I had a woman ask me recently: “Why is my life so hard?”
She had experienced a string of stressful life events including a health scare. Her problems were directly related to her lifestyle, though, and could be alleviated if not completely cured by a change in eating and by introducing exercise habits.
How many of us suffer needlessly at our own hands, slaves to self-defeating habits?
An honest self-appraisal of your habits could be in order. Have you fallen into reaching for a “drug of choice” to boost your mood and help suppress uncomfortable feelings? Sugar, starch, booze, drugs (recreational and prescription), shopping—online or when the shops are open—even gambling can all provide temporary escapes. But what is that daily bottle of wine or weekly purchase of a big handful of lottery tickets or casino visit (if they’re accessible in your area!) doing to your physical, mental, and emotional state?
Realize there are many different tools to give you a meaningful and lasting boost, but one of the easiest remedies to feel better is to develop a new healthy habit. It
could be as simple as waking up fifteen minutes earlier in the day or substituting fruit for chocolate as your afternoon snack. Do an honest examination of what you’d like to change. Visualize your happiness at success, and then start small.
One small step – a new, productive habit – can improve the quality of your life. Easy, eh?
Well, solutions are easy to come up with, but real change and life improvement can be hard and (sometimes!) painful.
In future blog entries, I’ll look at steps to help facilitate positive changes to create your whole new, happier life.
