Fear is a very important emotion. It is fear that keeps us safe and can help us make good decisions in life. Fear can also be destructive. A person who lives in constant fear, (whether for good reason or self imposed) will often hesitate and delay decisions and find themselves “stuck” and unable to move forward in life. People who live in constant fear will appear to age faster than others, which is a concept well understood in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Another important fact is that people prefer to add things rather than delete things from life. People tend to see adding things as positive, and deleting things as a negative.
Looking around at the marketing in our local health food stores, health clubs, and the marketing of various health supplements around the area, there is a lot of negativity and fear. Marketing tends to focus on all the toxins and bad things in our food and lifestyles and how to eliminate them. Exercise is often focused on how you have to “work hard”, sacrifice and push yourself for your own good.
In some people this creates a unhealthy feedback loop of fear and negativity that actually hurts the person physically and mentally. Every indulgent fun food becomes the enemy and a reason to deny cravings of the body, or a reminder of failure. Exercise becomes an unwelcome duty to be suffered through. Meager results on the scale and with the waist measurement become another indication of failure. Those failures combined with the media images of skinny healthy having fun and the drum beat of “obesity equals disease” can drive people beat themselves up even more. The result is more denial, more “detoxifying”, more focus on failure and fear of the dire medical consequences that lie ahead. Health marketing is quick to pounce on desperate fearful people, encouraging that fear and selling the latest miracle pill or plan that will quickly change a persons life. When those miracle pills eventually fail, the failure is often internalized in “ I must not have stuck with it long enough” or “ I should have spent that money on _____”
There is a better way. Health is about living life. Truly healthy people do not have a overwhelming fear that drives their decisions. Their decisions are based on fun and happiness. The answer is lifestyle. Develop a healthy lifestyle that supports health, life and above all joy and happiness. Don’t suffer another hour at the gym, and follow it with an unsatisfying meal. Find a fun exercise class, exercise with a friend, go dancing, train for a goal, take a cooking class, cook with a friend, find joy in healthy well prepared foods.
In general; find ways to add life to your life. If you have medical concerns- find medical practitioners who will help you move forward in a positive way, rather than focussing on failure and negativity.
Comments