Category: Health

I don’t believe there is a single person on the planet that has not spent at least one night worrying about their health. The $3 trillion dollars spent in the healthcare sector in the US is more than any other country in the developed world. What’s worse, prevention in the US ranks low compared to other developed countries. The US ranks as one of the worst countries in preventing deaths from treatable conditions.

Having synthesized five drugs for cancer treatment and having worked in the healthcare industry for the best part of two decades, I can tell you with certainty that when it comes to our health, it is what we do not know that kills us. What are some of the least known hidden causes that prevent optimal health? Join me in finding out.

The One Love Affair that Can Reduce Stress

#SelfLove
Photo by http://yuliyajul.com

When the glaring reality of stress shows up in your life in the form of anxiety, exhaustion, or irritability, I bet love is the last thing on your mind.

However, considering that our relationship with stress defines every other relationship in our life, I want to tell you a little secret about a special stress-reducing kind of love: The love you have for yourself.

In this article, I want to share with you why cultivating self-love is a gateway to effective stress-reduction as well as the ultimate path to the gifts of optimal health, performance, and happiness.

Why is self-love so critical?

If you are skeptical about the stress-reducing properties of cultivating self-love, let me share with you some data from scientific literature.  

The most vulnerable populations for compassion fatigue and burnout are:

  • Highly-dedicated individuals –the best and the brightest (Killian, 2008; Meyers & Fine, 2003),
  • Drivers and high-achievers (Shanafalt et.al., 2012),
  • Individuals with high expectations of self (Figley, 2012).

Although on first glance you may think that the above individuals’ dedication indicates a great degree of love for one’s self, I invite you to reconsider. Could their dedication be driven more by perfectionism than by self-love? An endless striving for perfection harbors a great degree of self-judgment and a loud inner critic, rather that self-love. Which would explain the high vulnerability of these individuals to compassion fatigue and burnout.

In fact, Dr. Brene Brown’s robust research on vulnerability has uncovered that perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Most of us who have a hard time saying no, who push ourselves to the limit and sacrifice self-care and work-life balance for success, know all too well the cost of perfectionism. It is linked to depression, anxiety, addictions, eating disorders, digestive issues, and so much more. 

When I found myself falling from my top performer pedestal to the tight grip of burnout and illness, I had an invaluable epiphany: The endless chase of perfectionism and the adverse effects of stress may have meant that I had forgotten to love and honor one important person—myself.

How do you know when you don’t love yourself enough?

Until we love ourselves whole-heartedly, we are stuck in this never-ending chase for love, approval, and security from external sources.

I call this state the “bottomless pit.” You know you are in that state when nothing ever seems good enough and you are your own worst critic. Regardless of how much you accomplish, you are never fully satisfied. Perhaps this is because of the way accomplishments were rewarded in your early life. You may have established an identity that is derived from your achievements if you got “love” from others for your performance. You then forget all about your well-being or what makes your heart sing. You begin living your life to meet other people’s expectations, judgments, and perceptions of you.

How stress shows up when we don’t love ourselves enough

Stress is a state characterized by all the changes our body makes to meet the demands from our environment. However, although it is considered to be the epidemic of the century, stress is essentially what summons our resources to rise to the occasion as needed in different aspects of life.
In fact, up to a certain level, stress is defined as eustress (good stress) and it is what gives us the superpowers to ace a presentation, pass an exam, get through a family Thanksgiving dinner, or solve a complicated problem.

There is nothing wrong with being committed to performance excellence, but there is a big problem when our efforts are driven by the fear of not measuring up to others’ expectations. When we push ourselves to the limit to get approval, safety, and security from others, we are running away from this fear instead of going after something we value.

Giving control of how much is enough to others will push us past the good level of stress into the bad level of stress, called distress. 

It is well documented in scientific literature that operating too long at the level of distress, compromises every aspect of ourselves. Our body systems malfunction and we enter a state of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual impairment.

It is at that point that we experience exhaustion, irritability, ineffectiveness, and so many other symptoms of stress-coping mechanisms.

And as I learned all too well from my personal experience of burning-out and suffering a musculoskeletal disorder, this can lead to extensive damage in organs and body tissues, broadly described by the term allostasis.

How self-love transforms our relationship with stress

One of the most important lessons I learned from burnout is that meeting the demands of life from a place of worthiness and love for ourselves is a game-changer. It took a serious illness for me to discover self-love and to know how amazing being on my own side feels, but I am grateful for all I have experienced and the new direction of my life’s purpose: To translate all the lessons I learned from science and my healing journey into guideposts and strategies on how we can actually be successful without burning out.

Here are some examples of what living from a place of self-love can look like:

We may stay up late to meet a deadline, but we do so from a space of deep satisfaction, which re-charges our batteries with ample energy to conquer the world the next day.

We charge toward a goal that is aligned with our innermost sense of purpose and values. 

We feel self-sufficient in being our own source of love, approval, safety, and security. And from that beautiful, calm, balanced state our relationships transform at work and at home. We no longer cling to people, situations, and things, relating to them in a dysfunctional way that is rooted in fear. We trust that people, jobs, and all good things in life will be available to us as long as the energy exchange remains balanced and healthy. We also have the courage to step away from energy drainers. We don’t think it is the end of the world to give up a larger paycheck to work for an amazing leader or a company that lives their values.   We appreciate everything with a healthy dose of gratitude and we don’t play the martyr. We don’t take things personally, and we establish healthy parameters of giving and receiving while making appropriate adjustments when necessary. We have no reservations about setting healthy boundaries and we are proud to be a role model of work-life balance. We are able to follow the advice of Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Final thoughts

Stress is an inevitable part of our modern life that none of us gets a free pass from.

However, the quality of love and trust we cultivate with ourselves greatly determines how resilient we are and the impact that stress will ultimately have on our well-being.

Until we become the source of love, trust, and safety for ourselves, our relationship with stress will continue to be problematic.

Our efforts will be tainted by an endless pursuit for approval and a hidden sense of fear.

We will then engage in dysfunctional patterns of being and relating, which often lead to reducing our optimal performance. Then we experience the adverse consequences of stress.

However, when we choose to cultivate a different quality of love for ourselves, we begin to do things that are aligned with our values. Then the magic begins to happen.

No matter what curve balls we have to deal with in life, we are able to trust in our ability to set our own parameters to deal with these difficulties. We do this with a sense of purpose and equanimity while growing inner strengths along the way.

Although you may be skeptical of the stress-reducing properties of increasing love and kindness for yourself, there is so much science that proves it!

But don’t take my word for it. Regardless of where you are in life, if you are not where you want to be, you can begin the only love affair that can change that.

I will share science-based strategies on how to cultivate more kindness and love for your self in my next article. If you would like to be notified when it will be published and begin to tap into the transformative power of Self-love, Join my loving community: bit.ly/JoinMyndZen 

Five Ways Our Mind Trips Us Up and How To Change That.

Mind Trips

In my last article, I invited you to join me in celebrating the amazing capabilities of our mind.

Thank you so much for all your love, comments and engagement!

In response to all your invaluable comments, I decided this week to write an article that addresses what is on your mind: Why does our “untamed” mind lead us to behaviors that trip us up and what can we do about it?

By “untamed mind” I mean the thought processes that we habitually engage in based on past experiences although they sabotage us today.

Are you frustrated with any habitual thought patterns that sabotage your relationships, your career/finances, or your health? Why not consider guiding your mind to take alternative pathways so that you can arrive at different destinations?

Your mind may be distorting your view of reality and tripping you up without your even realizing it.

The truth about our mind’s involvement in self sabotage. – It is not your fault!

  • Our thought patterns are very powerful, but have been established through experiences we had no influence over.
  • Our mind has been trained to take certain pathways to make sense of challenging aspects of life and help us cope with the internal discomfort that accompanies them.
  • Threatening thoughts, (mind trips) place us in a compromised state because they activate our fear circuitry.
  • Our wise mind shuts down and our body systems veer off balance to address the perceived “threat”.
  • We then grasp for any ways to activate the reward centers in our brain and release “feel good” hormones, to mitigate the sense of unease.
  • Our pathways to rewarding activities that have also been set in our past, may or may not be aligned with our current goals.

Food may be a pleasurable, rewarding activity for someone like me, raised in the Mediterranean, where so many positive values are cultivated around the dinner table.  However, allowing food to be the default pattern of reward center activation during stressful times may over time lead to obesity.

Eliminating the thought patterns leading to Self-Sabotage is within our control.

It is not our fault if the thinking patterns and reward activation pathways which were established in the past do not serve us today.

However, it is within our control to change those patterns in the present.  

We can carve new thinking and reward activation pathways and displace the “defaults” which  consistently mess things up for us.

Here is what you can do next time you feel an internal thought-based discomfort and you are considering an action that sabotages your goals:

  1. Pause– Challenge the thought, its origin and the trigger.
  2. Ask– What it is that I really need right now? Often when we binge watch Netflix we try to numb our unmet need for connection and support.
  3. Choose– Replace old thought with a new alternative thought and rewarding activity that is aligned with your values today.

Trick your way out of Five Common Mind Trips

Here are some suggestions on ways to trick your mind out of five very common mind trips that mess things up for many of us, although they are not based on reality.

  • Mind Trip # 1 — “I am not good enough.”

Sometimes we confuse our behavior with our quality as a person, leading to inadvertent self-doubt and self-criticism. For example, notice the difference between “I am a failure” as opposed to “I fail sometimes.”

You are not your behavior. You can choose to change your behavior if it is not serving you well.

 Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

You are perfect just the way you are and you have all that you need to meet and exceed every one of your goals in every area of your life. This does not mean that you do not have room for growth. You can use every mishap, moment of self-doubt, or encounter with your inner critic as  guides to uncover qualities that YOU would like to cultivate.

You are more than enough. I think it’s about time you embrace this!

 

  • Mind trip # 2 — “Material things will increase my value as a person.”

We literally kill ourselves to reach a six-figure income level, buy a certain brand of car, or upgrade our home. Yet research is clearly showing that beyond a certain income level, ($75,000/annually), wealth and assets have no impact on our happiness. 

Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

No material asset will make you more amazing than who you already are. When you catch yourself worrying about the size of your bank account, consider instead the astonishing thirty-seven trillion cells at your disposal to manifest abundance in your body, mind, and environment.

An imbalance in your bank account simply requires your attention in determining how you will go about increasing the deposits and minimizing the withdrawals. But increasing your wealth will have no impact on increasing your sense of self-worth.

Only you can improve your sense of self-worth by using your mind to reinstate balance in your life. From that calm and centered state you can access your body’s amazing resources for greatness.

 

  • Mind trip # 3 — “I can’t help the way I am. I was born this way.”

As George Elliot said, “Its never too late to become who you are meant to be”.

Your brain shapes your mind and your mind shapes your brain throughout your life.

In essence, whatever your mind rests upon becomes your reality.

Advanced imaging techniques now allow us to see from the inside exactly how our thoughts shape our brain and hence our reality.

Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

 Where you choose to rest your attention induces the growth of different brain regions. Different brain regions are associated with traits and characteristics, some of which are positive and some negative. When you‘re dealing with a challenging situation, if your attention goes to feeling helpless, the neurons in the region of the brain that register helplessness will fire and wire together. This then strengthens the pathway to feeling helpless. When something becomes problematic, why not acknowledge the complexity of the problem and simply ask, “How can I solve this riddle?” Asking your brain to come up with the resources to solve problems is key. This redirects your energy and activates the problem-solving region of your brain, as opposed to the region that registers defeat. You can change any traits that you don’t like about yourself that you inherited from your environment. You can do so by consciously choosing to focus your attention on experiences that cultivate traits you would like to enhance instead.

And yes, my friend, your mind has the power to do that.

 

  • Mind trip # 4 — “Others will not like me if I let them see my vulnerabilities.”

We spend a whole lot of our energy hiding our humanness in an effort to be admired and respected more. We can witness this behavior in elementary school students all the way to our current political leaders. However, adopting the fake belief that perfection equals power deprives us of our real power—the power of connection.

Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

You are an amazing, complex system with a myriad of strengths and vulnerabilities. However, part of being human involves having characteristics that have room for improvement. This can  threaten our feeling of needing to belong. Fear activates our stress response, which shuts down the part of our brain that helps us relate to others. 

The best way out of this trap of fear is to resist your tendency to let fear isolate you. Why not respond to fear by opening up to someone you trust? Andadd a hug while you’re at it. Human contact induces the release of oxytocin, a wonder chemical with so many positive effects. Why not focus your attention on the power of your body’s oxytocin to reduce your perception of fear and increase feelings of safety and trust?

A hug is a wonderful way to soothe the internal discomfort of feeling vulnerable. It is also a powerful way to train your mind and brain to keep your relational center open to connection— one hug at a time.

 

  • Mind trip # 5 — “My problems are not my fault.”

Do you blame your former spouse or your manager for your lack of career advancement? Do you attribute your debt to the economy? For many of us, our mind trips us up into wasting our energy blaming someone else for our reality when that reality is not the one we wished for.

 Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

You are 100% the creator of your reality. The beginning of getting your power back is the realization that you, and only you, have control over your circumstances. If you are not where you would like to be, it’s time to take charge.

The mind map technique.

Here is a technique that you can use to begin this process. You can create a “mind map” of where you are compared to where you want to be. You will need a blank sheet of plain paper and three pens with different colored inks, green, red, and orange. Using the green color, jot down a list of all the things that you do that help you get to your desired destination. Using the red color, jot down a list of all the things that you do that hinder you from getting to your desired destination. Review your lists and then using the orange color, jot down one or two things that you can commit to doing every week that will help you get to your target. Make sure to focus only on things that are within your control.

Each one of those small things, repeated over time, will slowly but surely help you create the life you wish for.

Final thoughts

Although your mind is simply the focus of your attention, it has a lot of power.

Your thoughts are responsible for how you feel and how you act.

Your thoughts are also responsible for the architecture of your brain, which determines how resilient you are.

Thus, if you are unsatisfied with any aspect of your life, you can begin to make changes with the power of your mind.

When you catch yourself engaging in actions that do not support you, pause, question your motivation and make a new choice. In this way, you actually begin building a new pathway to feeling good during difficult times that eventually will all together displace the defaults that trip you up.

Switching the focus of your attention will not only improve the way you feel in the moment, but you will also begin to carve a new path, using your mind, to take you to where you want to be.

If you need a guide to hold a lamp to light your way down your path to re-uniting with your best self, I am here for you. You can contact me at tzeli@myndzen.comto set up a free consultation.

It Is Time to Change Our Minds

mind power

If you want to improve the trajectory of your well-being, you may consider starting by changing your mind.

Because I am a former cancer researcher, healthcare industry veteran and stress-resilience evangelist, people often ask me:

“What is the one thing I can do to mitigate stress and improve my health?”

Can you imagine if one thing, like a magic genie, could take away all our pain? What if this one thing would allow us to do all of the following?

  • Bounce back when we fall.
  • Enjoy every moment without regret about the past and worries about the future.
  • Open doors to abundant health, happiness, success, love, and anything else we wish for.
  • Instantly turn the volume down on anything that steals our energy away.
  • Feel deeply connected to the present moment as opposed to being overwhelmed by the ups and downs of life.

My friends, one thing has all these powers: Our mind!

I want to take a few moments to acquaint you with the most potent antidote to almost everything that holds you back. This includes depression, anxiety, relationship problems, poor performance, insomnia, hypertension and other issues.

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” Henry Ford

Your mind gives meaning to everything in your life.

 Do you ever wonder why you cringe when you see a spider, feel uncomfortable with change, or feel nervous at a party? Everything you think, imagine, dream, fear, and desire are all by-products of your mind. From conception all the way to this moment, your mind has been developing patterns. These patterns are representations of the meanings of sounds, words, sights, or even scents. Their purpose is to establish a blueprint of how you approach rewards and avoid dangers. Nerve cells firing and wiring together develop different regions of our brain to form these patterns. What we call memory is the systematic organization of events, classified by their assigned meaning in relationship to a corresponding emotion and action. Most of these memories cannot be consciously recalled, yet they run our life on autopilot. Many of them are limiting beliefs.

The more we engage in a specific thought pattern, the more nerve cells fire and wire together making that pathway stronger.

If you sacrifice work/life balance and self-care to work harder and harder, perhaps your subconscious programming has linked hard work to success. Or if you defer your own desires to please others, perhaps pleasing others has linked to your feeling worthy.

Try paying attention. Can you spot any limiting beliefs that are tripping you up?

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” Aristotle

Your mind is responsible for your emotional state.

 My understanding of the human mind has been greatly enhanced through the incredible work of Dr. Daniel Siegel, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute.

Mindsight is the ability to see and shape the activity of the mind behind the thought, memory or behavior. It has been shown that cultivating mindsight, results to a better integrated, more balanced and healthier brain.

Studying mindsight, has taught me that our mind is the system that processes and regulates information and energy flow. We can see our mind at work in the 60,000 thoughts we have every day about life situations that we encounter.

Whether you are at a job interview, on a date, or having a difficult discussion with your teen, it is your mind that determines how you feel and what you will do.

Life situations themselves, or people, don’t have the power to make us feel defeated, helpless, or depressed. Our thoughts about a situation lead us to negative emotions and inhibiting actions.

I invite you to consider: “How do you want to feel? “You can change the way you feel by recognizing choice points in your thought process in any situation and altering the focal point of your attention. Then you can choose actions that serve you well and help you arrive at your desired outcomes.

“The mind is a powerful force. It can enslave us or empower us. It can plunge us into the depths of misery or take us to the heights of ecstasy. Learn to use the power wisely.” David Cuschieri

A healthy mind-body connection is key for your optimal performance.

 What your mental activity rests upon will determine the energy available to meet your life’s demands. Your embodied brain, which is linked to all of your body systems, is the CEO of your energy. Your brain works with your cardiovascular, immune, and endocrine systems to keep you safe.

But your mind is the operating system of your body. If being asked to lead a meeting means “disaster ahead “to you, your stress response will steal all the energy you need to perform well.

When someone says something critical to you and you feel your stomach tie up into a knot, that is your energy being stolen from you through the shenanigans of your untamed mind. Your stress response will compromise the optimal performance of your body every time you encounter something, no matter how small, that your mind has assigned as a threat. Your thinking brain is shut down, which will undoubtedly compromise your work performance as well as your health.

Next time you experience physiological changes like your heart rate increasing, pause and check in with your mind. You may ask a question like, “What about this situation makes me feel this way? “Your lower brain does not have enough data to answer this question. You can redirect your energy back to your more highly evolved thinking brain, which can reinstate the balance needed for optimal performance.

 “The human mind is the last great unexplored continent on earth. It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams. It will return anything we want to plant.” Earl Nightingale

Changing your mind is within your control.

 Science has proven that our thoughts can not only change the way we feel and act, but also the structure and function of our brain. However, you don’t have to be a neuroscientist to embrace your incredible capacity to train your attention and use your mind to sculpt a more resilient brain. You and I can strengthen our ability to monitor information and energy flow, one thought at a time.

But often we don’t know where to start.

You can try these processes as a beginning.

  • Every time you have a thought that leads to an automatic response that does not serve you, observe it and let it go. Recognize that it is just a thought.
  • Create space between an event and your reaction to provide yourself with the opportunity to choose the meaning you give to something.
  • Question emotions that do not serve you. This allows you to create new patterns and update your subconscious mind and your brain. Consider the impact of this practice, for example, if you chose to replace contempt with affection when having a difference of opinion with a loved one.

Would you like to learn more about how you can actually turn your thinking brain back on when stress has overwhelmed it? If so, I offer a practical way in the form of five questions you can work with. Click on the link provided to join my community to receive this tool and start the process of taming your mind today! http://bit.ly/JoinMyndZen

Final thoughts

Not that long ago I believed that the notion that we can transform our life simply by using the power of our mind was “new age hype with no scientific basis. “I believed that relentless hard work is what leads to optimal performance and ultimately success.

Failing to maintain my own well-being, despite doing what I thought were all the right things, proved me wrong.

Plenty of scientific evidence exists that shows that our frame of mind is a profound predictor of our health.

In fact, a 2012 study that examined the relationship between stress, the perception that stress affects health and actual health outcomes concluded as follows: “The study subjects that experienced a lot of stress and also believed that stress impacted their health had a 43% increased risk of dying prematurely.”(Keller. A.et al, (2012), Does the Perception that Stress Affects Health Matter? NIH, Health Psychology.)

By taking an active stance in choosing the focus of our mind’s attention, we can select the state from which we will face the inevitable challenges of our existence.

We can then handle life’s stressors in a coherent manner, without having the sense that every adversity is the “end of the world. “Beyond feeling good on a daily basis, maintaining an inner state of calm through our thoughts actually prevents wear and tear on our organs. When we don’t waste our inner resources for unnecessary defense, we have them available to help us perform optimally.

You see my friends, there is one thing, like a magic genie that we can do to improve our health.

We can become our own genie and embark on the wonderful journey of training our mind to develop a happier, more resilient brain.

When we are ready to embrace our own power, we can work with our mind to transform our life, one thought at a time.