Your One Thing: Finding Your Groove

If you could make just one health related change that would impact your life the most what would that be?

This time of fall is the perfect time to establish new healthy rhythms in your life.  The craziness of summer is past.  Back-to-school has begun to find it’s groove. And now you can find your groove too.   A simple three step process can help you finally make that change, and set the rhythm for your best life.  

When most people  are asked the one health habit that would make the biggest difference in their life and health, they don’t have to take too much time to think of what that one thing is. It is probably the one thing they have been actively avoiding for months or years.  Why?  Habits… state of mind… change is hard.  And for many people, the answer is busyness.  So lets take a moment right now to make a shift that may just move the needle on your whole health and life in the most significant way possible…

If you’d like a quick video, you can watch the Facebook reel HERE

1) State Shift

First, you want to get yourself out of the state that is used to being tired, apathetic and uncomfortable. But this state shift can be as easy as a simple gratitude practice. So right here, right now, think of 2 things that you are genuinely grateful for. If you have just an extra moment or two, you can even whip out a notepad and write down 3, 5, or 10 things to amplify the benefit. But even just one thing will start to make the shift from your limbic “survivor” brain, into your more creative, productive, and soulful upper brain centers.

2) Visualize the Positive Outcome

Now that you have set the platform for your contemplation, bring to mind that one thing. It can be related to fitness, diet, physical, mental, or emotional health. Maybe it is exercising daily, cutting out sugar, or meditating. Choose the health habit that would make the single biggest change in your life and health. Now visualize successfully doing that and your life changing in all those ways you knew it would with that change. What would it feel like or look like? What can you see being a natural positive consequence of that shift, and how would that feel? How would your interactions with others be perhaps more present, joyful, confident, or calm? How would you feel about yourself? How would your energy be? Really spend sometime watching your different self through your minds eye for sometime. We will do one more visualization after this, but for now, notice if any thoughts or feelings of avoidance, doubt, or self-beratement come up. You don’t have to know the ‘How to get there’ now. Just gently set aside any negatives for now and stay in the state of positive visualization. Ideally get to a place where you can just hang out in this positive feeling for a while. You are conditioning your body and mind to align with the reality that this could happen. Feel free to journal any feelings or epiphanies that you have. Come back to this exercise as well as the next one as often as possible.

3) Picture Overcoming Obstacles

Once you have firmly opened your brain to the possibility of this different reality, you have already begun to the shift to that reality. But there is one more step that is often missed. This will take concentration, so stick with it. While holding that positive experience in your mind, you may have noticed the gap between where you are and where you imagined yourself being. You suspended that part of your brain for sometime to get to the higher mental centers, but now we are going to use those active higher centers to practically look at those real obstacles. Now that you have imagined yourself accomplishing better health with that new habit, what are the obstacles that could get in your way? This shouldn’t be hard because it is probably all the reasons you are not already doing it. The difference is now you are consciously identifying those things, and visualizing yourself overcoming them. Can you see yourself in the process of creating new habits? Can you see yourself letting go of old habits getting in the way and how? If lack of confidence from past failures is an obstacle, imagine yourself overcoming that. One time when I wanted to meditate more, I did this exercise and could tell I had a block. When I sat with it for a while, I realized that the thought of meditating brought up extreme feelings of loneliness that I was subconsciously avoiding. Just this realization created some space from those feelings, so I could work with them rather than having them subconsciously sabotage my goals.

Now that you know what to do, schedule it. Each of those ways that you saw yourself overcoming the obstacles, take the practical steps to overcome them. Remember this, this study has been repeated again and again When athletes were put in a situation where they were visualizing themselves training for a goal (say throwing free throws in basketball, for example) the outcome in real life was that they actually performed as good or better than if they were practicing in real life.

You have inside you what it takes to do what you are being called into.

If you think having a clear nervous system would help you accomplish your health goals, or focus better to do this kind of exercise, I would be happy to jump on a phone call and see if our care or office could help.

Dr. Lara Hill is a holistic Duluth chiropractor. She does a different kind of chiropractic in Duluth, MN, though people drive from all over northern Minnesota and Wisconsin to benefit from her particular type of chiropractic care.