What is Healthy Living?

Finding a Path to Wellness
BY: T. Franklin Murphy | July 1, 2018 (edited February 6, 2022)

A young woman closing her eyes, face to the wind. A Flourishing Life Society article on Living Healthy

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We must find an individual path for healthy living that fulfills both our physical and psychological needs.

There’s no single path to well-being. Although Google prefers clear concise steps to elevate an article in searches, we need more options than settling for a platter of AI shuffled data to find what we need. We need more human touch to lift us to higher roads of existence. Creative thinkers continue to write books and philosophize about life, giving their own personal spin on what we need. Perhaps, the paths to healthy living can’t be reduced to simple steps; but the rewards of a constant and wise effort to satisfy basic human needs.

What is Living Healthy?

Living healthy is a whole body and mind endeavor, balancing many factors to achieve wellness. Our minds and bodies don't operate independently, each intricately connected to the other. Our physical health impacts our mental health and our mental health boosts or draws from our physical health.

Living healthy requires attention to both. Some common ingredients of a healthy living lifestyle include rest, exercise, close relationships, healthy diets, and passionate interests. We also need external support of ample opportunities, medical care, and security. Living healthy is a joint effort between society and the individual.

See Nine Pillars of Wellbeing for more on this topic

Key Definition:

Living healthy means practicing a lifestyle that balances fulfillment of both psychological and physical needs.

Dangerous Shortcuts

Dangerous Shortcuts

Shortcuts may intrigue the wanderer; loudly beckoning a rewarding escape from weighty consequences and promising rest. Don’t go there. Tough futures and narrowed opportunities dwell in the shadows of ease, patiently waiting to haunt the cheater. Taking the path of least resistance seldom rewards and usually punishes with lost time, broken relationships, and difficult futures.

Elements that Impact Living Healthy

Poor budgeting, non-competitive work skills, and procrastination cannot be overlooked. We must address these pernicious villains that rob the future of blessings. Their evils cannot be dismissed. Healthy living can't be won with a lucky throw of the dice. When life overwhelms, we panic, hoping for a magical escape. The struggling soul often compounds errors of poor preparation with new addictions, extracting weightier costs. The person now must contend with the original costs along with new debilitating addictions.

The easy path has a high cost. The flourishing dreams of instant wealth obscures the barren returns of poor odds.

Undisciplined lifestyles rob futures of vitality and richness. Purposeful choices, structured in wisdom and patience, stretch our souls, lifting us above momentary comforts, creating a life of purpose—not simple survival.

We must be wise, mindful of our directions, identifying pernicious habits and escapes. By embracing the less decorated but proven principles of living healthy, and patiently employing habits that work towards those goals, we begin a beautiful transformation. Persist when you are tired; change directions when you are too comfortable. Actions matter. Living healthy invites greater riches to the many moments yet to come.

T. Franklin Murphy

Wellness. Writer. Researcher.
T. Franklin Murphy has a degree in psychology. He tirelessly researches scientific findings that contribute to wellness. In 2010, he began publishing his findings.