Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Want to Live Healthy: Get Real

Health is a very important part of our lives. We think about it, talk about it and try to improve it every day. There is not a day that goes by that we don’t focus on our health at some point. Unfortunately, for many, this focus involves worry and doubt. For many people, health is something that they are seeing as a problem and an area they need to improve.

I don’t disagree with that. I talk to people every day that are in poor health. I see articles that illustrate our growing health epidemic. I talk to colleagues and clients daily and they are all hearing the same things from clients and employees. The fact remains: health is a problem for most people.

In this day and age, with all of the technology and education we have at our finger tips, it has never been easier to live healthy. Wait, did I say that correctly? It is never been easier? Well, that depends on how you look at health. In the old days, we didn’t focus on health, we just did what we thought was normal and it turns out that it worked pretty well. We lived good lives and stayed in good health right up until the end.

There wasn’t much education involved. Doctors were learning and sharing as they went patient by patient. People were starting to figure out what they liked and didn’t like in their own lives. Technology was starting to become a bigger part of medicine. Over the last few centuries, we have taken leap after leap forward in technology. Our life expectancy has jumped and the ways we can be treated and aided have continued to multiply rapidly.

This would make health easier, right? We have more technology to help us and we have more knowledge at our finger tips than ever before. We should all be living healthy and it should be pretty easy for us, right?

Wrong. Living healthy is not easy. It should be, but it is not. Why are we having such a hard time with it lately? There are many reasons that people are not as healthy as they should be. A better way of looking at it is: people aren’t as healthy as they WANT to be. That is the reality of the situation and that is what leads us to the biggest problem we have.

What is our biggest problem? We don’t want real solutions. We want the quick fix and instant gratification. We want results without effort. We want change to happen to us without actually making any changes in our lives. This is our big problem and it is not going away without some major changes.

There is only one way to solve this problem: Get Real.
We have to get real. We have to realize that change is something only we can do. No one can do it for you and if you don’t do it, no one can and no one else will. If we don’t realize this, we are going to keep going down the same path.

Based on conversation and our basic wants and needs, this path is not a path that anyone would choose, yet many of us are choosing it daily. When you ask someone the question: “Do you want to be healthy?” The answer is ALWAYS yes. There is not a person on this earth that would choose to be unhealthy if given the option. The strange part about this is that people are choosing to live unhealthy. They are choosing these health problems and choosing to go the wrong direction despite their desire to be healthy.

This sounds sick doesn’t it? It sounds like people are insane. It sounds like people are dumb and don’t understand. People are not dumb or insane. They are smart (for the most part) and know what they want. The problem is not their intelligence, sanity or education. Their problem is reality. They are living in one and trying to be healthy in another.

That is what we need to fix. Health needs to be a part of everyday life. If health is a part of real life, we can make real changes and see real results. That is the only way people are going to be able to do it. You have to find real solutions that work for you on a day to day basis in order to live healthy. You have to apply these solutions daily by breaking them down into simple steps. These simple steps will bring you real results.

Living healthy is not something that only some can do. It is something that we are all capable of. The results are real as long as the actions are too. In other words, in order to live healthy, you have to get real.

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