Have you ever noticed how easy it is to take your health completely for granted, right up until you can’t?
I think about this constantly. Not just because I’m a coach, or because I’ve spent 15 years practicing acupuncture and a decade teaching group fitness. I think about it because I’ve lived the other side of it, the injury that stopped me cold, the people I love who faced diagnoses that changed everything, and the quiet, cumulative cost of letting the basics slide.
This is your reminder. We all need these reminders, even me, because we fall into the rhythm of living life and lose our awareness of what is already here. You’re used to your house, used to breathing, used to your neighborhood walk. Until it gets taken away.
Why We Forget (Even When We Know Better)
When I was 18, I was a year-round basketball player who ignored chronic knee pain until a piece of cartilage broke off during my first term at college. One pop, and I was on crutches for three months, watching people take stairs and feeling a kind of frustrated jealousy I hadn’t known before.
That experience shook something loose in me. But here’s the honest truth: within a few months of recovering, I was back to taking my body for granted. That’s just how we’re wired. We don’t think about breathing until we can’t breathe. We don’t think about movement until we can’t move.
My wife Lianne’s experience with breast cancer brought this into even sharper focus for me. Beyond the obvious fears and physical hardships, one of the most painful parts for her was the loss of her physical capability during treatment. She’s a deeply physical person, and having that taken away, even temporarily, was a grief all its own. It affected her identity in ways that don’t get talked about enough.
We think we have unlimited time. We think we can always start later. And so we do.
Your Physical and Emotional Health Are the Same Thing
Here’s another dot to reconnect…because you know this logically, also.
The chronic stress humming in your background right now? That’s not just a mental health issue. The limiting beliefs you’re carrying, the fear you haven’t named, the burnout you’ve been managing by ignoring it? Those live in the body. The science around the cell danger response makes it plain: fear and ongoing emotional stress have a direct, biological impact on your physical health. They can and do make people sick.
Which means the conversation about your health has to include your mental and emotional state. The things you’re telling yourself. The stress you’re not managing. The isolation that’s built up quietly since the world changed. The way you’re showing up in your relationships and your work.
All of it counts.
A Simple Place to Start
I’m not asking you to overhaul your life this week. I’m asking you to be honest with yourself.
Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 in a few key areas: food and movement, sleep, stress management, relationships, work enjoyment, and connection to something bigger than your daily routine. Whatever buckets feel relevant to your life.
Just look at the numbers. Notice what’s low. That’s not a reason to feel bad about yourself. It’s just information that can become a starting point.
You have one body and one life. The time to honor both of them is now, not after the next crisis reminds you why it matters.
If this landed for you, I share thoughts like this every other week in my newsletter, The Impact Effect. Join us.
