Elemental Energy

Dear Joyanne,
I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I feel like giving up on my dreams because it seems like I’ll never have the energy to make any of them come true. Where do I go from here?    
   
Please help,
No Way Out

Dear No Way,
Vitality is the capacity to live, grow and develop. Since you appear to be in a day-to-day struggle with simply living, securing your vitality will be essential to your future progress and growth.  In other words, now is the time to redirect ALL of your energy into a commitment to your health and wellness. While that may include postponing what you’d hoped to achieve, it is unlikely that you would even be able to produce the results you desire given your current energy level. In the end, even your ability to enjoy what you’ve accomplished will be directly influenced by your vitality. Your singular focus on this goal is the one thing to which you must commit yourself fully if any of your dreams are ever to come to fruition.

Vitality is a choice!
No, you cannot pick and choose the germs that come your way but you absolutely can choose to prepare yourself for the eventual challenges to your health. This critical step may be the hardest for you to take if you’ve never developed a habit of making your own needs a priority. Vitality is the reward for choosing yourself again and again in the face of everything else. Life never stops demanding of you so, in order to meet those demands, you must learn how to be self-nurturing in order to claim the vitality that is rightfully yours. All the medical advice in the world won’t help if you’re not first dedicated to your own well being.

Obligation versus Dedication
I can hear you asking… “You want me to put myself first? What about all of my commitments?” My response is, yes what about them? Only when you first honor your obligation to yourself, will you have the fortitude to honor what you are dedicated to. Conversely, by not honoring or choosing to meet your basic need for wellness, you repeatedly compromise your own physical integrity to the detriment of everything depending on you. If you’ve ever needed “permission” to give to yourself, I hope you now feel that you have it!

Start with baby steps
Now that you are ready to take charge of your wellness, it would be wise to do so consistently and incrementally. Radical changes are too difficult to maintain but new habits can be forged with repetition over time. Assuming you have ruled out underlying medical conditions such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, there are simple methods you can employ to recharge your basic energy levels. Start by picturing what being truly healthy looks like. To me, vibrant health is like a bouquet of gorgeous flowers that command the attention of anyone in their midst. I like the idea of modeling myself after that which perfumes the air with beauty and energy.

You are a flower too!
If you would like to express the qualities of a flower in bloom, start by thinking like one. Ask “If I were a flower, what would I need?” The answer is simple…. sunlight, water, air, and food or, in terms of the four elements, fire, water, wind and Earth. These are what I call Elemental Energies and they are as critical to our survival as they are to a flower in the garden. In fact, the only cell that separate humans from flowers is something called a chloroplast. A chloroplast is an organelle that allows plants to collect sunlight through photosynthesis and to store that energy in the form of carbohydrate. Because people lack that ability, we are dependent upon the food energy found in what we eat. Once you understand that basic principal, it’s easy to see why a diet of processed food has little to offer in the way of replenishing the energy your body requires.

What You Can Do
Because food naturally contains all four Elemental Energies, what you eat represents the single biggest impact you can have on your overall health, not to mention the health of entire ecosystems! If you approach your relationship with food as you would a romantic relationship, you’ll find that the comfort foods that bring immediate pleasure just don’t make for lasting love. Wouldn’t you rather have a long-term liaison with what serves you day after day? You can do that by selecting those foods that are colorful, fresh and bursting with energy that hasn’t been lost through processing. Begin by eating locally grown, organic foods just once a day and you will start to notice that you feel recharged by the abundant power in Earth’s endless rainbow of colors and flavors. Like all of life, this is a process of learning to receive the gifts being offered…. the more you need, the more you need to practice receiving the bounty that is always available to those with the courage to ask for it.

"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."  - Janis Joplin