Perfect Health . us

Excitement is not the same as pleasure and satisfaction.

The cost of ignoring escalating stress is a diminished ability to experience pleasure, and a continued movement toward greater stress.  As stress escalates, increasing levels of stimuli become necessary to arouse satisfactory sensation.

As this cycle of stress and excitement continues, more and more intensity of experience is required to produce satisfactory experience,  with the associated satisfaction becoming less frequent and shorter in duration.

This is stress addiction—a work hard, play harder compulsion that leaves little room for authentic experience,  growth or maturation as an individual or nation. This is addiction; this is the addiction process. It deflects, befuddles and confuses healthy information neccessary for survival and growth.

This is our culture and America today, January 1, 2008. It’s a poor legacy to leave future generations, and it’s a hard way of life for our present civilization. Yet there is no reason we have to live this way.

In stress addiction, we are over-stimulated and can’t experience pleasure efficiently; we seek greater and greater levels of stress and stimulation defining this as pleasure when it is only over-excitement, over-stimualtion and neurological irritation.

The coffee industry has been well positioned for growth in this present generation. As a stress addicted nation, we need successively greater levels of stimulation to feel anything at all, because over-stimulation numbs authentic sensation.

Excessive stimulation overwhelms our nervous system; the nuances functionality of authentic pleasure cannot arise because our neurological circuitry is far too occupied. We are in a constant state of emergency that we have learned to ignore and call it status quo.

We pack on life demands to a greater and greater degree, not realizing were are the ones doing this to ourselves. We are left wondering why we have no time to really live, play or enjoy the pleasures of life.

Excitement is not the same as pleasure and satisfaction. Excitement is not the same as a deeply satisfying and authentic life experience. Excitement is only irritation, arousal and distraction; it is temporary, ephemeral and unenlightened.

Excitement is not enduring and does not sustain or build anything of value. Over excitement diminishes our capacity to experience the pleasure of who we are; it stunts our development as individuals and disrupts societal maturation.

Over excitement and prolonged stress diminish our progress as a culture. Stress addiction may in fact collapse our present civilization into a cycle of increasing chaos and escalating conflict if no cultural influence is born to counter it. The problem is that we cannot see or sense what we are doing… wrong or right. How can we change this?

(Continued… as Stress Addiction, Part II)

How we think and how we feel, at times, may seem out of our control. Interestingly, nature has designed us to be out of conscious control, in a helpful way, during situations of extreme crisis such as attack.

The human response to a severe emergency is often called “the flight or fight response.” This response exists for a reason—to protect us from harm and save our lives.

The problem with the flight or fight response in modern life is that it can create situations of crisis where they did not previously exist. Constant stress can make the flight or fight response trigger happy—too quick to engage and likely to go off in all sorts or situations where there is no crisis. When our bodies are in a state of crisis, we interpret all events as crisis whether they are or are not.

When we don’t get enough exercise; when we don’t eat right or breathe clean air; when we don’t have adequate social support or sufficient levels of pleasure producing activities in our lives: We are in a very real state of crisis!

When you add difficult traffic and demanding people to that equation, we can end up in a constant state of flight or fight where prodigious amounts of energy are spent trying to manage the effects of this natural stress response.

Freight or flight was only intended to protect us during the occasional emergency or threat. We were not designed to experience this as a constant state of being!

We have created a “modern” society of constant stress where the flight or fight response is activated far more than ever intended. Our happiness quotient is seriously diminished, and our ability to experience pleasure is compromised.

How do we get control of our thoughts, feelings and state of stress, so we may have a satisfying life.? We can improve any stressful situation by making changes in our behavior. We can create a more natural environment, an environment containing conditions that were intended for optimal human functioning and pleasure.

We were designed over millions of years to eat a certain diet, to get a given amount of exercise, to have a certain level of rest and to physically move at a certain pace… a pace that is literally step by step, one step at a time not flying down highways in motorized vehicles or sitting in traffic jams with perfect strangers.

(Continued… The Source of Distress, Part II, next post)

When you put a human being behind the wheel of an automobile for the first time… guess what? Stress and fear happens–flight or fight. This is a normal response to a dangerous situation. Your body’s got it right, and your no chicken. But you repress your apprehension and common sense, because driving is a way of life.

Our body is actually pretty smart. When you’re barreling down the highway, at 60 or 80 miles an hour, most of our body knows that danger is involved…

In a fast moving vehicle, our body know that we can easily be killed, maimed and harmed. We were designed to be comfortable going about one or two miles an hour. We are adaptable, however there’s a limit. Pleasure and life satisfaction begin to diminish when we reach that limit. This is stress.

The human body was not designed to do many modern behaviors. We aren’t fooling our bodies, so to get by we have to repress awareness of our body’s danger response; we have to get comfortable with this new induced level of stress by ignoring it the best we can. But it’s sill there, the stress, even if we are not conscious of it. We are still in a state of flight or fright and high alert even if we don’t know it.

After subjecting our bodies to the stress of traffic, we might then get out out our car and begin our day at work. Or we may get out of our car at the end of the day and interact with our children and partner. What happens? It’s not quality time… for anyone.

So who is in charge of all this, and who can change it? We are in charge. We can change anything we choose; and no one else can.

The awareness of stresses in our life can provide the the opening for changing them. So do an inventory, and change what you can.

We can control our life. We can control our thinking, feeling and physical behavior by making changes of behavior to help ourselves and eliminate stress.

Our bodies are trying, at all times, to feel good, to think productively and well. But we have to take control of what we do and how we do it. We have to provide an environment where the good responses, the natural bliss of our bodies and minds can exist and flourish. So think about eliminating stress and enhancing bliss.

Life is not something that happens to us, it’s something we create for ourselves.

The illusion that life is happening to us and not in our control is created by extended times of difficulty over which we in fact had no control. For most of us, these times are brief. But as children extended times of crisis can have a deeper impact. This impact can carry over into adulthood as a sense of little control of our destiny, when this is not the case at all.

A child really has little control over his or her environment, his or her happiness. An adult has this control but may not know it. An adult from harsh or difficult origins may go about creating life difficulties again and again without knowing, without being aware that as an adult they are the ones creating their lives… that the hard times and crisis are over, or can be, as an adult.

The trick to changing your circumstances, is to practice the art of changing them. You don’t really have to believe in the process of personal change, you simply have to make a change of behaviors, take the steps of behavior to change. Things then change!

If you practice happiness, happiness happens. You don’t have to believe in it. You just have to do it: practice happiness and appreciation. You also have to take concrete and sometimes difficult steps to change your environment: who you live with, who you play with, where you work and how you work at your life.

To improve, you have to make improvements. To change things, to change what your are getting out of life—you have to change what you are doing; you have to change your behavior.

Nothing will change your life more quickly and more thoroughly than changing what you physically do. If you make changes for the better in your behavior, thoughts and feelings will sonn come around and change as a consequence of your changed behavior.

You don’t have to struggle and analyze everything you’ve done and why you did it. From time to time, it may help to some degree, and self examination is an essential part of living an effective and purposeful life. But there is nothing as powerful as changing major areas of behavior: How you eat, how you think, how you act, how you move, how you feel. How you speak, how you judge.

Life change that is positive and lasting happens in small incremental steps that eventually lead to a overall change in life style, a change of acting, feeling and thinking.

Positive life style changes lead to the presence of health and happiness, automatically. Health emerges on its own, naturally, in a healthy environment. A healthy body creates healthy thoughts and feelings naturally and without effort. Bliss is health and health is Bliss.

And all of this is the product of how we choose to behave. What we experience as adults is the product of choices we make.

A common mistake we all can make, is blaming a situation or person for our own unhappiness. In my previous post I talked about the importance of finding work you enjoy. But it’s hard to identify a job you like if you are truly unhappy.

Few jobs will be satisfying and few relationships will be rewarding if you have not found happiness with yourself.

So fine! And kind of obvious—to be happy with an occupation, situation or life partner, you have to be happy with yourself. Easily said, but how do you do it, isn’t that the million or billion dollar question? Yes, it is; it’s the secret to life. It’s the secret to the universe, and the answer is down right simple.

You have to practice happiness to be happy.

To be happy,  you have to have your physical, emotional and social needs met. You have to have a reasonable level of health: body, mind and spirit. And most of this is up to you, and little of this is a matter of luck.

To be happy, you have to address happiness as an inside job, and an outside job.

To begin your practice of happiness, you need to program happiness into your brain and body until it is automatic, until it is a habit.

At the beginning of every day, as soon as you get our of bed, start practicing deep felt sincere happiness and appreciation. Sit quietly, breath easily in and out. Focus on the gentle life entering your body, breath out with deep appreciation for bing alive. If you don’t feel it, pretend you do. Soon the feelings and awareness of happiness and appreciation will emerge and be there for you.

But you have to practice this simple exercise everyday… twice or three or more times. Maybe every hour. Remind yourself, and do it. It is a simple human power, creating attitude, happy or unhappy. We are the ones creating our attitude, no one else. It just seems that way. We are the ones in power of what we think, feel and say. We create happiness or reject it in our lives in this manner.

For most of us, our level of happiness is simply a habit. It is formed in our early years, and may seem like reality, but it isn’t. Happiness is a practice, and human ability like any other. It is usually a requisite for health.

If you don’t eat well, there are consequences. If you do not practice good thoughts and feelings… Guess what… you don’t have them. As simple as that.

Practice happiness; practice health. Practice loving every inch of your body and who you are. Practice loving life and everyone in it no matter what they have done or what they do.

Practice pure and unconditional love… for yourself. Practice respect too, for yourself and others. You body will thrive. Your health may improve. Things will look different, and life will appear more valuable, because it will be!

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Confucius

Is it possible to have a job you love, one that excites you, a job that you look forward to everyday… of course it is! Yes, Yes, Yes!

It may take time, preparation and education; experimenting with this and that; but anyone can have an enjoyable job for most of their life.

Successful people almost always love what they do. It’s hard to do well at anything if you don’t like what you are doing. The singer Madonna, when asked the secret to her success in life, said, “Just do what you love to do.”

Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the world said the same thing. But you don’t have to be the wealthiest person in the world or a rock star to to love what you do.

If you enjoy working with people, work with people! If you enjoy working with animals, work with animals! Simply work towards doing what you have to do to be employed at what you love to do.

If you don’t know what you love to do, experiment! How else will you find your vocational bliss. Try different things. You may find yourself retuning to something you once did in the past with a new perspective and MAKE it something you love.

Many people think they would like to be self employed, but once they try it they change their mind. And that’s great, they will no long wonder if it’s something they should do. And their search can narrow.

The trick is that you have to experiment and try some new things out. You don’t have to get it right the first time, or the second or the third.

I knew a medical doctor, who decided after his very long education that he did not want to be a doctor and instead wanted to be a real estate agent. Good for him! He at least learned a high degree of discipline and a professional approach that would serve him well in his new career of real estate.

No time is lost in the search for the occupation that is right for you… maybe several different jobs over your life-time is the right things for you. Variety can be fun! Just do what you love! It will make you healthy and reduce stress. Being happy with your job is an important element of health.

Doing what you love, with people that you appreciated leads to a long and happy life… pretty simple! If you don’t like what you do for a living, you are probably not around the type of people that you enjoy. It’s all about creating the right environment, finding the right setting for you to excel.
If you don’t know what you love to do, you can look at what you do not like to do and let that guide you.

Keep at it; keep searching; continue trying and never give up. As you love yourself, as you do what is best for your life; you will find what you love to do!!! It’s hard to have optimal health if you don’t. And if you are going to live a long life regardless, wouldn’t it be best to enjoy what you are doing for that long lived time?

Good luck in your search. If you have found what you love to do already, share that fact with someone who hasn’t. And tell them how you did it. Happiness, satisfaction and success are contagious… also health enhancing!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!