Choose to live a wonderful life

Reframe Your Thoughts

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Ask yourself, how do I talk to myself?

Do you believe that good health is hard to acquire? Don’t have enough time in the day? Do you think about what you can’t get done, or don’t have, or won’t accomplish today?

Often, we aren’t nearly as kind or compassionate with ourselves as we are with other people. Especially when we face our individual challenges, our mindset and internal dialog while we go through the issue IS the issue. Minor tweaks to the language we use when we are thinking and talking with ourselves and others can lead to major shifts in our productivity and prosperity.

The easiest way to turn around a litany of can’ts, don’ts, and won’ts? REFRAME it! Choose instead to practice thinking about what you GET to have.

I GET to eat foods that bring me energy.

I GET to drink healthy, clean water with lemon in it.

I GET to move my body.

I GET to choose organic.

I GET to take time for myself to consciously breathe.

GET it?

Every time you have a thought with the words can’t, don’t, or won’t, try to Reframe it.

“I don’t have time to get to the gym today” becomes “I GET to take the stairs at work and burn a few extra calories”

“I can’t afford to buy organic for my family on my salary” becomes “I GET to thoughtfully prepare a meal and consciously enjoy dinnertime with my loved ones”

Like anything, mindset is a practice. And the good news is we can change it with practice over time. We may have gotten really good at negative thinking from all those years of practice. We’ve become experts! So, now, if we want different results, we GET to practice being an optimist – we practice seeing and thinking about what we get to have and do. And the more we focus on that, the happier we feel; we are now in a state of gratitude. Gratitude is the vibration of receiving all the abundance that is already here. And when we practice receiving abundance, we are saying YES to more of that. It is a mindset. And it’s a practice worth pursuing.

Nourishment Is About More Than The Food You Eat

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When I was earning a Masters in Spiritual Psychology (I called it a Masters degree in Loving), one of the key tenets was this: “how you are with yourself as you go through the issue IS the issue.”

This can be applied to anything, including how we literally feed ourselves. In other words: how you are – and who you are being – when you eat is as important as what you eat.
When clients want to work on releasing weight, I include some kind of mindfulness practice, which at its essence is about slowing down and being present with what is in front of you. Loving is listening, and true listening requires deep presence. So this is a practice of learning to love and accept the self and that includes our bodies. There are scientific reasons for this need to slow down. The hormone cortisol, which is released when we feel stress of any kind (even imagined), is linked to retention of excess weight, as it suppresses digestion and metabolism. With our stress-immersed
culture and lifestyles, there is an overproduction of cortisol on a constant basis for
most people, and it has a huge effect on our health and bodies.
There are different mindfulness practices to choose from but one of the easiest and
most simple is the practice of lighting a candle for a meal. While I worked as a house manager and self-care coach at a women’s recovery home, I would always light a
white candle at the table when sitting down for a meal. I didn’t explain it; I just did it. Meal after meal, I would first light a white candle. What did this do for the women
and for the environment? Well, for starters, it invokes beauty.

Beauty is nourishment for the soul. We are not just feeding our bodies, we are feeding our being.

And the body-soul needs nourishment on a continual basis. Lighting a candle also sets a context for the meal: this meal is sacred and we are taking time for it – which psycho-spiritually translates to “I am sacred and I am taking time for myself.” And voila, the stress response softens and the body can digest. Whether we say an opening prayer of gratitude or not (I encourage you to), the simple candle brings focus, beauty and reverence to the occasion of sitting together – or with oneself – while our deep soul knows how much
there is to be grateful for.