Who wouldn’t want to hear those words? In our culture, looking good is highly valued, and we spend a significant chunk of our fortunes on grooming, clothing, jewelry and other adornments that improve the way we are perceived by those around us.

Yet, you’ve heard the expression “you can’t tell a book by its cover” – appearing good on the outside doesn’t mean that everything is working properly on the inside. In fact, sometimes health problems are sneaky and insidious, without any noticeable symptoms.

Blood pressure can creep upwards, wear and tear can erode the joints, and any number of subtle changes can occur that at first create no pain or obvious malfunction. There are really only two things you can do to help yourself.

First, you can choose the very best lifestyle habits available. Eat well. Reduce your stress. Exercise appropriately. Avoid unnecessary injury. Minimize toxicity by reading labels and staying away from excessive chemicals in your food.

Second, you can consult experts on body function and lifestyle design, building a wellness team with the services you prefer – nutritionist, personal trainer, life coach, massage therapist or body worker, and of course your doctor of chiropractic, who can help you coordinate the use of professionals like these and others.

There’s an old story about a young man and his mentor, walking and contemplating, when the student, looking up at the heavens, exclaimed, “I cannot believe that the ancient peoples of the world were so stupid as to think that the sun rotated around the earth!”

The old man looked up as well, and remarked, “Does it look any different to the two of us down here?”

The young man realized that his understanding of the earth rotating around the sun was from his previous knowledge, and that the sky really did look like the sun was revolving the earth – he could see how people were duped by the appearance of it.

And so are we sometimes misled when we hear people say, “You look great” – it may be true, but you’ll still need to take the responsibility of developing good health habits and building a team of professionals to help you get healthy and stay healthy, so you work as great on the inside as you look on the outside!

Most of us know at least a little about goals. Setting a goal is one of the simplest and most basic success tools – it means to pick a target to aim at, a result you would like to happen, and then make a plan to work toward it. Setting goals is how almost all successful people create their success, in every chosen field of endeavor.

Some health goals are goals of safety – for example, if you want to travel safely in your car and avoid unnecessary injury, you would wear your seatbelt. Yes, it’s a law, but if you have a goal to be as safe as possible in your car, then no one has to insist that you wear a seatbelt – it’s an action step you would take to achieve the goal.

Or, you can choose a goal of a slimmer figure or clean, healthy lungs. You would then have to select some new behavior patterns, perhaps in eating, exercise and self discipline, to move yourself to lose weight or stop smoking.

See how this works? When the goal is clear and meaningful, the natural tendency is to act to make it happen, and that’s one of the main reasons setting goals is so important – it guides you toward naturally good decisions and behaviors, supportive of what you want to accomplish.

Interestingly, you can also set goals around positive health practices, like deciding to improve your diet, starting a regular exercise or meditation practice, or coming in for regular chiropractic care. These goals are not only to avoid pain and illness — they are designed to increase health and wellness, for a longer and better life.

You could set a goal of better posture, or a better attitude while doing chores you don’t really enjoy. You could aim at more patience with your children (or your parents). You could work toward improving your strength, balance or your wind and lung capacity by walking or running regularly.

You could set a goal to learn a martial art like karate or a sport like tennis. You could pick an ideal weight and combine proper diet, exercise and coaching to get there. You could aim at better mobility and flexibility by practicing yoga.

You could set a goal to clean up your nutrition, and reduce or eliminate unhealthy food and drink habits, like sugary soft drinks, excessive coffee, or chips and candy.

You could set a goal to assemble a team of expert health and wellness advisors, and research the best providers in your area and develop relationships with them.

So what are your health goals? To avoid pain? To improve your quality of life? To live as long as possible and be as healthy as possible? Learning to eat fresh wholesome natural foods, get enough rest, reduce your stress and keep your body tuned up and ready to go with exercise and chiropractic care are habits that will take you toward a healthier life.

They say that hindsight is 20/20, which means that after things happen it’s obvious what decisions you should have made along the way, but too often the opportunity has by then been missed.

So it goes too often with our health – we may be lulled into a false sense of security by the lack of overt symptoms, only to discover that our poor choices have painted us into a corner, requiring a huge effort to get out of it, if we even can.

Sad, and ironic, since the commitment necessary to stay healthy is usually a reasonable one – moderate eating and exercise, staying positive and reducing stress, getting enough rest and keeping our bodies tuned up with some basic maintenance care can go a long way toward producing good health and avoiding preventable illnesses and conditions.

Your doctor of chiropractic is specially trained in lifestyle science, and can advise you on some of the fundamentals of good health. You’ll be surprised how easy it can be, especially once you develop some momentum around these simple and profoundly beneficial habits.

If you wait too long, you could suffer the consequences – doing too little, too late is common in our world, but you don’t have to become an unfortunate statistic if you just make a few good decisions and stick to them.

Ask your chiropractor how you can improve your quality of life and avoid health problems – the result will be a longer, healthier life for you and your family.