August 23, 2016

There seem to be a lot of things out there these days that can kill us: Pollution, global warming, terrorism, super-bacteria… the list is long.

But if you look at what really poses dangers for us, statistically speaking, it’s how we choose to live day-to-day.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) the top five preventable killers in the United States are heart disease, cancer, lung disease (like emphysema and chronic bronchitis), stroke and unintentional correctly-prescribed medication overdoses.

Each of these don’t just happen to us out of the blue. Instead, they are often a result of our habits. Smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, a diet high in…well, garbage.

So it makes sense that one of the first things you’d want to do to get yourself healthy and stay there is change the habits that pose the most risk… and replace them with healthier ones.

But change is hard. Or, at least, it is if you don’t have the right information. You can’t take any steps toward forming new habits unless you know where to start.

At the Wellness Training Institute, we teach our members to begin at the beginning. Which is: Nutrition.

Why Nutrition?

What do you think of when you hear the word nutrition?

Most people’s minds jump straight to food. Which is true.

But that’s not the whole story.

Nutrition, at its most basic level, is defined as the act of getting sustenance from what’s around you. And it’s not limited to just food. Breathing, for instance, is nutrifying yourself with the things in the air that sustain you. Cultivating a sense of awareness around both your body and your environment works to nutrify your thoughts.

Before you begin figuring out how to replace your bad habits with good ones, you need to understand that everything you do for your health has to be a step toward nutrition.

Nutrition is about creating a relationship with the earth’s energy. It’s also about connecting with your own body.

What’s interesting about viewing your health in this way is that it makes it very clear that, within every moment, you are always either moving toward life or toward death. There is no middle ground. That kale leaf is a signpost toward life. That cigarette moves you three more inches towards death. There’s no such thing in life as stasis. Everything is moving, all the time, one way or the other.

When you learn to gain sustenance from gaining energy from the earth, from your food, your breath, even your thoughts, you are effectively choosing life over death with each passing second.

You don’t consciously choose to do this, or at least not all the time. Often, you make choices without even thinking about them.

What I’m talking about are, of course, habits.

Habits dictate whether you are working toward life or toward death.

Which brings up the question: How do you form the type of habits that can get you healthy and keep you there?

Here are three great suggestions to get you started:

1. Awareness

One of the most valuable things you can do for your health is to create a sense of awareness. What this means, in its simplest form, is that you let the world quiet down around you and listen to what your body is telling you.

The reason for why this is important is simple: You don’t know what your habits are unless you take a little time and figure that out.

And you can’t identify the bad habits until you know what they are.

The best way to begin building this awareness is to start a journal. Write down what you do every day. Write down what you eat. Write down how the food makes you feel. Write down your thoughts. Start each day writing three things you’re grateful for in a gratitude journal.

This seems like a small, insignificant thing. But we’ve found that documenting what you do and how you’re feeling each day gets your mind right—and your thoughts nutrified—in ways that can’t be accomplished in any other way.

You’ll be amazed at how many things you do without even thinking about it.

You’ll also be amazed at how easy this habit is to form and how effective it is as a foundation for building better habits upon it.

2. Surround Yourself with Nutritious People

This is not a call to become a cannibal. I promise.

(You shouldn’t even be eating meat, let alone people meat.)

Instead, it’s the idea that negative people and toxic relationships can have a huge impact on your ability to start and maintain healthy habits.

Just like you would eliminate certain foods that might be wreaking havoc with your digestive system, in the same way you should put a little distance between friends, family members, and co-workers (to the point that that’s possible) for a little while. You’re not shunning them entirely and forever. Instead, you’re just giving yourself a little space to begin to let your emotions heal and seeking out more positive people to spend time with.

After a while, as with an elimination food diet, you can begin adding those negative people back into your life after you’ve gotten healthier.

And, who knows? Maybe some of your positive energy will spark a desire to change in them as well!

3. Find What Energizes You

One of the problems with starting out on a “diet” or trying to get healthy is that it can often feel like you’re reinventing the wheel. You’re eating different, strange food. You’re forcing your body to move in ways it’s not used to. You’re cutting out all the things that gave your life structure before and sort of flying blind.

The end result, as you’ve probably experienced, isn’t health. Instead, it’s frustration.

One of the ways you can prevent this from happening—and form some great habits along the way—is take a look at what you documented in the first step above, find what healthy actions you are already doing, and then just double down on them.

Chances are, those healthy habits are going to be things that you enjoy. If you eat a salad three times a week, start eating six instead. If you take a walk a few times a week, begin working a walk into your routine daily. If you find yourself vegging out in front of the TV every evening, take a half hour of that time to sit in silence and practice awareness.

The point is this: You don’t have to change everything all at once. In fact, you shouldn’t, because that’s not how we as humans are built. We have habits for a reason. The goal is always to maintain what’s good and then add more of that.

Health is not a baby-with-the-bathwater proposition. It’s gradual, deliberate, and—baby step by baby step—transformative.

I hope these three ideas for beginning to form healthy habits meets you where you are on your health journey. I also hope you’ll take them to heart.

Health isn’t an end goal. Instead it’s a path toward wholeness. And every little habit counts along the way.

The post How to Develop New Habits that Transform Your Life appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

May 31, 2016

These days, as a culture we have a skewed view of how to be healthy. Just take a look at your Facebook feed, or your email inbox, or watch a few minutes of television. You’ll be inundated with information about the latest fad “diet” while simultaneously being buried in ads for food that is—at best— the nutritional equivalent of cardboard.

We’ve gotten away from what true health looks like. We’ve lost the ability to even understand how health actually works.

Here’s the truth: Being healthy is a habit. It’s something you do again and again.

And again.

Here are three simple steps you can take to build that habit—and revolutionize your life in ways you probably can’t even imagine at this moment.

We call it the ACT method: Awareness, Connection, & Transformation.

Put simply, here’s how it works: Awareness is just knowing WHAT you’re doing and Connecting with those facts and behaviors on an honest level. Soon you do it again and again, and then it becomes a habit, and you create a Transformation.

Got it?

Great. Let’s dig a little deeper.

AWARENESS

Just knowing what you’re doing makes a huge difference in adjusting your unhealthy behaviors. 

We live in a society that is addicted to distraction. Awareness is the opposite of avoidance. We all do it. It’s far easier to avoid thinking about the parts of ourselves that we don’t like than to confront them. It’s human nature. But it’s also one of the primary things that stands in the way of developing healthy habits.

But before you can make any changes, you have to be AWARE of what those things are. Meditation, breathing exercises, journaling, and goal setting are all fantastic methods for cultivating awareness.

Remember, we aren’t fixing anything yet. This first step is all about just identifying what’s going on with our thoughts.

Want more great information about the foundations of a healthy life? Download the first installment of our NEW 7-part eBook series The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People for FREE right now, right HERE!

CONNECTION

Once you’ve identified what you are thinking, the next step is to understand where those thoughts come from. Every thought you have is like a plant. It grows out of the soil up into the air, but it has roots you can’t see. Your thoughts are the same. They don’t exist in isolation.

So, by examining the WHY behind your thoughts—both the negative and the positive ones—you are able to begin to see things for what they really are.

Ask yourself how a certain thought makes you feel. Then ask yourself “why does it make me feel that way?” Look around that thought and try to identify its connections. Is it something from your childhood? Does it remind you of a certain person? Are the roots of that thought based on something negative or positive?

By first identifying a thought or a habit, and then understanding its connections, you can begin to understand why you do certain things without even thinking about them.

TRANSFORMATION

You’re able then to begin to replace that bad habit with a better one. Step by slow step, repeating that good action will literally rewire your brain.

And after a while, that good action will become something you do without even thinking about it. Which is what we call a “habit.”

Transformation comes when you have that connection with the why and how of what you do and why you do it.

I hope after reading this that you now have a better understanding how bad habits are broken—and new ones are formed.

Here’s your challenge: Follow these steps.

Don’t give into the ignorance.

And learn to listen to your body.

As you practice awareness, as you get to know yourself, you’ll be amazed at who you are becoming!

The post ACT: How to Change Your Life in Three Simple Steps appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.