You Are What You Think.
It is hard to acknowledge the now-proven fact that arthritis, cancer and heart disease can be influenced by your emotional state. Often we want our health to be someone else’s responsibility. Robert Kiyosaki said, “The biggest challenge you have is your own self-doubt and your laziness. It is your self-doubt and your laziness that defines and limits who you are. It is your self-doubt and laziness that deny you the life you want.” Ouch!
Last night I was discussing with some friends the now-known fact that diseases are influenced by our emotional state. They were flabbergasted that they were liable for choosing how they feel because they always had believed that “someone else made them mad or glad.” They found it difficult to acknowledge that the “fear of failure or fear of rejection” could have power over their thought process and, therefore, their success. They always blamed circumstances.
When we are susceptible to the way other people treat us or think about us, we give away our life to be restricted by other people’s beliefs and opinions. When we live this way, in actuality we are a puppet on a string, doing a dance to the music others play. We take on other people’s opinions; we then think less about ourselves. This affects how we treat ourselves and how we react when we aren’t treated well. If we live in self doubt, we are afraid to “risk.” The more we discussed it, the more we all agreed it really was true. How we think and, consequently, feel about ourselves affects the decisions we make and, therefore, our lifestyle. Some people, in an effort to answer their disheartened emotions, munch out more. They choose “comfort” or sugary, unhealthy foods, while others drink more or smoke more or do some other harmful, momentary, self-gratifying thing. For others, this low self-esteem escalates into self-depreciating fear. They sabotage their success, believing they are not worthy or good enough.
Unhelpful, negative self talk brings pessimistic emotions that bring low self-esteem or fear and can give a constant gnawing pain in the pit of the stomach. Constantly living in these downbeat emotions affects your digestion, creating in your body a medical condition called inflammation. Countless types of diseases can be the result. We have the choice of healthy or comfort food, to exercise or not, to smoke or not, to overwork or to be lazy, to grab an opportunity or to react or respond when something happens. These choices ultimately are reflected in our health.
Evaluate yourself: When are you more predisposed to eat junk food, or have a sugar gorge or imbibe in too much alcohol? When do you just haul yourself around with no vigour or incentive? And when you have regained your sanity, how does it feel? For me, in the past, when I messed up on an assignment, or someone hit me with a negative outburst about my capabilities, I would get defensive, angry and annoyed with myself and then react by eating all the fattening food I could lay my hands on. Then came the inevitable ‘bloat’! The stupid thing is I would repeat the same action — eating all the comfort foods – because I rationalized that I needed the proverbial “quick pick up” to get me going! What a destructive merry-go-round!
In previous articles, I have discussed changing your thoughts or the negative ‘self talk’ as being the key to changing your life. Choosing to think success statements will lift your mood and make you feel more justified of a fantastic life. The inconceivable truth is we can begin and sustain the rejuvenation process by treating ourselves well and shifting how we feel! So instead of it being thoughts creating feelings, we can make it feelings kindling healthy thoughts. When your thoughts have brought you to feeling ‘low,’ turn off the negative TV. Put on an inspiring song, have a hot bubble bath or shower, go for a walk, ring a positive friend or, if you must eat, choose to eat an apple or something that makes you feel healthy. This reversal of how you think by taking positive action is a brilliant way to get control of your life.
Consciously nurturing yourself by deliberating creates the ‘feel good endorphins’ that give your mind and body a boost and will position you on the passageway to a joy-filled life, health and the success you desire. In addition, as you continually reinforce these endorphins with healthy affirmations such as “What a beautiful evening”! “I feel so vigorous when I go for a walk!” “I’m glad I did that!” or “That water tastes so refreshing!” the whole negative thinking process is turned around from the downward cycle of “got to’s” to “get to’s”.
Finally, conduct this experiment: Look at yourself in a full length mirror and say, “__ your name__, You are wonderful, look at you! At your age you can still bend and touch your toes.” “Your skin looks really good.” “Well done on choosing the healthy over the junk! I am proud of you.” and then give yourself a big hug!:) and say “I love you!”
Doing this exercise when you don’t feel like it is the best time to do it. It begins the reprogramming of your brain to accept, love and appreciate you. When I look at myself in the mirror I am flabbergasted at all the unbelievable things happening in my body: breathing, digestion, cell renewal, heartbeat, eyes that can see and ears that can hear, nerves that can feel, muscles that can lift — all at the same time. Liking yourself just as you are builds self-esteem and self-confidence.
When you say your affirmations with gusto you are transferring the message to the cellular level to create what it is you are saying. These new and healthy messages will generate a new Reticular Activating System (RAS) which are patterns in your thinking, your feelings and, ultimately, your health. To conquer those earlier self-sabotaging behaviours, you merely learn how to handle them and, in due course, you will become the master of them. Transformation starts with the audacity to eat the apple a day instead of the donut, to choose water instead of soda, and to talk to yourself in a positive manner instead of the destructive. It is picking yourself up one more time when things don’t work and learning from those ‘mis’-takes. You are simply creating new habits – a new RAS. As the late Zig Ziglar was famous for saying “courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the mastery of it.”
