Health Goals - do you know how to do this?

Where is Your Focus?

It’s a question I ask people over and over when they come into the office for chiropractic. What are you looking for from care? And many people, especially those new to the work say words to the effect of “I want less pain”, “I want my symptoms to go away”, “if only this pain would stop, I’d be fine”.

So what happens in your life when you focus on something? Let’s say you have a very difficult friend who is demanding a lot of time and attention. So you give her the attention she is asking for, but after every interaction you feel exhausted and wiped out. Or maybe you’re focusing on a problem at work, and you just can’t see a way through. What happens in your body?

The think is, for most of us, when we focus on the problem, the pain, the circumstance, the difficult relationship we find that our energy drops, our mood lowers, we start to feel negative and frustrated.

And what does this mean for your body’s ability to heal? When we feel tired, exhausted, negative or frustrated this tells me that your physiology is supporting Fight, Flight or Freeze. it’s not in a state to heal. It’s not in a state to make positive changes or think constructively.

So I get it that you have pain or symptoms or struggles. We all do. And there is a time to focus on these. However, if your energy is low and you feel un-resourced, it probably isn’t the time.

So what can you do to:

  • To raise your energy?

  • Improve your mood?

  • Think better questions?

  • Shift your physiology to one that supports healing and growth?

We will all have different answers because we are all starting from a different place.

But where is your focus?

Maybe you need to focus on improving your nutrition, to support health and wellbeing. Or maybe you want to exercise more, which may mean walking, running, yoga, so many things?

Or maybe you want to look at your inner dialogue, because if many of us spoke to our friends like we speak to ourselves, we’d have no friends.

Suggested areas of focus that may help include:

  • how can I raise my energy?

  • what needs to happen so that I can run 5k?

  • what one thing could I do today that would make me feel better?

  • how could I improve my sleep?

  • how do I say no and stick to it?

So when you bring this back to your health goals, it’s good to try and go big picture and be positive. Almost everyone I speak to tells me what they don’t want - I don’t want pain, I don’t want stress, I don’t want to be so angry all the time.

Instead, you could have aims like

  • More ease in my body

  • More energy / enough energy to do my daily activities with ease

  • Better sleep / I want to wake up refreshed

  • I want to feel good about myself

  • I want to be more authentic / sovereign

  • I want to say no and mean it

So it can be tempting to try and do everything and stress yourself out further. And if that’s you, I suggest you pick one thing you can do to improve your ability to heal. Something that will help to move you towards better energy, better sleep, more flexibility or positive thinking.

But you may be ready to look at your health and wellbeing in a different way, and if that’s you now is a perfect time to start!

And next time you find yourself totally focused on your pain or symptoms, you can remember the one thing you are doing that is helping you heal and put your focus there instead. And then observe your body. Observe how you can shift your internal state by simply focusing on something that makes you feel better. And if you have studied the Somato-Respiratory Integration exercises, go to stage 1 and focus on the area in the body that makes you feel at ease or peace (and if you don’t know how, you can access a Free Stage 1 Online workshop here)

Small things can make a big difference.

Rachael Talbot