Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Change Your Brain Change Your Life

By Kenneth L. Johnson


Many people are dissatisfied with their lives. They realize that things need to change but they often do not know what to do. Follow these six tips to get started making your life better than it has ever been.Get rid of the clutter.As the years pass by we tend to accumulate items that we no longer need. These may be items that were given to us as gifts or things we thought we needed but have only used once or twice and no longer use. They are just taking up space and perhaps even getting in your way every day.Get rid of them. Clear them out. Plan on the time to pull them out of the closet or the garage or attic and go through them. Keep only what you need for your immediate use, such as today or next week. If you will not need or use them in a couple weeks, set them aside and create a pile of items you will give away to others or sell.

Go through your closets and discard clothing you have not worn in the past year - it might not even fit you now. Consider how many shoes a person really needs. Most people do not really need more than three or four pairs of shoes. Discard that which you do not need and make room for something else - you'll feel better if you do.Similarly, go through your refrigerator. When's the last time you cleaned that out? Do you really need to keep that near empty bottle of Soy sauce considering you haven't eaten Chinese food in more than a year? Toss it out! Make room in your refrigerator; make room in your life. You will feel better afterwards.

There's increasing evidence that training attention with the right kind of attitude has many benefits. Much of the scientific work has been done on depression. People who attend a course for eight weeks, going to a weekly two hour class and doing around half an hour each day over the duration of the course, works at least as well as taking antidepressants. The effects are long lasting and can be seen in changes in the brain and continuing the habit has even greater benefits.

Yes, exercise. The human body is connected to the human mind and the two are inseparable. One affects the other and it is necessary that we take care of each of them.Many people do not exercise because they do not like to sweat. We can still exercise without sweating.Begin getting fit slowly. There is no need to go all-out from the beginning and that is not recommended anyway. Begin by taking a slow walk through the neighborhood or go to a large shopping mall and just stroll through it. Take your time - there is no hurry.Over time begin walking a bit quicker. Stay comfortable; don't hurt yourself, but walk. Begin working your body a little bit more each day. Walk a few feet further today than you did yesterday. Walk it a bit faster and begin getting that heart pumping, get that blood flowing.

What the information in this book adds to my practice is a holistic perspective that includes making referrals and recommending information on medication, nutrition, exercise, social interactions, behavior changes, along with the talk therapies and other treatments I offer as a mental health counselor. Dr. Amen states he is one of very few psychiatrists that offer these types of brain scans and consultation on mental health problems. They are also rather expensive. He states the purpose of the book is not for everyone to go out and get their brains scanned but to explain a wide variety of human behaviors in terms of the images that SPECT provides and show they can be treated on a medical model as well as the traditional psychological and social models (Amen, 15).

This can have a profound effect on all kinds of different areas of our life because so many of our problems result from the way we get trapped in patterns of thinking and behavior. Developing a regular practice of mindfulness exercises helps us to see the patterns that drive us more clearly and enables us to pay more attention to what is actually going on for us. This makes changing things much easier. We're not using our will power to change the way we behave; with mindfulness we can discover what it is we really want to do and do it naturally. Mindfulness exercises help us to really get to know ourselves better, as if we were an old friend and that makes it much easier to do what's in our own best interests without being self critical.Most people nowadays are always in a depressed state of mind due to the pressures of life. Doctors and counselors constantly advise you to think positively in order to set back depression. However, it is tougher to do than to say.Studies show that people who accept defeat sportingly are the happier type of people and they have an optimistic attitude towards life.

Although you may not want to, make a list of the bad things that have happened in your life too. Consider what caused those things to happen and how you can avoid that happening again.In this hurried world many people do not get enough sleep. Our jobs may require more and more of our time, traffic prevents us from getting home in a timely manner, people make small demands on your time which add up to several hours, children act up and take up more of your time (but you should be thankful for your children - they are blessings!), there are many causes for why we do not 'hit the sack' when we know we should.And when we awake we are not rested. We may have been thinking and dreaming about problems at work or in our personal lives, some may suffer sleep apnea, while outside sources such as loud parties next door or noisy neighbors or the couple in the next apartment who screamed at each other all night may have interrupted our sleep several times through the night.

A body that is not rested means a mind that is not rested. It makes for a very difficult day, so do your best to get enough sleep.Set a certain time to go to bed and stick to it. Your body needs a 'pattern'; it needs to do certain things at the very same time each day.If you make time for 'you' and get to sleep at the same time each night, exercise every day and do what you can to eliminate external influences in our life so you can get quality sleep, you will awake rested and ready to go.You will feel much better and your life will go much better in return.Skyscrapers are never built unless a plan has been prepared first. Your life is no different. A plan will help you set goals and goals are important. If you don't know where you are going you could end up going where you never wanted to go, so make a plan.There are short-term plans as well as long-term plans and you should make both.Begin with a short-term plan. What do you want to do tomorrow? Where do you want to go and how will you get there? What do you want to accomplish while you are there and why? Making such a plan will give you cause to think about things you have not considered? What do you want to do next week? Make a plan for the entire week, not just one day of the week.What about next month? What do you want to accomplish next month? Having a better idea will help you make the time to do that and you will begin to make better use of your time.Work your way up to a one-year plan. Where do you want to be one year from today? Why do you want to be there? How will you get there? The answer is one day at a time.



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