Tis the Season for happiness, togetherness, giving, receiving. Well you get the hint, “great tidings of comfort and joy.” But what if happiness isn't the prevailing theme? What if loneliness, sadness, and even depression are what you are feeling?
Not only is that not good for your mental health, it is also harmful to your physical well being. In Lessons From The Miracle Doctors by Jon Barron, he points out that depression can by as hard on your physical body as stress, which we all know can be a killer. “Your body is a product of your thoughts. The cells of your body have receptor sites for the various neuro-hormones you produce. Your immune cells, to use just one example, have receptor sites for each of those hormones. When you are happy, you produce a set of neuro-hormones that are picked up by the cells of your immune system. These particular neuro-hormones tell your immune system to jack up – which it does. In other words, happy thoughts improve your health. However, when you are depressed, the opposite happens. The neuro-hormones your body produces literally shut down your immune system. In effect, negative thoughts can actually kill you.”
Spend this day focusing on happy. Look around you and be grateful for the things you do have, give no energy to those things you don't. If you are alone, go to a soup kitchen and volunteer, if you are sad write a list of five things that make you happy. Go to the video store, read a good book, be grateful for the moment. If you spend enough time and energy focusing on what you are grateful for, the things that bring you down will lose their strength. Spend this day in gratitude, your body will thank you for it.
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2 comments:
Thank you Melissa.
You are so right! We cannot, ever, mention (and occasionally stretch) enough the POWER and BENEFIT of GRATITUDE.
A few years ago, I suddenly "got it" with the gratitude. I followed the instructions, wrote lists of things/people/whatever I was grateful for... and after doing it for some days or weeks - one day - the list took on its own life.
I started off with the usual of being grateful for the house, the friends, the pets, etc. and went on to the clean, drinkable water - hot and cold, as desired no less! - to all the food in the shops, to the shops with all these people who work there at all weird hours, just for my comfort - to the truckdrivers who deliver all these goodies to the shops, to the roads on which they drive - to the people who built the roads - to the people who get the petrol for us to the petrol stations - to electricity and heating.... and on and on and on.....
Suddenly, most of the world seemed to be busy, doing THEIR thing (for their own reasons), yet to MY comfort and benefit!!!
Life has never been the same!
I have never felt sooo connected to the world as in that moment.
And when people say to me, "I do it in my head", I KNOW the difference it makes when we do it, and do it consistently, on paper.
So, all the people out there who do gratitude in their head: DO IT ON PAPER!!! And do it every day - and see what happens.
Angelika -
You are so right!! Living in a attitude of gratitude makes all the difference in the world. Somehow, living in gratitude brings joy, and joy truly leads to a higher state of being.
I have kept a gratitude journal off and on for several months and your post has made me realize, I once again need to do it on paper.
Thank you!
Melissa
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