There is no secret recipe to Wellness and Longevity for they are merely the cumulative sum of your collective Lifestyle Behaviors. Each good behavior adds life energy and each poor one subtracts from your Total Health.
In our fast pace world of 365 24/7 we have made everything too complicated. This may be due the limited time each of us believes we possess to get everything accomplished. The results are a continuous decline in our Collective Wellness.
These trends in physical wellness are alarming and are becoming more obvious each day. Like a wave it possesses an overwhelming compensatory dynamic that impacts our popular culture and ultimately our society.
These changes has been gradual, slow, steady and pervasive. In this manner they are invisible and become accepted elements of our mindsets. The individual unless they are educated, informed and vigilant to these dynamics cannot see how their own lifestyle has changed. Because it alters our mindset it becomes a hardwired automatic response of our unconscious. More than a thought it is a feeling that is very experiential and thus becomes a core belief of who we are.
So we now accept certain behaviors and habits that only five years ago we would actively resist as we knew that they were detrimental to our long-term health.
I will not spent time here examining all the pyscho-dynamics of will power, self-disciple or self-control for we have arrived at a place where situational ethics have removed the value of these attributes from all too many people’s lexicon.
With this radical transformation of mindset has come all too many poor health habits and thus a collective diminishing State of Wellness.
From the scientific research that is available we know that the five simple lifestyle behaviors that I am going to suggest will add many years to your life. The recent British Medical Association report on Global Alcohol Consumption subtracts almost four years of quality life from the average individuals lifespan.
Yet in our Age of Technology where humans have access to more information than we have ever possessed you would think that our longevity would be improving. The converse is actually the case. So the prediction of the future super human beings in this New Century living to 125 years old is as mythical as Flash Gordon.
The question becomes could you make five lifestyle changes that research shows could easily add ten years to you life. The logical answer is more than likely Yes but in reality the research study stats that came back harkens back to that “Mindset Factor” that I previously mentioned. Less than ten percent surveyed believed they could sustain these changes to their lifestyle habits.
My Five Simple Wellness Habits
1- Stop Listening To the Noise
The collective impact of the bombardment of electronic sights and sounds creates an environment of Distraction and Disruption that is draining your energy, wreaking havoc with your biochemistry and quite literally stealing years of quality wellness and life. We do not have enough time in regards of long-term research to know the extended health impact of this New Century Mobile Device Culture.
Yet it does not take a research study to observing the changes to behavior and health of many segments of our society. Our children are the most obvious bell weather. They are far less healthy than we are way into our sixties and seventies. You would think the opposite would be true. We for the most part grew up working class with none of the benefits that our children have enjoyed in nutrition and access to every advantage that promotes health and wellness. In their youthful inexperience they have been swept up in the toxic information age in which we live.
I have long stop watching the news and listening to all the noise or spend my time aimlessly dallying on my IPhone. The powerful special interests in this nation have pitted various groups against each other while they continue to make billions. Time to stop playing their game…. Shut them off.
The hundreds if not thousands of hours in pursuit of these behaviors possess vast physiological changes to plasticity of the brain and the manner we all understand each other… reject their message of disunity….Love Your Sisters & Brothers….the Good Karma will add years to your life!
2- Stop Drinking Alcohol
If you are part of the one third of the human race that drinks alcohol, you are poisoning your body. The Global Study by the British Medical Association finally puts the straight talk out there; any amount of alcohol consumption is detrimental to your health. The old adage that a glass of wine a day is good for you is not the current science. Their key take away that drinking subtracts two years of quality health from an average forty year old was no surprise to me at all.
I am delighted with the small emerging trend of over fifty year old friends of mine who have stopped drinking. The immediate and dramatic impact to their health and general wellness is so impressive. Most visible is weight loss, better tone and color of skin and less pain with more flexibility in their joints…. The new 60 is yesterday’s 40…..their clarity and vigor is remarkable.
I have a close friend a single mother of two at fifty six gave up drinking who also changed her diet and started exercising. The spring in her step, youthful dewy glow of her skin and a general new brightness has taken fifteen years plus years off her appearance…..just simple amazing
Stop Drinking Alcohol is my #1 Wellness advice….it will change your life!
3- Start Eating Better
The changes here are also so simple. You do not need some high priced nutritionist with $500 worth of “Special Food” to make you healthy.
Vast improvement in your wellness would be achieved by doing the follow
Eat no processed food
Eat smaller portions of all meats and animal proteins
Greatly Diminish the amount of Bread and Sugar you consume
Dramatically Increase the amount of Bean and Vegetables you eat
Drink lots more water and herbal tea
It really is that simple but once again that requires the disciplined mindset that rejects instant pleasure and gratification for long-term objective of longevity.
4 – Become a Body in Motion
The proliferation of child, young adults and 20-30 years old individuals that are obese is the result of diet, alcohol and no exercise. It is a national epidemic!
We have become an inactive and sedentary culture….as inert as a rock. Millions of years of genetics have hardwired a physical complex machine that is designed to move. We have become the most inactive culture that humanity has produced.
Unless this trend is reversed the future health impact and cost to the nation will be enormous.
I don’t need everybody rushing out and trying to run a marathon. The secret of exercise is actual quite simple; especially if you are eating the right food.
It’s all about being a body in motion.
We all sit way too much and this has become one of the primary reasons why all these younger generations are so amazingly unhealthy.
On the most basic level find a way each day to be standing at least an hour collectively as this is a more natural state of operation for your body. Find time to walk or move your body even 10-15 minutes each day.
Just these two simple things in conjunction with the other changes will produce immediate improvement. You need to reset your mindset to understand that each beneficial behavior works in tandem with the others to create Total Wellness.
It doesn’t take a large of amount of exercise to be physically well …it takes daily consistent consciousness of using every opportunity to move your body as that is what it was designed to do…..its really just that simple!
5 – Create a Circle of Wellness
All the ninety and one hundred plus year old individuals I know have a large network of relationships of people that they love and that love them!
It appears to be one of the reoccurring factors of global longevity. This social connection provides a true north compass and grounding that has an intensely positive impact on our biochemistry.
From the small island off the Greek mainland where everyone lives to be over one hundred years old, the multi-generational close family and communal relationships reveals yet again why our Wellness is declining.
Due the intensely hostile and polarized society that we have created, we have all gradually diminished the circle of people that we interact with. This social isolation while protective and necessary is not how we were designed. As a social creature our optimal state of wellbeing is when we are rooted in a community.
So your final change is to use all the time you have saved by being unplugged several hours each day to work on enhancing the relationships in your life. You will discover that in placing more energy into people and less into your IPhone a more introspective sense of self….in time it will change the manner you look at everything.
This is precisely what needs to occur. A change of Mindset that ultimately will govern our believes that in turn will provide us the insight to think differently about the manner that we do everything.
As I started my post by saying. There are few things in life that I can guarantee with certainty but adopting even one of this Lifestyle habits will improve your Wellness.
To the successful individuals that I have met on my journey that have found their courage and developed a Mindfulness that challenges our collective thinking….
Congratulations….Cheers…..Well Done!