By Darren Gurr, Managing Partner
Feeling good is about the simplicity of getting present in your relationship with your health and wellness.
How often do we take the time to stop, disengage from life, and ask the question “How Do I Feel?”
How does my body feel, where is my heart, what is going on with my feelings and emotions, and what is my mental state?
I don’t mean doing a casual drive-by with the question and giving it a superficial glance. I mean really stopping and listening. It is a powerful question. For the majority of us creating this kind of awareness does not happen often enough for the answer to be “I am really feeling fantastic”.
We are often forced by life circumstances to take some time off in order to create the space necessary to ask these types of questions and since we have let ourselves get to that point of unconsciousness the answers we get are usually not good. A health condition or sitting in a hospital bed may all of a sudden make this question a priority.
So why do we find ourselves not taking care of ourselves the way we want to or the way we should? Being in the business of helping others feel good has given me a front row seat for this human condition and I think you will like what you are about to experience if you authentically engage in the following exercise.
FIRST LET’S GET SOME CONTEXT
The reality is that in life there aren’t any big secret recipes to creating what we want or how we want to be. If we keep things simple the answers and the way will show up for us. The good news is that this applies to our health and wellness. The bad news is that simple isn’t always easy.
Understanding how to keep things simple and connect to the relationship we have with our health is what I call ‘cracking the feel-good code”.
Self Mastery Starts With The Fundamentals
WHERE IS YOUR ENERGY COMING FROM?
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If this idea of feeling good is simple then why doesn’t everyone feel the way they want? Why do we need coffee to keep going? Because we get distracted and lose sight of what is important in life. Urgent, less important things get on to our to do list. We have a lot of stuff competing for our time and attention. Plus we want to do a lot and experience as much as we can in the short time we have here on earth. Does all this distraction ever get you to a state of feeling anxious? When we get to that state it does get hard to keep how important our wellbeing is in proper perspective.
Here at rnr we have a strong philosophy that getting your feel-good mojo on is all about taking care of your mental, physical, spiritual and emotional wellbeing. By nurturing these four pillars in an intentional way you can crack the feel-good code.
WE ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH EVERYTHING IN OUR LIFE
The reality is that it is our life’s work to grow in these four areas of our health. Yet we get distracted and de-railed from this work. In addition we most likely just don’t take the time to connect to our own lives intentionally by looking at the relationship we have with wellness. The result is a compromised quality of life that we settle for and we aren’t even aware of it.
The quality of our lives is the quality of our relationships and everything in our life is a relationship. If you live by this philosophy you will see it benefit you in all areas of your life. If we commit to enhancing our relationship to our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health then we elevate the level at which we experience the world.
Examples of this in other areas of life might be our relationship with money, friends and family, career, travel and adventure or politics and world affairs.
TIME TO GET CRACKING
What follows here is a simple yet powerful exercise. You will find that it creates some self honesty around your relationship and thoughts about the role wellness plays in your life.
Take the time in your day to get by yourself when you dig into this work. Just you and your journal. I promise your day is about to get better. Simply through creating some awareness.
- Write a statement naming how you feel about your physical, mental, emotional or spiritual health.
Prompt: Only do one area at a time. Choose your fitness level, or mental state, or where your life is currently emotionally
- Next, ask why this situation is the way it is.
Prompt: It is the way it is for a reason. No playing victim here, take responsibility. We invite situations and things into our lives so what is the meaning behind this? What is this trying to teach you? Write for at least 10 minutes.
- The significance of this in my life on a scale of 1 – 10
Prompt: How much does this whole concept of mind, body and spiritual wellness resonate with you? Do you think it is relevant to your feel-good factor? How important has it been to you up until now? How important do you think it should be?
- Describe your connection/relationship to health and wellness.
Prompt: This is where it is time to be as honest as possible with yourself. This is where you get real with yourself. Are you fully invested in letting your health and wellness elevate your quality of life or does it sit at the perimeter getting some occasional attention. Dig deep to find the meaning in this. Are you embracing all the pillars or do you take care of your body but close off to your spiritual self?
- What would I like my relationship to be like with this certain area of my health?
Prompt: Do you want to be present, connected and intentional in your relationship to this part of who you are? Do you need boundaries put in place with others or yourself? Draw the picture of what you want this relationship to look like but please be sure to include how you feel when this is a reality in your life.
As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a secret recipe. If we all lived in a world that wasn’t so noisy and distracting, our natural instincts would be present in a way where this would be our natural way of thinking. Maybe this is already natural for you.
We need to to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ lists
-Michelle Obama
The real simplicity is to just grasp the concept that how good we feel is a product of the quality of our relationship to health and wellness. If you authentically answered the questions above you will already experience the power that comes from levelling up this relationship.
The bonus is that we can repeat this exercise in our relationship to every other area of life. Like all the people, places and things we experience.
Keep the output that you came up with here present in your day to day life and you will have cracked the feel-good code for yourself. Create the space for this in your life. Remember you are precious and you are worth it.
