How URGENT is your health?

As I sit here planning out my day, I have to distinguish between things that are important and things that are urgent. 

This is a great question because many people can't separate the two! Until I thought about it, the only things that were urgent in my day were important. And things only became important when they became urgent. 

I touched on this last week a little bit, but you really have to lay down your values in life. Now most people will include honesty, family, faith, integrity, etc. But often health is left out. And perhaps its because in our country people tend to think that as long as they aren't sitting in an emergency room they are healthy. 

I don't think that's health food!

There was a study out recently that reported 90% of Americans think they are healthy. Now obviously we know this can' t be true because 68% of the country is overweight! So at this point the question becomes how do we define health? What is the criteria?

Getting back to stating of values, health has to be a value and a PRIORITY. Our families, friendships, jobs, and so much more rely on us being healthy. 

 Concern and protection of our health through proactive measures. Planning your meals and planning your exercise will make them both much easier to accomplish and be consistent with. 


Now I am going to open up to you a little bit. My wife and I had a talk the other night and she really opened my eyes to something. What it boiled down to was that I can plan out my schedule at work, plan workouts, plan my eating habits, plan things to do with my daughter, plan out my schedule for grad school. But when it comes to our relationship, too frequently I just "show up." I fail to plan anything and I put all the emphasis of maintaining our relationship on her.

Is this your threshold for health?

So I started thinking back on what my values are. I can say and write down that I value family, faith, health, honesty, hard work and friends. But where have I put each of those on the priority list? 


For most people, their health and fitness isn't near where it should be. If we neglect our health as a nation we are basically saying that its not important. But it will become important when our health becomes urgent. And this is NOT what you want! Because at this point, the only time you think of your health is when its rapidly deteriorating and we end up running around in "crisis" mode. 


Here's the final point. Don't let your health get to the point that it becomes urgent. Urgent health means that your body is failing you. 

Your health is important. But don't wait until you're in the emergency room to start thinking about changing your life to include health in your list of values.