I’ve mentioned it in a couple of other posts but my word for 2020 is “health.” That being the case, in an effort to keep that in front of me and to continue down the path of health in all areas of my life, I will probably be writing about different aspects of health more and more over the course of the year. Today that starts with physical health.
This is probably the easiest one to write about. I know a good bit about physical health. I have a beautiful wife who is a Beachbody coach and has studied health for a while now. I have read my fair share of health and fitness blogs and articles and for a while I kept pretty close tabs on the bodybuilding world. I’m sure I don’t know everything, but I know enough to know what’s good and bad for me and what I should and shouldn’t be doing.
Now, you’ll notice that what I did not say was that I actually DID the things I know how to do. Knowledge does not necessarily lead to action. You can know a lot about a lot of things but if you do nothing with that knowledge then it’s just more useless information wasting away in that beautifully complex brain of yours.
And so it is with me. I have a lot of knowledge, but I haven’t been very good at putting it into practice. I haven’t made “health” a big enough part of my identity to make the actual changes I know I need to make.
Therein lies the key. In order to make real, lasting change, it has to become part of your identity. You can go out and lose 20 pounds … but it won’t stick, because you didn’t change who you are.
So while a portion of this physical health thing is actually in the physical (the actual exercise, the acts of making and eating the right foods at the right times, etc.), there are significant portions that are mental, and even spiritual (down in your soul at the level of your identity). For years I’ve been telling myself that working out and eating right where just too time consuming. I didn’t have the time in my day to make it workout. I couldn’t eat well because it was just too time consuming and too expensive and too … you get the idea.
When it comes down to it, I just didn’t want to. I still don’t really want to. My journey this year will be a much more involved thing then just doing my cardio and eating some celery. It will be that too. But it will involve a trek into my heart to determine the kind of person I want to be. It will take me being honest with myself about where I am and where I want to be. It will take a change from the inside before a change on the outside every sticks.
Now that’s a process that’s worth going through in every area of all of our lives. Will it be hard? Yes. Will it be uncomfortable as you encounter who you really are? Absolutely. Is it going to be worth it? My gut says “yes”.
Here we go…