We are our own worst critics.

Many of us who work in the Wellness profession, and in traditional Healthcare professions, care about helping others achieve the highest quality of health and wellbeing. We tend to forget about ourselves and can risk abandoning ourselves in the process of trying to help others.

For decades I’ve worked on my own healing. It’s only been recently, and at middle age, that I have realized that it’s a necessity for me to focus on my own health and wellbeing if I want to have anything left to help those who come to my window at the pharmacy for advice, or who come to my wellness center for services and guidance.

It sounds so cliche. Be the change. You can’t help others if you’re depleted.

I feel like the simplest forms of advice are often overlooked because they do sound cliche, or it sounds like it’s the next new trend. Then it becomes a trend and not a destination. Adkins, Keto, Paleo – trends? or a destination and a way of life? In consideration, I say trends because very few people actually stick to these types of diet plans as a destination to arrive at for the rest of life, or at least a few solid decades.

I’ve had a roller coaster ride with my health because of always chasing the carrot, and engaging in trends. Yet, I have no regrets, because each one was an approach to more wellness, healthier choices, and positive health benefits. The problem has been when the urge for caffeine or sweets came back in, and a moment of weakness took my health back to an average status, because it became a very long moment, then back to a bad habit. On the down swing, everything feels a little heavier.

There was something in the last year that had me get off the roller coaster. It was consistency with yoga. Consistency with any healthy lifestyle choice is going to have excellent results. But how do you get the consistency? Mine came from default.

Get the best out of life by doing what you love even if it is not a source of income.

I would have never consistently done yoga 3 or more times a week every week for over a year unless and until I started teaching classes.

Because of making the right choices, albeit not the most sensational or lucrative choices, I easily walked into becoming the owner of a yoga studio and wellness center within walking distance from my house. I commit to teaching 3 to 4 one-hour classes every week and I’ve been doing so consistently.

My wellness center started to develop recently, and with other women joining to bring services of massage, meditation, more yoga, reiki, energy work, quantum readings and consignment items for a small gift shop – suddenly I have everything at my fingertips. This hadn’t ever happened in my life before – I am grateful.

The real wellness began when I started to be at my wellness center to receive services. I work as a licensed pharmacist, so the wellness center is a place for my heart work, and for community. I found myself engaging in guided meditation, connecting with others of the same mindset, committing to getting a therapeutic massage twice a month, am getting ready to have my third quantum session for clearing and healing (amazing!), and using natural handmade lotions, and other wellness products from my little gift shop.

I say all that to say this – I realized that investing in myself and my own wellness is paying dividends, not in money – but in my ability to be a walking advertisement for wellness.

My yoga studio and wellness center is small. This testimonial is not about promoting my business – it’s about letting everyone know that investing in ourselves, and in our own wellness, is the way to have a better quality of life.

Your health is your wealth.

Try going on vacation as an 80year old obese person with a serious heart condition and diabetes. Will you enjoy it because you have a million extra dollars you can spend on any luxury you like? Would you enjoy more being an 80year old who is healthy and vibrant and enjoys every day of life as if on vacation because you’ve set up your best life at home, and within self?

We are one. We are on a journey of experiencing life as a human being. It comes with the perspective that we must age and die. There are so many other perspectives about us that are completely false, and we’ve accepted as truth. It’s easier now than ever to really find truth because more information is at our fingertips.

You can go onto a search engine, Google or YouTube, and type in “healing vibrations” and you’ll get options to listen to higher vibrational music, Tibetan sound bowls, etc. You can find color healing, online yoga classes, mediation aps.

We literally build our own algorithm with today’s technology, and that will only increase as AI gets used more. Developing a healthy algorithm in life is just as important as developing a healthy algorithm online.

I found that committing to wellness, if even in small ways at first, leads to big benefits. I also feel we’re at a time in our human evolution that we can start to move into more effective ways of truly healing. These adjustments and destinations are going to cost some money. The practitioners who bring these services are valued.

I know I spend way too much on restaurant food – that expense alone can be reduced dramatically, and the money I spent on food can be moved over to paying for true wellness services and investing in my own health. I can cook. I can pack a lunch to take to work.

This new mindset also requires changing perspective on using health insurance. The goal is not to have a company or the government paying for all kinds of medications and procedures to make you feel better. The goal is for you to live better so that you don’t need the procedures, the medications or the visits to a doctor to interfere with your best quality of health and wellbeing.

Let me say it this way – Western medicine, the doctor visits, the procedures, and the medications interfere with your best quality of health and wellbeing.

Why do I still practice pharmacy when it is a Western medicine approach? Because until the culture shifts completely to education, wellness and preventative medicine, I will connect with patients by following demand.

For now, most of the American people I serve as a pharmacist, older people being the majority, are stuck in the entitlement loop. They want their medications fast like fast food and they feel entitled for their insurance to pay for everything. The people I serve in wellness are taking responsibility for themselves and healing from within.

The wellness approach is the true way to a better quality of living. I now know that what I am doing as my heart work is the true helpful work that can inspire others to take their health and wellbeing into their own hands. I am seeing and feeling the results of investing in myself.

I seem to be benefitting in every way from engaging in my own wellness. All four of my bodies – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual – feel better, stronger, more at peace, and calmer. I have less inflammation in my arms and hands, less anxiety, more clarity, and am less rattled by outside circumstances when they are stressful.

I’m forever on the path of wellness, and of pushing myself to be “better”. I don’t see this changing for me, yet what has changed is that I am less frantic about it. There is no real sense of urgency to become anything better than I am – it’s just a natural organic process of handling life as it comes with steadiness and clarity derived from making good decisions.

Somewhere along the line I realized that it wasn’t so much about pushing people to become healthier, an approach I took in the past, as it is about becoming healthier and engaging in my own wellness by really investing in it. Time is the most valuable investment. Because there are a lot of ways to get free self-help, free yoga, free education, free meditation, free nutritional advice, etc. We know what to do – taking the time to do it has to become a priority.

Once I slowed down and stopped pushing myself to meet my own made-up deadlines and obligations – I really started to experience a natural flow of the right things just happening in my life. My better life started to unfold in front of me and I was able to grab onto that and ride the momentum, slowly and steadily, and without expectation.

Committing to and engaging in my own wellness came only after I was consistent and saw results in my own body, mind, emotions, and spirit. I feel changed, I feel different, and I feel the more I engage in my own healing and healthy lifestyle, the better I feel. It inspires me to live to the fullest and to make good use of every moment I spend in this human experience.