Whose responsibility is it?

    So many times I come across people who are frighteningly willing to hand over the responsibility for their lives to others.  There are many examples in all different aspects of life:   Body shape and/or weight   Who is responsible for food choices, portion sizes, and level of physical activity? Should it not be our responsibility, since it is our own body?   When I first came to Australia, I lived in a family and helped them in their household. That was my first job. It was common practice there to plate up the meals in the kitchen and then serve them at the table. I was horrified at the fact that someone else decided how much was to go on my plate and basically told me how much to eat. I felt my decision power had been taken away from me, especially when I came from a background where everyone served their own meal. We learned to judge our portion sizes and to share and be mindful that the others in the family had a right to eat too. These days with so much take away food and someone else controlling our portion size it is no wonder that so many people end up the size that they are.  How do we want to look and feel 10, 20, 30 years down the track?    Health Are we eating to nourish our bodies or are we eating to feel full?  I guess we can eat anything to make us feel full, but to truly nourish our bodies we really need to look a bit further, finding nutrient rich foods- fresh food markets or organic suppliers are a great start, teamed up with the right organic supplementation to fill the gaps between what we eat and what we need to have optimal health. Too many times we are not willing to do our part and head straight to the doctor, looking for the magic pill to fix what we caused in the first place.  To me optimal health is having heaps of energy each day, waking up feeling great (not like a truck ran over the top of me) and feeling positive and looking forward to being able to do what I want to do into ‘ripe old age’. This includes not being dependant on medication for so called ‘lifestyle diseases’.  This is where the management of pain fits in as well. I am sure that most of us have some kind of pain at some stage in our lives. It could be something like sciatica, backache, headache, carpal tunnel-tennis elbow style pain or any other unexplained pain.   While I am not a physician (and don’t claim to be one), what I do know is that the effect of soft tissue pain is often underestimated. Many times traditional treatment for pain (analgesics) is not producing satisfactory results.    From personal experience I have found it to be more effective to explore soft tissues that could be affected and apply targeted massage to the area.  Fitness  Fit for what? That is for you to decide.  We are born to move. As babies we worked really hard to earn the strength and balance to stand up. Then we explored our bodies by running around chasing things or each other, climbing everything in sight, jumping and wrestling (just watch the kids). Generally we found a real joy in moving our bodies. When we were made to sit in school we started losing some of that hard earned ability with our bodies. Take this some 20 or more years forward and all of a sudden things that were once a joy and easy for us, are not so any more. We all have it in us to be fit. It is our heritage.   I once heard someone say that if you don’t look after your body and health (take responsibility), you are basically saying to the people around you: ‘too bad, you will just have to look after me’. Is that what you want to burden your family and friends with, and do they deserve the restriction this places on their lives?   Happiness/state of mind  How do we choose to think? Are we looking at the bright side of life or is everything too hard, too bad, someone else’s fault. Do we know it all or are we hungry to learn, be a student of life and on a path to continuously grow and evolve as people, in our respective fields and in our relationships?   Lifestyle Do we have the time we want to have for the things that are important to us?  So many times we succumb to the so called ‘urgent’ demands of life without ever thinking about what might be important to us. ………   Again, for you to decide.