Is Your Mindset Helping You or Hurting You?

We often think that the way we think and live our lives could never change. We say things like “being stubborn runs in my family” or “my dad got Diabetes, so I will too”. But do you ever stop to think that maybe what you think and say could actually be creating dis-ease and dysfunction in your life?

Health and Success Starts with our Thinking.

Your brain is neuroplastic, which means it has the ability to change. Your attitude, mindset and emotions are tangible things that have been physically wired into your brain through a lot of practice and repetition. The good news is, they can also be re-wired! Yes, all the negative, destructive thoughts we unconsciously allow to stream through our brains at a mile a minute, can be assessed and turned around to be used for our benefit.

As humans, we have the ability to filter our thinking and choose what we decide to focus on. According to leading neuroscientist Dr. Caroline Leaf, “if you are thinking about something daily, within about two months your brain has changed to accommodate this pattern of thought.” While we cannot control everything in our lives, we can control what we dwell on and whether or not we let the things that happen to us rule in our lives. If your mindset about life is that you have no control over what happens to you, then you’ll continually feel out of control.

Your Perspective of Stress

If you can start to change your perspective of stress, you will actually be able to change the way that stressful situation affects your mind and body. Think about a time you recently felt the negative affects of a stressful mindset. Maybe you were in traffic, and as you became impatient and aggravated, you could feel your heart rate increasing, and began to experience anxiety that carried over into the rest of your day. Or you had a meeting with your boss, which beforehand you visualized all the negative issues that would come up. As you saw the potential negative outcomes in your mind, you began to feel tense, anxious, nervous and even developed a stomach ache. You’ve created an unhealthy environment in your mind that you could physically feel in your body. That’s the power of the mind-body connection!

Did you also know that your mindset, including your thoughts, perceptions and attitudes, affect the expression of your genes? We can quite literally think ourselves into depression, anxiety and disease. This concept is based on the science of epigenetics, involving the factors that control the expression of our genes, by which our mindset plays a major role in.

If you want more peace, joy, healthier relationships and an overall more fulfilling life, you must start with your mindset and your thought life. A few ways you can begin to do this include:

Saying out loud what you are grateful for first thing in the morning, or starting a gratitude journal and finding a few things you are thankful for (we can all find something!)
Start becoming more aware of your emotions and the thoughts that may be underlying them. Where is your anger rooted and how can you see that situation or person in a different light?

Start to see difficult situations and problems as a way to grow and learn.
Be conscious of that fact that your emotions don’t just happen to you, but you develop them through what you choose to think about.

Try this out for a week and let me know how it’s changed your perspective and your day!

Asher Kleiber

Registered Holistic Nutritionist™

Sources:

Think, Learn, Succeed by Dr. Caroline Leaf, PhD, BSc.

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