Ways to help motivate you to start living a healthy lifestyle.

These are some of the things that I do that have helped motivate me to continue a daily healthy lifestyle. This is just advice from personal experience, so maybe if you’re like me, it will help you too.

1. To-Do list - I have a dry erase board hanging up on the wall in my room, and either the night before or the morning of, I will write down all that I need to get done that day. That includes my workouts, activities, cleaning sessions, etc. I just erase each thing that I’ve done after I’ve done them, which makes it easier to actually finish all of those things before the day ends, and all around just helps my days run more efficiantly, and therefore eliminates some stress.

2. Health Binder - I have put together a binder of health information, workouts, inspiring health photos, etc., and also a section where I keep track of my daily activities and my meals/snacks so in the longrun I can see all the progress I’ve been making and how long I’ve been maintaining that lifestyle. It’s also another thing that helps keep me motivated to continue with all of it.

3. Cleanliness/Organization - Keeping my living space clean and organized helps to create a more stress-free and open environment. Stress-free because it makes it easier to find what I need exactly when I need it, and open in terms of making my indoor workouts and activities more comfortable and pleasing.

4. Browsing/Maintaining a Health Blog - Looking through a health blog and/or maintaining your own, helps keep the inspiration and motivation flowing. When you’re filling your brain with images and writings related to whatever it is you want more of, I really believe that it helps attract it to yourself that much more, because you get a sense of what it would be like to maintain those things and therefore helps it become more realistic.

5. Creativity - Balancing out the fitness in our lives with a bit of creativity, I feel, helps us to appreciate being healthy that much more… because when we have a balance of discipline and spontenaiety in our lives, it keeps that sort of freshness flowing in whatever it is we do. As opposed to doing the same old things every day, it gets boring and we become unmotivated to continue pursuing those things.

(Source: eyswdeopn)

lovelyogi:

“This moment is as it is because the entire universe is as it is. When you struggle against this moment, you’re actually struggling against the entire universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole universe by struggling against this moment. 

This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. This is important to understand. You can wish for things in the future to be different, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are” 

- Deepak Chopra, The 7 spiritual laws of success

(via yogachocolatelove)

The Power of Now ( A Highly Recommended Book )

To make the journey into The Power of Now we still need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of this extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breath a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.” Althought the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question-and-answer format to guide us.

A word-of-mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers - one that can radically change their lives for the better.

This book has definitely helped me out of the most troubled problems I’ve ever faced. Intense anxiety, stress, unhappiness, depression. I can honestly say that it has helped me immensely with those problems, or more so, “situations to be dealt with.” I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone who is open to it.

likethesun:

“An emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern, and because of its often overpowering energetic charge, it is not easy initially to stay present enough to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds - unless there is enough presence in you. If you are pulled into unconscious identification with the emotion through lack of presence, which is normal, the emotion temporarily becomes “you.” Often a vicious circle builds up between your thinking and the emotion: they feed each other. The thought pattern created a magnified reflection of itself in the form of an emotion, and the vibrational frequency of the emotion keeps feeding the original thought pattern. By dwelling mentally on the situation, event, or person that is the perceived cause of the emotion, the thought feeds energy to the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern, and so on.” - Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

Yawn, It’s one of the best things you can do for your brain.

Go ahead: Laugh if you want (though you’ll benefit your brain more if you smile), but in my professional opinion, yawning is one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience. Even my colleagues who are researching meditation, relaxation, and stress reduction at other universities have overlooked this powerful neural-enhancing tool. However, yawning has been used for many decades in voice therapy as an effective means for reducing performance anxiety and hypertension in the throat.

Several recent brain-scan studies have shown that yawning evokes a unique neural activity in the areas of the brain that are directly involved in generating social awareness and creating feelings of empathy. One of those areas is the precuneus, a tiny structure hidden within the folds of the parietal lobe. According to researchers at the Institute of Neurology in London, the precuneus appears to play a central role in consciousness, self-reflection, and memory retrieval. The precuneus is also stimulated by yogic breathing, which helps explain why different forms of meditation contribute to an increased sense of self-awareness. It is also one of the areas hardest hit by age-related diseases and attention deficit problems, so it’s possible that deliberate yawning may actually strengthen this important part of the brain. ( READ MORE )

‘Magic Mushrooms’ Can Improve Psychological Health according to research from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

The psychedelic drug in magic mushrooms may have lasting medical and spiritual benefits, according to new research from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

The mushroom-derived hallucinogen, called psilocybin, is known to trigger transformative spiritual states, but at high doses it can also result in “bad trips” marked by terror and panic. The trick is to get the dose just right, which the Johns Hopkins researchers report having accomplished.

In their study, the Hopkins scientists were able to reliably induce transcendental experiences in volunteers, which offered long-lasting psychological growth and helped people find peace in their lives — without the negative effects.

“The important point here is that we found the sweet spot where we can optimize the positive persistent effects and avoid some of the fear and anxiety that can occur and can be quite disruptive,” says lead author Roland Griffiths, professor of behavioral biology at Hopkins.

Giffiths’ study involved 18 healthy adults, average age 46, who participated in five eight-hour drug sessions with either psilocybin — at varying doses — or placebo. Nearly all the volunteers were college graduates and 78% participated regularly in religious activities; all were interested in spiritual experience.

Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% of those who received the drug said the experiment was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.

Critically, however, the participants themselves were not the only ones who saw the benefit from the insights they gained: their friends, family member and colleagues also reported that the psilocybin experience had made the participants calmer, happier and kinder.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/16/magic-mushrooms-can-improve-psychological-health-long-term/#ixzz1edsaWDlo

Creativity and mental health

Research has shown that being creative alters us by improving our mood, self esteem and socialization. It looks at the physiological change of increased neural activity as well as the joy of expression. And the cumulative results are renewed vitality and a can-do attitude that triggers healing because a new strength emerges that fosters independence.

And creativity can take many forms. It is not black or white, simple or complex; it is an approach and an attitude of coloring your world differently. Everything in our lives can be looked at in other ways. It is not always about art or the talent to draw. We can challenge ourselves to wonder how a purple flower might look if it was red with soft pink edges, or how a story would change if the characters had different intentions, or how your favorite pieces of music would sound if they were blended together. It is the purpose of thinking, imagining and delighting in possibilities.