By Dina Aldabbagh

This needs to be put as clearly as possible: nothing in this world is more important than your health. Okay? That means physical, mental, and spiritual. Nothing. Not your husband, not your mother, not your best friend, not your career, not the opinions of others, not fitting in, not maintaining the peace, not one single thing. Do you understand? If you don’t, I need you to. You need you to. The world needs you to. And certainly the next generations need you to. Listen to me clearly, I won’t put it gently, if the world needs to burn so that you can maintain your health, let it burn. Whatever needs to go from your life so that you can become healthy, take out that trash immediately, because if it’s stopping you from being healthy, it is garbage. Clear the garbage. 

That sounds bad right? “Oh, but Dina, we can’t just be that self-centered and selfish that we prioritize ourselves over everything. If everyone did that, where would we be?” We’d be better off, is where we’d be. I am being so direct with this because I need you to understand that Step 1 is getting your health in order — the holy trinity: physical, mental, spiritual. Maybe that sounds selfish now, because we do live in a world that tells us that there are just so many more important things! First off, it’s very important to get as many people to like you as possible. Secondly, make sure you compromise yourself if it’ll help others out. Thirdly, try to make your life look like the way we sell you through all our media and advertisements. If you don’t, that’ll just count as a failure of a life, and you should be ashamed. 

Step 1 is to get healthy. Everything else is Step 2 and beyond. However, there is no Step 2 without Step 1. If you try to skip it, you will wonder why everything in your life feels shaky, and that’s because its foundation is built on unstable ground.

All beration aside, after you understand my first point — that nothing is more important than your health — I can tell you that actually the most selfless, peace-bearing, generational-wealth act of service you can give this world is to become a healthy individual. When your cups are full, not only are you able to give back, you want to. Once you taste the goodness of proper alignment of your health, you want to scream it on the rooftops and help everyone else feel what you’re feeling. You feel inner goodness, so you want to pay forward goodness outwardly as well. 

This isn’t some woo-woo, almond mom, gym bro propaganda. This is just the truth. If you are healthy, you feel good, you do good. Then goodness acts like a ripple in the water and it flows so much farther than what you initially had to give. 

Physically: 

When you love the way your body looks and feels, you become less judgemental of others’ bodies. When you move your body on a daily basis, you become so appreciative of life’s simplest and greatest pleasures: you realize that the best things you can get out of life are not things you can buy, but the things you can do with yourself as the vessel. When you set fitness goals for yourself, and struggle through them, but stay disciplined anyway, you teach yourself that you can achieve anything you set your mind to. When you treat your body like it matters to you and you are appreciative of the vessel that hosts your spirit, you don’t hate yourself, you don’t pick at your flaws, you don’t wish to look like some celebrity; instead, you accept yourself. 

Mentally: 

When you’re not overburdened by anxiety, you don’t act out of desperation, so your actions are emotionally regulated and thought out. When you don’t feel insecure, but rather confident, you trust yourself. When you have high self-esteem, you believe that you are worthy, that you are deserving of good things. When you don’t depend on other people to be your validation, you won’t change parts of yourself to be temporarily accepted by others. When you can trust yourself to be your own advocate in times of conflict, to leave situations that hurt you, you’re more willing to be vulnerable and take risks. When you develop your own unique charisma and believe that people like being around you, you feel at ease when interacting with others.

When you believe that it’s okay to ask for the things you need and the things you just want, you’re honest, allowing other people to love you correctly, and feel comfortable setting and holding boundaries. When you don’t feel constant shame and guilt, you allow yourself to be imperfect, which opens you up to trying more things. When you have integrity, you respect yourself, when you respect yourself. When you dignify yourself, when you honor yourself, other people do the same — and if they don’t, at least one person does; you. All this and you end up liking yourself.

Spiritually: 

When you believe there is a power greater than you that not only loves you, but has your back, you live life in hope, in expectancy. You understand that there may be things that happen in your life that you don’t understand, but you can trust that one way or another, it will work out for you. You understand if the situation isn’t changing, it’s because the situation is changing you. You put your best forward and wait patiently for the day the dots connect and you understand why so many things didn’t work out. With this belief and hope, you can endure all hard things in order to get the beautiful things that life bears in the future. You constantly work to better yourself and live in a trusting, sure of yourself manner. You seek wisdom and hold yourself and your life to that standard. You remove all the habits, people, and things that bring you inner turmoil. You live in peace.

Ultimately, when you accept yourself, you accept others. When you like yourself, you don’t hate on, ridicule, or try to bring down others. And when you live a life of peace, you’re one of the people that brings calm to this world, rather than calamity. And even if you didn’t touch anybody else’s life, you changed one person’s world: your own. 

So don’t let anyone tell you that prioritizing your health is not the best thing for you and everyone else. It is indeed a ripple effect. Not only does the world as a whole benefit, but look no further than your own household. When you get yourself healthy in the manner of the holy trinity, your son, your daughter, your mother, your sister, your husband, they all get a shining example of health. What’s more, you are only a single degree away from them. They’re not looking at an A-list movie star getting healthy — “Oh, they have access to the best trainers and therapists and chefs” — they’re witnessing someone who is just like them lead a life of health. 

Change your health, change your life, change others’ lives. It can be a tough process at times, but as you refine yourself, you become greater than gold. Harmonize your health — physical, mental, and spiritual — and you will be unstoppable.

This was my first article in my blog because this is the foundation you need to meditate on and believe in. The blog posts that follow will be me getting into the nitty gritty, into every weed I can to communicate what I know to be true about health. I too once struggled with my health and getting out of that hole was the best thing I ever did for myself. If this is my only blog post ever, this is what needs to be said. Luckily, it’s not. I hope to see you again for the next post. Welcome to the Health is Wealth Files.