WellnessIs Wellness a concern? Are you "feeling good? Is your Mind/Body/Spirit balanced and healthy? Are Health and Wealth issues? Wellness...some thoughts here on what I consider to be a very important attitude for healthy living. Mind/body/spirit health. 1. Alicia Claire PH.D, MT-BC Professor and Director of Music Therapy at the University of Kansas, "Customarily people have interpreted good health as the absence of illness or disease, but more recently wellness has come to a new meaning: feeling as good as one can feel regardless of diagnosis. This new interpretation...is reflected in a shift from medical professional control and management to an individual's assumed responsibility for "feeling good". It is broadly understood that "being well" results from engagement in activities that lead to and maintain health." From Remo.com 2. Mind-Body-Spirit health, often defined as wellness combines healthy strategies that promote well-being for "a whole person." 3. To a great extent, the lifestyle choices we choose today will certainly be reflected in the future we create one step at a time. For health is not a goal - it is a journey traveled throughout our lifetime. Go to Goals for more on how to achieve those steps. 4. Barry Bittman, M. D. and and Anthony DeFail, authors of Maze of Life say, "It's the way you choose to live your life that counts. Ultimately, it's a matter of choice." 5. Creating a balanced and healthy life. An "attitude" of wellness, which includes diet, exercise, nurturing, social support, spiritual practice, intellectual stimulation, stress reduction, coping skills, and creative expression. 6. Challenge for each of us is finding time for creating a healthy balance. In our fast-paced society is difficult to establish a routine that allows us to blend our wellness choices in a healthy matter. Wellness applies to every aspect of our lives, not just to a lack of illness. The person who makes the biggest impact on your life is you. Life doesn't happen to us - we are life. How life is going to be for us is simply up to us. We have choice. Do we leave our lives up to chance? Or do we use our creativity and choice to develop a healthy life we desire? What does wellness mean to you? Is it a physical problem, are you struggling to overcome something or is forgiveness an issue? Are relationships just not... working.... satisfying... happening... or lasting? What about family concerns? Teen problems? Are you a boomer worried about retirement? Or wanting that future to be better? Are health or disability problems determining your income, and maybe your child's future? Is there a part of you that searching... searching for fulfillment or greater meaning to life? Wellness affects every area of our life, just as stress does. Stress seems to indicate lack in our life. Wellness could well be amed wealth, B>prosperity, or abundance. Too much of my life was spent looking backward, focusing on how it impacted on my present time. Then I learned to look ahead. The hold I had allowed the past have on me began to dissolve as I constructed a protective shield and focused on where I wanted to go. Coming to a point of saying "no more" and standing firm in your acceptance of a wellness mentality will open the doors of a greater future for you, too. When we read the stories of Kim Phunc, Norman Cousins (Stress Success book) and Viktor Frankel the evidence is clear that well-being is not only a lifetime journey, but a matter of choice. Our choice. We can do it.
Lets look at some specific areas you may want to address. *For serious health concerns, please see your doctor. 1. Physical Wellness Many health issues or concerns can be helped with hypnotherapy. (See Uses) The power of your mind is vast. Something as simple as learning to manage stress will have an impact on your health and wellness. Speaking lightly of it as "simple" is done in jest. Stress management is a skill, a series of skills, they require decision-making and implementation. How to clearly set goals plus knowledge is needed to maximize your efforts. Goal setting is also an important factor for smoking, weight, and pain management issues. If you want to, you can do it! 2 Mental Wellness Again, see your doctor for serious concerns. Mental health affects your whole life. Every aspect of daily living. We may pretend (or want to believe) that are depression or addictions are unnoticeable or even undetectable by others. They aren't. And they impact on others. But even if they didn't - it's your life - and you are worth more. You are worth the best life has to offer. The skills of stress management include addressing anxiety issues. Abilities like Thought-Stopping are useful skills. Knowledge of how positive-negative thoughts affect us can increase our understanding of what has been running the show for us. That knowledge gives us the power to change. Specific hypnotherapy programs, such as, self-esteem, anxiety, even pain management and insomnia, can help s make that change. Learning to use visualizations and to re--frame our mental input are valuable skills taught in Self-Hypnosis classes that will be useful throughout your new life of wellness. 4. Emotional Wellness Lack of self-esteem and self-confidence, perhaps head the list of emotional dis-ease. Loneliness and heartache are close behind, and sometimes almost indistinguishable. Certainly those lacks can lead to relationship failures and loneliness, but it works the other way also. We can be down on ourselves after job loss, though the downsizing is an economic issue and not our personal failing. And, don't you sometimes mentally kick yourself for doing or saying something you wish you hadn't. Or not doing something you wish you had. We are hard taskmasters on ourselves - all too often without reason. Just habit. But bad habits become habit forming..next thing we know we have talked yourselves into a corner where we actually believe those negative thoughts. Greater and greater emotional wear and tear is done. The cycle continues. Physical and mental wellness may suffer. None of this is what we want. Life can be better. You can make it better. And you are worth it. Consider your values and beliefs, map out your goals, set your intention and create your plan for better wellness, a brighter future. Learn strength, gain personal power, choose the right. Self-esteem and self-confidence programs and many others can help you to gain or regain your sense of self-worth. This will happen even with fitness and smoking programs. Self hypnosis classes teach skills that empower you and can literally help you create a new, better pathway of your journey to wellness. 5. Spiritual Wellness Deepest loneliness and despair may be the result of not allowing our spiritual side to florish. It has been well said, that we are "not earthly beings inhabiting a spiritual plane, but spiritual beings inhabiting an earthly plane". No matter how we see this part of ourselves, it is as necessary to our wellness as food, water and fresh air. From our birth onward through our teens and well into old age this part of us cries out for sustenance. Katherine Zimmerman of TranceTime.com quotes youth she has worked with who express these needs and feelings. My own experience with children and youth backs this up. What are some ways to develop spiritual wellness? Prayer, scripture study and affiliation with a spiritually based organization are quick immediate answers. Take time also to examine your beliefs and values, to set goals and clarify your intention. Meditation, listening to your "inner wisdom", and study will help develop this personal attribute. Learning to heed that "still small voice" within can be accelerated by learning self hypnosis. As you access your "inner sanctuary", increase your response to intuition and heed your conscious (sense of right or wrong). You will feel yourself pulled toward Truth. Building on this by a conscious effort to live spiritual laws will create spiritual wellness in your daily life. One thing that may surprise you is how pervasive this will become. As you enlarge your spiritual wellness capacity, you will literally hunger and thirst for more. It will have a positive effect on all areas of your wellness. The concept from the Bible of our bodies being temples, the houses of our spirits, is particularly apt. Other scriptures probably state the same idea. This may be a hard concept for a person who despairs of their body or of things that happened to it. But before you turn from this idea ponder on temples. Temples or structures, (like our physical bodies) that are filled with the Holy Spirit. Places of sanctuary, well tended and cared for in every part of them (as we strive to do with mind/body/spirit wellness). They are often places to which we offer our best; no matter how we interpret "our best" - gold, gems, rich fabric, elegant furniture, art, design, light, music or silence. We do not look for flaws (unless to repair or restore them) but honor a sense of perfection (we look for the good). We allow ourselves to put aside negative and worldly thoughts, dress or ideas to feast at a banquet even the humblest of temples has to offer. We glory it. Temples can be some of the world's most beautiful buildings. Or simply without structure as we create a temple within ourselves. Our place of peace and place of power, our inner sanctuary, that once we find, we can return to any time we wish. A Temple to house spirit. That is a great equalizer. The place we find love, banish loneliness, find strength, overcome weakness, but also the place that teaches us love and compassion for all living things, all life. So many needs are met, so many sorrows ease, we quickly learn how much our very beings had been crying out for this food. And, not just us, the very world cries, too. Acknowledge this part of yourself, open yourself up to receiving fulfillment and set your goals. To use the wisdom of hypnotherapy - leave the negative thoughts and feelings of unworthiness behind, simply affirm and reaffirm positively in your mind and heart who you want to be - and walk in the footsteps. Walk the walk. Suddenly, you will find the sun shines brighter. Opportunities, people, thoughts will appear in your path as you open yourself up to and affirm (to yourself, the universe, God, your higher power) your intention to fill your spiritual needs. As you continue to heed the "still small voice" within, you will develop your innate ability to know truth. I will be adding pictures of temples around the world. Please enjoy them and allow yourself to ponder on them that you may enjoy a respite from the world. 5.Financial Wellness Having financial wellness will add greatly to your overall wellness though this area is often ignored. Debt, especially overwhelming debt, can destroy wellness in any other area of your life. People literally can feel suffocated by bills and creditors. What are the options? Spend less? Earn more? Balance the budget? Luck? Or determination? There are options. Some years ago, my medical doctor told me to apply for disability pension. It felt as if my life was over. I am fortunate to live in a country where there are such things as government assistance - but $850 a month? Hardly enough to exist on, even with substantially reducing my already (after divorce and years of illness) low standard of living. I am fortunate to have had help and support from family, friends and church. I'm especially fortunate to have a stubborn streak. I said, "there must be something I can do". So I set out to find something. First, I looked at what I had. My inventory went like this: A home, with a big mortgage.. The Community Care Specialist course I had taken after divorce. A strong faith. Intelligence. Life skills and experience teaching them. A lifelong desire to help others. Some wisdom. A love for working with words. Support and love of family and friends and my three cats. I also had to put down poor health (mental, emoional, physical) due, in part, to two decades of ulcerative colitis, slow recovery from two major surgeries, depression, fibromyalgia that gave me physical weakness, pain, inability to sleep well, to concentrate or even to remember. I was no longer young. I was new to my community and my friends here were all new to me. It wasn't much, but as I look back, I realize I had more than I thought. I appreciated what I did have but often let what I didn't have become overwhelming. It is hard when you're on your own, isn't it? Maybe the best thing I had was that inner voice that kept saying "there must be something I can do"., I decided to add to my training. I couldn't do physical work anymore so I chose more counseling training. I couldn't sit in a classroom or even commit to being there every day. Focus and attention were almost impossible, pain was too much, so I chose a Distance Ed course I could do at my own pace. Within a few months, hearing about hypnotherapy opened up new possibilities. I thought of it then as something I could do to earn money, while I studied my other course. It transformed my life and well-being. (I also saw my doctor regularly and a psychologist for a while..okay, and my friends and the man I eventually married!)) Gone is the pain, gone the depression, gone the handful of pills I took every night. (My doctor is very supportive). Gone are years of negative self talk. All because I kept repeating to myself "there must be something I can do". There were days that was all that kept me going - often I didn't even believe it, I just said it. Now, if wellness issues arise, as they sometimes do, I simply tell myself: "You know what to do about it; go do it". Gradually, courage and hope replaced fear and despair. My health and well-being improved as I listened to more and more hypnotherapy tapes. My Prosperity and Abundance series transformed my belief in myself, while other programs built my health. My study of hypnotherapy has proven to be ongoing. Not a day goes by that I don't learn something. As I have studied to perfect scripts and to address my own needs I have had to walk the walk I wanted to counsel others to do. How lucky I have been! I love my career. I have learned there are alternatives, and you can do it! The future is exciting to me now! If only governments would...but that's another topic. Financial wellness not only gives you a better life, but gives you the ability to make life better for others. Important learnings that I want to pass on: 1. a) Do a personal inventory - examine your beliefs and values, financial situation - consider your assets and strengths - consider your liabilities - are they permanent? - is there a way to turn them around b) Learn more. Read. Study. Ask for help. Listen. Pray and have faith. Listen some more. Open yourself up. Every day. c) Set goals - short-term - long-term d) Set your intention - I want to be... have... - I will - The person I want to be is... e) Act 2. Options - do I spend less or earn more? - should I quit my job and seek a better? - work out or work at home? - do I give up or go on? - how do I get rid of debts? Look at the financial wellness options on the Prosperity page. There are options. Just don't give up. If I can do it, so can you. This is a fantastic world; you can create a NEW reality.
I will be adding some very helpful links.
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