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Countless medical studies have shown just how dramatically our beliefs influence our health. People who believe they’re getting a new drug or treatment can experience improvements in mood or profound relief from pain – even when they’re in the placebo group. Our beliefs can alter how toxins affect us. And on the “nocebo” side of the equation (a negative placebo effect) we can even generate signs and symptoms of diseases we don’t have.
In one Japanese study, subjects known to have a strong reaction to poison ivy were told that one of their arms was being rubbed with poison ivy. Yikes! But researchers actually touched them with the leaf of a harmless plant. Every participant broke out in a poison-ivy-like rash.
The subjects were told that their other arm would be rubbed with a harmless plant. Instead, the researchers rubbed real poison ivy on them! But only two out of thirteen people had a reaction to it.
We can make ourselves sick and we can make ourselves well. The key is the incredible power of belief. It’s been thoroughly and indisputably proven, yet few people consciously exploit this magic on a regular basis. I’d like to change that.
As a start, I suggest we practice observing positive belief every time we put something into our bodies.
When you eat, try getting yourself mentally and emotionally enrolled in a positive expectation about how you’ll be affected by it. Admire the food. Tell yourself it’s going to be deeply nourishing. Your body is going to efficiently extract the nutrients and deliver them to all your tissues. It’s totally reasonable to expect that it will support clear thinking, high energy and mental calm, glowing skin, efficient digestion, optimal organ function, strong immunity, etc.
For best results I recommend building your expectations for a minute at the beginning of the meal, remembering this from time to time during the meal, and then happily anticipating the benefits after the meal.
You might even try bringing your attention inward, visualizing the nutrients being absorbed through your intestines and flowing into all of your cells, and telling yourself, “I allow myself to receive the fullest, most complete health benefit from this food” – or whatever words feel natural to you.
What happens when you say to yourself or a dining partner, “I feel really good from this food. My body thrives on good food. I can already tell that this meal is exactly what I needed”?
This should be even easier to do with supplements, herbs, and drugs, since you’re consuming them with a specific healing purpose and outcome in mind. Don’t forget it. Tell yourself as you swallow them (or apply them, if topical) that they’re going to do what they’re intended to do, that they’re perfectly compatible with your body, that the benefits are already starting (whether you can feel it or not).
If you make a practice of priming yourself to expect good things you’re significantly more likely to experience good things, to notice the good things, and to be grateful for them.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Expect Good Things: A Practice for Getting the Most Out of Food, Medicines, and Supplements
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Welcome to the final installment in my series on longevity. We’ve covered a lot over the past few months! Here’s a recap: (1) Love life and live for the present (2) Work, stretch, and relax all parts of yourself (3) Dance with consciousness (4) Reduce media consumption (5) Pay attention to your breathing (6) Eat less (7) Prioritize community and service (8) Exchange love and touch (9) Optimize your sleep (10) Laugh more (11) Keep your heart open (12) Simplify (13) Go with the flow / don’t resist (14) Be one with Nature. (15) Keep growing (16) Know your pain body (17) Invite the spiritual dimension into your life. And now for my last three recommendations.
#18: Be an Optimist.
Optimism has measurable positive impacts on physical and psychological health. Some people are born optimists and it comes naturally for them to always look on the bright side. What a**holes, right? 😉 If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The fact is, even if you were born such a curmudgeon that you can’t see the bright side of a lightbulb, you can choose to become an optimist today. Remember that “growth mindset” we talked about? Sure, optimism is a lucky inheritance for some, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be cultivated.
To a great extent optimism and pessimism are habits of attention, and what you put your attention on grows. If you want to be an optimist, start putting your attention on what’s working, what’s good, beautiful, fascinating, or fortuitous. Pick something and take a moment to appreciate it. Hit your inner “save button.” Amplify it. Comment on it out loud – to yourself or whomever is nearby.
Feel how it lifts you up a little. Then go with this springiness and see if there’s another good thing you can be aware of. Bounce from one gift to the next. If nothing sweet or wonderful jumps out at you, create a sweet event. Hand someone a flower, pay someone’s bus fare, offer a compliment. Meanwhile, as important as focusing on the good is noticing when you’re focusing on the bad. Then, as efficiently as possible, pick up your attention, put it on something else, and let go of whatever you were focusing on. You can change your habits.
#19: Forgive.
Little consumes life force as much as holding onto grievances, whether they’re with ourselves, other people, or the world. Withheld forgiveness is a primary expression of the pain body (our addiction to pain and conflict) we talked about last week, but I chose to cover forgiveness as a separate item on this list because it’s just so important.
Our resentments cause us pain while stealing our power and attention. Moreover, everything we resent eventually hardens within our physical and/or energetic being as a sort of concretion. You might think of it as a knot or blockage. Conversely, forgiveness is the relinquishment of a false idea – the idea that condemnation is a force for constructive change – and it opens and frees us.
Like the concept of resistance I discussed in part nine of this series, I feel I could write a whole book about forgiveness, but in the interest of your time, I’ll bottom line it. Opportunities for forgiveness are everywhere. Start noticing your grievances with all sorts of elements of your life – from the obvious to the very subtle – and forgive them. Don’t expect it to be something you’ll do once and it will never come back. Forgiveness is a commitment to keep forgiving. Over and over. Let it go, let it go, let it go. Feel the peace that comes from this act. Set yourself free and set the world free.
#20: Love Yourself.
If you seek longevity, I believe it’s worth looking closely at who it is that you wish to have a longer life and how you feel about this creature. Look in a mirror. Do you love that being dearly? Have you forgiven and accepted them in their entirety – for everything they are and all they’ve ever done? Do you want the best for them in all situations? Do you treat them lovingly in terms of how you feed them, how you groom them and clothe them, how you exercise them, how you regard them and speak inwardly to them? Are you your own biggest cheerleader?
If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, sadly, you’re in excellent company with most of the world. What a tragedy that we’re given a life and a vehicle for that life, and from such an early age we learn to withhold love from it.
The withholding of love from ourselves is mostly fueled by an internalization of the parent/child dynamic (where the parent role could be informed by any adults from our early life). We become our own inner parent (more like a vicious tyrant at times), deeming ourselves underserving of love for all the ways in which we don’t match some unattainable template of perfection. Withholding love from certain parts of us while conditionally loving the other parts (as long as they don’t get pimples or say the wrong thing) fragments us.
The path to self-love involves a lot of forgiveness. What parts of yourself have you disapproved of, rejected, or even denied the existence of? Find all the unloved pieces, forgive them, and let your love enter them, envelop them, and include them in your emerging sense of self. Forgive yourself for condemning and withholding love from these parts of yourself. Visualize your reintegration.
Use your broader forgiveness practice to learn where you may be withholding self-love. What aspects of the world do you condemn? What qualities in others do you resent? Can you find those same qualities within yourself? Yes, it’s work. But it’s work worth doing.
This concludes our exploration of the factors that contribute to longevity and life enrichment. There are always exceptions – like the rare centenarian who drinks whiskey for breakfast and doesn’t abide by any of the recommendations on this list – but I figure we might as well hedge our bets and follow these practices to the best of our ability. Also, my focus all along has been to help you get more life out of this life right now – regardless of how much longer it lasts.
I always love getting into conversation with you. Did I miss a good one? What do you plan to do with your newly lengthened life? Share your thoughts about this subject with me and our community.
Be well,
Peter
P.S. If you’re someone who likes to see everything in one place, here’s the whole list for review:
- Love life and live for the present
- Work, stretch, and relax all parts of yourself
- Dance with consciousness
- Reduce media consumption
- Pay attention to your breathing
- Eat less
- Prioritize community and service
- Exchange love and touch
- Optimize your sleep
- Laugh more
- Keep your heart open
- Simplify
- Go with the flow / don’t resist
- Be one with Nature
- Keep growing
- Know your pain body
- Invite the spiritual dimension into your life.
- Be an optimist
- Forgive
- Love yourself
[post_title] => Three Final Keys to Living Longer and Happier
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There was a lot of interest in the article I wrote last month called “How to Bounce Forward from Adversity” in which I discussed positive psychology. Whereas traditional psychology has focused primarily on helping unwell individuals to get to a state of normal functioning, positive psychology explores how we can go beyond “normal” to optimize wellbeing and life satisfaction.
Today I’m going to share some of the most effective ways to do this. The core elements come from Martin Seligman, sometimes considered the founder positive psychology. Seligman is known for the PERMA model of wellbeing, which stands for: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement. We’ll look at these and some valuable additions from other psychologists.
Positive Emotions: This is as much a measure of optimal wellbeing as it is a means. Seligman emphasizes that seeking positive emotions alone isn’t especially effective, but that fully experiencing positive emotions is vital.
If positive emotions aren’t a prominent part of your psychological landscape, it’s worth looking and feeling into why. I believe positive emotions are part of our native state as humans, an expression of fundamental wellbeing, regardless of circumstances such as socioeconomic status. When they’re not naturally present, this tends to signal that there’s something in the way – such as limiting beliefs about one’s ability or deserving of happiness. We can change this.
Engagement: Having a sense of engagement, in which we may lose track of time and become completely absorbed in something we enjoy and excel at, is an important piece of wellbeing. It’s hard to have a developed sense of wellbeing if you are not truly engaged in anything you do
Psychologists Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff build on these first two methods through their model of positive experience called Savoring. Here’s how to savor fully and get the most out of your positive experiences:
- Sharing: find other people to share the experience and tell them how much you value it. According to Black Dog Institute, this is the strongest predictor of the level of someone’ pleasure.
- Memory building: do things to crystalize and save the moment, such as intentionally take mental photographs, keeping a souvenir of the event, and reminiscing about it later with others.
- Self-congratulation: this is a hard one for many of us because it entails telling yourself what a good person you are and remembering everything you’ve done to get yourself to this point in your life.
- Sharpening perception: this is practice to encourage the imprinting of the experience in your consciousness. Pay close attention and try focusing on certain elements and blocking out others, like closing your eyes while listening to music.
- Absorption: allow yourself to become totally immersed, not thinking, just experiencing fully
Relationships: Study after study has shown that healthy relationships are the single most significant predictor of happiness and longevity. We are social creatures and our connections with others help us flourish. They give us opportunities to share, to help, to be heard, to be witnessed, to touch, to laugh, to be co-inspired. I have a homework assignment for you. Today I want you to call or visit someone you haven’t been in contact with for a while. Both of you will benefit from this.
Meaning: There are plenty of ways to experience positive emotions and good connections without meaning, but for most of us, especially as we get older, this factor starts to matter more. Sometimes we can even have a “meaningless crisis” where we suddenly feel that nothing in our life has real significance. If we’ve spent the last decade getting stoned and playing video games, maybe such a realization is pointing to a need for some changes. But for most people, it’s a matter of attitude adjustment more than a life overhaul.
For instance, doing the core values, gifts, and life purpose work in our Dreambook can help you get aligned with your meaning, which you then bring into whatever you do. An early mentor of mine, Matt Garrigan, used to say, “Life is meaningless. You add the meaning.” While that might sound kind of fatalistic, he meant it to be liberating. It underscores the power to choose our perspective.
Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski of Yale University writes about the distinctions between relating to your work as a job (you see your work as a means of income, a necessity), a career (you take a certain pride in what you do and hope to advance and succeed at it), or a calling (your work is a central, meaningful part of life and who you are, a forum for self-expression and gratification). These three orientations represent degrees of meaning, and a spectrum of overall life satisfaction. Being dedicated to something bigger than oneself brings to a special kind of fulfillment. Incidentally, Wrzesniewski emphasizes that the job itself is irrelevant to one’s orientation toward it. You could approach trash collection as a calling.
Achievement: In a world that sometimes hyper-focuses on achievement as the sole measure of a person’s worth, it’s easy to get the wrong idea about it and find ourselves unable to relax and play. But we need to strike a balance because accomplishing things, even small things, is essential to authentic wellbeing.
When we set out to do something and follow it through to completion we build confidence and self-trust, and it reinforces the feeling that we have some control over the trajectory of our work and overall life, which is another factor that yields greater wellbeing.
Play: Being able to play – doing something for no outcome other than play itself – is one I’d add to this list. Here’s an excerpt on play from our book, The Well Life:
George Bernard Shaw said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” We know it’s hard to schedule time just for enjoyment, but play is important stuff. Playing and laughing are good for our cardiovascular health. They foster bonding with our family and friends. They’re relaxing. They promote development of social skills. They’re uplifting. They teach us cooperation. They help us learn to manage our emotions. They improve brain function, learning, and cognition. They relieve stress. They enhance healing. They stimulate creativity and problem solving. They keep us feeling youthful. Unfortunately, we tend to save playtime for after everything else is done. But it shouldn’t be seen as just a reward. Play is therapeutic.
Finally, one more that numerous others have added to PERMA is Vitality. Physical vitality and psychological wellness are interdependent. That’s not to say you can’t have one without the other, but many physical health factors such as high energy, good digestion, restful sleep, and adequate strength often translate to a better ability to do the other things on the list, as well as supporting a clear and open mind.
I encourage you to go through this list and choose one factor to dedicate yourself this coming week – ideally one that could use some attention. Set an intention to work on it each day, and write it down. At the end of each day, take a few minutes to reflect on (and, better yet, journal about) how this affected you.
Be well,
Peter
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Countless medical studies have shown just how dramatically our beliefs influence our health. People who believe they’re getting a new drug or treatment can experience improvements in mood or profound relief from pain – even when they’re in the placebo group. Our beliefs can alter how toxins affect us. And on the “nocebo” side of the equation (a negative placebo effect) we can even generate signs and symptoms of diseases we don’t have.
In one Japanese study, subjects known to have a strong reaction to poison ivy were told that one of their arms was being rubbed with poison ivy. Yikes! But researchers actually touched them with the leaf of a harmless plant. Every participant broke out in a poison-ivy-like rash.
The subjects were told that their other arm would be rubbed with a harmless plant. Instead, the researchers rubbed real poison ivy on them! But only two out of thirteen people had a reaction to it.
We can make ourselves sick and we can make ourselves well. The key is the incredible power of belief. It’s been thoroughly and indisputably proven, yet few people consciously exploit this magic on a regular basis. I’d like to change that.
As a start, I suggest we practice observing positive belief every time we put something into our bodies.
When you eat, try getting yourself mentally and emotionally enrolled in a positive expectation about how you’ll be affected by it. Admire the food. Tell yourself it’s going to be deeply nourishing. Your body is going to efficiently extract the nutrients and deliver them to all your tissues. It’s totally reasonable to expect that it will support clear thinking, high energy and mental calm, glowing skin, efficient digestion, optimal organ function, strong immunity, etc.
For best results I recommend building your expectations for a minute at the beginning of the meal, remembering this from time to time during the meal, and then happily anticipating the benefits after the meal.
You might even try bringing your attention inward, visualizing the nutrients being absorbed through your intestines and flowing into all of your cells, and telling yourself, “I allow myself to receive the fullest, most complete health benefit from this food” – or whatever words feel natural to you.
What happens when you say to yourself or a dining partner, “I feel really good from this food. My body thrives on good food. I can already tell that this meal is exactly what I needed”?
This should be even easier to do with supplements, herbs, and drugs, since you’re consuming them with a specific healing purpose and outcome in mind. Don’t forget it. Tell yourself as you swallow them (or apply them, if topical) that they’re going to do what they’re intended to do, that they’re perfectly compatible with your body, that the benefits are already starting (whether you can feel it or not).
If you make a practice of priming yourself to expect good things you’re significantly more likely to experience good things, to notice the good things, and to be grateful for them.
Be well,
Peter
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