Out of all the insights that I’ve had over the years that have helped me to grow and to keep myself healthy, this has been one of the biggest. It has been a pillar of my strength and will power and has served as a constant reminder of what I should be doing at all times. Quite simply…
Respect your home.
The place in which you hang your hat is your territory. It’s your environment you create for yourself. It’s your home. Home is a place to recharge and seek nourishment. This means nourishment of your body, your mind, and your soul. It’s where all can be exposed with no worry of being hurt or ridiculed; you can let your guard down. It’s where you can surround yourself of constant reminders of who you are as an individual. It’s the one place that you personally control and nothing should be allowed inside it that’s negative or can sabotage you in any way.
Your home is the only place in the world that you have this kind of control and that should absolutely be respected.
This means not allowing others to bring anything into your home that you don’t want there (including drama). Not allowing them to bring anything in that could hurt you in anyway. It even means being selective of what you allow from radio and television to come into your home. All that is in vain however, if you are not mindful of what you bring into your home. Anything you bring in should be nourishing to you and nothing should be damaging. You have complete control of what’s there. No one else does. So if you allow yourself to be sabotaged in your own home, how do you plan on having success outside the home?
There is an obvious correlation here with food. If it’s important to you to be healthy, fit, and well nourished, you should be actively bringing in an abundance of nourishing foods into your home, while blocking access to damaging and harmful foods.
The one true place that you can have complete control of what goes into your body is in your home. Once again, if you sabotage yourself here, you have no chance of controlling it anywhere else in your life. This should be a constant thought when you are in the grocery store figuring out what you are going to be bringing back with you to your home. If it goes in your cart, it will end up not just in your home but in your body, so don’t put it in the cart in the first place.
A tip to make this easier while grocery shopping is to stay in the perimeter of the store as much as possible. The more you stay out of the aisles the better. It’s the aisles that are filled with the chips and cookies and frozen foods while the perimeter is loaded with fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and dairy products. Granted not all of these are good for you but they are a lot better than most of the processed garbage found in the aisles.
On occasion, your cravings will get the best of you. There will be special occasions and get-togethers when some junk food will be part of the occasion. The purchase of this type of food, as a practice, should never be included in your regular grocery shopping though. If one night I get a craving for something that just won’t go away, my life is designed so that I have to go out of my way to fill that craving. I have to get up and physically leave my house to go get it. It’s not in my house already because my rules of grocery shopping prohibited me from buying it. This helps me to avoid the pitfalls of sabotaging my diet in my own home. I have to justify it to myself much more if I can’t just go to the freezer and grab the ice cream.
If you practice looking at your home as a place of nourishment, it will have a great effect on your life and your health.
As a side note, I understand that some of you might be saying that this doesn’t work if you have a roommate or a significant other that has their own ideas of what they want to bring into the house. Clearly you can’t stop them from making their home their own as well?
Of course there will always be some truth to this. But if you’re in a situation where you have say a roommate or BF/GF living with you that stops you from having your own space and allowing yourself to have a spot to recharge and just be yourself, you should probably take that as a sign that its time to move on. It’s that important to have your own environment.
If you’re married and things just aren't that simple, I suggest you try to reconnect on the grounds you originally came together on and talk about it. Most people marry because they have commonalities and respect for one another. While people change over time, these things shouldn’t really change. Connect on this level and then explain yourself and what it is you need from your home that you’re not getting. Then find out what they need and make it a joint project to find ways to help each other obtain them. There’s always a way. You just may have to get creative.
Until next time,
Kris
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i find your blog really interesting. would like to have a link partner. i think both sites would benefit from it.
Posted by: Weightloss Center | 16 June 2010 at 08:23 PM