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We’ve all heard the saying: “Health is everything.” I grew up with a wonderful mother who stressed: “If you have your health, you can accomplish anything.” It’s true.
OK – maybe these sayings are a little simplistic, but it’s really, really hard to live a full life without your health. You know how debilitating a simple little headache can be, or how frustrating and limiting it is to try and get around with a broken leg or broken arm, for example. And lack of mental wellbeing is a whole other world of debilitation and pain.
So WHY do we tend to prioritise everything else before our wellbeing? Any intelligent, self-loving human can see that it makes no sense, right? We know that we can only truly flourish in our lives if we’re healthy mentally and physically, so why on earth don’t we put it first?
Well, the complicating factor here is your mind.
IFS AND BUTS
Ahhh… and I can hear those ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and defensive justifications:
- but there’s never enough time…
- if I spend time taking care of myself my career/business will suffer…
- but I can’t afford to put myself first. So many people ae relying on me – my family, clients, my dog…
Wow. Why defend your limitations and the very things that keep you from living your best life so ferociously?!
Really – why?
Again, the complicating factor here is your mind.
You do realise that all those ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ we come up with are just beliefs, right? They’re not the truth. Pick one of the beliefs that just popped up for you and take a moment to truly question it. Is it truly, 100% accurate?
BELIEFS DICTATE OUR EXPERIENCE, NOT VICE VERSA
The thing to understand about our beliefs is that they dictate our experience, NOT the other way around.
Cell biologist Bruce Lipton’s research and writing documents the “biology of belief” (also the title of one of his books), proving that it’s our beliefs that cause our reality. Through our own beliefs and perceptions, we create our experience.
So if you believe there’s never enough time, you’ll chase your tail, run and run and run on that treadmill, work harder and longer and NEVER have ‘enough time’.
If you believe you can’t afford to switch off when running your own business or trying to get ahead in your career, well, you’ll never be able to switch off.
If you believe that you have to put everyone and everything else before yourself you’ll find that, not only do you sacrifice yourself into the ground, but others won’t give you the care, appreciation and respect you deserve, because you don’t give it to yourself. (To put it bluntly, this is a form of self-abuse.)
WHO’S REALLY IN CONTROL HERE?
We like to think we’re constantly making logical choices and that our conscious mind’s in control. NOT SO. Our unconscious/subconscious mind’s responsible for 95% of our behaviour. It runs our bodies and our lives 95% of the time as we live our lives on autopilot, run by the programmes, patterns & beliefs we pick up as children before our critical faculty’s formed. We’re even run by intergenerational patterns imprinted on our DNA!
One of the unconscious mind’s main jobs is to keep us safe.
If it believes it’s not safe for you to put your wellbeing first or that you don’t deserve it, it’ll do everything in its (immense) power to prevent you from doing do. Think saturation of guilt, stressed and anxious, mental voice obsessing over the ‘to do’ list…
If it believes it’s not safe or that you don’t deserve to stop and relax, you won’t be able to.
If it believes you don’t deserve what you want, guess what? It’ll sabotage you and orchestrate your own disappointment.
If it believes you’re only safe if you’re pleasing other people and making other people happy (as so many of us learned as children), you’ll run yourself ragged putting everyone else first and feeling responsible for other people’s stuff.
You get the picture.
TOO HARD? ONLY IF YOU DON’T KNOW HOW.
Is it now clear that we can know what we need to do In order to thrive and be well, and yet be pretty much powerless to actually do it? Powerless, that is, unless we change our negative, self-sabotaging unconscious beliefs and patterns.
Easier said than done, I hear you think? It’s one of those things that feels impossible if you don’t know how, and really rather simple and quick if you do. You know, like some tech-minded person telling you the solution to some glitch’s so simple when you’re completely baffled.
If you want to be well and make positive changes to the very foundations upon which your life has been built, and if it feels overwhelming, get help. Decide you want better, and get help.
It’s as simple as that.
