Understanding your health value  

Subconscious decisions that dictate behaviour.

Most people don’t know that health values are something that you learned whilst watching your parents when you were very young. In fact by around the age of 7 you had developed your values around health and happiness. If you were like me, health was about over-eating and treating illness when it happened.  Moderation and illness prevention we not concepts I understood until well into adult life. This causes DEEP divisions in the way we behave and makes us do things we don’t understand.

“I want to be healthy, but I haven’t exercised in months”

Most people value their health except, every day they do things that they know they shouldn’t. That’s because what we saw early on in life isn’t always the best way to behave.

Would you like to know a better way?

To understand how to change, ask yourself these questions and write down your answer. Take the time to write down a few reasons.

What does being healthy mean to you?  How is it important to you?

Now that you have written the answer down consider the following.

If you value your health,  notice whether it is for yourself or for others. For example do you want to be healthy for you, or for your family and children? Also notice if you want to be healthy because you don’t want to be sick, or because you don’t want to die young like someone you know?

Here is a great example of two very different responses.
“I value health because my father died from a heart attack when I was young, and I don’t want to do that to my family.”
“I value health because being healthy allows me to fulfil my potential so I can be the best I need to be.”
Recognize how the answer to this question tells you why you’re not getting what you want from your health goals.  If you are keeping healthy for others, or to avoid being sick, chances are you’re not getting everything out of your health goals.

If your motivation is for the self you are more likely to be fulfilling your health goals.

Knowing this insight puts into perspective why we behave the way we do. Question your health decisions with this perspective and notice, moving forward from now how you can make better decisions that serve you.

Finally, put into practice all the things you decided to do about being healthy this year.
Consider your diet, your exercise goals and your treatment schedule.  You will thank yourself for it.