Keeping a Healthy Lifestyle Amid Chaos
What a year 2020 has been for us all. As I see it, I'm grateful to have my health, my loving husband nearby, and to have made enormous progress on Voices from the Mist. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, we've managed to maintain our healthy lifestyle here in Costa Rica. We eat a brain-nourishing diet full of fish, chicken, vegetables, nuts, and fruit.
One of the many challenges Dian Fossey faced living high up in the Virunga Mountain Range of Rwanda was limited food options. When we were there back in 1985, the typical diet was comprised of sweet potatoes, plantains, cassavas (manioc) sorghum, and few vegetables. Sorgum is best known as cattle feed in the U.S. Beef was rarely eaten because cattle represented household property. Dian didn't have the best nutrition practices either. When she made it off the mountain to campaign on behalf of mountain gorillas and to promote her book, Gorillas in the Mist, she'd stuff a suitcase full of junk food to take back to camp with her. I’m not a junk food fan, but I have been known to eat my weight in popcorn.
Another essential part of a healthy lifestyle is mental and emotional. We all deal with things flung at us from all sorts of directions. Our responses are, more often than not, related to how our brains were wired when we were young. According to Dr. Bruce Lipton in his book, The Biology of Belief, he claims beliefs control human biology rather than DNA. For example, if your father and grandfather led sedentary lifestyles and died of heart attacks, and you believe the same fate awaits you, it’s likely you’ll lead the same lifestyle and die of a heart attack. But if instead, you decide to change your sedentary lifestyle, eat nutritious foods, exercise, and educate yourself on how to avoid a heart attack, you’ll likely not have a heart attack.
Dr. Lipton goes on to say our brains perform like a hard drive during the first seven years of our lives. For example, if a parent tells a child he’s stupid, that child will accept it as fact (and perhaps never overcome it). If another parent tells her child she’s smart and pretty, the child will accept it as the truth, and likely thrive. But we must first become aware of old, mistaken hardwired beliefs before we can correct them.
I’ve been a self-help junkie for a long time. When I was ten years old, my stepmother tossed my nearly perfect report card aside and hissed, “Maybe next time you should get all A’s.” Enter Evelyn the Overachiever. It took only once for my father to say, “You can do anything you want to do in life,” for me to embrace it with all my heart, and I still do.
I practice transforming how I perceive predicaments and mistaken beliefs. Now, I have ah-ha moments when I watch them morph into opportunities. Even dreaded hurdles can turn into advantages once you take the leap. It isn’t easy, but it pays off. I find going inside does wonders when it comes to keeping your sanity and remaining centered amid crisis-like conditions. When I'm mindful and let go of what I can't control, it helps alleviate my struggle with unnecessary stress.
Dian’s health was a struggle. She smoked like a factory, never gave her body time to heal correctly after medical treatments, which included recovering from broken bones, and she didn't practice self-love. But then, she didn’t feel much love or acceptance those first critical seven years when her brain was being hardwired. Thankfully, Dian connected profoundly with the mountain gorillas who filled a void no human ever had. They became the family she always wanted, and she protected them with every fiber of her being.
If you get a chance to visit these magnificent creatures in Africa, you'll understand what drew Dian to them. Being in the presence of a mountain gorilla in the wild is pure magic.
Stay safe, my friends, and do something nice for yourself today.
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