Dear Reader,

Scroll through social media for five minutes and you'll find someone who seems to have their health figured out.

The coworker who's training for a marathon. The friend who doesn’t eat sugar anymore. The influencer whose gym workouts show up in your feed every single day, without fail.

And almost without realizing it, you start comparing what you’re doing to what they’re doing.

I used to think that comparing myself to people who seemed healthier or more disciplined was just inspiring me to be better.

But looking back, I think it was also teaching me that who I already was wasn't enough.

When did we decide what a “healthy person” is supposed to look like?

Somewhere along the way, I feel that health has become a bit performative. Sometimes the trend is intermittent fasting, the next week it's working out at 5 a.m. There's always a new “best way,” and somehow the rest of us are always slightly behind it.

And it has made me reflect on a Japanese expression lately: oubaitouri (桜梅桃李).

The expression is made up of the kanji for four trees - cherry, plum, peach, and apricot - each of which grows and blooms in its own way.

Like how we don't look at a plum tree in March and worry that it hasn't blossomed like the cherry tree next to it, it means that everyone is simply on a different path.

To me, oubaitouri is a reminder that there doesn’t have to be one right way to grow, and maybe there doesn’t have to be one right way to be healthy either.

How to know and focus on what you actually want from your health

Comparison can make us so focused on how we measure up to others that we forget to ask a much more useful question:

Maybe it’s having more energy for the things you enjoy. Feeling stronger and more comfortable in your body. Staying active and independent as you get older.

If you're not sure what you actually want from your health, a few questions that are helpful for getting there:

1. What does healthy mean to me?

Not what does a healthy person look like, but what do I want my health to make possible in my life?

2. What am I actually responding to?

If you see someone else's routine, physique, or health habits and react to it, get curious about why. Maybe you don't actually want to run a marathon, but you want to feel stronger, spend more time outside, or prove to yourself that you can do something difficult.

3. Is their method the only way to get there?

You can want the same outcome without adopting someone else's workout, diet, or lifestyle. Their approach can give you ideas without becoming the standard you have to follow.

Just as we don't expect a plum tree to grow like a cherry tree, we don't have to measure our health by how closely it resembles someone else's.

We can learn from one another while still choosing the habits that help us flourish in the lives and values that are actually ours.

Instead of asking “Am I doing enough?”, what might change for you if you asked,

“Is this helping me live the life I want?”

Warmly,

Kaki

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