Category: Health

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One man’s story how he changed habits and himself

Incredibly inspirational story, focused on weight loss, but applicable to understanding and possibly replacing one or more habits one desires to change.

Clips from the text with some paraphrasing: To get where I am today, I better understand myself and why I do what I do; I’ve identified my motivation; I’ve changed how I perceive myself and think about myself; I’ve begun to see myself as, and make decisions like, the new person I want to be; I stay focused on the present. Goals? When I reach my goals, I will have new goals to aim for….I never want to stop challenging myself in new and exciting ways. And I think that’s the best attitude one can have.

http://markmanson.net/weight-loss

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Optimism can make a huge difference

This one is a little bit longer – about 5 pages – but I think the length is not just “filler” and that it covers a very useful concept. ymmv

” ‘Which story do you prefer?’ This question turns out to matter a great deal if you are trying to figure out who grows after trauma and who gets swallowed up by it, a question that each movie addresses and that psychologists have been grappling with for years. Think back to the last time you experienced a loss, setback, or hardship. Did you respond by venting, ruminating, and dwelling on the disappointment, or did you look for a faint flash of meaning through all of the darkness — a silver lining of some sort? How quickly did you bounce back — how resilient are you?
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Far from being delusional or faith-based, having a positive outlook in difficult circumstances is not only an important predictor of resilience — how quickly people recover from adversity — but it is the most important predictor of it. People who are resilient tend to be more positive and optimistic compared to less-resilient folks; they are better able to regulate their emotions; and they are able to maintain their optimism through the most trying circumstances.
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For many years, psychologists, following Freud, thought that people simply needed to express their anger and anxiety — blow off some steam — to be happier. But this is wrong…. another study found that facing down adversity by venting — hitting a punching bag or being vengeful toward someone who makes you angry — actually leads to people feeling far worse, not better. Actually, doing nothing at all in response to anger was more effective than expressing the anger in these destructive ways.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/the-benefits-of-optimism-are-real/273306/

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Your attitude, good and bad, is contagious

The words you choose and the way you present things, can and does impact your own attitude and the attitudes of others.

For example, it’s common to hear statements in the form of (with emphasis on the word “have”):

“I have to go to a meeting”, or “I have to create a presentation for a new client”, or “I have to go to the gym”, or “I have to interview job candidates”.

Oftentimes the implication – or simply the perceived or received message – is the lamentation that one has to DO something, or do something or a list of things that are less desirable than something else.

Now, regardless of whether you really would rather not do what you feel obligated to do (maybe you need a tooth filling!), or you are genuinely appreciative and enthusiastic to be able to make a difference and work on something important, consider that you might make yourself, as well as those you communicate with about the task, feel better and more positive about it, simply by choosing a different way to describe it.

For instance, instead of “I have to…”, one could begin “I get to…”, or “I have an opportunity to…”, etc. In other words, “I have an opportunity to present the neat stuff we can do to a new prospect (that I can’t pass up)”, or “I get to select a great person to join our company and team, which is really going to help…”, or “I’m getting a tooth filling to save my tooth!”, etc.

I think most of us want to associate with happy, positive, enthusiastic, and fulfilled people, and, again, the words we choose can indeed have an impact on the attitudes of everyone “in the room”, including ourselves. Further, it seems undeniable that our attitudes about even the small things throughout our days carry over to the “big picture”, and our *overall* outcomes, more than we might fully recognize.