One of the hardest moments that come from embarking on a wellness journey is the fear of what others may think. While we know we are making the right decision for ourselves and the one we believe is ultimately the best for our health, the reality is that not everyone is going to see this change the way you do. You will have some people who will question as to why you are doing it. Some people who will encourage you to do it for all the right reasons. Then of course you will have some people who will try to tell you how to do it simply because they think they know best.
Having so many different thoughts and voices in addition to your own floating around in your head can be extremely overwhelming. It can also make the process seem a whole lot more complicated and unrealistic than what it really may be. I know all of this because I have been down this road many times before.
When I started my wellness journey, I had all sorts of opinions entering my mind. I had people who were telling me that I was making the right decision because of my family’s health history. Breast cancer, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, fibroids, colon cancer, and asthma are just a few of the health problems that exist in my family’s health history. As you can see yes, there are a lot of health problems on both my mom and dad’s side of the family. So, for someone to congratulate me for wanting to change my health for the better does feel rewarding, but to agree with my decision simply because of that did not sit well with me.
On the other hand, I had people telling me that I was making the right decision, period, because living a healthy life is important. In the beginning my wellness vision consisted of daily exercise, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, drinking a gallon of water a day, and cutting out red meat. Why? This was what I believed was best for myself in the beginning because they were small changes in my diet that I felt I had control over. However, the same people that would be congratulating me for making a change would also in the same breath tell me that my approach needed to be different. I was either being too restrictive or not restrictive enough.
While I did my best to allow people to voice their opinions, the truth of the matter was that none of it really mattered. For starters, no one in my family, immediate or other, viewed health and wellness the way that I did. Therefore, they couldn’t really understand or relate to the journey that I was embarking on. In addition, I was raised to strictly view health as something physical. It was always about how you look and presented yourself, never about how you felt or even what you believed. Being surrounded by people with such a narrow mindset about health and ultimately wellness, I didn’t really have solid guidance let alone support to take with me on this journey.
I started my wellness journey alone and for the most part clueless. I knew what I wanted my overall well-being to look like I just wasn’t 100% sure how to get there. I knew it was going to require hard work, dedication, consistency, and healthy habits, but I didn’t always know where to start. I have had so many ups and downs with my wellness journey. I’ve had months and years where I’ve been on top of it, as well as months and years where I have not been doing my best. Regardless of all the good and the bad, the “rewards” and “failures”, I kept going.
That’s because I knew what my ultimate wellness vision was and I was determined to achieve it.
If you find yourself on this part of your journey currently, first, I want to congratulate you on making the decision to better your health. It’s not always easy to commit to making such changes, especially when you feel you are going at it alone and don’t know where to start. Secondly, I want to offer you some words of advice and perhaps wisdom because making this decision and committing to it is not easy! To make the decision to empower your health requires determination and being open to not only trying new things, but also failing at various moments on the journey.
To help cushion the blow a little bit easier for when those moments come, I want to share with you the 7 rules of life that I have applied to my well-being. These rules remind me of my “why” for this journey daily, as well as help to filter out the negativity that often comes with living a life completely different from those around you.
7 Rules of Life
Rule 1: Let it Go
As I mentioned earlier you are going to have a lot of ups and downs while on this journey. Especially when you are just starting out. It takes time to find your groove, and to understand what wellness means and looks like to you. You are going to have multiple setbacks and many moments when you remain stagnant. In those moments I encourage you to fail forward. Don’t hold onto what went wrong yesterday or in the past moment. Focus on what is going right and what feels good and allow that positivity to push you forward. There’s no need to ruin what could be by focusing too heavily on what should have been.
Rule 2: Ignore Them
Everybody is going to have an opinion for what they believe is right and what’s best. With that comes people wanting to give advice and guidance (sometimes for the good) and people who will ultimately challenge you on your beliefs and commitment. Unfortunately, neither of these are avoidable. The best practice for when these moments present itself is to simply focus on empowering your health. Only you know what that looks and feels like, and if you want to be successful you have to stick to your guns. Especially in the moments when people may try steer you otherwise.
Rule 3: Give It Time
Simply put don’t expect big results overnight. Transformation takes time, especially when you are working from the inside out. You will encounter a lot of people who will judge, criticize, and even question if what you are doing is worth it because THEY don’t see the changes. It’s not about them. It’s about YOU! Empowering your health is about how you feel and what you do, not what you look like.
Rule 4: Don’t Compare
Look, there are going to be a lot of people you are going to come across doing something similar to the habits you’re creating and they are going to make it look easy. Don’t fall victim to believing that they didn’t have to start at ground zero just like you. If there is anything you take away from this post, I hope it’s that you can’t compare your now to someone else’s today. Everyone starts their journey in their own time and when you cross paths with others, they will be either somewhere similar or vastly different from where you are on yours. Either way, you can’t let that discourage you because in order to empower your health you have to be willing to face the music, no matter what tune it plays, and know that you are ultimately on this journey for yourself.
Rule 5: Stay Calm
You are not going to know all the right things to do in the beginning. Even if you have a detailed playbook to follow, you are going to have many slip ups, setbacks, and moments questioning why it’s taking you longer to get there. Don’t freak out and get in your head about it. This is a normal part of the transformation process and something that you can’t avoid on the wellness journey. The key to getting through it all is to stay focused and remember your “why”.
Rule 6: It’s On You
You are in charge of your well-being. It took me a really long time to understand this. I thought that making healthy changes in my life was dependent upon everyone else in my life doing the same. Well, here’s a hard truth for you, just because you are making the change does not mean everyone else in your life wants to. Therefore, you have to be ok with knowing that you may be standing on your own for a while until you can find your like-minded community. Until that happens it’s on you to take control and empower yourself to empower your health.
Rule 7: Smile
At the end of the day, it’s going to take a while to get to where you want to be, but that doesn’t mean the journey can’t be fun and enjoyable. The way you get through the hard moments and find the courage to keep going is by smiling. All the universe will ever ask of you is to try your best, and that comes with understanding that your best isn’t always going to look the same on a day-to-day basis. Regardless of that you have to know that your best for the day was enough to keep going. And that only rings true if at the end of the day you are able to look at yourself in the mirror, be proud of what you have accomplished for the day, and just smile.