3 Mindsets that will SAVE YOUR LIFE!
3 Mindsets That Will
Save Your Life!
It’s all about the 3 M’s...
Welcome to Month 6 of the SAVE YOUR LIFE blog series. I’m happy to get to share with you my 3 M’s for the top 3 mindsets you can use to save your life! Here they are:
1. Manage your thoughts - meditate; contemplate
2. Manifest gratitude—even if you are not, act like it.
3. Make a daily intention
1. Manage your thoughts: Take time each day to have positive thoughts, to meditate and to contemplate. I especially recommend you take time to have at least one (although the more the better) positive thought as soon as you wake up in the morning and as you are falling asleep.
In order to manage your thoughts and stay positive, you have to routinely and consistently screen for negative or less than optimal thoughts. These kinds of thoughts have a way of creeping into your awareness very insidiously and without warning. We are bombarded with so much chaos, negativity and “bad news” on a daily basis that we have to make it a priority to actually monitor our thoughts constantly and consistently.
2. Manifest gratitude: I cannot talk about gratitude without mentioning the work of Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey, particularly the work they have done together around this issue. You must choose to be grateful. This is not always easy depending on your current challenges, but it is essential.
I used to think that gratitude had to come naturally. I did not know that gratitude was a choice. Now I realize that mostly it’s a choice of rebelling against negative impulses and managing our thoughts even when we don’t feel like it. In a nutshell, what I learned is that acting grateful can actually make me grateful. In other words, it is in the process of creating the expression of gratitude (finding what to be grateful for) that actually makes you grateful!
There are those people in this world however, who are more naturally filled with gratitude and might not have to work as hard to find it. It turns out that they probably have the gene that helps them be inherently more grateful! A 2014 study showed that a variation in the CD38 gene is associated with gratitude. Certain people have a heightened genetic tendency to experience the emotion of gratitude, or in the researchers’ words, “global relationship satisfaction.” (1) But, for the rest of us that have to practice being grateful it sure is nice to know that it can be a learned trait too! Acting grateful (even if you don’t feel like it) makes you more grateful, which makes your life so much better.
One trick I find that always reminds me to be grateful is this: as I am getting out of bed in the morning and take my first step onto the floor, I remember to be grateful. I feel gratitude for another day, for simply being me, for my health and for the ability to take a deep breath and to experience how good it feels. On those really rough days when its hardest to find something to be grateful for, I am grateful that I can step my foot on the ground and feel the floor underneath my feet. And finally, I remember that there are those less fortunate than I, and I am grateful for my blessings.
3. Make a daily intention: Your daily intention can be to make it the best day possible. You can do this by the two previous mindsets I have mentioned - managing our thoughts and manifesting gratitude. But, I feel we should take things one step further and set a simple and easy intention for each day as we are waking up. It can be to imagine your cells becoming hydrated as you drink all of your water for the day, or it can be to simply stay positive (which sometimes is not easy depending on the environment you are in), or it can be to simply breathe deeply throughout the day. My favorite intentions are those I write down and refer to several times during the day. Somehow the act of writing it down makes me feel more committed to working on it no matter what the day brings.
Love and Light,
- Dr. Trindade
Bibliography
1. Sara B. Algoe and Baldwin M. Way. Evidence for a role of the oxytocin system, indexed by genetic variation in CD38, in the social bonding effects of expressed gratitude. Social Cognitive & Affective Neurosci Volume 9, Issue 12Pp. 1855-1861.