Do you like PIES? I have good news for you; the key to your overall health has everything to do with PIES!

In my blogs and social media posts, I often refer to Healthy Rhythms and our ‘overall health’. When I use the term Healthy Rhythms by itself, my guess is that many of you think of physical exercise routines. That is a part of it, but only just a part. To truly be healthy, we need to have routines, or rhythms, that address all aspects of our being. When I speak of overall health, I am referring to:

(P)hysical health: this involves the stimulation, exercise and building of strength & endurance in our physical bodies. My goal in this area is to only allow age itself to deteriorate my physical condition.

(I)ntellectual health: this involves the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, and discernment through stimulating our minds. All three of these need to be present; knowledge alone is worthless if it does not produce wisdom, and knowledge & wisdom are of no value if we do not exercise discernment by allowing them to dictate our moral character.

(E)motional health: this involves exhibiting self-control over our thoughts and feelings. When we are emotionally healthy, we can cope with life’s challenges, involving circumstances as well as outside voices that may desire to disrupt our emotions.

(S)piritual health: this involves pursuing a relationship with the Maker & Lover of our soul; our eternal being beyond the confines of our physical, intellectual, and emotional self. It is the source of peace and happiness in our lives regardless the circumstances around us.

Over the next four blog posts, I am going to discuss each of these aspects of our health in more detail. These will, I hope, be posts of a very practical nature.

But before I go on, let me say a word about Mental Health since it is not explicitly a part of what I’ve written above. Mental health could be included in a combination of Intellectual and Emotional health as I’ve defined them above. But it can also be more. Often, the way we speak of mental health in our current society would link mostly to the idea of how we are emotionally coping with life’s challenges. When this is off balance, then trusted pastoral counseling or life coaching can be a great tool to deal with the issue. It would be my honor to provide these if you are in need.

However, our mental health is sometimes not within our control due to physiological or psychological conditions within our bodies and minds. When that is the case, please avoid feeling shame, but do seek out appropriate sound professional counseling and medical care. They can restore you to a position of being capable of exercising control over your overall health.

As I expand on these four aspects of health, it should be said that maintaining our overall health is much more (maybe only?) worthwhile when it supports us in fulfilling our purpose. Helping others in understanding life’s purpose is one of the primary reasons why I have chosen to become a life coach. I would love to serve you in that capacity.