I have had a few people recently meet me and think that I have always been this fit and this healthy and that it must be easy for me when it comes to making healthy lifestyle choices. Today it is easy to make these choices, because I feel the best health-wise and look the best I ever have. I have friends who have known me for 10-15 years who have said that I look younger now than I did back then. I definitely feel that way and I know it is a by-product of The Way of the Livingness.
Eating Junk, Smoking and Taking Drugs
From a teenager onwards I made some choices that I didn’t even realise were choices: I just made them because I thought it was normal, never once stopping to consider the effects these choices were having on my body.
Here are some of the things I would do:
- I would eat whatever I wanted – take-away food, chips or fries, deep-fried foods and packaged, processed foods. I used to drink a can or two of Coke or Diet Coke a day.
- I was so into cheese that I could eat a 1kg block of it by myself in less than a week.
- Smoking at least a packet of cigarettes a day – sometimes two – was normal. I grew up in the Caribbean where there were no laws for underage smoking and it only cost $2 a packet, so money never stopped me from being a chimney. I also smoked a lot of marijuana as well – that too was cheap and socially acceptable.
- I would drink alcohol to the point where it would make me sick and even though my body reacted every time, I would just do it again. On the island where I lived it was duty and tax free so alcohol was often cheaper than a can of Coke or a juice.
- I would drink coffee, tea and other caffeinated drinks as well as eat a lot of sugary products as I was always feeling tired.
These lifestyle choices were affecting my moods, my energy levels and my whole life but I did not put the pieces of the puzzle together. I just thought it was a normal way to live. I didn’t know that there was another way. How did things change?
What Steps did I Take to Get to Where I am Today?
First of all I became aware that there was another way. I met some amazing people who are true role models and showed me The Way of the Livingness – being connected with yourself; taking responsibility, knowing that everything you do affects everyone around you. It has been presented recently by Serge Benhayon of Universal Medicine and is super simple.
In this Way, there are no rules or guidelines, so to speak, so you can’t fail or not ‘pass GO’. This ‘no-rules’ approach was what I embraced first as I have always been a bit rebellious and have never liked being constricted by rules and regulations.
The Way of the Livingness gave me the freedom to make my own choices and be responsible for all of them.
At first it was rather challenging taking responsibility for all the old choices I had made, but there was no point in beating myself up for doing things I hadn’t even been aware I was doing, let alone for being unaware of the damage I’d been causing in my own body.
- I didn’t go cold turkey and give everything up, wave the magic wand and ‘voila!’
- I took baby steps, making small changes slowly, without ever having to give it all up at once, and
- There wasn’t, and still isn’t, a goal as such – it was more like each day I just made choices that felt right for me.
I’m not perfect, I used to have an occasional hot chip if my daughter had some. But the thing is, my body speaks very loudly and clearly to me these days and I listen. I never felt great after eating the chips – I just enjoyed the part of putting them in my mouth. Nowadays I choose not to eat them, as I no longer want to ignore what my body will tell me later. And this is how I am refining my foods, with awareness and looking into the reason why I want to eat certain foods.
I didn’t give everything up and now live a boring life. It’s quite the opposite. I let go of a lot of the things that were not healthy for me, and now I live a vibrant, energy-filled life. I enjoy my days and dance and sing like I never ever did before. In the past I would only dance if I was wasted: now I dance and sing and have so much fun.
I have deep gratitude for Serge Benhayon and his family for showing me The Way of the Livingness and supporting me with so much love over the last 5 years. It has been awesome making healthy lifestyle choices and getting to feel younger as I grow older!
By RB, NSW
1,219 Comments
I feel that we are influenced by our friends and family from young so that we as you say RB we make choices without realising we are making them we just go with what everyone else is doing.
How many of us when young stop to consider that the food and drinks we put into our bodies when young can in later life have such a huge detrimental impact on us.
Listening to my body has made choosing what’s truly supportive for me much easier. I used to focus on health quite strongly and it was information from outside of me. Some of it worked but other things, like certain ‘superfoods’ for example were not right for me but I persisted because they were ‘healthy’, but some things things were giving me symptoms and were not right for me at all. I’m still learning each day as what my body needs can change depending on my health and different things like the season and what my body is experiencing in day to day living. What I really enjoy about body awareness is the simplicity and clarity, and naturally it works very well to support the body by taking direction from it.
Thank you Rosie, as you have shared nothing is given up, but listening to the body and what serves it with the nutrition for keeping our body fit and healthy to be of service definitely eliminates a lot of choices that I dreamed healthy in the past.
‘From a teenager onwards I made some choices that I didn’t even realise were choices: I just made them because I thought it was normal,’ This highlights to me the importance of accepting our personal responsibility to ourselves because if we don’t we allow everyone to feel that it is ok to live in disregard.
Our super markets are filled with substances that abuse us and it is up to each of us to find what works and the time that it takes to eliminate foods that no longer serve our bodies as it is our choice as you have shared Rosie.
When we observe others and clock the level of health to which they live we do assume it was an easy journey for them. We do not acknowledge that the road to that point was paved with a series of consistent choices that were made not from ‘I should’, or ‘I have to’ or ‘I am useless’ but from a spark that said ‘I am worth loving’. The other day I was talking to someone who said she really ought to exercise because her joints really needed the support, but this person concluded that there was a laziness there and so was unlikely to. I don’t agree – there wasn’t laziness there, simply not enough appreciation of self and that fact that she was totally worth the effort to love herself in this way.
“… there wasn’t laziness there, simply not enough appreciation of self and that fact that she was totally worth the effort to love herself in this way.” Thanks Michelle for your comment, I appreciated reading this today, exactly the words needed to support me with my own exercise program, thank you.
It is a step by step process, I never cut everything out all at once either. Listening to my body again and again to refine how I live is a process I don’t feel I will ever reach the end of. I know there’s more vitality to be lived even today.
There is so much that can be said for eating and living healthy, put it this way my mental health is so much more stronger and on it when I eat to nourish myself rather than to bludgeon myself.
Its amazing what can be achieved when we make positive life style choices, like you I have family, friends and colleagues that have known me for years and they say the same thing I look younger now than I ever did in my twenties and 30’s. This has been confirmed by the medical profession when having a recent health check. They said what ever it is I’m doing to keep going that they wished all their patients took as much self care as I did because then their work load would be less burdensome.
Mary it shows the daily effect we all have on our health based on our self care.
“The Way of the Livingness gave me the freedom to make my own choices and be responsible for all of them.” This is true religion right here in this statement.
This article makes huge sense to me, for all our choices have an impact on how we live.
“The Way of the Livingness gave me the freedom to make my own choices and be responsible for all of them.” The freedom of choice to be aware of how we feel.
Similar to you Rosie I did a lot of not so Loving things to my body through drugs and alcohol abuse but I did go cold turkey on the lot some 26 plus years ago and my body went through what we could call the dry horrors for 6 weeks. Fast forward to 2004 when I first met Serge Benhayon and even tough I had stopped all that abuse years before, the underlying pattern had not been healed. Approximately 6 years ago the eminence of marijuana left my body wit the most garishly taste of the smoke. So energetic healing when done by a True Esoteric practitioner will work energetic miracles when we are ready to heal because of our Loving choices.
What I find concerning about the general approach to our health today is that we tend to not consider past this moment, so we could eat something, or drink something or smoke something because we like the sensation of it but the effect could last for days if not have a much longer lasting effect. It’s a bit like we are blind to or ignore the long term consequences that could have a serious impact on our health.
Love what you’ve shown here – that changing our lifestyle and making healthier choices doesn’t have to be an arduous struggle to lead a monastic existence, but is actually a super joyful and fun process, where the body leads the way. It’s like when we bring more awareness to our body we realise how loudly it is actually speaking to us, all of the time – and from there, things that don’t support the body to live in a vital way start to feel like hindrances that we naturally want to leave behind.
There is this misconception that when we give things up that we must be suffering or miserable but actually it is the other way around because the body rejoices at our choices.
To have the understanding that the changes I am making is affecting everyone around me is supporting me enormously to observe and accept the reactions from others. I simply cannot deny the changes that are taking place and this is all because of the choices I am making to deepen the relationship to self.