If you want to stay healthy, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to pay attention to your attitude. For now, I'm going to define 'attitude' as how you choose to act in response to how you feel and in response to all of the ongoing thoughts in your head.
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What is your attitude?
What is your attitude toward health and wellness? Is it important to you to have a strong, healthy body? To have a mind that is also free of dis-ease?
Imagine the following scenario: You are at a social event, talking with a few friends. One of your friends is sniffling and sneezing and coughing the entire time. Do you get upset and think, "Great, now I'm going to get sick, too! And I'll probably miss a week of work." Or, do you think, "I'm so thankful that my body is healthy."
What we tell ourselves about these situations matters. In the example above, if we think that we are going to get sick, we likely will. If we think that we will remain healthy, we likely will.
Thankfully, our attitude is something we can change. We have a choice. When we are feeling good, it's fairly easy to adopt a good attitude.
One thing I like to do is to repeat positive affirmations to myself throughout the day. I'll say to myself, "I feel happy, I feel healthy. My body is strong and powerful."
Even better, add your own little tune to the words! You can use general, generic statements for your entire body, or chose something specific if you have an area of chronic weakness you wish to strengthen.
Here are some examples of affirmations you can use:
- I love and approve of myself.
- I am beautiful, I feel radiant.
- I love myself, I am safe.
- I feel joyful!
- My lungs are strong and healthy. They take in air with ease.
A wonderful book which I love for affirmations is You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise L. Hay. She has amazing insights into specific illness and underlying thought patterns that you can change to find healing.
How to change your attitude
Unless you're a full-blown worrywart, choosing a positive attitude about your health can be fairly simple when you're already feeling good. It's a bit more challenging when you're sick.
Last fall, I got sick and spent the day on the couch. This is an unusual occurrence for me. Unfortunately, my husband was also recovering from being sick himself and he wasn't feeling so well either.
This was a bad combination! He was stressed about his work and about me being sick, and I fed off of his stressful demeanor and became upset myself. It's these types of challenging situations that give us an opportunity to grow.
We chose to grow. We stepped back and talked about things. We did NOT blame the other person for their behavior, but we acknowledged how we each felt.
We realized we had both made a poor choice and had chosen a bad attitude. So we fixed it and changed our thought processes.
How do you do that? I've found it takes a bit more energy when you're not feeling well. However, the process is generally the same. It's all about what you tell yourself in your head.
I started by forgiving myself and forgiving my husband. Then I gave thanks for my sickness and this current challenge, because it made clear to me an area I need to improve. The next step was to choose an affirmation, a positive statement, that I could repeat over and over for the day. "I feel fantastic. I feel healthy." When I drank something warm, I said, "I bless this food that it will heal my body."
Practice, practice, practice!
- If you want to have better heath in any aspect of your life, start by changing your attitude about your health. Instead of complaining about that bad knee, sore neck, frequent headache, sinus infection, asthma.....or anything else you are dealing with....give thanks! Choose a positive affirmation and repeat it daily, over and over and over. Make sure to be especially diligent on those days when "your" health issue is really acting up.
- Notice how you feel when you choose to think new, different, positive thoughts
What affirmations do you find most helpful in having a better attitude?
