Health is your Greatest Wealth

Now I know I am a doctor and I would say this, but Health is Your Greatest Wealth!

When you have good health you have energy, vitality and zest for life. With good health it is easier to have wellbeing in the other areas of your life such as career, finances and personal growth.

The absence of health is disease, discomfort, pain and suffering. In this state it is so much harder to have wellbeing in other areas of your life. And of course, the absence of health in the extreme is death: the absence of life.

We all have a responsibility to ourselves and our family to take our health seriously. To value it, cherish it and work hard to protect it.

A simple way to look at health is like your finances. You have health liabilities and health assets.

Simply put the way to increase your health is to increase your health assets and decrease your health liabilities.

Balance of health

Increase your health assets

• Genetics (while you can’t change your genes but you can do things to stop certain genes being triggered)
• Nutritious diet
• Positive thinking
• Self-regulation (learning to control certain body and brain functions)
• Exercise
• Sleep
• Healthy habits
• Positive relationships

 

Decrease your health liabilities

Known in the medical field as risk factors! There are some health liabilities that you can’t do much about like genetic risk factors or being born with an inoperable physical deformity. However one risk factor does not define your outcome.

Health liabilities include:

• Dehydration
• Lack of Exercise
• Unhealthy habits
• Not seeking medical advice for health problems
• Contact or ingestion of poisons (such as smoking) or unhealthy food products
• Physical harm
• Emotional harm including stress
• Extremes of weight
• Poor hygiene such as oral and skin

For more advice on protecting your greatest asset: your health visit…

www.positivehealthandwellbeing.com

or email drleonaura@positivehealthandwellbeing.com

Review your 2014 … Your regrets

Many people wait until the New Year to set goals for the year ahead, but the really productive, proactive people begin to set their goals before the year ends. Regrets may seem like an odd place to start with reviewing your year, but they often hold the secret to the goals you should be setting for the year ahead.

What is regret

Regret are feelings of sadness or disappointment over something that has happened or something that has not happened. The “would have,” “could have,” “should have” conversations that people have, all too often. We rarely regret things that didn’t matter or were not meaningful to us, and because of that regrets give us clues, to what IS meaningful and important to us.

5 most common regrets of the dying

Palliative care nurse Bonnie Ware produced a most fascinating list of the “regrets of the dying”. Here are the top five:

• “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” This is, of course, shows the importance of living true to your authentic self.

• “I wish I didn’t work so hard.” This regret occurs when we live our life without being true to what we value. Of course, work is very necessary from a financial perspective but it is tricky to get the work-life balance right. By being clear about your values, you can protect yourself from this future regret.

• “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.” Again, this regret arises from repressing your authentic self and not letting it have a courageous voice.  So let that inner voice sing!

• “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” Connection and love are essential human needs but often we overlook them when life is very busy. You can’t keep in touch with everyone you ever meet, but important relationships and friendships are worth some time and energy.

• “I wish that I had let myself be happier.” Imagine realizing on your deathbed that all you needed to be happy had been with you your whole life. Happiness is a choice. It is about contentment with what you have. It is about living with purpose and passion. It is about stopping to notice the good things in life and embracing them.

Your Regrets

Grab a piece of paper or page in your journal and answer the following questions (writing these down activates more of your brain and helps you process the information better!):

• What do I regret doing in 2014 and why?

• What do I regret not doing in 2014 and why?

• What are the biggest regrets in my life so far and why?

• What regrets do I want to avoid having on my deathbed and why?

• What could I do in 2015 to avoid these regrets and how?

If you struggle with this consider 7 key areas of your life: How you spend or manage your Time, Physical Health, Mental Health, Relationships, Career, Personal Growth, Finances and Environment (home, town, country, planet).

Once you have done this don’t dwell on the negative, use what you have learned to make sure these regrets do not remain regrets. Turn your regrets on their head, allow them to become the inspiration for your goal setting for 2015 and beyond. Next time we’ll discuss what you are grateful for!

Adapted from Beyond Soccer Mom: Strategies for a fabulous balanced life, By Leonaura Rhodes (Morgan James 2014)

Image courtesy of istock.

Courtesy of istock

Why this Brit Loves Thanksgiving

As a Brit living in the US, I was a little bemused by Thanksgiving at first. In the UK, we celebrated “Harvest” with a cute assembly at my kids school and a collection of cans of soup and beans for the elderly.  But on the eve of my fifth US Thanksgiving I have come to consider Thanksgiving my favorite “holiday”. When we strip away the commercialization and overeating of Thanksgiving, it is essentially a day for gratitude and gratitude is good for you and a day devoted to gratitude can only be a wonderful thing!

Now I am a neuroscience geek, out and proud and mounting neuroscience research shows that practicing gratitude is good for you! Martin Selligman, founder of Positive Psychology asserts that the acknowledgement and expression of gratitude is good for health, wellbeing and relationships. In Change your Brain, Change your Body Daniel Amen reports that gratitude improves function in key areas of the brain enhancing cognitive ability, coordination and emotional regulation.

Gratitude is a powerful tool to reduce stress and increase wellbeing because it focuses your attention on the good things in your life, past and present. Often we get caught up in our busy lives and fail to stop for a moment and notice the good things and to celebrate them, no matter how small. That is why I have created this gratitude meditation to share with the world, so if you have just 5 minutes to spare, I’d love you to listen, you never know it might just be good for your brain!

Click the link to take a soak in the power of gratitude:

http://www.drleonaurarhodes.com/gratitude-meditation/

So this Thanksgiving, I am grateful for many things, many people, my life, my health and my happiness. What are you grateful for?