Jul 18 2013

What Does Work Have to Do With Health?

stress-and-sleepWhat Does Work Have to Do With Health? – Vol. 208, July 18, 2013

For many years I held jobs that I disliked. Some of them I hated. In the beginning these terrible jobs required an hour and a half commute each way, on the subway system.  All the while working in offices, getting dressed in suits and nylons that itched me every day just to look “the part.” I was doing secretarial and reception work in those days at companies that I didn’t care about. Most of them were temporary positions not even earning enough to pay the basic bills. I had to ask myself why it was that I was doing these jobs? The tedium of moving papers from one place to another seemed like a total waste of time. This work was boring and uninteresting. I made it a decision to figure out what I wanted to do with my life – something that was of interest to me because I found it fun and exciting to do. Something that would allow me to travel and do challenging and worthwhile activities that happened to pay me for the time I invested in doing them.

It turns out this was an excellent course of action because Americans are literally killing themselves with overwork. Lissa Rankin, MD speaks of this in her blog http://lissarankin.com today.

The bottom line is that prolonged stress creates all sorts of toxic responses in your body  and if it goes on long enough, one can actually die of a heart attack from this situation. It is most likely caused by the constant triggering of the “fight-or-flight” stress response activating the sympathetic nervous system, raising blood pressure and heart rate, resulting in over stressing the cardiovascular system.

If you are feeling burnt out, a study in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine reported a 79% developed coronary disease than those who liked their jobs and this was in 2000. I could only imagine the numbers going up in the work situations of today.

If you are feeling stressed by your job because of the long hours, difficult relationships with your coworkers and/or bosses while feeling like you have little to no control in your job, it would be good for your health to think about changing jobs.

I have many clients who come to see me who have complained bitterly about their work situations, especially now with the amount of layoffs going on forcing people to do the work of multiple people. I have also heard many complaints of co-workers being lazy, and bosses unwilling to constructively deal with those who are unwilling to do their fair share. This while layoffs are happening to more productive individuals in departments that are no longer pulling in the requisite amount of income to warrant their existence.

Recently I had one client who was getting so sick from the physical strain of her particular job and the mental agitation of being in a negative atmosphere that she worked to find a lateral position in her company under a different manager. So far she is as happy as can be. Her new manager listens to her concerns and lets her know her contributions are much appreciated. There is much less physical labor involved allowing her a much healthier place to work.

I have another client who is in a situation where she is in a contract position that has taught her much, yet is thinking that there are other places that she would like to be employed. She is in a transition though and thinking through moving from corporate work to non-profit work doing something that is a bit more in line with her values. She realizes that she will need to build on some new skills and is looking forward to doing so.

I have had another client whose government contract ended and he ended up starting his own consulting business and is dong great. He even managed to lose 75 pounds in the process being much happier in his new life.

There are all sorts of ways to give yourself the permission needed to leave a potentially deadly situation to find something that is more workable for yourself. In the mean time:

1) Do what you can to relax. Learn meditation or self-hypnosis techniques to calm your self.

2) Eat better foods

3) By all means turn off that depressing news and find yourself more positive people to be with.

4) Get out and enjoy the nice weather by taking walks or riding your bike. Get out into nature and enjoy the fresh air.

We all need to take the time to give our bodies what they truly need to take good care of us. Anything less is destroying the body that is your temple.

 

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Jul 11 2013

Happiness Is The Key To Success & You Deserve it

Hanh Dung xinhHappiness Is The Key To Success & You Deserve it – Vol. 207, July 11, 2013

Recently I had the opportunity to hear Marcy Shimoff, author of Happy For No Reason, do a talk on the “5 Keys to Happiness” which I know you will find quite compelling. The first thing that you ought to know about happiness is that there are four benefits that you probably haven’t thought of to being happy. Here they are:

1. Happiness is the key to “success”: The happier we are the more success we have by raising our energetic vibration. The short cut to anything that you want in your life is to “be happy now.” It’s the fastest way to bring money or anything that you want into your life according to Rhonda Burn, creator of “The Secret”.

2. Health: People who are happy are healthier being one-third as likely to get sick.

3. Longevity: Happier people live on average 7 years longer based on a study of nuns.

4.. Money: Happy people earned $750,000 more over one’s life time than unhappy people.

We all have a happiness “set point” – similar to a weight set point. For the happiness set point it doesn’t matter what happens on the outside. For example paraplegics have within a year returned to their natural happiness levels. So the question is how do you increase your happiness set point?

Well, considering Bruce Lipton’s work you can change the 50% that is genetic and 40% that is based on your thoughts and events in your life simply by changing your thoughts and beliefs. Isn’t it interesting that most of us waste most of our efforts on the mere 10% that is based on changing our circumstances? So here are the 5 ways that you can increase your happiness so you too can enjoy the benefits listed above from Marci Shimoff’s research.

1. Don’t believe everything that you think. This is real important because our thoughts are habituated and 80% of our thoughts are negative. So get out of your head and into your heart. Focus on the things that you can do and excel at with all your heart and soul. Power comes from working from our hearts. Most successful executives keep a list of the positive things that happen to them every day. You can also use meditation, self-hypnosis or EFT to help you to shift your limiting beliefs and rid yourself of negative thoughts.

2.The Power of the Heart. People who are happy let their heart lead, not their mind. Do this by:

A) Telling the people around you how much you appreciate them and what specifically you most appreciate about them.

B) Set achievable goals giving acknowledgment for achieving those goals. If goals  are not achieved, do nothing. Positive reinforcement works. The other person feels better, which makes you feel better.

C) Silently wishing other people well. “May you be safe, happy, healthy and live in   peace.” This practice allowed a wheel chair bound lupus sufferer to get out of the  chair and into a healthy productive life.

3) Living your purpose or passion with vision. Your heart is the way to figuring out what your passion and purpose is in life. Only you know in your heart what you are here for. To find the answer, fill in the blank below:

A) In my ideal life I am_________. Fill this in for yourself five or six times to get to the essence of what you are in your ideal life.

B) Next visualize your success. Every Olympic athlete knows that success comes from imagining the best execution of their skills. Somehow few of us spend the start of our day visualizing our best day. The same neurons fire in the brain as if you are actually doing the activity which is why having a vision board works to bring in want you want to accomplish in life. When you think of your intentions think about how they can serve other people, other than just yourself.

4) Our relationships: We become the average of the five people we associate with the most. Are they peoples’ whose emotions you want to catch, because you will. Sam Walton on his deathbed said he blew it. He spent so much time going for success and money while ignoring his relationships, which he admitted was all that mattered.

5) Plugging yourself into spirit. People who are happiest felt they were connected to a universal power source. It didn’t matter what they called it – it was something that was bigger than themselves. We all have an internal guidance system. We have the channel of expansion where we are coming from our soul. We also have the channel of contraction where we are coming from our ego. Come from your soul and you will feel happy. People who believe that the universe is a happy place were happiest. If unhappy things happened, these people would look at it as the gift of the lesson to be learned and then moved on.

An extra key to happiness:

6)  By all means keep your sense of humor. Every time we are laughing we are kept in the moment which will keep us in a happy place.

So if you have an intention which you put your thoughts and actions into, and then let go of how and when the results come to you, you will find yourself a very happy person.

Marci states, “That when people are happy for no reason, they don’t look to their circumstances to extract happiness, they look to their happiness to bring to their life circumstances. You see the world through how you feel. The way you feel is how you view your world.”

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Jul 04 2013

Is Your Health Care As Important as Your SUV? Vol. 108 July 7, 2011

By Donna N.

Why is it, it seems that everyone wants something for nothing these days; just look at the casinos or the Lottery for that matter. People are buying scratch tickets or feeding slot machines over and over again expecting more money out than they put in. We tend to skimp when we shouldn’t only to find we should have spent for the best available, especially if the best available is proven to work. For example we spend a lot of money on our electronic gadgets: big screen TV’s, smart phones, and SUV’s with all the bells and whistles yet, when it comes to our health we tend to try to save a little, often only to spend more in the long run.

Why is it when it comes to less dramatic situations concerning our health, we feel the need to shop around for the cheapest cost worse, don’t purchase the needed item or put off the procedure? We want to lose weight for example, but hesitate in joining a good gym due to the cost. We also want to eat healthier however, we don’t buy organic foods because it costs more, yet we are willing to spend $10 for a pack of cigarettes. We are worried about the radiation from Japan contaminating our food supply yet, we continue to bake in the sun without sunscreen UV protection.

Even when it comes to having cosmetic elective surgery people put themselves at greater risk then they need to, to look better, or so they thought when they decided to undergo it. I’ve seen what happens when people took a cheaper way out with cheap doctors. They actually can die.
“Four people have died after cosmetic surgery performed by doctors at a Strax
Rejuvenation & Aesthetics Institute since 2008 — more than at any other physician
office in Florida.” Dr. Paul Wigoda tells patients to beware of discount plastic surgery centers that have a high turnover of doctors and history of deaths. Research and safety should be top priority when choosing a plastic surgeon.

Not getting a grip on that bulging waistline leads to diabetes if not controlled. Not tackling that nicotine addiction can lead to asthma, emphysema, lung cancer and ultimately death. If I was going to have open heart surgery I would want to go to a surgeon who has done this procedure successfully before, not to a surgeon who saves money on second hand equipment. To do this I need to be prepared to pay for what I want, and that is the best for my mind and body because my health is priceless, unlike my cell phone, TV or SUV.
It is also true that if something is worth investing in, especially oneself, than one really should not be considering money as a limiting factor. When I was dealing with my issue of addiction, I realized that without appropriate help, my life was at risk. After doing appropriate research I made the decision to invest in myself. I spent the amount of time and money it required and am now drug free, without even a thought of going back to that life. I did whatever it took to get myself the best care possible. I didn’t even hesitate to say it costs to much, much less think in those terms. Services and items generally cost what they reflect, that is to say if a person has a service that is proven, reliable and successful – he or she is going to charge more than a person that is not as successful.
Research and safety is a top priority when choosing any type of health care provider that is going to work on my body or mind. I rely on other peoples’ testimonials and make my decision on facts before I choose a provider. Once I make my decision, I commit to the provider’s treatment. What I mean by that is that when one signs up for a program or a series of treatment, one needs to be prepared to commit to the treatment plan 110%. The reason being that it is so tempting to quit part way through for several reasons. For example the average person 9 times out of 10 does not finish a course of antibiotics for an infection. People start to feel better and they figure even though the doctor’s orders are to finish the 10 day supply of antibiotic, they stop at day 6 or when they feel better figuring they no longer need the pills. What they don’t realize is they are creating a stronger and more virulent strain of bacteria when they are infected again. It is not as easily treated the second time. This is the main reason we have so many super bugs that are no longer easily treated requiring stronger antibiotics designed to get rid of the same infection that once was so easy to eradicate. Because it was treated partially, it went away temporarily only to come back in a stronger mutated form. One reason why drug addicts become addicted in a stronger way is that they try to quit over and over only to go back to it with an even stronger addiction. Diseases of the mind do this in such a way that often the person experiencing the illness does not realize that they are getting sicker.
Diseases of the mind can be so subtle that sometimes the individual that is going through the difficult time cannot see the illness. They sometimes don’t even realize that they are not thinking clearly due to unresolved anger and/or depressed feelings. For example, they will start a treatment program and quit part way through, feeling they can handle things when in fact they cannot. There is a reason it is called a “treatment plan” or “program.” Unless it is completed in its totality one cannot expect 100% success resolving the issues that first brought them into the program. During the work they may even experience worse symptoms than when they started. However, once the problems are treated there is no question that doing the work involved in the treatment was worthwhile. For me, there were many times when I found it difficult to do the homework Suzanne gave me. It meant confronting people in a manner I was not used to and didn’t know I could. There were times I got angry with her for forcing me to do this stuff, and yet, once it was done, my life was my own, now that I was clear with others about what it was that I was willing deal with and that which I wasn’t. Only through going through the entire program did I receive the tools that I needed to stay clean and off antidepressants for over a year and a half now, while creating much healthier relationships in the process.

Then there is that little thing called integrity. If a person has the good fortune to pay the provider of their treatment in installments, they need to follow through with the commitment especially if they sign a contract be it written or even verbal. This is why it is often good if the provider requires the full payment at the first visit. The client is more apt to complete the program having paid for it already. And, sometimes that is what it takes, knowing you are going to waste a certain amount of money if you quit. So you continue, get over the difficult part and come through a happier and healed individual.

So, is your SUV more important than your health? Look at the choices that you are making and perhaps you may want to rethink your choices.

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Jul 04 2013

Dignity Versus Disability

humanity. love. respect.Dignity Versus Disability – Vol. 206, July 4, 2013

I attended a very eye opening lecture at Lesley University given by Donna Hicks, Ph.D. who earns her living helping to resolve conflict in the embattled areas of the globe. Her lecture was on the importance of first treating others with dignity. Dignity she explains is something we are all born with and so is to be granted regardless of any differences we may have with another. When our dignity is taken away, this is when we fight back to give our selves the self-worth that is being yanked out from under us. When we are treated with dignity, trust can be gained and then useful understandings can be had where resolutions can be formed. This is the basis of all the negotiations she partakes in on the global level.

This idea of dignity is important as we look at how it is that we interact with people who have to deal in a world of being seen as “disabled.” Let me begin by telling a little bit of a story here.

Years ago, I was having a relaxed dinner with a friend of mine when we were talking about the effects my upcoming divorce was going to have on my life. Being a person who was himself once married to a disabled woman, he soothingly suggested that I use my mental health “diagnosis” to get disability payments.

It was during a more recent phone discussion that another friend of mine would suggest that I use my credential as a “diagnosed” mental health patient as a way to gain social security income since my finances were not in the best order.

Both of the friends mentioned above help others. One does so working with the mentally disabled and the other as a financial advisor, and yet all they could do was focus on what was long ago found to be supposedly “wrong” with me, my “disability.” This instead of working from the point of view of what I had to offer others using my own skills and talents, my “abilities.” In so doing their solutions would have taken my dignity away. I am not interested in going on disability for any reason. I don’t see myself as disabled in any way. Any social security official would have laughed at my case rightfully so given my lack of working with a mental health professional for almost a decade now. My own situation was more about learning effective sales and marketing techniques for my business, and had nothing what so ever to do with my past history and yet, there was a very reasonable explanation for the reliance on disability to come to the fore.

Unfortunately our country is based on the idea that those who have some reason to call themselves “disabled” are able to be granted a basic level of life on the heels of the gainfully employed, to the detriment of all involved. It is a sick and expensive notion to be sure.

A very brave gentleman, James W. Macartney wrote a book right before he died called “Crisis to Creation.” He was a man who had to overcome his own crisis to create a new life for himself based on what he could do after a seizure left him unable to do the work he once did. He worked as a therapist and rehabilitation counselor with people whose lives were turned upside down by war, accidents and seemingly fatal illnesses. His thesis is that our whole system of rehabilitation is one of creating a dependence on the doctors to heal us. When they can’t see a way to our healing they tell us to deal with the practical reality of what medical science can do. In some cases it means living in pain, in other cases it means bodies losing function sometimes till death. With these messages the dignity of the disabled is taken away left to live without any hope for anything better. These patients give up.

Other doctors helped their patients to understand that it was in the patient’s control to discern how to best move forward, giving the dignity back to them. In so doing many of these patients lived far longer than thought to be possible having found a new meaning for themselves in the lives they were living.

Mr. Maccartney was able to perceive a strategy of healing through his transcending his own crisis along with the research he did of others. He found that if a person is able to deal with the crises by navigating through the chaos the lost abilities bring, that person was able to create a new life based on the abilities still in tact. This was best accomplished when the newly disabled person was allowed to let go of the past life. Then using the abilities still in tact, new possibilities for living life were discovered. The beautiful outcome in these cases was creating new life based on a deeper understanding of what truly mattered in life. Life was no longer about accumulating those emotionally empty representations of success in our society. Instead life became about how to bring love and care to the greater world, thus bringing fulfillment to the person. The healed person transcended the self opening up to the possibilities of engaging in the world at large.

I have certainly found this whole notion of returning dignity to my clients to be life giving for those who were willing to let go of the issues that made life so miserable. Taking this idea of dignity full circle, indeed by the conclusion of Dr. Hicks lecture it was determined that dignity equals love and we know that love heals all.

 

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Jun 28 2013

Need Motivation in Pursuit of a Higher Certification?

Vol. 71, December 2008- Need Motivation in Pursuit of a Higher Certification?

Many times as we continue through life there are times when it becomes evident that it could be helpful to go for a higher level of certification in order to better do our jobs, move up to a higher level or perhaps even change our careers. In so doing there are many things that are required of us in becoming successful. It is one thing to attend classes and read material. It is quite another to be able to retain that material and pass the required test in order to gain the new certifications. This becomes even more difficult if you have a job to do already. Add a family to the equation and one wonders how anyone gets through it, but many do. Continue reading

Jun 28 2013

Trouble Losing Weight: 9 Triggers to Fat Gain and How To Stop Them

Trouble Losing Weight: 9 Triggers to Fat Gain and How To Stop Them – Vol. 206, June 27, 2013

Jon Gabriel of the Gabriel Code is the one person who magnificently put together a simple list of all of the complexities of weight loss that I have echoed over the past 11 years I have been involved in the world of hypnotism. Jon Gabriel has put together a simple to understand list of 9 fat triggers and what we can do to overcome them. He took off 220 pounds and kept it off for 2 ½ years with life style changes. It isn’t all in your head and it isn’t all in your genetics. It has everything to do with your biochemistry and the body-mind connection.

1. Chronic Dieting
Decreasing the amount of food you take in puts you into “starvation mode” which creates many cravings for junk food. Melbourne University research shows that cutting down calories produces 20% more of the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin forcing you to overeat after the diet ends. This is what makes people put on more weight then than what they had before they started the diet.

2. Lifestyle Stress
Stress causes fat regardless if it is from your job or personal life bombarding you with emotional, physical or mental or subconscious stress, your body reacts to it in the same way releasing a chemical called cortisol into your body causing you to gain weight. This activates the “fat trigger” to keep us alive. Todays constant stressors don’t allow our body to normalize because it can’t tell the difference between a life-or-death situation any longer.

3. Emotional Trauma
If you are not careful your thoughts can turn to fat. Self-defeating emotions, like powerlessness, insecurity, and not being able to say “no” to people result in stress which causes the release of cortisol, which as mentioned above triggers fat to be formed.

4. Inadequate Nutrition
Inadequate nutrition causes insulin resistance impairing your digestion pushing your body into nutritional famine. When your body is lacking the appropriate nutrition to carry on its normal functioning, your body will continue to tell you to feed it till you give it the appropriate nutrition to satisfy its needs. Insulin resistance causes extreme highs and lows in your blood sugar levels giving you strong sugar cravings and hunger pangs more often than if your sugar levels were stable.
The three main nutrients missing are:
Omega-3 fatty acids
Protein
Live foods

5. Poor Digestion
If the food you put into your body isn’t digested correctly giving you incomplete nutrition you will be under-nourished, dehydrated and lacking in friendly bacteria and digestive enzymes. This is due to the over processed and highly cooked foods we consume. The lack of nutrition puts you into fat storage mode.
This can be serious causing not only obesity but diabetes, and heart disease.

6. Toxicity
Your body is exposed to toxins every day making you fat. If you live in a city you are exposed to many more toxins in your environment. Toxins come from medication, alcohol, tobacco products, and pesticides found in non-organic produce and manufactured grain products. When you body can’t eliminate these toxins your body stores them in your fat cells. The layer of fat then becomes a buffer between the toxins and your body. This is why weight loss in some people creates illness.

7.  Limiting Beliefs
One of the most common limiting beliefs is thinking that because you have an overweight family member that it runs in your family’s genetics. When you think this way you are eliminating personal responsibility while rejecting the possibility of becoming a thinner person.

Some people believe that they are unworthy of being thin because diets and exercise never worked for them.

Your beliefs are your reality so if you don’t believe you can lose the weight on the conscious and unconscious levels you will not.

8. Harmful Medications
Studies have shown that there are over 50 common medications that make people gain weight including: antidepressants, insulin, cortisol, steroids, hormone replacement, and birth control pills. Sometimes ;you can gain up to 10 pounds a month according to the research that Mr. Gabriel has done.

If you make positive changes in your life style like meditating, doing self-hypnosis, adapting mind-body practices, getting a bit more activity in every day, eating nutritious life giving foods, and by all means reducing the stressors in your life no matter where they come from, you can most likely dump the drugs while becoming healthier in the process.

9. Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea disturbs your sleep as you stop breathing sometimes hundreds of times during the night. Your body is left starving for oxygen. Exhaustion is the end result which not only puts you in a bad mood, but triggers fat production in your body.
Lack of sleep also lowers the production of leptin a chemical which keeps you from feeling satiated after you eat while increasing the amount of ghrelin – your appetite-stimulating hormone forcing you to over eat.

Now you can better understand why the methods that the diet doctors preach don’t work. It isn’t about eating in a certain manner or undergoing some invasive surgical procedure such as liposuction, gastric bypass surgery or getting a lap band and all will be great in your life.These methods don’t work in the long term because weight loss is a much more complex matter than merely what and how much one eats and if or how one exercises. I give you this information because there are many hypnotists out there as well who would like you to think that changing your habits or just releasing your old stories will do the job as well. This is a step in the right direction, but far from a complete understanding of what it really takes to rectify this huge problem.

 

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Jun 20 2013

Let Us Set The Monkeys Free – Become “Recovered” – Vol.90 July, 2010 –

Written by Donna N.

At a recent conference on addictions that Suzanne and I attended, I noticed that all of the prominent speakers that had substance abuse issues acknowledged that they had  referred to themselves as “in recovery”. My question to you is: would you rather be “in recovery” or “recovered”? My question to the prominent speakers is: Are they truly free of addiction??

Personally having been in recovery and now recovered, I can honestly say that I prefer being “recovered”.

When I was in recovery, I was still considered an addict with all the “addict” behavior associated with the label, however I was not using or abusing drugs. I went to meetings and was identifying as an “addict”, albeit in recovery. This only sent the damaging message to my unconscious mind that I was still an addict with an addiction problem. Having sent this message to my unconscious mind each time I went to a twelve step meeting and hearing others identify as addicts in recovery at these meetings convinced me that I was indeed an “addict” which did give me the unconscious excuses I believe for my addict behaviors. Continue reading

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