Adjust Your Attitude
Positive Attitude Builds Health
Over and over, we’ve seen that attitude matters in disease. We can’t think our way out of sickness, but a positive attitude makes a difference.
Fight Disease with Your Mind
One way a positive attitude helps fight disease is that when we feel good about ourselves and our future, we are more active. People with a positive, can-do attitude walk an average of 3.4 more miles per week.
Bulldoze Barriers with Attitude
Even with the same blood tests for cholesterol, a positive attitude cuts the risk of heart problems a lot. The placebo effect, where a sugar pill can actually make your health improve, suggests there is more to physical health than just physical means.
Move a Body by Thinking
Our physical health is closely tied to our emotional health. If we have little hope for the future, if we can’t see the beauty in daily life, if we don’t see the good in people, our health suffers. It is mysterious that our thinking and feeling influences our physical body.
Connect with Living
A key to a positive attitude is connecting with people. Even if you’ve been torched by people in the past, don’t let that keep you from connecting. Take courage and be vulnerable. Love yourself and others. Be willing to uncover the hidden self. Pretending doesn’t help us or others. Be kind to yourself, and you will be kind to others. We are all imperfect. Know that you are worthy of connection just as you are.
Gratitude is THE Attitude
The key attitude is gratitude. Be thankful for the good things in your life. We all have circumstances that could be better. We all have pain in our lives. Don’t make the bad the focus of your life. Focus on the good you have. If you look for the good, you’ll find it.
New Every Morning
Start every morning with thanks for the good in your life. It may be hard to see among your problems, but it’s there. Then, focus on something beautiful. It can be something you see or something you imagine. It can be something visually beautiful (a painting, a sunrise, a tree) or it can be a beautiful sound (the birds singing, a symphony) or it can be the beauty of goodness (people in love, heroic sacrifice). Begin with beauty.
Find What You Seek
As you go through your day and difficulties hit, imagine the beauty you thought about earlier. Don’t imagine you will go through life without problems. Imagine you have what it takes to overcome your obstacles. The world is full of truth, goodness, and beauty if we look for it. Magnetize your mind to attract truth, goodness, and beauty, and you will repel lies, evil, and ugliness.
It is You
‘I’m not an optimistic person,’ you may have said. While you may not have a bouncy personality, you have what it takes to swagger into your future. If you say to yourself, ‘I can’t do it,’ you’re lying. Don’t believe the lies you tell yourself. You can change your attitude if you need to. You can retrain your thought wheel. Not overnight, but over time you can develop new thought grooves. Duck out of the griping rut and fall into the generous groove.
Hope and a Future
Even if you are facing health problems or disease, or did so in the past, don’t be discouraged. Our problems aren’t going to disappear and we can’t think our way to health, but we have what it takes to face our troubles head-on. Embrace the uncertainty of the future with hope and do it together with other people. Not only will you feel better about yourself and others, but also you will be healthier.
