Relaxation is one of the fundamental traits of good health. As the mind relaxes, a person will feel more at ease. Being serene allows the mind to react to life in more spontaneous and caring ways to others. Having a relaxed mind also fosters curiosity for new experiences and helps add variety to a person’s life. A relaxed mind is also a calmer mind and calmness allows for greater richness of experiences.
Having a calm mind also allows a person to be more composed emotionally. Often times a person’s emotions are triggered from external events or events in the mind. As a person’s mind and emotions become more relaxed and flexible, the thoughts of the mind and swings of emotions will become more even tempered. A person that spends some time actively relaxing will have a greater sense of emotional stability and calmer reactions to life in general.
Some methods that help the mind and body to relax include: meditation, getting a massage, deep breathing, exercise, listening to music, talking to a good friend who is healthy, taking a bath, and making art. Actively relaxing is something that is easier if you give yourself the time and patience to do so. For instance, you may be exercising at the gym with the aim of relaxing after a day of work. In this case, it would be wise to work out at a pace that leaves your body with vitality when the workout is over.
Having a spiritual practice that fosters a ‘relaxed’ spirit or approach to life can help add to the amount of relaxation a person feels during their life. By ‘practicing’ inner skills like acceptance and understanding, a person can nurture their innate ability to react and respond in healthy and affirming ways to different circumstances in life. Even if a person doesn’t have a spiritual tradition, a person can adopt flexible attitudes about being human by interacting with people from different walks of life. Another way to become flexible and feel relaxed in different social situations is to learn about the cultures and histories of different people.
Having a relaxed mind, body, and spirit are vital components of a healthy, vibrant life. While relaxation may or may not be a priority for you, increasing the amount of time spent relaxing can add more satisfaction and peace to your life.
As uncomfortable as being ‘stuck’ or feeling in a rut or perhaps even feeling mildly depressed can feel, the feeling of ‘stuck-ness’ and the resistence to happiness or feeling at ease can serve as motivation to begin new activities or adopt new attitudes about life and people that can help you to feel happier.
Some people refer to old patterns of thought or old attitudes which no longer offer relief as the mind playing ‘old tapes’. While these old tapes are familiar and possibly comforting in some ways, just like maps can grow outdated, and not describe in detail the size and actual locations of cities and countries, so too can these ‘old tapes’ become limited in their ability to lead your thoughts and behaviors to give you a sense of peace and happiness.
So, how do I get ‘un-stuck’ if I feel ‘stuck’? (more…)
The Personal Value of Healthy Self-Esteem
Feeling the value of healthy self-esteem is like realizing the value of having health insurance.
Having access to good health insurance can comfort your worries about finding help when feeling ill, give you access to trained professionals that can offer you sound advice as how to best handle health issues, and offer a sense of security that can help make health-related decisions easier.
Like health insurance, healthy self-esteem can keep you protected from people and circumstances that trigger your self-doubt, or self-criticism.and prompt you to seek help or advice from others, including trained professionals, when an event in your life conflicts with your self-image.
Healthy or high self-esteem has, in the past, been described as a way to reach great material success or have the ‘perfect’ life, or in terms of a way to approach life to get the relationships or achievements you desire. Self-esteem isn’t a lot of times talked about in a light that makes self-esteem a personally fufilling trait to have and to nuture or maintain.
Healthy Self-Esteem Protects You
Having a healthy sense of self-esteem can keep you from continuing or forming un-healthy relationships in your personal life or taking on too many responsibilites or stressful situations at work by forming a giving you an emotional presence that will prompt you to end or get out of a situation that someone says or does something that is emotionally disturbing or if you are in a physically taxing or stressful situation because that high self-esteem can’t exist in personally disresepctful situations. (more…)
The health and vitality and the level of emotional reward felt from our relationships a lot of times can be based upon the level of esteem or respect a person has for themselves. A person’s self-esteem can affect not only the harmony or health of a relationship but also the types of people a person would choose to relate to.
Trusting your Instincts
The dynamic of person-to-person relationships often times is a result of instinctual reactions a person may have about someone, the level of trust in that instinctual reaction and the behavior that results from that reaction.
The factor of poor or low self-esteem can cause a person who has an instinct to stay away from certain types of people because of a felt sense of a potential imbalance in a relationship or not being able to meet the expectations of the other person to undercut their natural instincts and engage in a relationship that is based on catering to another person’s needs or desires in order to maintain a false sense of peace. (more…)
Healthy self-esteem or healthy self-regard is a very sought-after quality. On some level we are aware of our innate and unique gifts in varying fields or relationships and wish we could better realize our potential or improve the level of happiness felt in our relationships. At times, our efforts to have productive careers or have affirming relationships are compromised by the attitudes about ourselves or life in general that we carry with us throughout the experiences of our day. Often, these self-sabotaging attitudes are the total of the emotional effects of pivotal events that have taken place previously in our lives. Some of these events left profound imprints on our personalities and behaviors, others had more slight impacts on us, but the sum of all of those events, both affirmations and slights, form a very firm sense of us, our limitations, but also our potential in some ways.
Hopefully, this entry will illustrate some not-so-common beliefs about the notion of healthy self-esteem and the deep-seated positive effects it can have both for your self as an individual and the person you are in your relationships and the affirming qualities they can have. (more…)