There is no such thing as perfect health. Listening to your body and continuously adjusting your self-care is the best way to achieve and maintain your health to the highest possible standards. But everyone, myself included, will have times when they don’t feel great.

     Hi there, it’s Elaine Gardner, the founder of DesignYourHealthyLife.com. I often talk about how grateful I am for the excellent health that I have the privilege to enjoy these days. I think sometimes it comes off as though I never experience any health challenges but nothing could be further from the truth. While I do enjoy excellent personal health and I’m extremely grateful for it given the many years that I struggled with really significant health challenges, I don’t feel my best every single day. It’s something that I work at all the time. I don’t think that health is just a fix and forget it mentality. And I want to encourage you to get away from that idea. It’s something that you need to work at on a day to day basis in order to maintain. And everybody, regardless of the level of healthy lifestyle that they’ve been able to implement, is going to experience health challenges, including me.

     Just a really good example, just recently this past weekend, I was extremely tired on Saturday and I had a busy week last week. There were a couple nights where I was awake in the middle of the night because my kids were out and I was waiting for them to come home. And come Saturday, I was just wiped out. I was able to do the things that I wanted to do that morning, but in the afternoon I could easily have taken a nap. I was that tired. But it was after 2:00 and I knew that if I took a nap then, it was likely to interfere with my sleep that evening which would only perpetuate the problem and not be helpful. So instead, I decided to take some time off and sit down and watch a couple of episodes on Netflix, commercial free of course because commercials just don’t work for me. I can’t tolerate them, can’t handle that kind of bombardment. And that did the trick for me. Just taking that time out and resting, and then I was able to get back up, and make dinner, and do the other things that I wanted and needed to do for that day – go to bed at a normal time, and I felt so much better yesterday.

     Now this morning I’ve been sneezing and sniffling, so I pulled out my Boiron Coldcalm Homeopathic Tablets and I’ve been taking those, 2 every 15 minutes [for 1 hour] as the package states, to just encourage my immune system to respond if it’s a cold that my body is fighting with. And perhaps that’s why I was so tired on Saturday as well. So it’s not about perfection from day to day. It’s about listening to your body and course-correcting all the time. If I didn’t listen to my body and take that time out on Saturday, I probably would’ve felt terrible yesterday as well and really struggled through that day, which would have been completely unnecessary. And if I wasn’t listening to my body today, I would probably be pushing through and not taking those homeopathic tablets, and perhaps I’d be getting a really bad cold over the next couple days.

     So it’s about listening to your body and course-correcting. I know I’m repeating myself but it’s so important – listening to your body and always adjusting. Your body is always sending you messages. And if you ignore those messages, you’re going to have health struggles, whether they’re just small and minor or, if you continuously are ignoring your body and not doing that course-correcting, something significant is going to crop up for you over time. And just maintaining those lifestyle choices that you’re doing on a day to day basis – a lot of people say it’s too hard to eat well and it’s too hard to get enough sleep – things like that, well I understand that it takes effort but for me, being sick was really, really hard. So things that I do on a day to day basis like eating well, getting enough sleep, taking care of my body, those things aren’t hard to me. They require effort, but I have to do those things anyway. I have to eat, I have to sleep, so why not have good hygiene around that? Why not eat really good, healthy food? Why not get the extra sleep that my body deserves? It’s a small amount of effort that pays off with huge, huge dividends.

     And every time of your life is going to be different, every season is going to be different. So not only paying attention to your body on a day to day basis, but over the years your body’s always changing, so you always need to be listening and course-correcting depending on what’s going on with you, whether it’s a seasonal thing or those foods that worked for you last year just aren’t working for your body anymore. Just always thinking. Your skin’s going to change as you age, so changing your skincare regimen so that you’re keeping up with those changes in your body, always paying attention, always course-correcting.

     So I hope that serves you well and encourages you to really, truly listen to your body, and to reach out as well. Most of the things I do on a day to day basis are things that I maintain on my own, but I also have other practitioners that I work with. I’ve had a lot of musculoskeletal issues over the years, so body work is something that works really well for my body. So don’t try to do it all alone. Get someone to help you. Try different practitioners. Get the support that you need. This is a lifelong process. It’s well worth your effort. You only have one body, it’s really important for you to take care of it.

     I hope that serves you well. I’d love to hear how you’re feeling today, what you’re doing to course-correct with a big storm coming up or as the seasons are changing. This is a really trying time of the year for me. We had beautiful temperatures a couple weeks ago, and now it’s been super cold. That’s really, really hard on my body. So I’m just trying to take it easy, stay in the house more often than not, to avoid the cold as much as humanly possible. I’ve been enjoying the sunshine because that’s been out and I’m looking forward to warmer weather over the next couple of weeks. So I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment below the video and I’ll look forward to connecting with you again soon.