Life Engagement

What is your level of engagement? I'm talking about your level of involvement in your own life. If you check in with your spiritual, mental, emotional and physical selves, what do they tell you about how engaged you are in LIFE? If you had to put a score on yourself between 0 and 100, how would you fare?

Are you frightened of resolutions? Try engaging yourself. If you think you'd like to focus on a resolution for the New Year, the following is a great place to start:

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Visit http://lge.perfprog.com and take the test, (max. 5 min.). When I took it, the results said I was 80% engaged in life. The conclusion was that if I strengthened my physical side, my overall life would improve. I often view these kinds of tests with a grain of salt, but this time it seems as though the results were really on to something. I was looking through my "life" box of goodies filled with mementos and treasures from my life and came upon some old report cards from my school days. And what do you think they showed? Sure enough, my lowest grades were in physical education! I had forgotten that my average score in Physical Education was indeed a C. It was true, the test was correct; my lowest level of engagement in life was and still is physical!

So, I made up my mind that I was going to become fully engaged. Doesn't that sound FUN????? Since then, I've taken up hiking and I am having so much fun!!!!! Downhill skiing is something else I enjoy, but I've found hiking to be an excellent alternative because it's inexpensive and accessible nearly year-round.

Let me back track for a moment. My husband hates hiking. He refuses to even walk around the park with me. I was afraid to go alone, afraid of being mugged, and since he wouldn't go with me, I initially allowed that to be a stumbling block. But then I began asking my women friends if any of them liked to hike. Some of them did but we just couldn't seem to coordinate our schedules. But I didn't give up. I finally struck up a friendship with a woman who walks at the park around the same time that I do. After a time, we decided to hike outside of the park. Since then we've gone on several hikes together including this beautiful place called Red Rock Canyon right here in Clark County, Nevada that I never would have experienced if not for my willingness to engage in something different.

Then another facet of this wonderful new period in my life began to unfold when my church started a hiking club. So now I've been on two very fun hikes with them. These hikes have typically been anywhere from 4 to 7 miles in length, not really steep and so beautiful.

What has happened to my physical body because of this is very encouraging. My shape overall is better and my heart feels stronger. But what has happened to my mental and emotional body is even more impressive. I am more joyful? I feel like I did when I was a child playing all day long. Being out in the fresh air doing something physical, fun and adventurous is most definitely giving me a new sense of vitality. Not to mention a great night's sleep?

While I'm not going to share my exact scores on the rest of the test I will say that my highest score was spiritual, followed by emotional, mental and physical in that order. I agree with the experts who say we are encouraged to change what we measure. Had I never taken this test I would not have identified this weak area in my life, nor realized that focusing and engaging with it could make my life richer. Laughter and fun = joy and since I've engaged my physical self more I am engaged in life in a way that makes everything I do have more meaning.