Health Campaign

 

1) Be precise in the timing and other details surrounding your ritual.

 

2) Start with only a few (or just one) ritual to start.

 

3) Place your log someplace in plain sight and easily accessible.

 

4) Consider having a friend or relative hold you accountable.

 

5) Be obsessive about completing the log.

 

 
Tip #2
 
Relax for Life - Simple Ways to Live More and Stress Less
By Dr. Max Gomez
 
If I told you stress was bad for your health, you wouldn’t be surprised. You’ve heard it before.  As a matter of fact, you’ve probably heard it so often that you don’t even pay attention anymore.  But what if I told you that out of the top 5 causes of death in the United States, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke and accidents, all will list stress as a contributing factor? Would you pay more attention?
 
Nine out of ten people I spoke to told me they experience too much stress; the other one is either not telling the truth or is deluding himself.  All of them told me they didn’t have a choice; that their life circumstances determined their stress and they weren’t in a position to change their circumstances.
 
What does that mean?  Everyone is at increased risk for chronic disease and a shortened life span.  Virtually everyone accepts it as a given.
 
That’s the bad news. But wait, I do have some good news for you.  Some very good news.  Something that may surprise you.  What I am about to share with you could change the course of your life and those you love forever.  No, I don’t have a magic wand to instantly rearrange your life exactly as you wish and give you sudden magical control over everything around you.  I’m only going to open your eyes to a magic wand of sorts that you already possess to alter your thoughts, which you do have control over.
 
If you lived a perfectly balanced life, free of constant demands on your time, you could meditate twice a day for 20 minutes.  Unfortunately, that’s not a luxury most of us have.  Fortunately, you don’t need that to alter your thoughts and reduce your stress.
 
If you haven’t noticed before, when we are stressed our internal dialogue speeds up.  “I don’t know what to do.  I’m going to lose my house.  Why doesn’t life cut me a break?  I hate my job.”  Worse:  “I’ve lost my job.”  Whatever it may be.  Stop and think for a minute about others you have encountered who you consider stressed out.  Were they talking rapidly or slowly?  They were talking rapidly; an external reflection of their internal dialogue.  The moment you realize your internal dialogue is fast-paced, S L O W   I T   D O W N.  Turn the speed down on your dialogue and increase gaps between your thoughts.  The physical result is a reduction in your feelings of stress.  
 
Think back on the times you felt most relaxed.  Perhaps when you were getting a massage or like most people, when you were away on vacation.  And if you’re like most busy people living a high stress life, it took you a day or two to “unwind” and get into the relaxed groove of vacation.  Why is that?  Because without realizing it, the demands on your thoughts lessened and the pace of your internal dialogue slowed down.  That’s one of the key reasons vacations relax and re-energize us.  
 
Who doesn’t love a vacation?  Remember the Club Med commercial that shows a stressed-out guy on day one of his vacation?  Then as each day goes by, you see him stop shaving, relax, the furrows in his brow ease, until by the end of the week he looks like a totally laid-back beach bum.  But the reality is we can’t stay on an endless vacation.  You can, however, slow down the pace of your thoughts and both relax and re-energize yourself in just a few minutes or even a few seconds a day.  And the more you become aware of this and slow down your thoughts, the more it will become automatic for you and you will more regularly and consistently feel less stress.
 
That’s step one.  Recognize rapid, accelerated thinking and slow it down.  A good way to do that is to remember to BREATHE!  STOP, take a deep breath or two before you move on.  It’s one of the central teachings of yoga, the ancient Hindu discipline of relaxation.
 
Step two, and this is simple yet powerful also, is to change the questions that you ask yourself.  
 
Let’s think about the sorts of questions we are asking ourselves when we are feeling down and stressed.  Do any of these sound familiar?  “Why does this always happen to me?  Why doesn’t my boss pay me more?  Why do I never have time for myself?  Why can’t I make more money?  Why does my husband/wife always bust my chops?  Why can’t I lose weight?”
 
When you ask yourself these questions, your brain is going to say “OK, here’s a whole bunch of reasons and if that’s not good enough, I’ll make up a bunch more.  You don’t deserve it, you’re lazy, you have no self control, you’re just not lucky and on and on.”  And then what happens?  It begins a downward spiral of feeling even worse about yourself and raising your stress level.  You are asking for all the reasons you aren’t where you want to be in life and are further defeating yourself.  Plus, most often, in a sub-conscious attempt to not blame ourselves for our situation, our thoughts will lead us to external forces, over which we have no control, for the reason life sucks.
 
So what are better questions and what will they do for you?  Begin to ask yourself more empowering questions, more solution-based questions.  Instead of: “Why can’t I make more money?”  Ask yourself “What do I need to do to make more money?”  This does two things.  It turns your brain around to think about the solution, not the problem.  And guess what?  Just as your brain will deliver all the reasons for your failure, it will begin to deliver to you the solutions.  Plus, and this is a big one, what is the other huge difference between the two questions above?  Look back, read them both, see if you can figure it out.
 
The first question focuses not only on the reasons why you can’t, but it will most likely deliver an answer like “I’m not lucky.  Opportunity doesn’t come my way.” Something along those lines, which are outside of your “perceived” control.  
 
The second question, “What do I need to do to make more money?” gives YOU the power.  You are asking yourself what YOU can do to make more money.  You have power and control over your actions.  This is really key.  A sense of powerlessness is a huge stressor.  When we allow ourselves to feel trapped or a victim of circumstance, we render ourselves helpless.  When we begin to ask ourselves the right questions, empowering questions, about what we CAN do, our life will begin to change.  The answers will come to you because you are now looking for them.  
 
Here’s an interesting perspective, which you can use to turn stress into a good thing for you.  Ask yourself, “How can I use this stress I’m feeling to be more relaxed?”  Your answer now is, “I can slow my thoughts down.  I can slow my breathing down.  I can become more relaxed.”  So what happens is you now use feelings of stress as a cue to take you to relaxation.  
 
Another great question is “How can I do what I’m doing in a more relaxed way?”  I’ll share with you a story about a friend of mine.  It may not be for everyone, but I thought it was an example of how to turn a stressful situation into a perfectly relaxing one.  My friend has a young son, 6 years old.  His son was misbehaving, getting into everything and my friend was about to blow his cork.  His wife was out, and he needed to change the child’s behavior and get himself relaxed.  So my friend asked himself, “How can I improve his behavior and make it fun and relaxing for me?”  His answer was brilliant. 
 
It was summer and it was a beautiful day.  He decided his son’s punishment would be to sit outside, in a lawn chair for 30 minutes, and write a story about a boy who learned to listen to his parents.  That was only half of it.  The other half was my friend mixed himself up a margarita, grabbed a book, got his own lawn chair, put his feet up and enjoyed himself thoroughly for the next 30 minutes.  Plus his son got to see the calming effect just “stopping” for a few minutes had on both him and his father.
 
 Here are a few more suggested empowering questions, based on the most common stressors:
 
 How can I do this better?
 How can I handle this better?
 How can I handle this economy better?
 What can I do to handle my finances better?
 What can I do to lose weight?
 What can I do to increase my energy?
 What can I do to improve my relationship(s)?
 What am I grateful for in my life?
 Who loves me and who do I love?
 
Just those last two questions will completely change your focus.  When you change your focus, you change your emotions.  When you change your emotions, it changes your behavior.  When you change your behavior, it changes your actions, which changes the way your life goes.  The key is stopping, taking a deep breath and reframing or refocusing.
 
Take Donald Trump as an example.  During the last major economic downturn, he asked himself “How can I get rich while everyone else is afraid?”  Look what happened.  It’s a good question to ask ourselves right now.  It will automatically change how you think and feel, which is what we all want.
 
The questions you ask yourself consistently are what determine how your life goes.  If this is an “Aha!” for you and makes sense, take it one step further.  Write out your new empowering questions and list all the possible solutions in writing.  I would suggest you hand write them, at least to start.  When you take your thoughts and write them out, it creates a powerful link between your conscious and subconscious mind, so they will be working together instead of against each other to get you what you want.
 
What you can now do with this knowledge is create a stress-reducing ritual for yourself, to the point where it becomes easy and automatic, a new and better way of living.  “When I feel stressed, this is what I do.  I slow my thoughts down.  I ask myself better and more empowering questions.  I breathe deeper.  I slow my breathing.  I slow down the speed at which I talk.  My physiology changes right away.”
 
I’ll leave you with one final thought.  There are two things that make successful people different from everyone else.  And let me be clear what I mean by successful.  It’s not simply a matter of who has the most money.  What I mean by successful is someone who accomplishes what they want and lives a happy and fulfilling life.  Successful people are very clear about what it is they want.  And, they are committed to do whatever is necessary to make it happen.  
 
Those are two skills/attributes you will find in every successful person.  What happens with everyone else is they are focusing on what they don’t want.  They want to get away from something, so they’re walking into their life backwards.  
 
Decide what you want; ask yourself what YOU need to do to have it.  Move toward what you want rather than away from what you don’t want.
 
Special thanks to James May and Keryl Pesce 
 

TIP #3