How many times a day do you experience a negative emotion?

Feelings like:

• Frustration at being stuck in traffic.
• Overwhelmed by how much you have on your to-do list.
• Fear about how you’re going to pay your bills.
• Impatience with how fast the line is moving at the grocery store.
• Irritation at how much noise your kids (or pets) are making.
• Dread over going to work.
• Regret about a past experience.

What if every one of those negative, catabolic thoughts and resulting emotions was literally sucking a little bit of your wellness away?

Because the reality is every negative thought and resulting emotion impacts your body—whether the thought is about your body or not.

Don’t worry. A few negative emotional hits here and there are no big deal. In fact, if you’re about get hit by a bus, you want some catabolic fear to kick your adrenal glands into high gear so that you can get the heck out of the way. That’s how catabolic energy helps us. It enables quick action during a crisis or dangerous situation.

The problem is that the majority of people spend most of their time stressed. They see almost all of life as a crisis that requires the fight or flight response.

Over time, this catabolic energy begins to impact your wellness at the cellular level.

Your body is not meant to deal with chronic levels of the stress hormone cortisol and adrenaline. This is why stress breaks down your immune system, overburdens your heart, and impacts your muscles. Over time, this prolonged catabolic energy can cause everything from painful trigger points in your shoulders, to inflammation, to heart attacks. It also impacts your metabolism and other weight-related systems making it easier to gain and harder to release weight.

So if you really want overall wellness and a slim and sexy body, you are shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t address your thoughts and emotions in addition to what you eat and how much you move your body. This is why so many diet and exercise programs fail to create long-term change.

You have to transform your mind to get the body you want.

The good news is that your thoughts and emotions are made of energy, not marble. You can change them! And it’s simpler than you might think.

It just takes consistent and persistent practice. Consciously shifting your thoughts and emotions for as little as a minute a day can make a significant difference to your overall wellness.

Isn’t getting the body you want worth that little bit of time and attention? Isn’t knowing the impact you are having on your overall wellness a powerful incentive to begin paying attention to how you feel emotionally?

Here are some simple ways that you can begin shifting your thinking:

1. Take three deep breaths. My clients are always amazed at the simple power in this. When you catch yourself caught up in anxiety or frustration, just stop and breathe. Deeply. Taking three deep breaths is all it takes to feel a sense of relief, which signals a shift in energy.
2. Focus on something else. Getting frustrated with the pokiness of the checkout girl? Shift your attention to the contents of your shopping cart, or to the abundance of food that the store carries, or even the cover of some of the magazines in the check-out aisle. Change the subject mentally.
3. Literally change the subject. Stop yourself when you notice you are participating in a gripefest with friends or co-workers. Introduce a better feeling topic, or if you need to, disengage. You might remember a call you need to make or a task you need to get to in order to walk away from the catabolic banter. Your job is not to stop your friends, but to stop yourself.
4. Take advantage of when you are feeling good. Even more powerful than stopping yourself mid-catabolic thought is extending those times you are feeling good. Laughing with friends? Consciously think of other things that make you laugh or that are fun. Enjoying a beautiful sunset? Think about other things that you find beautiful. Feeling a sense of love or appreciation for a child or pet? Think about other things that you love. See how long you can keep that good feeling going.
5. Regularly practice meditation, positive prayer, or centering. Quieting your mind for as little as a minute a day—every day—will begin to have a profound impact on how you feel. When you master a minute, build up. Or do a minute several times a day. The benefits to your body grow the more you do it.

What are you willing to do for a minute every day to begin to transform your mind to get the body you want?

Together we can do it!