While the first few articles were designed to stimulate awareness around how our minds work, the last few articles have been about healthy ways to deal with some of these unhelpful ways of thinking we exhibit in our minds.

The topics I discussed included the following:

1) When we calm ourselves and slowing down, we can generally trust our thoughts to give us better results.

2) When we get support, we can be challenged to think better thoughts.

3) When we focus on the positive and what we can be grateful for, our inner life improves.

4) When we can consider how we want to show up in the world (personal core values), there is a clearer compass for how we live our lives.

This may be a bit of a surprise but for the last topic in this series, I’d like to briefly touch on TAKING CARE OF THE BODY.

In my old men’s coaching community, I remember there were many men that would come to the community in various states of crisis.

You could hear it in their thinking and in their voice, as they ruminated over and over again on what they were worried, stressed, and frustrated about.

On more than one occasion, I remember the men’s coaches asking these men questions about how well they had been taking care of themselves and, as is often the case, many of them were struggling in this area.

A common issue that would come up was that they weren’t sleeping.

And rather than specifically address the men’s issues, the coaches would suggest that these men work on prioritizing sleep and only focus on issues once they had gotten some rest.

It was amazing how even a couple of nights of good sleep would work wonders for these men. They would come back, feeling much better rested and I noticed how their thinking seemed clearer and more rational.

I’m sure you all reading this can relate!

I know this is fairly intuitive for most but as humans, we all have clearly have a “mind” as well as a “body.” And there is a “mind-body connection.”

In other words, how we treat our body can affect our mind and vice versa!

If I neglect my sleep, exercise, and slack on nutrition, eventually that will take a toll on my mind and how clearly I think. It will also affect the quality of my thinking and my own emotional/spiritual life.

And If I don’t bother to work on my mind/heart/soul through mind/soul/heart work, then eventually affects my body and even contributes to health issues.

Maybe you can relate to this too?

Here in the Western hemisphere, I believe we’ve lost touch with the value of this mind-body connection. We may tend to value one but neglect the other or vice versa.

Yet I believe God never intended for us to only take care of one part of our person. He wants us to take care of our insides as well as our outsides :)

Because when we don’t take care of ourselves holistically, it affects all the parts – the mind included!

In conclusion,

Having a healthy mind requires that you make sure you have a healthy body.

 

Some questions to consider as we wrap up this series:

What are some areas in your physical health that you’ve been neglecting?

How’s your sleep?

Are you physically active? Do you exercise at all?

How are you with nutrition?

Do you drink enough water daily?

What else do you need to do to be physically healthy?

Let’s THRIVE in mind so we can THRIVE in life!