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LET HEALTH BE
YOUR NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION
Article by herbalist
Dave
Hawkins, MH, CNC
With the New Year, many of
us will reflect on the past year and decide to make
positive changes in our behavior or make decisions about
what we want out of life. It is
somewhat ironic that we are ready to stop the habits that
we know make us feel bad, but then we have no control or
willpower to make those changes. Many
of us have good intentions, but we don't seem to follow
through.
Many of my friends say, “I'm
going to stop smoking this year;” or “I'm going to lose
some weight and exercise more.” Why don't we follow through
with the lifestyle changes that we know inside we want to
achieve? Let's look at this and some ways that we can set
the process into motion that will assist us in achieving
our goals.
The nature of this article
will deal with many of the aspects of positive attitude.
Positive attitude is one of the steps that can help us to
fulfill our dreams and desires and potentially help us do
what we truly want to do.
Researchers in the medical
and psychological fields are demonstrating that our level
of optimism is a major determining factor in our level of
wellness. For most people a positive attitude doesn't
happen all at once, but rather it happens in degrees and is
subtle. Because life is full of changes out of our control,
it is our attitudes that determine how we will react and
feel about ourselves.
We must learn how to be
optimistic. Learning to be optimistic
means learning habits that involve positive thinking.
In the book The Complete Guide To
Your Emotions And Your Health by
Emrika
Padus and the editors of Prevention Magazine,
it is stated that negative thinking is a learned response.
Six common negative distortions are exaggerating, ignoring
the positive, personalizing, either/or thinking,
over-generalizing, and jumping to conclusions.
Cognitive thinking is a
skill building process. With time, effort, and commitment
anyone can replace negative thinking with new habit
patterns of constructive and positive thinking.
Here are a few suggestions.
Choose an area of your life that you want to change and
begin to pay attention to how you think of it. Ask yourself
how realistic are your beliefs.
Set modest and immediate goals for changing your habits.
Reward yourself for successful changes you experience. Seek
out optimistic people for fellowship. Have fun. Ask for
your family and friends support. Be
flexible and don't let setbacks guilt you out.
Setting positive goals is
also a powerful method of building positive attitude and
raising self-esteem. Here are a few guidelines to help you
achieve your goals. State the goal in positive terms and
avoid negative words in this statement. For example "I
enjoy eating healthy low calorie nutritious food" instead
of "I will not eat sugar or other fattening foods."
Make your goals attainable
and realistic. Be specific. Clearly define your goals and
the more likely they will become reality. State your goals
in the present tense, not the future. It is important to
believe that you have already attained your goal. An old
proverb sates "The journey of a thousand miles begins with
the first step."
Creative visualization is
the next step in this process. Positive imagery has been
heavily researched in the field of natural healing. Dr.
Charles Garfield, a psychologist who has done research in
this area, discusses the power of positive visualization in
detail in the book Peak Performance.
One of his key findings is that almost all world-class
athletes and other peak performers employ visualization.
They see their goal, they feel it, and they identify with
it so strongly emotionally that they actually experience it
before they do it. It all begins in the mind's eye.
The secret of change is to
focus your energy – not on fighting the old, but on
building the new.
I hope this has given you
some insights into how you can achieve your New Years
resolutions. Good luck and good health
in the New Year.
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