5 Habits to Cultivate Holistic Health
In the world of today, we are constantly bombarded with responsibilities, challenges, problems and choices which, when we’re not feeling up to it, can be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Being healthy and well-rounded not only helps us feel better in our bodies, but allows us to handle the challenges life presents us with more ease, flexibility, and conviction than we would otherwise feel if we were not in good shape.
Being healthy doesn’t just mean eating the right foods, getting adequate sleep, and participating in exercise routines. Yes, all of these things contribute to our overall well-being, but they are not the end-all-be-all of what it means to be healthy.
What Holistic Health really means is being able to balance all of the complex, intertwined aspects of our lives in a way that feels good to us, that feels right for us, and that produces the results we’re after. This means looking at life in a different way than we’re used to. The conditioning our fast-paced society imposes upon is it that we’ve got to “do it all” and “be it all” all the time. Sounds exhausting, right?
These are my Top 5 Tips for becoming better at balancing your own unique life aspects while at the same time, cultivating a healthier lifestyle:
1. Change your Perspective from “Balanced” to “Balancing”
This idea seems almost cliché, but its implications are long lasting and effective at helping us manage our lives. If you think about all of the aspects of your life like a mobile (a hanging diagram with multiple items of different sizes, weights, and constituents) then it becomes easy to understand. On a mobile, all of the items hanging on strings are perfectly in balance. When one item is moved or altered, it effects the entire system. This is exactly how our lives function – when one aspect of our life requires more of our attention, it shifts the amount of attention and energy we can place on the other areas, effectively creating what would at first glance appear as an imbalance.
When we shift our perspective from believing our lives must be perfectly balanced all the time or we’re not succeeding to “I understand life is an ACT of balancing”, it takes the pressure off. When something in your life is lacking or you’re struggling to make progress, it’s likely because your attention and energy have been focused in a different area of your life’s mobile. We are designed biologically to always find homeostasis, so we are in essence always seeking the security that balance provides.
Here's an example: Imagine a tightrope or slackline walker walking over a large crevasse. If you watch the way they are crossing the rope, are they standing static in the middle? Absolutely not! They are constantly shifting their weight from left to right in order to maintain that balance. They are never static for one moment. If they stood still, they would fall.
Your life is exactly like this – when you shift your “weight” to one area of life that requires your attention, the other aspects may not momentarily receive that attention, but you can always counter-balance your focus back.
Our lives obviously contain more than two options to balance. I like to organize the aspects of my life like this: Career/Work, Financial Wellness, Relationships, Passions & Hobbies, Home (chores, house responsibilities), and Other/Misc.
I’ve created an organizational tool I call the Living Matrix to help you play the balancing game which can be downloaded HERE (adapted from the book “The One Thing” by Gary W. Keller).
2. Make Physical Activity a Non-Negotiable
I don’t care who you are, we all have the ability to move and use our bodies (unless of course you are paralyzed). Using, moving, and strengthening the body needs to have a high priority in your life flow, which is why it’s not included in the above organizational tool. For people who have no experience with exercise and fitness, “Fitness” could absolutely have it’s place in your Living Matrix until it’s become a non-negotiable act in your life.
Even if you’re out of shape or have a busy life, you can spare some time to take a walk, go for a hike, ride a bike, or do some push-ups. If you say you don’t have time, it’s because you haven’t made it a priority. If it’s not a priority, don’t expect to feel any healthier! If you don’t know where to start, there are a huge number of free resources on YouTube and Facebook for helping you initiate a workout routine. I would recommend hiring a trainer to help keep you motivated, teach you about safety, and coach you through the times of resistance, especially if this is a new activity for you.
3. Play
The older we get, the more important it is to do things that feel like play. We all have responsibilities that must be attended to in order to keep our busy lives moving in a positive direction; but if we don’t find time to let loose and do things that feel like play, what’s the point of living?
We play naturally as children. Even animals play. It’s a part of the natural world and so are we. We’re practically designed to play. Playing even improves our ability to learn and retain information. When we’re in the let go of play, all of the things we’ve been working on and learning have space to settle into our being. In fact, some of my best ideas come when I’m NOT working, when I’m doing something that feels like play, when I’m in a flow state.
Find activities that are fun, excite you, and have some level of competition. It could be a game, a martial art, a sport, exploring in nature, or playing fetch with your dog. The point is, make it a point to find time every day to become playful and take your mind off of your responsibilities. You may be surprised to find that if you take on a playful attitude and make time for play, you will begin to find ways to make Exercise and Work more playful.
4. Set Specific Time to Connect
Whether that means a phone call, a date night, tea time, or simply a specific time set aside to be with someone you love, don’t overlook and under book your connection time. For me, I run a Personal Development business, have a toddler to parent, and goals and aspirations that beckon my time and energy. If I don’t schedule specific time to connect with my beloved, it often can get pushed to the wayside because of my excitement and conviction towards my purpose.
The people in our lives are truly what make our lives rich. If you attained everything you dreamed of, acquired the ultimate wealth, produced your life’s work, or climbed Mt. Everest and you didn’t have anyone to share it with, would any of it really be worth it? When we have someone to share these achievements with, it makes our success all the more enjoyable. Gratitude becomes a natural side effect when we share our lives with those we love.
Carving out time for connection is one of the most impactful things you can do to feel Holistically Healthy because it takes all of the focus off of you and places it on the people you share your life with. The people in our lives are the ones who reflect back our accomplishments and share in our shortcomings. They make our life worth living and deserve just as much of our attention as anything else.
5. Find your Way of Connecting to the Sacred
Our connection to Spirit is exactly that – ours. To complete the picture of peak holistic health, there must be a spiritual component that gives us our sense of purpose, meaning, and place in the universe. We must find ways to have a direct connection to the source of all that exists, with no middle-man in between. This may take some serious soul searching, trial and error, and questioning of who and what you are, but I promise you, this is the most fruitful endeavor one can embark upon.
When we feel a true sense that our life has purpose, we can handle anything that we are confronted with. Connecting with God, the Universe, the Spiritual Ground of All Being (insert name of God here) should be treated with just as much fortitude and consistency as our relationships with other human beings. In fact, the only way to truly feel spiritually connected and tapped in to the sacred is by consciously making a habit out of connecting. Prayer, meditation, ceremony, psychedelic plant medicine journeys, time in nature, adventuring, visiting your local church or spiritual organization, giving thanks for your food before eating – these are all things one can do to start a relationship with Spirit. It’s up to you to find out what exactly works to help you find that connection in your own life.
The key takeaway in Finding your Spiritual Connection is to seek for yourself. Find out what it actually means for you. You are already always connected anyways. There can never be any separation between you and the Divine. There is only the illusion of separation.
If you need help developing your spiritual life, I absolutely love helping clients find their way, in a way that feels true and authentic for them. Book a free call with me here to discover how to deepen your spiritual connection.
Conclusion
Achieving peak Holistic Health doesn’t have to be a huge daunting task. It mostly requires a shift in perspective and some conscious intention. When we quit taking things so seriously and start approaching life with a playful attitude, anything that seemed out of reach before soon begins to seem more attainable. A little organizational effort can go a long way too. I hope these tips were helpful for you in deciding what you need to do to in order to feel healthier.