A radiant life

I've had a lot of ideas lately about things I would really love to talk about in this space, things that have nothing to do with diet, exercise, and weight loss.  They go a step beyond that into total wellness.  You really can't experience Radiance (in my opinion) until you begin to focus on wellness.  Total wellness is not an east subject to talk or think about.  It is easy to tell yourself that if you can get your exercise and your diet right, the rest will take care of itself.

But if that were true, I doubt that the US would have the same epidemic of obesity that we currently face.  Yes, diet and exercise are important.  But really, our entire life is important.  If you aren't sleeping enough, and your stress level is too high, you will never be able to achieve lasting weight loss success.  If you don't have a strong support system around you, the chances of ever meeting your goals drop substantially.  It's a sad truth to have to face.

The Institute for Integrative Nutrition teaches in its Health Counseling program that if one area of your life is out of balance, it will have a negative impact on the rest of your life.  I experienced this truth firsthand.  I was stuck in a job I hated.  My diet suffered, as did my relationship with my boyfriend.  Every other aspect of my life began to suffer because I was so unhappy in one area of my life.  The different aspects of our life are not discrete; they impact each other in ways we can not imagine until we stop to look at what's really going on.  IIN created a great tool to help determine if your life is in balance.  It's called the Circle of Life.  The idea is that you mark each area of the circle.  If you are exceptionally satisfied with that area of your life, you mark the area closer to the outer edge of the circle.  The less happy you are with that area of your life, the closer that mark moves to the inside of the circle.

The Circle of Life

So, based on this idea, I made you all a sample of what my Circle of Life looks like right now.  I'm going to warn you, it isn't very round.

What we can see from this is that the areas of my life I am least satisfied with are my home environment, spiritual life, finances, and health.  I love connecting the dots, because it helps me visualize how one area may drag down the other areas in my life.  Throughout the next few months, I'm going to be showing you how I am working through each area in my life, and how my Circle of Life changes as I go.  I hope that you will try making your own circle of life, and maybe see how you can bring more joy into your life as well!

I hope you are experiencing radiance in your Sunday activities!