My Three (Health) Things - Update

In an earlier post I outlined my three primary goals for improving my health. Progress has been in and fits and starts, but here's the latest.

1. Begin a meditation practice.
It's begun. But it's not quite a regular practice yet. Sometimes I miss a day (or three). That said, whenever I do practice, I'm so glad I did. I'm already experiencing lots of great benefits, but I think my favorite has been the incredible way it's sparked my memory. There have been a handful of times that I've just been jolted with a flash of memory from my early childhood. When I was shucking corn the other day, I could almost hear my grandfather talking about fresh corn in Ohio; when I was taking a walk outside, I had a snapshot memory of old family friends I haven't thought about since I was about nine. My focus at work has been (a little) better, too.

2. Resume my yoga practice.
Drat. Excuses continue. Haven't done this yet, but I have been stretching more throughout the day. Baby steps?

3. Get a better grip on my finances.
Finally starting to tackle this one. Last night I returned clothes and shoes I'd bought but never worn and decided I'd rather have the money. This morning I finally set up online banking for my big scary credit card. Most of my other bills are electronic, but I hadn't gotten to this one. I'm amazed at how relieved I feel having done this. Tonight I've scheduled down time into my calendar (no joke), and I plan to confront Quickbooks.

Am I as far along as I'd like to be? No. Am I making progress? Yes. I feel I've lapsed a little bit in the past week and a half, but I'm trying to accept that as part of the natural ebb and flow of things. What never ceases to amaze me, though, is how often I'll be doing something for my health and well-being, it'll be working, I'll feel better, and then...I stop. For example, I eat mostly raw organic food --> my energy skyrockets and my brain feels clear --> I stop eating as well --> my energy plummets and I feel foggy --> I don't have the energy to think about eating as well. It makes me frustrated at my own behavior sometimes, and I really want to understand why I do this. Is it because somewhere in the back of my mind I feel I need a break from the work of being healthy? Do I somehow think I'm "cured"? Now the trick is figuring out how to stay in the good cycles rather than slipping back out to the less healthy path. If you have some magic tricks, I'd love to hear them.

My Three (Health) Things

The Institute for Integrative Nutrition has a series of Warm-Up Classes for enrolled students to work on before classes start in January. It helps harness our enthusiasm for holistic health and helps prepare us for class. Many of the assignments are geared to raising our awareness of our own health, as well as getting us to see first-hand what an impact these changes can have. Puts us in the client's shoes, so to speak, so we'll have a better understanding when we start to counsel folks. The Warm-Up Class I did last week asked us to list three things we could start doing immediately to improve our health. Here are my three.

1. Begin a meditation practice. In progress.

2. Resume my yoga practice. I've made excuses for not doing this yet (time and money...), but am committed to reintroducing yoga this week. Even if I decided to sleep in instead of going to the 7:15a.m. class today.

3. Get a better grip on my finances. It might seem strange to have this under health goals, but money causes me more stress than just about any other piece of my life that I can think of. If I can get enough of a sense of control over my finances, I suspect I will feel a new sense of lightness and have more energy and mental space to devote to more healthful, joyful things. For starters, I'm going to spend some time this week getting better acquainted with the Quickbooks software I bought back in March.

There you have it. Three manageable health goals to focus on. I found this exercise quite helpful, and would encourage you to try it. Once you start making goals, you'll probably come up with a list of more than three things you can do to improve your health, but I'd encourage you to limit it to three. Beyond that it can get overwhelming and unrealistic to tackle all at once. Prioritize, and as you feel you accomplish different things on your list, then rotate in the next one.

Feel free to share your list in the comments section!