The Rewards of Living Healthy

Living healthy is not easy. Health is a big challenge, but the greater the challenge in life, the greater the reward. We were built to seek and overcome challenges in our lives. Health is no different and it. No matter how difficult it may seem, it is not only possible, but very rewarding as well.

There are many rewards that come from living a healthy lifestyle. These rewards come from the effort you are willing to put in. The more you give, the more you get. It’s that simple. The more you get, the better you feel. This is a also a simple concept to understand, yet it can be difficult to put into practice. Why else would so many people be choosing to ignore their health or have such a hard time taking control of it?

The problems we keep hearing about are very real. They are being experienced by millions right now and it seems there is no end to them in sight. The problems may be real, but so are the rewards. That is the rewards: believing that you can reach them.
Health often feels difficult and in many cases it is difficult. Once you have struggled for a while or seen a few attempts fail, it is easy to give up. It is easy to lose sight of why you are trying to do this. Why are you trying to live healthy? I suspect that you are doing it for the rewards. If you are, you are more likely to succeed. The list of rewards below is just a few of the positives that come from living healthy. Let’s break each reward down so you can see what it really does for you when you achieve them.

Satisfaction

This is a simple concept, but it often gets misconstrued. Satisfaction is really why we do anything, right? If you accomplish something, you are satisfied. If you are satisfied with something, you likely wanted to do it and will continue to do it. Living healthy somehow gets left out of this equation despite the level of satisfaction you can achieve.

So, how does health bring you satisfaction? Well, for starters, you know that you are focused on the most important thing in your life. In fact, you are focused on your life itself. There is no other task that is more important for you to complete. Each time you do something for your health, you get that satisfaction. The more you do it, the more you can be satisfied that you are doing it.

Confidence

Confidence is a key component in any area. Confidence can mean the difference between success and failure. If you are trying to get into a new routine, it takes confidence just to get started. Without confidence, you can’t get started and you certainly can’t get the results you want.

The best part about confidence is that it carries over. When you build confidence by mastering skills in one area, it can help you do the same in other areas. As you get started and keep a good routine going, you can take pride knowing that you are accomplishing goals and getting positive results. These results will help you feel good when setting goals in other areas such as social, business/work and even romance. I know that being a parent is easier when you are used to getting your routine done and with the energy that comes with it. And in true cyclical fashion, as you become more confident in those other areas, you can continue to grow more and more confidence for more and more success.

Success

Success is what it’s all about. Everything we do in life is held up as successful or unsuccessful. When you set out to do anything, no matter what it is, you want to be successful. When you try to get into a healthy routine, you want to be successful. That is the only way that you are going to be getting what you want.
The definition of success is setting a goal and reaching a goal. In health, you can set any goal you want to set. It can be as complex as a lifelong dream of completing a marathon or as simple as going for a walk after work. If you set a goal and reach it, you are succeeding. This becomes a habit as you do it more and more. Success leads to more success as you make setting and reaching goals your habit.

Personal Fulfillment

The above categories all have something in common. They all have to do with what you get out of living healthy. True, that is what we are talking about, but they all add up to one thing. The one thing that you get when you put all of the categories together is personal fulfillment. As you gain all of these things, you realize that you are doing great things and that is fulfilling.

Control

Why do we want to live healthy? Well, the above reasons certainly help. They are what we gain mentally and emotionally, but health, while all-encompassing, shows itself physically. We notice health or its absence when the body breaks down or doesn’t do what you want it to do. That doesn’t have to happen if you don’t want it to happen.

Health is control. By taking action and focusing on your routine, you are taking control of your health and taking control of your life. The diseases that we read about and the statistics that we hope we won’t be dealing with are all preventable. You can decide to live above all of it and that is certainly one of the positives you gain by taking care of your health.

All five of these areas are important and you will enjoy them when you get there. Each area is different and may hold different weight depending on where you are coming from. No matter what you set out to achieve, it is important that you get something of personal value to you. These areas are of great value and they can give you many reasons to live healthy.

The most important thing to remember is that you are at the root of all of these reasons. From satisfaction to control and everything in between, you are gaining knowledge about yourself and learning what you are capable of. We are all capable of living healthy. When we choose to do it, we gain some amazing rewards.

The Greater the Challenge, the Greater the Reward

When it comes to health, we all want it to be easy. Just look at our daily lives. We want to eat the fastest foods. We want to do the shortest exercises. We want to put in less time and get more results. Time is one thing that always seems to be a barrier. We all want more of it and no one ever has enough.

Despite the challenges and the constant crunch, time is not my biggest concern. When it comes to the health of the people in our country, my biggest concern is effort. We are not putting in the effort that it takes to live healthy. When it comes down to it, we can live healthy. We can change the trend and start moving the other direction on the spectrum of health.

We can do anything we want to do. The knowledge and technology we have today gives us unlimited possibilities. Maybe the technology has actually hurt us. Maybe our quest for the fastest, shortest and most convenient has actually hurt our ability to progress personally. Sure, we can make more money and help companies reach more people in less time. We can even have conversations with people around the world at any time.

Technology has provided us with a lot. I’m glad we have the tools to do what we can do today. The problem is not the technology. The problem is our expectations and our effort. The more advanced we get, the less we have to do to see a reward. As things have gotten easier, our willingness to put forth any effort has decreased.

With so much instant gratification it is no wonder that we have gotten used to things being easy. We want things to be easy. We like it when things are easy. That has created one big problem. The problem I see with this is our disinterest in doing anything that’s not easy. We are so used to quick and easy that anything else is simply not worth it. If it is too difficult, we won’t do it.

This is clearly a problem for many reasons. When it comes to work, family, school or any other area of life, we all know that you have some difficult things to do. You have to suck it up and get through quite a few things in order to be successful in life. Don’t get me wrong, life has many wonderful things to offer and most of it should be happy and enjoyable. Most of life should be happy, but all of life should be rewarding.

Health, for me, is all about rewards. The reward that you get may be a combination of instant and delayed rewards, but there are many that come living a healthy lifestyle. The fact that we need to continue to highlight the rewards and sell health in order to make people do it is a crying shame, but I’m ok with it as long as people buy in and start to seek these rewards.

What are these rewards? Well health offers many positives that we can’t get from any other source. I’m not talking about avoiding heart attacks, preventing diabetes or avoiding death at age 50 because the body can’t make it any further. These are all good things to short for, but they are based in fear.

The fear of having a heart attack may be enough for some to take control of their health, but it is usually too late. They are only realizing that they need to make changes since they have had one or are told they are at high risk of having one very soon. This doesn’t equal a healthy lifestyle. This is just last-minute panic when a lifetime of ignoring health has finally caught up to you. This may keep you alive for a few more years, but it will not bring you the reward you are looking for.

The real rewards we get from health are not avoiding our worst fears. The rewards we get from health are more about what we want than what we don’t want. The results we really want are possible. They can be achieved if we are willing to put forth the effort.

What are these rewards I’m talking about? Well, there are many. Here is a short list of reasons we should all be focused on our health. These are the rewards we receive when we take control and give the effort necessary to live healthy:

Satisfaction
Confidence
Success
Personal Fulfillment
Control

These rewards are not easy to achieve. They take time, planning and commitment. Most importantly, they take effort. You have to go out and work for these rewards. You have to put yourself first and decide that you are worth the effort. If you don’t, you are simply taking what’s given. That may be easy for you to do, but it will not bring you what you want. Easy does not yield the rewards that truly satisfy us, it only gets us by.

Challenges are what bring us the real rewards in life. We were built to seek challenges. Just think about how good it feels to win a dare or to win something that no one expected you to win. It is natural to feel a reward when overcoming a challenge. Health is a big challenge, but that is what makes it so important. Just remember: The greater the challenge, the greater the reward.