Your Life Experiences Are Affecting You In Ways You Might Not Realize
Many of us are not aware of the ways in which impactful life experiences impact the decisions we make every day. Our approach to physical well-being is a product of our life experiences, including those from our childhood.
An experience does not have to be traumatic, or even particularly memorable, to be “impactful.” In fact, every experience we have is impactful in some way. While it is easier to draw connections between a health scare or a traumatic experience and our current mindset around physical health, it isn’t as easy to decipher how other experiences have also impacted us.
When we become aware of the “why” behind what we believe to be true, we are able to make important changes, elevate our lives, and ultimately, experience a higher level of success in all areas.
In this clip from our most recent Cup of Joy episode, Dr. Joy shares some examples of impactful life experiences that you may not have considered, but are potentially influencing you and your prioritization of physical health.
Physical well-being is not an area of life that Dr. Joy spends most of her energy on. This conversation allowed for a deeper dive into the “why” behind what she chooses to prioritize, and not prioritize, in her journey to holistic well-being.
“Everything that I teach, the the healing model that I’ve designed, and have been using with coaching and counseling clients for years, is teaching folks to understand that life experiences, impactful life experiences….(And really, every experience makes an imprint on our lives.) All of life is impactful. And it affects how we define ourselves, it affects what we think is true. It affects what we think we don’t like, what we think we do.
Dr. Joy states that she always jokes around with people about how we are given the “recipe” for happiness: go to school, get your education, get married, have a family, and once you do all those things, you’ll be happy. However, we come to realize that something is missing. “And so, in all the work that I do, there always comes a time where we we have to figure out what is that impactful life experience that has deposited a ‘truth?’
These “truths” we come to believe about ourselves are often not completely true, and when we unpack them, we come to see that we are making decisions without fully understanding the “why.”
So, how does this impact our physical well being?
These impactful life experiences can either be a reason why you have really “zoomed in” on health, or be a reason why you don’t prioritize your physical health in ways that may be important.
For those of us who have chronic health diagnoses, or have gone through a health-related trauma, sometimes these experiences can cause us to become hyper-aware of our health.
In contrast, if we grew up in a home where our role models did not prioritize physical health, we may have learned to model that as adults. Additionally, there are cultural considerations that reach farther back than even our individual life experiences. For people of color, the medical system has a long history of oppression and experimentation, leading many BIPOC folks to make decisions about their health from a place of fear.
Our physical well-being, like most other things, is a product of our genetics and our environment. While we can’t control our genetics, our environment, our daily choices, and our mindset around physical health can be changed to better support us in our journey to holistic well-being.