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Why don't we do what we should?

johanna1604


Over 80% of people with lifestyle diseases are choosing to die rather than to change their ways. This sounds terrible doesn’t it?


There’s been a couple of different studies asking people this question who have e.g. Diabetes and other lifestyle diseases, and they choose not to change (diet and lifestyle.)


People find it so difficult to change, that they’d rather coast into an early death, rather than shake things up and make the change.


But why can't we change?


There are very clear reasons why we do the things that we do.  There are also very clear reasons, which may not be obvious, where we simply won’t change. 


We know what to do, but many of us simply won’t do it.  People say ‘I want to lose weight’  or ‘I want to get healthy’ but they won’t take the simple steps, to actually make that possible.

What we’re talking about here is a bigger conversation and many an instance where a ‘diet’ won’t work for us. 


There’s such deep rooted issues and events, pains and traumas within us, that it’s not as simple as ‘do this and then you’ll be skinny’ or ‘do this and then you’ll be healthy.’

It really runs much deeper than that. 


The word ‘transformation’ gets thrown around a lot too, but a transformation in our health will only happen if we work on the entire picture of our lives.


Meaning: Don’t seek to disregard everything you’ve been through and everything that has got you here.  Instead try to understand it.  Try to understand who you and what has made you this way.  Big question right?  Of course!


But change is much easier when we go into a deeper level of ourselves.  You can start this by:


Ask yourself  – What makes really makes you happy?

Where did you actually lose touch with who you are?  You may think ‘I know perfectly who I am thanks very much!’  But we automatically defend ourselves often due to fear of uncovering the truth.  But it’s in this truth where lies a golden nougat!


Why have we forgotten what things  bring us happiness and joy?  Too busy and priorities change right?  Women who devote their lives to their families in such a selfless and total way, and forget themselves in the process, often have no idea anymore what makes them happy.

So unlocking this realisation again, is part of the puzzle with their current health struggles. I see this time and time again, in private consultations with women.


Much of the reason for this, is due to us being conditioned by all the ‘shoulds’ that are pushed onto us by society.  We should do and be what is expected of us.  To finish grade 12, go to university, have the perfect job, the perfect family, the perfect life.


There’s so much conditioning to create us as  ‘all the same’ – but only, we’re not all the same.  And this is how we lose touch with our unique ‘selves.’ Industrialization doesn’t want us to be unique, rather it wants us to form the army of a country’s workforce.


These shoulds condition us so much, that we think ‘yeah that’s what I need to do.’  And we’ve become so busy trying to ‘be’ who they want us to be, that we forget who we are.

So we’ve kind of created all of these ‘voids’ or parts of us that are missing, like you have a house with all of these rooms in it that you’ve closed the door to.  And you have no idea what’s in that room anymore!


A simple awareness of just the above… can really help you, when you’re addressing your overall health.

But, how do we integrate this into our lives?


Since there’s a total connection between the body and the mind, just understanding your nutrition, may not get your health across the line.  There’s often something much deeper here, that we need to look at alongside our nutrition.


We can be prescribed a diet to follow, but often we don’t follow it.  Why?  Why… if we have all the answers, do we not follow it?


Self Sabotage could be part of the answer


Our beliefs can create these self sabotaging habits that many of us have.  Because our beliefs today, are the events that happened to us in our past, the emotions that we felt from those evens and the explanation that we gave them.


And these emotions, if from a negative event, are where we start to embody our traumas.  These often ‘old’ emotions are what today, triggers the biological reactions and pathways in our thinking right now. We also have a ‘negativity bias,’ which means:


We’re trained to believe the worse and then we’ll spend the rest of our lives, looking for evidence to back it up.

So what we need to do, is think back to when these beliefs were formed and start changing them.  A kind of updating of our old belief systems.  Give the events in your lives a new explanation if you need to.


This is not easy and it can be really scary for some. Most of us have spent our entire adult lives trying to numb the feelings from past traumas.


But you can start here, this is your first step:


When you next have a strong feeling around something, ask yourself this simple question without trying to find fault, without beating yourself up, just ask yourself:

“I wonder why I feel like that about ______?’

This allows you to just go back into your life in the least threatening way. Go inwards – goodness knows we spend so much time externally, when everything we need is right within us.


Nature is an amazing thing and think of all the times you’ve been amazed by nature.  How a tree’s trunk crinkles like skin where it bends or how animals learn to survive in a drought.  A human being is as equally amazing and complicated and there is a reason for everything.


When you start becoming the observer of yourself, rather than simply reacting at a surface level in your life, you will up the anti on what it’s like, being a ‘human being.’


We’ve carried a lot of ‘stuff’ around for so long and there’s often a need for forgiveness.  Having a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.  It’s never really going to work out for you.


This all takes time.  It won’t happen overnight and given that getting healthy or losing weight is not JUST about your diet,  this kind deeper level self ‘stuff’ is a large part of what we do inside Empowered Women’s Health to free ourselves up from our past a little.


Then, we can not only know ‘what’ to do… but we’ll actually remove the barriers and limitations we put on ourselves which prevent us from actually taking action!


I hope this helps you 🙂


P.S. For information please email me here: johanna@johannaanning.com.au

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