Cowritten by Drs. Yvonne & Scott Rheinschmidt, PhD., LPC

“Fear no one…but be afraid of those who can destroy both soul and body.” (Mt 10:26)

For the past three months we have been trying to deal with the coronavirus and so many life changes. I think the message today is to question how we are maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  We all have heard the saying “what we practice makes us grows stronger”.  If this is true, then we need to ask ourselves how we are practicing and maintaining wellness. We know that when we practice on a regular basis, we do improve. Whether we practice a musical instrument or Kung Fu or relationships and even our faith when we practice them, we automatically grow stronger.  Having a healthy lifestyle builds resiliency then we can withstand the world with all it’s issues and what it throws at us. 

Military warriors train for combat. We too need to train to become resilient.  Resiliency requires a healthy lifestyle.  This means we need to train in every aspect of our lives:  what we eat, what we do, what we think and what we focus on. These areas always have an impact on our resilience. There’s a lot of people that just lead stressed out lives; they worry about everything. Easily, we let the world’s happenings disrupt our lifestyle. Of course, we will get stressed from time to time because we are human, but to prevent getting completely stressed out, we need to focus on our lifestyle. It is not enough to just read Scripture once in a blue moon, or exercise once a month or occasionally eat a healthy snack.  We then wonder why we feel unhealthy, tired, stressed, and even burned out. Stress and worry are reminders of what we need to work on: exercising, reading, studying, our diet and meditation.  These activities are an overarching area that modifies and transforms our minds. Remember that a healthy lifestyle is purposeful. It requires daily training. 

Play to win and not, play not to lose.  In other words, training and practicing every day a healthy lifestyle will take an effort, but it will help us to prevent living in stress and fear.  Thus, we built resiliency.  We will have no overwhelming fears. What’s your lifestyle like?