Pay Attention (Part 3 of 3)

When you were a kid sitting in class, what was the instruction you heard most? Well, maybe you didn’t hear it quite as often as I did, but during my elementary school years, I was told to pay attention many times a day. Although I had to be told more times than I can even remember, I did eventually learn the importance of paying attention.

Attention is important in all areas of life. It started in school when we needed to pay attention to learn the lesson of the day. Once we knew the lesson, we could complete assignments and take the quiz or exam. Eventually this would all cumulate and we’d get a grade for the class. If you didn’t pay attention, what kind of grade did you get?

When I see the state of health in America, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if everyone started paying attention. I’m not sure where we went wrong. I have a few theories and can walk through a few steps to show what has occurred, but that is a whole new article.

Without getting into the entire history of US health, I just want to discuss the power of attention. If nothing else changed, what would we gain by paying more attention to our health? That question has been stuck in my head for a while, so I had to share a few ideas of what I think we would gain from paying a little more attention.

In Part 3, I'd like to look at health care. We've talked about two areas of health in parts 1 and 2. I'm sure you've heard about this little thing called "Health care reform." For some reason health keeps getting left out of the conversation on reform. Let's take a look at how we can actually fix health care.

Healthcare

I saw a billboard the other day that made me think about all of this. A healthcare provider in the area has a series of billboards that say: “Health should be simple.” On each of these billboards is a picture of someone eating an apple, lifting a weight or doing some other healthy activity. I like the message here. Health should be simple. Unfortunately it has become very complicated and difficult for people to manage.

This is one of the reasons that we are dealing with the healthcare crisis now. Yes, there many factors, but I think the biggest factor is the fact that are no longer paying attention to our own health. In fact, we don’t even look at it as our own anymore. Health is now something that your doctor worries about or what was passed on by your parents.

That is a good way to lose control of health. It has happened to many people and will continue to happen until we take ownership again. What do we need to do first? You guessed it. We need to pay attention. We need to pay attention to our health BEFORE the doctor tells us we need surgery or before we have been diagnosed with a chronic condition. We need to take control of our health.

Question: Do you know your blood pressure? Do you know your cholesterol numbers?

The advances we’ve made in the medical field are amazing. We are constantly finding new ways to do things and to make what was previously a death sentence into a manageable situation. This can be a double-edged sword though. The one drawback to this is that we no longer try to avoid the medical care. I appreciate this and I see great value in all of it. I’m not suggesting that we pear back medical technology to make healthcare cheaper. I’m just suggesting that we start managing our own health rather than waiting until we need to be saved.

What am I talking about? Well, I’ve heard many people say that they aren’t concerned about their health because they are young and don’t need to. I’ve heard, “Why do I need to worry about health now?” Well, you actually don’t have to worry about it if you pay attention. If you don’t, that is when you need to start worrying.

I’ve also heard, “My parents are overweight, so why should I even try to lose weight?” This is an excuse that has become very widespread. People think that everything is genetic. This is an easy way to avoid ownership. If you are not in control it’s not your fault. Well, you are in control and so are your parents.

If you are overweight, it is not because your parents passed on the “overweight gene”. You are overweight because of your habits. Your parents are also overweight because of their habits. Oddly enough, those habits seem to be similar. How did that happen? It looks like they passed those habits along.

Question: What habits are you passing along to your children?

Too often we are ending up in the doctor’s office with something we could have avoided. We have let medicine become something that only the doctor can deal with. We take the mentality explained above and say that our health is just happening to us and we all we can do is what the doctor tells us to do.

I find this especially hard to understand, considering the medical community has been telling us to exercise and eat right for years. I guess we don’t hear that. We do hear the doctor when we have to start taking another medication though. At least we can make the decision between taking that medication or changing the way we live so we don’t need it.

Again, medicine has come a long way. There are many great medications out there. For people who need them, they have worked wonders. For people that do not need them, they have helped them continue to live an unhealthy lifestyle without the consequences. At least the consequences haven’t shown up just yet.

Last Questions: How did your actions today affect your tomorrow? Is today going to have a positive or negative impact on tomorrow?

Maybe that’s the problem. We are aware of the consequences of our actions, but we are still unwilling to change our behavior. Maybe we just don’t see it because it’s so long term. Actually, this brings me right back to the same place: Paying attention.

If you pay attention to how you feel today, you can alter what you do in order to feel better tomorrow. If you keep doing this you will keep feeling better and enjoy life much more. If you choose not pay attention, you can easily end up in the cycle where you are not in control.

The best advice I can give: Don’t give up your control. If you have given it up, take it back. It only takes one step to get started. The best way to take control of your health: Pay attention.

This concludes the 3-part series on paying attention. Hopefully this was a helpful read for you. We all have more power than we think. If we use that power, there is no telling what our lives, the insurance and the medical industries will look like moving forward. If we keep leaving it up to someone else...