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Being happy Studies have shown that happy people are also healthier people. Happiness is simply a state of mind. Being happy truly comes when we are in control of our own thoughts and actions. • How can one be happy in
modern world with all tragedies, violence and terrorism? One must remember that it’s not what happens to us that counts (because most often it is out of our control), but how we deal with it. We can control how we react to it. We have a choice. The choice is to react to it in a negative way or positive way. If we have a defeatist, negative attitude then we lose our empowerment. If we take a positive, courageous attitude, then we can be empowered. • How is it that after Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, children can still laugh and play and carry on with their day to day activities? The universe tells us that nature of life is to go on and carrier of life is hope. • Perhaps we can take a lesson from these unfortunate people, to free our minds up, because we often find that we are prisoners of our own devices attached to comforts and material possessions we don’t really need driven by our insecurities and status anxiety. These insecurities are manifested through modern day media which is driven by society’s capitalistic ideals.
Regular rhythm What is so important about a regular rhythm? Life and nature works in natural cycles and natural rhythms. Our world tries to take that away from us, by distancing us from natural cycles and creating artificial cycles, like for example night shift. • If we were meant to live and work at night wouldn’t we have larger eyes or special night vision like cats? Doesn’t that make sense?
Simpler approach to life A simpler approach to life doesn’t mean, we all throw away everything and live like hermits in bush or jungle. This is simply not a practical approach. What it does mean is removing our selves from attachments and clutter, that is root cause of stress and other mental illnesses such as depression. Depression can simply be a sign that we are personally out of control and have lost empowerment, if you take hollistic view. • Why would we want to remove ourselves from attachments? Don’t attachments define who we are? The more attachments we have more stress we induce upon ourselves, because having more attachments require more care and headaches. More headaches ultimately means more stress. More importantly more attachments we have means less we are empowered, which means we can feel helpless and be manipulated or controlled by larger external forces far more easily Forces and entities like media or government and authorities. We ultimately become “prisoners of our own devices and remove ourselves from true nature of being, distracted from universe by things that matter very little in grand scheme of things.” • It has been estimated that Australians buy $10 billion per annum of goods, services and food that we simply don’t need or don’t use. [Source: ABC news]. What about all precious resources that are used to make these goods, services and foods?
State of our current health in Australia The state of our health care says a lot. Take for example Medicare Safety net It has cost twice as much as planned. There will be a AUD$1 billion rise in health care cost over next three years. The Medicare Safety Net which was announced in May 2004 budget will cost an extra $107 million per annum. The government’s annual target was reached by August 2004, only three months into program! It was supposed to have affected 450,000 people, now believed to effect one million people per annum. • Doesn’t this say something about state of our health? [Source ABC News 11/4/05]
Effects of Smoking What about effects of smoking? • One in four people in NSW smoke. Over coming years, half will die directly. For every person that dies in a road accident in NSW, ten will die from smoking related illness. [Source ABC News 11/4/05]
Summary In summary we need to rethink way we handle own health, as current approach is failing us. The current way is expensive, ineffective and most often only benefit health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and their shareholders. • We must take a balanced approach towards maintaining our own health and understand that ultimately we are responsible for our own health, and not blame “the system”, society or even our own family.
By taking a proactive approach, to maintaining our wellness, we are acting in a responsible manner. Whilst we are doing this we challenge boundaries of our lives, through better knowledge and an improved approach towards living and maintaining our wellbeing, not only for ourselves but for our family, friends and all our loved ones.
Tobi Nagy is a small business develoment consultant and a specialist on developing sustainable systems. His website can be found at http://www.sustainable-development.net
