Small experiences can bring great joy….

Published by Alison Wem on

Snow has arrived in London! Well a sprinkling of snow has, but its enough to make a snowman….

I am like a child when the snow comes. I have never lost that sense of excitement and wonder of it. A walk in the park showed that I was not alone. On a dreary January day in lockdown London, it was great to see the children making snowmen and having snow ball fights. Their laughter was like a wonderful tonic.

I believe simple experiences can bring great joy. The way to happiness is en-joying experiences rather than ‘things’. They are available to all, as I saw today.

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Life Lessons

How Relationships Shape Your Health: A Holistic Approach to Well-Being

In today’s fast-paced world, where technology and individualism often dominate, the importance of relationships in our lives can sometimes be overlooked. Yet, from a holistic perspective, relationships are not just a social necessity, they are a vital part of your overall health and well-being.

The connections you forge with others can have profound effects on your physical, emotional, and mental health, making it essential to understand and nurture them.

Are you giving enough attention to your relationships?

 The Interconnectedness of Body, Mind, and Spirit

Holistic health emphasises the connected nature of your body, mind, and spirit. It suggests that true well-being cannot be achieved by focusing on just one aspect of our health in isolation. Relationships, whether they are with family, friends, or romantic partners, play a crucial role in maintaining this balance.

Positive relationships provide emotional support, reduce stress, and even contribute to physical health,

Negative or toxic relationships can have the opposite effect.

Emotional Well-Being and Relationships

At the core of your emotional health lies the quality of your relationships. When you feel connected to others, you experience a sense of belonging and security that can significantly reduce feelings of anxiety and depression.

Studies have shown that individuals with strong social ties are less likely to suffer from mental health issues. The reason for this is simple: having someone to talk to, share experiences with, and lean on during tough times acts as a buffer against the stresses of life.

On the flip side, poor relationships, characterised by conflict, lack of communication, or emotional abuse, can lead to increased levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Chronic stress from unhealthy relationships can trigger the body’s stress response, leading to a host of physical health problems over time.

Give thanks for your good relationships

For the challenging relationships, review just one.  Step back from the hassle of that relationship and examine what life lesson it may be trying to teach you. Once you understand what it is, you will step out of victim mode and more easily take action to remedy the situation. Once you can demonstrate to the Universe you have learnt that lesson, the relationship will improve.

Physical Health Benefits of Healthy Relationships

The impact of relationships extends beyond emotional health to our physical well-being. A strong support network can encourage healthier behaviours, such as regular exercise, a balanced diet, and adherence to medical advice.

For instance, people who are married or in committed relationships often experience better health outcomes, including lower rates of heart disease, improved immune function, and longer life expectancy. This is partly because partners often motivate each other to adopt healthier lifestyles and provide care during illness. However,

You can motivate yourself to take actions towards better health.

Moreover, positive interactions with others can reduce the production of stress hormones like cortisol which can lead to high blood pressure, weakened immunity, and other health issues.

You are in control of your relationship with yourself and looking after your body

The Spiritual Dimension of Relationships

From a holistic standpoint, the spiritual aspect of relationships is equally important. Many spiritual traditions emphasise the concept of interconnectedness, that we are all part of a larger whole. Building and nurturing relationships is a way to connect with this larger whole, fostering a sense of purpose and meaning in life.

Spiritually fulfilling relationships can encourage personal growth and self-awareness. They challenge you to become better versions of yourselves, teaching you about love, compassion, forgiveness, and empathy. These qualities are not just beneficial on a spiritual level; they also contribute to a more harmonious and healthy life.

The Role of Community

Being part of a community also significantly impacts your health. Communities provide a sense of belonging and purpose, which are essential for mental and emotional well-being. Whether it’s a religious group, a social club, or a local neighbourhood, being involved in a community helps to reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation, which can be as harmful to health as smoking or obesity.

Nurturing Healthy Relationships

Given the profound impact of relationships on your health, it’s crucial to invest time and energy into building and maintaining them. This includes open communication, setting healthy boundaries, and showing appreciation and love for those around us. It’s also important to recognize when a relationship is harmful and take steps to address the issues, whether that means seeking counselling, having difficult conversations, or, in some cases, ending the relationship.

In a holistic approach to health, relationships are as important as diet, exercise, and sleep. The connections we maintain with others nourish not just our emotional and mental well-being but also our physical health and spiritual growth.

You can make conscious choices to nurture and cherish your relationships, leading to a healthier, happier, and more fulfiling life.

Life Lessons

Can your strengths become a weakness?

Each of us is a unique self with our own mix of personal strengths and weaknesses.

Personal strengths might include sensitivity, work ethic, candour, playfulness or many other behaviours.

However, can these strengths become a weakness if taken too far? Being over sensitive can make it hard to be with less sensitive people. Someone who works too hard may neglect the very people they love and work hard for. And so;

For each strength, too much of it can become a weakness.

There is a judgement to be made in how much you use your strengths. Too much of any of them can bring a negative influence into your life. Balance is needed to have not too much but also not too little.

Finding the middle path is the best route to take.

To achieve this, you may need to do this consciously and thoughtfully initially. Eventually it will become second nature and you will not need to give it a thought.

We all have flaws in ourselves. You have to bear with them along with other peoples’ flaws. Given the balancing nature of strengths and weaknesses, you need to optimise your strength not to let it become a weakness.

Let me give you an example to explain this.

Being up front and speaking honestly is a strength. But if you give your opinion when it is not requested it becomes a weakness as you are seen as opinionated and lacking flexibility. There is a balance to be found between the strength and the weakness.

This all feels quite complicated but it need not be. There are 3 easy steps;

  1. Review your strengths and weaknesses. It is difficult to manage your strengths if you don’t know what they are. Reflect a while and note on some paper your three key strengths. Just being aware of them will help you to not allow them to go too far and become a weakness. Then reflect a little more on what your weaknesses might be and note the top three.
    2. Take the three top weaknesses and identify what you might do to improve it. Take action to work on reducing your weaknesses.
    3. Keep iterating over time 1 and 2 above. The reason for only looking at three weaknesses is not to allow yourself to become overwhelmed by trying to make too much change to happen at once. If you can only handle managing one that is alright. You are moving in the right direction and working at improving how you live.

I cannot stress too much that the art is not to work on too many actions at once. Otherwise, there is a very real danger of becoming over whelmed which helps no-one. Consciously do one or two actions. When these become second nature, take two more actions.

It is very much a little step at a time.

However often the tortoise overtakes the hare.

At some point you will look back and be amazed at how you have improved your strengths and reduced your weaknesses.

Life Lessons

What do relationships bring you?

Our lives are made up of a range of relationships. Your earliest relationships are with your parents and siblings. As we grow, they include friends, fellow students, wider family, neighbours, lovers, managers, colleagues and many others.

We chose to be born into this life to learn life lessons.

Life lessons are not about acquiring material wealth but more about how you behave with other humans, animals and nature.

It is my belief that some of our greatest challengers and difficult relationships are our greatest teachers.

I can remember my dad saying to me to think before I opened my mouth and spoke. At the time I was cross at the comment, but now I can see the truth in what he had said. My dad was trying to guide me to go for quality of conversation rather than quantity.

A considered reply comes from a higher place within you and generally is a better reply.

We bring many hopes to relationships, especially love ones, which are often not fulfilled. That is not the fault of the relationship. It’s just that we have been encouraged to have unrealistically high expectations.

No relationship stands still.

It either develops and grows or degenerates and falls away. Being pragmatic, all long-term relationships have their ups and downs. If you want to keep the relationship in your life, it is important to work on it especially during the more challenging times. It is possible to work through those times and get to a better place.

In most relationships, the other party is often giving you the opportunity to learn a life lesson.

You may well be doing the same for them.

My natural disposition tends to be impetuous. My dad was trying to teach me to be more considered, planned, practical and grounded. It made me smile when I had an esoteric astrology natal reading. My soul has all of these characteristics whereas my personality (ego) is a more strategic and big picture thinker disliking the detail.

My dad was really asking me to lead a more soul led life.

What a wonderful gift he was bringing me. So rather than being irritated by his guidance, if I had been more aware, I should have stood back and asked myself what life lesson my dad was helping me to learn.

Having a life rich in an array of relationships helps you to learn a broad range of life lessons.

Or you may have come into this life to learn a few but key life lessons. In this case:

You may have a few but very important relationships to help you to learn.

To speed up your learning, take the time to step back and review your relationships. What life lesson is it helping to teach you? It could be a whole range of things such as learning to listen to, to define and hold your boundaries, not to rush, to allow yourself to have fun and many more things.

By consciously reviewing a relationship, especially if it is a difficult one, you step out of victim mode and become more objective. It is much easier to learn the lesson from this perspective. As soon as you demonstrate you have learnt the lesson by doing and saying the right things, amazingly the relationship usually improves along with the quality of your life.

Keep reviewing and keep learning to help bring about a better life….