By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness

Can the type of food you eat or how much you meditate determine your mood and productivity?

I’m beginning to think so.

I’m not saying that people who don’t eat healthy or meditate can’t be happy and productive, and I try not to judge anyone for how they live as long as they aren’t hurting anyone.

I find it necessary to try to eat natural foods, however, and I feel noticeably worse when I stop eating healthy. The same thing happens when I stray from certain spiritual practices and creative outlets.

The less I write, play music and meditate, the worse I feel and the more it comes across in my exchanges with others. The more I do these things, the more I realize that they’re what I’m meant to do.

Beyond eating healthy and meditating more, I’m noticing other areas of life in which we can all make a positive change; most notably to the amount of love we give to the world.

So many people have forgotten that the best way to live is to live with love, and if we don’t have love and its many shades, such as compassion, we don’t really have anything.

When we do have love and we’re willing to express it to everyone unconditionally, we have everything we could ever need and life opens up for us and reveals things we never expected.

They can’t be revealed if we don’t open the heart and embrace everything life has for us, and for me, the first step is to become more physically, creatively and spiritually active.

I want to live actively, and beyond practicing meditation and other things that require stillness, I want to keep moving. I don’t want to let in any unnecessary negativity or lethargy, because they stop great people from doing greater things.

There are a lot of obstacles on the path to a physically and spiritually active life, but we don’t have to let them get the best of us.

No matter how much they’ve hindered us in the past, today is a new day with ample opportunities for growth, learning and achievement in fields we assume are inaccessible.

We have to stay strong when confronting our limits and the challenges that make us aware of them, so let’s keep at it and give this life everything we have.

A life lived actively is infinitely more fulfilling than one lived for lethargy or depression, and the more we give, the more we’ll get back in the form of endless satisfaction and self-love, which we can share with everyone.