In the World of Wellness: The Power We Give Away

Wellness is a term widely used that has multiple meanings around health and positive life style changes leading to well-being. Here we will use the term "wellness" in those ways and also as a means of defining a life free from disease as well as a way to explore alternative medicines, what they offer, and what this could mean for you.

Every month I'll do a post on a health and wellness related topic. This will give you a chance to explore other options, become informed, and make the best overall decision for your own well-being.

In the World of Wellness: Take back your power

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A friend of mine found out she had cancer back in October. They were able to remove all of it, thankfully, but she's had complications and serious, serious exhaustion ever since. This has made me become acutely aware of life in far more pressing ways than I've experienced prior. Of how I can either reign in my power and take the best care of myself possible or give that power away- to bad food, to bad habits, to unhealthy things.

Giving our power away - remember that. This is the focus point. This is important.

Years and years and years ago, human beings had to work their asses off to survive. We had to grow, kill, and prepare our own food. It was that or starvation. We did everything for ourselves - everything. We sewed our own clothes so we wouldn't be naked. We home schooled our kids so they would be wise. We cleaned with cleaning solutions we created from baking soda and vinegar because that was all that existed. We did absolutely everything on our own because we had no other choice. While this gave us great power over ourselves, our lives were much shorter, much harder, and much less fun.

Now we waste countless hours watching TV, playing video games, playing on the computer, and staring at tiny phone screens. Instead of seeking out food and shelter, we seek out entertainment. We get bored in a time when there is NO REASON to be bored. We demand, well, everything. We are never satisfied. We want it all, we want it now, and we want it delivered to us so we don't have to get dressed and leave our houses. Somehow, with all of this convenience that we have, we still manage to literally kill ourselves from stress that wouldn't even be considered stress back in the day. Somehow, instead of finding a balance with the conveniences we've been given in life, we threw ourselves completely off balance.

And because of that, because of all of that, we have given our power away.

Some of this is good, helpful, beneficial to us. Having some of these conveniences has made our lives easier. For other things though, not so much. We no longer create our own food - we buy it from someone else, from a manufacturer, a grocery store, or a farm. Food that has typically travelled thousands of miles. For the most part, for most of us, we have no idea where this food actually came from. We don't know who touched it, what touched it, what went into it. We know nothing about it and yet, we eat it. We consume - constantly - things that we know nothing about.

We put things on our hair, on our bodies, in our air, on our plants, all around us that we know, truly know, nothing about. We have no idea how to pronounce the chemicals contained within these items or what they even do. We rely on the people making the money off of these products to tell us the truth, to only give us good things, to be concerned about our well being. For the most part, we don't question any of it. And when we do, when we know it's bad for us, we still use or eat it.

We do all of this because we've given our power away. We do all of this because it's easy and because we can't be inconvenienced. Because we are too consumed and busy doing all of these other things that are in all actuality not that important in the big scheme of life. Things that years and years and years ago wouldn't have mattered, not one bit. If one day we have an end-of-times scenario on our hands, most of us will be screwed because we have absolutely no idea how to truly take care of ourselves and we don't have the skills we'll need to survive. We rely on everything to be provided to us. We have given our power away.

And we continue to.

If I ate Hostess cupcakes all day long (which I can't do even if I wanted to because they're not gluten free) and I gained 20 pounds and became diabetic, it wouldn't be Hostess's fault. I gave my power to them. I freely gave it away. If I sat on my butt all day watching Scandal (which would be easy to do because I love that doggone, crazy show) and, thus, my butt became as big as a house, it would not be my TV's fault. It would be mine. I gave my power away.

I know you all get this. I know you do. But you also don't. I don't always either. Why do I say that? Because things like this don't sink in until we're sick, or dying, or until someone close to us is sick or dying, or until something really, terribly, horrible goes wrong in the world and we become directly impacted. We know we're not immortal and immune to illness and disease, yet at the same time we act like we are. We don't care until we're forced to- plain and simple.

Don't you want to change that? Don't you want to take your power back?

I do.

Now, for my rant, which I promise will tie this all together.

As you, my loyal and wonderful friends know, I am very seriously against GMO, well, everything. I'm against a lot of things, but this is the easiest example to use in this particular rant I'm about to go on.

I constantly have debates/discussions with people about health and wellness things. I love these conversations and I'm totally open to them, but I am sick and tired of people who have done no research, have no education in this area, and who are forming opinions just to have opinions go off on tangents like they know what they're talking about.

I'm not a doctor or a research scientist or a genius. I fully and genuinely admit that I don't know everything and that information can change based on new studies being conducted. I am, however, educated on health and wellness. I have literally put in hundreds of hours studying nutrition, wellness, and all things health related. Hundreds of hours. Hundreds! Not to mention actually traveling to some of the countries who have been negatively affected by GMO's and talking directly to the people - completely cutting out the middle man, going to the source. When someone who hasn't done a fraction of any of this heatedly argues with me, I become frustrated. Especially if that person doesn't take care of themselves at all- never exercises, eats terrible food, has health issues, and is, to be frank, lazy about their health and well being overall.

Here's the deal: Many of us rely on sources to educate us that may not in fact be worthy sources. We base our opinions off of this insufficient information. We hope they're giving us good, honest, correct info, but we don't really know that unless we put in the time, do the work, and actually research the information ourselves. This, friends, this is taking our power back. Not just so we can have better debates and discussions, but to allow ourselves to get the best, most accurate information possible so we can take the best, most appropriate steps for our health.

This is why it's important that we stop giving our power away. This is why it's important that we educate ourselves, with real, genuine information. This is why we need to let our egos step aside so that we can logically look at a situation. This is why we need to take our power back.

This is why we need to ask questions, the right questions.

This is why we need learn how to take care of ourselves with skills that are truly valuable.

This is why we need to take back our power.

This is why we need to start now.