Archive for August, 2008
Life Is A Journey: You Must Set Goals!
Posted by at 31st August, 2008
Goal Setting
A journey requires goals. Think about it, what do you really want? If you do not know, how can you receive it? Once you identify what you really want, write it down and if you have it already; fantastic! If you do not have what you really want, then establish it as a goal. Choose what you really want to be your experience.
“To choose is also to begin.”
-Starhawk
Goal Setting Exercise:
Take a few minutes to reflect on what exactly you wish to do, each day, each week, month and year. Now, take those thoughts and list 3-5 goals. Here are some examples of some goals:
1) I wish to spend more time with my family.
2) I wish to exercise.
3) I wish to work and have a successful career.
4) I wish to find love.
5) I wish to have more money.
Go back and revise your goals and be as detailed, objective and finite as possible. List your goal and then describe it as you imagine it would feel like if you were doing it or having it at this present moment.
1) I wish to spend 3 hours a day, one on one time with my family, playing, laughing and having fun together at the park.
2) I wish to exercise for 30-60 minutes 3-5 times a week, including walking, bicycle riding, weight lifting and swimming.
3) I wish to work in an environment that allows me to strive, not just survive, I wish to be successful and promoted to manager within the year.
4) I wish to meet my soul mate and be involved in a loving, caring, sharing and passionate relationship with this person and partner.
5) I wish to make “$ XX” dollars a year.
Now, go back and review your list again, read it out loud, how does the list make you feel? Do you feel good and happy when you read it and imagine yourself doing it or having those things right now? Good, that means you have identified good goals for you at this time. If you feel anxious or uneasy about your list, then go back and re-write the goals over and over until you do feel good. You should perform this exercise again, once you meet these goals and establish more goals. Once you get the hang of this creative process you will see your life unfold in front of you.
Excerpt from “Acquired Hope” book, more references and free resources on Acquired Hope website
Life is a Journey! Enjoy the Journey, Not the Destination
Posted by at 31st August, 2008
-Anonymous
For every journey, a roadmap is helpful in order to get to the destination timely and see all the sights and do all the activities along the way, which one has planned. Many of us travel or have traveled on our journey of life, without such a road map. We all need direction at some time, although many of us don’t typically ask for directions. But how will you know where you want to go if you do not have a goal or destination in mind? Or if one has a destination, but no road map, one may circle around endlessly, reaching the destination long overdue or even worse never at all. Everyone should have a road map for their journey of life. On this road map, it is important to establish what you really want, who you really want to be, your purpose and how you will travel.
-Lewis K. Bendele
Top Ten List of the Positives of Living w/ Chronic Illness
Posted by at 28th August, 2008
The chronic injury or illness experience can be a good thing. In David Letterman fashion, I have created my own top ten list of the positives of the chronic injury or illness experience:
10) Your pharmacist knows you by name.
9) Otherwise complete strangers are your instant friends, as they now share a common bond of the injury or illness experience. Look we are all meeting here today!
You find an inner strength and sense of empowerment that you never knew existed.
7) You grow closer to those who love and support you.
6) You find out who your true friends are.
5) You have an opportunity to re-invent your self.
4) You can explore and create new work skills and talents, that otherwise may have been left undiscovered.
3) You simplify your life.
2) You slow down and start to focus on the things that are really important to you.
1) You have an opportunity to explore and expand your current balance of the mind, body and spirit. You can become more resilient.
You can learn to Acquire Hope and abundant Health and advance your recovery! I offer two books that I have authored to help others with Myasthenia Gravis and other chronic illnesses to learn a proven method on improving your situation. These books “Acquired Hope: A Journey of Advanced Recovery and Empowerment” and “365 Days of Abundant Hope” are both available on Amazon.com. This process works, guaranteed!
Visit http://www.acquiredhope.com/ for more information and details on advancing your recovery. A portion of the book profits go to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America to help support the fight against MG!
A Change Of Focus: Advancing Recovery From Anything
Posted by at 28th August, 2008
Powerlessness
Chronic illnesses and accidentally injuries can often times appear uncontrollable and unpredictable. People may feel as if they have lost control over their bodies and their future. Loss of control feels like powerlessness. When people feel powerlessness, they may also feel hopeless, anger or rage, or even have feelings of despair, worthlessness, panic and fear. The less powerful an individual feels, the harder they may try to maintain control over their world.
However, if they learn to change the feelings of powerlessness and replace them with positive thoughts, such as passion, optimism, hope and enthusiasm. They can see that they are indeed capable of many wondrous things, and that they have control and power over many aspects of their health and body.
Fear plays a big part in the emotional pain of chronic illness, injury or disease. A person may become afraid of many things, including the progression of a disease, the increasing loss of control or increasing disability, the outcome, the relapses or re-injuries. A patient may be afraid of our how family members, neighbors, friends and co-workers feel about them, now that they have an injury or illness. They may have financial fears, fear of losing the ability to work or not sustaining a current income or position. They may fear not being able to support their loved ones. Fear can sneak up on them and fear can overwhelm them on a continual basis.
The chronically ill, physically challenged and those coping with other conditions often regret their condition and situation. This is a natural reaction. However, if this reaction becomes a chronic way of thinking, this individual will always be chronically ill. For many individuals enduring these circumstances, who feel self-pity don’t see any way out of their situation. The path of self-pity leads only to isolation. It is important to change the focus from self-pity to a focus on ability and health.
The feeling of isolation is another strong, negative emotion that can become overwhelming and self-destructive. Whether an individual is dealing with a disabling injury such as a spinal cord injury and paralysis or a chronic illness like diabetes or multiple sclerosis, that individual may often times feel alone or outside the norm, that nobody understands what they are going through. That individual may feel that they have been rejected and are not wanted or unloved. That they are different, and that this difference is a bad thing. They may become self-conscious, suffer from poor self-esteem or feel ashamed of their condition. All of these negative emotions and thought patterns only add to the isolation and a vicious cycle is created.
The chronic injury or illness experience can be a good thing. In David Letterman fashion, I have created my own top ten list of the positives of the chronic injury or illness experience:
10) Your pharmacist knows you by name.
9) Otherwise complete strangers are your instant friends, as they now share a common bond of the injury or illness experience.
You find an inner strength and sense of empowerment that you never knew existed.
7) You grow closer to those who love and support you.
6) You find out who your true friends are.
5) You have an opportunity to re-invent your self.
4) You explore and create new work skills and talents, that otherwise may have been left undiscovered.
3) You simplify your life.
2) You slow down and start to focus on the things that are really important to you.
1) You have an opportunity to explore and expand your current balance of the mind, body and spirit. You can become more resilient.
Anger and Rage
Individuals with a disease or condition may experience anger and rage. There may be anger against their bodies for “failing” them. There may be a sense of betrayal. There may be anger at the meaningless of their disease, injury or condition. Or they may blame themselves or others for their condition and current situation. They may express anger or rage at nature, life, the medicine they take and their side effects, the doctors/therapists for not curing them and their friends and family members for not understanding them or responding to them the way they would like at that exact moment. There may be anger when people make allowances for them and then when they do not.
Envy, resentment and jealousy are emotional reactions that are hard to separate from one another and are difficult to eliminate from our thought patterns. To be envious, is to wish you had something that someone else had. To be resentful, is to be angry and bitter because you do not have something that someone else has. For those with a chronic illness, injury or disease the thing that they want and do not think that they have, is health and full function. Because our culture is competitive in nature and there is such an emphasis on perfection and images that reflect the “perfect” person in magazines and in movies, when a patient is coping with an illness or condition, these feelings and emotions can be a monumental influence on their lives. A person will need to learn to stop comparing themselves to what others have and what they look like and take themselves out of the competitive plane and focus on the abilities and strengths that they do have.
When coping with the onset of a chronic illness, injury or disease, grief can be one of the stages a patient may go through as they progress towards acceptance. There are typically three phases of grief:
1) Denial
2) Emotional pain
3) Acceptance.
A change of focus is required in order to maximize recovery and functional restoration. A change of focus from negative emotions, to more positive emotions such as; passion, optimism, hope, gratitude and acceptance. These are the emotions a person must take to heart in order to advance their recovery and fully restore function. Changing focus can be easy, once you learn the process in acquiring hope. To learn how to change your focus and attract good health, please read “Acquired Hope: A Journey of Advanced Recovery and Empowerment”.
Ref: “Acquired Hope: A Journey of Advanced Recovery and Empowerment” book and Acquired Hope website
Using the Law of Attraction & Visualization to Heal?
Posted by at 26th August, 2008
Listen to this comment from Dr. Evelyn Monahan, who taught at Emory University’s school of nursing:
“you can use the mind to affect external things, including the molecular structure of the body“.
She believes creative visualization techniques are extremely powerful and effective. As she says, “one of the most effective techniques is visualization, I taught the nurses to teach patients to actually see diseased organs or infection of the body repairing themselves, for example if you want to fight infection, visualize the white blood cells going to the infectin site and destroying the invading body.”
Additionally, Dr. Irving Oyle, author of “The Healing Mind” was an early pioneer in the use of visualization, meditation/self hypnosis and affirmations in self-healing. He states:”By changing the consciousness, the mental picture you have of what is going on in your body, you can change the physical body. By thinking themselves sick, people become sick. We know for example there is a certain type of personality that tends to get heart attacks. If you can change the thinking pattern or the visual imagery to restore health, you become your own healer.”
Therefore, healing yourself comes under the natural laws of the universe, specifically, the law of vibration/law of attraction. Disease, chronic illness is just a vibration, so is optimal health. Disease is a low vibration, optimal health, a high vibration. Healing becomes fixing the maladjustments of frequencies of your thought patterns.When you can change the vibration of something, you can change its form.
In order to change the vibration, we must apply mental energy, healing energy, energy in the form of thought.
****This information is so powerful, changing your thoughts, raising your conscious awareness, using techniques of affirmations, meditation/self hypnosis, visualization and the law of attraction to create better health, increase your self-healing capacity and live in optimal health energies, is possible!You just need to study it, believe it and think it.
I have many resources to help you achieve this, I had a chronic illness, I healed myself by these techniques. I was taking 22 pills a day and was moderate to severely disabled from the fatigue. These tecnhiques work! Please try them, I want you to win too!
PS: for techniques on effective and powerful creative visualization, affirmations, ways of being, the BE:DO:HAVE secret, attitude congruence, goal setting to reach higher levels of function, the law of attraction and how to apply it to self heal, please refer to my book “Acquired Hope: A Journey of Advanced Recovery and Empowerment“.