Are You Mentally Prepared For The New You?

OK, so you made up your mind to start living a happy and healthy life, now what? Living a happy and healthy life takes a lot more than just eating right and exercising. Although eating right and exercising are important, your mental attitude is just as important.

How many times have you heard the expression “Think Positive?” There is an old Bing Crosby song that starts; “You got to Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the positive, eliminate the negative,” That should be a part of every aspect of your life.

Having a positive attitude helps in achieving a happy and healthy life, as a matter of fact, I don’t think you can truly achieve a happy and healthy life without a positive attitude. With a positive attitude, you are attracted to the more bright side of things. For instance, I start my exercise routine at 5:30 am, now I can’t even remember the last time I needed an alarm to get up, why? Because I enjoy it, I wake up with a clear head with a gung-ho attitude ready to face the day ahead, that’s a positive attitude.

Having a positive attitude makes your day more enjoyable, makes it easier to handle those everyday problems that seem to pop up. It makes it easier to deal with that diet you might be on. All in all, it just makes life much easier to deal with.

But that’s not all; a positive attitude provides a big boost to your health as well. It actually helps prevent degenerative diseases that may be adding years to your life.  “Your outlook—having a sense of optimism and purpose—seems to be predictive of health outcomes,” says Dr. Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Kubzansky has studied the health effects of several forms of psychological well-being. She has found that emotional vitality—characterized by enthusiasm, hopefulness, engagement in life, and the ability to face life’s stresses with emotional balance—is associated with a substantially reduced risk of heart attack and stroke.

Her team reported that among 6,025 participants, those who had high levels of emotional vitality at the onset had significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease an average of 15 years later. In 2015 they reported that among 6,019 participants studied for an average of 16 years, greater emotional vitality was associated with a lower likelihood of having a stroke.

Multiple studies have shown that a positive outlook on life reaps many tangible benefits: “Happy’ people cope better with stress and trauma, are more resilient, have stronger immune systems, and live longer,” says Barbara Santay, therapist for Franciscan Alliance’s Employee Assistance Program.

Research from the Harvard School of Public Health links a more optimistic outlook with a lowered risk of heart disease in older men and University of Pittsburgh researchers report that optimistic women have less thickening of the carotid artery walls. That Women’s Health Initiative Study suggests that a positive mental outlook is associated with reduced evidence of coronary heart disease and total mortality in postmenopausal women.

When I lost my mortgage business and just about everything else along with it, you can bet I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. Changing my attitude was a big part of overcoming that part of my life. Two books helped me through it, The Power of Positive Thinking and How To Win Friends And Influence People, which I still read to this day.

ATTITUDE, EATING RIGHT, and EXERCISE. Put them all together and you will achieve a happy and healthy life for sure, without a doubt.