If you no longer have little children in your household, or you haven’t had any children yet, here’s a good thing you can do to assess how you’re doing health wise. Go to a playground where there are 5-year olds and watch their energy level. Do it in the mid to late afternoon.
Here’s what you won’t experience…you won’t see them with their head hung and their shoulders slumped just dragging themselves through the motions of playing. You won’t hear them telling each other how much they could use a cup of java. Nope, you will see them going full speed. You will hear them screaming with delight.
You know why? Because that’s the way its supposed to be. We are all designed to be full of energy and vigor all day long and then gradually wind it down at night as our internal clocks tell us it’s getting close to time for us to re-charge. If we don’t feel energized all day long this is a sure sign that we are not giving our body what it needs. We might be lacking in adequate exercise, sleep, water, or nutrients. It could be a combination of all or just one or two, but the bottom line is that we should feel jazzed most of the day and if we don’t it is an early indicator of things we won’t want in our future.
Energy level is just one of the short-term indicators that we aren’t treating our bodies right. Skin issues, aches and pains, restlessness, anxiety, shortness of breath, frequent illness, and a lot more are all big giant clues. These things are usually just inconvenient for us, in some respects, and they also affect our quality of life in other respects. If we come home from work and we are so dragged out that we can’t devote the proper energy to our family relationships…how long before that is a major issue? How much fun is it?
Taking care of our body is essential to living the best life we can. And it’s not that hard to do if we make it a priority. But that’s not the real message of this posting. The real message is that we have to be clear that too many days in a row, accumulating over years, of having these short-term indicators present, means that a major health issue is inevitable. THAT will mess up your day.
Here’s a little thought for you to ponder….what things in your life that are dominating your time and energy, and make it feel like you don’t have the time to take the right care of yourself, would you not gladly sacrifice to get your health back if you lost it? Whatever you would gladly sacrifice then? I would submit it makes sense to sacrifice a little of it now! Life is big. It’s full of possibilities and you were designed to flourish in it. But you have to take care of the body you live in because if you don’t…where else are you going to live? There is plenty of time to live life to the full, especially when you have a healthy body.
