Hello everyone!
Welcome to our first ‘real’ blog after our introductory launch last month: The Mind Body Connection – Happiness & Your Health. We’re excited to be here and more visible so that we can reach more and more of you looking for compassionate, high-quality, well-informed, care in the realm of holistic health services.
Today I wanted to write about a big disconnect I see so often in our culture and how it unfortunately insidiously affects so many of us. This weekend, amongst getting many things done, I took the time to pull off my home library shelf one of the Dalai Lama’s many books that I’ve been meaning to read but hadn’t gotten to yet. Now while I’ve read several of his others, I hadn’t tackled his rather lengthy ‘The Path to Freedom.’ But, feeling in need of a pragmatic wise voice, I picked up it and read a chunk.
While I’ve long appreciated his wise blend of pragmatism with his worldly, erudite experience, I particularly appreciated his observations on the pursuit of happiness in the ‘western world’ vs. that in third-world countries. Now while not from this book, one of his very apt quotes, came to mind when thinking about health and happiness whilst reading. When asked what puzzled him most about modern life and humanity, he answered:
“Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies never having really lived.”
So often, I see at the root of many health issues, a lack of awareness and wisdom in our day to day lives that unfortunately pushes many people into bad habits, such as neglecting early warning signs of perhaps something serious because they’re ‘too busy’ and pushing themselves beyond the limits of ‘reasonable’ in pursuit of advancement, whether it be professionally, personally, or both. Just the other day I was speaking with a friend of mine (who happens to work in healthcare) who had ignored some chest and jaw pain for several weeks, thinking it was nothing serious (as he is not overweight, doesn’t smoke, and eats well) and that he was ‘too busy’ to get it checked out. It turned out, after going into the hospital, that he had a 95% blockage in a major artery and required immediate surgery!
I couldn’t help but think his ‘busy-ness’ nearly could have cost him his life! It also further supported the idea that I think we all, at some point, need to ask the questions: ‘What’s the point of all this busy-ness?’ ‘What do we really need to be happy?’ And, ‘are all these habits and obligations really bringing me closer to my authentic definition of what happiness is in my life?’ Gretchen Rubin, NY times best selling author of the ‘The Happiness Project,’ points out that in studying dozens of age old writers and scholars while researching for her book, a common theme emerged: that while health is no guarantee of happiness, it seems to be a prerequisite to make happiness possible!
Isn’t that interesting?? Our health is our foundation to potentially achieve long lasting happiness in our lives! So, it would seem that anything we might do that tends to detract or damage that, is actually going to take us further away not closer, to our goal of ‘true happiness’ (which, by the way, for every individual should likely look a little different). That means that while hard work may be important to get us to where we want to be personally, professionally etc. (to achieve that ‘happiness’ we’ve defined for ourselves), we don’t want it to be at the expense of our health. And, that arguably it also needs to be tempered with a practical wisdom of knowing ‘when to say when.’
Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what might happen to rates of anxiety, insomnia, depression, and fatigue if we all simply knew when to put the brakes on, tune into our bodies, and may be evaluate the ‘health for wealth’ trade-off we may be making in the meantime?
Something to indeed ponder and consider. While indeed some things that happen to us health-wise may be due to things beyond over-work and paying lack of attention to, I do seem to find many connections to this detrimental habit and to many cases that walk through our door.
So, in this salutatory blog, I encourage you to pay closer attention to your day-to-day choices and really think about ‘what is the health to wealth trade-off here I’m making?’ and ‘is this choice really bringing me to closer to happiness or not?’
As the saying goes, ‘an unexamined life is not worth living.’ And it seems that we could also say ‘an unexamined life is likely not so healthy!’
In health,
Dr Eric