We are what we eat, as the saying goes. Our bodies are comprised of the foods we take in, which affects our health and our overall productivity.
The health industry promotes a better, happier life guaranteed by eating X, Y and Z brands of nutrition bars. Social media trends convince us that eating avocado toast and wearing Nike gear to dinner means that we have it all together.
But what we often forget is that nothing gives us a happier life, a happier human experience than a healthy mind does. One can eat all the avocado toast in the world and own the entirety of the Nike store two times over, but if one’s head isn’t in the right place, chances are that his or her life isn’t in the right place either.
Giving ourselves the gift of positive mental health is the best thing we can do. As students, it’s important for us to be both physically and mentally healthy. It can be argued that remaining physically healthy during school isn’t the easiest thing because of the dining options readily available to us and because of the stress that our heavy schedules lay upon us.
But for what it’s worth, it doesn’t hurt to try. Trying means getting the salad instead of the burger, getting a bottle of water instead of a small fountain drink during meal exchange, taking the stairs up to the third floor of Marillac instead of the elevator.
Achieving mental health, believe it or not, can be much more of a challenge. How do we stay focused and driven in an environment that can sometimes, if not most of the time, promote the opposite? As young adults, we’re constantly being tempted into things that can bring us unhappiness, and staying on the right course can be one of the biggest challenges we’ll ever face.
There are things we can do to fight this. We can surround ourselves with people who only make us happy, we can remind ourselves frequently that we’re blessed to be receiving an education, we can find what we love and pour our lives into it.
We’re only given one single shot at this crazy thing we call life, and we owe it to ourselves to live it in the lightest, happiest way possible.
