Health Is Everything: How You Can Take Better Care Of Yourself Both Internally And Externally

It’s true that we don’t know what we've got until we lose it, but it’s also true that we don’t know what we've been missing until it arrives.

While this anonymous quote may have been referring to “the one” in romantic relationships, it can also apply to having good health in life.

We know that having good health is important, yet we procrastinate when it comes to daily maintenance. The society in which we live glorifies instant gratification and celebrates the big things, but minimizes the small things that make life truly significant.

According to Stephen Covey's time management matrix, maintaining good health falls under “Priority 2: Important but not urgent.” Only when this concern jumps to “Priority 1: Important and urgent,” will we consciously give it the attention it deserves.

Many aspects of both internal and external health require nurturing and effort. While attaining good physical health and positive relationship health can feel like achievements for just the self, since we are dependent on one another in the grand scheme of things, the positivity will widely propagate.

Most people know how to achieve good physical health: sufficient sleep, healthy diet and appropriate exercise. Although this is easy to outline and say, taking action can be challenging. Unless we endure major health scares, maintaining appropriate health can take a backseat to handling the daily grind of life.

Below are three simple things to do today to improve physical health:

1. Breathe deeply 10 times.

2. Drink a few sips of water every 15 minutes.

3. Have an uninterrupted night of sleep.

Less quick and easy, emotional health is difficult to measure, but its effects are obviously visible. There are many theories and studies about emotions, but we are still far from truly understanding them.

Basic emotions include love, anger, sadness and joy; however, why we are feeling, how we are feeling and what we are feeling are often difficult to articulate or even understand. We tend to absorb emotions from others, express them when we deem it to be appropriate and suppress them as we grow older.

Toxic relationships are the most detrimental to emotional health. While professional psychologists are able to juggle multiple emotionally unsound patients simultaneously, going to lunch with a group of them might drive someone crazy.

It is not necessarily easy to distance yourself from toxic relationships, though, especially if they include family members or colleagues. Even when we think we can manage these negative relationships objectively, subconsciously, they are likely to stress us out.

Below are three simple things to do today to improve emotional health:

1. Minimize interactions with toxic people.

2. Read or watch something that evokes positive feelings.

3. Carve out an extended period of "me time."

The mind is known to be wider than the universe and have neurons longer than earth's circumference. It is the most difficult computer to understand. Napoleon Hill found the secret to success in the 1930s, by which successful people still live.

He said, "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." All man-made things we have today were once only figments of someone's imagination.

Today, the line between right and wrong is grayer than ever before. An overarching, confused moral compass is redirecting human motivation to satisfy items that appeal to self-interest above what society deems to be right. It’s confusing and can compromise one’s mental health.

Below are three simple things to do today to improve mental health:

1. Empty your mind for five minutes.

2. Take a walk in a scenic park.

3. Give thanks for five things.

Gary Smalley said,

Life is relationships; the rest is just details.

The most important relationships we have are with other living beings. We are born with nothing and we will die without anything; the only things we accumulate during our lifetime on earth are the memories.

Below are three simple things to do today to improve relationship health:

1. Give someone a genuine compliment.

2. Appreciate a small gesture.

3. Say, "Thank you."

A broken spirit or damaged soul is difficult to fix. Without passion and zest for life, we are the walking dead, going through the rat race of life because we must.

People, obstacles and setbacks can break our spirits bit by bit, and before we realize, we lose parts of our souls to life’s realties.

Below are three simple things to do today to improve spiritual health:

1. Smile at your reflection.

2. Meditate in silence for 20 minutes and/or pray.

3. Do a kind deed for someone without the expectation of recognition or reciprocity.

Money is an important aspect of modern society. Good financial habits are not complicated, but they require self-discipline. While it’s not possible to solve everything with money, plenty is easier in the face of financial efficiency and sufficiency.

When we no longer need to work to pay off past debts, we have more freedom, time and energy to focus on things that matter.

Below are three simple things to do today to improve financial health:

1. Cut back spending on one “good-to-have” item.

2. Reorganize your money and cards in your wallet.

3. Read three finance articles online.

What is the point of exchanging health for a million bucks and then spending multiple millions to buy it back? One of the simplest, most joyful things in life is going to bed with a grateful smile, having an uninterrupted, peaceful sleep and waking up happily energized.

As Augusten Burroughs said,

When you have your health, you have everything. When you do not have your health, nothing else matters at all.

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