Proven Strategies That Help You Feel Better and Live Longer

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Stress & Illness

Let’s talk for a moment about distress. In our world today, psychosomatic and stress related illnesses are huge. Medical research says that somewhere between 50% to 80% of illnesses have a psychosomatic or a stress related component. That sounds a little high to me, but research supports that’s correct.

I’ve dealt with many psychosomatic illnesses over my 30 year career. In many cases, when we change what’s going on inside of the person’s head, the problem and the health issue reduces or goes away.

Included are things like cardiovascular problems, cancers, strokes, sexual dysfunctions, ulcers, colitis, asthma, allergies, hypertension and high blood pressure oftentimes, insomnia can be, frequent colds, and at times headaches are created by this.

The four most common disorders that are prominent in the U.S., in Europe and in Japan, the big industrialized nations, are thought of as afflictions of civilization. These four major illnesses – cardiovascular problems, cancers, arthritis and respiratory diseases fall into this stress related category. Those oftentimes have at least some psychosomatic or stress related component to them. Read more »

Proven Strategies That Help You Feel Better and Live Longer

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Your Emotions Can Physically Harm You

When I was growing up, my father owned a restaurant in Twin Falls, Idaho. He spent most of the time when at the restaurant, being the front man. He did a lot of the schmoozing with customers, helping the staff, and running the day-to-day operations there. His partner was more in the background, more silent.

One evening, while my father was there working at the restaurant, his partner came in through the back door, unbeknownst to my dad. The partner began to just give the cooks a very hard time, and was picking at the waitresses. My father and he had been having these kind of problems for awhile. Because his partner had started drinking way too much, and would show up at the restaurant drunk.

My dad heard this noise coming from back in the kitchen, and couldn’t figure out what was going on. So he went back, and here’s his partner raising havoc; yelling at the cooks, giving the waitresses a hard time. My father got furious. He and his partner had had arguments about this before.

He told his partner, “Get out of here! This is inappropriate.” His partner refused and told him to mind his own business. Dad blew up! Dad grabbed his partner, and bodily threw him out the back of the restaurant. Read more »

Proven Strategies That Help You Feel Better and Live Longer

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Various Types of Stressors

Environmental Stressors

The first type of stress is “environmental” stressors. Environmental stressors and pressures are things like the quality of the air you breathe. If you’re living in an environment where you’re regularly inhaling massive amounts of chemical fumes, smoke and pesticides, it can have a very detrimental effect. Or if the air quality is bad because you work in a factory and the air scrubbers don’t do a good job, you will be affected. Air quality may have a major impact on your physiology, energy, mental clarity, and your ability to be resilient.

“Noise” stress is another environmental pollutant. Noise in our day and age is huge because of traffic, airplanes and machinery just to name a few. There was a research study done in New York City approximately 15 years ago. They analyzed children who lived right in the middle of the city, on a main street, on a lower or street level in the building, where there’s lots of street noise.

What they found was that the noise which came in, because it never really abated, most children didn’t notice it. But if they were to change their living situation to a quieter environment, that on average the children had a grade point jump of .4. So if they were a 2.5 student on average, they would jump to 2.9, just by getting away from the noise pollution which was affecting them. Read more »

Proven Strategies That Help You Feel Better and Live Longer

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Welcome everyone!

I’m Dr. Larry Iverson. Our topic today is “Overcoming Stress and Pressure – For a happier, healthier, more robust life!”.

We’re going to talk about some of the causes of stress, what brings it up in our lives, what “eggs it on”, in effect, and drives it forward. We’re going to talk about the effects of stress, both good and bad, because not all stress is bad. You need some to get you moving, to do things, to be motivated. We’re going to talk about some of the things you can do to overcome the negative ones and enhance the positive ones. Thirdly, we’re going to talk about things you can do about it, what are some of the simple strategies you can take to make a difference in your life.

You can really live your life haphazardly, or you can live it on purpose, and it’s a choice. With stress it is also a choice. No matter what your situation, whether it changes or not, there’s things you can do about it, so let’s talk about some choices. Read more »

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More Attitudes & Emotions of Power

President Thomas Jefferson said, “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal. Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” Confidence and determination are attitudes of a winner. If you look at the greatest, most successful people in the world, you will find confidence and determination are underpinnings of much of what they do.

The fifth attitude of proactiveness is flexibility. Remember we talked about those action signals; fear, frustration, overwhelmed, disappointment, guilt, sadness, et cetera. Flexibility. Those signals say that a change is needed. That’s what they’re telling you. They’re signaling ‘I need to do something different’.

There are many ways up any mountain. I don’t care which mountain it is, there are lots of ways. Some are better, some are worse, some are easier, some are harder. But to get to where you need to go you have to be flexible. You need to be willing to change. You have to be able to do what you can do and if you run into a barrier say, “Hmm, what’s another way? Well I’ll try that.”

One trait of people who excel, who achieve highly, is that when they run into a barrier instead of going, “Oh no, a barrier. Gee what I’m I gonna do?” they go, “Hmm, how can I get around, over, under, through this sucker.” And then they do it. They try it again and if it blocks them again they go again. They just keep at it until they have either achieved what they want or it is absolutely proven beyond a shadow of a doubt there’s got to be something different to do. Read more »

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Attitudes & Emotions of Power

Once you begin receiving the signals of change, or that a new direction is needed, when you’re paying attention finally, there are attitudes of power that will energize your life and bring vitality into everything you see and do. These powerful attitudes and emotions allow you to use those signals you are receiving, so you can move forward into a more energized, vivacious, fruitful life.

One of the very first energizing principles is an attitude of gratitude. Live with an attitude of gratitude. Could you have more? Could you do better in your life, your finances, your hobbies? You need to appreciate what you have.

What’s a major culture shock for most of us is go to some third world countries where they don’t have opulence like we do in the Western World. It’s a real eye opener. In many cases it makes you feel very grateful for all that you have.

Couldn’t you stand more? Of course, but gratitude is an aspect of love and thankfulness that are blended together. Gratitude is saying, “I’ve got stuff, I’ve got good things, I’ve got me, I’ve got health, I’ve got air, I’ve got what I need.” More? Sure more is fine but that isn’t necessarily something that you have to have.

Cultivate this attitude of gratitude and your life will begin to grow and expand because this gratitude principle is part of the ultimate law of success. To succeed you have to be grateful for what you have. If you do not feel grateful for what you have the universe will, in many cases, take away from you that which you do have. You have to be willing to enjoy it and to appreciate those things or you tend to lose them. Read more »

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More Signals for Change

A third signal to watch out for is feeling hurt, feeling disappointed, feeling lonely or sad. All of these – hurt, disappointment, loneliness and sadness – all have to do with a feeling of loss. Something you expected to go a certain way did not and you feel a loss; a sense of sadness. A friend you’d hoped to spend some time with had something come up and had to cancel the time you were going to spend together. A toy or a vacation you hoped to have fell apart because of lack of money or because of things. It’s disappointing, it’s sad.

To move beyond the hurt, disappointment, loneliness or sadness you have to pick a new direction. You set a new goal. You don’t keep focusing on what’s not working. Winston Churchill once said, “No success is final nor is failure fatal.”

I suppose there are failures that could be fatal but 99% of the failures in life are not going to kill us, they’re just disappointing. So quit focusing on that. Quit focusing on the things you can’t do anything about, pick a new direction and take action.

You have to keep on moving and pick a new direction with passion. That is how you move out of hurt, disappointment, loneliness or sadness. Because all of those feelings of loss begin to diminish when you refocus on something you can do something about.

A fourth signal that things in your life need to change is guilt. Guilt means you need to change your direction again. I once had a professor when I was in graduate school say, “embarrassment is shame before another person, guilt is shame before yourself.” Read more »

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Signals for Change

In order to better manage your brain and energize your life, I’m going to give you some action signals that tell you when it’s time to do something.

How do you know when it’s time? If you go to a doctor because you’re not feeling well what do they do? They look at the symptoms. Are you flushed? Do you have a fever? Is there pain somewhere in your body? Are there any abscesses or openings or cuts or wounds? What’s going on within you? Do you feel lethargic? Do you have energy? Do you not have energy? And so on. They look over you and they take all those symptoms that they can elicit and they diagnose.

Or if you take your car to a mechanic because you have a flat tire, they don’t first check your radiator to make sure it has water, see if the battery has water in it, go and make sure that the belts are tight on the alternator and so on. You’ve got a flat tire, they look, they diagnose the symptom of why it can’t go down the road because it has a flat tire and they fix it.

So I am going to give you some action signals that will tell you it’s time to do something; things to be aware of. In my mind one of the first, and a major symptom, or a major signal, is fear.

Fear can go from being slightly concerned about something to absolutely terrified. Fear is really just a signal to pay attention. Some fears are red stop lights, most of the time it’s not. Most of the time fear is a yellow caution light. It means pay attention, something’s going on that’s knocked you out of your comfort zone. Read more »