Harness Your Mind’s Power to Create the Healthy Body and Life You Desire for 2016

Happy New Year’s Beautiful,

I love New Year’s because it’s filled with so much hope and positive energy. It’s like starting out with a clean slate and getting a fresh start. But, like many people, there were many years that I started my New Year off with a bang and some awesome intentions, but, then didn’t manage to succeed in most of the things I set out to do or change. In fact, there was a time when I seemed to rewrite the same goals over and over, year after year, but either fell short of the goal or made little progress.

Then, twenty years ago, when I was living in New York City, surrounded by people going after their dreams, I found an amazing coach that taught me about the power of the mind – and my life took huge leaps forward. I got my

master’s degree, my license to practice psychotherapy, and opened my wellness center, The Miralinda Center for Well-Being.

You see, before I understood the power of the mind, I was totally stuck in the belief that I could never pass the math courses I needed to graduate from college in the career I wanted, so I just kept taking college courses, but never getting a degree. This limiting belief came from childhood, when in the eighth grade, I got a “D” in algebra, which cemented the belief in my mind that I could not do math. This fear and shame around math plagued me for years, and kept me from my dreams and feeling good about myself.

By learning that the mind actually created reality (yes, everything, including your health) and that I had the power to control my mind, manage my thoughts and feelings, I was able to live my own dreams. Before I understood the principles behind the power of the mind, I felt like a hapless victim where things just happened to me, where my health was out of my control, where my thoughts could race out of control, and where I couldn’t stop ruminating over past failures, hurts, and losses.

I also believed I was at the mercy of my feelings. Until I understood that my thoughts and beliefs created my feelings, I spent a lot of time feeling less than, not good enough, blocked from achieving this or that, disappointed, let down, betrayed – the list goes on and on.

Unexpectedly, when I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, my brain got a boost. One of the doctors on my team recommended daily meditation and short walks in nature, along with a total overhaul of my diet, which at the time was the ultimate SAD (Standard American Diet), loaded with sugar, white flour, caffeine, processed foods, etc.

This natural treatment plan and healthier diet not only reversed my MS, but also improved my mental chaos, brain-fog, and moods like anxiety and depression. To understand how that happened, I would like to explain the gut-brain connection.

The Gut-Brain Connection

Science has now discovered the mechanism that connects our thoughts and feelings to our body and health, or lack of health. They have proven that the gut has over 500,000 neurons of its own (nerve cells that communicate with the brain), and that it produces 95% of our serotonin (the “feel-good” hormone). They have also discovered that the vagus nerve, a nerve that runs from the brain stem and connects to all the organs, carries information from your viscera (organs) to the brain and vice-versa, your brain communicates with your organs via this nerve.

So, depending on your diet and food choices, your gut will send positive or negative messages to your brain, and conversely, your thoughts (whether positive or negative) will be sent from your brain to your gut and other organs, and affect the functioning and health of the cells, creating health or disease, depending on your thoughts and feelings.

Using the power of your mind to think more positively, manage your mind, and make better food choices is of crucial importance to your health and life and overall success in life.

I would like to share a few of the tools I learned that have changed my life from one of poor health to optimum health and indestructible happiness.

3 Tools to Increase Your Mind Power

1. Mindfulness Meditation: Mindfulness means living in the present moment in full awareness and consciousness, (rather than going around on auto-pilot or in a fog). You can easily begin to practice mindful meditation using the following method:

• Get in a comfortable position and close your eyes
• Begin to notice your breath as you inhale and exhale
• Notice if your breath is fast or slow, shallow or deep, and adjust if too fast or too shallow
• Follow your slower, deeper inhales and exhales until a thought intrudes into your mind (they will)
• Just notice the thought, without judging it, or pushing it away, or clinging to it, then imagine it shifting into a big white cloud
• Allow this big white cloud to float off to one side until you can no longer see it
• Return to your breathing and follow until another thought intrudes, and repeat
• Do this for 5-10 minutes

You can also get a free audio download of this mindfulness meditation with soothing music on my website.

2. Become an Observer to Your Life: This is such a powerful and effective exercise that I share it with all my therapy and coaching clients. Try this for one day, or one week (better). Get off autopilot – step back from your own body and mind and pretend that you are a private detective following yourself around. When something upsetting or negative happens, you are now an observer and can stay more objective about the situation. When you do this, two very important things happen:

a. You stop the usual thought patterns that perpetuate the same things happening to you over and over.
b. You are able to respond to situations in a much more calm, orderly and in-control manner, which gives you better outcomes.

Finally, keep a notebook recording your observations. For example, “I noticed that when my boss was walking towards me looking angry, I felt scared. OR, I noticed that after I ate sugar, I felt anxious. This is like having a very wise person guiding you through your days.

3. Visualize your life as you want it: Visualization has been used for millennium and is used by corporate moguls, athletes and astronauts to accomplish some awesome goals. Begin 2016 with a guided visualization of where you want to be in January of 2017. Make this your best year yet!

You can download a FREE audio of a guided visualization audio (it’s called Manifest Your Destiny).

Wishing you a healthy, happy, mind-empowered 2016!

Cheers,