“Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards.” – Tony Robbins.
As I reflect over the past year and the challenges of these times, I think about what I have learned about the importance of being my own health advocate and staying healthy. After several years of sharing with you ideas from experts, and my own experiences on the topic of Health & Wealth through my blogs and podcasts, I continue to be hopeful of how our lives can be impacted by the simplicity of taking care of ourselves regardless of age, geography, or our current level of wellness.
Whether it’s just making the right decision of what to eat on a busy day, dealing with the constant infections and sicknesses of having two young kids in daycare (If you know, you know), or just dealing in our new normal of COVID and all the next variants. Our society makes it extremely convenient to take the easy way out with fast food drive-thrus, twenty-four-hour work cycles, using “get healthy quick” options to think you can take a pill for a lifetime of health and wellness AND just not making fitness a priority in general. So every day, we all must make the conscious decision to pursue health and wellness to stay on this earth as long as we can in an active and mobile state.
The decisions I make daily reflect what I observed and learned from my parents.
It certainly helped me personally, but the added value it brings to me and what I demonstrate to my two girls how to make their health a priority for themselves is a bonus. I am most thankful for the example my wife sets with her constant healthy eating research. She continues to study and learn how to make delicious healthy meals and help us understand the ‘why’ of what we eat every day. She shows us that those choices have a massive effect on our day-to-day functionality and how we feel and perform in our activities. So we truly are what we eat.
It was a great feeling when I recently picked up my 2.5-year-old from daycare one day after I skipped out on a workout, and she said, “Daddy, you’re not sweaty?” She’s used to me picking her up after I work out, or she asks if we can do yoga when we get home.
Those moments reinforce the importance of staying healthy and fit.
Looking into next year and on, I hope to continue to learn and help educate myself, my family, and my circle of influence.
2021 has been challenging, whether through health, work, or family issues. We are learning with science and wisdom of resilience that, as brutal as this year has been, the long-term impact on individual and collective lives as a society is not predetermined or fixed. The New Year is here. Have you decided what kind of year it will be? What lessons of hope and possibility will we carry with us in shaping our 2022? How will we be transformed based on what we have experienced? That is up to each of us. We are empowered to make those choices.
January 2022
