Health & Happiness: Are We Missing The Point? By Anthony Alfieri

Health and Happiness, regardless of how we define these states of being as individuals I believe nearly everyone recognizes, aspires for, and desires to live a healthy and happy life.

So why do so many of us struggle with mental health, our physical vitality, and the overall quality of our lives? Our relationships with the world around us, our intimate relationships, work, and how we view ourselves?

We are hardwired for survival and survival does not equal health and happiness in our incredibly powerful, limitless minds. Our evolved logical, rational parts of the brain give us the incredible ability to be present here at this moment reading this idea while at the same time visiting our past, exploring potential futures, and using a combination of our conditioning, values, beliefs, current mental/emotional state coupled with our intuition or the instinctual/emotional side of the brain to make decisions about how to think, feel, react, or respond and what to believe in this moment and every moment of our life. ?

Social creatures, driven by pain and pleasure, we are conditioned from an early age with punishment or reward from our parents, extended family, and those closest to us like teachers, friends, and coaches. Without any thought, our nervous system and brain constantly keep score, creating associations with what to avoid so we don’t get hurt mentally, emotionally, or physically and develop links to the quickest way into a state of pleasure. Because naturally, survival is paramount to the human mind, the avoidance of pain is a stronger driver than gaining pleasure.

Without any assistance from our environments, parents, and other influences we undoubtedly will have mental and emotional challenges, maybe even some physical ones as well because the default is survival, it’s reactive, and largely driven by “avoiding pain.” Add in the influence of our parents, friends, teachers, and coaches, the potential limiting beliefs and destructive patterns they are unknowingly transferring to us and helping condition us with, and by the time we hit high school, college, or beyond of course we are confused, walking down a path designed by our closest influences, and or already in a perpetual state of reaction.

And we haven’t even factored in the fundamentals of health yet, did we get quality food, quality sleep, stay hydrated, and exercise during the period mentioned above? Without question, some of us did and some of us didn’t, regardless of what side of the spectrum you fell on then or fall on today health and happiness are connected, there are some clear cause and effect relationships between the two.

Intrinsically I believe most of us have a grasp on everything I just said, even if we don’t think about it or talk about it frequently. So why isn’t health and happiness a fundamental part of how we see the world, the decisions we make, how we coach, teach, and parent our children or lead our teams?

On the individual (micro) level it’s always going to be different for each of us, at the global level (macro) the majority of us get caught in a loop driven by survival, scarcity, fear, and self-doubt. By the time we become young adults whether, through conditioning, genetics, and or our choices and a combination of the latter. What can become a perpetual loop of fear-based decision-making and bad habits is already set in motion. A lot of us break out of this conditioning and go on to lead our versions of healthy and happy lives to varying degrees.

However, I would challenge by the time we consistently produce health and happiness in our lives if we ever achieve it, we have gone through far more heartache, created many more challenges, and potentially perpetuated more negative cycles in our own family, children, or businesses then was necessary to learn the lessons and make the shifts that produce health and happiness. Not to mention by the time most of us have a real grasp on health and happiness there is a generational gap large enough between us and the young people we so desperately want to influence to lead healthy and happy lives it’s difficult to communicate and connect with them in a manner that shifts their perspective.

So, what’s my point?

Health and happiness are foundational to a life well-lived, money can only solve money problems, and for those that have made the journey across socio-economic classes from “have nots” to “have” you quickly learn regardless of your income, net worth, and lifestyle if you have health problems and live in a state of stress your quality of life is less than desirable. Not to be misconstrued, finances have an impact on health and happiness but you can be happy and healthy and lead a beautiful life without incredible financial wealth. When at the same time there are people with incredible financial wealth that spend most of their time stressed out, possibly afraid to lose it all, or in other negative emotional states. So their quality of life regardless of their financial situation is a perpetual state of stress, which I am sure we can all agree sucks.

So how do we set ourselves up for success?

Make health and happiness or emotional well-being part of the foundation you build your life on, think of them as pillars or values that factor into every decision you make.

Personally, health and vitality are my number one value, meaning it is a central focus in all areas of my life, and of course, I have additional values like contribution, personal development, and living in a beautiful state. However, number one is health and vitality because my perspective is my health is what makes everything else possible. It is the root of all of my success, it determines how much energy I have, how I feel, and the capacity I have to contribute to the world around me. Being healthy and enjoying vitality or what I consider high energy enables me to produce better results than if my health or energy was at a lower level. It makes me a better husband, a better businessperson, and simply a better human being because my body isn’t waging an internal war with blood sugar, imbalanced hormones, and inflammation it frees up my mind and energy to invest and work towards higher-level problems that I can choose.

Being healthy represents a proactive approach to life, in many ways investing in your health and happiness is the purest form of self-love we can engage in. Daily, we have the opportunity to structure our lives in a way that reinforces an internal belief that we love ourselves, value ourselves, and we are going bet on ourselves. How so? Think about the incredible self-fulfilling power you unlock when you make a decision on a Sunday afternoon to prep out your breakfast for the week and the food you decide to pick for yourself is all healthy nourishing food. Beyond the incredible health benefits of eating healthy, you are sending a crystal-clear signal to both your conscious and subconscious mind that you love yourself and you value yourself. Additionally, you are shifting into a state of positive expectation, proactive planning/thinking, and starting to free up your mind from making too many decisions during any given day (not to mention it is far easier to rely on habit than discipline.)

Many of the benefits I just listed are self-centered, so I want to add some context for those that are primarily motivated by external factors like their children, spouses, or teammates/colleagues.

What happens to those around us when we make the shift and start valuing our health and happiness?

If you are a parent, the lessons you will teach your children will far outlive you. To show our children a life where we love ourselves, invest in ourselves, and take a proactive approach to be healthy and happy is a life well lived and frankly one of the responsibilities I believe as adults we have to our children and the young people that look to us for guidance in a rapidly changing world.

As a spouse, through your actions and not your words, by loving yourself you make it possible to love and care for your significant other on a deeper level. Marriage and relationships can be a sensitive subject because they are so close to home, by investing in our health and happiness we put ourselves in the best possible position to create beautiful relationships and build marriages that impact the world around us. It is tough to invest in your marriage or relationship if you are stuck in survival mode, battling your biology and constantly reacting to the environment around you. For many of us, this pattern is so habituated, so normal, for so many generations we don’t even think anything is wrong with it. Take any married couple that has found a way to build health and happiness into their lives as individuals and then into the marriage and home life and what you have is an incredibly powerful team. Over time they will build an incredibly powerful family, influence their community, and act as a beacon of hope for other relationships. And not because they are “better” than anyone else, simply because building a beautiful marriage is not easy, building a life together with another human being that is rooted in health, happiness, and of course the love for one another is an incredible journey and one that as a society we don’t openly discuss enough. Strong marriages create strong families, strong families create strong communities, and the cycle continues. That is not political or religious, that is biology. We are hardwired to love and follow our parents, we share a combination of their DNA, they literally created us… so the family unit is essentially the fundamental unit of the human race based on science, not politics or religion. So, investing in your health and happiness is an investment in your closest relationships!

We have all had that teammate or co-worker that is inspiring, the way they lead their life, conduct themselves, their consistency, who they are, and what they represent is living and breathing proof that our goals and our aspirations are possible. When we make the shift and create health, vitality, and happiness in our lives we become one of those people, we become living breathing proof that regardless of age, occupation, and all of the other factors we can make a shift and produce different outcomes than what we have previously. Becoming healthy and happy is an act of leadership because it is all about the actions you take on a day-to-day basis and there is no hiding the results. Like anything worth having, making the transition can and will be challenging, you will learn how to tell people “no,” how to tell yourself “no.” When your co-workers want to order pizza or grab fast food and previously even though you might have been working on eating healthier you would just follow the pack and go out to eat, but this time you politely say no thank you and enjoy your healthy prepped meal (or persuade them to make a healthier choice on the restaurant). Once you make that shift and start telling people no, you take control of far more than just your health, you are actively creating an internal locus of control. Or in other words, you are starting to dictate and call the shots in your own life, aka you are leading yourself and becoming a leader. The shift towards creating health and happiness creates a compound effect, it will transform your life and pay dividends forever. Beyond the personal gain, you also create a pathway for those closest to you to make positive change in their life as well, you show people the way and without “title” become a true leader amongst your peers.

How do we produce health and happiness?

Art and science, because we are all so unique there is no one-size-fits-all solution to creating health, vitality, and happiness. However, there are some fundamentals that I believe we all stand to gain from regardless of our individuality, genetics, and current situation.

Quick Tips For Health & Vitality:

1.??????Food & Hydration – replace junk food (sugary, processed, inflammatory) with food that will nourish you, sugary, processed foods create inflammation in the body, massive swings in blood sugar, and keep your hormones imbalanced. They create an incredible biological barrier that makes it easy to stay stuck in survival mode, reacting to your environment and the day-to-day. A few quick tips around food, plan your food and plan your day – if you do not have to decide at the moment it is far easier to make the healthier decision. Use replacement more than just cutting out foods/drinks, if you are a soda drinker, replace the soda with coffee, tea, or a sports drink like ZipFizz, something that is not loaded with sugar or chemicals, but can fill the void of the old habit. Our relationship with food is all about associations and emotions, my perspective on food (and I love food, love to cook, think it’s a critical part of our lives) however, in my eyes food is fuel, I view myself as a high-performance machine and refuse to put low grade “fuel” into my body. It is very easy for me to say no to sugary sweets or fast food because my associations with that type of food are very negative, my nervous system knows, my rational mind knows, and emotionally I know if I eat that food my body is going to feel horrible, it’s going to slow me down, cost me money, time, and not worth the temporary pleasure the taste may give me. I would encourage you to think about changing your associations to the food you struggle to stay away from that isn’t healthy. It may be extreme, but if you look at fast food or a cake and say that food is going to be the death of me, rob me of my ability to care for my family, and or I love myself so I am no longer going to put low-grade junk in my body.. it becomes far easier to say no or make a better choice because the association with the bad food is negative instead of that cake looks delicious (important to note it is totally fine to eat a piece of cake or grab some fast food, as long as you are in control – ex. you’ve crushed it and want to have a cheat meal. For me personally, I haven’t had sugary processed foods for so long it makes me sick when I eat them so I just don’t eat it)

2.??????Sleep – the right quantity of high-quality sleep, cut out the screen time and other stimulating “blue light” before bed (buy some blue light blocking glasses and use them anytime after 7:00 pm or 8:00 pm depending on when you go to bed). Plug your phone in downstairs (if that’s possible – I know some parents might abhor the idea of not having their phone next to them and potentially missing an emergency call from their child), create a routine that triggers your mind, and body to wind down (nighttime ritual). It could be something as simple as drinking some sleepy time tea every evening at 8 pm while you watch a little bit of your favorite show and then a cadence of tucking in your kids, brushing your teeth, and jumping into bed. The important part is it is a consistent ritual that triggers you to relax and unplug right before bed. Blackout curtains for your bedroom and no TV in the bedroom. The bedroom is designed for sleep, and that is all your mind should associate with it if you want to make it easy to consistently fall asleep quickly and get high-quality sleep. I am not a sleep doctor, nor am I credentialed, sleep-expert. However, I spent about 15 years not sleeping well and have been prescribed enough different sleeping pills and spent enough time with experts to know there is no magic bullet here. You do have to change your life, daily routines, and use some trial and error to figure out what works best for you. I am happy to report through my trial and error and the implementation of everything I have talked about in this article I have been off sleeping medication for almost 5 years, on weeknights I do take a natural Melatonin supplement to help the process and I consistently fall asleep by 10 pm without fail and get up between 5 am-5:30 am. This is a sweet spot for me, you made need a little more or less sleep than that!

It is important to note that quality sleep can and will help combat stress, enable you to recover, and put you in a position to be your best self during the day. Sleep is critical for physical and emotional health, it has a compound effect on everything we do. When we sleep well we have more energy, clarity, and focus which in turn makes it easier to make better decisions, have better performance, and overall better outcomes in all areas of our life. If we stopped right here and all we did was dial in our nutrition and sleep it would transform many lives.

3.??????Exercise – Keep it simple and don’t be afraid to start small, if you haven’t exercised in a while or currently have mixed feelings or negative emotions about exercise focus on changing your relationship with and perspective on exercise first and foremost. A few simple ways to accomplish this could be starting by walking on the treadmill and pairing it with listening to your favorite podcast, music, or watching your favorite show. Find a way to create a positive emotional experience or “reward” for exercising, overtime the exercise itself will become rewarding, your body will crave it, the bio-chemicals it releases and the incredible positive reinforcement you will receive in other areas of your life as you increase your physical vitality will be enough to keep you going. Also, depending on who you are know that it is okay if for the first year all you do at the gym is walk on the treadmill and stretch, the powerful thing that you are doing is creating the habit of exercising and going to the gym consistently. Eventually, it just becomes part of your life, when you think about your week you will without thinking structure your days around when and where you are going to exercise, the resistance you once felt to it will be long gone, the habit will sustain itself and the new identity you formed by going to the gym for a year straight will help you stay on track.

?If you are further along and fall into the “busy” trap, not making time to consistently exercise. Instead of telling yourself, you are “too busy” look in the mirror and say “exercise is just not important to me and that’s why I am not making it a priority and creating time for it” this is something I do anytime I find myself saying I’m too busy or don’t have time for anything in my life, it helps bring clarity to the matter at hand and is taking ownership of the fact that you are choosing to spend your time elsewhere. There is likely something you could exchange in your day-to-day for exercise, but at this point, you have not been willing to make that shift in values and make a perceived “sacrifice” or it just isn’t that important to you and we all have that right to choose. Also, because I understand we live in a fast-paced world with demanding schedules, work, family, and everything in between something I love to do is take care of tasks like responding to email, text messages, and organizing my calendar while I walk on the stairs or listen to an audiobook/podcast that way I am getting the most out of the time. In my opinion to sustain health and vitality you have to find a way to make exercise part of your life and family, something you can do with them or at least a shared value. Otherwise, the time to exercise starts competing with quality time with your family, unless you wake up at 4 or 5 am and get it done before the day starts and even still that means you probably need to get to bed early and potentially cut into the time you might have with your spouse or children. And beyond the time, those critical decisions you make at the grocery store or when you order food can either be supported by those closest to you or can create friction. If your spouse does not eat healthily or buy healthy food when they go to the store, it will be that much harder to make the shift yourself. Your family can act as the most powerful accountability partner or an adversary to your progress, I know that sounds extreme, but it’s true. Think about all the “cycles” we see in families from poverty, addiction, to wealth and health. If you grow up in a home where the status quo is to eat healthy, exercise, and your parents have great health habits. By default you are going to have some healthy habits conditioned into you before you are even consciously aware, not to mention if your parents help create an environment where exercise is fun, being healthy is exciting, and they touch the wires that create an understanding of the compound impact health will have on the quality of your life you are at an incredible advantage. The opposite is also true, if like me you grew up in a home where it was normal to drink 3-4 cans of soda a day, crush a few honey buns, and wrap it up with some mac and cheese the odds are your health journey has been an uphill battle from the time you were relatively young.

The good news is you can make a decision today to break that cycle or to double down on creating a healthy life for yourself and those closest to you.

Quick Tips for Mental Health:

1.??????Double down on health – nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Only once this part is dialed in, is when I believe we can get an accurate assessment of our mental health. This is not what a counselor, most doctors, or psychologists would say. If they had produced exceptional results consistently I would listen to them. However, it does not take a scientist to see the gaps in the typical approach to mental health. Assess. Diagnose. Medicate. Assess. Reevaluate Medication. Reassess. And the cycle continues, I am not trying to discredit the work that many professionals that deal specifically with mental health do, they work within the confines of the systems they operate in and the knowledge that have acquired through schooling and practice. I just don’t act on information from anyone that hasn’t produced the result I am working towards. I am interested in producing results and helping others produce results, not in pontificating ideas, testing hypotheses, and using a trial-and-error method of medication especially in teenagers and young adults without first ensuring we have pulled all the other levers available.

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2.??????Deal with the reality of your life – take ownership of the good and the bad, from the childhood trauma to the dysfunctional relationships, either decide to leave it in the past or dive into it head-on and work through it. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions for this either. If you had a dysfunctional relationship with your parents and you have never faced that or had a tough conversation with them to communicate how you felt and forgive them. The odds are it’s impacting the closest relationships you have right now with your significant other, children, managers, etc. Naturally, if some of your closest relationships have significant disfunction you are not going to be happy because those closest to us have a massive impact on our lives. Also, recognize you are not chasing down perfection here, there comes a point where you have to accept certain things as they are, we can’t control other people in any way shape, or form, really all we can control is ourselves, how we think, feel, and act at any given moment. Beyond that, we had no say in how our parents raised us and we have no control over other people’s actions, sure we can influence others, but at the end of the day, we all will always make our own decisions for our own reasons whether it’s done consciously or subconsciously. So, take ownership of the reality of your life, whether that means facing a childhood trauma, or finally getting on the same page about finances with your significant other. Until we own our outcomes and take full responsibility for our lives and everything in them we will always have some internal strife because we are giving up our power to the external world and things we cannot control. If we focus on what we cannot control in any given situation of course we feel depressed, defeated, and anxious. The human spirit intrinsically knows it can create and accomplish anything so the choice or habituated pattern of focusing on parts of a situation you have no control over is debilitating.

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3.??????Create Clarity & Self Awareness – For me personally the best tool I’ve ever used to gain clarity, self-awareness, and redefine myself was Tony Robbin’s book “Awaken The Giant Within.” ?A different path may work better for you, what is important is going through a process of self-discovery where you clarify your values, beliefs, what you are naturally attracted to or driven towards, and what you naturally avoid (think pain and pleasure). Additionally understanding the references that you fall back on most frequently and the habitual questions you ask yourself in different situations, Tony has a gift, and his book if acted on will transform your life. Once you gain clarity around the fundamentals and foundation that make up who you are, your beliefs, identity, and values and begin taking action and living life around your true self or better yet your redefined and improved self, being happy is a natural consequence. Clarity and self-awareness are like a superpower that enable us to make the best decisions based on who we are and what we are seeking to accomplish, not based on what our parents wanted us to become or other social pressures. When you are self-aware and make decisions based on your values that you have actively refined to fit the life you want to create, that internal conflict disappears. It becomes much easier to see things through and at least in my experience, you gain certainty that gives you confidence as well as patience because you know you are on the right path and no longer questioning yourself and your decisions constantly (aka self-doubt). One example I see frequently is the individual that has created success at least from the outside looking in, they are an achiever that has checked all the boxes except for happiness and fulfillment. You dive a little deeper and discover the life that they built was purely based on their parents and teacher’s influence, that medical or dental practice was not their idea, but the influence of their parents and teachers was stronger than their internal voice. As we discussed earlier largely driven by survival our parents and teachers typically encourage us to go down a “safe” path because they don’t want us to get hurt and they also encourage us to go down a path that is familiar to them and their references. So fast forward, you’ve built an incredible career, now you have a family, mortgage, and the real responsibility that comes with it. However, you’ve made decisions for a few decades based on childhood influences and despite a great economic position you are not happy or fulfilled. This is where self-awareness and clarity on your values, beliefs, and primary drivers are incredibly powerful for long-term happiness and fulfillment. Even if initially it creates friction between you and the other party (likely parents if you are younger, but potentially a manager, spouse, etc) in the long run following your path once you have that clarity and self-awareness is almost always the best path. Now if today you are sitting in a position like I just described, my first step would be asking myself a higher quality question about the situation so you can reframe your perspective and get a better answer about what to do. Everyone’s situation is going to be different and I believe once armed with the right mindset we can all make a shift and allow ourselves to feel happy and fulfilled in nearly any situation.

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I hope this article has provided a new insight or distinction that you can use, share, and make a powerful shift with that creates more health and happiness in your life! I know this is a business platform and this article feels very personal in some ways and that is by design, business success is very personal and our health and happiness are a critical piece of that.

?Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, I hope they provided you with a new distinction that can help in at least one area of your life. Or maybe served as a reminder to something you already know, but have gone away from!?

"Health & Happiness: Are We Missing The Point??"?- Published By Anthony Alfieri - February 2nd, 2022