Happy Friday

It has been a long week, right? Yes, it sure has for me. Just like the picture above there have been huge waves of good and waves of bad that I have faced this week. The key is that I worked through each situation to find the good in them all. Certain situations are still not resolved, yet remaining positive is always the better option. Yesterday I wrote about the benefits of sleep. Did you get a good nights worth? I did. I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day.

That brings me to the important topic on negative vs positive thinking. Here are things that happen to you when you think negative.

Whether you are rich, poor, middle class, a medical student, collegiate student, athlete, businessman/businesswoman, or even if you’re just someone whose subconscious mind is filled with limiting beliefs from your childhood like “I’m the sickly type” or “My family gets cancer,” focusing your attention on illness has been scientifically proven to predispose the body to illness. Excessive knowledge about what can go wrong with the body can actually harm you. The more you focus on the ways in which the body can break down, the more likely you are to experience physical symptoms. Of course there are other factors that can affect your health such as accidents, genetic risk factors, plus bad things happen to good people with positive thoughts. The studies show that, even in light of these things you can’t always prevent, what you believe, especially what you fear, has a tendency to manifest itself in reality because negative beliefs fill your body with harmful cortisol and epinephrine, while positive beliefs relax your nervous systems and allow your body to heal.

In the Lancet article, researchers in San Diego examined the death records of approximately 30, 000 Chinese-Americans and compared them to over 400,000 randomly selected Caucasian people. They found that the Chinese-Americans died significantly earlier than normal, by as much as 5 years if they had a combination of disease and birth year which Chinese astrology and Chinese medicine considered ill-fated. The researchers found that the stronger the attachment to traditional Chinese superstitions, the earlier they died. The data researchers concluded that the reduction in life expectancy could not be explained by genetic factors, the lifestyle choices, behavior of the patients, or any other variable. It was the belief that they would die young because the stars hexed them. Their negative beliefs manifested as a shorter life span.

This does not just apply to Chinese-Americans since another study showed that 79% of medical students report developing symptoms suggestive of the illnesses they are studying. They get paranoid and think they will get sick, so their bodies comply by getting sick. So, keep this in mind, every time you think negative thoughts about your health, you are potentially poisoning your body with stress hormones that deactivate your body's natural repair mechanisms.

Think positive!

Have a Fantastic Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!

Reference: Dr. Lissa Rankin, Scientific Proof That Negative Thoughts Harm Your Body, Mindbodygreen