Why Live 1.3

1.3 Aim For Healthy.

When I am in a situation,  I always ask myself “What is the healthy outcome?”

I see this a lot with my friends who are dating. They like someone and start putting in all these efforts to make the other person like them. Eventually their efforts pay off and the 2 are blissfully in love….for a few months. Then it ends quickly and completely. 

What happened? Well, my friends were so focused on if they could woo their crush that they never stopped to think if that person was the healthy partner needed for a long lasting partnership.

I have learned that I will never be perfect. No matter how amazing my clothes or hilarious my jokes or tidy my house is. I will simply never be capable in my lifetime to attain perfection.

As a result, I have found that when I aim to be healthy in any given situation… the results usually play out in my favor in the long run.

I aim to be healthy for myself.

When eating, I aim to eat unprocessed foods and to have vitamins daily. That way, when I occasionally want a piece of cake, I am not throwing off my mood for the entire day.

When sleeping, I black out the room, avoid any blue light devices for an hour then take my melatonin and rest deeply. That way, those occasional all nighters of writing, I still function well.

I aim to be healthy for others.

I study different ways of communicating such as NLP and nonviolent communication so that I can effectively connect with others.

I study 12 language and try to understand the variety of cultural values so that I have more empathy for differences. 

I never have an argument anymore- because I am genuinely curious about the other person’s views so there is nothing for them to defend against.

It’s about being healthy. When I know why they do what they do then I can be on their team. I can help them get what they seek in a manner that allows me to get what I seek too.

I aim to be healthy for the next generation.  

When I go visit others I could easy tell their kids not to ask questions and to leave me alone. But instead I usually bring little puzzles or projects to help them with. 

The last time I visited my favorite little nugget, I brought 2 metal bookshelves that she assembled using only a kid sized screwdriver.

We counted the screws for each shelf and I’d always ask “What do you think we do next?”

Sure she had a few times where her choice of the next piece didn’t work. When that happened I would say with joy in my voice “uh oh! We made a mistake, now we have more information!  Yey!” and give her a big hug then high five.

Because that’s a valuable life lesson: we are enriched by our mistakes in life.

I aim to be healthy in my failures.

I came from a childhood where mistakes were guarantees of screaming, ridicule, and violence of some form. Not to mention the number of times it would be brought up later as “proof" of my incompetence as a human.

It didn’t matter that no one taught me anything about what I was trying to do. The only thing that mattered to them was to feel good in the communal shaming of my character. They were accepted and I was rejected. 

When I fail today, a simple forgetting to plug the lamp in, I still feel the urge to defend myself and then to shun myself away.

That’s not healthy. So when I catch myself doing those old toxic behaviors, I do a pattern Interrupt. I laugh instead of cry. Or I ask for a hug instead of leave the room. These decisions are monumentally terrifying to me and a part of my healing.