You Deserve Perfect Health

by Dr. Cailin O'Hara, DACM, LAc, Dipl OM

Think about someone you love.
Do you think they deserve perfect health? Happiness? Everything their heart desires? I’m sure you do. I bet you want to see the people you love most absolutely thrive. I bet you can imagine them at their very best, totally joyful and living an incredible life. Close your eyes, and take a minute or two to imagine that.

What about you? Can you see that for yourself?
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​How would your life change if you believed you deserve perfect health?

Deserve is such a tricky word. For many of us, it implies that we have to earn something, we have to do something, we have to be worthy.
​According to what standard, though?

When it comes to ourselves, we can make a lot of excuses and a lot of exceptions at the expense of our health and happiness.
​I’ll explain some of those ways in a moment. 

​First, I’ll ask you…
What if we prioritized our own wellness like we do the health of our children?
​What if we prioritized our own wellness like we do the security of our finances or the caliber of the work we do? 
​

What is it that you value the longevity and vitality of most?
​Is it you or something else?

In all the healing I’ve experienced personally and in the healing I facilitate for my patients, it always comes back to this: you come first. If you want to thrive, be well, and find the satisfaction of enduring joy, you have to prioritize YOUR longevity and vitality over all else.
...

How can it be that we don’t think we deserve good health?
See if any of these statements describe you...

• ​You don’t sleep when you’re tired.
• You absorb the negative emotions of others to help them feel better.
• You don’t move your body in a loving way to help keep it flexible and flowing.
• You stay in situations that are breaking your heart.
• You exhaust yourself to prove yourself.
• You focus on the pain of the world until you can’t find happiness.
• You try to create perfection.
• You try to fix everything that doesn’t feel good.
• You don’t comfort yourself when you’re sad or angry.
• You have a negative slew of thoughts on a daily basis about how you’re not enough.
• You fixate on what other people don’t like about you.
• You fill your body with chemicals and empty calories or…
• You don’t eat enough.
• You go to the gym or work out in state of guilt or shame and push yourself without compassion.
• You reject love and support.
• You don’t accept compliments.
• You dwell on your “failures” or mistakes.
• You don’t love or approve of yourself when you look in the mirror.

These are some of the thousands of ways that, on a daily basis, you block your innate vibrancy and wellness.

I know this because I’ve done it, I see you do it, and I’ve learned what happens when we stop doing it:
We heal.
 
One moment at a time, we can stop all of the self-sacrifice, self-sabotage, self-hate, self-neglect, impatience, negativity, anger and fear. We can create new mental, emotional and physical paradigms for ourselves- ones that actually support us unconditionally.
 
Think about it like this...
Even in the worst of conditions, we survive. We are a wildly resilient and adaptive species. But as amazing as that is, it doesn’t have to be so hard.
It doesn’t have to be about survival.
 
You deserve perfect health. What that looks like may be different for all of us. But one thing is true for everyone- you can either create the space to heal or create barriers to it. What are you choosing?