Wellness And Its Connection To A Positive Mindset

Gram’s Wisdom 44: Positivity and wellness.

When you feel well it’s a positive feeling. Positive thinking can make you feel better at the moment, but can it make you feel better overall?

My Gram certainly thought so. Gram understood the direct connections between exercise and a balanced diet on your physical wellness, she didn’t see positivity as a substitute for taking care of yourself. But she felt there was a definite link between positivity and your physical and mental wellness.

She often reminded me as I grew up, that my well-being was in my control. To feel well, tell yourself that you do. To be well, do the positive things that contribute to health and wellness.

Don’t beat yourself up.

Usually, stress is thought of as coming from external factors like work, traffic, or family friction, beyond your control. But a surprising amount of stress in life comes from within.

When a difficult situation arises, or even if you anticipate a difficult situation, some of you tend to criticize yourselves and begin imagining the things that could go wrong.

While it is important to understand the possible downsides of a situation, if you spend too much time thinking about the dangers of a situation or how we may be unprepared to deal with them, it can drastically increase the levels of unhealthy stress that can come from a situation. This stress not only makes it harder for you to think straight and control the situation, but too much stress over a long period contributes to health problems including weight gain and heart disease.

The next time that you begin to worry about a situation, look at it from a viewpoint of finding ways to make the situation favorable rather than thinking about how the situation could get worse. This small example of positive thinking will lower your stress levels, making you feel more comfortable and helping you to maintain control over the situation.

Positivity and other coping mechanisms.

Stressing about negative situations does more than prevent you from solving the problem at hand, it can also make problems worse and even create further difficulties.

If you are stressed or otherwise upset about something, it can be easy to slip into making unhealthy choices, whether that’s turning to comfort food or drugs. Even legal ones like tobacco and alcohol can quickly harm your health.

Thinking optimistically protects your health from the main effects of stress as well as these additional problems that can come on when you are drawn to manage your stress in unhealthy ways.

A positive mindset bolsters your health.

It was already discussed above that excessive anxiety over too long a period can be bad for the heart. This can be partially due to those secondary concerns mentioned in that last paragraph, like a diet. However, it can also be due to stress itself.

Stress is a complicated phenomenon in the body, involving a lot of chemicals being created and released into your blood. This cascade of events evolved in humans to help us run from predators or fight invaders, but a faster pulse and slowed digestion don’t help us get over the loss of a loved one or the frenzy of tax time. Our ancient ancestors needed the stress response to escape danger, but in today’s modern world it can tend to linger too long. This can be a draw on your body’s resources and can even prevent it from fighting an infection like it is supposed to.

Thinking positively can be good for your emotional health, but it may also help you to avoid whatever bug is going around.

Pondering positivity.

Your attitude is everything.

How you face life each day largely determines how you feel about your day. If you have a positive approach to life and yourself, even your most demanding days will feel tolerable. Thinking positively is a simple rule, the key to living a satisfying, fulfilled life. However, putting it into practice in your daily life can be more difficult.

Consistently thinking positive can be challenging. Maybe your self-confidence isn't as strong as it could be. If this is the case, you may need to take a leap of faith to think positively.

To be positive you must persevere.

Negativity is the human default, and everyone falls prey to it at some time or another. You are human, and you will stumble and even fall occasionally. The positive person is not faint-hearted, he knows that to stay down is a failure, not a fall. After a short letdown, you’ll remind yourself that with your intelligence and perseverance, something good will happen soon. You can’t lose by approaching life’s events with positive thinking.

We get what we expect.

Dare to think your project offering will be chosen. Whatever we expect or believe will occur will indeed come to pass. So, if you believe that you'll do well on a work project, you will. If you expect not to do well, then you likely won't. The implication is that if you can manage your thoughts, you can think your way to success.

When you aren’t sure about how to think about a situation, approach life positively. With enough positivity, you can change your life.

My final thought.

Looking on the bright side can be challenging, but if you don’t take it seriously it’s impossible. While some people avoid trying very hard to be positive because they think that it’s just a bunch of feel-good nonsense, hopefully, this article has helped you to understand some physical and mental benefits of positive thinking.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Let me know if I’m on track with the kind of information you are looking for.

For more information, check out these posts.

The Power Of Positivity.

Does Your Role Model Have A Positive Mindset?

Can Mindfulness Improve Chronic Pain?

Mindfulness and chronic pain.

I want to talk about chronic pain. It’s inconvenient, obviously painful, often debilitating, and causes an array of other issues when conventional treatments fail. I have suffered from Migraine headaches for nearly fifty years and I am always grateful that I have days or even as many as three weeks at a pain-free time. Because I have refused to take any kind of medication, I learned early in my life to have a fallback routine for the “lost” days. While this has helped immensely it’s nothing more than a band-aid and I had continued to search for pain relief.

Chronic pain sufferers commonly experience anything from anxiety and depression to pain medication side-effects and addiction. All of this on top of excruciating pain that can’t seem to be controlled. Using the mindfulness approach for chronic pain may be just what the doctor didn’t know to order. I only discovered and began to use this for my migraine pain a couple of months ago.

Mindfulness is, simply put, paying close attention, and maintaining direct focus. Being brave enough to gracefully embrace a moment, good or bad, and know that it’s okay to let it go. Yes, it sounds terrifying to a chronic pain sufferer to pay more attention to the pain. Still, you should continue reading. I intend to make it clear how mindfulness for chronic pain can be highly beneficial and even help eliminate pain almost completely when practiced properly.

Some practical mindfulness techniques.

A common relaxation technique over the years has been to, tense up each part of the body, individually, count to 10, and then release your hold. The object is to notice exactly how tense you were, to begin with, and to physically feel the tension go away. You would typically begin at your head and gradually work your way down each body part until your entire body is completely relaxed.

For instance, you could start with your face by crinkling your forehead, squeezing your eyes together, pursing your lips, and clenching your teeth. Inhale through your nose, hold the tension as tight as you can for 10 seconds and then slowly exhale through your mouth. Feel the muscles relax in your face and head.

Feel the tension and stress leave your body. Notice how you feel the blood start to move again and how invigorated yet relaxed and calm it makes you feel. How completely aware you feel. This is the same premise as mindfulness for chronic pain.

The idea is to get closer to the pain, acknowledge it, assess it, and allow it to go. Accept that the pain is there, without judgment, which is the hardest part. Naturally, chronic pain and all that accompanies it is seen as negative.

Focus on pain relief.

But just for this exercise, try and view it neutrally. Shake hands with the pain as if it’s the first time you’re meeting a new neighbor. Visualize the pain. And when you exhale, let the pain move on.

Substantial pain relief may not be immediate, but if you are mindful and continue practicing mindfulness for chronic pain, the decrease in pain will gradually happen. It takes practice and focus, but it’s well worth the effort considering the damage other treatment measures can potentially cause to your body, mind, and spirit.

It also helps to alter your mindset on the pain itself. Your approach should be to understand your pain, individually describe the sensations you notice with and without the mindfulness exercises, and create a deeper awareness of equanimity.

If you enter this with the idea that your pain needs to be “fixed”, if you aren’t extremely successful on your first shot of meditation, your mind will interpret that as “failure”. And mindfulness for chronic pain is so much more than simple success and/or failure.

Mindfulness will help you achieve a more accurate perception of the pain. You essentially retrain your brain to calculate pain differently. Think about it; your mind doesn’t feel the pain, but it sure lets you know on a scale, how bad it might feel.

For your brain to differentiate the intensity of pain, it first had to send signals down to the core of the pain, which was then interpreted as even greater pain. It’s like poking a really bad bruise. Ouch!

Mindfulness, life, and pain connection.

Mindfulness for chronic pain isn’t about erasing pain. Mindfulness is a phenomenal and powerful method to help you live a full life even with the pain. Your focus is no longer on the outside obstacles but on accepting what’s going on inside your body and having an alternate relationship with it.

You get to choose your reactions, believe it or not, and mindfulness for chronic pain assists in just that. With practice and determination, you can and will change your pain response. Think of all the added benefits like less narcotic pain medication, less chance for addiction to medications, as well as decreased anxiety and depression symptoms.

What about the fact that you can begin again to live a meaningful, active life without spending the majority of your energy on avoiding any pain breakthrough?

Mindfulness for chronic pain has endless potential and the results can affect multiple areas of your life. There’s no reason not to give it a try.

My final thought 

My pain management is admittedly a work in progress. What pleases me is the reduction of the pain and the length of time the migraine lasts when I practice this technique. I attribute this to a lessening of the associated stress and anxiety I feel now that I have taken a more hands-on approach.

I hope you enjoyed this post and will share it with your family and friends.

Learn How To Say No

Learn to say no as a part of better self-care

There are too many nice people in the world today…or so it might seem, with the number of “yes” folks you run into on a daily basis. However, what about the lesser heard “evil sibling”, the word “NO”?

As a child, you were raised to be considerate to others, and to accommodate them as much as possible.

How do you know exactly when enough is enough? And more importantly, are you saying no to yourself by saying yes to others every time? Chances are that is exactly what you are doing, even if only subliminally.

A no to others is a yes to yourself.

Wondering when is the time for you to use your no’s effectively? Take a look and see.

Adding to your stress

Not being able to say no can greatly contribute to elevated stress and really quickly! Doing too much fuels feelings of overwhelm that cause chronic stress, and people who cannot say no are usually the first to fall victim.

It is important to understand your own boundaries and limitations, and while helping others is important, you absolutely must take care of yourself first.

This means sometimes saying no to friends and family, in order to maintain an optimal level of energy, health, and wellness for yourself.

Feeling you must

This is by far the most common cause of resentment in persons, since you are basically “forced” to say yes whether or not you want to. Maybe the person asking did a major favor for you in life, maybe it is a family member.

You feel a sense of obligation to always be at the beck and call for whatever that person requests of you, but you need to ask yourself “when is my bill paid in full?” will you continue to feel a forced sense of obligation forever?

This constant obligatory situation builds resentment, and resentment can literally make you physically ill!

You need to let them know you have to put yourself first, by doing what you need to do. If an issue arises, it may be best to sever ties and remove a toxic person from your life.

Staying up too late

Though it is fully understandable the need to unwind after a tiring week’s work, there is absolutely no justification for staying out late and drinking on a weekday when you have responsibilities to meet the next morning! It is more than likely the result of friends asking or guilting you out even though your better judgement says no.

You’re not doing yourself any favors as you will be sleep deficient the following day, not to mention likely hungover and miserable. Saying yes to that, is saying no to your well-being.

Enabling bad behavior

It has happened to all of us before, from your child asking for something, hearing no and slowly breaking you down, to much worse influences on your life.

From friends begging you for a loan, to unnecessary spending, while it may seem OK or insignificant at the time, it enables bad behavior and disrespect over the long haul.

When you say no, it needs to stay that way. You will gain infinite respect for having unbend-able beliefs and will be looked at as a pillar of strength.

Doormat behavior

There have undoubtedly been numerous times when you sat quietly seething while something (or someone) boils your blood to the point of an eruption, yet you show no outward emotions. This can range from a boss berating you in the office, a bully, or a random stranger who finds it appropriate to assert their dominance over you.

By allowing it, you are doing just that, rolling over and assuming the fetal position. Open your mouth, demand your respect and speak for what you believe in.

 “You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say no.”  -Lori Deschene

When you must temper your “NO”

Being agreeable

You want to be as helpful as possible at work. People are always coming up to you to ask for your help. Your boss gives you tasks because she knows you’ll get the work done on time. Your colleagues hit you up because you are one of the most knowledgeable people on staff. The trouble is, you then have a difficult time getting your own work done. When this happens, you need to learn how to say no.

There are ways to say no that won’t make you seem like the bad person. One great way to do this is to let people know you have other tasks and that you can get to their tasks after you complete yours.

Not when they are lazy

It is fine to help people out, but you should avoid doing their jobs for them. If someone asks you to do something simply because they don’t feel like doing it, you need to take a stand and tell them this is unacceptable. You should begin by asking why they can’t get to it. Perhaps someone else has given them more tasks to do. You need to show them how to say no to those other people.

Some people are, simply put… slackers. They try to pass off all their work to other people. When you find one of these people, confront them. If you do this early on, they will lose the control. This also demonstrates to your other colleagues that you won’t let a slacker have control, and they should follow suit.

Compromise is good

You’ll have a tougher time telling your boss no. She’s the boss after all. However, you do need to let her know that your plate is full and try to compromise. See if you can get a priority of the extra tasks your boss is piling on. Also, if others on the team are currently freed up from their tasks, see if they would be willing to take on those extra duties.

Keep your cool

It’s important to never become angry when others approach you with more work. Smile and find out why they are hitting you up for the extra work. It could be they are not aware of your schedule. You can produce your to-do list if this is the case.

By staying calm, you keep the control in your corner. If you blow up at people, they are going to consider you volatile which makes it difficult for them to compromise with you. It’s rarely a situation in which you will come up the winner. It is okay to be firm with people when you discover they are simply trying to pass work off to you.

Conclusion

“NO” is not a bad word. It has been criminalized via society and the illusion that things must be OK all the time. You will only end up feeling put upon by others, and resenting yourself for being weak, and not ever doing what you want to do by allowing others to always walk all over you. You need to look after yourself before you look after anyone else after all, and lead by example!

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