Your Health and Making Your Mark on the World

Most of us have some sort of goal for leaving our mark on the world. Maybe it's as (apparently) simple as raising our kids with as many of the right lessons and opportunities as we can give them so they can apply their talents to the world. Maybe it's amassing some amount of wealth and contributing to good causes. Maybe it's inventing something, or running a business that helps people live better lives. Maybe it's leaving some form of your art -- a performance (perhaps recorded), a painting, a book, a lecture series.

Whatever your goal, it is probably impacted for better or worse by your health, which is why investing in your long-term wellness is so important. It's not likely to keep you on planet Earth forever, but it is likely to optimize your experience while you're here, and hopefully to help you leave more of a mark.

I'm writing about this today, though, because December 16 is Beethoven's birthday and we know that he grew increasingly deaf throughout his life. He wasn't the only composer who couldn't hear well. Bedrich Smetana became deaf around age 50 before writing his best known piece of music, The Moldau.

I think this is worth pointing out because while our health definitely impacts what we can do -- especially if we're out of energy and can barely get out of bed -- it can also be used as an excuse not to fulfill what we perceive to be our purpose. And I like to think that if composers could write things like The Moldau or Beethoven's 9th symphony, we should be careful about too easily saying that an illness is keeping us from our purpose.

Of course if you can see how feeling better would improve your contribution to the world, how it could help you reach your goals, then it's worth exploring the next best steps to feeling better. Perhaps this means starting to eliminate things from your diet that don't serve you, or addressing unhealthy habits. Maybe it means slowly increasing the number of healthy foods or habits in your life. And maybe it means addressing deeper causes of your health challenges -- this can mean looking to energy remedies like infoceuticals and even making positive inner shifts through various consciousness practices.

Whatever the next step means for you, I encourage you to take it. We're all given some time on the planet to make a difference, and I love seeing what each person contributes. It would be a shame to lose the opportunity because health was holding you back and you never found a way to address it!