Just take one step
“Begin with the possible; begin with one step.
There is always a limit, you cannot do more than you can.
If you try to do too much, you will do nothing.”
~ P.D. Ouspensky & G.I. Gurdjieff
A season for gratitude
It’s Thanksgiving week for those of us in the U.S. But Thanksgiving has turned into meaning too much food, a lot of football and big, big, big everything … except for acknowledging the words in this holiday term. Giving thanks. Pure and simple.
I guarantee that you have plenty of reasons to feel thankful. But, in our negative society, they too often get brushed over while the bad stuff gets lots of attention. And what that does is increase your stress level and damage your health.
So, instead, let’s return to simplicity and a season of gratitude. How and why? Here’s why first:
- Recording what you’re grateful for each day will have you feeling better and experiencing fewer health problems overall. Participants in a study who focused on gratitude reported better health than those in the same study who either recorded hassles they experienced or others who wrote about anything that impacted them.
- In another study, the gratitude group reported falling asleep easier, getting more sleep and feeling more refreshed when they woke up.
- Gratitude helps protect against heart attacks. One study showed this while another demonstrated that the heart rhythms of people who held loving, appreciative thoughts in their minds followed a more coherent, rhythmic pattern.
- Gratitude helps you manage stress and deal with daily problems better.
- Grateful people are, of course, more optimistic, and that boosts your immune system. Among a group of healthy, first-year law students under stress, those characterized as optimistic maintained higher numbers of blood cells that protect the immune system than their more pessimistic classmates.
And here’s some suggestions for how:
- Keep a gratitude journal. Each day — at night before you go to sleep is a good time but choose whatever you can be consistent with — write down a minimum of five things you are grateful for. While you can be general, i.e. having a roof over your head, also look for specific instances, i.e. a co-worker complimented you on your report.
- Put up visual cues to remind you to be positive. Even a post it note on your computer, in your car and/or on your refrigerator with an uplifting phrase is enough.
- Enlist a gratitude partner, someone who wants to work on this just as much as you do. Or, as an alternative, spend more time with someone you know who sees the good in life. Role models count at any age.
- Become aware of what you think, the inner dialogue you have with yourself. A lot of negative can exist there. Awareness is the first key to changing it. But, please, please, don’t beat yourself up for those thoughts! Notice them, see how you can switch them around, see how they reduce over time.
- Reframe situations that you might tend to see in a negative light.
- Extend gratitude to others. What goes around truly does come around!
Take some part of this, and begin to practice it as regularly as you can. You only build your gratitude muscle by putting it into action. Once a year is not enough.
Happy Giving Thanks to you!
Tell yourself a little white lie
It’s okay to lie to yourself sometimes if it helps you do something you might not otherwise do.
What in the world am I talking about? It’s this: We make huge, grandiose promises to ourselves … then feel like failures or beat ourselves up or give up when they feel too big to accomplish.
So do this instead: Promise yourself you only have to do just a tiny bit of health thing X. That’s it. You do that (you tell yourself), you’re off the hook!
So, for example, let’s use me. Sometimes I just hate going to the gym. Though I know I love how I feel afterwards; I enjoy the strength; I like having my body working properly; I gain more energy. And so on.
So, on those sort of days, I tell myself a little white lie: Cindy, go to the gym. If you get there and do just a bit and want to head right back out the door, I’m allowing you to do so. No harm; no foul. That makes it seem do-able. A few minutes; that’s all I’m committing to. If my inner 2-year-old wins and wants to go home and play online canasta, then that’s what she and I will do!
But you know what happens? I get there, I do a bit, I feel better, the motivation kicks in, and I complete my full work out. Every darn time. It’s just the start that’s tough to, well, get started.
If you don’t like lies, let’s call it something more positive. I have a huge value for honesty as well. Let’s call this a baby promise to yourself instead. Not a shoot-for-the-moon promise, just a tiny, bitty promise that you’ll do a few minutes of something. Or you’ll eat a small salad and then you can choose your favorite decadent delight. Or whatever.
Baby promises are so much easier. You can commit to a baby promise. You can complete a baby promise and feel good that you did. That baby promise has a lots of possibility, too. Because, nourished well, it will easily and naturally grow into the big promise that seemed too overwhelming.
And that’s how you build a road to wellness, all paved with cute, little baby promises! Get out your pink and blue baby promises today and give them a chance.
Question so you can learn
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
~ Albert Einstein
Are the facts keeping you from healing?
If you have any disease that seems dooming, it’s hard to believe that life can hold much else in store for you, right? You visit the professionals, you take in their information, you research the illness/symptoms on the ‘net, you talk to others with the same ailment. And all that generally does is make it seem reasonably hopeless. What you have is what you have.
That’s why I bring you my examples. Not to talk endlessly about me, but to give you a real-life example that your health can vastly improve, no matter what the “official” belief is.
When I think about it, with all I’ve been through starting from my 20s, I could be on disability and not able to do much right now. But I’m very far from that, thankfully. I’m active; I’m healthy; I haven’t needed a prescription drug (including antibiotics) in at least 10 years; I’m told I look — and I know I feel — far younger than my 55 years.
To give you hope and the push to try and the encouragement to believe is why I bring you my latest example. My vision has improved … for the second time. It improved for the first time last year; it’s improved again this year.
While that is pretty amazing for a person who’s worn glasses (then contacts) since I was in grade school, it’s even more miraculous because I have keratoconus, an eye disease that causes your corneas to thin and become cone-shaped. You hope for your poor vision to remain stable at best in this. You get that, and you have reason to celebrate.
But improved sight? I don’t know how often that happens or if it happens at all. From the look on my optometrist’s faces (my long-time one and my new one this year since I’ve moved) when they realize my vision is better, it’s pretty rare.
Over the years, there is a list of ailments met and conquered. I had severe headaches I don’t have anymore. I had thyroid disease that I don’t treat anymore except with a natural supplement I purchase from a health food store. I had Lyme Disease that doesn’t present any symptoms anymore. (And Lyme Disease is supposedly incurable.) I had gall bladder issues, but I never had it removed nor the stones, and I have no problems there anymore. I was suffering from severe fatigue that doctors couldn’t figure out the cause of. Gone. And now my vision is improving despite the fact that I’m getting technically older, and I supposedly have keratoconus.
Pretty cool, huh? It is for me, I know that. Does it help you? I hope so. Are you going to professionals who truly can tell you the facts and your chances for better health? I know they’re doing the best they can and following their training, but, truly, they can’t know exactly what may happen for you.
If you don’t make use of your own body’s knowledge; if you’re not willing to look at other avenues to wellness and remain open to possibilities, then you may miss a huge chance to become healthier and live the life you want.
How did I heal? I think it’s a combination of things. I didn’t create the Wellness Wheel survey that looks at how you measure in nine areas out of nowhere. It came from what I’ve experienced, what I’ve seen, what I’ve read and researched, what I’ve learned. These areas matter. Ignore them, and wellness doesn’t work.
I hate to see people suffer needlessly. Or lose hope that they can feel better. Or give away their power to someone just because they have a degree. Or give up trying. Or think this is too hard and life lived with an eye toward wellness is too difficult.
Be willing to explore the possibilities. Be open to learning something more. Be agreeable to do a little work that will be worth it and not as bad as you think. Be ready to be surprised.
