• Personal Growth,  Psychology of Life

    There is More than Just the Thinking and Feeling Thing

    January 29, 2013

    Everyone is talking about thinking and feeling and how it is, that one leads to another.  Another popular theme of discussion is this idea that if we can change the way we feel about things, we can thus create a better reality.

    I think that all of this is at least partly true and mostly good.  I do believe that we need to step back from ourselves and find out what we believe.  If you think, thinking is important; then you should look at the source of your thoughts – which are your beliefs.  It’s very important that we identify our beliefs.  Sometimes we must work backwards to identify the belief.  If you have an underlying belief that you are worthless, chances are you will not give yourself worthwhile gifts and you may not honor yourself either.  This is important, because if you are waiting for the world to treat you better – you must first believe that you are worth very good treatment.  (This is not an invitation for a free-for-all for narcissists!  You know who you are…)

    To go in and find out about your beliefs backwards, for example – you may realize that you have been in a series of love relationships that were un-rewarding and where you felt unloved.  If you have an underlying belief that you are not lovable, you may sub-consciously pick selfish people who will not love you as good  as you can be loved.  You must work at this thing called self-awareness, it is not an easy task to understand yourself and pursue your highest good; it is work worth doing.

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  • Baby Boomers,  Psychology of Life

    Healthy Living: Therapy, Diet, Exercise and Yes, Medicine

    January 17, 2013

    Beliefs are thought processes that control your behavior.  Trust me, beliefs are critically important to your eating behavior.  Beliefs are critically important to all behavior. You don’t always know what beliefs you have floating around in your head that are controlling the way you eat.  One obvious (erroneous) belief is “finish everything on your plate!”  One not-so-obvious belief that I had / have is “it’s not worth putting a lot of effort into cooking and preparing meals unless you are cooking a lot, or for a lot of people”  This is an outgrowth of the efficiency model and the ‘no waste’ model from the depression era.  In other words, my mother felt very strongly about waste and inefficiency.  Because I didn’t think it was ‘worthwhile’ to cook unless I was cooking a lot, I would either over cook or over eat: both bad outcomes from a belief system that wasn’t working for me anymore.

     A belief system is a tool that we use to make our life easier.  It was actually a survival mechanism that allowed us to recognize the signs of danger when the danger re-occurred.  This pattern recognition allowed us to behave in a way that would give us safety.  Unfortunately, we have not learned to utilize this pattern recognition turned belief system to our advantage.  Instead the pattern recognition / belief system is guiding us to behavior that is killing us softly.  What can be a softer way to die than to eat yourself to death? 

    1.18.13

    So Christina says that exercise has belief systems attached to it, as well, AND general belief systems affect how we do exercise, and how we do eating.  All of that is important stuff.  For example – for some reason I associate ‘working out’ with narcissism.  I know several narcissists who work out, so they got stuck together in my brain.  I do not want to be a narcissist, so I do not work out.  Interesting stuff huh?  Do you know what belief systems you have surrounding your health?

     

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