'Closing The Gap' - Page 15:
RELAXATION:
One of the most natural responses to stress is relaxation. It is easy to learn and easy to use. It is effective regardless of the cause of stress. If you haven’t tried it before, try it now. Read through these instructions first and then give it a go. Perhaps you may like to make a recording and relax while you play the recording back.
Like any physical skill, practice makes perfect. The more you practice, the more effective this technique will be. Twice a day is more effective than once a day.
THE 8 MINUTE RELAXATION PLAN:
Minute 1:
In a quiet room and in a comfortable chair assume a restful position and a quiet, passive attitude.
Take four deep breaths. Make each one deeper than the one before. Hold the first inhalation for 4 seconds, the second one for 5 seconds, the third for 6 seconds and the fourth one for 7 seconds.
Pull the tension from all parts of your body into your lungs and exhale it with each expiration. Feel more relaxed with each breath.
Minute 2:
Count backwards from 10 to 0. Breathe naturally and with each exhalation, count one number and feel more and more relaxed as you approach 0.
With each count you descend a relaxation stairway and become more deeply relaxed until you are totally relaxed at 0.
Minutes 3-7:
In your mind go to a place that you find particularly pleasant and restful. Stay there for about four minutes. Visualise the beauty around you, listen to the sounds. Using all your senses try vividly but passively, to capture the feelings of that place and time.
Minute 8:
Bring your attention back to yourself. Count slowly from 0 to 10. Feel the energy, vitality and health flow through your body. Open your eyes. Feel alert and ready to resume your activities.
DIET:
The computer industry has a very explicit phrase. It is ‘garbage in, garbage out’. It’s simply means if you put useless data into the computer, you can only get useless data out. Our bodies work along the same lines.
The food we choose to nourish our body with can have a positive or a negative effect. It can assist us to live a long and full life or it can impair both our physical and mental performance.
Unfortunately many of us have learnt bad eating habits, and it is interesting to note that these bad habits were learnt from others. Therefore the example we set for our children could have a life-long effect on them.
We have the choice to be a positive or a negative influence on our children. By eating a sensible well-balanced diet, we will have a positive influence. We will also feel better, look better and in fact be better.
EXERCISE:
Exercise utilizes the energy that our body has built up for fight or flight. It is a constructive outlet for this energy. Your body will become fitter and better able to cope with a hectic lifestyle.
Parents who exercise regularly achieve both physical and emotional rewards. The physical rewards are to feel good, to have energy and be able to interact with your children in strenuous activities.
All this as well as the emotional rewards of being a positive influence on your children’s life habits, puts the argument for exercise in the essential class even if you have to alter your lifestyle to do it.
If you are saying that exercise just isn’t for you, then try relaxation and good dietary habits first. You will begin to feel better and exercise will become much easier for you.
Relaxation, diet and exercise actually have a combined effect greater than their individual contribution to your health. A small improvement in each area can make a big difference to you.
WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WAY WE FEEL:
While the importance of what we have been talking about cannot be underestimated, diet, relaxation and exercise are only one side of the coin. The other side is our mental well-being. The way that we use our mind has implications for the health of our body.
Follow through this exercise. Record the following words very slowly giving yourself 30 seconds between each paragraph. Then play the recording back while you are lying on your bed or sitting in your favourite chair.
(START OF RECORDING)
Sit back and relax. Close your eyes. Let the pressures of the day fall away. Think of a favourite spot where you go to relax. Visualise yourself resting in this special place.
How does your body feel? Are you relaxed and comfortable?
Now into your idyllic scene comes someone that you care about – someone you love and trust. Someone who has given you pleasure and comfort. Visualise yourself with that special person.
How does your body feel now? Are you more comfortable and relaxed?
But then your companion moves on and a person you dislike intensely comes into your line of vision. You see that person approaching you. Closer and closer.
What is happening to your body now?
(END OF RECORDING)
After you play back the tape, relax for a minute and read on. Did you find that your pulse quickened? Were you tense? Did your muscles tighten up? If so, why did these things happen to you? Not because a person you dislike had entered into your idyllic scene. For this person isn’t actually near you. You were in no way physically threatened by this person. Then why did your body react this way?
Your body reacts this way because your mind cannot always tell the difference between what you see and experience in reality, and what you see and vividly experience in your imagination.
As far as your mind is concerned, this person actually came into your personal space. The person didn’t do anything to you and was never going to do anything to you, but his presence in your imagination was enough to trigger a stress reaction in your body.
If someone was looking at you while you were doing this exercise, they may have noticed tightening of the facial muscles. This would be evidence of an outward involuntary physical reaction to a mental picture.
Now let’s look at this logically. This person isn’t doing anything to cause your reaction. What is happening is that you are causing the changes. In other words, you are allowing your body to react in this way in this situation.
While there was no physical danger during this exercise, many of the symptoms that you experienced would occur in an actual threatened situation. Your body was on a ‘fight or flight’ footing.
Let’s develop this example further. Imagine the person you dislike is in reality someone you often come in contact with or think about reasonably often, because as we’re just determined, you don’t have to be in contact with someone for that person to have an impact on your body.
Previously we mentioned three stages of stress. First was the alarm stage, and then came the resistance stage and finally the exhaustion stage. It’s entirely logical that if you hate someone badly enough, then that person will frequently come into your thoughts.
If he occupies your thoughts, then your body will react as if you’re in physical danger. If you continue to hate that person, your body will continue to react. You will go through the alarm stage, the resistance stage and perhaps the exhaustion stage. Remember that this last step is where the body actually begins to wear out.
If you hate someone badly enough, for long enough, you will injure yourself both mentally and physically. This hate that you feel for someone is something that is inside you. Something you have control over.
If we choose to hate, we are actually causing ourselves a disservice. Note that you would hurt yourself, not that he would hurt you, because you have control over your thoughts, you have choices. You can choose to hate and therefore hurt yourself, or you can choose not to hate and consequently not hurt yourself.
John’s experience when he was a youth is an example of being responsible for the way you feel. John was brought up in the bush and managed to accumulate an amazingly large number of enemies in a short space of time.
His reaction to his enemies was to fight; in fact, he had more fights than he had hot meals. He made enemies out of everyone he met because he thought everyone hated him. He was probably right.
He walked around as tense as a loaded spring, ready to fight at a moment’s notice over real or imagined provocations. If people were friendly, John wondered about how they would betray him.
Then he would look out for any signs that would back up his suspicions. He would then interpret their actions (whatever they were) as confirming his suspicions. His health began to show the effects of his body’s constant tension, caused by the hate he carried. He was like a time bomb ready to go off at any time.
John began to realise that if he was to have a future, he must change. What choices did he have?
He had two choices. He could change his enemies or he could change himself. Obviously he couldn’t change his enemies. He realised that to change any relationship, you have to change yourself. So this is what he did.
He decided he wasn’t going to hate his enemies anymore and that they were now going to be his friends. He was determined to be friends no matter what their reactions were. So the next time a situation arose where he usually would have fought, he simply smiled, slapped them on the back, joked and walked away.
Imagine the confusion! Someone that you’re used to fighting with, suddenly acts differently and not only that, but is friendly as well. John said, ‘the boot was now on the other foot.’ As far as he was concerned, they were his friends and he would always treat them as such.
How they reacted to this was their problem. If they still hated him, that was up to them but he would look to find evidence of friendship in all that they did.
What he did, was to do himself a favour. Instead of carrying around a hate, he carried around forgiveness. He didn’t know if the others were any happier from his change of attitude, but he did know that he was certainly happier and healthier.
Giving up hate worked for him. If you hate or have negative feelings for someone, it doesn’t hurt that person. The only person who gets hurt is you.
Forgiving others is a necessary step in helping yourself.
You are simply happier and healthier when you don’t hate anyone. Think back on the times when you’ve been happy. Weren’t these times when you felt neither hate nor distrust? One of the objectives of this guide is for you to be happier and more comfortable with yourself.
It can’t happen all the time, because after all, we are human. When you are feeling off-side with someone analyse what is happening and why, and take the appropriate corrective action. People who are able to do this will be noted for their good humour and their friendliness. It simply makes better sense to be friends rather than enemies. You gain more personally from being a friend, even when others let you down.
To lead a healthy lifestyle, not only does the body have to be healthy, but the mind has to be healthy as well. If you have negative thoughts, release them now. Examine what is happening around you and learn from it. If events are not going your way perhaps you can still learn from them.
One of the reasons why we give ourselves negative feelings about other people is because we expect them to think like us. We then misinterpret their actions as John did and say to ourselves ‘OK, you don’t like me so I don’t like you’, and proceed to act in a negative way towards them. This in turn draws a negative reaction from them and of course thereafter we feel justified in disliking them.
One of the reasons why we fall for this cycle of events is that deep down we’re unsure of how we feel about ourselves. If we don’t feel that we are confident, lovable individuals, then it is very difficult for us to realise that someone else can love us or have a positive relationship with us. So if we’re not positive about our own self-worth, these sorts of situations tend to occur.
One of the causes of this behaviour lies in each person’s perception of the other. You can do your part to improve relationships by changing your perception of the other person. Then you will tend to change your actions and this will then have an impact on the other person.
We can all learn from Will Rogers, a famous American comedian who once said, ‘I have never met a man I didn’t like’.
I don’t think this quite reflects upon the type of people Will Rogers mixed with, as much as if it reflects his own personal philosophy and his positive approach to life in general.
Sometime during his lifetime, he would have experienced something unpleasant for him personally but he still managed to say this statement and believe it. We can all learn from this. We may not be able to make the same statement but certainly we can forgive others and go on to build a better life for ourselves.
Someone who is confident about their own self-worth will have fewer enemies and negative feelings than someone who isn’t. This may be because they feel that they can deal with any problem more easily than a person with little confidence feels they can.
In other words, they are more confident and possess a more positive attitude. We must be at peace with ourselves before we can be at peace with others.
The two important issues that have been raised here in terms of mental health are:
* We must develop and maintain a positive image of ourselves.
* We must be capable of forgiving ourselves and others.
These issues go hand in hand. They are inseparable.
AFFIRMATIONS (Positive Self Talk)
The most powerful force for self change that we have available to us is our self talk, that is, what we say to ourselves. Our self-talk directly influences our self-esteem. Therefore one way in which you can build your self-esteem is by using your self-talk constructively. This is done by sending yourself positive messages that your mind will eventually come to believe in.
If you tell yourself something long enough, your subconscious will accept it and you will begin to act that way. If you act as though you like a person you might build a friendship. You certainly will lose an enemy. After all, it takes two to fight.
John Lennon sang an affirmation in one of his songs: ‘Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better’. Those simple words are important and if you repeat them frequently, you will find yourself believing them. Used as part of an overall program for change, affirmations can be very effective in raising your self-esteem.
When your self-esteem rises, it is easier to apply the other techniques of relaxation, a balanced diet, sensible exercise and rational emotive therapy.
Here is a good mental diet that is relevant to all of us.
* Carry no grudges.
* Put the best possible interpretation upon everyone’s actions.
* Send out a kindly thought towards any person who is being antagonistic.
* Think hopefully at all times.
* See only the best happening.
Once you become aware that you are the ‘captain of your ship’, you begin to realise that you need only experience stress when you choose to do so.
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