Did you know that what you think is what you become?

The key to a successful life lies in doing things that make you happy.

Read on to find out how simple thoughts and actions can influence your day, career and life.

When you wake up first thing in the morning, your mind and heart rested and fresh, do you look forward to your day?

Or do you have thoughts about how your day is going to be the same old one as it has been for the last so many months/ years?

Unfortunately, as many law of attraction experts have told us, energy precedes form.

So if your thoughts about your day aren’t exciting, passionate and enthusiastic then in all likelihood the day isn’t going to be either!

But apart from actually changing your thoughts to make them more positive, there’s also a lot to look at in terms of making your day something you can’t wait to live.

I can imagine some of you feeling right now that a day of your dreams is one that’s spent at the spa or travelling and shopping or doing something that you love doing.

That is totally fair, and so my question to you is, ‘what are you aiming to feel?’

Danielle La Porte’s work around core desired feelings can be so helpful for us to determine how we would like our days to be.

La Porte describes core desired feelings as the emotions we are looking to feel with all the actions we take.

So if you like shopping, you are possibly looking to feel free about how you spend, looking to feel blessed about the abundance in your life or looking to feel appreciated by looking your best.

These feelings, once you arrive at them, can be a really powerful way of navigating through your days to build a life of your dreams.

And it can happen in really simple steps.

1. Get familiar with your core desired feelings

2. Notice how they make you feel

3. Do one thing each day that makes you feel each of those

Remember a time perhaps from your childhood where you felt free, passionate (or alive!) and happy so easily.

You did all the things that actually felt good and you naturally let yourself be pulled towards activities, games and people who made you feel good.

Do you remember obsessing about food when you were like that?

Or perhaps a time when you had this huge crush on the guy next door. And you were so consumed by it that you would only think about him all the time.

You didn’t care about food, drink or anything else.

In any of these situations, your life was feeding you with love, passion, happiness and connection so much so that you didn’t worry about food so much.

If we truly live a life that feeds us then we won’t depend as much on food. We won’t need to worry about cravings, over-eating and giving in to temptations.

The things that can empower you to have your BEST health and body — intuitive eating, listening to your body and respecting yourself become much easier!

It’s not that not thinking about food is enough to stay healthy. But when your life feeds you, you are able to have the two things that you most need to keep your health and body well.

1. One is a positive frame of mind

2. And two is consistent energy

 

1. A positive frame of mind allows you to find the best possible solution in any given circumstance.

Have you noticed that when you are angry or pissed off, every little thing that happens then just throws you off very easily?

If you are unhappy about your day and your life in any way and not feeling very positive, small health concerns are more likely to throw you off.

Whereas if you are positive and feeling good about yourself, and you have a minor pain or a rash or a headache then you are able to look at possible causes and choose a way of taking care of yourself that is doable and helpful at that time.

 

2. Thoughts have energy. So we know that.

But we don’t realise that negative, uninspiring thoughts have the power to sap us off energy.

We feel pulled down, ineffective and least creative when we are feeling uninspired. Without a way to feel our core desired feelings on a consistent basis we feel really low on energy.

I had a dear friend who worked full time and came back home to take care of her then three-year-old girl.

She would go about her day travelling almost an hour each way and still come back and feel energised about running after her daughter at the playground.

A few months later, she decided to quit working to spend more time with her daughter. She began to feel uninspired and unproductive about her day.

She said she felt that she couldn’t be creative and felt that by the end of the day she began to feel low on energy.

She was no longer excited about playing with her daughter in the playground and didn’t feel motivated to do many of the things that she would otherwise do with her!

When she realised that her life wasn’t feeding her any more she decided to make a shift in her day by taking up something she really loved from the core of her being.

She decided to enrol for singing classes and started to feel better right away!

The author is a speaker, writer, coach, and founder of The Balance Mantra, a 360 degree wellness initiative.

Always wanted to learn salsa?

Or take up painting? Or perhaps you love to cook?

Any activity that takes you away from the humdrum of everyday life can take away your stress. So instead of turning on the television, take up the paintbrush or the pen and let your creative juices flow

1. Indulge in that creative  streak

Always wanted to learn salsa? Or take up painting? Or perhaps you love to cook?

Any activity that takes you away from the humdrum of everyday life can take away your stress. So instead of turning on the television, take up the paintbrush or the pen and let your creative juices flow.

2. Take a walk!

Literally!
If you’ve had a stressful day, instead of going home and brooding over it, step out and go for a walk. The change of scene is bound to make you feel better.  And if not there are those endorphins we keep telling you about that’ll lift up your mood! Then, of course, there is that little side effect of weight-loss that will cheer you up further, won’t it?
So what are you waiting for?

3. Socialise

Ok!! we admit that if you’ve had a stressful day, meeting other people might not exactly be on the top of your agenda. But make the effort and socialise. There is a good chance you’ll meet someone interesting and learn something new. Not to mention that it will take your mind off that thing that’s stressing you out.

4. Be good, do good!

When you do good, you feel good. Since depression, anxiety and stress involve a high degree of focus on the self, focusing on the needs of others literally helps you start thinking beyond yourself and your problems.

5. Do not swipe that card

Many of us resort to making purchases when we’re feeling down and out. While retail therapy may have its supporters they aren’t the ones footing your bill. So before you swipe that card, think a million times. The next month’s statement will only make you more depressed!

6. Try yoga and meditation

The therapeutic powers of the ancient Indian practice of yoga have now been recognised the world over. Yoga not only disciplines your body but also the mind. The fact that you also end up fitter is a bonus, is it not?

7. De-clutter

Would you prefer walking into a house or a desk that has nothing but clutter or a place that’s spick and span? And before you tell us that there’s a method in that madness, let us assure you that it can never apply to a cluttered desk or a home. So keep your workplace and living space clutter-free. Allow energy to flow freely. Clutter invariably slows you down and stresses the mind and body without you realising it.

8. Listen to some music

Everyone loves music. It could be anything from Mozart to Yo Yo Honey Singh or anything in-between. Music therapy is a real thing. So go on, plug in the headphones and plug out the world.

According to transformation coach Col (Retd) Gaurav Chibber, “Awareness of the fact that you are getting stressed in a certain situation or company is the first and most important step, which will give you access to the knowledge that you are entering a ‘Zone of Stress’ and that you need to harmonize your feelings with your environment to come out of that state.”

In an era of self-prescription, fitness mantras are the ones most commonly passed around.

Some of these can be misleading, passed on by fly-by-night “fitness experts” who have obtained certificates dished out indiscriminately to those looking to make a career in this field.

Even well-established names in the fitness field succumb to this temptation of churning out “experts” in a field where learning can never really stop, and one needs to constantly upgrade one’s skills.

Yesterday’s health fact can be challenged by research today, and unless you keep abreast, you could make serious errors of judgment while working out.

Shameem Akthar, yogacharya trained with the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre, sounds the alert on post-workout mistakes that you should avoid.

In gyms, those who are obese are often pushed into the sauna as a way of losing weight passively after a work-out.

This can be outright fatal in certain cases. You cannot combine all weight loss efforts into one back-to-back package!

Losing weight in a sustained fashion means a lifestyle overhaul. Trying to speed it up with a post-workout sauna is not the way.

You can have the sauna after a massage if it is recommended by an expert.

The sauna is not for everybody. It must be carefully prescribed in cases where there is a tendency for blood sugar and blood pressure shifts.

The body’s salt balance is severely affected by a work-out; a sauna affects it further.

It could be an excessive overload of challenges for the body to suddenly cope with, and could have disastrous results.

If you have to rush to work immediately after a morning work-out, it is tempting to have a bath before you dash out.

But try and aim for a 20-minute to half-hour break between work-out and a shower.

This is important because your sweat contains trace elements and nutrients that are precious. Most of us never have enough of these as they are created by the body in miniscule quantities.

If you allow the sweat to dry off naturally (use those fancy gym towels sparingly and only to stop sweat from running into your eyes) it gets re-absorbed by the body.

Having a bath immediately after a work-out interferes with this re-absorption.

If you are a regular work-out freak, this is even more important because some of these nutrient losses can cause cramps, affect joint health and deplete calcium.

If you have a proper work-out that takes care of different aspects of training you are more likely to eat moderately (because you will not feel too hungry, unless it is a pure aerobic challenge).

If your work-out makes you very hungry it may be time to shift focus and do something else.

Even a bar of chocolate may feel too sweet if your work-out has been good because the high that comes from it heightens all the senses, giving a signal that puts off consumption of excessive calorie-rich foods.

Post work-out, even if you are ravenous, it is good to have a planned meal that accommodates all nutrient needs, especially a good proportion of protein.

This is crucial because protein is involved in tissue repair and that is what the body needs to do after any work-out.

In fact, your highest protein consumption should be immediately after a work-out, to help you remain young (otherwise the work-out may end up aging you and making you look frowzy) and fit (joints, muscles need the proteins to heal).

Gyms often do not have the space or inclination to provide for a cool down.

Hectic lifestyles, with the gym squeezed in between other tasks, also leads to skipping the cooling down period

A regular cool down requires you to be still for at least five minutes immediately after any hard-core work-out.

Any work we do, including exercise, creates a build up of lactic acid in the blood. The blood lactate levels are talking directly to your adrenal glands, which are your stress glands, keeping the stress hormones on a spike.

This may explain why a lot of macho-looking men end up with anger control issues! If you do not cool down after a work-out, you could end up in anger management classes or suffer the other side of stress hormones – extreme anxiety!

Don’t dispense with the final stretches. The last few minutes spent in stretching may actually power the rest of your day, and even the day after.

This is because the post-workout stretches release stiffness and soreness.

If you give them a miss, it is likely that when you return to your work-out you will feel stiffer than before.

Part of the impact comes from what we mentioned above, the blood lactate levels being eased gently out of the body.

The stretches also create red muscle fibre – the endurance and repairing muscle – and may help you heal faster in the long-term.