Your Best Defense Against Aging: Your Attitude To Life
In the international bestseller, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell explains how researchers who study mind-reading using body language and facial expressions found that the old clichéd advice to smile when you're feeling down really works. Just moving those facial muscles into a happier position can actually perk you up mentally and emotionally, say the researchers, who are finally beginning to understand and accept the link between mind and body. Other research has found that simply recalling one episode of anger depresses the immune system for up to seven hours - but one episode of feeling compassion or caring enhances the immune system for about the same amount of time. A happy outlook towards life appears to trigger the release of endorphins. Endorphins relax the cardiovascular system and cytokines, which alert the immune system to pay attention in detecting abnormalities like cancer cells. Even though the physiological make up of emotions themselves have not yet been identified, some researchers suspect that a small portion of the brain called the insular cortex may be the key. The insular cortex regulates the autonomic nervous system, which controls the automatic functions of our body such as breathing heartbeat and blood pressure. It also plays a role in higher brain functions and helps to process anger, fear, joy, happiness and sexual arousal. When the insular cortex is stimulated for long periods of time, it can change heart rate and blood pressure and even cause a kind of damage to the heart muscle that is similar to sudden cardiac death. Its not surprising then, that sorrow, anger and other negative emotions can cause a malfunction of the insular cortex. Whatever happens in those six inches between your ears, one thing is certain. Optimism, laughter, love and other positive emotions can counteract many harmful effects at any age, even in your sixties, seventies, and eighties, and beyond! Research has shown that positive attributes as dependability, trust, agreeableness and open-mindedness are associated with a two to four year increase in life expectancy. Let's explore some tips for developing a better outlook on your world. Listen carefully to yourself. If you have put yourself down since childhood, over a lifetime negative subliminal message can take their toll by turning you into a pessimist. Spend one week writing down the phrases you use in your "self talk." Chances are you will find that you repeat a dozen or so phrases over and over again that reinforce that negative image. If you know about them, you can change them. If an issue is not resolved it will continue to plague you and you will relive the negative emotions tied to that issue over and over again. Write yourself a letter spending about 20 minutes a day for four days and write about what you feel. Forget grammar, punctuation and so on. No one else will see this but you and you can throw it away when finished. Once you begin to write, don't stop until the time is up. This exercise will help you organize your thoughts and get them out of your system. By the end of the four days most people feel much better about themselves. Seek out new challenges and opportunities. Always have something that is a goal just over the horizon. When you begin to close the gap and reach that goal, set another and another. Keep yourself consistently moving ahead. Try and do one new thing every week or month. Visit a museum, go to the zoo, go to a book signing or lecture. The goal here is to eliminate monotony, which is a sure killer of optimism. Look for a new marvel of nature each day. Discover an abundance of happiness. Spoil your pet or if you don't have one, visit the human society and adopt one. Learn to laugh at yourself. Allow yourself to experience grief but don't let it control you. Find someone who is worse off than you and lend a hand. Volunteer at a hospital; visit a nursery or a shelter. Have a healthy sex life. Sex at middle age can actually become better and more satisfying than ever before. Don't wait to plan for your retirement. Waiting until you are 60 will have very bad repercussions on the quality of life for your remaining years. Here are a few quick tips for increasing joy, hope and optimism that will work no matter what your age: Make a list of at least 50 great things that happen to you every day. Laugh a lot. You'll heal your body and your mind. Discover a new challenge each month. Try meditating for just five minutes each day. Copyright © 2005 Priya Shah Priya Shah edits the Health Naturale portal. For more tips on anti-aging and living a longer, healthier life, visit Anti-Aging Treatments This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.
MORE RESOURCES:
Defining yoga, one style at a timeCommon Ground, CA - Dec 1, 2008That’s the philosophy that inspired Jivamukti Yoga founders Sharon Gannon and David Life, who developed the style in their Manhattan studio in 1984. ... |
A HinJew Target in MumbaiWashington Post, United States - 23 hours agoHindu-derived Siddha Yoga was my path. I came by it in 1980 as a journalist sent by a Los Angeles newspaper to cover California's latest guru sensation, ... |
IndiaGlitz |
Ileana D'Cruz becomes the Yoga girlIndiaGlitz, CA - 3 hours agoIleana has now started preaching Yoga whenever she finds an opportunity. The story behind a naĂŻve girl becoming the yoga girl is that she had started ... |
Living Your Yoga: Seated pose brings tranquilityWashington Examiner, DC - 16 hours agoBy Kimberly Wilson Andrew Harnik/Examiner Welcome back to our ongoing series dedicated to living your yoga! This series explores yoga as a lifestyle through ... |
Supatha Yoga celebrates anniversaryScarlet Scuttlebutt, NJ - 10 hours agoThis dream included sharing her lifelong passion for yoga, a practice that saved her life and has kept her healthy for more than 35 years. ... |
Yoga - Google News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
The Enchantress Within Each of Us Returns-Making Potholders, One Stitch at a Time!
When I was little I was very busy--as I imagine most little girls are. At six years of age I had my toys, my fire station with a real bell, my fire trucks and other cars, my paper dolls, my coloring books and large box of Crayola assorted crayons, my picture books and stuffed animals.
Self-esteem: Who Do You Think You Are?
Are you the kind of person who dwells on your strengths, or the kind obsessed by your weaknesses? It's been said that you become what you think about most of the time. Continually pondering your strengths therefore makes you become stronger, enhancing self-esteem.
Creating Icebergs Out Of Hostility
Have you ever dreaded an upcoming presentation, meeting or function because you just knew that the group would be hostile? Maybe you had heard that these people are very critical, even aggressive.*How can you prepare for such a situation even though you wouldprefer to disappear into thin air.
Financial Abundance And Peace Of Mind Are One!
There are only two emotions we can experience; love or fear. It should be obvious to you that any emotion based on love is positive while any emotion based on fear is negative.
Positive Self Talk - What Should You Say?
How do you explain things to yourself? With positive self talk or negative? What we say to ourselves radically affects the quality of our lives, and our ability to do things effectively. How useful is it to always tell yourself "impossible," "more problems," "never," and "I can't?"Below are some of the things that positive and negative people say.
Taking Yourself Too Seriously? - Suggestions for Reclaiming Your Perspective
"We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude." - William James, 19th Century American psychologist and philosopherI've noticed I often take myself, my work, and my life way too seriously.
Getting Over Your Fear Of Success
The fear of success is more common than some might realize. Just the thought of 'What it would be like to.
The Inner Dialogue
Do you talk with yourself? When we hear people talking aloud with themselves we consider it weird. But have you noticed that all people, with no exception, talk silently with themselves? This, we do not consider odd or weird.
Banishing Hannibal Lecter Personalities From Your Life
We all know them. We all have somebody like them at our workplace.
10 Passion Principles to Creating the Rest of Your Life
1. Take passionate action towards living your life by design.
Change Your Head Position For A Flood Of Positive Energy!
Have you ever considered that you may be subconsciously sabotaging and inhibiting your own potential positive emotions through the position of your head and the manner in which you breathe?Personally, before a few years ago, I had never really considered it. However as I became more interested in how deep focused breathing could positively change your body and mindset I looked more closely at such things.
Changing Stumbling Blocks To Stepping Stones?
"The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how you use them." - UnknownIt is not really what happens to us that matter but how we react to it.
Releasing Self Sabotage for Success and Happiness in Life
Today, I wanted to mention this notion of self-sabotage.I recently studied some material of Kevin Hogans and lots by John Grinder on this topic.
Life Writing, One Facet of Living an Enchanted Life
I started life writing in the fifth grade. My mother bought me my own Girl Shout diary! Are you wondering what a Girl Shout diary is? It was a Girl Scout diary kept by me.
Get Some Attitude!
You've been looking for a job for as long as you can remember. Or you've written that exam more times than you can count.
Change Your Mind; Change Your Luck
When I was a young man, even a teenager for that matter, I always had an optimism that was hard for others to overcome. Even in the midst of the all the negative influences from family and peers, this positive optimism was difficult to beat down.
Finding Meaning in Life: Three Steps
So how do we find meaning? The first step is through personal experiences - experiences through something to which we are familiar and through someone we value. Develop your appreciation of beauty - that is heightening your sensitivity to beauty such as in great art or wonders in nature.
Optimism: The Tremendous Benefits of a Positive Attitude
How many times have you heard someone say, "Hey, cheer up!" or "Turn that frown upside-down!"? Unconsciously we all seem to know that optimism is a virtue and that a negative outlook is something to be concerned about. And did you know that there are actually a host of concrete reasons why this is so?Medically speaking, anxiety, anger and stress can all do a lot of damage to the body.
11 Great Ways to be Positive about Change
Look for the positives!Seek them out - those little scary places that it's challenging to let yourself go to - the positives are genuinely scary, because they give you hope and it's hard to let go of all the fears you have right now - so hanging onto them is the easiest path!So try letting yourself go, just for the heck of it!Take that step back from being 'done to' and take the initiative. At work, at home or wherever, this can be a great time, if you let it.
Negative Thoughts to Positive Thoughts
Changing Negative Thoughts into Positive Thoughts is a key lesson to becoming healthy and successful.PINT.
|
