Have you ever wondered if that person is really healthy or really just lucky? We all have! At the end of the day, we all want great health! We want to feel good, move better and look our best, but we also don’t want to work very hard for it. If we’re honest, we wish for the things we want a lot more than we work for them. Therefore, we spend our time wishing for more good luck over great health! But we don’t have to!
“If only I were as lucky as her.” “If only I were as lucky as him.” Those are the things we say in our head and therefore the mindset that we live in. We identify wanting the luck of others to reap their health, instead of just manifesting the mindset of great health now and actually starting to live it. Our mindset and our thoughts have a direct impact on our overall health. If we start to change the narrative in our minds to, “I feel so healthy today.” “I am moving stronger each day.” “I look healthier each time I look in the mirror,” we can start to feel those things almost immediately! Dr. Isha Gupta a neurologist from IGEA Brain and Spine, who has been seen in the media on various platforms, shares that increasing dopamine and serotonin are the secrets to instant boosts to our immediate health and well-being. They found that the easiest way to do that is with a 20-second smile! If we want to be healthier, we don’t need to be luckier! We must think better and smile more! How lucky is that!
We can’t blame our health on the luck of others or even ourselves. Another common phrase we use is, “my family is just unlucky, we all have…” Not true, sure, we all have genetic predispositions, but we also have free will and abilities to make daily, hourly, and sometimes even minute-to-minute impacts on our health. Johns Hopkins, which is one of the most elite hospitals and institutions for education, shares on its website that we can’t let hereditary diseases like Heart Disease become a doomsday outlook on our lives, (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-power-of-positive-thinking) so much so that expert Lisa R. Yanek, M.P.H., and her colleagues were doing studies on positive thinking with their cardiac patients and found that even those with family histories could reduce their preexisting re-existing risks of heart attack or stroke by 1/3 with positive thinking. They said, “What is clear, however, is that there is definitely a strong link between “positivity” and health.” How lucky is that?
On St. Patrick’s Day week, it’s fun to keep the magic of “luck,” alive and we can do that each day or even moment, with our own thoughts, intentions, and actions. Because what makes one person lucky or unlucky, is really perception, right? You may think one thing is lucky and someone else may think it’s not. Perhaps we would do well this week to be mindful of our own luckiness we each have. Let’s look for luck in our health and well-being, and if we aren’t sure if it’s there, we can still choose positivity and smile. To be lucky enough to dream of feeling good, moving better, looking great, and believing we are those things already too is luck in itself! Also, who knows, someone may be looking at you and saying, “If only I was as lucky as them.” You might be luckier than you think!
Steve Harvey, yes, the Family Feud host, who is also a motivational speaker, says, “if you have any measure of health, that’s a blessing.” St. Patrick’s Day is an Irish holiday tradition that often is filled with “blessings,” but if you swap that word out with any other of its synonyms it would be, “if you have any measure of health that’s a miracle.” “If you have any measure of health, that’s dedication.” Or our favorite, “if you have any measure of health, that’s good luck.” If we consider that we most likely have many measures of health, not just any measure of health, that’s not just a “blessing,” that’s pretty lucky! Happy St. Patrick’s Day – here’s to being lucky in health!
Mary Hoadley
Director of The Wellness Center