HEALTH AND WELLNESS TOPIC.43(3)

By likemindblog

The POWE OF GRATITUDE – part three. Enjoy!

What it Does to Your Body

So we’ve got the people around us feeling a little happier and our minds getting the happy message abut what about our bodies? What does being grateful do to our body?

Our cells are constantly changing, renewing and mending themselves. Many doctors recognize the worth in a positive attitude towards health

In fact, if we feel good about ourselves we tend to look after our physical selves better. We make better food choices, eat for hunger and not to stave off sad or complicated emotions and we enjoy making our bodies move. A happy body is a healthy body.

Many obesity theorists think that one of the reasons that people in poorer areas are more likely to be obese isn’t because they can’t afford the right food, but that their misery at having no money, and limited resources impacts their emotions and drives their body to satisfy that need with food. And it’s often over processed, sugary, body hating food they crave.

If your body isn’t what it “should” be right now, or rather, if your body isn’t want you want it to be right now, instead of focusing on the flabby bits, the sore bits, the needing to be operated bits, focus on the parts that do work well.

One of the fascinating think about people who suffer from some sort of impairment is their body makes up for it in some other way. For example a blind person often has a highly developed sense of smell or incredible hearing. That is our body’s way of being thankful for what does work. It compensates and provides an enhanced talent at the cost of the one the person doesn’t have.

We all have that ability. While most of us can probably mention many things we DON’T like about our bodies, what can you mention that you do like. Some of the time, we carry on shadows form our families’ comments that impact us. They don’t need to.

If you have a chronic illness, focus on the healthy parts of your body. Many studies have been done on the power of imagery that involves your healthy body fighting the ill health intruder. Spend time enjoying the healthy parts of your body.

If you feel absolutely terrible, and there is nothing you can find to feel good, then go back to that first activity at the beginning of this book and focus on your breath. Even if it is labored. Even if you need to do it slowly, breathe in and out and focus on your breath. Focus on how you are alive with each breath you take in and out.

It isn’t easy. Our physically feelings can often outweigh everything else. We often neglect how our body feels and then we stop looking after it. It becomes a vicious cycle. But to begin to be grateful for our health can liberate us from ill health.

EXERCISE

Spend five minutes a day focused on what is right with your body.

If you have severe body issues, or health issues, consider trying some EFT technique to help break the cycle and give yourself a kick start into positive feelings and gratitude.

Remember, no matter where you are or how you are feeling, you can love and accept yourself just as you are today.

What about the Bigger Picture?

For those raised in a home where faith was part of their lifestyle, the concept of thankfulness and gratitude is a big part of their culture. You may have been raised to give thanks before eating, or to say thank you to your god before bedtime.

Once of the universal concepts is that we all need to be filled with gratitude in part because it is part of what makes the world go around. On the metaphysical level this is referred to as the law of Gratitude. This means that the universe, or the essence of life around us reacts to the thankfulness and it creates energy around us that impacts us and the people around us.

As we are grateful, the universe responds by giving us what we are grateful for. This is the basic precept in the Law of Attraction that says the things we focus on are the things we attract more of into our life. The things you hold dear are the things you put your energy behind. The more energy we have around something, the more energy it attracts. It’s basic physics.

So the things you may be grateful for- your friendships, your work, your health, your loved ones, grow and respond to that gratefulness the more and more grateful you are.

There is a proverb that says “Out of the heart the mouth speaks”

Take a look at what you say and do. The person with a lot of gratitude in their heart speaks works of gravitates and attracts people around them that do the same. An army of positive people can’t be all that bad!

What About All the Bad Things?

So we’ve covered all the good bits of our life and we’re focusing on them. But what about the bad things that happen? Should we be grateful for them as well? Well yes, if possible

Being grateful for bad things that happen to us isn’t saying that what happened should have happened. It’s not about lying down like a doormat; ready for the next punch life might throw at us.

Being grateful about the bad things that happen is more about learning to live with the life you’ve had, and seeing the good that can spring from anything.

If you look at people who are successful, often they have a tale of woe of how they struggled, were hurt, abused or injured. But somehow they rose above that and keep on going. Key to this and to their success was to not see their situation as something that broke them, but as something that made them.

Being grateful for hardship. This doesn’t mean that the universe is going to give you more if it. It’s more of a letting go. You can have two people in life experience exactly the same turn of unfortunate events and manage it completely differently. The person who uses gratitude that they are still alive, still surviving, still fighting, and has learnt from the lessons life has thrown upon them either at their own hand or at the hand of others is the one who is going to be positively affected by having gratitude in their life.

CASE STUDY

Sarah was in an abusive relationship. She lived in fear for five years, and during this time also suffered from large financial issues, and had a near death experience due to a medical condition. She cites the day she walked away from her relationship as a turning point, but she also looks back at the things that happened during that time and is thankful for those too. “I could see that I allowed a lot of that behavior to happen around me and I had to learn from it. I look at life now completely differently from all of that time. For a start, every day is a gift. It’s not something to take for granted”

Neitchse said “What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger” While that is often true, it only works if you choose the path of love and forgiveness. Being able to forgive someone for any wrongs done to you isn’t so much about whether what they did was right or wrong, or even if they ever appreciate that you’ve forgiven them.

Forgiveness is about what happens to your own heart during the process. As you forgive for the horrible parts of your life- forgiving a person, an object, a situation, the universe, yourself, you let go of the negative power that has over you and you can start to be thankful for the person you are now from that experience or event.

It can be tempting to live in the life of what could have been. However this just leads to a stronger sense of loss and hurt and it’s very difficult to move on from. If instead you focus on how it’s shaped you, and given you a different perspective others may never get to see, then you start to take on a more positive slant.

When bad things happen to us we all need recovery time. We need to look after ourselves and be gentle on our tender parts. But we can also look at the scars we carry and see them as little reminders of how we have survived. Battle worn some of us may be, but how awesome to have made it through to the other side.

It’s like Weight Training

If it just sounds too weird to relate to, think about what our body needs to do to become stronger and more resilient. If you want to build muscles, any form of resistance helps. The heavier the weight, the harder your muscles have to work to build up.

We use weights to fight against your muscles, to grow them. The muscles actually tear a little as we work them; stretch and then re build, connecting more fibres. The muscle growth doesn’t happen during the session, but afterwards when we rest up and let our muscles mend.

To build muscles best you need to work them so they tear a little, feed them to give them the power they need and rest them up. The resting and feeding is just as important as the work out.

So how does this compute with gratitude? Well if you want to make the most of any traumatic situation, where you’ve felt your heart and mind tear a little, (or worse) then you rest up from it, and you allow it to heal and you add in some gratitude that you made it through it. This is how we become stronger.

Being grateful that you’ve made it through doesn’t mean that you are giving that experience power or importance. In fact it’s giving the power to yourself because you are saying that you beat it. It didn’t beat you. And that feels good.

Learning from our experiences, and our past unwise decisions is about being grateful that you don’t need to repeat the lesson again. You learn to read situations that others may miss, you can see things as they are, not as people try to portray them, and you change the way you see the world.

If you are reading this, and you’ve recently gone through something awful, then this may be the very last thing you want to hear. Everyone needs a bit of wound licking time. But it’s something that is good to keep in mind. This is about not letting our life’s experiences control us in a negative manner. It’s about finding a reason somewhere in all the horribleness to find a gem of gratefulness and let go of the pain.

To be continued next week with seeing the bigger picture…