Sometimes you see or hear something, and it simply does not register. I have heard the saying, “you reap what you sow” at least a thousand times. It was not until recently that I connected that to my health and quality of life.

WHAT WE SOW IN OUR LIVES IMPACTS OUR TOTAL HEALTH

Think about this for a second, every time you CHOOSE one thing over another, you are sowing seeds in your life and your TOTAL HEALTH. If you continually and consistently choose unhealthy, you will reap an unhealthy life. Hard as this is for you to accept, you are causing disease and poor quality of life by the seeds you plant in your life.

YOUR HEALTH REFLECTS THE QUALITY OF SEEDS YOU SOWED

With rare instances, most of us are born as healthy babies. We get or become unhealthy because of our environment, sometimes beyond our control, or directly by the choices we make. In other words, we are by our choices impacting our TOTAL HEALTH and quality of life daily. What you sow today by the choices you make will bear healthy fruit or diseased fruit.

If you are struggling with weight issues, diabetes, elevated blood pressure, cardiac diseases, etc., it is probably because you consistently sowed unhealthy seeds. The choice you make to have the coca cola and pizza every night for dinner caused disease in your life and impacted your quality of life.

The choice you make consistently to take the elevator instead of walking up a flight of stairs has contributed to your weight gain. Folks, I am not exempt, I consistently chose to eat cookies and ice cream, instead of dealing with my emotional and mental issues. Food became my default/automatic habit the minute I felt an ounce of dis-ease or discomfort. I sowed seeds of highly processed carbohydrates, guess what, I reaped disease.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO IMPROVE YOUR TOTAL HEALTH

Despite your current issues, you can still sow seeds of health. First you have to till the soil.

1. Clean up your emotional landscape
2. Renovate or remodel your mental framework
3. Know that you have the POWER to change the choices you make
4. Believe you can make the healthy changes

Then you have to change your attitude of I can’t do this, or I don’t have enough. Begin with making SMALL but powerful changes.

1. Accept that you have made some poor choices that have negatively impacted your health and quality of life.
2. Forgive and love yourself despite these mistakes.
3. Learn to BE PATIENT.
4. Practice mindfulness [every time you are about to make a CHOICE, ask this question: “INSERT YOUR NAME, is this action I am planning to choose going to move me CLOSER to my objective or take me away from my goal or milestone?”

USE THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR SUCCESS

Folks, dieting does not work by itself. You set yourself up for failure when you think diet. In your mind, you are already thinking when I get off this diet, I will go back to what I did before. Instead understand that you are CHANGING your lifestyle permanently. Recognize that you will be tweaking it along the way until you find the style that fits with your goal or objective. In other words, this is how you will live for the rest of your life.

I still have cookies and ice cream, but rarely and only because that is what I truly desire. I don’t choose ice cream and cookies when I am empty of love and full of H.A.T.E. I am mindful that I am choosing cookies and ice cream because I want a bit of junk food. Think PROGRESS and not perfection, lose the all-or-nothing thinking, and please do not over generalize. You will change when you believe you can change.