The principles are easy..
Sitting here, letting the heavier than I intended dinner settle in prep for some gym time, I figured I’d ramble about that book some more…
Well, all this may be common knowledge, but the premise of the book was making people understand that their emotions affect their health. Moreover, your own attitudes and decisions affect your emotions, and thus your health, and I’m not just talking about the decision to eat a box of twinkies… I’m talking about the decision you make to let that one more piece of work that someone drops in your lap lead to a lengthy inner and perhaps outer gripe session and rehashing of how that is just another example of the shit you have to put up with, working yourself into an emotional frenzy, when in the end you STILL have to deal with the work you were handed. According to the author even a brief stressful emotional situation can have significant impact on your health, the most common stress related symptoms of which were headaches, general muscle aches, and fatigue. Intense stress can also affect your immune system and can make you more susceptible to catching passing illnesses like colds and flu.
I know, I know… duh.. all this stuff seems pretty common knowledge. It did even to me, but that was only the first section of the book… medical proofs and trials documenting the relationship of how much emotions affect physical health. The rest of the book was about the basic principles in life that one needs to be happy, and how to find and appreciate them in the face of day to day dilemmas. It talked about healthy relationships, healthy sexual wants and needs, healthy job attitudes, healthy family attitudes, and even how to recognize decision paths that only lead to such extreme stress as to make you consider suicide. It was all interesting, and to go into and try to summarize or explain it all would probably take more journal entries than I could organize (or else I’d be writing books for a living), but I just have to stress how it made me THINK about things. It’s almost like before reacting to things, I pause.. I breathe.. I consider.. what is REALLY the significance of this or that… then I react with the most positive attitude I can muster about the situation. Inbox full again, well, work has to be done.. dreading it only makes things worse, complaining only makes you resentful and less productive… SURE it’s okay to be unhappy with your job, sure it’s okay to want to improve yourself and get a better job, but the key is to make the best of every thing right now.. from moment to moment. This job sucks, sure, but it is my job right now, and I need to make the best of it, to get the work done, so I can have more time to spend on things I do enjoy. Realizing that stressing and complaining and “taking the work attitude home” only robs me of time and energy that could be placed elsewhere, and moreover, actually makes me feel weaker and less like doing the things I enjoy doing.
So, it’s all about attitude… your OWN attitude… how YOU face YOUR situations.
Almost makes me think…
“It’s a fancy way of saying, if you believe you’re pretty, then you will be pretty. What do you do when you’re most uncomfortable? When you’re angry or scared? ”
“I hit. ”
“You might want to try smiling. Just smile a little smile and… say something offhand. It doesn’t have to fit the situation, really. Say, ‘I never did mind about the little things.’ “
infinite1der has made a Comment
{Grits teeth} “I never did mind about the little things…”
August 13, 2002 @ 2:37 pm