87. My focus this week is health. I am trying to think myself into being a healthier person.
I know I can. I know I can. I know I can understand my body. I know I can out think the food companies and create a reality that gives me joy.
Once again I have asked Chat GPT to tidy up my thoughts and add some sub-headings ideas. It fixed some grammar but I had to change some of the sub-headings. I hope you can feel how hard I think about life and how seriously I take my challenge to be a good human being. I think I have a pretty good balance between looking out for myself and being a useful part of a community. I will not be swept aside by ego driven people or become like them in my struggle to survive.
Annoyed at the Fragility of my Health
Health is such a fragile thing. I believe that my health is deeply connected to the world around me. After being sick with a big city virus that my body had never encountered before, I feel both annoyed and frustrated.
Annoyed, because I should have taken more notice of the moon phase and planned my travel around the full moon. I know my body is at its lowest energy at the new moon, but being practical, I ignored it. I don’t believe the moon has magical powers, but its phases do seem to match my monthly energy cycle.
A few years ago, I noticed that my energy seemed to rise and fall in rhythm with the moon phases. It makes sense that even with lower oestrogen levels, I might still experience a natural cycle within my body.
I don’t feel any spiritual connection to the moon — I simply observe that my energy aligns with it. So why don’t I take it more seriously? I think I will from now on. I hate being sick.
Frustrated
I’m also frustrated because I wore my mask nearly all the time on the train and used alcohol wash constantly, yet I still caught something. That makes me think it was a new virus, something my body hadn’t met before. Thankfully, it didn’t turn out to be a bad flu.
For the last six years or so, I’ve been taking immune support supplements when I travel to visit Mum. Before that, I often came home with a sore throat or bad head cold — once, even a strange, moving back pain that lingered for days. Since starting the supplements, I’ve managed to avoid getting sick for years.
Food for profit rather than nourishment
Are you keeping up with the latest research on inflammation? There’s so much now showing that sugar is a demon. Or rather, the big companies that load their products with sugar are the demons. Our physical and mental well-being are nothing to them. Profit is the master.
I’m a sugar addict. I generally eat healthy, but I always add a biscuit or two each day and love my weekly coffee and cake. I try to avoid processed sweets as much as possible and have fruit. But even that is full of fructose that is bad for us in large quantities.
Recently, I’ve been putting Flora plant cream, made from lentils, on my fruit. I couldn’t figure out why I liked it so much — until I read the ingredients: sugar and modified corn starch. I wish I could eat dairy. At least cream is just cream.
I listened to a podcast recently that linked sugar to brain inflammation, anxiety, and depression. It made me grateful that I feel happy and contented with my life, which means I must be nourishing my body and brain well enough to avoid mental darkness.
It saddens me to see how many people struggle with anger, hate, and depression. I’m sure our modern diet plays a huge role in this.
Living with Intention
Apart from eating well, I’m doing what I can to help others choose positivity and fulfillment. My latest efforts focus around creating gemstone bracelets with accompanying affirmations and journals that I am selling at my market stall.
Eating healthy and thinking positive thoughts takes conscious effort, but I know that my health affects my mind, and my thoughts shape how I act and feel and I want others to know how I work at positive thinking.
Gratitude and Reality
There’s so much to learn about life, and our brains are such strong gatekeepers that each of us lives in our own version of reality. What I believe to be true may differ completely from someone else’s truth.
In my reality, I am constantly grateful to be part of this extraordinary, random unfolding of life on Earth. Beyond our evolutionary drive to survive and reproduce, it gives me joy to know that I can choose my purpose in life. It gives me a good feeling to know that I am responsible for how I act and feel.
A good diet and positive thinking can take us a long way towards a joyful life and combined with all the medical help available to us today I am hopeful that humans won’t destroy themselves in the future. I can only think positive thoughts about our future because that is what I have trained myself to do.
Gratitude and hope are wonderful things to work on.
Cheers,
Val
Thinking yourself into good health is something that I value and aspire to as well.
When I go on a train or in a public place for a while I not only wash my hands, etc. afterwards but I suck a disinfectant throat lozenge too. Personal hygiene and diet are important every day.
But so is my sense of personal competence. My imminent activity is to undertake a two week driving holiday in England (I live in France) to visit friends and family in different places around the country. I leave tomorrow. I travel alone since my husband died 4 years ago, but we always used to enjoy these kinds of travels together.
This holiday also gives me a surfeit of social activity before the onset of Winter. The dark, cold months are full of solitude where I live. The memories of times spent with friends and family tide me over till the more social activity of the Spring time. Meanwhile, I have the company of my cats and dog, horses and chickens. These family members are responsible for my physical well-being as their care involves quite a bit of exercise.
BTW I am 87 years old.