When it comes to any or all aspects of lifestyle, the spiritual saying ‘the path and the goal are one’ applies. For example, if you want to be healthy, eat healthy or “nutrient rich” food, and when you do, health inevitably shows up. ~JAM
It’s the last month of the year, and we’re reviewing 2015 goals and beginning to contemplate the goals we want to achieve in life, business, and sports in the upcoming year.
In that spirit, let’s consider whether health should be a goal. Though we’ve all read about “the journey” to wellbeing or “the journey to health,” is health really a goal? Are we aiming to achieve a healthy state in life or do we want to maintain a balanced and healthy state so we can achieve our goals in life?
Here at Nutrient Rich Superfoods, a Performance Lifestyle company, we think the latter makes much more sense as a mindset. Having the right mindset has big implications for your lifestyle and the results you experience in this life. Not only does it determine how healthfully you eat each day; it also has big implications for how you live your life as a whole.
When you make goals (objectives that take time to achieve) out of certain aspects of your lifestyle—like eating healthy—the implication is that you’re not eating well right now. Thus, maybe, if you’re successful at achieving your “goal,” you’ll be eating healthy in the near future. Meanwhile, if you’re not eating healthy now, you can expect that food disorders, weight problems, and other kinds of health complications are, or will soon be, distracting and holding you back from you real life goals.
At the core, your lifestyle is “how” you achieve your goals.
What’s interesting about this inquiry is that it begins to illuminate the saying above about the path and the goal being the same thing.
The concept of “the path is the goal” originated in spiritual circles and is usually spoken of when referring to meditation. Spiritually speaking, what this means is that the experience of freedom (liberation from the mind or separate self sense) and the practice of freedom (meditation or awakening) are one and the same.
The enlightened perspective is that you don’t meditate to get free. When you meditate, you are already free. On that path, you have already reached the goal of being free.
Will your experience of your authentic self become clearer, more stable, and be perceived more pervasively over time? Yes. But even if your mind is attempting to drive you a little crazy while you’re meditating or living in a state of awakening, YOU are still already free. That’s the practice. It’s immediate and ongoing.
In many respects, this is analogous to another aspect of lifestyle: eating. Many people are sold the mindset—through the marketing of various health programs—that they are on a journey to health by eating healthier. The problem with this perspective is that while you’re body will continue to get healthier over time by practicing the art and science of healthy eating, you need to be eating healthy now or being healthy will never really show up.
While you won’t necessarily experience the pinnacle of wellbeing after your first meditation, you are free right now. The same is true for eating a healthy meal. While you won’t necessarily experience optimal health immediately, you are healthy right now. As long as you start with that mindset, the path and the goal are one and the same. The minute you are eating a predominantly whole foods, plant-based, nutrient-rich diet, you are achieving the “goal” of health. And you can be confident your health will continue to improve. This is true of anything you practice. You just get better and better.
The big mindset shift is to put the lifestyle practices that promote what you want to experience into play immediately, so you are on the path and achieving your goal right now. Not later. You want to stop making goals out of healthy eating. Healthy eating helps you achieve your goals. It is not the goal!
Which is why want to learn how to fuel your body right and eat healthy, quickly. It’s why you want to get it and get on with your life, rather than thinking of it as something you are aiming for somewhere down the road. ~ JAM
Being healthy isn’t a real goal, even if you’ve lost the practice and need to regain it. I know that can be hard to see when you are suffering from diabetes or some other consequence of unhealthy eating and living. The mindset applies because it will get you eating healthy as best you can, right now, so that healthy eating becomes a given in your life, not an abstract goal. That’s the power of a lifestyle mindset. You need it working for you right now, so you manifest the experience of life you want over time.
Doing so will enable you to get free of the hidden challenges that distract or hold most people back. This allows you to remove interferences (nutritionally speaking) caused by eating nutrient-poor foods and in ways that don’t maintain health.
If you want to focus on your real goals in life, business, or sport without the distraction of low energy, health challenges, or weight issues—and with the confidence that comes from being able to engage in the world at your full capacity—stop making a goal out of healthy eating. Just stop. Establish a healthy eating style as part of your lifestyle today so you can create a new normal.
This is why we created the whole idea of Performance Lifestyle nutrition. It is a healthy, performance lifestyle philosophy. We all know that wellness, health, and higher performance are not limited to nutrition alone, but our fueling and eating practices must fall into alignment as a lifestyle practice, not a diet you try or a goal you set. Rather, it’s about living in a way that promotes and maintains health and enables your body to function and perform well so you can pursue your biggest dreams.
To learn more about performance lifestyle nutrition, click here.
To learn 10 Tips to Optimize the Way You Eat (the basis of Performance Lifestyle Nutrition), click here.