Health and happiness can be separated into two different categories.  Plenty of people with chronic illnesses find joy.  Even though they are sick, they are working on their joy and doing what they can for their health.  People can be in top physical health, but not are extremely miserable. Can one be fully healthy without happiness, and vise versa? Maybe.

For a long time as a fitness instructor, I believed that physical health was the answer to a lot of questions.  Do the exercise programs, follow the food plans, fix many problems. That is, until doing all the exercise programs and following their recommended plans caused injury and illness.  Not to mention all the anxiety and body image issues, which have already been a struggle most of my life and was a reason I became an instructor.

I still believe that movement is an essential part of overall health and happiness.  If it weren’t important, than bedridden patients wouldn’t have someone coming in to move their limbs from time to time.  Stay too long in one spot, you risk getting bedsores, blood clots, or other sneaky scary things.  Movement creates mood enhancing hormones, but finding enlightenment outside of the gym is critical for overall wellbeing.

Society likes to tell us how we are doing everything wrong.

We’re constantly told we’re not 

good enough.  I have come to the conclusion that a lot of that noise is due to three things. 1) Marketing strategies, 2) self-projections of miserable people, and 3) power and control.  Bosses keep workers mostly unhappy, telling them that their life would be nothing without being on the payroll (Power and control). All of the diet and exercise programs makes us feel horrible for not looking like a photoshopped image so we will buy their product (marketing).  The internet is full of examples of people being jerks (self-projections).

Getting rid of that noise can be very difficult, especially if it’s junk you have heard your entire life.  Figuring out how to turn down the volume is important to both health and happiness.  When the volume on the hate is down, we become more self-aware.  We don’t push our bodies to the breaking point and can focus more on intentional movement and do things correctly.  Setting healthy boundaries becomes a thing we can do now.  We slowly start to shift our defenses and learn to allow happy moments to happen without question.

As we get rid of the noise, our overall mood changes. Our mood affects many parts of our physical operations.  People die of broken hearts.  People that look like the textbook definition of health end up with liver disease, popcorn lung, heart issues, or decide to find out what’s beyond this realm of existence on their terms.  Depression and anxiety don’t go away just because a quick glance by a medical professional says you look good. An elevated mood will not necessarily make a health condition go away, but it will help you learn to live with or manage the condition in a mentally and emotionally healthier way.

Figuring out how to get yourself out of the swamp of despair is key to a healthier life.

Figuring out the main roots of what created our swamp can create a difficult emotional journey, or admittance to something we don’t want to accept.  People are afraid of change, but change is inevitable.  None of us are who we were when we were 5, 15, or even 3 years ago.  We are conditioned to please others before ourselves, and in some societies taking care of ourselves is somewhat unacceptable.

Swamps can be created from legitimate health conditions like Ehlers-Danlos, environmental conditions like what happened in Flint Michigan, community conflicts including unaccepting parents or partners, or many other circumstances.  The question becomes: Are you willing to change what is necessary when you figure out the cause of your misery?

Sometimes parts of the cause can be edited, such as repurposing or decorating a space, evicting specific people from our lives, finding a medical/mental health team that doesn’t dismiss you, or even a complete movement and food intake makeover.  What if it’s the entire community’s way of life that’s the problem?  You have to ask yourself what you are willing to continue to tolerate, what you can place boundaries around, and what has to completely change in order to create the life you can be ok having lived.

If you’re ready to start your journey to change your life, I invite you to check out my self paced Pillars of Transformation course.