How you think and handle your emotions and stress is probably the most important factor in your general well-being or happiness. This, in turn, directly impacts your physical health and your abiliting for losing weight. And, when you think about it, even if it wasn’t connected to your health (it is!) would it still not be of primary importance?
Positive Outlook Helps Focus
Positive Outlook Helps Focus
It is no simple matter to ‘be happy’ or ‘think positive thoughts,’ or ‘relax and go with the flow.’ I put these in quotes because they sound like cliches, which they are. Still, they are of utmost importance. That is, what you eat, how you breathe and your thoughts all impact each other. That is actually why I chose to mention this subject. Because it is both the most important and hardest to practice when losing weight,
I wanted to set the stage with other, more straightforward things first. After all, it is easier to simply stop eating a certain junk food and start eating something healthy or to start exercising than it is to change your focus in a more positive direction. Yet if you start with better nutrition and more exercise, it becomes a bit easier to get more positive in your outlook.
More and more people are starting to believe in the notion that we create our reality with our thoughts and emotions. The Law of Attraction has become a popular subject since the release of the book and movie, The Secret (there is considerable debate over this, but I recommend you see it/read it if you haven’t already).
Whether we physically create our reality this way is debatable though some interpret quantum physics in a way that supports this. However, it is much more clear and obvious that, at the very least, our thoughts and emotions some say ‘attitude’ largely determine our experience of reality. This includes our well being and happiness. So, it follows that, if we want to feel good and be happy, we do best if we think positive thoughts and feel positive emotions.
The problem is that life, in the form of events, other people, memories, news stories and other sources, often sends things our way that we don’t find pleasing. So we feel angry, sad, nervous or some other negative emotion. This, in turn, sends signals to our body and all its cells and organs that causes stress. What is even worse, is that these signals tend to be self-replicating. That is, negative or stressful states tend to perpetuate themselves, causing more such states in the future. Fortunately, the reverse is also true the more you can feel good or happy, loving, relaxed, euphoric- the more you can feel good in the future. The body, once again, absorbs these messages as well and this has a very healing effect.
One very important aspect to have a positive outlook helps focus and how to do it is:
LIVE IN THE PRESENT!
I was almost going to devote a whole post to this, but I am trying to keep this brief. Living in the present means that you let of regrets of the past and worries about the future. No one, except maybe some meditation masters living on a mountaintop, lives in the present 100%. It is still a worthy goal, though. It is most important, naturally enough, to let go of negative feelings regarding the past or future, but even positive ones can be limiting if they keep you from realizing your potential in the present moment.
A person who is often nostalgic about happy times in the past has a belief that the best of everything is already over. If someone is always looking forward to some future happy outcome, they, too, are missing out. The problem with the future is that it never arrives. When what we think of as the future does occur, there is always a new future to look forward to. It is a fact of quantum physics that time as we believe in it is not real. It is an intellectual construct that makes everyday life easier to manage. It is not real in any fundamental sense. Keep this in mind when you find your mind wandering into the illusions of the past or future.
So the first step in thinking more positively is to set it as a priority in your life. There are many tools to help with this several in this report, especially breathing and the techniques in the following chapter- but the particular techniques you use are secondary to your basic commitment to do this. You simply cannot have well-being if you are not thinking good thoughts. Period
So if having a positive outlook helps focus why not start this right now and change you life?
