So what is your big reason, to get up every morning and do what you do?
Whether it be our job, our business or running the family home… I strongly believe we need to know our big ‘why’ rather than just thinking ‘we have to.’
Particularly at this time of the year, we tend to think back over what we’ve accomplished, taking stock of both the good and the bad. Do we need to make changes? Or do we just need to ask ourselves – Is our work aligned with our values and what is most important to us?
This alignment, I truly believe is the only way we get that big old sense of fulfillment from knowing that we’re on the right path.
For me, I often get asked why I’m a Nutritionist and why do I give so much free information away?
So my big ‘why’ came from as a kid. Growing up I witnessed 3 extraordinary women, from 3 different generations, fiercely caring for their families and living on the land.
Firstly my grandmother, who was blessed with 102 years of life. She married young and moved onto a large isolated cattle station, where she devoted the next some 60 years of her life selflessly caring for her family. The second extraordinary woman being my mother, who lived(s) a similar sequence of events, however a major difference was that she’s part of the next generation and therefore ‘thinking and attitudes’ became more evolved thank goodness!
The third extraordinary women, my sister, she’s also followed the same path as my mum and grandmother, living and breathing ‘the land.’ She’s completely devoted to her young family and endeavors to protect her children from what often can be a very harsh and isolated existence.
But, at the same time, having grown up with my sister, I too lived within the endless and exquisite beauty of the land that surrounded us every day. That appreciation of nature and the bush I know, is forever etched into our souls. It’s something that’s difficult to explain, unless you’ve experienced it for yourself.
For women living out there, it’s this beauty and space, that a lot of the time makes up for the vast isolation, loneliness and a huge gap in health resources available to them.
Thankfully, women on the land now and their city sisters, are becoming more and more connected with each other, largely because of the internet (though not without its problems.)
So my ‘evolvement’ through my health career, has been tremendously guided by the ‘story’ of these 3 women.
All who are (and were in my grandmother’s case) totally devoted to the welfare of their families (like all women) and sadly many times, putting their own health and well being last. I will never know what my grandmother went through all those years ago as a woman, but I’m guessing at the core of it, they were very similar issues to what I hear from speaking to women in my practice. We are just so lucky that now we have the ‘help’ and more people to listen to us when we need to talk.
So even though this realization for me started with these three women in my life, over the years my reach has extended out to ALL woman! No matter where she lives… on the land, in a city, or even in another country, we’re all pretty much the same! We have the same needs and the same frustrations, particularly when it comes to our health and well being.
The individual-ness comes into how we treat our health and how we fix us. We may have all got here by a similar path (stress, ignoring symptoms, putting others first) but our solutions can often be very unique and individual.
So as a nutritionist, each women I help today, whether she be a patient in my clinic, a member in my face book group or through my ‘soon to be’ new resource ‘Empowered Women’s Health’ I feel like I’m helping these 3 women also!
They remain the cornerstone for my WHY.
So tell me why do you do what you do? I’d love to hear 🙂
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