Paying attention

An wonderfully inspiring teacher and friend, Kathy McKenzie taught me once that ‘what you pay attention to you get more of’.

If are constantly thinking about why we like avoiding healthy activities and about reasons for preferring other pursuits which might not be supporting good heathl….then we’re very likely to listen to ourselves.

CHANGING THE MINDSET

With the mass media and marketing bombarding us with negative messages designed to pull down and weaken our state of mind, its no surprise that an unsuspecting person might have an unhelpful mindset or lack of confidence in their own strength of character and resilience. So it is good to know that a strong mindset and resilient character and counteract and challenge the messages we receive from advertisements, from some unscrupulous sales people and from the mass media. And as a result a positive and resilient mindset can keep us feeling ‘realistically optimistic’.

Kathy also taught me that ‘what you pay attention to determines what you miss’.

So if you spend a lot more time thinking about what you enjoy about health and wellness – you will start to forget all the things that use to put you off it! If you can learn to practice and pay attention to the thoughts you know improve your resourcefulness and confidence and self belief in a realistic and balanced way – you will be too busy to be affected by the ‘sneaky – sniper’ marketing campaigns of unscrupulous marketing organisations.

So to maintain any sort of lifestyle change, it can be really useful to :

Firstly – Gain awareness. Get an understanding of your belief and confidence in you own health and wellbeing

Secondly – Practice activities that increase self belief develop your confidence and improve creativity and resourcefulness. This is the core to gaining more belief around your ability to improve your health and wellbeing.

REALISTIC OPTIMISM

In his book Lifes is so good, when George Benson was asked whether he believed the glass was half full or half empty he replied….its neither Richard, the glass is ok, just as it is!

Its important to point out here that a realistically optimistic mentality or ‘winning mentality’ is a very personal thing. Some people like to jump up and down excitedly and become quite animated, others like to reinforce positive affirmations…..and you can do that if you like those sorts of things…or if that does not suit your personality you don’t have to do that at all. Remember you can do what ever you choose.

So if you prefer, you can simply ‘relax’ and with a confident knowing smile and a relaxed and easy manner agree that you believe in your own ability. You have to right to bring out the best in yourself. Nobody can take that away from you.

All the best athletes talk about the importance of training belief and consistently working on maintaining their confidence. Economists are constantly referring to the importance of confidence in the economy. Any good magician will tell you that the key to success of any show is all in the mind!! And with your health and wellbeing you only have to convince yourself. But sometimes people forget that it is their thoughts that determine confidence.

If you imagine that you are enjoying the benefits of an activity…then you are allowing the possibility of enjoyment to happen but if you tell yourself that it will be a horrible experience right from the start, you are limiting your options very quickly!

‘imagination is more powerful than knowledge’ Albert Einstein

There are many many different ways to change the way you think about health and wellbeing. The follow activities represent but a drop in the ocean…..

When legendary blues musician BB King wrote the lyrics ‘I did what I did before Love came to town’. He explained in a show that I watched that long before all the fame and the money and the devoted fans he had - his love of music, his belief in what he was doing the hard work and long hours of practice.

Be kind to your mind, and your mind will be kind to you!

Believe in yourself and yourself will believe it too!

Have you ever heard of the 21 day rule?

Although its very easy to change our thoughts and mindset, it takes the body a few weeks to adapt to the new stimulus – there is a transition period where your body has to grow new neurons in your brain, change receptor function in the periphery and adapt to the complexities of differing hormone levels throughout your body. This transition period is currently believed by some that if you perform a new habit repeatedly for 21 days, it will become permanent!

Personally I just use this rule as a reminder that the body can take some time to catch up to the mind. So if your new habits and healthy activities seem strange at first, it’s a good thing! It means you are learning something new – so stick with it!

Fortunately, we can learn to use new mobile phones or computer programs, or we can learn to play musical instruments any time we want, or we can learn to drive a new car with different controls, or maybe we can even learn other new skills like George Dawson, author of ‘life is so good’, who learned to read at the age of 98!

We can do these things because as humans we are able learn to change the way we act, and we are able learn to change the way we think.

Change is happening everywhere. Global warming is changing the weather patterns, on top of this the seasons have always changed from year to year. Every day the billions of cells in our body grow and develop and change slightly, and every 365 days we have a completely new set of cells. Our relationships with friends, colleagues and family are also constantly changing and evolving. They conversations you have with you parents or your siblings now are quite different from the conversations you had with them 5 or 10 or 15 years ago.

Change is not only possible, Its inevitable - Milton Erickson

making contact

to get hold of chris visit www.theopendoor.com.au

Following on from Priority....with Self Talk

SELF TALK

So you now have an understanding about whether health is a priority. But that alone is not always enough. Some people have a crazy idea that they can start exercising more or eating better even though they hate exercise and dislike healthy foods!

This is a plan that revolves around ‘willpower’ alone and can often cause pain, and guilt and agony. Like the title song for the American sitcom ‘married with children describes - your thoughts and your actions have a similar relationship to love and marriage – you cant have one without the other!

When legendary blues musician BB King wrote the lyrics ‘I did what I did before Love came to town’. He explained in a show that I watched that long before all the fame and the money and the devoted fans he had - his love of music, his vision for the future, his belief in what he was doing and the resulting hours of practice.

Healthy mind, Healthy Body!

In "Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink (GREAT BOOK), he describes a research project they conducted where they served a wine they described as "two-buck Chuck" with two different descriptions. One was described the wine as a California red; the other had the SAME wine was described as North Dakota red.

The people at the meal served the "California red" not only reported the wine as better, but the entire meal as well; the "North Dakota red" found the eaters with less enthusiasm for the meal. The capper is that both groups were served the SAME food too!

The point is that if want to, you can convince yourself of anything! If you have spent years believing that exercise is not enjoyable and that you don’t like healthy food, then your body will respond physically to these beliefs.

If you tall yourself something to be true – then in your mind it is!

If you want to change your lifestyle…the activities you do and the foods you eat, you also have to change the way you think about them. In medicine its called the placebo effect, in business its called marketing & in sports its called having a winning mentality.

External peace is impossible without inner peace. It is noble to work as external solutions, but they cannot be successfully implemented so long as people have hatred and anger in their minds. This is where profound change has to begin. Individually we have to work to change basic perspectives on which our feelings depend. We can only do so through training, by engaging in practice with the aim of gradually reorienting the way we perceive ourselves and others.

How to practice the way to a meaningful life – His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama

It’s the same with healthy lifestyle change. Your thoughts determine your actions, and if you think that it is possible enjoy an activity or pay attention to the benefits….then there is more chance that you will return to it again and again

A Placebo Effect for Pricey Placebos in Placating Pain

BOSTON, March 4 -- Irrational and extraordinary as it may seem, expensive placebos offer greater pain relief than cheap ones, found researchers here.

Put another way, placebos that cost pennies may be no therapeutic bargain in a patient's eyes compared with placebos that cost dollars -- even though they are the very same placebo.

One implication is that extra-clinical factors – such as price or brand name -- may alter the perceived efficacy of a real medication, according to Dan Ariely, Ph.D., of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues.

The finding emerged from a randomized, blinded study, in which 82 healthy paid volunteers were given what they were told was a new opioid and asked to rate its effect on painful electric shocks, Dr. Ariely and colleagues reported in a research letter in the March 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

If an athlete loses their confidence their performance suffers (winning mentality), if a company does not talk positively about their services or products then their customers will not want to buy them (Marketing) and if a patient believes a medicine will work – then their belief alone can effect their recovery (Placebo effect).

Of course if you don’t like the taste of broccoli it will take time to teach your body to reaction more favourably to it, or to ‘learn a new behaviour’. But if you genuinely believe in your ability to learn, and you want to learn, you can teach yourself to enjoy new activities and new types of foods.

A colleague of mine, Mr John Twoomey from Lifebalance Australasia put me on to the following paragraph by WN Murrey. It tells a story of commitment very nicely.

"Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all facts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from that decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would come his way."

W.N. Murray of the 1951 Scottish Himalayan Expedition

For sustainable ways to improve wellbeing and enhance energy visit www.sparkexecutive.com.au

A Formula for Lifestyle Change

The experiences of some of my clients has inspired me to come up with another formula that has proven to be quite successful at providing a framework for continued change. The formula is nothing new.

I don’t pretend that I have discovered some missing piece in the puzzle of life or have stumbled across any holy grail of health. In fact its quite the opposite. I believe that this is something that we all intrinsically know. I have simply put it into a simple and digestible form to help people who might have got a bit sidetracked. Anyway, Easthams Formula says that:

Easthams Commitment Formula

Ongoing commitment = Prioity x Self Talk x Planning

PRIORITY

If you are not as healthy or fit as you ideally want to be, it is a wonderful thing to be able to imagine just how your health might be better or different in the future…..but when you stop and think of your life as a whole. Is health improvement your primary goal for the end of the year, or is your career more important? Is achieving a healthy weight one of the most important things on your mind or would you prefer to expend you energy looking after your friends and family and loved ones.

Health is only one aspect of our lives and in the 21^st century there are plenty of other aspects of life that different people prefer or need to be interested in. So its important to get an understanding of whether health is truly a priority.

Over the next couple of weeks ill discuss the rest of the formula and introduce some ideas to assess yourself and develop powerful lifestyle change strategies.

For sustainable ways to improve wellbeing and enhance energy visit www.sparkexecutive.com.au

"Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all facts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from that decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would come his way."

W.N. Murray of the 1951 Scottish Himalayan Expedition

Why you have to have a positive vision & think about the positive reasons for doing exercise

In "Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink (GREAT BOOK), he describes a research project they conducted where they served a wine they described as "two-buck Chuck" with two different descriptions. One was described the wine as a California red; the other had the SAME
wine was described as North Dakota red.

The people at the meal served the "California red" not only reported the wine as better, but the entire meal as well; the "North Dakota red" found the eaters with less enthusiasm for the meal. The capper is that both groups were served the SAME food too!

A Placebo Effect for Pricey Placebos in Placating Pain

BOSTON, March 4 -- Irrational and extraordinary as it may seem, expensive placebos offer greater pain relief than cheap ones, found researchers here.

Put another way, placebos that cost pennies may be no therapeutic bargain in a patient's eyes compared with placebos that cost dollars -- even though they are the very same placebo.

One implication is that extra-clinical factors – such as price or brand name -- may alter the perceived efficacy of a real medication, according to Dan Ariely, Ph.D., of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues.

The finding emerged from a randomized, blinded study, in which 82 healthy paid volunteers were given what they were told was a new opioid and asked to rate its effect on painful electric shocks, Dr. Ariely and colleagues reported in a research letter in the March 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Carefully consider the placebo effect when explaining medications to patients and do not emphasize elements such as price discounts or brand names. In fact, the volunteers were all given the same placebo, but some were told its price was $2.50 a pill and others were told the cost was discounted to 10 cents a pill, the researchers reported.

Those who got the perceived expensive pill had significantly greater pain reduction (P=0.02) than those who thought they were getting the cheaper version, Dr. Ariely and colleagues found.

It is interesting how, Dan Beuttners book - The Blue Zones combines the power of scientific investigation with the wisdom of ancient traditions.

The research is has been carried out scientifically. But they have essentially just been looking at what people have already been doing and have modeled it.

Rather than showing how science can overcome tradition, this book seems to show how science can work in harmony with tradition and wisdom.

For sustainable ways to improve wellbeing and enhance energy visit www.sparkexecutive.com.au