By Darren Gurr, Managing Partner of rnr Wellness
Taking care of what really matters in our own lives.
When a wheel has a broken or bent spoke it doesn’t roll nice and smooth, instead it gets off kilter and causes a wobbly or bumpy ride. All the spokes need to be strong in order to carry whatever load the wheel is responsible for.
In our own lives when we are attending to those important areas that really matter, then everything seems to work and our ride through life is much smoother. When one area of life is not working quite right it affects other areas and our experience of life is not so smooth. So like the spokes on a wheel when one area is weak or broken it affects how we show up in the rest of our life. Which, like the wheel analogy, means we are in for a bumpy ride.
If one spoke is broken it also weakens the other spokes in the wheel by putting undue stress on them, which means the straight ones are at risk to bend or break as well.
The quality of our lives is the quality of our relationships
and we are in a relationship with everything in our life.
The spokes in our own life can be represented by our job, money, home life, our bodies or simply those activities or interests that we are passionate about that nurture who we are. Such as travel or hobbies. Showing up as the best expression of ourselves in each department of life sets us up to show up better in the other areas. How we practice one thing is how we practice everything. We feel good when we are taking care of business in all areas of our life which takes a certain level of personal leadership.
So what is personal leadership?
Personal leadership is the act of taking care of business in our own life. One way to look at this is in terms of relationships. Everything in our life is a relationship. This includes not only the people in our life but our relationship with money, our career, health, material possessions, or spirituality. When one of these areas is not working it means we have a broken or bent spoke in that area of our life. Said another way we have a broken relationship with that part of our life.
Most of the time this is because we practice avoidance and choose not to look at it with complete honesty or we are simply unconscious in that area of our life. So it then becomes an energy drain and leaves us far from being whole and complete with ourselves. This is where personal leadership or taking care of business in our own life comes into play.
Personal leadership starts when these relationships to the different areas of our life become much healthier and whole. This is when we are connected to the spokes of our life or what I call the building blocks. Our wellbeing comes down to our physical, mental, spiritual and emotional health. These are the most important spokes in our wheel of life. As we build healthy practices to strengthen each one of these relationships, it then strengthens the other three. This synergy creates an exponential strength that we like to call your “feel-good factor”.
The greatest art we could ever create
is a that of a life well lived
If we are emotionally healthy then we have the necessary energy to fuel the brain, body and soul. The same applies to our physical health and its effect on the mental, emotional and spiritual state of our overall wellness, and so on. Each supports the other to create a strong foundation of wellness.
Our spiritual condition is another spoke on the wheel. We can get a really big bump in the wheel if we are disconnected with our source of power, no matter what we call that source of power, then our ego starts running the show and the wheel gets very wobbly. So our wellness is directly related to spiritual connection as well.
Create Awareness Around Your Relationship With Wellness
It is about being connected with each spoke in the wheel. The connection involves taking a look at each one of these wellness pillars in our lives and actually seeing the relationship to our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well being. Take an honest look. Not peek and ignore what is actually there kind of look. But a real look so that you can see what is really going on in that relationship. It helps to have some perspective from those around us because we are not always totally honest with ourselves about who we are. We tell some pretty good stories about who we think we are.
I personally find that creating some voluntary discomfort around my physical, emotional and mental health is the best way to create the necessary state of wellness in my life. If I am not applying the stress of physical activity I don’t feel the necessary vitality that adds to my mental clarity and sharpness. When I challenge my heart, lungs, muscles and agility, I then engage my life with a positive enthusiasm and stay out of ruts or funks that cause anxiety and frustration.
For me getting uncomfortable mentally is using objective critical thinking to challenge those insidious negative beliefs that can sneak in and steal my energy. Also different mindfulness practices or putting myself in new situations keeps me both mentally and emotionally healthy. I don’t do well emotionally if life gets stagnant and there is no growth.
All kinds of factors affect my emotional health. Obviously my thoughts heavily influence my emotions but so do environmental factors such as diet, sleep or how often I get out into nature to spend time in the mountains and lakes. Nature is the best medicine ever invented and can solve a lot of mental, emotional, and physical wellness issues we face in the modern world.
People used to affect my emotional health constantly. But here is some evidence about how important emotional health is. When I started accepting people for who they are and not who I expected them to be, I became much healthier. So much that my family and friends asked if I was medicating. I no longer was aggressive or confrontational and I learned that my opinions were not facts. It was a massive change in my relationship to my spiritual and emotional life which contributed to my overall health in a substantial way.
Have a look at anyone who practices this philosophy of taking care of every spoke in the wheel. More often than not you will see that because they take care of their relationship with their mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health that all the other spokes in their wheel are strong as well. It is highly likely that the relationship with their money, work, goals and dreams is also very healthy. That is what it means to feel good.
I always tell my children that if you want to be successful then go hang out with healthy people who are passionate about wellness in their lives. There is a really good chance all the other areas of their life are on track as well.
When we start to get our head right, our body right and our heart right the spokes. Then things start to fall into place in a way that makes us feel we are swimming downstream in life rather than fighting the current to try and swim upstream.
