RENEW
HEALTHY LIFESTYLE BEGINS WITH
Personal y t i l i b i s n o p s e R
by Carol Lopez, CHt, PSYCH-K Facilitator, Carol Lucia Frequency Healing
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orging a sustainable lifestyle takes commitment to opening our minds and expanding our knowledge base. It also takes being willing to learn, explore, and experiment. It comes down to asking ourselves how we want to live our lives — with carelessness or compassion? With harmony or imbalance? With discord or integrity? For me when it comes to living a sustainable and healthy lifestyle, I apply the Golden Rule the same way I do in the rest of my life: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I love that this rule applies to virtually everything. Fundamentally, I believe we all want the same things: safe neighborhoods, an unpolluted environment, a safe and plentiful food and water supply, and a cooperative and friendly community. We also want others to make similar choices to ensure we
all have these things. The solution then is to give what we want to receive. It begins with personal responsibility — becoming accountable for our beliefs, decisions, and actions, as well as our inactions. I recently read a post that started with the words, “Eating well is a form of selfrespect.” It made me think
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about how much of what we do to care for ourselves and others is actually a statement about how much we value and respect ourselves and others. In don Miguel Ruiz’s book The Four Agreements, one of the four agreements is to be “impeccable with your word.” This applies to ourselves as well as to others.
We often say we’re going to do or stop doing something, but don’t follow through — we make excuses, allowances. We say, “I’ll do it next time.” Caring, loving, compassionate, conscious thought is a prerequisite. When we take time to look inward and ask ourselves what we can do differently to honor and respect ourselves by keeping our word to ourselves, then our lives can transform. It takes minimal effort to follow the Golden Rule and consider whether our thoughts, words, and actions are helping or hurting ourselves and others. However, it does require caring enough to apply consideration. When we respect ourselves, we honor our bodies, our minds, our family and friends, our neighborhoods, our communities. It becomes easy to respect others when we give others the same respect we give ourselves.
