connection

This is the factor of health I have personally found the most challenging. The journey of transformation I have been living, led me to grow a higher sense of awareness around the value of relationships and its huge impact on overall health. Humans by nature are social beings in constant need of love and belonging; therefore, fostering supportive, deep and meaningful connections with others is not only imperative to living a more joyful and fulfilling life, but also conducive to longevity.

In addition, I believe building a deeper connection with oneself through spirituality is equally as important; in fact, I attribute the complete turn-around I have experienced in my life to having strengthened and evolved my spiritual relationship with God. It is the source that ultimately gave me the courage and inspiration to change from within, and as a result undergo an unimaginable life conversion.

Lastly, by learning more about the importance of connecting with nature, I have made a conscious effort to introduce practices in my day-to-day that allow me to tune more into nature and noticed tremendous benefits. Simply spending more time outside and engaging with the environment through one’s senses, can be stress relieving and help with gaining a greater sense of appreciation for everything that is and that one is part of.

Connection With Oneself - Spirituality

Distancing myself from God, seizing to continually grow my faith and spiritual connection with Him, and falling into self-sufficiency led me to develop low self-esteem, insecurities, and fear. As a result, I used smoking, alcohol, temporary pleasure, materialism to cope and try to fill an internal void I was unconscious of. Such poor decisions and behavior steered me towards a downward spiral that took me to the lowest point I have ever reached. Living such a season enabled me to have greater perspective and recognize I had to change, and the only way I could do so was to allow God to work within me. Through the power of building a daily habit of prayer, gratitude, reading the Gospel and meditation, I gradually strengthened my faith, grew my trust in God, and increased my dependance on Him. Acknowledging I am a vessel for God’s purposes, recognizing God lives in me as well as through me - meaning all I am and everything I have comes from God and is to be used through me for others - profoundly impacted me and became the foundation for the continual transformation I have experienced within myself and therefore in all areas of my life.

Connection With Others

I learned that assessing the quality of one’s family bonds, friendships, and social groups is extremely worthwhile in the pursuit of radical change. The decisions I have made in the last several years, to undertake endeavors requiring sacrifice and discipline, gave me an opportunity to organically simplify the relationships I have had in my life. In other words, the people I surrounded myself with, and the relationships I invested a great amount of time and energy in, slowly began to change as I started altering my ways and adopting a different lifestyle. The ones that were no longer aligned dissipated and the ones that have served me remained. I was also able to form new and more supportive ones.

Learning to let go of relationships with people whose values and lifestyles were different than my own was quite difficult but crucial. Because of my introverted personality, making friends wasn’t always easy for me; therefore, I had the tendency to cling to friendships, seek to please others to fit in and feel validated, and I was afraid of being lonely.

With time and once I began accepting my true self, embracing solitude, freeing myself from my insecurities and others’ expectations, living by my own set of values without fear; I discovered one can attract like-minded people to form new relationships with by simply being one’s authentic self and having the courage to get out of one’s comfort zone.

Connection With Nature

Spending time outdoors I believe is key to strengthening one’s health. From breathing fresh air, getting natural light through the eyes, getting sun rays through the skin, hearing sounds emitted by one’s surrounding environment, feeling the wind and the rain, grounding one’s feet to the earth; to having a greater awareness of everything that is and that one is part of, has led me to become more appreciative of the amazing gift of life. Having the perspective one is such a tiny part of all of creation is quite humbling and can significantly alleviate stress and anxiety. Spending time outside daily, primarily through running, has had such a positive impact on my emotional and mental health. It has become a meditative practice that continually brings me internal peace, increases my sense of gratitude, enhances my mood and energy, in turn enabling me to handle life circumstances with a better attitude and more calmly. Walking or sitting with bare feet on the grass, spending time at the beach - on the sand and in the water - doing bodyweight exercises outdoors, going on short walks or hikes are other types of activities I try to do as much as possible to have a greater sense of connection with nature.

useful Questions and phrases i have considered:

  • Do the people you surround yourself with want to see you succeed? Do they challenge you to be better?

  • Are you willing to let go of relationships that don’t truly serve you and seek new ones that align with your values?

  • You are the average of the people you spend the most time with.

  • You CAN’T change the people around you, but you CAN change the people around you.