If you read the words, “healthy thoughts” and immediately thought of Stuart Smalley’s Daily Affirmations on Saturday Night Live. “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough and doggone, people like me.” I’m glad to say, it’s not that. Sometimes, bad things happen and it’s normal to get upset. However, being upset for years or not looking at the whole picture is a different matter. There are so many lessons to learn when you look at everything, the good, the bad and the neutral. It’s balancing out the negatives with the positives.
What you think plays a role on your health.
Some of the most telling and fascinating information on how our personalities and thought patterns affect our health come from the world of psychiatry and the study of multiple personality disorder. Differences in vision and the presence and absence of diabetes occur in separate personalities, indicating that the mind may control some aspects of the body. There are less dramatic examples. Sometimes you distort your vision of what actually occurred and it makes you sadder, madder or anxious. These are called thinking traps. They can be just as dangerous to your health, since they can cause you to put off getting or staying healthy.
Some typical unhealthy thoughts that can prevent you from achieving your fitness goals.
Have you ever started a diet and then cheated a bit by nibbling on some cake or maybe taking a whole piece. Instead of stopping there, you mentally call yourself and your healthy eating attempts to be a failure, so you finish the entire cake. You label your efforts to get healthy as futile or constantly demean yourself. Knowing you’re going to fail before you start is another self-defeating thought. Healthy thinking helps take the stress out of life.
How can you turn around stinkin’ thinkin’ and make change it to healthy thoughts.
Before you jump to conclusions, take an inventory of how you react to healthy living and getting healthier. Do you focus on how you hate to exercise or simply can’t resist fries and shakes or do you think about how good you’ll feel when you finally shed those extra pounds. Start challenging those negative thoughts, and seeing what’s really behind them. If you think you’ll never accomplish something, chances are that you’ll never try. Getting healthier is part of that mental program.
- Some people not only accept that they’ll be unhealthy, overweight or out of shape and others even revel in it, giving a laundry list of illnesses they have to anyone that asks. Do you fit either scenario?
- Choose to be optimistic rather than pessimistic. You have a choice how to look at every event in your life. Even the worse things that happen can have a positive side, even if we don’t know it for years.
- The people you associate with can affect your thinking. Choose positive ones that respect you, provide encouragement and strive for the same positive goals. Make sure you’re also speaking kindly to yourself when you do self-talk.
- If you can’t accomplish something today, do what you can. Sometimes, reaching a goal takes a long time. It takes time to change your attitude and clean up your thoughts, but it’s worth it.
For more information, contact us today at LIV Fitness