Your Health and the Economy - 8 Things You Can Do To Stimulate Them Both

Our President is working hard to make an impact that will stimulate the economy and get this country back on it's feet. He tells us in his speeches that it's time to act responsibly and that we need to change our habits. Every time I listen to him speak I can immediately relate his message to the same message that I write and speak about. It takes the same thought process to change one's habits to stimulate muscle if you want to be lean and fit. After all, isn't health and fitness about taking responsibility for our lives? You bet it is! So at this trying time in our nation's history, I think we should also make an effort to take responsibility for our health.

Got stress?

Yeah, me too. If you find yourself indulging your senses with food or alcohol or anything else that creates a temporary escape, then you are simply avoiding and prolonging making positive changes. You are moving away from improving your life and your health. That's not good, and it's probably just making you feel worse in the long run. Look, I'm not going to paint you a rosy picture and tell you this is easy and that everything is going to be all right. What I can tell you is this. If you want a healthier life...live and be healthy. If you want a happier life...live and be happy.

The quote for the day:

"There's no way to happiness. Happiness is the way." ~Buddha

You can substitute health or wealth or anything in place of happiness for that matter. It gets down to three very simple and repetitive tasks that we all do, all day long.

The three things that we do are:

What we think about - thoughts
The choices we make - feelings
What we do as a result - actions

Now that sounds really simple. On a conscious level it is. But most of the time we are on auto-pilot. We go through the motions thinking the way we think and doing things the way "we do" them. Because that is who "we are". But all of a sudden we realize that we are over weight, malnourished, we see the bags under our eyes, we've got a rash, our teeth are yellow or coffee stained, our hair is dull, our nails are brittle. Sounds attractive, doesn't it? Well, it doesn't have to be this way.

Think about how we start each day. There's an opportunity to have your day go down hill right from the get-go. If you have a big mirror and you don't like what you see in your reflection, your mental state has just been affected. Heaven forbid you decide to step on the bathroom scale. If you don't like the number you see, you've just registered another whammy. Now let's suppose you take a shower and than get dressed. You either like the way your clothes fit or you don't. If you don't, strike three, you've just started your day off with three negative emotional experiences that could send you to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast!

So getting back to my point. The word for the day is "stimulus". What controls your actions is your thoughts. Pay more attention to what you pay attention to!

Here's a few suggestions.

• Watch less news. It's mostly negative
• Read the comics, not the obituaries
• Take a hot bath before going to bed to relax you
• Avoid quarreling, especially with your spouse and kids
• Take an afternoon 20 min power nap (more on this later)
• Go to bed fifteen minutes earlier than you do now
• Get up fifteen minutes earlier than you do now
• Read before bed, but no TV

In short, replace negative stimuli with positive stimuli. Think about what you are doing the moment you are doing it. Ask yourself, is this a bad habit? If you can find a way to catch yourself in the act of the things that you do that don't support you and then change your thoughts about that very moment, you are well on your way to changing the world. And the world is you!

Press on!