Real Life Wellness: How awareness leads to health
By Bill Hemmer
Last week I talked about how awareness levels will make or break how healthy you become. Your level of awareness of your environment and your body are extremely important when you talk about becoming healthy. But how does your awareness level change and how can you become more aware and make the changes in your life you want? Please allow me to explain.
Over the years, I have been exposed to literally hundreds of different ways to change awareness levels. At the time I didn’t realize this was the case, but now I realize that every time I talk to somebody it’s my job to change their level of awareness. If I can make people think differently then they can make changes in their lives. Each person is the tool of change in their own life. Nobody else can do it for them.
As a Chiropractor, my job is to explain to people how their spinal cord affects every cell in their body and how fixing the spine is the easiest way to affect the spinal cord. This explanation can change the awareness of most people about how important their spine is to them. Therefore, they change the way they think about things like lifting, bending and working. They also change the way they look at injuries. They will use ice on an acute injury instead of heat. Once their awareness changes, then their life can change.
Another example is what I call the “I gotta do something” situation. How many times has this happened to you…a friend, family member or yourself has some sort of health crisis. A heart attack, high cholesterol or a heavy scale creates an “oh crap” type of situation. This situation then leads to thoughts of the effects your demise will have on your loved ones and yourself. These thoughts then lead to the realization that if you do nothing things will only get worse. Then comes the famous line, “Well, I gotta do something!”
Once you get to that point you only have two ways to go. The first way is to ignore those feelings and hope they go away quickly. The second thing you can do is say enough is enough and work to change your behaviors to become healthier. How many times have you ignored those feelings until they pass? I know I have many times! But all it takes is one time for you to finally say enough is enough and mean it to change your life forever!
The process I just described is how changing your level of awareness can create positive changes in your life.
If you skip any of those steps when you try to change you will fail. How do I know? Because I have failed hundreds if not thousands of times myself. The human condition is based on failure. As a matter of fact, you must fail to succeed. More on that next week.