Overweight doctors write new diet books. Supplement manufacturers publish health magazines. Drug companies sponsor television news programs. Uncovering the truth about health can be difficult if you’ve been overexposed to disguised marketing messages that favor sales over truth. Health-product marketers often seem to follow Mark Twain‘s classic advice: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
My (Steve Pavlina) goal here isn’t to convince you to adopt my personal beliefs about health. Instead, I want to give you the means to think intelligently about the matter for yourself. Consequently, I won’t overload you with statistics because that would be entirely pointless. I can track down the data to build any case I want, but you’d never know if you could trust that I was sharing the whole truth with you. If I was really manipulative, I could even use distorted facts and figures to try to convince you to buy a special line of overpriced supplements, the kind that enrich only two things: your urine and the manufacturer’s pocketbook. I’m not a trained research scientist, and most likely you aren’t one either, so let’s skip the chest-pounding stats battle and consider a more sensible approach.
Take a moment to clear your head of everything you think you know about health. As Bruce Lee would say, “Empty your cup.” Let’s return to the first principles, starting with your basic perceptions. Set aside the uncertainty of what you think you should be doing, and examine what your senses are telling you right now.
Take a good look at your body. Get naked and evaluate yourself in a mirror if possible. What do you see? Do you appear overweight or underweight? What parts of your body do you like best? What do you wish you could change? What color are your eyes? How would you describe your hair? Notice your external perceptions as well as your internal reactions to them.
How do you feel? Are you alert and energetic or foggy and sluggish? Do you feel light or heavy? How often do you get sick? Do you sleep restfully at night and awaken refreshed, or is your sleep disturbed and restless? Are you relaxed or stressed? Is your emotional state positive or negative? What kinds of foods do you eat and in what quantities? How do you feel about your diet? Do you perceive that it’s healthy, or are there problems you already know about? Do you have any unhealthy addictions? Do you consume drugs such as caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol?
How would you rate your overall physical fitness on a scale of 1 to 10? How would you evaluate your aerobic capacity, strength, flexibility, and endurance? What kind of exercise do you do and how often? What physical recreation do you currently enjoy? Are you able to function well, or do you suffer from any physical problems? Do you have the physical vitality you desire?
Be completely honest with yourself. What do your perceptions reveal about your physical body and your current state of health? If you want even more information, ask for a friend or family member’s perceptions of your physical body as well, or consider getting a full medical checkup.
Now turn your attention to your predictions. You never know if these will be accurate, but you can certainly make reasonable guesses based on your current patterns. In order to be totally honest with yourself, use a third-person perspective. Imagine that an objective, unbiased observer carefully examines all the details of your physical life. What will that person predict for your physical future? Is the expected outcome positive or negative? Is your health improving or declining? Where are your current habits taking you? Is this what you want? If you’re feeling brave, ask a friend or family member to make these predictions for you as well; then compare this person’s forecast to your own. This will help compensate for your internal biases and bring more truth to your situation.
In the past, you may have resisted your most honest perceptions and predictions, especially if you didn’t like what you saw, but this time do your best to accept everything as completely as you can. Accept where you are right now and what you have to work with. Accept the body you’ve been given, despite its flaws. For better or worse, this is the vehicle you’ll be using for the rest of your physical life.
There are some things I really like about my body. I like that I have blue eyes. I like that I’m left-handed, even though it can sometimes be annoying to live in a right-handed world. I like that I’m six feet tall, which is just tall enough to get a good view when standing in a crowd but not so tall as to require ducking while walking through a doorway. I like that I have plenty of strength and endurance. I like that my body isn’t particularly hairy, that I know how to juggle, and that I don’t get sick very often.
There are also some things about my body I dislike. I don’t like being nearsighted, and I don’t like having to shave every day. My teeth are discolored from when I wore braces as a child. My body isn’t very flexible, and my posture could use improvement. I’ve been colorblind since birth, so I’ve never seen a sunset the way other people see it. And of course, half of my thoughts seem to originate from below my waist.
We all have our unique physical issues to deal with. Some of those may be within our power to change, while others may not have practical solutions. Regardless of the specific details of each situation, the path to better health begins with identifying and accepting what we already know to be true.
* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina