Carolyn Hansen: Mother Nature needs healthy humans to keep planet in balance

We are not separate from Mother Earth. We are her children and she has given us a wealth of natural resources to draw from to experience a fabulous life. Photo / Getty Images

As humans, we have a tendency towards complacency. We get comfortable in our routines and habits and start ignoring signs and signals that something in our personal lives is off-balance and requires attention. It may be our health, our finances, our social life, our home life, our business, or work life.

If not tended to, this imbalance eventually tips the scales to the wrong side, and openly reveals itself as distressed health - mental, physical, emotional, and even financial.

Take, for example, heart disease. It is the number one killer for one main reason - unhealthy habits. Lack of exercise, poor nutrition and unchecked chronic mental stress top this list.

Sadly, the damage that fostering unhealthy habits causes does not stop on a personal level. Complacency of unhealthy habits at home in our personal life can be thought of as a lifestyle disease that becomes a destructive global issue when governments run by people begin acting the same way.

This complacency towards nature's nudges - her signs and symptoms to us when pushed out of balance, further exacerbates this imbalance, and places the health of our precious planet Earth under distress, strain and eventual breakdown.

Major lesson: We are not separate from Mother Earth. We are her children and she has given us a wealth of natural resources to draw from to experience a fabulous life. If a crisis in nature occurs it is because we have abused her privileges, overstepped boundaries, and created imbalance.

Rather than aligning with Mother Nature/Earth and using her natural resources in balance with a heavy dose of gratitude, we use and waste her resources selfishly, most times for temporary monetary gain, and end up damaging the very environment created for us to live and thrive in.

Floating plastic bottles and other waste in the ocean. If a crisis in nature occurs it is because we have abused her privileges, overstepped boundaries, and created imbalance. Photo / Getty Images

We strip her luscious green forests and leach precious minerals from the soil, leaving it barren. We poison the air and water, set fire to her landscape and unnecessarily kill-off her astonishing display of exotic wildlife for sport or trophy.

Our insensitivity to the hand that feeds us has separated us from the very thing we are, nature.

Destructive personal habits eventually manifest as dis-ease or disease in our lives and this same principle plays out as dis-ease on a global scale. So, what is the answer?

We must reverse our war on nature.

The ills that suddenly appear in the world in the form of disease, the pandemics that occur globally as result, the fires that burn out of control, the pollution that poisons both air and water and government and societal breakdowns are all a direct result of our complacent, unhealthy thoughts, habits and actions.

They bleed over from our personal lives collectively affecting our environment, our government, and our ecology in a negative way.

Ignoring signals while waiting for a wake-up call before initiating changes places us and our environment in serious jeopardy since most alarms are not sounded until issues are critical and reach the boiling point.

At this stage, things shift rapidly from minor symptoms to major problems and suddenly we are dealing with a nasty global crisis causing disruptions in trade, travel, productivity and damaging the health of the economy and the world at large.

In the end, a war with nature is a war with us.

Global warming, environmental pollution, the ruthless extinction of precious animals and life-giving plants, exploding populations, food shortages and climate changes are worldwide global issues that we as humans and guardians of Mother Earth must solve.

That can only happen when complacency is eliminated, responsibility is accepted and every one of us contributes towards returning nature's balance and keeping it.

And it starts at home. "How we do the little things is how we do the big ones." Our personal lives, our lifestyles, the habits we adopt and how they affect our health, mentally, physically and emotionally does not stay bottled at home but plays out collectively on a global scale eventually affecting the health and stability of the entire world.

The truth is, removing complacency by shifting our daily habits and lifestyles to healthier ones is the first step towards experiencing these same things on a global, worldwide basis.

We must stop our self-absorbed, arrogant attitude and finger pointing and begin looking directly at ourselves for answers because we are the answer. If there is any finger pointing in all this, it points directly to us. If changes must be made, they begin and end with us.

Each one of us is a cog in a larger plan and when we do not play our roles effectively, we damage the whole.

In other words, "we're all in the same boat" and must become caring, resilient, and selfless towards each other, Mother Nature, and the world around us.

If we hope to get our environment, our ecology and economy healthy, prosperous, and balanced on both a personal and global scale and keep it there, we need to step to the plate and make serious changes. We can no longer sit on the sidelines blindly indifferent to the world around us, waiting for a crisis to "wake us up".

It is time to "turn that pointer finger around" and take responsibility for our lives, for the health of Mother Earth, our planetary home, and her generous life-giving resources. We must take responsibility for, support and contribute to the stability of our governments, our appointed leaders, and the decisions they make.

As US President John F. Kennedy once asked – "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Let us expand that wise request to read: "Ask not what Planet Earth can do for you, but what you can do for Planet Earth."

• Carolyn Hansen is co-owner of Anytime Fitness.