Four Most Important Health Inputs

These four individually and combined will take us further than anything else of proportionate value. They’re the most poised and deft wisdom activities. Sleep the best you can, eat well, exercise and accept the things you cannot change, and the rest of life will go well.

Success in life is about getting the inputs to it right. It’s not about a focus on outputs or outcome. Those generally only either impress or depress us. There’s no steady middle ground in them.

Sleep Well

Do you know a grumpy person? Chances are they’re tired.

Probably the most important general life input is sleep. Given adequate, good quality sleep our physical, mental and emotional equilibriums will often then manage themselves.

If we have developed a sleep debt we need to be patient in getting back on track. It can take several months to again sleep well. But the wait is always worth it.

Eat Well

Want alertness? Eat a green apple, some protein, nuts or vegetables. Want to ward against depressive feelings and thoughts? Eat chocolate. Want to sleep. Try carbohydrate-dense food or dairy products.

Whatever we put into our bodies we become. If we manage our diets well we augment our sleep and we can at last improve a thing we all think a lot of; our self-image that’s cast from our physical manifestation—the person looking back at us from the mirror.

Exercise Well

Consistency is the message here. The more regularly we exercise, and the more we build it up so we’re gradually getting fitter, the more overall contentment we’ll gain in life.

For many people, especially men, there’s also the added benefit of it supplementing our anger management strategies. Exercise too wards against mental ill health as we command the body to produce more endorphins—the body’s very own ‘happy’ drug.

Accept Well

Perhaps the most important of all, and something that can facilitate the others, or the ‘want’ to do the others, is to just accept life on life’s terms.

There are many things we do not like. But will that dislike change things?

When we get this one right—more or less, because it’s going to be a lifelong struggle, but one that gets joyously easier—we’re suddenly getting life right, weird as that sounds.

On one level we’re happy and content as we use our minds to teach our hearts that caring is okay, but too much is a problem.

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The four combined are a wisdom-set. They are the very simplest of things, yet they indelibly give us power for life.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.