Do you cultivate weeds or flowers in your mind?

So why is it so important to be mindful and to see the butterflies in life?  What do these things have to do with health and weight? In a nutshell they help us to manage our stress better and to keep our perspective positive.  These actions are mind fertilizer.  Just like enriching the garden soil with compost yields a better tomato crop, being mindful and choosing to see the butterflies in our life enriches our thoughts and keeps us from feeling unbalanced and stressed.  Stress occurs when people perceive that the demands placed on them exceed their ability to cope.  Notice the word “perceive”.  It’s our perceptions of  a situation that create our emotions.  And emotions drive our behavior.

The Unhealthy Mind Cycle

Sally is a client who is in her early 50’s and works in the accounting department of a large firm.  She has a boss who is not easily approachable and demands too much of her.  She often works through lunch.  She is a mother of two teenage boys who are involved in basketball and with that comes expectations of parental volunteer work to raise money for the team.  Her husband has a job that requires travel and long hours.  Sally feels she has too much to do and not enough time to get it done.  Lately it has caused her to wake up in the middle of the night with anxious feelings and she has difficulty falling back to sleep.  She has gained thirty pounds over the past couple years and is frustrated with how her clothes fit.  She also notices her energy level is not what it used to be.  She gets sick more often and she often times feels lonely and depressed. She has food cravings in the evening and often eats a whole bag of potato chips, then feels guilty and frustrated that she can not break out of this habit.

Sounds like Sally is horribly trapped, doesn’t it?  Although Sally is fictitious, she is characteristic of many people I have worked with.  There are many areas of opportunity for the Sallies of the world to break this kind of pattern.  In Sally’s situation, eating chips at night is an escape from the daily stress and grind. Often times people aren’t even aware of how they are feeling, let alone whether or not they are hungry.  The TV is on; they are multitasking doing email or computer games and before they know it, the chip bag is all gone.  It starts with the bag of chips being a source of escape and temporary pleasure but over a period of time this form of escape leads to weight gain, a loss of energy, mood cycles of pleasure, frustration, guilt and a feeling of loss of control. How do you stop the cycle and fertilize the mind?

The Get Healthy Mind Cycle

First acknowledge the feelings you are having. It’s very easy when feeling overwhelmed and stressed to ruminate and have negative self talk, “my boss is unreasonable”, “no lunch break again”, “I can’t believe they are asking me to help with the basketball fundraiser this Friday”, “my husband is never around to help me”, or “my boys don’t appreciate how hard I work.”  I encourage people to take inventory of their lives and prioritize.  Address time management by being assertive where you can, delegate where you can and plan as much as possible on your days off for the week.  After that I encourage people to take two minutes every few hours when they are this busy to just breathe – shut their eyes, focus on their breath and visualize a pleasant place.  I also encourage them to get up every hour and scope their environment with all their senses looking for the butterflies, or what is going well in that moment.  Take inventory of what is going well and acknowledge that with self praise. Our self talk can influence our emotions which can then influence our behaviors.  We have a choice in every moment to look at things from a positive angle or a negative angle.  Taking the time to breathe and notice the butterflies stops automatic thinking, breaks the unhealthy behavior cycle and puts us back in control of our lives.  Pausing in the midst of the craziness allows us to separate our feelings and emotions from our problems and worries.  Instead of reaching for the bag of chips at the end of the day, we can stop the impulse or at least delay it by going to a quiet room, and just breathe.  Slow down the breath and count to ten with each inhale and exhale.  Do this for ten minutes regulary and you will fertilize your thoughts, crowd out the weeds of negative self talk and cultivate a positive perspective full of possibilities.