Looking Ahead: A New Way Of Being

I had originally planned to do an update on this post on forgetting resolutions and setting intentions. If you’re in the headspace for that, by all means, hop on over and enjoy. Reading it now, however, I don’t feel like it’s enough. We are in a position right now to choose a better outcome for our world.

The reason I felt that my old post about intentions fell short was because I don’t believe setting intentions is strong enough right now. I have long been frustrated by the lack of ability within the health care system to work from a place of health. They are swamped trying to keep up with diseases.

It’s almost as if a pause button needs to be set, wound back 100 years, and we choose to move ahead on a different path altogether. Imagine a health care system that focuses on unbiased education and prevention? Imagine a health care system that promotes prevention, not through testing and detection of disease, but through diet and lifestyle efforts that result in no disease at all. Crazy, right?

What about a social care network that ensures people and communities can access what they need in order to support essential nutrition, physical, and mental health? Imagine if funding went to solving issues at the source with root cause solutions instead of always going towards haphazard place holder repairs.

Imagine if optimal health was the norm and it was common for all of us to move through adulthood without an increasing number of aches, pains, and ailments.

Imagine if we could ensure this for our children. Alas, that is not where we are today, is it?

What if, and this requires us to stretch our visions into the future a hundred years, we are at the tipping point of a new paradigm? What if the dominant system of the last 100 years was in its final years, or even months? What if the model of the last 100 years that is decimating our planet, building more chemical-based weapons, and filling our food supply, our personal care products, and, in turn, our bodies to the brim with known human toxins was nearing its end?

What if the events of this past year shone the brightest light possible onto all the cracks of a system that cannot support the illnesses that it has created? What if we are now facing both the breaking point, and the turning point?

This is where we are, so where do we go from here?

How do we shift the conversation away from a bandaid for every issue and ill and instead look to avoid the wound from getting so deep and wide, so infected and so dangerous? How do we communicate with those who make the decisions that we want to help? I want to help.

Like everyone, I want to see this end and move from being in the here and now to a part of our past.

Perhaps we can allow this to be a chapter of great learning for humanity, a final lesson that we cannot and should not try to dominate Mother Nature and the microbes that inhabit our planet, and instead learn to work with what is delivered to us.

We need to find sustainable ways for all of us on the planet to be strengthened from the root of our health –  mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. We need to start with the earth that supports us. Rather than fight the microbes in the dirt where we are currently attempting to grow nutrient-deficient, chemical-laden food, we need to nourish the soil.

We need to get back to our source and remember that we are created as part of Mother Nature.

It can be difficult to comment on, assess, or analyze stressful events while they’re still happening, and I do feel like we are all in it. Deep in it. Some of us have most certainly felt the impact in greater ways than others, but we’ve all been experiencing a heightened level of stress for an extended period of time.

Right now it’s all feeling like one massive navigation, and I have the absolute worst sense of direction.

In the moment of acute challenges, it can be especially difficult to reframe, refocus, take those deep breaths and elevate above the chaos. I know that I don’t always do this very well. Because of that, because I can easily allow myself to be weightlessly carried by the tide of anxiety, I have double-downed on doing the work.

I have focussed my efforts on breathing deeply and getting to know the potential of my mind and my brain.

There’s a major root cause problem out in the world that I alone cannot change. Our collective health is in deep trouble and it takes a dramatic amount of effort and resources to achieve optimal health in this day and age. We are constantly working against the messages and conveniences, and sometimes the people who surround us. You of course know this, which is likely how you ended up in this community – seeking information to make going against that tide a little easier.

What I can do is keep breathing. Deep, deep breaths and, where possible, find a little humour. I can control (or work on) where I allow my mind to take me.

All we can control in any circumstance is our response and our actions.

I have committed to taking responsible action. Unless we speak up for the greater good (and for those who can’t) with strategies that are sustainable long term and serve to elevate and support health and wellbeing from a root cause, and whole life perspective, we will just be back here again and again.

The way I see it, we’re at a fork in the road and we get to choose where we want this to go. Trusting (hoping/praying/up all night wishing on stars/writing letters to politicians) that we will make the right choices helps with that staying calm and breathing bit.

I have hope. I have hope that no matter where anyone stands right now on the plethora of contentious topics, no one wants to be standing here a year from now. So now it’s up to us.

Which way are we going to go? We get to choose. Get quiet. Think. Dig in and find the answers yourself. That feeling deep down in your gut. Trust that. It’s right. It always is. We just get too busy, we let our lives get too noisy, and as a result, we forget how to listen to what we already know. What we’ve always known.

On My Mind Episode 09: Looking Ahead: A New Way of Being

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