By Andy Boone

What if 2019 is the year that you finally decide to prioritize you? Let that question hang there a bit. I am talking about seriously prioritizing your life, along with growing curious about your health. To take it one step further. What if you decided that beginning in 2019 you were going to commit to living the best life possible? What might the best life possible even look like!? Where would you start?

CrossFit Inc. makes a strong case that points to health parameters that sit well ordered on a continuum of values ranging from “Sick” to “Well” to “Fit”. For example;

• High-density lipoproteins (HDL cholesterol or what we think of as  good cholesterol). Less than 35 mg/dL of HDL cholesterol and you may have a problem, 50 mg/ dL is  nice, and 75 mg/dL is a whole lot better.
• Blood pressure: 195/115 mm/Hg you have a problem, 120/70 mm/Hg is considered healthy, and 105/50 mm/Hg looks more like an athlete’s blood pressure
• Triglycerides, bone density, muscle mass, body fat, hemoglobin A1c all can be plotted relative to the above values.

The significance is that these are the predictors, cause, and  manifestation of chronic disease. Chronic diseases include obesity, coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, many cancers, Alzheimer’s, peripheral artery disease, and advanced biological aging, among others (above examples from CrossFit Inc. L1 Training Guide and talks by Coach Greg Glassman).

Perhaps you’ve already made your commitment to your health. You have a physician you trust, you test important markers and the above values and metrics sit very nicely within “Well” and “Fit” ranges. Maybe you turned to our CrossFit program or another fitness program you love, you’ve dialed in a nutrition plan and you sleep soundly among other healthy behaviors. You manage stress well and don’t feel a struggle with rumination or overly anxious worry. You are living what feels like your best life and you even have data to support it. Keep rockin!

Or maybe that’s not quite it. Perhaps it still feels, you feel, like something might be missing? Maybe you know something is missing, but just not sure what.

I pen this in the spirit of a new year, but it’s more than that. Your health, your life, and the opportunity for you to live the best life possible is what motivates me. It’s my personal Why. It’s why I spend so much time thinking about this place. It’s why I try to empower and create opportunities for coaches. It’s why I’m committed to this level of transparency! I am determined to create a space, program and a team of coaches that can support you in evoking a massive life change. Consider this your invitation to get curious about what’s possible!

I’ll reach a bit and attempt to connect said invitation to the Buddhist concept of Impermanence. According to the teachings of The Buddha, life is comparable to a river. It is a progressive moment, a series of different moments joining together to give the impression of one continuous flow. It moves from cause to cause and effect to effect. It moves from one point to another, giving the outward impression that it is one continuous unified movement. In reality, it is not.  As they say, the river of yesterday is not the same as today (adapted from urbandharma.org). Today is a new day. A new opportunity.

So much of our physiology and our health is the result of the lifestyle and behaviors we choose. As I have written about in the past, if we are willing to first examine and then potentially say NO to certain aspects of our life, especially with habits we’ve developed over many years, where then can we finally say YES? If we can develop the strength to let go of the stories we’ve told ourselves for many years, then what? What new doors can we open?

A few years ago I found a physician who helped me begin to get really curious about my health. Perhaps more importantly, he helped me begin to pay attention to the life I was living. How did I want to show-up in this great game? Where was I willing to make changes beyond showing up and consistently taking CrossFit classes?

I am certain that each one of us has the power to stop telling ourselves the same old story. My certainty comes from my own experience. 1/1/19 marked achieving a personal goal of 12 months alcohol-free. I pondered this potential lifestyle change for a couple of years. How would I be able to hang with friends? Enjoy happy hours? Survive at a cocktail party!? Alcohol consumption may not even be on your radar, but perhaps there is an area in your life where you might benefit from evoking a change.

Here’s the point I want to make: if we can stop long enough to hear the stories we’ve been telling ourselves for years, the power to choose otherwise and make big shifts lives in each of us.  This includes perceived fate, no matter our age, condition or current physical shape. Even genetic predispositions passed on from our parents are only part of the story. Humans possess the ability to turn genes off and on via lifestyle and behavior changes. Simply put, you have the opportunity to take charge of your health and wake-up to living a different life.

Stay-tuned next week as we begin to preview a couple very cool 2019 programs launching soon. This includes the “Take Charge of your Health” program that will include all access seminars, as well as small group health coaching sessions. Our goal is to create opportunities for us all to dive deeper into identifying our own stories, listening to self-talk, understanding behavior change, setting attainable and sustainable goals and truly waking up what’s possible.

Happy 2019 from Portobelo, Panama.  Let us all celebrate the opportunity to finally Take Charge of Our Health!