Knowing, Doing, Being
Why is it that so few of us are actually capable of consistently doing things that we know are good for us? These might include eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, sleeping for at least seven hours per night, and/or practicing gratitude. Because there is a gap between our knowing, doing, and being. For most of us, when we embark on our journey to “live a healthier life” we focus on all that we “should do” and “need to do”. We move from knowing to doing, without paying much, if any, attention to our being.
This, unfortunately, tends to rile up our saboteurs. You see, the saboteur neural pathways are primarily located in those regions of our brain where we process information analytically. So when we approach a problem from only this angle, our saboteurs can be easily triggered. The scenario often looks something like this: You decide you are going to start an exercise program. You dread the thought because you find it boring to be on a treadmill and to weight train. But, you know it’s good for your health, so using your will power, you make yourself go to the gym for a few days. However, you’re using so much of your will power to get yourself to the gym, it’s getting hard for you to handle some of the day to day challenges at work. Eventually, you have to use all of your will power to not show frustration with a patient when she is exceedingly rude. That day there is no will power left to get you to the gym, and you are made to feel horribly by your judge saboteur. You then start actively looking for excuses to not go to the gym thinking that If you have a legitimate excuse the saboteurs can’t make you feel so bad. And, that is how your attempt to do something good for yourself ends.
What would it be like if instead we could approach our journey to a healthier life from a place of curiosity, creativity, and empathy? What if we could take our knowing and marry it with our being before we embark on doing? What would that look like? Perhaps that would mean that we could first consider who and how we want to be: what is important to us, and why. And from that place, find how we could incorporate healthier foods, more movement, more sleep, and mindfulness into our day in a way that was aligned with our deepest values. How would that look for you?
We may KNOW that something is good for us, and we may even Do based on that knowledge. However, without alignment in our BEING it is unlikely we will be successful. And even if we are successful, it will be at the cost of our peace, fulfillment, and joy. Growing our mental fitness gives us the capability to discover and align our being with our knowing and doing. It allows us to recognize when the saboteurs are trying to hijack us, and gives us the ability to command our minds to shift from saboteur neural pathways to the sage neural pathways where we can access our true essence- our true being. The point again (I’ve said this before) is that mental fitness is the bridge between our knowing and our being.
