What does health mean?

Health means different things to different people: physical, nutritional, mental, emotional, spiritual, anything that the person feels is blocking them or not allowing them to move forward or progress.

Over the 2017/2018 Christmas and New Year period, I allowed myself some downtime to think about what health meant to me and what I felt was lacking in my life. I wasn’t sleeping, my food wasn’t on point, my training and emotions were all over the place and I wasn’t giving myself any love and attention. The way I was treating myself was mirrored in what and whom I was attracting in friendships, relationships and situations.

After working incredibly hard during 2017 I had a decent book of business, but this was to the detriment of everything else in my life. This was the energy that I was giving out, therefore it is what I was getting back.

My personal life was a wreck last year. Among the suitors I attracted, was one particularly awful one who I met at my place of work, and who I still see on an almost daily basis. I was trapped in a relationship with him for 5 months, where he at times had a terrible temper, which was aimed at me. We had an unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship, terrible rows and despite my 4 brains screaming at me to get out, especially after he was twice physically aggressive towards me in a heated argument, I stayed with him through what I can only assume was lack of self-love and self-esteem. He eventually cheated on me, most likely more than once. I was being shown the same amount of respect and love that I had been showing myself.

At the beginning of 2018, health for me therefore meant emotional and spiritual wellbeing. I started the year positive, determined to change the energy around me, but 4 weeks in nothing had changed and I drove myself into the ground by working long hours (including weekends), not sleeping enough and eating poorly. Whilst the extra calories helped my training, they didn’t do much for my self-esteem. When sleep deprived and low, I feel overwhelmed by things and people, and I jump straight into my hole. One of my friends picked up on this and nudged me to book a week back home so that I could reset.

What these past few weeks of turmoil have made me realise is that I have only 1 life, 1 body, 1 soul. I should be filling my time with people who care about me, activities that I enjoy doing, and not allowing anyone or anything to break through and pollute my energy. I am open and friendly, but know deep down that I have allowed into my inner circle of energy people who are not genuine with me or genuinely interested in me, even as a friend. The door is meant to swing both ways, but after being smacked in the face by it so many times over the past 12 months, I have finally decided that I need to come first. I have been making time again to meditate, which has helped a great deal with trying to balance out my energy and find myself again, after being emotionally and spiritually lost in 2017.

Step one: coming back to Portugal, my home, for a week, to my friends and family, and grounding myself again. I have only been here for a few days but I am feeling so much better already, after completely shutting down from work, sleeping, eating, spending time by myself, going for long walks on the beach and most of all, listening to myself. We lead such busy lives that we often don’t hear what our bodies and soul are trying to tell us. I have been able to block everything out and get back in touch with me. I have also been using a mood map to establish who and what I no longer want in my life as the feelings associated with them are negative. There is no room for negativity; only positivity and happiness.