Are you busy trying to detox your body? Don’t forget to detox your brain!
“The mind is everything. What you think, you become.” – Buddha
This time of year countless fad diets are floating around, coaxing billions from people turning to miracle foods and supplements to detox their body and lose weight. Makes sense. You are what you eat, right? Healthy is as healthy does?
Growing up we were told food and drink are the building blocks for a healthy body. Taking a daily multivitamin was considered de-rigor for maximum health – until recently. Medical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine recently blew the lid off that theory when they published studies concluding multivitamins don’t work any better than placebo pills.
So it turns out, you are not what you eat.
Well here’s something to chew on. You are what you think you are.
There’s no point in making other lifestyle changes until you detox your brain! Toxic self-talk will keep you trapped in a cycle of negativity, creating stress and dis-ease until disease manifests. I’m sorry to say no amount of healthy smoothies can negate that, my friend.
But I know something that will.
Forty years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s ground-breaking book Psychocybernetics proposed that a person can’t perform better or worse than what they believe to be true. Since then, further studies in neuropsychology concluded we have the power to change our lives through our innate ability to change our minds.
Only you have the ability to change the way you think and feel about yourself. It’s relatively easy to affect change in your life, but first you must stop wasting energy listening to critical inner dialogue and reprogram those internal conversations.
We think constantly, day and night, but up to 85% of those thoughts are habitual and no longer serve you.
Affirmations, on the other hand, are thoughts you deliberately choose because you want the results they’ll produce. They’re a powerful tool to help you replace negative mind chatter with beneficial thought patterns that can change your life, and they work hand in hand with visualization.
Affirmations should always be phrased positively, in the present tense. For example, “I love and respect my healthy body now.”
Set aside time each day to focus on your goal, using all your senses to imagine it just as you wish it to be. Then, while holding the image in your mind, say your affirmations silently or aloud, or write them 10 times. If negative thoughts arise, release them before returning to your positive thoughts.
Don’t think affirmations can work for you? Quell that doubt by writing “my affirmations will work for me whether I believe them or not,” 10 times a day for two weeks.
Recognizing your thoughts create your reality puts you in the driver’s seat of your life. Like a GPS, affirmations and visualizations will ensure you get where you want to go, every time.
