adjective. 1. in good health. 2. indicative of, conducive to, or promoting good health. 3. (of a person's attitude)sensible and well balanced.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
—Mark Twain
know the best and highest choices for health and most often choose those things.
—mar
Healthy Choices. I believe an entire frozen food line has been thus named. It's natural to associate these two words with food. When I was speaking in a grade school, I walked past an open schoolroom door. From the festive decorations on the classroom walls, I would say kindergarten or first grade. I saw a smiling instructor directing her active and interacting students, “Let's practice our healthy choices.”
Let's practice our healthy choices. Beyond food. Movement. Of all kinds. From exercise to ergonomic positioning to physical awareness while in transit. The words we speak. The routes we take. The friends we choose. The entertainment we watch and participate in. Promotion of good health. The types of thoughts we bring to our mind on a regular basis. Our internal dialogue. The environment we build around ourselves.
All of us begin to define for ourselves what it is to make a healthy choice. Yet I see all around me people who associate with individuals who criticize them, promote negative thinking, and generally spin their world on a downward spiral. Still, those individuals are a choice in their life. A healthy choice?
Healthy choices thread through every aspect life. The key here, as in nearly every boldness which I take upon myself, is a heightened awareness. Tony Robbins and many other inspiring instructors talk about the process of creating a trigger to remind you of a desire to change a certain behavior. I was reminded of this practice in a journal-writing class I teach in a medium-security prison. The session was nearing the end. The curriculum had been covered, and we were having a last conversation. Casually I mentioned the need to remind myself of a new behavior we had all discussed.
“Rubber band,” one of the participants said.
“What?”
“Put a rubber band on your wrist. When you go home tonight. Get one and put it on your wrist. And snap it. When you snap it … say that thing out loud. Then tomorrow do the same thing. Wear the rubber band until you remember.”
I thanked him for the suggestion and asked him, “Does that work for you?”
Everybody in the class just howled. Slapped their legs and guffawed. “You think if it worked for him he'd be in here?”
Still my helper was adamant. “I didn't learn the rubber band deal until I got in here. It's helped me make a lot of positive changes. I just need some reminding. Maybe if I'd known this reminding trick when I was younger, I wouldn't be in here today.”
I smiled. I said I would use the protocol. And I did. It helped. I made healthy choices. And after a few days, I took the rubber band off.
My students in the prison system have taught me a great deal about making healthy choices over the years. Not only are many of them highly motivated to change, to lean a different way in their lives, but so much consequence is riding on their choices. One unhealthy choice under supervision, and they can end up back in prison.
• tool kit •
What kind of consequences can you create for yourself to motivate consistent healthy choices? Can you create consequences when you make changes inconsistent with your expressed bold desire? Who in your world demonstrates the skill of consistently making choices that seem clearly in their own best interests? Can you ask them how they make those decisions?
Wear a rubber band as a reminder of a choice you want to institute. Snap it!
verb. 1. care for and encourage the growth or development of. 2. cherish (a hope, belief, or ambition). noun. 1. the process of caring for and encouraging the growth or development of someone or something. 2. upbringing, education, and environment.
What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for one another?
—George Eliot (aka Mary Anne Evans)
gardening is all about optimism. i put a seed in the ground. i consistently tend it, confident i will see the results, in time, of all the nurture i have provided.
—mar
The friends and family who touch your heart? Yes. They know you love them. True. But Mary Ann Evans, writing as George Eliot, pointed out that “Silence lasts long enough beyond the grave. If you would have words of love—then speak them now.” Indeed. The whole “send flowers to the living” thing. There's merit in that.
My friend Jan sipped her coffee as we chatted through an afternoon get together. Our time was coming to a close because she still had to fit in a visit to a friend in the hospital.
Her cell phone rang. She checked the number and excused herself. When she returned to the table she wore a face of sadness and quietly told me one of her elder friends had died just that afternoon. He was in a hospice, in a great deal of pain. She was glad he no longer had to suffer.
I nodded. I just listened. Tears sat on the edges of her eyes as she explained, “Grief in loss is hard for anybody. I have faith in more than this life. But it doesn't mean that loss here is any easier. But here's what I know. I have no regrets. This afternoon's visit would have been just like Tuesday's visit. And the time before that. Every time I left Bill, I held his hand and I asked him if there was anything in the whole wide world I could get for him, or do for him. He always said no. I knew that just my being there was enough.”
Bill was nurtured by Jan in his last days. She didn't bring him anything. She didn't do anything for him. She just showed up.
And in sitting with my friend's grief, the best comfort I could offer was to just let her tell her story.
Nurturing is not complex. It's simply being tuned in to the thing or person before you and offering small gestures toward what it needs at that time. I think of the phrase to give someone a “hand up.” Not a ladder. Not a set of stairs. Not a whole airplane. Just a hand up. Nurturing is measured gestures in somewhat consistent fashion.
Nurturing is not always the same. What a seed needs when it is first planted is different than what it needs when it is further along in its growing. It requires a boldness in our seeing. A willingness to observe the true condition of what is before us and assessing the most appropriate action to contribute to the growth and wellness of that plant, that person.
• tool kit •
The precious hearts in your life, the friends who are there for you no matter what, those whose hearts are connected to you over miles, over years … how would you like to pause to recognize them? How do you nurture them? What would create a treasured memory?
Make a list of all the reasons the relationships in your life are treasured, are precious to you. And then make your nurturing plan. Let that plan involve saying those things which are deeply understood but often do not get spoken out loud.
It is often true that people give what they wish to receive. Notice the ways important people in your life give to others. And try returning that gift to them as a way of nurturing them.
Recognize that nurturing yourself is as important (if not more so) as nurturing others. Identify some ways that you flourish under nourishing care. Provide them for yourself.
noun. act of changing actual location or position.
We should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
i will dance a little. i will move with the wind. i will give my body to my love and celebrate that we have substance beyond the idea of ourselves. we can move. we can touch. this is my physical exclamation point. this is how i can awaken my mind to the possibilities in the day.
—mar
Movement energizes. There's plenty of material available to demonstrate the benefits of physical activity. Part of the trick for me is to make movement enjoyable. Actually, it's most of the trick for me. I have never been particularly fond of exercise. Even as an active youngster, when given a choice I picked reading a book over taking a hike. There's a humorous quote making its rounds: Every once in a while the urge to exercise comes upon me. If I just lie down, it usually passes.
When I want to be bold about my movement … I for sure do not call it exercise! I consider it dancing, and therefore, music and movement are a great combination for me. I dance. I walk and enjoy music as I'm walking. In this way, movement becomes yet another creative expression for me.
My husband rides his road bikes with a passion. He is informed and serious about his riding. In fact, he calls his rides “the long prayer.” Movement on his bike keeps him connected to the important spiritual components of his life. In his life experience, movement is intimately tied to spirituality.
My friend Noah Singer is also a road racer. He's finishing up college and entering the world of professional racing. This is serious stuff. He keeps a blog, and when I look at some of the photos from the races, his face looks as if he is in pain. And, guess what? He is.
I wanted to pump up some of my own inspiration around movement. And, as is my practice when longing to live a certain thing with boldness, I went to someone who knows a lot about what I want to know. And I asked Noah three questions:
“What motivates you to MOVE when you don't feel like it?”
“If I am not motivated to move, I am probably sick, injured, or sleeping. As long as I can remember, I have been a pretty active and outdoorsy person. I have never understood how to get to the fireworks of victory in a video game or been an avid movie fan. Now that much of my life revolves around cycling, most of my days are spent hunched over the handlebars, staring at the white line on the highway or the rich soil of Arkansas bike trails. On the days that I feel like backing off, I think about my competition. They are out riding, lifting weights, or looking into other ways of gaining the edge that will make the difference for them. I think about how lucky I am that, for now at least, my most important task is to ride my bicycle. That's pretty fortunate and gets me off my butt.”
“What draws you forward through the pain of those last feet in a race?”
“There is a something called ‘finish line fever.' It's when you are nearing the last five or ten miles of a race and you feel you're close to the finish but won't make it. When I feel my forehead getting warm with that fever, I think about all the miles I have already ridden that day, all the days I have ridden that month, and all the months I have ridden that year…. All that effort will pay off in the final few minutes.”
“What does non-training movement look like for you? What do you do that's physical for fun, when you're not thinking of training?”
“When not training traditionally, I like to go wakeboarding on the lake in the summer or ride my snowboard in the winter.
I am very injury-prone, so I try to limit my time with these, but it is a way to keep active and motivated in a world shared by other people with different skills.”
By virtue of my passion and my occupation, I spend a great deal of time sitting and writing. I've introduced movement into the traditionally sedentary process. At my writing desk I have both a traditional chair and an exercise ball. Most of the time I sit on the exercise ball. It's excellent for my posture and (with proper training from a professional on a video) I use it to stretch out. I bounce on it. By providing movement during an intensely focused process, I increase my productivity and manage to slip in some movement, too.
• tool kit •
What kind of movemen brings you joy? Is there more you can learn about it? Can you find a consistent place for it in your life?
Dance a little. Put on headphones. Put on music you know you love. Music that makes you want to move. And just dance a little. Or try putting on a pair of headphones with your favorite music when you are doing a redundant task. And move a little while you are doing the task.