Habit: the best of servants and the worst of masters.
Spring is a time of returning energy, lifting of spirits. It is the perfect time to reflect the positive renewal energy budding forth and rejuvenate yourself. Lose those extra pounds, cut out unnecessary drinking and smoking and develop more rewarding behaviors like deepening your relationships with your spouse, family, and friends.
Sure, January 1st is the conventional time for resolutions – but, as you and I both know, they usually don’t work. Why? Because in the dead of winter, surrounded by leafless trees and overcast skies our spirits tend to be at lowest ebb. We know exercise would be best to ward off these drab feelings, but even our desire to energize in that way is blocked by the crummy weather.
Ah, but now, as the world thaws, the sun-splashed daffodils dance in warm breezes, and the sound of nesting birds fill the air, all things begin to seem possible. Come on! Choose just one harmful behavior that you want to exchange for a wise response pattern. Your thoughts, emotions, and attitude all affect behaviors as well as things you say or do: Which would you like to change?
Empower Your Creative Imagination
First we make our habits – then our habits make us.
Think about what you love about Spring: joy, happiness, power, spiritual renewal, love… Relax deeply, empty your mind of distractions, and focus intently on the emotional quality of this magical season. Take the time to really feel. Take a walk – check out the tulips; you will feel it!
Now, while you are feeling inspired, strong, and open to change behaviors, remember the negative behavior you have had in the past, be aware that it is not a permanent part of you, that you can live very well without it, and it is possible to remove it permanently. Now, in your mind, replace that harmful behavior with what you want.
Concentrate, picture it in your mind. Imagine the same inner feeling of joy, happiness, power, and love that Spring brings about each year. Reflect that joy, happiness, power and love linked to this new behavior. Your unconscious is very goal-oriented and this sets that goal and provides the emotional motivation.
Finally, visualize yourself taking the steps that will bring about these changes. If you want to change eating patterns, visualize yourself eating very slowly, with full mindfulness of each bite, deeply enjoying, and feeling satisfied with a small portion. Or you might imagine yourself proudly refusing that second drink or that cigarette, and focus your intention on something positive and life-affirming.
Practice this routine for 5 minutes twice a day and witness your own magical transformation.
Remember, as Mark Twain reminded us, “Bad habits cannot just be thrown out the window
but gently coaxed down the stairs step by step and then out the door.”
About Author:
Emmett Miller MD is a Nevada City/Los Altos psychotherapist and mind-body physician who has guided thousands to behavioral transformation.
Dr.Miller discusses the healing process with Dr.Rossman and how it is directly connected and aided by the practice of deep relaxation and surrendering into the moment.
Q. There are so many “alternatives” in alternative health. How do I know what choices are healthy for me — what foods to eat, pills to take, books to read? WHERE DO I BEGIN?
A. It’s an individual matter. Everyone is different. Diseases don’t make choices, people do. The primary goal of the excellent physician, healer, or health practitioner is to serve the person — to enhance, enrich and empower them by all available means. So if you are choosing a healer, find one that treats you as a patient, not a disease.
If you go to a herbalist you will get herbs; if you go to a nutritionist, a diet. The chiropractor will adjust you, and the acupuncturist will try needles. So you must be in contact with your inner wisdom, before you decide which path to take, and which advice to follow. The first step in any treatment should be to put yourself in touch with your own inner wisdom — the Wise Self, the most mature, intelligent, experienced “adult” part of you.
When this Wise Self is contacted and empowered, it can help you make such decisions very effectively. The person who drinks too much alcohol yet takes another drink, the smoker who knows that cigarettes aren’t good for her lungs but opens another pack anyway, the sedentary office-worker who is not getting a sufficient number of workout hours, the overweight person who can’t resist dessert or a second helping–each of these are situations where the ability to contact and listen to a powerful Wise Self would have enormous effects upon health, relationships, self-image, self-esteem and performance.
When temptation comes along, it is this wise part of us we want to bring into play. It can see the temptation, measure what good or bad it would bring into our life, how it would affect those we love, how it would affect the future. We then weigh the risks and benefits and then choose what to do.
It’s much like someone who is going to go out backpacking. They know there is not much chance of rain, but they have to decide whether to carry the extra pounds of rainproof gear; poncho, canvas, tent, etc. The thought of not having to lug all that along is very appealing. But who wants to be trapped out in cold weather without rainproofing? So, our intrepid backpacker takes rain gear.
On the other hand, when he considers whether or not to take signal flares and a ten pound emergency transmitter along, he reaches a different conclusion! This process is very similar to the one we should use when we have health choices to make. We don’t want to be reckless, but neither do we want to become hypochondriacs. The Wise Self knows where the balance point is.
Q. How do you find this balance point?
A. In my books, tapes, and lectures, I often refer to the “Serenity Prayer.” With all the technology at our disposal, this ancient prayer is still one of the greatest healing tools available. To bring balance into our life, we can ask the Wise Self to “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This serves as an invitation to the deeper mind to open up our intuition so that we make the right choices in life, without becoming dependent on doctors, priests, or psychologists.
There are many other ways to communicate with our higher self. In Deep Healing; The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine, I emphasize three ways to do this.
1. Deep Relaxation, The Doorway to Deep Healing: First of all, deep relaxation is the simplest and fastest path through which anyone can improve their health and well-being. It can be dramatically effective in relieving symptoms such as inflammation, anxiety, and muscle tension. It improves circulation and speeds up healing. Through deep relaxation we can put aside the stress that blocks our link to the higher Self.
2. Positive Self-Programming: Focused affirmations are very powerful. People have always used the power of self-talk to reinforce what they know to be true, and to get in touch with the higher self. They can counteract older, negative, or troublesome messages we may have been receiving from the world around us, or that we have been sending to ourselves and thus, out into the world around us. Our self-talk is a powerful inner mechanism through which we can make dramatic changes in our lives. It can effect every part of our being-mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. These changes put us more in synch with the higher self.
The Master Skill, Positive Mental Imagery: Imagery helps us change our situation and our habits. When an image is held in the mind, it will tend to elicit from the nervous system reactions that are consistent with that image, and this effects all the organs of the body. By developing the skill of creating positive mental imagery (PMI), we can get an image of our higher self, and begin to journey with it in ways that work for us.
When these three are combined, it can vastly improve our ability to perform at optimal levels, even when taking on some of life’s greatest challenges. It can also awaken our conscious connection with the Wise Self, which will guide us towards the best healer or physician. But let’s not forget that the Wise Self is the most powerful healer we will ever meet.
Though we search the world over to find the beautiful, we find it within or we find it not.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Q: Dr. Miller, you practice Mind-Body Medicine, why is the Mind/Body Connection so important?
Answer by Dr. Miller: “Essence,” “divine child,” “soul,” “spirit”– our connection with the concept we call “Self” is far more important than what we name it. Awareness of its power and purpose changes your life’s potential. You have the greatest access to Self when the mind/body connection is strongest and there are many, many benefits to purposefully seeking it.
When you are in touch with your Self, you enter a state of extraordinary receptiveness in which valuable information can be revealed, received, and assimilated without the distortion of “mind chatter.” The essence of who we are — Self — is most clearly visible in the open, candidly vulnerable face of a child, you can feel it in their honest and free expression of emotion. Consider how rapidly a child learns, without conscious struggle, without self-judgment and without questioning the value of the growth they are pursuing. Commitment, passion, and purpose are clearly present and clearly provide them with the strength to succeed. It is natural for very young children to experience what we might call “failure” with no loss of self-esteem.
The more frequently the Self is accessed the more “inspired” and creative our daily lives become. People report experiencing a sense of relief, of release, of completion, of recognizing personal truth and having a renewed conviction and purpose. Goals become defined and reaching them seems possible at last!
Mind and body are one, whatever happens, it happens to both. This implies a concept of healing which is deeper than usually anticipated by conventional Western Medicine and Psychology. It is a. return to an ageless healing approach which integrates, rather than separates, the mind and body. Approached in this way, the deepest motivation for the greatest change becomes available.
Most cultures accept the integration of mind and body, but this has not always been true in the Western world. A couple of hundred years ago the curious notion was invented that the mind and the body are somehow separate. This concept was maintained well into the 1970s and 80s in the field of medicine — until overwhelming experiential evidence demonstrated it’s absurdity. Many people still have trouble releasing this notion. Physicians who “know best” and patients who “know nothing” deprive each other of a truly deep healing experience.
Negative conditioning can diminish our sense of Self when we’re very young. We may hide emotions that are not honored by our families — we may even hide them from ourselves.(If we live in a family made dysfunctional with alcohol, drugs, abuse, or other trauma we have a need to develop an internal wall to separate us from emotions and feelings we were never intended to handle.) A feeling deficit begun in childhood may also result in seriously eroded self-esteem, destructive behavior patterns, and the development of emotional, behavioral, or physical symptoms. The wall we erect to isolate our feelings is reinforced to contain our disappointments: this structure denies us access to the Self we need for full participation in life. If we’re fortunate, sometime in our adult life we will notice what has happened to us.
It is commonly believed that adults will deny the need for change until after they “hit bottom.” (Having “nowhere to go but up” may result in the discovery of the wall and what is behind it, including the lost Self.) Must devastation be the only motivation for change? Of course not — not when we can return at will to a non-judgmental state where “failure” carries no shame and the courage to try, to dream, to succeed is accessible. In this state of mind change becomes possible and denial is unnecessary.
When you strenghten the mind/body connection it leads to the highest level of change, growth, and healing possible — a course of action born of desire, not imposed by will or desperation. When intervention is designed for the mind as well as the body; both the individual and their life experiences are considered. This is the basis for Mind/Body medicine.
Habit: the best of servants and the worst of masters.
Empower Your Creative Imagination
