How healthy would you like to be? Just “not sick” or would you really like to achieve higher levels of health? Too often we accept a lower standard of health when we could feel so much better than we do.
While your goals don’t necessarily need to include running a marathon or climbing a mountain, what about just feeling healthy most of the time? Feeling like you want to get up and do some stuff instead of going through a pot of coffee each morning just to stay awake (even though staying awake is a great goal too).
Those that expect a high level of health tend to achieve a higher level of health
I find that those that expect a high-level of health tend to keep things at a high level. They have a low tolerance for feeling bad and really evaluate their recent choices if and when they do start to feel bad.
When they have a bad day, they’ll ask themselves questions like, “What did I eat yesterday?” “When’s the last time I got adjusted?” “Maybe I need to start adding in more stretching to my workouts?” They have these thoughts, and they want to improve. It’s this thought process that causes them to build up some health reserves and prevent illness or future surgeries.
Here’s a video I recently did for our Weekly Facebook Live:
Those that accept feeling bad ask different questions when they don’t feel well. They ask, “What can I take right now to stop feeling like this?” “I guess this is what ‘getting older’ feels like?” “This food won’t make me feel that sick, I should enjoy myself right?”
We often do community outreach events, sharing chiropractic and ways to help people get healthier. Some people see us and the response can be, “Oh, I always wanted to see a chiropractor but didn’t know if they could help me with my problem!” A conversation follows and we talk about how we might be able to help.
Still more common is the person that is clearly not healthy walking by us and I stand there hoping to get their attention so we can discuss how we can help. They will almost always just keep walking, careful not to make eye-contact so they don’t have to discuss ways to improve their health. They either don’t want to change or don’t believe there’s anything they can do to make any changes.
It’s heartbreaking, especially when it’s clear by the way they are carrying themselves that they are in pain or just not healthy. I don’t know if chiropractic can help them, but they don’t either and it’s a shame that we’ll never get to find out.
Just feeling good is not enough
Not being sarcastic at all, but you don’t need to exercise or eating right to “feel good.” Modern chemistry has provided a ton of shortcuts to make that happen, but you know that while you may feel good until the drugs wear off, it’s not real. That’s just not good health.
What if, instead, you started taking small steps to get healthier. Don’t want to change your entire diet? Start with one healthy meal. Then add in a few more during the week. What can you do right now to start exercising? Maybe it’s time to put some air in the bicycle tires or take a walk during lunch.
The goal is to do something, anything healthy today
In order for change to happen, you have to take action. That means doing something as soon as possible (like right now) to move you onto the correct path. You can decide whatever you want to do, but nothing will happen until you take some sort of action.
Just taking that first step towards better health can be a huge effort, but it can and will get easier the more steps you take. Doing things in an extreme way may produce faster results, but it won’t produce lasting results, and that’s what you want.