Hippocrates Health InstituteAntony Chatham answers listener questions in this live call where I interviewed him. From part 2, we were talking about where we need to reprogram ourselves.
So I asked him a follow-up question to further clarify this important point.
So in part 3 from the Hippocrates Institute Center, we start with this question:
So you’re saying that just like we reprogram our physical habits -- eating habits, some of our bad habits -- we also need to reprogram our mental habits?
He gives a great example. We know that to heal from many illnesses we need to eliminate sugar. But what happens? From childhood we’ve been trained with sugar as a reward.
So we may feel we are depriving ourselves of a big part of life. Yes, we often need to reprogram our responses. We are breaking the habit of our addictions and the underlying emotions. We begin to create new eating habits. Since we create the meaning we give to the experience of eating sugar or anything else, we can create a new meaning.
Can you recommend some things we can do at home to improve our mental health?
Antony carefully goes through several areas of our lives and what you can do right now:
- Relationship issues: we must learn to express our feelings in our relationships. One of the biggest causes of stress comes from difficulty in communicating. Make a conscious effort to increase the number of positive comments you make and decrease the negative ones.
- Live a balanced life. If you obsess over something, this will create a lot of stress. This also means that you don’t blame either yourself or others excessively.
- Develop resilience. Life comes with stressful situations. One of his practical stress management tips is this. Learn to anticipate and deal with challenges. One simple example is creating a time buffer so you don’t add the stress of arriving late to an important meeting.
- Learn to calm yourself -- mind and body.
Regarding this last one, there are many daily practices you can incorporate in your life:
- tai chi movements and tai chi exercises that calm the mind and work out the body.
- the effects of yoga are well known. Regular practice can also help you to calm your mind and body.
- Chi gong also employs movements that calm and focus.
- Guided meditation or your own meditation practice.
You have to find what works for you and take care of yourself before something breaks down.
Sometimes you will also find it helpful to get help from an expert.
Listen to Antony and please use the comment section below to say thank-you if you’ve found it helpful.
Then continue to Hippocrates Clinic Part 4 with Antony Chatham
