Health is not something that just pours out of our mind-body system over which we have no control. There is an element of choice involved in how our mind-body expresses health. Here are few things that you can do to invite health into your life:
1. Food
The food we eat has an enormous impact on our health. Careless eating habits can even bring a robustly healthy mind-body system to its knees. Eating over-processed food that is loaded with chemicals, hormones, and sugar will overwhelm your system and force it to express its troubles to you as an illness. Do not mind being labeled as a “health nut” and put only healthy stuff in your mouth.
2. Sleep
Sleep is essential for a healthy mind-body system. Cutting short on sleep can build up imbalance in our body that can grow into physical and mental ailments. Be sure to get 8 to 10 hours of good quality sleep every night, and give yourself the chance to catch up on deficiencies in sleep at least once a week.
3. Chronic Stress
Our mind-body is perfectly capable of handling stress. But when stress becomes unrelenting our mind-body has no time to recover. Illness is the result. Sleep and Yoga can help you get out of stress. You can also try meditation and breathing exercise to help reduce chronic stress in your life.
4. Relationships
Having strong loving relationships is essential to our health and well being. It is possible to have thousands of Facebook Friends but at the same time have very few quality relationships. It’s not the number of relationships that matters but its quality.
5. Relaxation
The ability to take an occasional down time or a relaxing vacation is essential for our health. Taking a leisurely stroll along the beach, or in the park, or a forest is important. It helps restore our connection with our deeper core, and this expresses itself in our health.
6. Attitude
The ability to think outside our own concerns and have more empathy towards others is a key to our health. A constant ego-obsession with perceived or real insults can make us angry, worried, and hostile. When we take away focus from our ego and instead become sympathetic to other people’s concerns it improves our relationships and our mental well-being. This is eventually expressed in terms of our overall health.
7. Active Life-style
Having an active life-style is essential for health. It’s important to move about and be active. Walking, exercising, playing outdoor games, yoga, running, and any other physical activity should be part of our daily routine. Also having fun in these activities and building connections and relationships multiplies its health benefits.
8. Cleanliness
It is important for health to maintain cleanliness and personal hygiene. But cleanliness is not just physical cleanliness. It’s also about de-cluttering our thoughts. Learning to keep our thoughts clean is the same as taking their focus away from the ego. An unclean mind and body will eventually express itself as an illness, so cleanliness in mind and body is key to health.
9. Meaning and Purpose
People who feel they are doing meaningful work are healthier and live longer. But meaning and purpose do not fall out of the sky. They come about when we do our actions with a sense of service to others. Ambition and ego kills meaning, while humility and service enhances it. Even the most humble job becomes something much larger when done with a sense of service. Finding meaning is not necessarily about finding work that is meaningful but it is finding meaning in the work we are already doing.
The greatest danger to good health is to take it for granted. This article puts you back in charge. Take strong action and make sure that you are always in the company of good health.
Related: Nine Secrets Of Long Life
Credits:This has been written by Raj Shah and edited by Ketna Shah.