Keys to Good Health

Categories: Blog, Podcast Apr 01, 2018

I’ve probably asked this before, but have you ever been in a hurry to leave your house but could not find your car keys? You were cutting it close on time for an appointment or job you had to be at, and now you can’t find your car keys increasing the likelihood that you will indeed be late? You searched, or ransacked, through your entire house only to discover your keys were in your pocket or worse, they were in your hand? And then you feel like a complete Ninnymuggins.

I think having good health is a lot like this. We all want good health, we were all made to have good health, and yet many of us spend a great deal of time (years, life...) looking for it when we are holding the keys to it all along.

Spoiler alert: You already have the keys to good health. Stop looking for them. You have them.

Now here is the News alert: Just because you have the keys to good health doesn’t mean you will use them.

You have the keys. You have what you are looking for. But that doesn’t mean you will use the keys to open the doors. Notice, I’m using the plural form of keys and doors. There are more than one and each of them have to be used. It’s very simple to use them, but it certainly isn’t easy. Let’s take a look at the keys...

Keys to Health

1) Move the way you were designed: breathe with your diaphragm, activate your vestibular system, and engage in your gait pattern. This is the first key to good health and it is perhaps the simplest and easiest key to turn. Simply move how you were made to move and your body and mind will respond accordingly. For a while...

2) Smile and be grateful: At the beginning of each day, you should smile and be grateful for another day. You can breathe, you can blink, and you can think. Those alone are enough to be grateful for. Gratitude and a merry heart are the best medicine you could ever give yourself. This is the second key and it may actually be more powerful than the first. It may also be much harder to turn this key as this key requires that we choose to be grateful every day, in every moment, regardless of how we feel or what’s going on around us.

3) Let go of fear: Many of us keep fear locked up inside of ourselves. We don’t know we keep it locked away, but we do. We may call it stress, anxiety, anger, or bitterness. Heck, we may even consider fear healthy and label it as “being rational.” But make no mistake about it, whatever you call it, however it hides itself, fear is the root of all sickness, sadness and depression. Fear will destroy your health and rob your life. Yet most of us keep it safely secure and locked away inside of us and it eats us from the inside out.

This is the third key and the trickiest to use. We must turn the key, not to go into the room we keep fear, but to let fear get out so we can let it go. Using this key takes practice; practice in the form of showing up every day with the key to make sure there is nothing hiding behind the door. This kind of practice, showing up every day with the key to let fear go, builds a special type of strength known as courage.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying the third key to good health is facing your fears. I’m saying the third key to good health is letting go of your fears. There is a big difference. Facing your fear keeps it locked away inside of you and letting your fear go simply gets rid of it. Turn the key, let it go....

These are the keys to good health: moving the way we made to move, smiling and being grateful, and letting go of fear so we can be courageous. These keys are simple to use, but they may not be so easy to use. They require choice, action and diligence. And that’s the rub.

You hold the keys to good health. Quit looking for them as if they weren’t in your grasp. Acknowledge that you have them, but use them. Choose to use them, put them in the door and turn the key, every. single. day. Be healthy. Be strong. Be grateful. Be courageous.

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