You make the opportunity for change

How many opportunities do we allow to slip past us? How often do we even take the time to daydream about the potential opportunities we have? We spoke in the previous blog about how risk management helps us to make better choices and helps us recognize hazards that could impede our progress. Well, we can manage opportunities as well. The better we become at risk management and reducing hazards, the better we can become at creating positive opportunities and chances to make positive changes. We are now being bombarded with typical New Year’s information about resolutions and one interesting tidbit of note I heard this morning was that many of us give up in less than 3 weeks.

Now, we also talked about habits and the complexity of a change being in direct relationship to how long that change needs to become a good habit. Oftentimes, poor choices and poor habits are very easy to acquire and we don’t even take the time to think about how quickly we became comfortable sleeping late, sitting on the couch for too many hours, drinking in an amount that is not healthy or other such hazardous choices. Our brains are unique and complex and how we feed and care for our brains determines how much we harvest throughout our lifetime. We can harvest weeds or we can reap tremendous benefit. We have to manage our risk, our hazards, and our opportunities to determine what we reap.

If we begin early in life to read books and develop a true love for reading, then we don’t think twice about sitting down to read a good book in the evening. If we begin early to sit for long periods of time watching mindless television blocks, or if we spend hours on the computer, our vision starts to suffer, we begin to develop that dreaded muffin top due to lack of activity combined with poor sitting posture, and now we have set the wrong stage for our bodies. Changing these poor habits seems so much more difficult than developing the poor habits creating the need for this change. So, we also have to change our perception and our perspective. This is also difficult, but not impossible to achieve.

When we focus on bad things, we notice bad things all around us. When we focus on the good, we see endless opportunities and we feel more relaxed. Keeping the focus directed towards positive outlooks takes work, but in time, it becomes natural. So, now we can see the links coming together for good habits, positive mental outlooks, and developing better opportunities and better health and well-being. Napoleon Hill advocated as early as 1938 for developing a habit of becoming a lifelong learner. This habit has not diminished in importance over the past 92 years. What we lack is the drive to continue that hunt for knowledge once we leave a formal classroom setting.

Imagine you are on a treasure hunt and the gold at the end of the trail is infinite knowledge on health, well-being, how to care for your brain, your muscles, your organs, etc. Doesn’t sound very appealing, but…..imagine the hunt ends with a need to educate yourself on the process of a disease such as cancer or dementia? Ignorance is NOT bliss. Ignorance is the feeding ground and the fertilizer for poor health, for disease and for disaster. When you reap ignorance and refuse to try and understand how to live a better quality of life, you risk the hazard of developing many different diseases and hazard cutting your life short. Which would you rather reap?

As we go forward, we have started caring for our brains with the six week series on mindful activities. The week 5 video will focus on documenting your journey. It is important to write down and record your activity each day to ensure that you are keeping your goal in focus, you are holding yourself accountable and you are working to make more positive choices and opportunities in your day to day living. I hope you are practicing and preparing for the coming year. This is yet another chance to make positive change, to get serious about your health, and to remind us that we never truly know how many more chances we will have. So, stay strong and start laying a stronger foundation for tomorrow.