The Price of Image to Health

In our society, which has become more dominated by screens, image is a big deal. It's not just the realm of celebrities, performers, and athletes these days. Image affects all of us in today's world. How we portray our lives and selves to others can become such an influential part of daily living that it can affect how we treat our bodies, health, and those close to us. Image can impact both physical and mental health in ways that can eventually lead to chronic health issues and take us farther away from what we want in life.

What is image? Image is typically what we want others to see despite what we're feeling underneath or what is truly going on in our lives. We all have an image, and that in and of itself is not a bad thing. Image, or persona, can help create healthy boundaries between ourselves and our environments, including other people. That bit of distance helps us have space and privacy where we need it. Everyone doesn't need to know everything. What becomes dangerous is when image evolves into more of a lie that we even start believing when we're alone.

We may want to believe that we're perfect, and try to show that to others instead of facing fears that are surfacing. These days, you may also notice social and media-induced peer pressure to show happiness to ourselves and to the world, even when we're feeling sad, angry, disappointed, or some other feeling instead. The idea of image can then start to encroach on personality and even become who we are to some extent, often to the detriment of our physical and mental health. The pull to be immune and safe in this world using an artificial image is something each person goes through at times.

Image is a tool that can be helpful in the roles we play at work and in life, when it is mostly in tune with who we are already. When it instead plays a more suppressive role in blocking out real emotions, thoughts, and expressions of who we are, it can also naturally suppresses health, hormones, neurotransmitters, and our personalities. It can become a cage in which we live with our unacknowledged fears and emotions.

The price of image overtaking who we are can be costly. Yet, it's okay to admit this and honestly look at what image you're showing to others, and ultimately to yourself. We live in a culture where image too easily becomes everything, and many people are dissatisfied with this way of living. Even when image affects health and stifles life, it can still be an addictive thing to pursue. However, if you remind yourself of what you really want in life, it can become easier to see how the image you're portraying might be blocking that. And then you can ask, what benefit is image really bringing to your life?

You know who you are, so what price are you willing to pay for image?

When Medicine Gets Lazy

Medicine can get lazy, that's a fact. While research and technological advances in medicine are happening everyday, the nuts and bolts of a doctor's appointment don't always reflect the benefits of this work. Yet, the doctor's appointment is where healing should start taking place. Too often, patients are given the run around through differing diagnoses, put through batteries of tests, given discouraging messages about their health, and sparked with fear toward their own bodies. What can we do when medicine gets lazy and fearful?

Health is not meant to be built around fear, so the first step toward supporting your body and well-being is to question and debunk the fear tactics used toward you in a doctor's office, if you do encounter them. It's not a common topic of conversation, but medicine is both a business and an institution in many cases, and therefore will have its own agenda that doesn't always take into account how you're feeling. At the same time, we're told to see medical establishments and the providers working there as an authority over our health.

You can see the conflict of interest that can arise in this setup. If you are told that you are helpless without a specific pharmaceutical drug, that lab results define everything about your health, or that your health is somehow a burden and nuisance, it's time to take a step back from the medical system and get back in touch with your body and how you want to feel in it. You can still seek advice and second opinions from trusted health professionals, but recognize yourself as an authority on your health too. After all, you're the only one living your life and in touch with your body on a daily basis.

Next, don't wait until a doctor's appointment to pay attention to your health, daily habits, and how you're feeling. Your body gives you signals and clues on a daily basis as to where you can show more care to yourself and how you're feeling. How you're feeling means not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Suppressed experiences, emotions, and thoughts are a leading source of chronic symptoms and fatigue, and often apathy about life in general.

Today's medical system often does not get at the underlying roots of how you're feeling on a mind-body level. However, you can do this type of investigation of your health on your own. When you try this approach, you'll be employing preventive health measures that can help you feel better, avoid excessive symptoms, and make your health visits more effective when you do have them.

Third, stay informed. Try not to lose curiosity and the desire to learn about yourself and your health just because modern medicine doesn't always feel like a caring or healing environment. There are resources and services out there in the medical field that will work with you and use a more educational and preventive style toward health care. However, there are also less healthy influences in medicine which can be discouraging and make you want to give up at times. Listen to yourself when these unhelpful voices enter the picture, and that way you can stay informed and educated about your options when it comes to supporting your body's health, vitality, and longevity.

Your health is not a burden, chore, or hopeless situation and if you allow the space in your own life to acknowledge this, you will be prepared if you happen to encounter negativity and discouraging messages out in the world of medicine. You and your body possess an innate intelligence and healing potential, so communicate with it and you will find that it will respond back to you too.

Taking Time to Look Around

When you're always looking straight ahead, it is easy to start missing out on life that you can experience around you. We all have goals, achievements, and responsibilities we'd like to reach, and lists and plans that we make. At the same time, we also have pressures and expectations, ones that can at times become unreasonable and force us forward not with real motivation, but instead with fear. There are times when we may be "doing all the right things" and going through the motions of reaching the next goal or milestone. Meanwhile, the body, nervous system, and senses--in other words, the real you--may be requesting that you simply pause to look around for a bit first.

You won't get too behind by just stopping and checking out what's going on in your environment. Whether it's in your house, nature, a new place, an activity that you miss doing, or your health. When you look around, you're acknowledging that even though there's a path you're following, it's not just a straight shot arrow and instead also involves the space around you and within you.

Also, when you're looking around you don't always have to define what you see, form an opinion about it, post it on social media, take a picture and record it, or even tell anyone. Today more than ever, we're tempted to do that with many things that we see or experience. The experience is enough as it is. It might just be for you.

What do you risk by not looking around from time to time? You'll never know until you look. It may be scary to leave the path alone for a little while, for fear that you might miss out on something important. Life's not like that though. It offers the time and space to look around, maybe not all the time or everyday, but enough that it's worthwhile to take advantage of it. What do you see around you, that you may not have looked at for a while?

FREE e-book "The Art of Health" for limited time (10/6-10/10)

Check out this FREE e-book of "The Art of Health" by Aarti Patel, N.D. from 10/6--10/10! Click on the link below:

 

Free e-book "The Art of Health"

 

Inside this book you'll find:

• A different approach toward chronic hard-to-treat symptoms
• How to pay better attention to the body and its signals
• Why chronic symptoms are often related to one another
• Tips for choosing long-term health instead of quick fixes
• The power of the mind in supporting real health
• The part that fear plays in health
• Why labels in health care can be limiting
• How to picture and live the health that you want
  ...and more

 

11 Story Fall: A Collection of Short Stories

Introducing "11 Story Fall: A Collection of Short Stories," a new book available for free today and tomorrow on Amazon. Written by Aarti Patel and Jason Petersen. Please check it out here, and any reviews are appreciated!

"There's no easy way to put the human dilemma. We strive for perfection, and we also want to live our lives. But really, the two are mutually exclusive. All around us we see ideals erected on pedestals, while we stand below and look up reverently at them. Who raises those unblemished falsities of life up there? We do—not nature—and it drives us nuts.

Each of these eleven short stories explores this theme. The lead characters are struggling not with trying to find themselves, but rather with facing a society hell bent on stripping them of who they already are. This conflict is especially real in the modern world. These eleven stories are a present day nose dive off those pedestals."

Enjoy Not Knowing

When the end of the year rolls around, our minds may hover around the fact that we don't know exactly what we'll be up to this time next year. Uh oh, that feeling creeps in of not knowing everything! The ability to plan for what comes next can only take us so far in life, and the uncertainty of the future can make us feel hesitant to initiate new changes. Some of those are needed changes!

The truth is, you've never known it all. Your decisions haven't all been based on planning each event in advance. There is a natural flow to life that offers us challenges that we can handle at each point in life. Staying open to uncertainty--of not knowing--can actually be rewarding and doesn't have to feel dreadful. Just remember that planning, and anticipating, and trying to know, and writing on a calendar, and trying to predict can't and doesn't always apply when the moment arrives. Each moment is unique, and like wild horses these moments can't be tamed so easily.

So enjoy what you don't know! You're not the only one who doesn't know, everyone experiences this feeling at different times in life. Give yourself a break and let yourself off the hook when your mind starts to demand, "But I have to know now!" Tell yourself, no---life is richer than having to know everything all the time.

Start It and Finish It

Have you ever started something and lost momentum toward finishing it about halfway through?

In today's world, it can be easy to get the ball rolling on a project or activity, only to fizzle out in excitement after a few weeks or months. Our attention is constantly pulled this way, and pushed that way. With the growth of social media and reliance on internet, distractions can make it challenging to stick with it. Though we're in the moment when starting an activity, this moment may pass by too quickly and seem irrelevant after a while. What's the trade-off in not following through with what you start?

"Following through" is an expression that comes up in sports a lot. Whether you're swinging at a baseball, tennis ball, or golf ball, unless you follow through with your motion and put your whole body and focus into what you're doing, the end result risks being a letdown. When you commit to your action and follow through completely, you've tried your best and may be surprised at just how much momentum and strength you can put behind your swing. The same goes for those things we wish to pursue in any area of life. Starting it, sticking with it, and finishing (or following through on) it can feel very rewarding and healthy. Not doing so can leave a unsatisfying dot, dot, dot at the end of what we do.

Beware of all the clutter that may come your way that tells you it's not worth finishing what you start. No matter how big the world feels in its apparent connectedness, you still have the space around you in your own life in which to do what you want. No matter how much the information on a screen proclaims its importance, you probably have things you've started in your own life that could feel even more substantial and satisfying if pursued further.

Are there areas of your life where you'd like to follow through more? Put that extra umph behind your swing and go for it!