A new year, a new diet
By the time this article goes into print, the New Year will have started. With that, so will countless resolutions to start something. It seems we are hardwired to start things on a defined basis. We set start times or dates based on birthdays, the 1st of the month, Sundays or Mondays, and a special event. But the quintessential starting point of any and every year is Jan. 1. It is the number one date for new or revised beginnings, and the definitive thing we start, or restart, is a diet: a change in eating habits we may have attempted a considerable amount of times during the past year, or decades.
Diets, or changing eating habits, are attempted because intuitively we understand that we need to take care of our bodies. We make some type of commitment to eat better, lay off the junk/processed food and increase our physical activity in some manner. As the saying goes, put junk in the body, you get junk out of it.
The biggest reason diets fail is because of a misconception that it should only be temporary. However, for anything to succeed there must be discipline and consistency. This means it has to be a lifestyle: a choice to change this part of how you live.
You must change permanently the way you eat and exercise as it concerns eating and physical activity to make any meaningful difference. You must come to terms with the fact that you have to stay true to healthy nutrition and incorporate regular physical activity into your life. That means purposeful planning and scheduling.
Some things will have to be given up, others adopted, some things moderated, others increased. All the proper information is available for those willing to pursue a better healthier lifestyle.
With all that said, this brings up a parallel interest for our well-being, what about our spiritual health? What improper unhealthy “dietary” habits are we feeding our spiritual nature? What lack of spiritual disciplines is leading us to soulful disease and spiritual malnutrition? How many of us are abusing ourselves, causing damaging consequences?
Remember that adage: Put junk in, get junk out.
What do we permit into our minds through what we watch or listen to? What gets absorbed into our spirits that is unsanitary or contagious? With a constant “diet” of spiritual junk food, is it any wonder that we can’t achieve a better spirituality.
To have a healthy vibrant mindset, attitude and relationship with God, one has to be disciplined and consistent. Does that sound familiar?
How we treat our bodies has tremendous similarities to what we should be doing for our spiritual nature. There may be some things we have to give up, moderate, add or increase.
To visit the thought that to make any meaningful difference, going to church once in a while, reading scripture here and there and praying only when desperate, simply doesn’t get us to the level of spiritual health we need to get to.
The idea that we can get by with just a small amount of effort causes our spiritual nature to suffer. This is eerily similar to how we treat our physical health.
Our spiritual activity must become a lifestyle, not a diet to practice whenever we think things are getting out of hand and we try to clean things up for a little bit. This also may mean purposeful planning and scheduling our lives around spiritual pursuits.
What commitment level do you need to make? What starting point are you targeting for? Do you need to make small or big changes?
Intuitively we know we need to do this, but it can’t be temporary. It needs to be a lifestyle. Consider what it will take to bring your body to a sustainable strong level, and then apply the same principles to your spiritual nature.
Matt 5:8 NIV says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” and Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
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Blessings.