What is your highest need right now?
Let’s face it, there is no shortage of information on practices that will improve your health. Some will help a little, some will help a lot, some may have no effect on you and some may even cause harm if you’re not ready for them.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve fallen into the trap of trying to do anything and everything to improve your health. Whenever I heard about something new, I would add it in, whether it be a new supplement, using a sauna, or grounding. I would do this until realizing that I had way too much on my plate, I was running out of time in the day to include all these practices and live my life. Sometimes I would even forget about the foundations at the expense of including in the latest practise.
It is helpful to know when and how to strip back, to assess and take action on what your highest need is right now. Perhaps you have digestive issues, joint pain, feeling irritable, not getting to sleep, craving sugar, low on energy etc etc. Do you address each of these individually or is there another way? Let’s have a look.
Pareto Principle – the 80/20 rule
The Pareto Principle states that, in general, about 80% of the results can come from 20% of the efforts.
When you find yourself in overwhelm or craving some more simplicity ask yourself, what are the 20% of things I can do to give me 80% of the results? Or to simply even further, what is the ONE THING that can give me the most bang for buck?
Focus on foundations
Without solid foundations it is much harder to make effective and efficient progress. This is true in most areas, and health is no exception. Neither are houses. Focusing on foundations is one of the most effective ways to be Pareto compliant.
What are these foundations? (more in depth article to come)
Sleep
Nutrition & Digestion
Stress Management
Movement
Drainage & Detoxification
Addressing root causes of any health conditions
Each of these areas has an impact on the others, both positively and negatively. When one improves, so do the others and vice versa. Setting solid foundations allows you to get the most benefits from your other practices too!
What are these root causes?
Like the name implies, a root cause is what is actually causing or significantly contributing to any health issues or roadblocks. By going as upstream as you can, finding the sources and addressing them you can see vast improvements. Pareto would give a double thumbs up for addressing root causes.
Some common root causes include
Environmental toxicities such as heavy metals, mould and chemicals
Low level chronic infections
Chronic stress
Misaligned structure
My story
Before I found out about just how mercury toxic I was I had a lot of health issues. Extreme fatigue, chronic pain, brain fog and low libido. I had most of my foundations in place, to the best of my knowledge at the time, but would hardly see any improvement with these symptoms. I was missing the root cause piece! And believe me, it wasn’t for lack of searching.
Once I found out about the mercury and started a protocol for removing it, all these areas and more started to improve. This is what can happen from going upstream and finding the root.
Check out My story if you want to read more.
Where to go from here?
Taking the latest herb or supplement is great, but what if you have really poor digestion, will you see much benefit from it? Perhaps you’ve decided to take a sleep supplement but haven’t minimized how much light comes into your bedroom at night.
Look at each of these foundations of health and determine which one you think is your weakest link right now. This is the area to focus on THE MOST to ensure the quickest results, though it shouldn’t come at the expense of the other foundations.
Not sure how to assess and/or work on these areas? Or perhaps you’ve been unwell for some time and haven’t found a root cause. This is where a health coach or practitioner can come in handy. They can give you a fresh perspective on yourself, perhaps helping you find and address any lagging foundations and root causes. They can help you find and work towards addressing your highest need right now.
Don’t have the funds right now? Look at each of the foundations and pick an area to focus on. Assess where you are at with it and look for ways to improve it, either on my blog or the wild wild web (not a typo). Move on to the next area and repeat.
Are there any foundations you’re going to devote more energy towards? Comment below.