Hello and welcome to the Being Well Podcast, I'm Forrest Hanson. Today we're going to be

concluding our series on grit by focusing on developing resources related to the strength of vitality.

This will include learning about the relationship between our body and mind, and learning how to accept and appreciate our body for what it is.

Before we really dive in here, I just wanted to take a moment and note that this episode is going to be

dealing largely with topics related to the body, including our relationship with our physical appearance.

It's tricky and sometimes very emotionally fraught material for many people, so feel comfortable going at your own speed here and if this isn't

something that you're comfortable thinking about at this moment in time there's

really no harm in skipping this episode and joining us again next week. To help us through this I'm joined as always by

Dr Rick Hansen. So to begin with, why is cultivating a sense of vitality which I think of as being a very

physical experience lived in the body, important for growing the

mental resource of grit.

Yeah, the point here is based on the observation that when a person's body is ill or weary or underfed or under slept, it's naturally

harder for a person to muster the mental resource of grit.

On the other hand, if people feel very energetic in their body,

they've had a good night's sleep, they've had good nutrition recently, their belly is full,

it's easier to be determined and stubborn and indestructible.

So for me there's a kind of humility frankly in

appreciating the ways in which our states of mind depend upon states of the body.

So this is our opportunity here to talk about the physical body and the

relationship that people have with it. To shore up the physical body, it's

important for people to have a relationship with their body that's based on

acceptance and appreciation because if you don't accept your body or you don't

...