Have you ever thought, “I will be happy with my life when I am happy with my physical appearance”?

I hear this phrase quite often and used to say it myself until I realized that I had it all backwards… I was trying to “fix” the outside when I really needed to do my work on the inside. I spent many years “chasing skinny” and it wasn’t until I started to get to work on my personal development that I finally realized my physical goals.

When we are fulfilled in our lives and nourishing our mental and emotional needs, our physical well being also begins to improve. Phrases such as, “I will be happy when…” are much more beneficial when replaced by, “I appreciate…”

Which comes first?

Your healthy, fit body?

Emotionally and mentally fit life?

While looking backwards may seem counter-intuitive, it is in fact essential to understand where you’ve come from in order to move forward quickly. Past experiences shape our lives, affect our judgments, form our habits and generally cloud our thinking. By recording the things that had a significant impact on you in the past, you’ll be able to easily identify when your assessment becomes compromised by your past experience and nix any unhelpful thought processes that make you favor things that could harm your goal seeking or disregard things that might help.

If you are ready to take a step towards uncovering your personal connection, let’s do an exercise to compare our physical highs and lows with how we were feeling about life in general.  We often find that something from one area of our life can prove to be the obstacle stopping you achieving in another and that our physical well-being and our mental well-being are directly related and not in the way you might think…

I have shared some of my personal examples with you and I invite you to take a few minutes to answer the following questions:

Highs and lows

What are the biggest highs you can remember?

STEPH’S EXAMPLE
Step 1: PHYSICALLY	Step 2: LIFE	Step 3: Examine the commonalities in Steps 1 & 2
1.) Maintaining my healthy weight was simple… I just ate when I was hungry and was active each and every day.	1.) I started volunteering at a local homeless shelter and felt more gratitude and fulfillment in my life.	1.) I wasn’t happy because I was thin… I was thin because I was fulfilled… I wasn’t seeking comfort in junk food and I felt very fortunate to be able to work out.

YOUR TURN
Step 1: PHYSICALLY	Step 2: LIFE	Step 3: Examine the commonalities in Steps 1 & 2
1.)	1.)	1.)
2.)	2.)	2.)
3.)	3.)	3.)

Now repeat the same process, when have you felt lowest?

STEPH’S EXAMPLE
Step 1: PHYSICALLY	Step 2: LIFE	Step 3: Examine the commonalities in Steps 1 & 2
1.) I was at my highest weight and couldn’t fit into any of my clothes.	1.) I was struggling to find a new job and I was adjusting to a new city.	1.) My weight was not making me unhappy… it was the life circumstance that I was having trouble coping with. I was finding comfort in food.

YOUR TURN
Step 1: PHYSICALLY	Step 2: LIFE	Step 3: Examine the commonalities in Steps 1 & 2
1.)	1.)	1.)
2.)	2.)	2.)
3.)	3.)	3.)

I may not be able to answer the chicken and the egg question, BUT after this evaluation, you can guess which one comes first in achieving great health and ultimately a great physique.

Spend some time taking a look at your life and the areas in which you can do some “inside” work. In what areas are you looking for more enjoyment and fulfillment? How could you apply more gratitude to your life in order to feel genuine appreciation for what you have?