Surrounding Yourself With a Healthy Environment
Being in a healthy environment is vital to our growth and development as human beings. A lot of how you feel as well as how you handle stress and look at the world has to do with the place that you are living as well as how you feel about it. For example, a child who grows up on the streets of Detroit, Michigan will have a totally different outlook than the child that grows up in the well-to-do suburbs of south Charlotte, North Carolina. For some people, they actually have to physically pick their lives up and move elsewhere in order to lead a better existence. I know someone who moved from New York City down to Wendell, North Carolina because he and his family felt too closed in and cramped in the city atmosphere. They wanted space and land to run and play on as well as own horses, so North Carolina seemed like a great fit for him. And you know what? Today, that person is much happier and much more “settled” where he is currently living.
Believe it or not, where you live has a huge impact on your health as well. The person who lives in the dirty, one bedroom, rat infested apartment in Los Angeles might find themselves getting sick more often than the person who lives in the one bedroom apartment in Georgia that doesn’t have those same problems. Ultimately, you need to figure out what is best for you and act accordingly. While most of us may not be earning enough money to ever be able to own or rent that penthouse apartment on the top floor, we can certainly make the best of our living spaces.
Surrounding yourself with a healthy environment doesn’t always necessarily refer to how clean something is; sometimes it refers to much more. For example, if you or someone you know is recovering from a drug or alcohol addiction, you want to make sure that the environment that you are coming back to is conducive towards helping you recover from whatever affliction you were suffering from. So, in other words, the drug addict shouldn’t want to go back to his or her apartment where there may still be drug paraphernalia laying around. All that this is going to do is tempt that person to start using again. The same goes for alcohol or even food!
Both food and alcohol are easily accessible and readily available and almost certainly unavoidable when it comes to hanging out with friends or family. Because of this, we have to develop the strength of character to be able to say ‘no’ to ourselves when we are tempted to purchase food that is unhealthy, but liquor or alcohol or over eat when we are out with friends. The next time you are at a restaurant with a friend or family member and it is time to order your food, order a smaller portion of the meal or ask the waiter or waitress for a to-go box. Then before you eat, package the food that you are not going to eat in the to-go box before you start eating, this way you won’t be tempted to eat too much!