Health: An Ongoing Process

Good for you for wanting to take the steps toward being healthier! Now that you have started to figure out what motivates you, you need to come to the realization that there really never is an ending point to staying motivated to better health. This is something that you will work on for the rest of your life, but rest assured that the more you work on it now, the easier it will be to work on it later. After all, if you set a basis of good health relatively early in life you won't be struggling with trying to start up a healthy regime when you are much older (and prone to injuries and various physical limitations). Stay motivated, because you are in this for the long haul.

YOUR HEALTH: BETTER BUT NOT PERFECT

Celebrate every little victory to stay motivated. What would make you happy with regard to your health? Would you like to be able to walk a certain number of miles without feeling as though you might pass out? Would you like to wake up in the morning and feel fantastic and well-rested? Take the time right now to figure out what goals you have that will make you ecstatic when you achieve them, and then keep the list that you compose because you'll need this list later so you can have some celebration every time a goal is met. It doesn't matter what your goals are; they can be as specific as a certain number of laps to swim or as vague as a feeling of contentment with your health status.

Whatever the goals, you should have some sort of celebration every time a goal is crossed off your list. This might mean that you allow yourself an indulgence with every achieved goal, or maybe you actually have a regular celebration with friends that you conduct every time another goal is met. Whatever the method of celebration, constantly acknowledging your small victories will keep you motivated while also reminding you how far you have come. For example, if you have a fairly extensive list of goals then imagine how great it will be to see the goals crossed off, one by one, until the day comes that you can cross the very last item off the list and have a really big celebration!

You can't reach perfection. There is certainly something frustrating about the efforts involved in trying to get healthier and that's mainly because there really is no stopping point when you can decide that you're healthy enough and that you don't have to try anymore. It's an ongoing process. No matter how much you achieve, and how healthy you get, you will probably always want to work toward getting just a little healthier.

Remember that you are probably your own worst critic, so even if you painstakingly work toward a healthier body for several years you may still look in the mirror and sigh because you simply aren't satisfied with what you see. It's completely normal to not be one hundred percent happy with your body, whether that means you don't like the way you look or you don't like the way you feel. As long as you aren't completely miserable with the status of your health after you have worked hard for some time to improve it then you shouldn't fret too much about the fact that you still may feel as though there are more improvements to be made.

The trick is to recognize and understand that there is no way that you will probably ever reach perfection when it comes to your health. You will still get an occasional cold and there may be days when you just feel plain lazy. This happens to even the healthiest of folks. You simply cannot expect to achieve some perfect state of health, but you certainly can expect that your body will reward you for all your efforts. Try to remember that it's going to be an ongoing quest for the rest of your life, but it does get easier and easier to maintain a healthy lifestyle the longer you do it. The hardest part is in the beginning, so once you get over that hurdle you can stay motivated knowing that you have already done the hardest part of the process.

It's a good thing that you can't reach the top. If there was some sort of pinnacle that you could attain with your health to where you would be magically pronounced perfectly healthy with no room for improvement then you would probably stop trying to improve your health once you reached this point. Your quest for better health should be an ongoing quest that never really ends.

There are always ways that you can improve your health, so for this reason it's a very good thing that there is no magical point where you get to stop trying to get healthier. You should find yourself constantly revising your health plan, whether that means adding new exercises to your regime or exploring different types of health plans. If you reach a point where you feel as though you're doing everything right and your health status is at its absolute best it has ever been then this is probably the time when you will feel comfortable trying new things that you never might have considered before.

Maybe you'll decide that now is the time to try some deep-tissue massage to see if it helps you feel more comfortable after a tough week. You may be delighted to find that this type of treatment not only helps you feel better but it actually makes you feel healthier too. You might never have considered trying something like deep-tissue massage or some other treatment if you had never reached the point of needing to try something new as a result of your healthy status. When you reach this point you can focus your motivation toward trying new things. This is the time when your quest for better health gets really fun because you aren't focusing so much on getting to a point where you can climb a flight of stairs, but instead on what new and interesting things you can do keep yourself healthy and interested in what you are doing.

IF YOU START TO SLIP

Expect some slip ups. When you reach a point where you can see and feel a definite difference in how you feel then it can sometimes be a little difficult to remember how far you have come. Sometimes people simply forget all the hard work that went into getting to the point where they wind up, and this thinking can sometimes lead to these folks slipping back into old habits (eating junk food, not exercising, et cetera) and before they know it the numbers on the scale start to climb back up or colds or the flu start popping up more often than they should. For this reason you should actually expect to occasionally slip up. As long as you recognize what is going on, and you take the steps to correct it and get back on your healthy track, then these slips ups once in a while can be just a normal part of what you deal with.

Nobody is perfect, so you can't expect to stay on course one hundred percent of the time. You should always pay attention to your body so you can realize when a slip up is happening. If part of your health concern is your weight then be sure to monitor your weight on a regular basis. If part of your health concern is you immune system's functioning then you may want to keep a record of illnesses that you encounter because when you notice a leap in the instances of illness then this will tip you off that something isn't quite right and you need to address the situation.

Don't panic. Slips up will happen, especially if living a healthy lifestyle is a relatively new way of life for you. You can't expect that you will always be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle through every single instance for the rest of your life. For example, you will inevitably encounter stressful or traumatic situations which will make you want to sit in a recliner and eat boxes of cookies (or some other equally self destructive behavior. Or perhaps you become so busy with a new work or school schedule that you have a hard problem devoting the same amount of time to your healthy regimen that you once devoted to it. These things happen.

Don't panic if you one day realize that you aren't doing things the way you should and that you are losing your progress. You should be glad that you recognized the problem before it got too out of control and you lost all the ground you achieved. Instead of panicking you can pat yourself on the back for stopping the slip up before it got any worse. Do what you have to do to get back on track and don't get too frustrated with yourself. You are human, after all, and humans have the funny knack for self-sabotage. You can also be glad that humans have the ability to correct their mistakes and to actively seek ways to better themselves.

Make sure that you are charting your progress. If you know that your quest for better health will most probably result in a lot of outward physical changes for you then you may want to consider taking some pictures of yourself and keeping a log. Similar to the "before" and "after" photos that you see in ads for diet products, you can use these photos as a great motivational tool. Any time you feel as though you aren't making progress you can flip through your picture book and see that, yes, you are indeed making progress every single month.

Charting your progress does not necessarily mean that you must keep a photographic log of the changes in your body. You can keep a journal where you chronicle how you feel on a day to day basis and use this as proof that a healthier lifestyle makes you feel better overall. If you prefer, you can actually grab some graph paper and keep an actual chart of your progress based on whatever your defining criteria is, whether it's weight, blood pressure, or whatever other factor you want to base your health improvements on. It can be so incredibly motivating to take a look at what your starting point was and compare it to how far you have come because you will feel empowered as well as accomplished, and that's might motivating.

DON'T FORGET YOUR STARTING POINT

Remember how far you have come. If you chart your progress (as suggested above) then you shouldn't have much of a problem remembering what your starting point was. Not everyone thinks to keep detailed records of their starting point, however, so that makes it important for you to remember exactly how far you have come. Try not to sugarcoat your starting point; if you began as a flabby, unhealthy mess then don't allow time to morph your starting point into someone who just needed to get a little healthier. You know the old saying those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. This is certainly applicable to someone who has worked hard to achieve better health. If you forget how miserable you once were (if you were indeed miserable) then you won't remember why it is so important to maintain your newfound healthier lifestyle. Try to use your starting point as a motivational tactic: remember that you don't want to wind up back where you started.

You can wind up back where you started. This can happen to people who have the best of intentions but who simply do not maintain the many changes they made when they were attempting to improve their health. Sometimes changes made when improving health can make a person feel so great and so healthy that they simply feel as though there is no way on God's Green Earth that they could even go back to the way they once were. The truth of the matter is that it can happen, and it happens quite often. Unless you maintain all the changes you made - and continue to make new changes so your body does not fall into a rut - you will eventually start to slip right back into your bad habits.

Your bad habits will inevitably lead to your health deteriorating again, and before you know it you're not only back where you started but you're there with the full knowledge of how much hard work it takes to get back to the point that you achieved. That can be a daunting situation to be in. This situation can be avoided by staying motivated and never allowing yourself to get fooled into thinking that you don't need to constantly maintain a healthy lifestyle. Being healthy can be hard work, but if you remember how far you have come then you may be able to avoid falling right back into old habits.

Find new motivations. Your goals and motivations are probably going to change as you get healthier. The idea of working towards running a mile without passing out may seem absurd after you have been at it for some time because as your health improves your body will be able to do more and more. Don't be afraid to revise your goals as you go along, but be sure that you also keep your mind open to new and interesting motivations too. You may be delighted to realize that motivations that may have repulsed you before (a rafting expedition, a tub of protein shake powder, an appointment with a chiropractor) are just the type of things you need now to keep you going. As your health status changes, so will the things that keep you motivated. Always be on the lookout for new and interesting motivations and rewards you can use when you cross another goal off your list.

Better health is not a destination, but more of an ongoing project. This doesn't have to be a difficult journey, but it can at times seem like you will never quite get to the point you want to get to. You will be much better off if you are able to figure out what motivates you. The more motivated you are, the more likely you will be able to keep on course with all the goals for your healthier lifestyle that you have set for yourself.

CONCLUSION

You might think that better health is enough motivation in and of itself, and that you won't necessarily need any other motivation in order to actively pursue better health. Try telling this to yourself when someone hands you a huge slab of birthday cake, or when you just can't work up the gumption to get through an exercise routine. The truth of the matter is that motivation can be a tricky thing…you may feel as though you need to bribe yourself in order to keep going and, although this may be somewhat true, you should remember that the ultimate goal is to get healthier. If you need to bribe yourself a little then what harm can you do?

The point is to get healthy, and if you can figure out what motivations work for you then you're well on your way to becoming successful in your quest for better health... Just make sure your motivation for better health isn't slabs of cake or missed workouts.

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