Personal Truth #7: “Conscious Awareness is the Path to Creating the Health We Desire”
This is Truth #7 of 8 posts, My Personal Truths About Weight Loss, from previously.
“Let’s get our priorities straight — focus first on who you are and let your actions flow from the place of self-knowledge. Your inner life must be fed and nurtured as much as your physical body. Do not focus on appearances and external achievements while letting your inner life languish.” – Gay Hendricks
On a core level, our physical health is the end result of habits. But I’m not referring to the obvious physical habits such as exercising and eating those leafy greens but rather the series of mental and emotional habits that operate beneath our everyday level of awareness that directly shape the physical experience in our bodies.
Limiting beliefs, faulty perceptions and unresolved emotions, are just some examples of how and what we think and feel can derail our best intentions when it comes to our health.
Like it or not, to a great extent, your physical body is a byproduct of what you hold in your mind.
Our perceptions of the events in our lives and the emotional significance we give to them influences the degree to which we become overwhelmed by the stress in our lives. This has a direct impact on our physical experience.
Here are just a few common mental and emotional habits that can sabotage your health goals:
- Feeling excessively guilty
- Obsessive worrying
- Fear of failure
- Going to the worst case scenario
- Not appreciating yourself for a job well done
- Feeling unworthy or undeserving of pleasure or relaxation
- Easily dismissing your thoughts and feelings
- Chronically people pleasing
- Living in regret
- Harboring resentment
- Constantly comparing yourself negatively with others
- Being overly concerned with what other people think
Caring for our mind certainly affects our psyche and behaviors, but it also affects our biology. There is an abundance of research that supports the profound impact that our thoughts and emotions can have on our metabolic experience through a variety of energetic and biochemical pathways.
Creating healthy mental and emotional habits begins with awareness.
Begin with observing your reactions to everyday events and situations. Pause and observe if you’re coming from a positive or negative emotional space. Try a gentle self inquiry:
“What might this challenging situation be showing me that has relevance to my own personality?”
“What am I thinking, feeling and believing in this moment?”
“What choice right now, most honors who I am and what’s most important to me?”
Yes, nutrition and exercise are important but the foundational piece is modifying our self care practices to evolve our level of self awareness. When we do this we can start to see our health challenges are a manifestation of our whole person, not an isolated event. With this understanding, we can better address our issues at their root and get on the path to lasting positive change.
So begin first with making a commitment to slowing down, getting out of survival mode long enough that you can make some time to simply sit with yourself.
Explore meditation, compassionate self-study, positive affirmations, conscious breathing techniques or yoga. All of these give you tools to shift your consciousness into healthier emotional and mental patterns bringing coherence back to your whole being.
This alignment of our hearts and minds is what promotes the restructing and repair of our physical body.
True health is rooted in a change in our consciousness not just our biology.
Consciouness is the greatest power you’ll ever have to create optimal health.
