I
believe the reason it is so important for health and wellness professionals to
develop psychologically, spiritually and physically is because in the business
of helping others recover from falls or accidents, we too must be aware of all
the possibilities of treatment. If we
are not aware or in touch with all aspects of our own integral health, how can
we be of any influence or offer any advice to those who still suffer and don’t
understand why. I think integral health
practices are more beneficial in the psychological realm only because that
focuses on the brain whereas in physical therapy, the focus is on the physical
which again, is controlled by the brain.
Really all three components play a part in integral health and recovery
since you need all three intact and working properly in order to help someone
else reach the ultimate goal of human flourishing and healing. In order to reach the final destination of
wholeness, happiness and healing we must be able to integrate all three of
these specific areas into a treatment plan.
We have already determined if one of these aspects is off, the others won’t
work in its place, it is not like a sense that was lost so the other senses
take over or become stronger in its place, this is an independent and vital
component that must be able to thrive on its own.
The
areas I need to develop to achieve my goals that I’ve set for myself over the
next few years are in spiritual and physical.
I truly believe that because my spiritual component is not functioning
completely right now, it is affecting my physical abilities and
motivation. As I said earlier, if one is
off, then they all are off. I think that
if I can either commit to working out, perhaps it will give me the drive and
energy needed to get back in touch with my spiritual aspect. I still don’t completely agree that we have
to be around others or in an organized setting to get what we need from our
higher power; I do agree that we need others like minded to encourage us to
grow and even challenge us to change. I
know that my relationship with God is different now, it changed, when my son
came back into my life, I felt something that I had never felt before, complete. Not saying I don’t need God in my life, I
very much do, however, I feel closer to wholeness now than I did last October
before I found my son and had contact with him.
Even if I don’t choose to involve myself around organized religion
again, I do have to go back to working out, that is a must. I don’t feel that as a Physical Therapist I
can set the example of being fit if I’m over weight. I know I need to lose at least sixty pounds
to feel good about myself in that aspect, only then will I feel happiness and
enable myself to flourish biologically.
I know I can do this; I just have to prioritize and make up a schedule
of when I’m going to work out and let nothing come between my schedule and my
normal responsibilities on a daily basis.
Every time I think about cancelling my membership, I visualize myself
walking into the gym, because you have to give written notice of cancellation,
and I can smell the way it smells in there, refreshing, clean and inviting. I know that I am not willing to cancel it
because that is giving up to me, that is saying I am not going to even try to
improve my physical condition; which is something I am not willing to say or
do. I think that right there, shows
there is a deep, inner desire to return to the gym soon, and even a longing, I
see myself going back even as early as next week.
The
way I have assessed my health in each domain is based on the information I have
learned in this course, by understanding the different realms, levels and every
aspect of integral healing I do believe these will be the guides I can use the
rest of my life to hold myself accountable.
The way I score my
wellness spiritually is rather low, perhaps a 5, simply because I haven’t been
to church in five months, which is a long time for me. The reason I stopped going was, when my son
was down here, he didn’t want to go, he only went once with me and that was
simply to make me happy. He is an
agnostic, which was rather disheartening to me, but I accept it because I love
him, and he accepts my beliefs in turn.
He made some pretty good arguments to me, some of which made me actually
question my beliefs, but in the end, I hold on to my relationship with God and have
no doubts about that aspect of it, while I may question the historical actions
of the church, which have been heinous even today, I don’t question the man I
follow, Jesus. I know why I am following
Him, I believe in what He did in His life, I believe in what He stands for, and
I love Him with all my heart. If the
church can no longer be the example I have a peace with, He can always be one. There was a lot of history I didn’t know
about or ever question before; my son of course, was more than happy to bring
all of it to my attention in hopes of winning me over to his point of
view. I listened with an open mind but
still don’t think giving all the credit of good or bad things to the “universe”
rather than to God and His plan and purpose for me. My son will give credit to the universe before
he will ever acknowledge the power coming from God, and it hurts me to think of
how lonely and difficult his life will be without help from above. He already believes he has to do everything
on his own, only after spending four months with me can he even call and ask me
for help when he needs it, other than that, he is determined to conquer this
world all by his self. I learned a long
time ago that I need help, I cannot do it all on my own, I will never be
perfect and nor will the world I live in be perfect so I might as well let the
one who is perfect handle everything for me.
My son believes he can make his world perfect and his self as well, that
will be a painful lesson for him to learn and accept failure to. I hope that I can be there for him when he
comes to this sad realization that it just isn’t ever going to happen, I hope I
can give him advice and hope that someone once gave me, reassuring me that it’s
ok not to be “the best” at everything, not to be perfect, to make mistakes so
that we can learn from them and move on.
I hope he will not see his self as a failure or not worth anything, but
see it as part of a journey, walking down the path to integral health instead
of a path of destruction. My words to
him will be that you can try to be the best at everything you do, but it’s ok
if you can’t, in the eyes of those who love you most, you will always be perfect
to them.
Physically
I rate myself even lower, at a 3 because I’m not doing anything to improve my
current condition of being overweight. I’m
not grossly overweight, but like I said earlier, I do need to lose at least
sixty pounds. I have not given up on
myself though, I do have the desire to go back into the gym, and I believe by
using visualization practices, I will be back there sooner than I know, every
day, my plan is to visualize myself driving to the gym and walking in, I get
excited just thinking about it right now, so I know I’ll be going soon.
Psychologically
I rate myself at a 10, the reason why is after spending two years in inner
healing, I resolved more than half my issues and forgave all those I needed to
forgive. I’m not saying I don’t have bad
days, I’m not saying I don’t think about committing suicide on occasion, but
the reason I rate myself a 10 is because even when I have those thoughts, I don’t
carry them out. Years ago, a thought like
that would come into my mind and I would be off to carry it out. I think that is the best success rate you can
give a two year program, not to mention that before I spent my life without an
ounce of self-worth, something I see in both of my sons now. I let people walk on me, reveled in being a
martyr, was addicted to people pleasing, and hated myself the entire time. Now, I have self-worth, I am valuable to
myself, I can say no to people, I can stand
up for myself, defend my opinions and choices to others even if I know they won’t
agree or like them. I can spend money on
myself occasionally rather than on others, I believe I deserve good things too,
I refuse to allow myself to be abused in any way, and I choose not to abuse
others because of my wounds. Joyce Meyer
said something once that has stuck with me, “Wounded people wound people” and
that is my motto; no longer wounded I don’t need to wound others. I’m not saying that I never hurt anyone’s
feelings, it happens, but I don’t set out to, that’s the difference. I’m not saying that I have “arrived” either;
I’m still on this journey to freedom, wholeness, happiness and health. I have finally come to the realization of
what I deserve and what I don’t deserve, and I don’t deserve to be used by
others, abused, manipulated or controlled.
I do deserve love, attention, compassion, true friendship, unconditional
love, loyalty, commitment and freedom to choose. I couldn’t have said that ten years ago, all
I thought I deserved was death and I set out to achieve that goal. What we believe determines our actions, it
sets us on a path to life or death, without the tools to know why we are
choosing either, we can never change the direction we are travelling nor can we
know the reason we are choosing to travel.
My plan to foster growth physically is to become
more aware of how I am eating and when, starts working out again, and continue
to treat myself to new clothes and keeping up my physical appearance on a daily
basis. The ways I do this now are by
getting my hair and eyebrows done every few weeks and dressing up when the
occasion arises. Psychologically I plan
to continue to foster my relationships with my sons, husband and others close
to me in my life. The ways I can do this is by staying in constant contact with
my oldest son, supporting him financially when I can, being there for my
younger son and helping him get on the path to independence by teaching him how
to manage his money and keep a checking account ledger. With regards to my
husband, just continuing to trust his judgment financially and include him in
decisions on how we spend our money. I
also am working on truly allowing him to be the head of the household by
handling issues with my younger son such as whether he moves out, the
conditions on his staying with us and the decision to move in March and not
take him with us. I think although that
will be a hard decision for me to rectify, I understand he is 18 years old and
needs to get out on his own two feet and experience what real life is like
without me around to do everything for him. Spiritually I plan to foster my relationship
with God by spending time completing a daily devotional every morning and contemplating
what that devotional means to me and ways I can incorporate it’s meaning into
my daily life. I accept that I cannot
convince my oldest son that having a relationship with God would benefit him,
however, perhaps by simply setting the example and letting him see how it works
in my favor will be convincing enough one day.
The
way I will assess my progress or lack of progress in the next six months will
be by writing down my goals and setting a time line that six months from now, I
will return to the list I made and see what items I can actually cross off as
completed. The strategies I can use to
assist in maintaining my long-term practices for health and wellness is to
simply continue to practice visualization techniques and meditate on where I am
now and where I want to be within six months.
Great job on you final project. Isn't it great to lay out goals? Now the key is that we follow through, right :)
ReplyDeleteHi Jada,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that health care professionals need to be aware of the treatments and familiar with them in order to be helpful in healing their patients. They need to experience the treatments themselves so they can understand what their patients are going through and empathize with them.
I can sympathize with you for questioning your beliefs. I was raised catholic, but after reading The DaVinci Code, I began to question the things I was raised to believe, because what is discussed in that book is not impossible. In the end, I concluded that there is a God, though I no longer agree with everything that the church teaches.
I can attest to the success of writing down goals. I keep a “to-do” list every day and I find that if I write things down, I am more likely to do them. As of recently, I have even gone so far as to schedule each task. For example, I’ll write that I am going to work on an assignment for this course from 6-7 pm, and work on an assignment for my other class from 7- 8 pm. Giving myself a time limit helps me focus on the work, but also keeps me from spending too much time on one thing so that I can do other things on my list as well.
Donna
Jada, great paper. I would say that when we take care of the spiritual then it gives the drive to care for improving the physical. I think the other way is backwards and is why America is so messed up. We focus way too much on the physical when in reality spiritual and psychological areas impact the physical greater than exercise does. I also noticed you said when you achieve weight loss through exercise, then you'll "feel happiness." What I'm about to share with you I want you to never forget because it can be very life changing. We can "act" our way into a feeling." In other words, many people live based on how they feel and wait and see how they feel to determine what they will do! Feelings are not the truth, they lie. That is why you'll hear people say to wait and let feelings subside before making an important decision. Divorce often happens as a result of living in "feeling mode." Our emotions will lineup with our thinking so it's more important I believe to get our thoughts right. I just had a rough day and know the best thing for me is to read scripture and speak it out to activate my faith because this will change how I feel about myself and situations. I would encourage you that even though we can connect with God without being involved at a church, He has a system He has set up for things to work best which involves bringing the right people into your life at the right time, so the right things start happening. I believe the church is where these kind of relationships can be birthed if we're seeking His ways of think, be, do. I do know that God works typically through people even though He can do miraculous healings, usually it's via connections with others that awesome things start happening in our life. On the physical side, have you ever considered the possibility of exercising from home instead of paying for a gym fee? I love being able to get alot accomplished in little time while making meals and studying at home. I hate that gyms through marketing get so many to waste money year after year while not getting results. I just find so many people who aren't taught the best methods of exercising properly and are following wrong advice because they simply don't any better. If we aren't taught what works best, then how would we know? Great to see you are pursuing healthy relationship with your son and teaching him valuable life skills for the future.
ReplyDeleteHi Jada,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great paper. Congrats on all you have achieved thus far in your life and may God bless you on the rest of your journey.
I too need to write down my goals. I think it is more a visual thing for me though. I write down my goals which stands for intent for me. Once I have written them, I have committed myself to the task with a particular goal or result which I will accomplish. It seems you have experienced a great amount of growth and human flourishing which you should be proud of. Don't forget to reward yourself every time you accomplish a goal. You are right, You Deserve It!!. Good luck to you and your family and God Bless.
Mary
Hi Jada,
ReplyDeleteGreat job on your paper. It seems to me that you have set some great goals for yourself here. I think it is important to know where we need to improve ourselves and then set our intentions to do so. I love that you said that you haven't given up on yourself as this really is the key to it all...YOU! You can do whatever you intend to do and I feel that you will continue to make positive changes for yourself. This path may not always be smooth, but I know that we can all walk it with confidence.
Lauren :~)
Jada,
ReplyDeleteYou have set some fantastic goals for yourself. I'm happy for you that you have set your mind to getting into shape to better yourself and your health. You also have had pretty amazing things come your way such as your new connection with your son. I wish you both a wonderful rest of your lives to get to know each other again. You have chosen to accept him for who he is and who he believes even though it is not your preference. You are a strong person. Great job and good luck in your endeavors.
Your comment brought tears to my eyes, so I know it was sincere, thank you.
DeleteJada,
ReplyDeleteYour post is inspiring! The one thing I found out about myself is I have a execellent support wywtem that keeps encouraging me to move forward and not give up on myself. Congratulations on finding your self. Everyone deserves unconditional happiness and I honestly believe it comes from within. Good luck to you in the future!
Jada,
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel about being over weight or semi, as i too am semi over weight and it is hard to lose weight and I struggle with it.
Good luck in life and your journey! May you prosper in life
Heather C