Actually, you probably have many of them! 

This year the art contest at the Health & Wellness EXPO is asking you to pick just one of them to illustrate for your entry in the art contest.  Once again, the Wickenburg Art Club has sponsored cash prizes.  You and your children or grandchildren have many healthy habits.  Just pick one – and then find a creative way to illustrate or symbolize that habit.   Picture an alarm clock for getting enough sleep (or maybe a big nose with lots of ZZZZ’s.)  How about some fruit, or a salad for healthy eating as a habit?  A toothbrush with paste and your big smile…  You get the idea.  Think of things that you do to take care of yourself – and bring it to life in an 8.5” x 11” piece of art, using any medium you like.   

Why focus on habit?  Partly because it’s one of the most powerful ways to improve your health:  either by expanding or increasing a good habit, or replacing a bad one with a good one.  

Here’s the other reason that healthy habits are so important in our rural communities.  Like it or not, health care (and access to health care providers) is going to be tougher in our rural spaces than in larger towns or cities.  A recent article (wish I could remember now where I read it…)   encouraged residents of rural areas to focus on prevention as much as possible.  It identified four key areas for improving or maintaining our health, ALL of which are within our control:    

 1. Getting enough sleep  2.  Physical movement  3. Careful consumption  (that includes healthy food choices and drinking plenty of water, but also means avoiding smoking and limiting alcohol.)  4. Cultivate positive social relationships and your spiritual life.  We hope this core group of components for healthy living will prompt you to look at habits in each of the categories – habits we need to develop or ones we already have.