Do I Have An “Effective” and Healthy Life?

By Jill Cody

Part 3 of a 7 part Series

Do I Have An “Effective” and Healthy Life?: A synopsis of Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s  principles as they relate to improving health

"The most wonderful thing in the world is somebody who knows who they are and knows where they're going and knows what they were created to do." — Bishop T.D. Jakes

Habit 2 - Begin With The End In Mind  

What Dr. Covey means by this is actually think about the end of your life.  I know we really don’t want to do this.  It’s morbid.

We spend our lifetime avoiding the idea.  Maybe that's the reason why we spend a lifetime floundering.  Maybe that's the reason we fill up our lives with meaningless trivia such as television or surfing the net for hours.  He wants you to think about what your family and friends would say about you at your memorial service. What do you want to have accomplished on this earth? What is the legacy you want to leave behind?  My goal is to share my experiences.  If I can save one person from triggering a disease as I did, I feel all my efforts would have been well spent.  What is yours? How will you make the world a better place?

How do you start to identify this staggering goal for yourself and then bring it down to an everyday level?  You write a personal mission statement.  Think about it.  Do you have a mission statement for the company or organization you work with?  Do you have a mission statement for your work section or unit?  Do you have a personal mission statement?  And if you do have a personal mission statement, do you review it regularly? 

The path to a balanced and healthy life is initiating a process of self-discovery.  Yes, its work, its hard work, and its work that has amazing results.  Writing a mission statement eliminates emptiness and sets direction by assisting you in identifying your unique meaning and mission in life.  A lack of direction or emptiness leads to imbalance.  Imbalance leads to dis-ease.  Dis-ease leads to illness.

Balance is an operative word in this discussion.  Obviously you don’t want to become so focused into the future that you miss the present. Ursula K. LeGuin said, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

How will a mission statement and thinking about your memorial service help you to identify which path you want to choose and create for yourself?   How does this habit apply to improving your health?  Achieving excellent health first requires knowing what being healthy looks like. 

Visualize what you want to change about your health.  Visualize the person you want to be.  Begin with the end in mind. For me, I imagined a person with strong, flexible muscles. I then signed up with the YMCA (Habit 1).  I imagined someone with no joint pain.  I rested.  I imagined someone with enormous amounts of energy.  I rested some more. I didn’t want to limit my thinking to what I could imagine a healthy body would look like.  I took classes to expand my ideas. 

Results didn’t happen over night. Remember there are no quick fixes.  There was a large degree of faith that what I was doing would eventually pay off.  On the other hand, I knew what I was doing couldn’t hurt me and that it could only help.  I had to have patience.

So get Dr. Covey’s book and start writing a mission statement. The Franklin Covey Company even has an online mission statement builder. You may find it at: www.franklincovey.com/msb/

Start identifying your roles in life.  There are many.  Mother. Father.  Son.  Daughter.  Friend.  Employee.  Supervisor.  But, there is one that I want you to be sure to add and that is “Self.” Many of us are so orientated to serving others at home or at work that we forget about ourselves.  Isn’t that how we don’t find time to exercise?  How on earth are you going to improve your health or prevent illness if you don’t spend some time on yourself?  Erich Fromm said, “Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself.”