Good Health – The Fullfilment Project

The Lessons of Chronic Pain

Being in pain most of each and every day has its drawbacks, clearly. It limits ones capacity to live and move in the world, but it has some unexpected benefits. I know this from the personal experience of living with Fibromyalgia. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Carry On Regardless

Being in pain, as I often am, with pain in my muscles and joints, doing the everyday tasks becomes challenging. Let alone going to work and looking after my family, but I must carry on regardless. Necessity becomes the motivation to keep going, and this becomes a skill, the skill to keep going when all you want to do is stop.

Choosing Your State Of Mind

Being in chronic pain can send you into dark places in the mind. Depression is a slippery slope of despair that feels like the only way to think about the circumstances you are in. This is essentially helplessness, but helplessness is a learned mental state, which can be changed to an optimistic state, you can choose your state of mind. You can be in pain and be joyful. This is a skill and one that is very difficult to master, but with practice you can be in good states of mind no matter your circumstances.

Your Health Is Your Responsibility

Often we assume that our bodies will keep on going until we get old. This is why we drink heavily and spend the weekend partying. This is also why we think we can work long hours and not get enough sleep and keep going. Your body is an amazing machine that functions well when it is well maintained and well looked after, but less so when it is not.

We can’t live life at full throttle and when we get sick expect others to fix us. We can’t go to the GP and say fix me. They will often just give us some pills to take which will mask the problem and cause other problems.

The way to ensure we are healthy is in what we eat and drink, what physical activity we do, how good our relationships are and how we think. This is a lesson hard learned when you are in chronic pain, because you just want someone to come along and make it all go away. You have to be your own saviour.

Self Mastery

We have been blessed with amazing faculties of mind and body, but they do not come with an instruction manual, though much can be understood if you know where to get the correct guidance. Your mind and body are connected in a sort of synergy where each effects the other. Self mastery requires mastery of both, but mastery of the mind is the key. Being in chronic pain, you are brought face to face with the necessity of this kind of self mastery. What begins as survival can become thriving. What seems to be coping strategies can become techniques of self mastery.

It comes down to a choice of how you want to live your life.

Managing Your Physical Health

The Pathway To Fulfilment

The problems we have with our bodies is largely that we don’t have the user manual for it, so we misuse it and suffer poor health consequences. The human body, including the brain, is the most sofisticated machine on the planet.

The food we eat and the liquid we drink literally become the body. An hour after eating an apple the body has taken essential vitamins, minerals and water and sent them to the places in the body they are needed. If we want to have a well functioning, healthy body we need to put in only what it needs and avoid things the body has to work at removing.

Anything man made and things like alcohol can be poisons for the body, but taken in small doses the body can handle removing them. Balancing what we should eat and drink with what we want to eat and drink is key. There are also ancient methods of maintaining a healthy body which, when done consistently, will bring about healthy and strong bodies.

The two main methods which have made there way into Western society are Yoga and Qigong (Chi Kung). I highly recommend both. I practice Qigong every day and it helps me keep my energy levels up throughout the day. Explore these and the impact diet has on your health and make some positive changes. You won’t regret it.

Making Up Stories

Happiness, Health, The Pathway To Fulfilment

In the absence of data we make up stories. Deciding on which stories we tell ourselves is powerful. If we tell ourselves that we need approval or support from someone else before we can do something, then we give away our power.

This is true of our health too. If we feel that we need medicine or a doctor in order to get better we are selling ourselves short. Our bodies naturally heal themselves, with most ailments. Some illnesses definitely require medical support, so if you are unsure go and see your doctor.

The mind, however, is powerful and there is a direct link between your mind and your body. So if you say things like ‘I always get sick,’ then you are more likely to be so, because your immune system will act accordingly. If you tell yourself that you usually get over illnesses quickly, then you are more likely to.

Your brain will believe what you tell it and your brain is responsible for sending out hormones and nerve messages, amongst other things, to the rest of the body, which will have an impact on how your body functions. Too much stress hormones means an immune that will struggle. The opposite is true also. Is it time to change the story you tell yourself?

2022 Goals: Physical Health

The Pathway To Fulfilment

When it comes to new year resolutions they more often than not revolve around improving our physical health, which is what this blog post is about.

Step 3 of the Pathway To Fulfilment is Good Health and the second element of this Step is Physical Health. When we think of improving our health this is usually what we think of, and in order to have good physical health we need to look at our diet, the amount of exercise we do and how often we do it.

So, how will you improve your physical health this year?

You could change your diet, join a gym, go for regular walks, cycle to work, practice yoga or start running. Even small changes in your habits could make a big difference.

Living A Healthy Lifestyle

Achieving Goals, Health, The Fullfilment Framework

Drop by drop a water bucket is filled over time. The quality of the water also depends on its source. Likewise our bodies are made up of what we eat and drink, drop by drop over time.

The state of our health depends on a number of factors though. Exercise is another major contributor to good health, but exercising for 3 hours once won’t make you physically healthy. However, if you exercise for 15 minutes everyday, you will become more physically healthy. Likewise, our level and quality of Chi (Qi) depends on us practicing Chi Kung (Qigong) or Tai Chi every day.

Our state of health, whether good or bad, is an accumulation of our daily habits. If we eat junk food every day and avoid exercise, then we will put on weight and develop bad health conditions. The choice is yours, you control your habits. If you are going to try and be healthy, starting in the new year, then the good habits you form need to be actioned consistently every day.

Starting tomorrow I will be sharing posts around 2022 goals which align with the Pathway To Fulfillment.

Developing The Pathway To Fulfilment

The Pathway To Fulfilment

My intention is to create a process by which you can start to live well. To me living well means to live in a way that brings about happiness and success, which in turn brings about fulfilment in our lives. This is not a life hack or magical cure for what ails you. It is a deeply personal journey of self-discovery, of life balancing and of purpose finding. This is an evolving process, until I feel a clear and actionable ‘Pathway’ is created, so it can be shared and used effectively.

I have reflected on the first two steps to the existing Pathway and have moved Acquired Wisdom to Step 1, as I feel that wisdom gives us a strong foundation from which to build. I have replaced Self Knowledge with Self Mastery and moved it to Step 2, as self knowledge is a useful mental exercise, whereas self mastery is an actionable way of being, which is built on both wisdom and self knowledge. This, I feel, is a more effective part of the journey, as self mastery is required in order to have a life well lived. The six steps are now Acquired Wisdom, Self Mastery, Good Health, Healthy Relationships, Defining Your Purpose and Living Your Purpose.

The six steps of the Pathway To Fulfilment are divided into Where To Begin, What To Maintain and How To Live Well. Now that I have an outline of a process that I believe will bring about fulfilment in ones life, I aim to add in the detail of the activities and actions you will follow within each step of the journey towards fulfilment and a life well lived. Watch this space and the Facebook Group Community for up and coming updates.

WHERE TO BEGIN

Step 1: Acquired Wisdom

We acquire the wisdom of others from a variety of sources, spiritual and secular. Wisdom challenges us and enlightens us. Often this is achieved by extensive reading, but, with the internet, a lot of this same wisdom can also be obtained through videos, audio books and pod-casts, however you learn best. This wisdom will feed into what you already know about yourself, it will influence how you see yourself and how you choose to live; helping towards self mastery.

There is a lot of wisdom out there to acquire, and it can sometimes be hard to distinguish wisdom from well sounding ignorance, so to simplify things for you I have broken down the wisdom I have found into ten Principles Of A Life Well Lived that will help you navigate the world skilfully. They are what I consider to be the essential wisdom to acquire. I will delve into each principle and explore how it will enhance your life. I have divided the principles into those that relate to Self and those that relate to Others. The principles related to Self are Growth, Equanimity, Fortitude, Seeking and Self Competition, and those related to Others are Stewardship, Servant-hood, Reciprocity, Joy Making and Connection. I will be sharing more detail on these moving forward.

Step 2: Self Mastery

The process of self mastery begins with getting to know yourself more substantially than you may have before; figuring out what really makes you tick, what you believe and don’t believe, what you think is true and false, what you think is ethical and not ethical, etc. It includes figuring out your beliefs and your ethics. Also, what happiness and success look like to you, personally, because our happiness and success are relative to our values, which are very personal to each of us. Our happiness and our success will not bring about fulfilment if they are not aligned with our values. Self mastery begins with broad and deep self-knowledge and then in order to gain and maintain mastery of yourself you will need to cultivate both body and mind, the tools for which will come from the ten Principles Of A Life Well Lived.

This will primarily be mastery of your thoughts, which is the same whether you are embarking on self-development or a journey of faith. Our mind and body are in a sort of synergy, which means our thoughts effect the chemistry our brains create in our bodies, which in turn creates sickness or wellness. Wellness, being the optimal state to be in. Also, that if we fine tune our body through exercise, through practices such as Yoga, and if we cultivate strong Qi (Chi) in our energy system, through practices like Tai Chi and Qigong, our physical well-being will flourish and allow our mental mastery and well-being to develop too. Self Mastery is both physical and mental, which leads me to Step 3: Good Health.

WHAT TO MAINTAIN

Step 3: Good Health

Your health should be of great concern, because good health is essential for your well-being and having an active, fulfilling life. I have included the usual physical health and mental and emotional health, and I have also included energy health; all of which could be thought of as a triad of good health. Good physical health includes diet and exercise. Good mental and emotional health includes mastering your emotions and balancing your thoughts. Good energy health includes mastering the Qi (Chi) that flows through your energy system, like blood through your bloodstream, as detailed in Traditional Chinese Medicine. To have good health you need to work on all three of these areas.

Step 4: Healthy Relationships

In this step you look at your relationships, and identify those relationships that are good for you and those that are not, and those that are a mixture of the two, that need work to become good. You should continuously work towards all of your relationships being healthy ones; meaning that they bring you happiness rather than stress, they uplift you rather than bring you down, and they are aligned with your values and ethics. These relationships are in circles of community, which are relationships with your self, your partner, your family, your friends, your colleagues and your acquaintances, and they are all interconnected.

HOW TO LIVE WELL

Step 5: Defining Your Purpose

After working your way through this journey so far, you will have a solid foundation for how to start living your life better. From this new understanding of yourself, your defined beliefs and ethics form part of what I call your Purpose Prism, the third piece of this prism being your purpose. You will go through a process of building on your beliefs and your ethics, weaving in Acquired Wisdom and Principles Of A Life Well Lived, and all you have learned from steps 2, 3 and 4 and define your personal purpose. This prism is the filter through which you will see and experience the world, and it will influence your thoughts, speech and actions, making them wiser in nature. Your purpose comes from a vision of a better world that you want to help create.

Step 6: Living Your Purpose

You will then be set to start applying your beliefs, ethics and purpose to your life, to find your best way to live them out in your thoughts, speech and actions; to act on your vision of a better world through everything that you do. This is living your life on purpose. All of this work will mean that both happiness and success become personal, and therefore fulfilling, all three of which are bi-products of a life well lived. When the garden of our lives is tended to properly, these things blossom, but if we focus on achieving them without tending to the important things in our lives then these things will not blossom. Your happiness, success and fulfilment along your journey then feed back into your acquired wisdom, self mastery, health, relationships and your beliefs, ethics and purpose, and on it goes, because this journey is a life long endeavour. Follow the Path To Fulfilment and live well my friends.

Cultivating Wellbeing

Mini Reflections

Wellbeing is often thought of as an ambition to feel better and laugh more. This is like looking at a garden and focusing on the need to have flowers. This is upside down thinking. If we were to plant the seeds, cultivate the soil, water the ground and ensure there is good sunlight, then flowers will appear. If we cultivate our bodies, so we may feel physically well, cultivate our relationships, so we may feel connected to others, cultivate our thinking, so we may feel mentally well, and cultivate our purpose, so that we have a direct towards which we work, laughter, joy, love and a feeling of wellbeing will blossom all by themselves. Without this wellbeing will never blossom.

Launching The Pathway To Fulfilment

The Fullfilment Framework

I have done some work on what I have so far called the Fullfilment Framework and renamed it the Pathway To Fulfilment, a more linear and simpler journey. My intention is to create a process by which people can start to live well, and therefore have fulfilment. This is not a life hack or magical cure for what ails you. It is a deeply personal journey of self-discovery, of life balancing and purpose finding. There are four steps of this process which are foundational to a life well lived, they are Self-Knowledge, Acquired Wisdom, Good Health and Healthy Relationships.

The Principles Of A Life Well Lived have been folded into the Acquired Wisdom. I have separated these foundational steps and the other steps of the Pathway To Fulfilment, six steps in total, into Where To Begin, What To Maintain and How To Live Well. Now that I have an outline of a process that I believe will bring about fulfilment in ones life, I aim to add in the detail of the activities and actions you will follow within each step of the journey towards fulfilment and a life well lived. Watch this space and the Facebook Group Community and on Instagram for up and coming updates. This new Pathway To Fullfilment can also be found on the page on this website of the same name.

WHERE TO BEGIN

Step 1: Self-Knowledge

The process begins with getting to know yourself more substantially than you may have before; figuring out what really makes you tick, what you believe and don’t believe, what you think is true and false, what you think is ethical and not ethical, etc. Also, what happiness and success look like to you, personally. It is broad and deep self-knowledge. This is your starting point.

Step 2: Acquired Wisdom

You acquire the wisdom of others, from a variety of sources, spiritual and secular; wisdom that will challenge you and enlighten you, as wisdom should. Often this is achieved by extensive reading, but, with the internet, a lot of this same wisdom can also be obtained through videos, audio books and pod-casts, however you learn best. This wisdom will feed into your self-knowledge, and influence how you see yourself and how you choose to live.

Connected to Acquired Wisdom are ten principles that I believe generate fulfilment, because they are wise principles that will help you navigate the world skilfully and live your life well. I have divided them into those that relate to Yourself and those that relate to Others. The principles related to Self are Growth, Equanimity, Fortitude, Seeking and Self-Competition, and those related to Others are Stewardship, Servant-hood, Reciprocity, Joy Making and Connection. I will be sharing more detail on these moving forward.

WHAT TO MAINTAIN

Step 3: Good Health

Your health should be of great concern, because good health is essential for your well-being and having an active, fulfilling life. I have included the usual physical health and mental and emotional health, and also energy health; all of which could be thought of as a triad of good health. Good physical health includes diet and exercise. Good mental and emotional health includes mastering your emotions and balancing your thoughts. Good energy health includes mastering the Chi (Qi) that flows through your energy system, like blood through your bloodstream, detailed in Traditional Chinese Medicine. To have good health you need to work on all three of these areas.

Step 4: Healthy Relationships

You look at your relationships, and identify those relationships that are good for you and those that are not, and those that are a mixture of the two, that need work to become good. You should continuously work towards all of your relationships being healthy ones; meaning that they bring you happiness rather than stress, they uplift you rather than bring you down. These relationships are in circles of community, which are relationships with yourself, your partner, your family, your friends, your colleagues and your acquaintances, and all are interconnected.

HOW TO LIVE WELL

Step 5: Defining Your Purpose

After working your way through this journey so far, you will have a solid foundation for how to start living your life better. From this knew understanding of yourself, your defined beliefs and ethics form part of what I call your Purpose Prism, the third piece of this prism being your purpose. You will go through a process of building on your beliefs and your ethics, weaving in Acquired Wisdom and Principles Of A Life Well Lived, and define your personal purpose. This prism is the filter through which you will see and experience the world, and it will influence your thoughts, speech and actions, making them wiser in nature. Your purpose comes from a vision of a better world that you want to help create.

Step 6: Living Your Purpose

You will then be set to start applying your beliefs, ethics and purpose to your life, to find your best way to live them out in your thoughts, speech and actions, to act on your vision of a better world through everything that you do. This is living your life on purpose. All of this work will mean that both happiness and success become personal, and therefore fulfilling, all three of which are bi-products of a life well lived. They then feed back into your self-knowledge, acquired wisdom, health, relationships and your beliefs, ethics and purpose, and on it goes, because this journey is a life long endeavour. Follow the path to fulfilment and live well my friends.

Lockdown Blues or an Opportunity in Disguise

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” – Margaret J. Wheatley

The global pandemic we know as the Coronavirus has had a wide ranging impact on the lives of so many across the world, on our health, our wellbeing and our finances, hitting some much harder than others. Many of us have had to go into self isolation, due to illness or being at high risk. Schools have closed and children are being educated at home through the wonders of the internet. Many adults are also working from home via the internet as well or have lost their jobs and some companies will not survive this pandemic. The way we do everything, including basic things like our shopping, has changed. These are challenging times.

Every Challenge is an Opportunity for a New Possibility

When challenges arise in our lives we really have two ways of looking at them, either to look at the negative impact of the challenge on our lives and how we feel or to look at the things the situation can teach us and the opportunities it provides. Resilience is built on overcoming adversity. If you are in lockdown, imposed by your government, or in self-isolation, as you are following the sensible advice to stay at home, this is an opportunity to reconnect with what is important in your lives and reevaluate your priorities.

Panic at the Supermarket

Panic does not help in situations like this. Panic buying hurts others and therefore it hurts us. When we panic we go into a fight or flight mode of thinking, which only helps when you are in immediate danger, and it should end once that immediate danger is gone. Generally speaking, we are not in immediate danger, this very moment, there is not a tiger about to eat us or a madman with a gun pointed at us, we are in a dangerous situation that requires reasonable steps to keep ourselves and others safe, so we should follow the advice of our Government and health care system.

If those in our society that are supporting us through this pandemic cannot get what they need to live, how can they help us to get through this. Equally, if we are ignorant of the sensible measures we need to implement, then we put ourselves and others in danger. For example, there are some in America who have said that as they are Christian and are covered in the blood of Jesus they are able to go to church with lots of other people and they cannot see that they could get sick or pass the Coronavirus on to others.

I have no issues with the beliefs of others, people can believe what they want, but when people’s actions could cause hurt to others then this is not good. One reaction to a situation like the one we find ourselves in is to dive into our beliefs in religious teachings to make us feel less afraid. The problem here though is that, if taken to an extreme, it is all focused on the individual, the fear makes us selfish and irrational. Part of me does not blame these people for being hijacked by their fight or flight system, but actions do have consequences, and ignorance is no excuse.

Good Health Is Foundational

As we all know our health is important. I would say that our health is central to our entire wellbeing and should be a daily focus, not just when a pandemic hits the fan. We can take this pandemic as a trigger to turn our attention to our health, and if you have to stay at home you have more time to focus on improving your diet, and your physical, mental and energy health. Take up yoga, meditate, go for walks or runs, journal your experiences and take the time to improve your overall health, to either recover from an illness or prepare your body to fend off whatever illnesses you may have to come, even if they are not a global pandemic. We have access to pretty much the entire culmination of human understanding on every topic via the internet. We have to be careful to make sure we check the sources of information when we get it online. I would advise checking at least three different sources to see if they agree, and remember that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone.

Recentre and Recalibrate

It is also a chance to find ourselves again, to spend time with ourselves away from the normal busy lives we lead. To look at our priorities, what we care about and what we should not bother with. It is a perfect time to look at defining our Why, as well as our values and beliefs, as I mention in my Fullfilment Framework. To do some self reflection and set some goals. We do not normally get so much time to do this sort of thing.

Some of you are ‘Key Workers’ and may not have the same time available because you are literally saving lives and supporting our economy, but the effect of this pandemic will be massive on all of us and, like all traumatic situations, we can be crippled by it or rise to the occasion and become better versions of ourselves. All those who are helping others at this difficult time I salute you, you are the best of humanity and the guardian angels that we all need right now. If you are not a Key Worker then please do what you can to support your neighbours, family and friends, and if advised stay at home.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

We have all had to change how we connect with others, primarily via the internet. Zoom has become and invaluable way for people to connect. Teams at work, exercise classes, spiritual groups, you name it we are gathering together via Zoom. Facebook groups and email groups are exploding into a ferver of interaction to discuss the pandemic and support each other. Positivity is bringing so many people together. It is strange to feel so much community spirit without physically spending time with others, but the best of humanity is coming out to play and it is awesome. I am currently playing a game of chess with my elderly Father via WhatsApp message and he is beating me.

The Importance of Our Relationships

This has all highlighted how important our relationships are, they are the glue that holds our wellbeing together. What this pandemic has highlighted to me is how we cannot deepen our relationships with friends, family or colleagues through a screen as easily as we can face to face. It is the little moments of conversation and interaction, asking how the other person is doing and caring about the answer. It is the difference between a hug and the picture of a hug or a handshake and an emoji of a hi five. Physical connection is vital to healthy relationships and once this pandemic is over we need to not go back to interacting primarily through a device like a mobile phone, but to spend face to face time with those in our lives. This is one of the greatest lessons to learn from this situation.

Final Thoughts

I think this pandemic has also caused much of the superficial things that we thought divided us to drop to the wayside, as this crisis has created a shared human story that we are all experiencing. People out on their daily exercises are waving hi to strangers when they never would have before; we are beginning to see each other as human beings first. This is something I hope we do not lose when this is all over and we find a new normal, one of shared values, of oneness, of an understanding that all aspects of society are important. Without those who work in a supermarket being there for us at this difficult time we would not be able to live. Let’s hope the paradigm shifts to one of equality and respect, and that this paradigm stays for the foreseeable future.

The Foundation To A Life Well Lived

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“Time well spent leads to life well lived.”
― Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu

I have been working on my Fullfilment Framework and have made some developmental changes to it, which I will unveil fully in another blog post. I would like to focus on just one aspect of this new framework model in this post. That is the Foundation.

The Foundation is now made up of four sections, with the new addition of Healthy Relationships. This means that the four sections are Self Knowledge, Acquired Wisdom, Good Health Triad and Healthy Relationships. I realised through reflection and exploring what makes life fulfilling that I had omitted a significant aspect of all our lives, which is the relationships that we have. I will go into this in more detail later in this blog post.

Self Knowledge

I have put Self Knowledge at the bottom of the Foundation, as I believe self knowledge is the rock upon which we can build the foundation of our lives. If we do not know ourselves well then how can we know what we want out of life, what we value and what we believe. Self knowledge is the basis of what we think, say and do. If we do not have a good understanding of ourselves then we will be guessing what we want out of life and everything in it will be half-hearted and will not bring about fulfilment. We will also be living life either reacting to the events within it, not really having any direction or plan, or we will be living out other peoples plans for us, and our true selves become lost in a life wasted.

It has been a philosophical imperative since the days of Socrates to “Know Thyself.” It is also sage advice, as it will dictate what we get out of life, and whether you believe we only have one life or not, if we follow the path of others and do not explore what makes us who we are we will likely not spend our lives well, because we will not be forging our own paths through life.

Acquired Wisdom

Self knowledge will only get us so far in life. It will help crystallize what we want out of life and how we want to live, but we can still make mistakes along the way. Part of a life well lived is being wise about the choices we make and how we spend our time. The wisdom of others can help us here.

Whether you are a religious person or not our human history is filled with the words of wiser people than us. The wisdom of humanity comes from religious and philosophical writings, from scientists, from the native peoples of the world and from our own parents.

It is important not only to listen to the wise words of those around us, but also to become avid readers. Acquiring the wisdom of others and applying it to our lives can mean that not only do we not have to rely solely on trial and error, but also we spend the time we have exponentially better. It helps us live more deeply and to be able to look back at the end of life and say we lived well.

Good Health Triad

The Good Health Triad is three areas where we should aim to have good health in order to have good wellbeing. The first is the most obvious, it is good physical health. Going to the gym once in a while won’t be enough. We need to consistently exercise to our level in ways that are not detrimental to our health. For some gentle and often is better, especially if they are physically disabled. For some running marathons is good for them. Find your exercise routine at your level.

This also means a good diet. Not just eating everything that we are told is good for us, but rather figuring out the best diet for your body. This could be more vegetables than fruit to keep your diet more alkaline than acidic, it could mean spicy food or not, it could be dairy free. There are lots of options. This involves research, listening to your body and trying different types of food. Most diet advice is good, but don’t go for every fad diet that pops up in the media. Find your best diet and go to see a nutritionist if needs be.

The third element of the Good Health Triad is good energy health. As Chinese medicine discovered a long time ago, and Western medicine is slowly accepting, we have an energy system that allows Qi or Chi to flow along the meridians within our body. Much like our blood flows through our veins and nerve signals travel through our nervous system, our Chi flows through our meridian system. If our Chi does not flow freely or is unbalanced our health deteriorates.

Practicing Qigong or Tai Chi every day can help, as well as going for Acupuncture or Qigong Acupuncture, which is done using the practitioners own Chi instead of needles, will help to maintain good, healthy Chi. Ensuring we cover all three areas of this Good Health Triad will mean we live longer and feel better, so we are more able to achieve what we want to achieve, do what we want to do and live fulfilling lives.

Healthy Relationships

We all have relationships, with our family, our friends, our partner, our work colleagues, and so on. Some relationships are better than others, but I would argue that they should all be healthy relationships. What I mean by this is ideally we should not have any relationships in our lives that are detrimental to our wellbeing. Relationships that cause us stress, anxiety or self loathing need to be removed from our lives. Stress is something that can have such a negative impact on our health that people can die due to the consequences of stress on their bodies.

Those we have relationships with, in whatever area of our lives, should lift us up and make us feel connected. They should make us feel like we are part of something, a collective of good people. Our relationships should make us happy more than sad.

We should also try to cultivate our good relationships so that they grow and become stronger too. All relationships need maintaining through spending time with those people, finding out what is going on with them, being there for them when they need us and not only caring about ourselves.

The biggest barrier to healthy relationships in our current culture is mobile phones and tablets. People are spending more time on their devices than with each other, even if they are together they are looking at screens. If there is a momentary lull in the conversation there is an urge to pull out our mobile phones and scroll through our social media feeds.

Relationships are built on the little moments between other things, when we are waiting for a meeting to start or for a bus to arrive we can strike up a conversation, ask how someone’s day is going, etc. This is how we build strong, healthy relationships. We should also avoid things like gossip, which are corrosive to trust and cooperation.

Something to think about

What three changes will you make in line with this Foundation to improve your life and wellbeing in 2020?