2020 Vision: Seeing Your Health Clearly in the New Year

Did you let your healthy habits slide during the holidays? Or maybe you are feeling so sick and tired of feeling sick and tired that you’re ready to commit to breaking the cycles that impact your health and how you feel day in, day out. The beginning of the year is a great time to correct your long-term vision if it has become fuzzy. So, if you’re ready for a new prescription, read on.

         When making a plan for new habits, smaller, short-term goals are helpful, but what will keep habits for the long haul is a larger, long-term “Big Why.”  When you clearly see WHY you are doing something, it makes the day-in-day-out practice, choices and resisting of temptations easier. Think about how your life is being affected by your health concerns. Think beyond physical to emotional, relationships, career, hobbies, etc. What would life be like in three to five years if you don’t resolve these issues? What if you did?

For me, a single woman with no kids, I don’t have someone I could move in with in a few decades, and I for sure don’t want to be in a nursing home, so I keep the fact that I need to be physically and mentally sound throughout life in my mind’s eye at all times. I realize each small decision made now impacts 40 years from now. 

My Big Why is an imaginary carrot on a stick, always in my internal visual field, keeping me moving in the right direction. When faced with a decision or a temptation, I think, “Is this moving me toward or away from my goal?” I don’t just hone in on what I eat; although that is a big portion of my system to get to my goal, that’s like only looking at one section of a picture. Staying laser focused on your desire helps with each step along the journey. If you want to climb to the top of Machu Picchu, but you keep taking steps backward, it’s going to take a lot longer to get there, and if you get tired, you may never make it. Remember how the Tortoise wins, with slow and steady forward progress. 

2020 is a great, symbolic year to put your bad health habits in the rearview mirror, focus on your Big Why, and make a lifestyle change that will serve you with dividends for decades to come. Big change needs big aspirations, either for something positive or to avoid something negative. Breaking the old habits is a lot like a recovery process. Addicts often remind themselves multiple times a day WHY they are not going to drink, use or return to their addictive behavior. The same mindset keeps you on the path to health.  

Zeroing in on your Big Why this way will serve you when the next event or holiday season comes around, because, of course, they always do. Just like the alcoholic doesn’t get to drink on New Year’s Eve, you don’t have to lose sight of your Big Why when you are celebrating. A lot of our celebrations center around lifestyle-derailing foods and activities, but just like the recovering alcoholic on New Year’s Eve or at his or her daughter’s wedding, you can still celebrate whatever is being marked while keeping your vision on your Big Why. If your Why is big enough, it even overpowers the enablers and doubters that try and pressure you into losing your commitment to yourself and your health, which is, after all, your greatest asset. 

So, let’s raise a mental (eye)glass to a healthy 2020, and many years to come!

For more information, call Expect Wellness, located at 130 Suber Rd., Ste. D, Columbia, at 803-796-1702. Also visit DrRachelHall.com. See ad, page 4.