One of Tom’s 12 Laws that stuck a chord with me was Number 4:  You make your habits, and then your habits make you.  How true, especially when it comes to balanced health.

Although you might not agree with all of Tom’s 12 Laws and admittedly, some of them are pretty harsh (see Number 9 about Happily Ever Afters), the main point is that Tom has put some thought into figuring out his outlook on life, his idea of how life works, his rules to live by.

Here’s why that’s critically important to you and me:  these ideas or “rules” that we all have of how life works essentially dictate how you view everything, and everyone, in your life.

If your “life’s rules” include the belief that all strangers are not to be trusted, you’ll never be open to meeting new people.  If you believe the world is a dark, hostile place, filled with horrible people, that’s exactly what you’ll find.  Why?  Because that’s all you’ll be looking for.

On the other hand, if you believe that there’s always some good in everyone and that it’s your job to find it, you’ll find a world filled with goodness.

Someone once said that when you’re born, Life hands you a coloring book and a set of crayons.  You get to choose which colors to use.  You decide whether your world is a mixture of blacks and grays or whether it’s filled with a rainbow of bright colors.

Your “Rules to Live By” are like a set of filters that only allow you to see what you believe the world is really like.

So here’s the million dollar question:  what are your “Rules to Live By?”

What “filters” do you view the world with?  Are they positive and uplifting?  Do they support your goals?  Do they bring you joy, peace, and balanced health?  If they don’t, you really need to ask yourself whether or not they’re worth keeping.

How do you do that?  The first step is to write them down.  Your journal is the perfect place for this (you do have one, right?).

Find a quiet place and ask yourself, what rules do I live by?  What beliefs shape my view of the people and events in my life?  What crayons am I using to color my world?

Give these questions some thought and write down whatever immediately comes to mind.  Don’t worry about trying to come up with a perfectly formed list at first.  Your first step is to write down as many thoughts and ideas as you can.

After a little time has passed, review what you’ve written.  Ask yourself, “is that what I really believe?”  Ask yourself this several times in order to strip away the things that you think you “should” believe and get down to the things you really believe.  Feel free to revise, reword, add, and delete at this stage.

Continue reworking your list until you’re confident that each item describes what you really believe about how life is set up.

Now for the difficult part.  Once your list is fairly complete, go through each item and ask yourself, “what is this belief giving me, or costing me?”  For some items, you’ll find that the belief brings you a lot of joy, or happiness, or some other benefit.  For others, you might find that a particular belief costs you quite a bit in potential relationships and opportunities.

Lastly, ask yourself which of these rules to live by are still valid and worth keeping, and which are no longer consistent with the person you want to become or the world you want to live in.   Put stars by, or underline, the “rules” worth keeping or those that provide some sort of positive benefit.  Mark through or “x” out the ones that don’t support the life you want to live.  Then think of new, better ones to replace the ones you just marked out.

You have no idea how powerful this is. The simple act of asking yourself “what rules do I really live by,” writing them down, and then thinking about the consequences of having those beliefs is nothing less than life changing.

The neat part of doing this is that it doesn’t matter how young or how old you are.  As Tom Hoobyar notes in his Rule Number 12, “it’s never too late to change.”  Amen to that.

So what are your “Rules to Live By?”

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy

Technorati Tags: rules to live by, health, spirituality, life changing, motivation, balance, journal

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One of the chapters I found interesting was when he was trying to learn how to meditate.  His teachers told him to just sit.  He asked them what he should think about when he sat.  They said, “don’t think, just sit.”  He couldn’t understand at first.  It’s something I struggled with when I first began to meditate.

So what do you think about during meditation?  Nothing.  During meditation, you don’t think.  That doesn’t mean that thoughts don’t enter your mind.  Of course they do.  It means that you shouldn’t be actively creating them.

Sound confusing?  Probably.  In the meditation system that I try to follow (Vipassana or “insight” meditation), the intent is to sit and simply watch what is happening in your body and mind.  You don’t actively create the thoughts that come into your mind but you don’t attempt to suppress them either.  You simply watch them pop up, float around for a while, and then fade away, usually to be replaced by another.  If you try to force them away, you simply create more – just like trying to calm the surface of a pool of water only disturbs it further.

If you try to stop a thought, you tend to become engaged in it.  You’ll chase it around and before you know it, you’re planning what’s for dinner.  This is called “monkey mind” because your mind chases thoughts back and forth like a monkey chasing butterflies.  In this state, your mind never rests because it’s always engaged in an internal conversation that never stops.

So don’t do it.  Just sit and watch it all unfold.  Try to be an objective observer, nothing more.  If a thought pops up (and they will), just see it.  Watch it arise, stay for a while, and then fade away.  Eventually, you’ll find that these thoughts will pop up less and less frequently.  When that happens, you’ll find a peace and tranquility that you’ve never known before.  It’s a silence that’s both completely void of everything and yet, full of everything.  That’s when real insight (Vipassana) takes place, when you see things as they really are.  It’s when you hear the voice of God.

And it all begins with just sitting.

Please don’t think that you have to be Buddhist to meditate, or that meditation will turn you into a Buddhist.  Meditation is an important part of almost all religions.  The Bible says, “Be still and know that I am God.”  How do you learn to “be still?”  Through meditation.

So what do you think about when you meditate?  You don’t think at all.  You just sit…

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Technorati Tags: meditation, meditate, spirituality, peace

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1. Boom Boxes. For some insane reason, some people just love to crank up their radios or boom boxes when they’re out camping.  I just don’t see the logic of leaving the noise of the city – and  then bringing it with you to the campground.  Inconsiderate people who play loud music is one reason to hate camping.
2. Loud People. You know the type.  Even when these people whisper, it sounds like a fog horn on a stormy night.  Apparently, these people don’t need much sleep because they’re always the last ones to go to bed keeping everyone else up with their loud jokes, comments, and laughter.
3. Door Slammers. I happened to be up before daybreak one morning and watched my “neighbor” in the campsite next to me crawl out of their tent, open a car door, not find what they were looking for, then slam the door shut, open another door, SlaM it closed, walk over to the other side of the car, open a third door, then SLAM it shut.  If the entire campground wasn’t already up, they were after this person opened and slammed 3 out of the 4 doors on their vehicle.
4. Car Alarms. Why some people deem it necessary to set their car alarms when they’re camping is beyond me.  Invariably, one of them goes off in the middle of the night when someone in their party opens a door looking for something (see item # 3).
5. People Who DRIVE to the Bathroom. In most state parks, the showers and bathrooms are usually within walking distance from the campsites.  However, there are some people who insist on driving the 40 or 50 yards.  Waking up in the middle of the night because someone is starting their car to go to the bathroom is no fun — especially since they usually set off the alarm (see item # 4), slam the car door (see item # 3), and then tell their spouse where they’re going (see item # 2).
6. Irresponsible Dog Owners. This one’s a pet peeve of mine.  I love dogs but would never take one camping.  Most of the time, the poor dog spends the entire weekend tied to the picnic table or barking at everything in their strange surroundings.  I especially hate people who don’t obey lease laws or those who leave their dogs at the campsite while they go off hiking or into town.  Irresponsible dog owners is a reason to hate camping.
7. Irresponsible Parents. For some reason, parents assume that they can let their kids run wild like they do at home.  I’ve seen kids get hurt running into briar vines and falling off of rocks.  The outdoors is not at all like a manicured back yard.  Kids need supervision, especially when outdoors.
8. People Who Bring All the Conveniences. One of reasons to go camping is to get away from all of the TV and radio chatter.  It’s difficult to relax when your neighbor is watching the game on his portable TV in the next campsite and has the sound cranked all the way up.  I’ve seen people set up satellite dishes in a campsite!  Geez!  These are people who just don’t understand the whole concept of camping in the first place – and a reason to hate going.
9. Mr. Fire Bug. One of my earliest camping memories was watching a bunch of fishermen trying to build a campfire.  One of them dosed a stack of wood with what must have been at least a gallon of gasoline.  It was kind of breezy so he struck a match and held it close to his body in order to shield it from the wind.  Then he slowly moved it towards the gasoline soaked wood.  The fireball literally blew the fishing cap off of his head – and I’m sure singed his eyebrows off as well.  Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to play with matches.
10. Alcohol. Why is it that some people think camping is a reason to drink?  They’ll stand around a campfire and chug beer after beer for most of the night.  Of course, there’s always a boom box, loud talking and laughing, car doors being slammed, and a barking dog or two!

Although I love being out doors, any or all of the above can really ruin a great weekend.  Most of these come down to a basic lack of consideration for others.  I was brought up to be considerate of others, to try to be quiet when we came in late so as not to bother people who might be trying to relax or sleep.  In this “me, me, me” world, I guess such things get left by the wayside.  It’s a real shame.

However, don’t let these things rob you of the joy of being outdoors.  Nothing will heal your mind and spirit like a weekend sleeping under the stars.  You’ll feel a strong spiritual connection to Nature that you just can’t get anywhere else … that is until someone slams a car door …

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy

Technorati Tags: camping, outdoors, mental, balanced health, spirituality, nature, relaxation

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What Stress Is

What we call “stress” is the body’s response to a change in your comfort level.  That change could be something physical like an upcoming storm, it could be something emotional like being asked to give a speech in front of a group of strangers, or it could be something mental like worrying about how to get your bills paid.  In either case, your level of comfort changes and you feel stress.

Some stress can be a positive thing, such as when you get an unexpected pay raise.  It can also help make you stronger, such as when you stress a muscle by lifting weights.  However, too much stress or stress caused by negative news or events can create some pretty serious health effects.

It’s important to understand that negative stress can affect your health in a variety of ways including anxiety, mood swings, and depression as well as a number of physical ways such as sleeplessness, fatigue, sweating, and nausea.

Coping with Stress

So how do you deal with negative stress?  How do you cope with its effects?  Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Trust Your Faith.  Whatever your religious beliefs, research shows that people with a strong spirituality are more positive and hopeful towards the future.  They also tend to see stressful situations as part of life that help make us spiritually stronger.  Their belief that there is a greater power in the universe that they can access through prayer and meditation provides the strength and encouragement to handle any kind of stress.

2.  Trust Yourself. Adopt a “survivor mentality” that says, “No matter what, I will get through this.”  This attitude immediately begins to put a positive spin on things and makes them appear more manageable.  Knowing that you’ll survive no matter what happens gets you focused on moving past the problem.  This is obviously better than spending all of your time picturing the many ways that things can go wrong.

3.  Trust the Power of Action. Do something.  It doesn’t really matter what you do, just that you stay active.  Exercise, ride a bike, take a walk, anything to get your heart rate up and your mind off of your troubles.  If there’s a storm coming, throw yourself into the preparations.  Taking action, any kind of action, builds momentum towards a solution.  You’ll be surprised that some of your best ideas on how to cope will come during your bike ride or walk.

4.  Take a News Break. Turn off the 24-hour news coverage of whatever impending disaster they happen to be reporting on.  The news media is great at making it sound like the world is coming to an end – complete with film at 11.  Take a news break and turn off the TV or radio.  Put down the newspaper with the “Doom Doom Doom” headlines.  Walk away from the neighbor who only wants to talk about how the world is going to pot.  This suggestion alone will make some of your stress immediately slip away.

5.  Stay Healthy. During stressful times, it’s critical that you maintain good health.  Make sure that you continue to eat healthy meals, exercise regularly, meditate, and get plenty of rest.  Stress tends to lower your immune system making it easy to get sick – which adds even more stress.

Stress is Part of Life

The only sure thing in life is that things will change – and when they do, many of us experience stress.  Stress is a part of life and learning how to deal with it is part of balanced health.  I hope this short article has given you some ideas on how to cope with the next problem that comes your way.

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy

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