To continue with the topic of emotional health we must look deeply and hard at ourselves and be completely honest with ourselves. Honesty is the only way to begin to get help and to become healthy.
We have to look at our thinking patterns and work on those things that get us in a bad place and walk away from them. Sometimes this includes people. Our relationships can be a percentage of our problems. If the people we associate with are not good for us to be around. If they put us down or remind us of our faults in a way to make us feel bad about ourselves, if they are manipulative or lead us in to behavior that is not healthy for who we are, we must walk away from those people. It’s not easy to do. But it could save our lives.
I am harping a bit on emotional health as I feel that it is something that no one pays a whole lot of attention to. In the past, when we were an agricultural society, it is my belief that there was not a lot of time to think about emotional health. If you are farming and raising kids and cattle, your day is mostly spent in good hard work. Good hard work will release hormones that will help stay in healthy emotional places. This is why exercise is just as important for you mentally as physically. As we became more a sedentary society and so much work got done at desks, our ability to generate those hormones lessened and we don’t have that extra shot to get us through the tough times.
Our instant access to news and information also strains our emotions and we try to cope with what is happening in the world around us as well as with our personal issues. 11 years ago the U.S, watched the World Trade Center Fall, we watched it while it happened. If something like that happened 100 years ago, the whole country would eventually have known about it, but it would have taken a lot longer to travel and the emotional issue would have been less as you would not be watching it while it happened. Many of us still cannot get the pictures out of our head of the things that happened that morning.
Take care of your emotional stuff. Don’t hold on to the bad stuff or bury it, Deal with it. If you do this, you will find things a lot better on your inside. Don’t let things you are angry about fester inside you. This will lead to a deeply seeded bitterness that it will take years to dig out. Deal with things as they occur, take care of daily business. Make time to exercise and meditate. Eat right and make your relationships be beneficial for yourself and for those you are in relationships with. If you do these things life won’t be easy, but it will be productive and peaceful.
