Your health is in your hands, much more than you may think.
In my first post on this topic, I talked about you becoming the CEO of your own health and 10 pillars that you have control over and directly contribute to your health (find that post here).
Following my 10 pillars will help you take control of your health. The last three posts covered Eating Good Food, Drinking Water, Sleeping Well, Getting Outside, Moving Your Body, and Developing a Sense of Community. In this post, I will continue with two more of my 10 pillars:
- Work on your mindset
- Reduce stress
Work on Your Mindset
Your mindset can be a significant determining factor in your health. Mindset is how you see your life, yourself, and the world around you. A positive mindset can reduce stress, improve health, and improve resiliency. In fact, recent studies by the National Institute on Aging have shown that optimistic people actually live longer and have a better sense of wellbeing.
Adopting a “growth mindset”, the concept that you can continually learn, adapt, and grow rather than be unchanging, encourages optimism. A growth mindset allow you to reframe problems as fun challenges rather than setbacks. Furthermore, studies have shown that just a change in mindset can induce weight loss, increase physical activity, and create positive reactions to stress, all of which lead to better health.
How do you improve your mindset? Fortunately, we have many tools at our fingertips to improve or reset our mindset. Some of these include meditation, gratitude, yoga, affirmations, and even watching uplifting movies. Let’s delve into the benefits of each of these.
Meditation
Meditation has been shown to calm the nervous system and improve the mood which in turn helps the immune system.
Even 10 minutes daily can provide huge benefits. The uplifting feelings derived through meditation will open your body up to self healing and provide a sense of empowerment over your health. Many guided meditations are available on YouTube or in Apps. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the developer of mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) and a leader in popularizing mindfulness is a wonderful resource for mindfulness strategies and meditations. Prayer can also be a form of meditaion and can allow you to attain a sense of presences and wholeness. If these don’t appeal to you, just sitting for 10 minutes quietly listening to a fan or other white noise or relaxing music can do wonders. Although you may feel like you just cannot take time out to meditate in your busy day, it is well worth carving out time for it. As stated by the spiritual master, St. Francis de Sales:
Half an hour’s meditation each day is essential except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.
You don’t have to start with an hour or even a half hour. Just try to fit a little meditation in each day. First thing in the morning is a great time and before you get sucked in by the hubbub of the day and all the social media noise. You won’t regret getting up a few minutes early to meditate. It’s like sending your kids off to school with a good breakfast in their bellies. Send yourself off into the world with a positive mindset. It may have a profound effect on your life.
Gratitude
Gratitude seems like a fleeting emotion, but it is impressively powerful. The simple act of keeping a gratitude journal has the power to change your whole perspective on life. Get a little notebook and keep it by your bed.
Each day upon rising or when going to bed, just write down three things you are grateful for and see your mindset improve. These can be as simple as watching the sunset, hearing the birdsongs, or enjoying your cat. In just a few weeks, this practice can improve your optimism, bring more joy into your life, and enable your body to fend off illness. Feeling grateful puts a smile on your face and changes your perspective: you cannot feel anger or other negative emotions when you are feeling grateful. It’s truly amazing what a positive outlook can do to improve your health and general well-being. Practicing gratitude will lead you to this positive outlook, so start a gratitude journal today.
Yoga
Yoga is much more than stretching. It is a mind-body-spirit activity. There are many types of yoga and plentiful resources online for whatever fits your mood, body, or desires.
Bikram yoga is a series of specific poses done in a hot room allowing for increased flexibility and a feeling of surrender. Vinyasa yoga is a combination of poses done sequentially to produce a flow. Yin yoga is made of supported poses that are held for longer durations to relax your body and mind. These are just a sampling of the types of yoga available. Learn to do some form of yoga and practice it daily or as frequently as possible. Whatever type of yoga you choose, it is important to breathe throughout your practice. Breathing is an integral part of yoga and supports us physically, emotionally, and biologically. Yoga can be a form of meditation as you move through poses or lay still as in Yoga Nidra. A little yoga goes a long way. The benefits of yoga are plentiful and include:
- increased blood flow
- improved digestion
- improved breathing
- strengthened muscles
- improved lymphatic fluid movement
- stress reduction
- improved body image
- injury prevention
- promotion of feelings of calmness
- improved body awareness
Whichever yoga technique you decide on, be sure to approach it in a non-judgemental, non-competitive mindset. Don’t make constant improvement your goal. Instead, let your body be your guide only doing what you can on that day and in that moment. One day you may be able to balance well or access the full expression of a pose and the next day you are falling over or can only do a modified version of a pose. Let go of the judgement and be at peace where you are at that moment. Be gentle with yourself and reap the massive benefits of yoga.
Affirmations
Affirmations are another way to help create a positive mindset and can be very powerful. Who knew just talking to yourself in a positive way could have far-reaching benefits?
So many times our inner voice is negative, telling us how we should have done something differently or how we are not good enough. Practice changing that voice to say kind, gentle, uplifting statements about yourself. This does not mean being falsely optimistic or arrogant – those come from a state of fear. Start with statements that are just slightly more elevated than your current mood. Then gradually make more and more elevated statements that lift you to a higher vibrational energy. There are many websites and videos available at your fingertips that can lead you through affirmations. Find the one that suits you or create your own and give it a try and watch your mindset shift.
Working on your mindset is a gradual practice, but daily or frequent practice will have dramatic effects. Let this be a gradual change in perspective. Take time to develop practices and allow the practices to change as needed. Maybe some days all you can fit in is a quick gratitude list. That’s ok. Just try to add in some of the other practices as often as you can. My daily meditation practice has been life-changing for me and my family. Speaking of family, mindfulness is excellent for children. Mindfulness has been shown to help children improve focus, reduce feelings of anxiety, and improve resiliency.
And please remember it is called practice for a reason – don’t let perfection get in the way of practice.
Reduce Stress
Reducing stress in your life is important on many levels. Chronic stress plays havoc with our health and is associated with:
- chronic inflammation
- reduced immune responses
- brain fog and memory and focus issues
- increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer
- gastrointestinal issues including IBS and ulcers
- anxiety and depression
- sleep problems
- weight gain
When we experience stress, our bodies release the adrenaline and cortisol, two hormones that pump us up so we can respond to danger. This is wonderful if we need to react quickly and run or fight, but not so much when the stress is getting cut off in traffic or dealing with a boss. Once the stressful event is over, we need to process the residual adrenaline and cortisol for elimination from the body. If the stress is fleeting, our bodies are able to cope with the brief influx of these hormones and readily metabolize and eliminate them. However, if the stress is chronic, these hormones are constantly flooding our bodies and put a strain on our liver and other elimination pathways. This constant stress triggers a cascade of reactions that can lead to inflammation, reduced immunity, anxiety, sleep issues, weight gain and more.
It is important to find ways to reduce the stress in your life, but it is even more important to change the way you react to stressors. We are all going to have stress in our lives; things will go wrong, plans will be thwarted, unexpected situations will arise, all of which are out of our control. What we can control, however, is our response to those upheavals. We can choose to get angry or anxious or we can accept that it is out of our control and roll with the punches. Although this may not come naturally, we can practice being less triggered. We can practice being calm and even entertained by the mishaps. Just like learning any other skill, it will take practice. The mindset tools discussed above; meditation, gratitude, yoga, and affirmations, can all help with this. When we practice being mindful, we develop resiliency – the ability to bounce back.
Learn to be like a duck.
Duck feathers are coated with oil that allows the water to flow over their backs and not penetrate their skin. Learn to be like a duck and let the problems, the unexpected change in plans, the mishaps roll right off your back and not get under your skin.
Practicing mindfulness will help you reduce your reactions to stressors. But once you experience stress, there are many things you can do to alleviate or mediate this stress. One such tool is physical exercise.
Exercise can help by providing an outlet for pent up energy and by releasing endorphins (those uplifting chemicals) into your bloodstream. Studies also show that exercise actually reduces cortisol and adrenaline from stress. Exercise also is part of my Move Your Body health pillar cited in 10 Steps to Take Control of Your Health – Part Three.
Other tricks for reducing stress include watching funny or uplifting movies, shows, or videos. Even making and adhering to a schedule may help ease feelings of anxiety about accomplishing tasks – make a plan and work the plan. Spend a bit of time figuring out what your personal stress triggers are and develop strategies to manage those triggers. Find what works for you and put it into practice today.
In a nutshell…
Adopting a positive mindset will have a dramatic effect on your life. Who doesn’t like a person with a smile on their face? Everything is better when you pop on those rose-colored glasses.
It doesn’t mean you ignore problems, you just have a better attitude when you handle them. A growth mindset means you see setbacks as minor detours, maybe taking you down a windy road with beautiful views along the way. Try adding meditation, gratitude journaling, yoga, and affirmations to your life on a consistent basis and see your perspective change. Stress has been the focus of a multitude of studies and is known to be detrimental to health. So take steps to remove stress from your life. Asses your priorities and move stress reduction to the top of the list. And when you cannot remove the stress, reframe it. Strive for a growth mindset that lets you see mishaps as opportunities. Use some of the mindfulness tips to help you develop inner stability that will allow you to see the stress as something you can choose to react to or not.
I hope you are inspired to take up mediation or start a gratitude journal. I’d love to hear how you work a little mindfulness into your life and what benefits it brings.