Re-storying Health

“We are RE-STORYING HEALTH in our own lives and in the lives of others.”

As a Licensed Professional Counselor, Results Coach, Professional Speaker, and friend, I have heard countless conversations about illness and pain from every category: physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual. If you walk into a room of people telling your illness story, you are more than likely going to attract people to you like ants to a cookie. It is socially acceptable to talk about illness in public. People seldom reject the illness story. They may reject the amount of time domination from the illness storyteller because they want to tell a story too, but people seldom reject the illness story on its own merit. However, if you walk into a room of people and tell a story of health and wellness, people, on average, will want to hear about it but lose interest quickly because they do not know how to talk about health and wellness.

How many of the stories related to health have you heard that are really veiled illness stories? “I would like to get healthy, but I can’t; I am too far gone. Save yourself.” I hear versions of this fatalistic perspective within every aspect of health. “I wish I could be happy, but . . .” “I wish I could look like that person, but . . .” “I wish I could live a spiritually genuine life like that person, but . . .”  “I wish my relationships were healthier, but . . .” The story of some or all forms of illness continues for years.

I am fifty-one years old as I write this. From the outside, most people would assume my life was relatively healthy relationally, spiritually, and emotionally. Physically, they knew that was not true. The real story is that other than my relationship with my wife, I told myself a story of illness in every area of my life. I usually told others a slightly healthier tale, but I was just as embedded in a story of illness as most people. Fortunately, I was able to survive with two forms of validation: (1) most of the people I was serving in my practice were perceptively less healthy than me and (2) the people that I admired always, and I mean always, had some story of current illness in some area that kept us glued together. Social illness is more of an attachment or bonding resource than a reflection of reality.

I am tired of the illness story. I am tired of telling it and tired of people having an illness story. It is not that I am tired of people or hearing the story, I am tired of it being perceptively true. I am CREATING a new story in my life. My wife and I are CREATING a new story of physical, spiritual, emotional, and relational health. We are tired of being puppets of illness. We are no longer owned by illness to be tossed around. We are not demanding that someone give us wellness, we are CREATING it. We were designed for spiritual wellness and we are RESTORING that wellness and RESTORYING wellness. We were designed to be a part of God’s naturally healthy ecosystem that is a complex and unstoppable machine for restoration (leave a building unattended for a few years and nature will restore itself). We are RESTORYING wellness physically with real food and God’s natural resources in plant-based partnering like high quality essential oils. We are celebrating the joy of movement, because the body was designed to move. We are celebrating the blessing of relationships and proximity with people and bringing healthy into the room instead of illness in the form of self-doubt, fear of rejection, and lack of clear identity. We are determining our emotional health story by reprogramming our own Limbic System within the brain and optimizing our brains, bodies, and emotions toward health.

We are RESTORYING HEALTH in our own lives and in the lives of others. We have purposely partnered with companies that are genuinely RESTORYING HEALTH like Vitanya Brain Performance Centers (www.vitanya.com) and doTERRA Essentials Oils (www.doterra.com) because we want to surround ourselves with people and opportunities that will truly change the story from “we all have illness” to “we are all healthy”. Our company, Above All Behavioral Health Services, LLC (www.aboveallbhs.com) is transitioning from just outpatient counseling to a full wellness center addressing health in multiple perspectives. We are partnering with people that are creating real change like Julie Reising (www.juliereising.com) who is coaching mothers to embrace the amazing “momself” within and give up perfectionism and social comparisons. We are listening to people that speak life and health like our pastor, Chris Moix, at Harrah Church (www.harrahchurch.com) and Shawn Stevenson of The Model Health Show (www.themodelhealthshow.com). We are beginning to grow our own nutrient-rich food and shopping in the most colorful part of the grocery store where we get to touch the food we will eat because it has not been imprisoned (freedom food).

If you know us today, we are not yet the model of health and nutrition. We are only mildly removed from the illness story within our own lives. However, we are going all in with a RESTORYING of health. We are proactively asking questions about the space we occupy and the words we say and the things we feel and eat and doing something about everything that continues a story of illness. I urge you to Create! Don’t Wait. Most people are sitting around waiting for something to change. We were too. Now, we are creating our health story and are leading others to do the same. This is not wishful thinking, this is truth thinking.

Assuming we were created for spiritual, physical, emotional, and relational illness is a ridiculous lie. That does not even make any sense. Why do we tell an illness story? Because attaching over illness has socially been made into a more accessible resource for relationships than health. Therefore, we tell an illness story and live out illness story supporting lives and invite others into an illness story with us. That, for lack of a better word, is stupid. Do you want to know how long it took for my wife and I to switch to a health story instead of an illness story? The moment we said it and intentionally determined the emotional resources, it was true - immediately.

We are RESTORYING HEALTH in our own lives spiritually, emotionally, physically, and relationally. We are still physically overweight today and are still trying to figure out the changes we need to make in every area of our lives. However, in the past we just tried to change our behaviors to change our lives. Now, we have changed our emotional memories through “Perpetual Notion: 34 Days to Irresistible Change” and changing behaviors that fit who we have RESTORIED ourselves to be is quite easy.

Change your story by creating a new and vibrant health story. Create! Don’t Wait.

For information about individual coaching or inviting Jeff to both inspire and equip your group or organization for CREATING something real, reliable, and tangible, visit www.jeffplunkett.com.