As I sit to write these blogs I realize and know that I’d like to be real with you. I’d like to be transparent with you. I’d like to be vulnerable with you. I think you will find that I am more like you than I am different when it comes to taking care of my health. I’m not perfect. But I am passionate about truth. Truth in all things, but especially health and wellness. I’m passionate about not just keeping those truths to myself, but to share them with others. That’s what drives me. That’s what I believe God has called me to do – just as some are called to share the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (and if you are a Christian, as I am, we are ALL called to do this), I am called to share the truth about wellness. But unless I am real, and transparent, and vulnerable with you, the truths that I share may not be received like they should.
My health and taking charge of it has been a journey – it didn’t just happen overnight. The habits I have created for myself did not happen quickly, but gradually, over time. So, if you are desiring to take better control of your health, the first thing I would like to encourage you to do is be patient with yourself and with the truths.
I was visiting with one of my closest friends of 40+ years not too long ago. She had overcome breast cancer several years back and I want to first commend her for truly making greater efforts to eating healthier. But just like my friend, I think we all can get caught up in the weeds with the minute details of “eat this, don’t eat that” and on top of that, this mantra changes from one week to the next. We could drive ourselves crazy if others don’t do it first. Let me explain what I’m talking about and use her as an example.
As I said, she has made great strides in being much more conscious of her food choices. Apparently, she had found what she felt was a pretty healthy snack. But one of her younger colleagues (my friend is a nurse in the ER) told her that particular snack was not a good choice because it was made with seed oils. My friend wanted to throw her hands up in frustration and state “what can I eat?!” And of course, wanted to just throw the whole idea of eating healthier out the window because of one colleague’s comment about a minute detail of one food she was eating. I can appreciate her frustration! It can be overwhelming when you are hearing contradictory information from so many different sources. But our health is not like that. First of all, we are all not alike – our body’s needs are different, we are at different levels of health and/or disease, the availability of foods isn’t the same for all of us, our age of our bodies are different, our financial abilities are different – so many different factors that have to be taken into consideration.
My Dad wasn’t necessarily a perfectionist, but his way was always the only way that was right. Try growing up with that! So, I have adopted a saying of grace a long time ago, and that saying is this: “There’s more than one way to do something right!” Be encouraged by that.
But back to the lesson of my story. I always talk about health as a whole – mental (time management, budget, career, goal-setting, our purpose in life etc.), emotional, physical and spiritual. – this is wholistic health. We should always be striving to first maintain balance, but also to determine which quadrant of this health pie does the root cause of our health problem lie? Just because we have a physical ailment – in my friend’s case, cancer – doesn’t necessarily mean the primary root (not the little minute details) lies in the physical part of the pie. As a practitioner and her friend of 40+ years, I was quickly, and to me very obviously, be able to discern where the root cause of her cancer lied – and that was in the mental part of the health pie. She is a Type A personality, has been a driven, hard worker for as long as I’ve known her, raised 3 beautiful daughters, but not without challenges with each of them at one time or another in their growing up years (like most people), has a husband who is legally blind and therefore limited with some of the normal responsibilities a married couple shares – like driving. But it is her work where I believe that the majority of her stress comes from – especially over these more recent years. Just like a lot of nurses, she has put in more than her 40 hours of work a week, night shift, weekends, last minute call ins – and then in the ER to boot!
This ladies and gentlemen, is where the root of her health challenges, cancer in particular, I believe lies. She was back to work before the chemo ever got cleared of her body. Really, no actual healing time for her body. Keeping in mind, chemo and radiation or any other drug is not healing, but very, very toxic and harming to the body. This is extremely stressful to the body, especially when you add up the years, and years of this kind of work life creates. Where her focus needs to be in restoring her body fully back to good health, is to start exploring her retirement options – which they are. This is far more important for her than worrying about whether her healthy snack was made with seed oils. So, don’t get caught up in the minute details just because the latest “Women’s Day” magazine, or a co-worker shares their latest, untrained knowledge with you!
To help determine where your roots might lie, I encourage you to sign up for my monthly newsletter https://jackiemckool.com/#newsletter, and pick up a copy of my book “Are You Being Deceived About True Wellness, Unveiling the Confusion, Myths and Deceptions that Prevent You from Achieving True Health” https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8RFBX87/ – you just might have an “ah ha” moment!