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How I changed my life for the positive

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Apparently my subconscious mind has been simply yammering away at decoding why it is I am so recently able to be positive.  I really hadn’t dedicated much more thought to spelling it out, but I woke up this morning with a very nearly complete picture in my mind.  So now I figure that I need to get it down on “paper” before it fades.  I know this is something so many people struggle with I may be able to dedicate and flesh this out into another book, which would be a huge accomplishment for me.  So here goes.  I am gonna brain shotgun this all out, and hope that at least some parts of it can help you in your quest.

First, I think the part that is most often overlooked with depression, stress or positivity is the physical.  Some people think that depression and stress will manifest as an imbalance of brain chemicals, and are willing to treat it with pills.  I believe it is a chemical cause, but I have always refused to simply take the pills.  I know that our body is a contained system.  If something is in error, it is because something that needs to be put into it is lacking.  We really are a great big engine that is fueled by our food.  Two things I have learned recently that affected me are that an overgrowth of candida yeast in the guts causes depression symptoms in the brain, and also low thyroid function causes depression as well.  I have solved these issues in recent years by going paleo, which starved out the candida yeast.  I then hit that with some healthy doses of probiotics to build the good guys back up in there, and that helps a lot.  I recently also have been taking some thyroid supplements to boost my thyroid levels higher, which is doing wonders for my positivity and my energy as well.  Also, the human brain is essentially cholesterol and water, so as I have done away with the grains and sugars (and now caffeine) I have felt my memory and my emotional state improving in leaps and bounds.
This is not meant to be a diatribe on what you should do for your diet, but this is what I have done“, and the physical is a huge part.  If you are at all feeling not how you want to mentally.  If you are having trouble sleeping, trouble stopping the racing mind in the evening, trouble motivating yourself to fight on, I would highly suggest working with my friend Dr. Stephen Lewis over at http://www.drsnutrition.org/.  I am not someone that trusts doctors at all.  Cause I think they don’t listen.  This is a guy who talks to me by phone or email at least once a week, and actually listens.  He takes all diet and environmental factors into consideration, and will cure these things naturally using herbs, but also using testing to verify the cause and the treatment.  This isn’t shot in the dark witchcraft, this is actual scientific process.  Which is something I wish more natural healers would use, since we all know the stuff works.
So the big starting point to me needs to be the physical, but that’s certainly not the only thing  I woke up with several techniques that I didn’t even realize that I use on a regular basis, and I now have better words to describe them.  Also, as you may or may not know about my belief system, I have always taken the bible very literally.  If I hadn’t, some of my experiences in Tucson would have rubbed my nose in that fact, but that’s a story for another day.  I believe that God’s word can be taken as no less than an instruction manual for how I should live my life.  I have not always lived up to those standards, but having this perspective has been the key to combating this problem in my own mind.  As Jesus said in John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me.
The first thing I realized was that i was always afraid.  Period.  It didn’t matter when or why, but I always felt fear.  I could feel it as a physical manifestation, draining the heat from my face, tightening my chest, my hands and feet going numb, I was always afraid.  That is not normal.  I first examined, and realized this fear was baseless.  There was no reason to be this afraid.  So I went seeking the answer.  2nd Timothy 1:7 says For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline.  Thus any fear, or stress, or anxiety is not sent to us by God, but is a negative spirit sent to use from elsewhere.  There are varying degrees you can take this to in both belief and action, but at the very minimum, it becomes easier to block out these feelings of self doubt if you almost picture them as a little troll like neighbor shouting bad things at you over a fence.  I have often taken these thoughts to a further conclusion, but that’s where they need to start.
 
The second facet to being positive, it to constantly set your life for a simple success.  It is easy to feel positive when you feel like you are accomplishing our life’s mission.  So perhaps we need to define out mission in such a way that it is easy to succeed.  We can wrap ourselves as tightly as we want into specific goals.  I need to comp sales 15%.  I need to pay off my debt in 5 years.  I need to get promoted.  Yet in the end, these are all ephemeral.  The only lasting impact we have on this planet is the impact we make on other people, and on our surroundings.  Thus, I ensure that I leave every place I go better than I found it, and I ensure that I have a positive impact on every person I encounter.  As Hebrews 13:2 says, Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares and Matthew 25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.
 Again, these two things can take several forms depending on your desires.  For me, leaving the place better than I found it has manifested in my love of permaculture, and trying to create sustainable living systems for people.  I also planted trees everywhere I have lived.  I even use my knowledge of permaculture to apply to business principles to make them more sustainable and thus able to provide for more people moving forward.  In terms of making people better, that really depends on the relationship involved.  With a customer, my first goal is to make them smile.  Then to make them laugh.  Lastly, its to solve their problem.  Even if I can’t solve the problem, I have made their life better by smiling, thus I have achieved something.  With an employee, my goal was always to teach.  Something.  Anything.  Have them leave the interaction with more knowledge than they had at the beginning.  I wouldn’t pick up the phone and call them if I didn’t have something to teach.  This prevents dead air and frustration, and makes it very easy to have positive interactions.  It also makes folks look forward to interacting with you, because they will quickly come to see the value in it.
 
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is the need to simply let go.  I realized that I would spend far too much time in my day, agonizing over things that i had done years in the past.  Some of them major screw ups, but most of them were just stupid things that I had done or said at one point, and that I guarantee no one on earth even remembered happening except for me.  Why the hell would I do that?  That’s accomplishing nothing, because once something is done, you can’t undo it.  You are merely wrapping up neurons in your head that can be used for something else, and you are constantly wallowing in a negative place.  Matthew 6:5 says But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.  Just as important as forgiving others is forgiving yourself.  There is nothing at all to be gained by wallowing in a negative space.
This one was the hardest for me.  I was not a forgiving person, I liked to hold a grudge because I valued myself as a person enough to know that I was worthy of better.  Yet in the end, I was only making myself miserable.  So I actually wanted to know why.  I was unable to find the article I had read initially, but I am sure there are dozens out there now.  I found this one today.  http://lindagraham-mft.net/resources/published-articles/the-neuroscience-of-attachment/ which hits on the same material.  Our minds out shaped very young, and it determines the initial setup of the brain, but more important, is that we never lose the ability to rewire ourselves.  If we keep using the same patterns over and over, we won’t change, but we can at any point in our lives push ourselves into new ways of thinking and literally rewire our own brains.`There are literally more neural pathways in the brain then their are atoms in the universe.  God doesn’t want us squandering that incredible gift on keeping old scores alive.  He isn’t telling us that we can’t get into heaven if we die with a grudge, we are fallen creatures, of course we will get some stuff wrong.  He was using that passage to literally tell us how to set ourselves free.  Once that key turned for me, it was like the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders.  Not only more positive, but hell, I felt like I had more time available to me.  It literally changed everything.
So that’s what I got so far.  This information has now been cauterized from my brain and laid to rest for now.  I do believe I will expand it into a book, as we can’t be the only people who are struggling with such things in their lives.  I hope that I can use this to make the life better of everyone who reads it.  Most importantly, I hope at least some grain of it can help you.


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