Staying healthy is not just about going to the gym, eating right and taking vitamins. These things count, yet the root to health is actually mindset or the way you think and feel. If you live in fear or worry, which is actually faith for what you DON’T want, you are creating “dis-ease” in your body, and this will manifest as ill health in addition to the lack of ease, or lack of peace of mind.

How you feel does absolutely impact your health, and even if you try to deny and repress your feelings, if you are afraid to feel in repress your feelings, the “negative” energy will cause disease. This is the basis of stress. Stress is based in emotion; it is a psychological disease. What is stress?

Essentially it is provoke by fear that you are out of control, that those things in your life that you don’t want are coming and that you will not be able to be, do or have what you desire. Any of these things can provoke the survival response that releases chemicals in your body that are destructive.

Stress is now associated with everything from chronic colds to cancer. The good news is, that since it is based in perception and provoked by HOW you look at life, it can be reigned in and changed. CORE confidence, that comes from the inside out, comes from the inner Authentic Self of you, that part that is ultimately the source of personal power, wisdom and intuition that can lead you to a life that is empowered and fulfilling.

CORE is an acronym also for what you need to come from this center and eliminate the beliefs that are keeping you stuck in a pattern of stress and playing small. C = Courage O = Open mind R = Reflection and E = Enthusiasm. Courage is the ability to feel fear, recognize it and move through it with clarity and intention. If you have a closed mind and what I am saying conflicts with the way you think currently, you will not be able to consider doing anything new.

You will also keep getting your same results until you do change your mind. Also, peace and happiness does not come from things outside of you; enthusiasm is “en –theos” God or Spirit within. The spirit of you is the starting place for wholeness and creativity. Intellect is important, yes, in taking action in bring into form the ideas and energy from Spirit, yet if you are only working from the space of the five senses and your mental intellect – stress will continue to be your faithful companion in general.

So, shift into the new paradigm for our new decade and century. Take your power back and learn to change your mindset so that you can eliminate the stories that are blocking your true potential to live a healthy, happy and prosperous life.

I tend to come from the core of what makes us stay healthy or get sick – mindset. Yes, even disease is related to how you think and feel. In fact, it can make or break you and holistic/integrative physicians already get this.

When we become aware of the role of thoughts, feelings and emotions, we become even more empowered to make healthier choices and actually apply them in the first place. Also, intuitively doesn’t it just make sense that if you think and feel joyful and connected to life, you will feel and be healthier than if you are full of worry, judgment and anger?

In our changing times this information that I am sharing is critical. We are generally conditioned to fear change and by the time the “survival” instinct kicks in, we can find ourselves overwhelmed with worry and anxiety if we are not aware of how to deal with our own brain and nervous system. We think that we have a “right to our opinion” and we certainly do.

The question to ask is, what would you rather be, “right” or healthy? In fact, does it really even matter as to what other people are doing in the details of their life and why waste time looking over the fence into the lives of others? Does our opinion about what others are wearing, doing (particularly if it is legal and not harming others) or how they live their lives, really matter?

Will our opinion change them? Does complaining, worrying or gossiping really create the abundant, prosperous life that you desire? Actually, what I know for sure is that our opinions can be hazardous to not only our body’s health; if left unchecked, they can drain our entire lives. On the other hand, becoming consciously aware of the power of what we think and feel to attract the health and wealth we seek is the most economical and quickest way to achieve it, and this is science, not woo-woo.

Here is a powerful point: Every thought you have has a type of quality of feeling associated with it. When you send out negative opinions with negative feelings about others out into the universe, you ALWAYS feel it in your own body first. This should give new meaning to the ancient proverb: “Do unto to others as you would have others to do unto you”.

You see, what we send out to others in terms of what we think and feel, has to run through our own body’s energy system first. Check how you feel the next time you have an opinion about someone, positive or negative. And, you don’t even have to say it; just think it and you will still feel the response.

Ask yourself the following 3 key questions to assess whether or not your opinions are harmful to your health:

1. Do they (your opinions) uplift and inspire you? Do they bring feelings of joy? If not, how do you feel? Your feelings are your guidance system as to what kind of energy you are currently running through your body.

2. Do they create the feeling of connection to, or separation from others? Love is connection and stimulates health; separation is fear-based and stimulates disease.

3. How do you feel in your body? Do an energy check – Angry? Irritated? Drained? Or Peaceful, Loving and Happy?

It really matters how you feel, as it is the first step in releasing chemicals in the body that lead to more or less health. Health is your natural state. Disease comes from mismanagement of our power as a rule. Remember this the next time you think that you “feel irritated” because someone dyes their hair a color that you disagree with. Is it really worth it?   Stay healthy by keeping your focus on your health (not disease), what you want and how you can learn how to live your version of the abundant, whole life.  What do you think?

This is a part of the very problem we are faced with – worry and focus on disease. Your brain does not like stress; in fact it is toxic to brain cells and a health hazard in general. I believe that the financial pressure from our existing system will likely be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.

I don’t care how much money is pumped into the system, until the waste stops and people change their paradigm, their belief system about HOW they think – about themselves, their bodies and life in general – the system is going to fail ultimately.

What do I mean by “how we think”? We focus on fear and what we don’t want without realizing that this is not only damaging our brains, it’s creating the very havoc we see in our lives. The hormones and processes that are released in your body when your worry and stress (both based in fear) can not only kill off brain cells, it can damage your heart, your immune system, your digestive tract and your musculoskeletal system…among other things.

Now, instead of business as usual, which is to believe that if you could just pop a pill or make other people act the way you want them to behave, if you make the time to decide to change your mind – and I do mean change your brain and mind – you can begin to shift the gears that lead to destruction in your health.

Also, you can save yourself a lot of pain, suffering and money. The answer? Learn “brain hygiene”, in other words learn how to cleanse your brain/mind of the pollutants of negative thoughts/emotions which boils down to fear. Until we learn how to obtain and maintain peace within ourselves, we can forget about seeing it “out there”.

Peace of mind begins within; you will not be able to buy it or to obtain it by trying to “fix” others. What we judge harshly in others are only projections from our own perception, parts of our story of the “Mental Me” that we don’t want to deal with.

Mindfulness meditation has been shown quite scientifically to slow down the runaway train of the busy mind and the benefits range from improved physical health to happy relationships. And, by default, good physical health and great relationships almost always translates to improved financial health.

At the root of all three is spiritual health. When we learn to take our ego fears and release them and rewire our brains, we can get the “cataracts of the soul” out of the way so that our inner Light can shine. The power of Light and inner peace is a force that can change not only your world, but also the world. A healthy you will create a healthy world. Any thoughts?

The bottom line – stress is hazardous to your health. Many people do not realize that the chronic feelings of “overwhelm” that they feel – you know, not enough hours in the day, long “to-do” lists and not enough rest and sleep – is really what stress is.

It is the feeling that you cannot control what is happening to you and it is also the fear that you are under threat of some kind, be it job loss and even feelings of insecurity. Yes, it has also been shown that low self-esteem can trigger this stress response in your body. So, is stress something that “you cannot help”?

Do you believe that if your environment where different that then and only then, you can overcome overwhelm? If you believe this, you are like most people. I used to buy into this one back in the 1990’s. It was then that I first experientially realized that stress starts within, it is an inside issue.

It is not the “facts” that cause stress. It is not the things that are happening around you as much as it is the “fiction”, the story about the meaning of the facts. It is about where you are putting your focus and whether or not you are taking care of your mind and body – from the inside out.

See, I thought then like most people, that if I could only change my circumstances that I would have more time and would be able to rest more and have more fun. So, in a nutshell, I was able to create a situation where I went from single-handedly running a large medical practice, managing employees and doing surgery, to arranging a situation where I only worked 8 hours a week with no other responsibility than to see patients in the office.

That’s right, I did not even do surgery or have the responsibility of practice management. This should have instantly alleviated my stress, right? Wrong, I still felt stress and I think I had ADHD in those days to add insult to injury. Through a series of events, I came to realize that the inner turmoil was from a combination of how I thought about myself along with my inner perception about the world and those around me.

Once I learned how to change this, and I will say that one powerful tool is mindfulness meditation, I “magically” found more time and felt more inner peace of mind than I had felt in decades. It is not the facts, what is going on around you; it is your interpretation, your story that creates stress.

Once I had a grip on my mind and feelings and was able to eliminate the misperceptions, I eventually went back into my private practice, purchased my mentors practice and had everything twice the size as before I left. The amazing thing was, I was happy, not stressed and had more time to take care of myself than ever before.

The facts were not only the same as before, there was even more to handle! What changed was my “fiction”, my story and how I saw the facts and what I thought about myself. When your perception changes, you see things that you did not see before and you take new actions. You also impact the actual physiology of your body.

Staying healthy begins with mindset and understanding how to eliminate the noise in your mind, the stuff that “you don’t know that you don’t know”. Stress can be mastered when you learn this new science of the brain and how to combine it with wisdom principles to be applied in a practical way in your everyday life. Staying healthy and empowering yourself begins from the inside out!

Between the expense healthcare and medication, the threat to your financial stability and the questionable “scientific” data that supports that taking a million, kazillion (I know this is not a valid term) drugs is acceptable, I’d say one had better do everything possible to maintain their health as naturally and as cost effectively as possible.

Did you know that there is a definite mind-body connection and that stress is related to the reason for 75-90% of all primary care visits to physicians? Actually, I could have told you this without any fancy statistics.

It just plain makes intuitive sense. When you are angry and upset, notice how your body feels. Notice how much more difficult it is to concentrate. Then notice how you feel when you are joyful and happy.

In fact, have your blood pressure checked as you blow a fuse. Have it checked when you are in a relaxed state. It is likely that it will be high with anger and normal to low when relaxed. A relaxed state is a healthy state. I want to pick on worry in this blog post today though, because it is so epidemic.

I had the clerk in my neighborhood grocery store yesterday, tell me in definite “I will not change my mind terms” that there were “no jobs” available for her son to obtain in all of the United States, and that he would have to leave the country to find a job in his field.

Unless he made horse and buggies or telegraph/typewriters, – you know, something we don’t even use anymore – I doubt that her statement is true.

Yet, she obviously looked worry and upset as I discerned her energy and noticed the contorted expression on her face. I’m going to give you 7 reasons why you don’t want to go there. Worry is essentially faith for what you DON’T want. Simple as that.

It hasn’t happened, the person is just imagining it to be happening or is expecting (faith) that it will happen. Why not expect the best? Or at least remain neutral. In a nutshell, people generally worry because we are conditioned to do so.

As a world, we have so trained our brain to live in fear and expecting the next disaster that our nervous system is always on alert to “fight, flight or freeze”. This is what the stress response is.

Yet, we are capable of undoing this “hypnosis” on ourselves and rewiring and retraining our brains to come from a more uplifting space. Our brain is meant to serve us and does not judge the data you, your consciousness and intellect, feeds it. You must filter the facts that you see and come up with your own interpretation that forms your perception.

So, here are 7 reasons why you want to give up worrying and convert to becoming more of an optimist instead of a worrywart. Worry is dangerous to your health. Worry triggers the stress response, and here are seven (there are many others) side effects of stress:

1. Weakened immune system
2. Cancer
3. Heart Disease
4. Hypertension
5. Loss of concentration
6. Alzheimer’s Disease/Other brain cell damage
7. Weight gain

I didn’t even mention anxiety and when this gets severe enough, even issues like depression can arise. I think you get the point here.

There are simple ways to learn how to operate your amazing supercomputer, the brain and mind, while also at the same time getting back in touch with who you really are at your core, your Authentic Self. This is the path to staying healthy and true empowerment. Empowering your health begins from inside out. Any comments?

This is because your nervous system tries to assist you by helping you to focus on and “find” whatever you keep your attention on – it does not judge whether is it good for you or not. Learn how to train your brain to focus and find what you want and breakthrough the fears that are robbing you of good health, including stress. Good health starts from the inside out!  Have you noticed what you focus on expands?   What do you think?

There is too often a disconnect between how we really feel and what we do, or what we say. We talk about “pursuit of happiness” yet, when we or others attempt to come from an inner place of authenticity, if it does not fit inside of a narrow little box, there is not uncommonly, shame, guilt or blame heaped upon the one who finds a little courage to venture outside the “accepted” behavior for the group they currently associate with.

Well, I think it’s time to talk about how these dynamic impacts in a negative way everything from your health and aging, to whether or not you die with your joy and happiness locked deep inside of you. Over the many years I spent practicing medicine, I found that the people who were happiest, healthier and had the happier relationships tended to be open-minded, less concerned about what others thought of them and more likely to have a sense of humor or playfulness.

When we think that acting like an “adult” means that we have to be “serious”, or that to be successful we have to “work hard” or that health comes from focusing on avoiding being sick – we disempower ourselves in all of these areas. These are just common myths, common beliefs.

Just because a lot of people see life this way, does not mean that it is the best way, and certainly not the only way. As you may recall, the majority at one time also thought that the world was flat. What I have found is that, while there are principles or “secrets of the universe” that when followed work no matter what culture, century or educational level you apply them to, most of the stuff we believe is just a bunch of hand-me-down beliefs that may no longer apply to the current times or be in your best interest.

For example, happiness is not something that can really be obtained outside of you for any significant time. Haven’t you noticed how transient our feelings can be when tied to some person, place or thing? Or how about working hard – why can’t we be successful without all of the “sacrifice” and struggle? Of course we can, but if you only see life this way – this is the way that your nervous system will cause you to focus to “make you right”.

In fact, if your success comes easy, if you have this belief of hard work and struggle, you may sabotage yourself just because you feel guilty about life being so abundant for you. Hopefully, you get the point – much of the way we look at life is making our experience hard and full of struggle not because it has to be this way, as much as it is because this is the way we expect it to be.

You do have the right to change your mind. In fact, that is the only way you can let new, more empowering information in.

Here are 3 simple ways that you can switch your paradigm to one that is more likely to give you results tending toward more health and happiness and I use them all and they are working for me. Let me make it clear that I use to also believe, very much so, that life was hard and that success took much struggle and preventative health meant, “avoiding disease”.

For Mind Health:

1. Make it your business to escape the trap of all work and no play -
examples:

Get uncomfortable and play at the beach, get messy and wet in the sand, join a group that sets an intention to go on “play dates”, watch funny movies, this could be a long list. Let your imagination and “inner kid” come back to life. This is the best way to “anti-age” yourself. The point is, stress is a killer, accounting for as much as 90% of all visits to primary care doctors. When you play and relax, you counteract the cascade of the stress response which damages your brain cells, – literally.

For Body Health:

2. Of course, exercise and plenty or rest, but also some less often realized ideas include focusing on health and instead of fearing that you will be the next cancer victim. Worry actually weakens your immune system. Well, guess what? A weakened immune system makes you more susceptible to cancer and other diseases. Hence, the fear that you have is making you more likely to experience the very thing you want to avoid.

Your brain and mind cannot tell the difference between something vividly imagined and something really happening. You may just be scaring yourself to death with all of your fear of having a disease.

For Spirit:

3. Spirit is not the same as “religious” though some people do use the term interchangeably. Happiness is generally a response to something we want. The key to peace of mind and joy though is to either desire without “needing” and wanting to control or hold on. It has been so empowering for me to realize that I cannot micromanage the Universe and it is futile to try. It is also better for my health and mind. It just makes for much resistance and unhappiness and blocks the joy that can only come from within. Joy/happiness that is lasting is coming from our core, our spirit and looking for it outside ourselves is looking for it in “all the wrong places”. The belief that you can “be happy when _________ is one of the most common self-sabotaging myths going. Let it go.

These are three real and lasting yet uncommon ways to empower up from the inside out. Notice that they all overlap in many ways, as our mind, emotions, body and spirit are one – all interconnected and until we start to bring these pieces of ourselves into a whole unit, we are not very likely to find the joy, abundance and peace of mind that a truly empowered life can bring. Do you have any other ideas to add?

Emotion is something that is in your best interest to get acquainted with and stop fearing. Considering that emotions carries 5,000 times more magnetic energy than thought alone (visit HeartMath.org for more info), it is nothing to play around with and ignore if you want to optimize your health – mentally as well as physically.

Emotions play a major role in the state of your health. For example, hypertension is “life under pressure” or high tension. Stress, which is attributed to be the underlying reason for 75-90% of all primary care visits, is an emotional disease. When you feel stress, you are triggering the fear response in your body and it is typically psychological, as we don’t often have physical threat on a daily basis.

Today it snowed again in Chicago, and I could either whine and complain about it, and feel helpless to change it, or I could intend to find the beauty in it, which is what I consciously choose to do. This is always a choice. The challenge is slowing down enough to become aware of your thought pattern and then reset your default dial.

If you have a habit of focusing on what you do not like, you will raise your risk of all sorts of chronic disease. This is also why I choose not to believe in a “cold and flu season”. What is that? Last I checked there were only four seasons, winter spring, summer and fall. Every since I stopped believing in and expecting a season to catch cold, I very rarely even have one.

When I sneeze, I assume something it just irritating my nose and my reaction is just getting rid of it. I never think, “I’m catchin’ a cold”. Perhaps that is why I don’t. If I run myself down and weaken my immune system, granted, I will be more susceptible, but even then there is no guarantee.

Our bodies are amazing at self-healing, especially when we cooperate with them by directing our minds and feelings on things to appreciate and be grateful for. Feel your body the next time you are complaining and resisting what you cannot change. Then take a deep breath and relax, and focus on something that makes you smile, that is beautiful or that you appreciate and see how you feel.

The relaxation response goes a long way toward healing and health. Make emotions your friend and learn how to manage them. Your body will love you for it! Have you ever thought about the connection between how you feel and how you heal? Or your health?

When one is overwhelmed, she or he is not feeling very empowered. Feeling stress then is to feel disempowered. Now this is certainly not something that is in our best interest. When you are stressed, you are feeling threatened and this is a mind/brain response whether the perceived threat is real, meaning physical threat or psychological.

If your life is in danger, the stress response can help you to run faster, fight stronger or, for better or for worse – freeze. Other than physical escape, the response can interfere with your performance.

If you were meeting a deadline, enthusiasm or excitement would serve you better than getting yourself all worked up about last minute preparedness. The main thing to consider about stress is to understand that it is also very dangerous to your health.

Sure, overwhelm is unpleasant, but that is the least of your concern when it comes to stress. Consider the following facts about stress:

1. Stress weakens your immune system, increasing your likelihood of contracting disease

2. Stress has even been associated with creating susceptibility to cancer

3. Stress reduces your cognitive ability – it can cause you to make “stupid” decisions

4. Chronic elevation of stress hormones can cause weight gain

5. Increases your risk of heart attack and stroke

6. Is toxic to brain cells and memory

7. Increases muscle tension and stiffness leading to an inflexible body

The list could easily go on. You get the point. It is not to be taken lightly. One of the best things you can do for stress and more peace of mind is to start taking your brain to the “mindfulness gym” to re-wire and retrain it to break the stress cycle, which is essentially a habitual response.

Mindfulness meditation is like hygiene for the brain. Also, aerobic exercise and staying hydrated with pure, clean water goes a long way as well. There are several other things you can do as well.  I will cover these at other times here on my blog.

For inner peace and better health overall, I highly recommend the mindfulness practices. Aren’t love, joy and peace what we are really after? When these feelings are our starting point, health, wealth and happy relationships are a natural consequence.

Worry and stress are destructive. Learning to relax is more than just a nice idea. It could save your life!

We get into trouble when we start to buy into the idea that we can control everything and start wanting guarantees about what tomorrow holds. As a very young child, I started out in life feeling insecure and not wanted. It had a lot to do with my family position, gender and even religion.

The bottom line is, as a child, I was emotionally immature and had not developed much logic and I was physically smaller than the adults, of course. This is a set up for feeling fearful and setting off the survival instinct in our brains. Between adults who were not aware of the damaging effects of impatient words and the dreadful feelings of rejection, I eventually decided to repress my feelings and emotions.

Of course the adults around me encouraged this, as they did not want to deal with emotion either. The problem is, emotional wounds will hide out in your body until they are released. Emotions are not “bad” or “good”. They are just energy with a given charge or frequency.

The frequency will either match love or fear – simple as that. Love heals while fear steals. We all intuitively know that love feels desirable and fear does not. As long as I repressed my anger, grief, sadness and other pain, they built up in my nervous system and they started to constrict my field of vision for my life as well as to impact my physical heart. It can affect different people in different ways.

Memory is literally stored in your body at the cellular level. In my early twenties, I started to show symptoms and signs of a heart valve problem. However, once I realized that the emotional pain was literally capable of killing me, I began the journey of emotional healing. Not only has my vision expanded for my life, but also my heart is completely healthy. The pain of a “broken heart” can literally translate to heart “dis-ease”. Here are some tips to consider:

1. From an anatomy standpoint, you have two aspects to your brain (left hemisphere and right hemisphere)– logic and intuition. Mental processes are important but so are emotional processes. You need both to be healthy and whole

2. Fearing feelings and emotion are a conditioned and learned process that typically begins in childhood based in the mind of a child. Most adults are overgrown children who never healed their childhood perceptions and they pass on the fear of dealing with them

3. Healthy feelings and emotions are not explosive. Many people look over-emotional and out of control as usually they are reactively responding to unresolved pain that is backed up in the nervous system over the years

I have personally discovered that I could relearn how to manage my emotions in a healthy manner. I used to be TERRIFIED of feelings of rejection, sadness or virtually any other negative emotion – except anger, I was great at blowing up.

Once I learned how to change my attitude about emotions I found the courage and learned how to release the energy in ways that were quite simple and without drama. It’s not about stirring up emotion and just talking about the past. Healing comes from releasing the painful energy of emotion from your cellular memory and consciously “wiring” yourself with healthy thoughts, feelings and emotions. This will lead to lasting change. As I’ve done this, even my body is more flexible as well as my attitude about self and others.

Current, reel-time emotion is in the moment and passes in 60-90seconds and does not feel life threatening. Feelings and emotions make life rich, colorful and is the door to soul-felt creativity.

Learning to feel again and heal the old emotional blockages has been the single most empowering step I’ve ever taken in creating and living a life I can love. You can do the same and it’s not as difficult as you may think! Emotional healing is the missing link to living a life well lived.