Proven Strategies That Help You Feel Better and Live Longer

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(…continued from last week)

What are You Taking In

I’ve got a question for you. How long can you go without eating any food before it has any real harmful effects on your body? How long do you think you can go? Most people can go at least a week, maybe longer.

How long can you go without any water? Approximately 24 to 48 hours for most people. If you don’t have some your kidneys will start having problems, your body has to have water because you’re even losing water through the moisture in your breath. So you have to have water at least every few days.

How long can you go without air? If you don’t have fresh oxygen every three, four minutes, your heart and your brain they both begin to deteriorate. They begin to degenerate within minutes; three or four minutes.

So what is the most important thing you consume on a regular basis? Air of course. That simple little exercise, ‘seven down to one count breathing’ that we just did, absolutely helps normalize your body. Bring some balance into your breathing, your bloodstream, your immune system; it helps normalize things a bit.

Got Air?

One of the things we need to do though is remember to take deep breaths. Even one deep breath, breath in, hold it a moment, breath out, can increase the oxygen supply in our bloodstream by half a percent, or up to one percent, if we’re oxygen depleted. So through your day whenever you take that deep breath, it’s an automatic body and mind signal to release stress, calm the body, relax yourself mentally and physically.

What I advocate people do, is they get something that signals them or reminds them to do that. For instance, you could take a little tiny post-it note and stick it on your computer or your wall or the dash of your car that says ‘breathe’. Good signal, right? And every time you notice it you just take a deep breath.

So if you’re talking on the phone at work, and you see ‘breathe’ right in the middle of the conversation, just take a deep breath, and keep going. If you’re typing away and notice it, take a deep breath while you’re typing. If you get up to go to a meeting, and you glance at your desk and you notice the ‘breathe’ post-it before you walk out the door, take another breath. If you’re driving down the road and traffic’s thick and you notice the note, take a deep breath instead of wanting to choke the guy who is stalled right in front of you.

The more times you do that through your day, the better it is for your mind and your body. It’s an automatic signal to calm, relax, move into eustress. Again, eustress is healthful. Eustress can bring more balance to the body, balance to the mind.

Respond vs. React

Now, I mentioned that our relationships can get in our way sometimes. That mental and emotional pressures and stressors are one of the chief ways that people have problems in their lives. You need to get a handle on what’s going on inside of your brain. In other words, what you need to do is respond in a resourceful manner, instead of just gut reacting to stuff. You need to respond, think about, look at, take time, ponder, breathe, analyze ahead of time—instead of just gut reacting.

For instance, if you want to be good at a sport, what do you do? You practice it. You think about it before you go and perform, correct? Do you think people who play tennis for a living spend much time practicing or thinking about the game ahead of time? Do they ever watch tapes of their opponents so that they can analyze the person’s style and think about how they will respond resourcefully instead of just gut reacting to every shot?

Do coaches draw up plays ahead of time, so people can respond and work as a team in a resourceful way instead of just going out and chucking the ball wherever they want to? Of course. This is the same thing.

You’re creating a play book in your mind for your life. So you want to think about it ahead of time. If you know, for instance, that you’re going to be called on to present some program in the near future and it makes you nervous to be up in front of people; manage your emotional state ahead of time.

What you need to do is picture yourself there calm, relaxed, breathing deeply, and slowly and easily. Stay in a pleasant feeling, with a relaxed look on your face, saying what you need to so you stay in a calm. Think in a straight-forward positive manner, so you believe there are positive possibilities. Rehearse it in your mind so that when you get in that situation, you actually are more likely to behave that way.

Conditioning Your Mind

You need to be training your subconscious mind. You need to enlist the use of your reticular activating system inside your mind to build in a new program so that when you get into a challenging situation it is more likely you’ll behave the way you hoped. You’ve programmed in a positive response. Instead of shooting from the hip every single time, just reacting, you’re planning ahead how you want to do this.

It’s the same thing if you know there are stressors in your life; things that you have to do, or deadlines that are coming up. Let’s say every month; at the end of the month, you have to have this huge amount of paperwork to turn in, because that’s the system within your organization. Well, if you know that’s coming ahead of time, then during that ‘pre-arrival time’ you can think of your response.

Get a little more done ahead of time so you’re ready for it when it comes. And even if you are stressed, and it’s coming down to the wire, you can breathe. You can imagine yourself calming yourself down. You respond instead of just reacting. It’s a choice.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Choose wisely that which you are focused on and are thereby perpetuating in your life.” Whatever the chief thing that you’re aiming at, you are going to have more of that—be it good or bad.

You want to make certain that the things you’re focused on are; feeling resourceful, being calmer, being in control of yourself, managing your mind, taking care of your internal dialogue, breathing, taking great care of yourself in the process.

The Only Thing You Can Control

In many cases we can’t do anything about the external world. You have a choice in your personal life as to who you will be around. And, you can be around them or not. In your professional life though, you may not be so lucky. You may have to work with some son-of-a-guns out there who make you crazy. Well, that’s the way it goes. Deal with it in a resourceful way—that takes care of you.

You need to manage yourself so they don’t jerk your chain, so to speak. You need to manage yourself so that you can stay more calm, more centered, more balanced, no matter what “they” do. You must control the only thing you can control—you.

Have you ever met somebody who intentionally provokes you? They intentionally go out of their way to say things, or do things, or use sarcasm, or maybe they make you the butt of their jokes. This happens frequently to children in school. You can not grow up and totally avoid having that unfortunate experience.

None of us like that feeling. Using some of the strategies you’ve just learned will help you to disconnect the ‘mental wires’ to those buttons, so that when that person pushes on that trigger you don’t automatically react. It’s essential to work at becoming more calm, more self-aware.

Eustress experiences are good for us—like sports. Going out and competing, and having a great time, laughing and working hard at something. ‘Going for it’ is a good thing. It works your body. It also builds up some of those emotional reserves inside of you because it’s strengthening your mind, you feel strong, confident, competent.

Reading good books. Reading things that are beneficial to your mind, calm you. Make you feel more in control of your life. Breathing, taking time to breathe, is one of those things that calms and quiets you, makes you feel better.

Each of these can be a benefit. Doing these can calm you. You need those self-care things, because they will help you ultimately assist you in getting you where you want to go.

(to be continued…)

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