Your Health...

[catfan]

Health, it's a subject I have been pondering a good bit lately, specifically my health and how I view my responsibility towards my health. I'm sure many of you are immediately thinking health = physical well being. Well, I have been thinking of life health, by that I mean physical health/well being, spiritual health, emotional health and financial health.

All four definitely take a more than nasty beating during such difficult times of our lives. Having met a good number of newbies lately and seeing how they are doing really started me thinking, what are "we" doing to insure our overall health, what am I doing? Are we taking care of ourselves physically? Are we managing our financial situation responsibly? Are we looking after our emotional and mental states objectively And is faith/spirituality part of our lives?

Having to attend to any one of them extremely close is difficult but now we find ourselves in situations that demand we attend to all of them with equal importance and effort. Over the last 18 months it seems that for me I've been able to attend to one or two at a time but never all of them. Often I'd focus on one or two and sometimes three while paying lip service to the others. A nice convenient way to make myself feel like I had it altogether. But now I realize it's time to quit juggling and start living a healthy life.

For me the one that seems to be where I falter the most is physical well being. It's just way to easy to plop down on the sofa after work and do nothing, think of nothing and just "be". Along with it is eating. It's just way to easy to settle for something simple to make for dinner like pasta or fast food. But even worse is when the emotional well being is low it masks itself as physical exhaustion so it's real easy to grab a beer or glass of wine to help bring about relaxation or even worse head to the freezer and pull out the ice cream. (OK, OK I'll eat ice cream ANY time because I love it so much.)

I've finally hit a point where I feel strong enough or feel good about my spirituality, emotional well being and financial stability. It's time to do what I have spent a life time NOT doing and that's take care of the physical well being! Now to share one of the reason I have this change in mind set...I've gained 15 pounds since January! So much for the "divorce diet!!"

Seriously it's the weight gain that really signaled to me the state of the other healths. I'd lost 27 pounds the previous year simply because I wasn't eating, I was worrying about our situation and how could I fix it, what were my mistakes and failings, how can I fix those, my finances, my family's finances, my family, my kids, why my wife walked away, how is she holding up, why I was laid off, was I going to find another job, what was my future, my family's future, how can I manage my newly diagnosed ADHD and the one thousand and one other things that race through my mind at any given moment.

So with the weight gain I realized I was coming to peace and balance with several of the "well beings." I'd come to peace with each as I formulated a plan or made decisions around that area of life. I'm now formulating my overall health plan and am looking forward to getting it completely in place, finally adding physical health to a good spiritual, financial and emotional plan.

This all leads me to this, to ask, how is your health? Got a plan?