Sally Boynton Brown
4 min readNov 18, 2020

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Wellness Blog Series #2

Ironically, to answer the question “Who chooses wellness?” I could first ask the question in its reverse form: “Who practices sickness?” It sounds strange to put it that way, but Americans die every day in our country from practicing sickness. (The answer, by the way, is “too many!”)

What exactly do I mean by “practicing sickness”? I’m referring to when we hold and act on certain beliefs and perspectives about illness that tend to keep us in it. Illness and healing entail a lot more than simply the ways in which they manifest in our physical bodies. They’re also psychological. OPTIONAL: Some might even say that wellness has a spiritual component as well.

Although practicing wellness requires taking the necessary actions to heal your body and prevent sickness, a large part of being well is your state of mind. For example, I’m sure you can think of someone who’s physically healthy but always negative, never happy. Do you feel you are nothing more than a victim to your illness? What do you see as your role in your own recovery? How do you define wellness? Questions like these can help us determine how we see things now, how to choose wellness, and then how to set goals for where we want to be.

Every year we spend billions on wellness products we don’t, or barely, use. Obviously most of us are trying to get better but we don’t always follow through. Maybe we tried something for a short time and we wrote it off too soon. Maybe we weren’t ready to fully commit to the necessary lifestyle changes for healing. And of course there’s always the possibility that what we’re taking or doing isn’t actually helping us. Whatever the reason, until we feel we have some power over our own well-being we will inevitably continue tripping over our own feet in terms of achieving better health.

As I mentioned in my previous post, many people assume that if they have a mental or physical health issue that they have somehow failed or have brought it on themselves. Then to top it off, they often feel like they’re failing in trying to get better! But when we view our wellness as something we’re failing at, we also take away our power to do anything differently about it.

As a wellness specialist I work with a different type of formula. I believe our society is not set up to promote wellness. With all the focus on work, status, money, and how we look vs. how we feel, there’s not much room for focusing on ourselves and our healing. If we can break free from those societal restrictions and embrace our own wellness journey–from a place of grace and acceptance rather than one of control — we can move forward to more mental and physical wellness and, ultimately, to more purposeful living.

I want to specifically point out that there are plenty of situations around disabilities, chronic illness, mental health issues where it feels like we must actively fight against our bodies for our health. Denying our body wisdom will only come back to haunt us in these situations. While challenging to an almost impossible degree, most folks who have learned to live with constant pain (emotional or physical) will tell you, generally speaking, that when we can flow with the ups and down of the illness/wellness cycle consistently, observe it (not get emotionally attached to it), do our wellness practices, and listen to our bodies (instead of blaming ourselves), we will begin embracing and owning our wellness, allowing us to grow from it — and often recover a whole lot faster as well. There is wisdom to learn from those who suffer or are put into circumstances beyond their control. Adaptation and resilience is a necessary part of human evolution.

To make this kind of mental and behavioral shift, we need to embrace that there is a life cycle, an ebb and flow to all things. Just like the planetary, animal, and microbial worlds do, our individual bodies also operate in these cycles. When we accept this we can more easily view times of illness as signals from our bodies that we need to change something we’re doing. In short, when we get depressed, anxious, ill or injured, there’s wisdom in that. Our job is to figure out what that wisdom is. Are you listening to your body? Next blog we will discuss how it talks to us.

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Sally Boynton Brown

Social philanthropist, political and wellness coach, human. I empower people with the tools they need to transform themselves and our world.