The Wonders of Healthy Living (Re-posted)

This important post, which was made much earlier, is so fundamental to the success of the Learn2Heal program, that I am re-posting it here. Read it and begin to see the stair-step process by which we can move into the light of self-knowledge and leave destructive patterns behind.

All future postings will be based on this system and you should refer back to this framework periodically to understand how far you have come and what remains to be done.

Here it is:


1. HEALTH














Physical Health
· Passion for understanding your body.
· Exercise
· Nutrition
· Stop Smoking, Drinking.
· Adjust Attitude
· Adequate rest

Emotional Health
· Keep anger in check
· Observe patterns and reactions that elevate stress and modify them
· Organize your life to reduce frustration.


2. INTROSPECTION
· Take inventory of your emotional and psychological health the way you should with your physical health.
· Talk to yourself as you would a dear friend
· Take notes, review them frequently.

3. HONESTY
· Vanquish self-deception.
· Seek to understand the structure of your life and how it benefits or undermines your overall well being.
· Evaluate relationships, healthy or unhealthy, what can be improved, what cannot? How would life be different without them?


4. COURAGE
· Take steps to act on the revelations of your introspection and honesty.
· Fix what is not working in your life.
· Modify or leave relationships that are destructive or counterproductive.


5. BEAUTY
· Surround self with beauty
· Seek beauty
· Develop internal, external beauty
The sensual life in not a hedonistic, unhealthy life, on the contrary, the senses must be exercised, indulging them provides psychological and physiological benefits.


6. SOLITUDE
· Have special places to be alone.
· Take frequent walks alone. Walking elicits thought, creativity and improves overall health.
· Be spontaneous, when you see or hear about a place or thing that is intriguing, take yourself there.
· Be romantic with yourself.
· Take time to be alone, to experience and explore your emotions completely, truthfully.
· Get to know yourself apart from the way others view you or the way you wish to be viewed.

7. JOY
· Feel your spirits lift in the presence of beauty and the miracle of experience, remember the sensation, let it become part of you. Revisit it often in your mind.
· When you feel happiness and satisfaction, temper it with humility and gratitude. ·Recognize the rare spontaneous nature of joy and accept it as only part of a complete life. Understand that it arises on its own, only when we have created the opportunity, through healthy living.

8. BALANCE (Work vs. Personal Time)
· Take inventory of time spent at work and in repose.
· Is there other work you could do that would be more satisfying?
· How could you enhance income while increasing personal time?
· Do research, find ways to improve your financial health today and in the future.
· Pay off bills, streamline expenses. Live simply, material goods are fine, but evaluate the cost to your free time, sanity, etc.

Now, follow along as we begin to explore the meaning behind each one of these concepts and how to integrate them into your life. The content will be posted as it is written as this is a living document, an honest examination of my own counterproductive patterns and the methods I have used to transform them.

I encourage you to post your own responses as you read, so that together we might create a truly powerful collaborative work that helps to inform and transform ourselves and those who follow.