Appreciation and gratitude would have to be two of my favourite words, being essential behaviours in the creation of a happy, healthy and abundant life.
When we are able to appreciate every aspect of our lives, not just the comfortable sailings but the challenging storms, we are able to grow, releasing ego’s, burdens and fears that hold us back.
As Wayne Dyer says “with everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing”.
When we choose to focus on the faults in our life, our relationships and our health, we are allowing those faults, disharmony and ill health, to develop and grow. However when we acknowledge and appreciate the wonder and gift of life itself and are able to see the blessings that come from more uncomfortable and challenging times, we are able to enhance every aspect of our lives, including our bodies ability to function optimally.
“Your minds perception of the world changes your biology and body chemistry which, in turn, changes your cells”. Bruce Lipton (Cellular Biologist)
It all sounds rather easy doesn’t it!!!
Why is it then that so many of us, even many of us that have heard this before, still manage to become burdened by daily challenges and as a result, find ourselves in a less than content state.
This is because 95% of our mental processing is controlled by our subconscious/habit mind, where as only 5% is controlled by our conscious reactive mind.
This subconscious/ habit mind develops early in life and by the age of 6/7 years we have acquired the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of our parents, family and community. These then become the fundamental programs in which we operate from throughout our life. Hence the old saying “give me a boy of 7 and I will make you a man”.
So the big Q is? How do we turn long standing sabotaging, subconscious habits into healthy habits which allow us to grow and expand our appreciation and gratitude for life?
Here’s some suggestions…
- Firstly acknowledge the behaviour as you are doing it. E.g. “That’s interesting I’m having negative thoughts about this experience.” t’s not good or bad it’s just interesting — remove your charge on the situation.
- Behave in a different way. Start to think about all the positive reasons that may come from this experience. Help train/reprogram the brain out of it’s automatic, negative pathways and instead develop new positive conscious pathways.
- Change your language. For example, instead of “I’m sick, I have the flu” say “I’m having a great clean out or I’m having a health expression”, or instead of “I’m feeling really sore and tired” say “I have some interesting changes going on in my body”, or “my body is letting me know it’s time to rest and do something different”.
Changing a habit that you have been doing for many years may take time but by performing steps 1,2 and 3 on a regular basis you will develop new healthy subconscious pathways for your brain to follow and, in turn, this will expand your appreciation and gratitude allowing your life to head down a much happier, healthier and abundant path. So lets all add some more appreciation and gratitude into our lives in 2017 and beyond.
… Sally
