Attitudes for Outrageous Health and Obnoxious Longevity (Part One)

Hey! Aren’t I a food guy, a Diet Transformation Coach? What sort of non-foody post is this? Oh, the madness! ‘Tis anarchy!

Sorry. My bad.

But I’m digressing from food (for just 2 little blog posts!) to talk about the emotional piece of uber health. Because it’s so humungous. Ginormous. And other made-up words. So without further ado, here is PART ONE of the attitudes for massive health:

1) Know your innocence. Deep feelings of guilt make people sick. As kids, we interpreted any and all signs of unlove from our primary caretakers as being “our fault.” The child’s mind says: “I must be bad or they wouldn’t treat me this way.” Such beliefs can be brought into the sunlight of awareness and healed. Resources: Books by Bernie Seigel, A Course In Miracles (and books inspired by it, like Goodbye To Guilt).

2) Forgive. Old resentments and anger also make people sick. Forgiveness is a profound process to enter into. It typically can’t be done quickly, just because it “sounds like a good idea.” For forgiveness to be deep and life-changing, people usually must first move through the old, unfelt, painful emotions—anger and grief—about what happened to us. THEN we can move into true forgiveness. One good book is Forgiving the Unforgivable.

3) Heal Your Shame. America has been called a “shame-based culture.” Shame is different from guilt. Guilt says, “I deserve punishment for something, or things, I DID (even if I can’t remember or imagine what they could be.)” Shame says, “Who I AM is bad and uniquely flawed.” For working with shame, two fine books are: Healing the Shame That Binds You, by John Bradshaw, and There Is Nothing Wrong With You, by Cheri Huber.

4) Relationships. Give and receive love, care, affection, energy and attention. Engage and participate in peoples’ lives. Really “show up” for the people around you with full presence. Commit yourself to your friends’ lives. Strong social connection has been shown in numerous studies to be VERY highly correlated with great health and longevity. Check out Healthy At 100.

5) Purpose. Have a mission. Locate and feed your passion, whatever gives your life meaning. Check out The Power of Purpose. If you don’t have one, make one up and throw yourself into it.

6) Trust. This means letting go of worry! Chronic worry keeps the stress hormones (especially cortisol) coursing through our blood, and that tears us apart, wipes out DHEA (the youth hormone) and ages us QUICK. It’s possible to learn to take a step back and see worry as just a chronic habit, one that doesn’t actually have ANYTHING to do with what it appears to be about on any given day. Also, spirituality can give one a gut-level trust in an infinitely vaster Reality, and that trust is the supreme antidote to worry. A decent book is The Worry Cure. A cooler one is The Secret of Letting Go, by Guy Finley.

7) Slowness. Learn a new inner-asana, or posture, of NEVER being in a hurry “toward” anything, for any reason. Cultivate this by getting in touch with the dimension of yourself that knows that you and your life are ALREADY utterly whole and complete and magnificent right now, in this boundless present moment (“If you’re not whole withOUT it, you’re not whole WITH it”). There’s nowhere to get to. A good book: Slowing Down To the Speed of Life

The great Bernard Jensen said: “You’ll never be well until you get a quiet body, until you get a silent body, until you get a slow body. The busy body kills himself. He’s making the acids in his body.”

And Deepak Chopra said: “If the observation you’re making is, ‘I’m running out of time,’ then you actually start to run out of time! Even your biological clock speeds up!”

And Peter Ragnar: “Time pressure destroys the nervous system.”

Stay tuned for PART TWO!