Positive Attitudes of Optimism, Gratitude, and Motivation:
Your body responds to your thoughts and emotions.
Optimism is a resource for wellness. An optimistic attitude means that regardless of the external world or situation, one should feel confident about responding to it and making the best of it. Research indicates optimists have stronger immune systems, making them less susceptible to illness and disease. Optimists are more likely to overcome pain and adversity in their lives.
Gratitude is a feeling of thankful appreciation for favors or benefits received. Gratitude is about having an awareness of and appreciation for the good things in your life and not taking them for granted. It is about acknowledging the support of others. As such, it helps us to humbly remember that we have not done everything by ourselves. When facing a loss or a difficult task or situation, remind yourself to be grateful both for what you haven’t lost and for the strengths and opportunities that arise from facing difficulties.
Recent studies have shown that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships. Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance.
Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpreted and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem. Grateful people also have less negative coping strategies, being less likely to try and avoid the problem, deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use.
Motivation is the arousal, direction, and persistence of behavior; it is the internal energy that activates behavior and gives it direction. Motivation is being self-initiating by moving to control your own life for the better and not waiting on others to improve your life.
A motivated person says no to rejection by being persistent; they say no to unexpected events by being flexible; they say no to failure by learning from it and using it as stepping stones on the road to accomplishing goals; they say no to depression and unwanted emotions by attempting to achieve a deeper understanding of themselves until they master their emotions; and they say no to life's problems by coming up with answers.
Indeed mental and emotional expectations influence wellness outcomes. Changing your expectations from negative to positive will enhance your wellness. Here's how to make the change:
*Stop negative self-talk, complaining, and gossip. Make positive statements and engage in thoughtful and inspirational conversations that promote your wellness. As you notice yourself saying something negative in your mind, you can stop your thought mid-stream by saying to yourself “Stop”. Saying this aloud will be more powerful, and having to say it aloud will make you more aware of how many times you are stopping negative thoughts, and where.
*Send yourself a steady stream of affirmations. An affirmation is a phrase or sentence that sends strong, positive statements to you about yourself, such as 'I have the power to control my health', 'I am in control of my health and wellness', and 'I have choices and choose wellness over sickness'.
*Visualize health and wellness. Add mental pictures that support your positive affirmations. Visualization, a form of self-hypnosis, is a tool anyone can use to help foster healing. By providing positive pictures (creative imagery) and self-suggestion, visualization can change emotions that subsequently have a physical effect on the body. In healing, repetitive use of positive visualization allows access to the mind-body connection. This lets the mind and body work together to foster the healing process of the body on a physical level.
No comments:
Post a Comment