Making Positive Lifestyle Choices to Empower You

When it comes to creating rewarding outcomes in life, making positive lifestyle choices will empower you. While time and financial constraints may restrict a few people’s capacities for choice, you can still make small incremental and significant changes.

When a person’s mental, physical or emotional health struggles and they find themselves in a state of depression, the first-line treatments are usually therapies and pharmaceutical drugs. The mental health industry is just that, an industry. Let’s call it what it is, it’s big business. What’s not talked about are how making positive lifestyle choices will help your mental, physical and emotional health.

Some Lifestyle Choices That Can Affect You

Healthy Diet Choices

Your diet can impact your mental health in positive ways. When you maintain a healthy, balanced diet and avoid that “Stress Snack”, your mind is not pumped up by fast sugar or salt levels. That candy bar or bag of chips is enjoyable, but when it becomes the solution to stress, you’ll be back to it like a drug. Don’t go there. If you need a snack in between meals, make sure it’s something healthy and in moderation.

Another part of a balanced diet is your hydration levels. Water is a good thing that lubricates your body and key organs, and helps detox unnecessary waste in your body. Don’t substitute coffee or soft drinks as a hydration method. I like my coffee, but it helps to dehydrate you. Consider your coffee in the morning and possibly mid-afternoon. Anything past that might interfere with your sleep. Soft drinks, while they taste good are full of sugars and salt that lead to weight gain. Fresh filtered water can do more positive for your body than any soft drink.

Don’t Screw Your Life up with Drugs

Unless you are prescribed medication by a licensed medical practitioner, avoid self medication. Designer drugs like ecstasy or any of the illegal variants are harmful. I remember years ago when I was in federal law enforcement attending a Drug Enforcement Administration course.

A video was shown of a young girl and her mother. Both were shown an x-ray of a healthy brain. They both looked pleased, thinking the brain was of the girl. Then, they showed a brain with large holes in it. The brain was literally eaten by the chemical components of ecstasy. That’s when they were told the damaged brain was the girl.

The shock and fear, followed by tears and knowing her brain is permanently damaged was a sad scene to see. Drugs can negatively Impact your liver and designer drugs can kill your brain.

Be careful of vitamins as well. While the vitamin market is generally safe, they are still an unregulated product. I admit, I’m a vitamin user, but I don’t supplement with what I “think” I need based on the latest popular advertisement. I had a nutritional blood test by my doctor to tell me areas where I need to supplement. That’s probably a better approach based on medical advice.

Turn off the Noise

The world is noisy, and with noise comes stress. We are surrounded by the sounds of traffic, people, TVs, music and other electronic devices.  I’m always amazed at people that walk through the store with their cell phone on speaker mode so everyone can hear their conversations. People and the world can be intrusive and it’s a good idea to set some time away for yourself.

I remember years ago, a woman client arrived for her hypnosis session with me. She clearly looked stressed when she arrived. I asked how her day went and she said “It’s been too ‘Peopley’ out there.” While it gave me a quick chuckle, I understood it completely.

An hour later after our session, she was re-centered and totally relaxed. Be sure to take time for you, whether through meditation, hypnosis, a calm walk or a quiet focused workout. If you don’t take time for you, someone else will make the effort to take your time and use it for themselves.

A Few Stress Management Techniques

• Yoga 
• Meditation
• Hypnosis
• Aim for 7-hours of sleep per night.
• Progressive Muscle Relaxation
• Abdominal Breathing
• Eliminate sources of stress
• Exercise
• Engage in creative interests that shift your mind away from the noise.

Your Mission – Making Positive Lifestyle Choices

Your mission is to set aside time for you because you deserve it. Days of distractions and noise will start to chip away at your mental, physical and emotional health. The level of cognitive function and calm can degrade. If you’re not sure where to start, go through the items noted above and find something that shifts your focus away from the noise. Download my free confidence and relaxation audio and listen to that each day, or perhaps right before sleep. It’s only 19-minutes. If you’ve given 12+ hours to everyone else, you deserve at least this much to start a reset for your own life.

I also offer personalized hypnosis sessions by Zoom to neutralize the stress. My clients come from all over the U.S. I can help you too from the comfort of your home. Reach out to me here and we can get you on the schedule for transformative change.