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Do you take your health for granted?
By Carol Gordon
It really can be quite easy to ignore the essential elements required for optimum health (see previous articles: Staying Well and Taking Ownership of Our Health) and take one’s health for granted. In so doing, we “value it (e.g. health) too lightly.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
One example of how we take our health for granted is when we allow ourselves to get caught up in the details of our life and find ourselves more often than not:
Rushing around scrambling to get things done
Multi-tasking
Eating on the run, food that is quick and easy and not necessarily the best nutritionally
Skipping exercise more than engaging in it
Ignoring our emotional and mental health and well-being
When this becomes our regular pattern, we are doing a shoddy job of caring for our body, mind and soul and it will eventually catch up with us.
For some people it will take a major health challenge to get their attention and motivate them enough to slow down and take better care of themselves. For others, the mere inconvenience and nuisance of getting the flu and colds regularly, having to stay in bed and take medicines to get well and seeing their condition periodically escalate to a more serious one, moves them to pay heed (“pay attention, listen to, consider” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
When your body’s warning light goes off what do you do first? Go running off to a health-care practitioner to treat your body’s symptoms with medicine? Or do you first listen to what your body is really trying to tell you and start by filling its’ needs (e.g. more rest, change in diet).
After you have returned to feeling better, do you then think that you are now “healthy” and back to “normal” again? If so, do you view that as an indication that it is fine to return to your previous pattern, or do you view the experience as a “teacher” and make some fundamental lifestyle changes?
– Carol Gordon is a wellness consultant, writer/photographer, artist and entrepreneur. She has called the Columbia Valley her home part-time since 1981 and full-time since 1999.
www.facebook.com/pleiadesthewellnessspa
