Healthier Living With Positive Thinking In 2016

Oh holidays, how joyous you are. Driving to and fro. Coordinating schedules with friends, family, and somehow squeezing in your own personal life somewhere in there. It can get a little overwhelming to keep your sanity or as I call it sometimes, your positive thinking in flow. 

Make your happiness your New Year’s resolution this 2016. I’m dead serious. Make the conscious effort to make your joy an everyday reality. It’s an exercise, mediation, whatever you want to call it. Make it your 2016 practice. With so much focus on what we put inside our bodies, let’s talk about our mind, and how it plays such an important part in our health.

Have you ever caught yourself in the car replaying a conversation? How someone treated you? Talked to you? Did you keep yourself focused on those negative feelings instead of realizing how lucky you are to be driving, while looking at a beautiful purple sky.

“Change your thinking,” I heard myself say. I let myself realize I was playing negative stories on loop. It’s the worst. It keeps you in a bad mood. You get nothing productive done, and then you end up snapping at everyone else around you. When all you have to do is practice letting go of those negative thoughts only you can hear.

Ending the negative loop also gives your body other benefits. When the Mayo Clinic extolls the virtues of positive thinking you gotta take notice.

• Increase your life span
• Lower your rates of depression
• Lower your levels of distress
• Have greater resistance to the common cold
• Have better psychological and physical well-being
• Reduce your risk of death from cardiovascular disease
• Have better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

The way you’re mindful at the grocery store for your health, is the same way you gotta increase your positive thinking. You put veggies in your cart, do the same with your mind. Think of it as positive mental veggies. Your body will love you.

So how do you start? How do you practice positive thinking when you’re fighting traffic on the 405? Barbara Markway Ph.D,. of Psychology Today, has some great ideas for better headspace thoughts in 2016.

Ask yourself necessary questions about your thoughts such as:

• Is this thought true?
• Is this thought important?
• Is this thought helpful?

Instead of saying “I'm a loser,” say, “I'm having the thought that I'm a loser.” Instead of saying, “I'm going to blow this test,” say “I'm having the thought that I'm going to blow this test.” The difference may seem subtle, but it can help you gain the perspective that you are not your thoughts.

Thank your mind. 

If you're having anxious thoughts such as, “I hope this plane doesn't crash…I hope the pilot knows what he’s doing…” say, “Thank you, mind. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. But there's nothing that you really need to do right now. I’ve got it covered.” I’m big on notes to myself, so sometimes I write my mind a letter of appreciation for its efforts, but also let it know it can take a break.

Let them float away.

This one involves imagery. You put each negative thought on a leaf and imagine it floating down a stream. When you have another thought, as you will, you put it on another leaf and watch it float by.

Sing your thoughts. 

Try singing your thoughts to the alphabet song or to Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Your thoughts will certainty sound absurd this way, which is the whole point. Say them in a funny voice. Try saying your thoughts in a funny voice. Maybe do an imitation of a cartoon character. 

Name your stories. 

Many times our thoughts are repetitive and involve the same stories. My story frequently is, “I don't really know what I'm doing.” When thoughts come up along that storyline, I can say, “Oh, here’s my I’m Incompetent story, and just let it go.

Do it anyway.

Perhaps the most important tip is to remember that you can have a thought and perform any kind of behavior at the same time. If it’s something you care about, it’s worth it to let the thoughts simply be. You don’t have to do anything about them.

I know this post broke a little bit of the norm. We take such good care of our physical bodies with exercise and diet, but those aren’t the only things that matter. Positive thinking for 2016 will make our lives better, and the lives of everyone else around you. Let good things happen to you. 

Get Off The Hamster Wheel, Renew Your Zest For Life

Four easy ways to help you feel like your life isn’t set on “repeat.” 

We all have those moments, when life seems set to loop. Get up. Rush to breakfast. Rush to get ready for work. Rush to get work, and the myriad of other “rush” things everyday life requires. Like your workout, life sometimes needs a little mixing up, in order to give it a kick start. I like to think of it as cardio for your soul.

Try some of these ideas to get yourself mentally out of your everyday activities. Yes, we would all love to travel to Nepal, and explore the meaning of life. When your days are full of freeways, meetings, and status reports, you need to squeeze some “om” into your life, which doesn’t require a transcontinental flight.

• Go To Bed Earlier

Sometimes you feel the need to stay up an extra hour or two Netflixing away. Those late night hours seem as our only time to unwind. Don’t do it. Do the opposite, go to sleep early. Getting a good night’s sleep has numerous health benefits such as improving memory, learning, physical performance, maintaining healthy weight, curbing inflammation, spurring creativity, sharpening attention, lowering stress, avoiding accidents, decreasing anxiety, and living longer. 

Yes, so many benefits by hitting the sack early. Instead of waking up with heavy lids on a weekday, imagine waking up before your alarm goes off. Your body is ready to start to the day, because it’s had time to recharge, and run on all cylinders. 

• Wake Up Earlier

If you go to bed earlier, your body will naturally get up earlier. Imagine waking up feeling like it’s a Sunday, and brunch is the first thing on your agenda? You can have the same feeling of peace before every work day, by creating more time in your day. 

You’ll be able to make a healthy breakfast. You can exercise or go for a walk in the neighborhood. You can relax, and calmly make your to do list for the day. You’ll be more productive, and a good night’s sleep will become a regular part of your life. Nothing worse than the stress of those 10 minutes of being late to work. 

• Take A Lunch Break

Fewer American workers are taking time for lunch. Research shows that only 1 in 5 five people steps away for their midday meal. Digital life has so many ways of connecting, pings, and inboxes to check, you’ll never reach the end. Instead, unplug and give your body and brain a chance to recharge. You’ll be more productive by stepping away from your computer.

"Staying inside, in the same location, is really detrimental to creative thinking. It's also detrimental to doing that rumination that's needed for ideas to percolate and gestate and allow a person to arrive at an 'aha' moment,” says Kimberly Elsbach, a professor at the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management, who studies workplace psychology. 

Visit the outdoors, and give your mind a chance to have a new perspective. You might think of it as wasted time, but in reality, your mind will work better by letting it relax. All those emails and voicemails will be there when you come back to your desk.

• Make Meditation A Part Of Your Life

Reduce your stress levels and anxiety; improve your creativity, focus, and relationships by regularly meditating. Don’t think you need to have a zen garden with the incense sticks burning. Meditating is easy as spending 10 minutes a day, using apps like Headspace, to help center ourselves regularly.

Meditation helps your brain physically change, even if you’re not aware of it re-shaping itself. People with clinical levels of anxiety have experienced 90% reductions in anxiety. Meditation promotes ‘divergent thinking’ a type of thinking that allows many new ideas to be generated.

Also, researchers have found, compared with the people who didn’t meditate, ‘those trained in meditation stayed on tasks longer and made fewer task switches’. Lastly, meditation can improve relationships with everyone you meet. You become more comfortable with yourself, which makes it easier for others to get on with you.

We inundate ourselves with our friends’ lives, the news, and cat videos, when we can be helping our brains and bodies rejuvenate. If you don’t help your “self,” how can you truly experience all the benefits exercising and healthy eating. It’s all a matter of being in alignment with oneself. Carve out time for yourself, and your body will thank you accordingly.

"Come on get happy"

I recently came across a great article on 

"10 Characteristics of a Happy Person" 

Even though I think all of the items listed are important, I want to touch on the topic of number 6!

'6. Happy people not only know how to eat well, they also know how to feed their body with great quality food. In addition to this, they also follow a regular exercise routine. This is because they believe in self care and work at reaching the epitome of mental and physical strength.'

For the full article, follow this link!

A large problem with working out and achieving a certain physique is all about aesthetics.  Now I am not saying that is the reason you work out, but it is a large misconception placed on the industry.  Sure there are a lot of people just doing it for the aesthetics, but I am going out on a limb and saying that I can guarantee they are not your role model of a happy person.  It takes great sacrifices to achieve a certain level of leanness and I personally do not believe these people are mentally happy...at least not in the long run.

It is important to create a balance and as the quote says above, happy people believe in self care mentally and physically.  It is equally important if not more important to be mentally healthy.  A healthy body doesn't mean one is super lean and full of muscles.  Health comes in all shapes and sizes.  For most the only way to achieve an optimal physique is actually to be happy...I know kind of sounds like a catch 22.  If you focus on mentally being happy the rest will fall into place.  Be true to yourself.  

For me I have found this through, dance, running and Pilates.  Each one gives you the opportunity to focus on your mind and your thoughts while working your body!  The best of both worlds, working mental health and physical health!