Message 330

Why don’t you measure your mental weight?

“Part of healing is taking responsibility for the role you play in your own suffering.”
Lisa Schlosberg

This quote is exactly why I am so “into” IFS and neuroplastic theory (mind body medicine). The tools we need to “fix” ourselves are within our reach. We can make changes in our minds – our thoughts and attitudes. Those changes will affect our health and can change it – for good or for bad (if we live with negativity and stress).

We can’t just go to a doctor and expect them to know all about you and be able to give you a magic pill. People complain that that’s all doctors do. But you know what? That’s what patients demand. Sure when they’re feeling ok they’re all about natural methods and why don’t doctors teach all that. But as soon as they start to feel bad, they don’t want it to take a long time to heal. They want it NOW and natural methods don’t work that way. They take time. So now they don’t want to spend that time. I’ve experienced this as a doctor and it’s extremely frustrating. Patients demand results and they demand them in their time line.

I think we all (doctors included) need to incorporate all modalities. We are complex systems and need multiple ways to heal or to prevent illness.

And it all starts within. Your mind is much more powerful than you realize and it’s your responsibility to keep it in shape and continue to go to the gym – the mental gym.

Take this opportunity to start forming those mental muscles. Keep track of your thoughts, monitor them. Watch for progress or even regression. People are so obsessed with weighing themselves and say that they are monitoring their weight. What are you doing to monitor your mental weight?

Message 327

This week may seem to be a week of repetition but it just happens that these things have come to mind again because the end of the year is a good time to review important points you’ve learned all year long.

WILLIAM JAMES said
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

This is such a valuable concept for each of us to grasp onto at this time in our lives.

Things are chaotic. Things are stressful.

We don’t really know what’s going to happen at any point in time.

We could let these thoughts overwhelm us to the point where we do nothing and just watch our lives dwindle away while we complain about things.

We experience anxiety and fear.

In some instances that fear is warranted but in many others it’s not.

Knowing that when faced with a choice of thoughts, we can pick whichever one we want should be an immense relief.

Awareness that you can have opposing thoughts is the first step.

It’s not all black or white.

How you react or respond to something is totally up to you.

Several months ago i talked about contrast and clarity.

This is another place where you can use that exercise.

When you find yourself feeling anxious or down, take out a piece of paper and write your thoughts.

One per line.

When you’ve emptied your mind, go back to each line and write the opposite thought.

Don’t question whether or not you can believe that thought.

Just write it down.

Do that for every item on your list.

When you’re done with that, look this list over.

Go back and select the thoughts YOU WANT to think (you can circle the ones you want or cross out the ones you want to eliminate- pick whichever method is more symbolic to you).

Then it would be good to transcribe the ones you want to think onto another page (not necessary but helps to cement the feeling).

Carry this page around with you all day. Refer to it frequently, reminding yourself they you can choose different thoughts.

This won’t be easy at first because you’re accustomed to thinking those other thoughts automatically so give yourself some time to practice changing your thoughts.

Your world will begin to change too and you’ll see the power of intentionally picking what you want to think about.

Message 320

it’s time  for you tto think both inside  and outside of he box, with or without the wrapping.

No it’s not the success hot line challenge although that’s very important. 

“Oh my, what could be more important than that?”

I looked up what is meant by the Christmas spirit -oh and first, i am talking about all different holidays here, not just the Christian one so please understand that i’m using Christmas so i don’t have to spend 2 1/2 minutes each time to list all of the different observances. 

Back to the meaning –  my AI buddy told me it’s:

1-A sense of generosity

2-Warmth and togetherness

3-Hope and renewal

4-Joy and celebration

5- Reflection and meaning

If you’re crazy enough to be out today, Black Friday, then i bet these 5 things were not at the top of your list. Mine would have been:

-selfishness

-rushing

-taking

-exhaustion

-stress and pressure

-competition 

-success -I beat the other guy to the deal”

oh and a fair amount of complaining too

I know all of you that are doing the success hotline are busy with the challenge but here’s my challenge to you

When i said think inside the box – it was meant for you to continue your reflections that you’ve hopefully been doing over the past week. You owe it to yourself – and to your loved ones to take care of you. This is a time of immense stress and pressure. You have to make your sleep, hydration, nutrition and some sort of exercise a priority, even if it’s just gettiing up and walking around for 1 minute every half hour. You’ve heard Dr. Gilbert talk to us about how stress kills. It does and i am a personal testimony to how it can make you very very sick. But, i think i’ve told you all that story before.  use the next 6 weeks to practice taking care of yourself.

If you do that, THEN you can go about thinking outside the box – doing for other people.  But we should go beyond material gifts. 

I bet you’ll be as surprised as I was to find out that the suicide rate does NOT increase during the holiday season. It does increase slightly around New Year’s Day and that week. 

What does increase and this is where i would like you to pay attention, is in depression symptoms or any other symptoms if someone has a mental heath disorder. 

Depressive symptoms increase for a variety of reasons: financial pressure, grief or missing loved ones, family conflict, social isolation, disrupted routines, and the gap between idealized “happy holidays” imagery and a person’s actual situation.

Surveys of people living with mental illness show that roughly two-thirds report their symptoms get worse around the holidays, and about one-quarter say they get “a lot” worse.

Polls in the general population show that around 40-41% of adults say their stress or emotional strain increases between November and January compared with the rest of the year

We’ll continue with this next week