from things that do not benefit and are not good for you. So what do you do? How do you become healthy happy person. Firs at and foremost, you need to eat real food. Im not advocating a specific diet here, paleo, keto, carnivore, Mediterranean…if the food looks like something that grew on the earth, plant or animal that’s the place to start. Equally important is physically move your body daily. It doesn’t have to be running on a treadmill like a hamster, find something you enjoy and is convenient. If you make it hard you wont do it and the point is to just start. Finally and I still feel like this is equally important, find a passion or a purpose in life. We have discussed the food and activity aspect but passion and purpose… how do we find that?
I do not consider myself religious but spiritual….but even so there is a bible phrase that says without dreams and vision people perish. This is true whether you believe or not. You have got to have something to go for that inspires your heart and soul. Only the ego would think that moaning, groaning and complaining about your life circumstances will improve things. That’s the ego calling for mommy to makes things better, hoping to get something for nothing. Moaning, groaning, hoping and wishing wont make things better, planning and taking action will. There is no such thing as something for nothing, I can promise you there is always a payment to be made. Finding a passion or purpose though will inspire you to want to do more, be more, love more, enjoy more, and you will know when you have found that “thing”, because when you are doing it you wont care about an external reward. If you don’t know where to look, think about what you liked to do as a child, or before you got sucked into TV, social media, video games, dinners out and cocktails. It might not be your career, not everyone is fortunate to work their passion. If you like to draw but haven’t found a way to make money drawing that’s fine but keep drawing or start drawing again. Making changes is hard, its working a muscle you haven’t used in awhile. Expect to be sore, expect to want to give up, expect to have days you fail…and then keep going. For every cause there will be an effect, but time gets in the way of us seeing results so we think they are not coming, but just like every something for nothing there is a payment but if you keep up with positive changes the payment will be a reward.
