W E L L N E SS FE AT URE
YOUR WELLNESS matters BY VICKIE MAGIC
When it comes to our WELLNESS we often think, ‘I know I need to do better’. We quite often put off looking after ourselves last, putting everyone and everything on the planet ahead of ourselves. Why do you think we do that? Is it that we don’t think we are worth looking after? Is it that we think others are more important than us? I guess at the end of the day there isn’t just one reason. For anyone reading this, your answer will be unique. However, I would like to ask you, “Do you need to up your game a little to put yourself first a little more? Do you need to give your wellness more priority?” If you answered, ‘Yes,’ then this article might be just the thing for you. I am talking about your physical wellness, your mental wellness, your financial wellness, your relationship wellness, all of it. It really is about balance. The more wellness you have in these areas, the happier you are. Let’s face it, when we are happy, everything is so much better. So where do we begin? I guess first of all I should address the elephant in the room that has been playing havoc with our physical and mental wellness of late; ‘Rona’. Yes, Covid has most definitely had an effect on life as we know it. Some have lived in 80 ISSUE 101
total fear of this virus, some have been affected personally, some have been pretty unwell and some have even lost their life to it.
to change my focus. It is very easy for us to focus our energy and attention on the things in our life that are ‘wrong’. In fact, we were born that way.
I personally made a decision that I will not live in fear. I have made a decision to live my life from a place of surrender, of acceptance. I truly believe that when we decide we can’t control what we can’t control, and to focus on the things we can, we leave ourselves feeling calm and peaceful.
If we want to flip that on it’s head and train ourselves to focus our energy and attention on what’s right, then we have to make a decision to do that.
I, for one, want to live my life calmly and peacefully. I don’t want to live in fear, and I won’t. It really comes down to choice. When I made that choice, I gave up the fear, and I embraced acceptance. That said, on February 6, ‘Rona’ got me, and she got me good. I can honestly say that I was the most unwell I have ever been in my entire life. I suffered big time and it was definitely not fun. I ended up in hospital with chest pain which was later found to be inflamed cartilage around my heart. But I lived. I’m here to tell the story, so it wasn’t the end of the world. It was bad, but life goes on. ‘It is what it is’, ‘It was what it was’, truth is that I am still absolutely exhausted from it. Those words, ‘It is what it is’, are words I often use when I know there is something that I don’t have control over. My mental wellness is dependent on my acceptance of the things I cannot change. Yours is too! One of the ways that I truly changed my mental wellness was by really training myself
Then we have to start catching ourselves when we feel ourselves going back to our old habits. I still do it from time to time even now; something happens, or someone says something that upsets me and I focus on what’s wrong. But the reality is that what we focus on grows, what we give attention to, what we water, is what we get more of. So, if we focus on the stuff that is going wrong, we tend to just get more of that. If we focus on the stuff that is going well, we actually get more of that. Think about the weeds and flowers in your garden. If you water the weeds, you get more weeds. If you water the flowers, you get more flowers. We often have to remind ourselves that we are the ones holding the hose and that we decide which we water. It sounds so simple, in theory. Gratitude is one of the keys to mental wellbeing. That’s a fact. But it can’t just be word play, or pen play.
