Do you ever wonder if choosing to live a healthy lifestyle is worth it? Do healthy habits and routines really make a difference? (Insert that story you heard once about your friend’s uncle who lived to be 100, smoked a pack a day, never exercised, and ate bacon every morning.). There are so many decisions we have to make every day as we steer ourselves down the path of life. It can seem overwhelming at times.
Our boys get to practice making decisions in a fun way by reading the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Perhaps you’ve read these yourselves when you were a child. The books have multiple endings depending on what choices you make as you’re reading them. Our family also enjoyed watching You vs. Wild on Netflix. In this series, Bear Grylls undertakes various missions in challenging outdoor settings and leaves many decisions about what to do next literally in the hands of the viewer with the remote control. Some of these decisions can lead to mission failure and extraction but there is always the option to re-do the episode.
Do you ever wish life could be like that too, where you can make big decisions and if they don’t work out you could have a “do-over”? This is interesting to think about with lots of areas: school, marriage, work, travel, friends, kids…. Our lives could be so different. Just out of plain curiosity you could make multiple decisions and see how they play out. Don’t like where you are? Hit the “replay” button and start all over. Wow. The possibilities are endless! And here’s that word again….overwhelming.
Thankfully, there is at least one area of our lives that doesn’t require us to second guess our decisions. That area is our health. Rest assured that choosing to live a healthy lifestyle is worth it!
The research is clear. The healthiest choices made consistently will lead to a better ending: eating well, getting adequate sleep, staying hydrated, exercising regularly, minimizing stress, taking care of our spines, maintaining positive relationships, and having a purpose in life. There are no shortcuts, and there is simply no better way to have the best quality of life.
Develop healthy habits and routines, and leave the heavy decision making for all the other areas in life where determining the outcome is a lot more challenging. Just imagine how long your friend’s uncle would have lived had he made better choices!
Your adventure awaits!
Marisol Haughton