One
The capacity to make mindful choices for our sleep, nutrition, exercise and movement, work-life balance, resilient relationship building and maintenance every single day is neither realistic nor natural, especially in this modern era.
Pick one category and start with a simple, extremely easy and doable habit that you commit to maintain irrespective of the type of day/night you have had. Consistency leads to habit stacking over time and keeps expectations realistic and sustainable.
Two
Most recommendations, courses, books, remedies promoted with words like:
- ‘Only these will help to…’
- ‘Every person who signed up for this had guaranteed success with…’
- ‘You can achieve anything using…’
ARE ALL SELLING A FANTASY THAT MANY AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIVES AND STRUGGLES WILL FEEL OBLIGED TO TRY.
(They are not what they are promised to be. It breaks my heart to see the grief and more harm that these ‘hacks’ can cause for people who are desperately holding on to hope.)
Three
Preventative health goals seem expensive in the short term but serve as the most effective and feasible long-term investment in healthcare and wellbeing, and anyone at any stage of their health journey can embark on some sort of preventative health goal.
Four
Every meaningful person, task, relationship, habit, goal will and does require the ‘hard work’ of consistency. Consistency does not mean perfection, neither does it mean to ‘always’ do something. Consistency defines ‘norms’ and not exceptions.
Five
Delving into the past to understand and explore the meaning of your and other people’s behaviours and circumstances can only help you break the cycle if you are willing to let go of a few basic things:
- Insight, perspective and emotional intelligence is uncomfortable and inconvenient for many, and choosing to adopt those will necessarily lead to the departure of such people/influences from your life. (Just because you’re choosing this path for yourself doesn’t mean you will have a flock of admirers or supporters, and it can be quite lonely. But you have your best and true advocate in your own self.)
- The idea of justice that we have in our minds where there is ‘only truth and the real truth and so help us God’ is met with deep sadness and pain because it is not fulfilled for many.
- The world and people around us will move on to something or someone more relevant or attractive for various reasons that we might understand or not. That will be hard to accept and understand unless we stop actively seeking others’ opinions for our validation.
