[Paul Chek pictured above right]
Note: The following is the 1st chapter from my book “Pursuing Vitality”, which is available on Amazon [Click Here to Find It]
Your mindset determines whether or not you have success with personal healthcare and self-improvement. Your mindset is the key to practicing healthy habits on a daily basis. The only thing more important than your mindset when it comes to optimizing your health and being the best version of yourself for the long run is the identity you form. Forming a personally meaningful, empowering identity will be discussed later, but for now you need to know that your mindset is more important than the specific facts and information found in this book which pertaining to health and wellness.
There is no singular, ideal mindset, but there is a number of pointers that can help anyone form a healthful discretion and practice health-promoting habits for the long run. Here are some of them:
- Power of choice
You have to believe that your choices matter more than anything when it comes to your health, your wellness and your life. The choices you make come with consequences, good and bad—it is your responsibility to take care of yourself. Many people cannot handle the pressure, and mismanage their lives as a result. However, by reading and employing the information in this guidebook you are making the choice to take control of your health and your life by making educated choices and living a life of personal healthcare and development—this means that you are taking ultimate responsibility for yourself.
- Anything Except Nothing
This applies to your daily ritual and your fitness. Even if it’s just a 10-minute stroll through your neighborhood, a quick hip mobility stretch/drill and 5 minutes of deep breathing before you go to bed—it’s still something. Even on your busiest days you can still make time to manage your stress with the daily ritual and take care of your frame with mobility/flexibility-enhancing drills. Incorporate movement into your daily routine—at work, on errands, at home—you might have to get creative. It’s up to you to stay moving, and it’s up to you to proactively manage your stress with a daily ritual.
- Perspective
The overall purpose of eating healthy, exercising with purpose, improving your stress tolerance and practicing the daily ritual is to become the best version of yourself for the long run. This means that your health, and by extension your healthy ‘lifestyle,’ is a means to an end, which consists of you being a vital, energetic person who performs well in what matters most to you and you have the ability to live your life to the fullest.
- Positivity
If you want to put yourself in position to solve problems, handle adversity and make adjustments on the fly, which we all need to do in order to live healthfully in the modern world, then the best thing you can do for yourself is to instill a positive outlook.
If you have a positive outlook behind the way you look at yourself and the world, you are more likely to practice a healthful life for the long run. In the short run, all you need is to have what it takes in order to instill healthful habits and improve your health and vitality. To make these things last, you need to see yourself and the world from a positive, uplifting and empowering viewpoint.
- Patience
If you have fat to lose or health issues you want to address by living healthfully you already know that you did not develop them overnight, therefore you need to remind yourself each and every day that you will not correct or reverse your health issues quickly.
It takes time to build muscle, get significantly stronger, move and hold your body in good form and posture, and handle stress in a beneficial way. Please remind yourself that it takes time to truly develop as a person, and it takes time to truly change your habits and your mindset.
- Be consciously aware
This is the difference-maker in terms of whether or not you find it easy to take ultimate responsibility for yourself, make the best choices, live the most purposeful life and be the best version of yourself for the long run. ‘Conscious awareness’ is a vague term, an intangible sort of idea that is hard to explain; but one thing I can say is that it is deeper than your mindset and thus less sensitive to external influences.
Over time your mindset will undoubtedly change, as will your priorities and even your values to a lesser extent. Your conscious awareness is closely connected to the way you see yourself, the identity you form, how you relate that to your habits; it is a subconscious belief about who you are. Your conscious awareness influences your mindset which is then reflected by your habits to some extent.
If you have a good idea about who you are and what you stand for, then find a way to connect those beliefs and ideals to your health and your daily habits—that is a great way implement this material for the long run and to experience the health, wellness and energy available to you. It is also my belief that if you see yourself in a meaningful and empowering way, you will think you are worth doing all of this for, and you will find it natural to use healthful discretion when it comes time to making choices in your diet and taking action in employing a daily ritual and exercising with purpose.
It has been my experience that the people who see themselves in a meaningful light and feel empowered also tend to be positive on a daily basis and readily get back on track after taking a few days “off” from their workout routine, miss a few daily rituals and/or eat some food or have drinks that aren’t necessarily ideal.
Finally, please remember that your health is the sum of many things—mind, body and past and present choices. Your health serves a purpose! Health can and will help you live a fulfilling, happy life. Health itself cannot be the sole purpose of living the lifestyle outlined here—if so, it will be frustrating and you are setting yourself up for a difficult time. Instead, look at health as a means to giving you the energy and the capabilities to live your life to the fullest.
Additional Resources:
Coach Yourself Thin by Greg Hottinger and Michael Scholtz
Release: The Simple Success Solution for Real and Permanent Weight Loss
Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the Upward Spiral That Will Change Your Life
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