Author and fitness coach, Brad Pilon, shared some research recently that highlights the importance of the words we use and listen to, and the thoughts we think.
Here’s a synopsis of the paper..“In a classic experiment researchers asked students to answer a questionnaire. However, there were TWO versions of the questionnaire: The first version used words associated with youth and vitality… not as the topic of the questionnaire, but rather, sprinkled in the way the questions were worded.
The second version used words associated with aging and weariness.
Unbeknownst to the students, the researchers didn’t care about the answers to the questionnaire. What they WERE concerned with was how long it took the students to walk from the room they were tested in, down a long hallway to the elevator to leave the building.
It turns out the students who answered the questions with the aging and weariness wordings took longer to walk down the hallway than the students who answered the other set of questions.
It sounds suspicious, but it is true, and reproducible – this study has been conducted over and over with similar results.
This means the words you read and the thoughts you think matter. AND, if your thoughts are constantly about the negatives of (fill in the blank), then this is the direction your body takes.”
I find this fascinating but not surprising; and the truth is, you probably don’t either.
So why do we spend so much time listening to negative voices if they have such a negative impact on our physical, mental and spiritual health?
Some Takeaways:
- We should be intentional about who we spend our time with. Is your social group positive and encouraging? Or do your friends spend more time talking about other people than their own lives? Do they inspire you? Or make you more miserable?
- We should turn the news off. I repeat this a lot because I’m convinced that watching the news on a regular basis with cause you to be more anxious, angry, and frustrated. I saw a recent commercial for a national news organization that stated, “We help you make sense of the news” which is code for, “We won’t report the news, we will give you our spin on today’s events so you will be exposed to our political agenda.” My response? Stay away!
- You have control over your own health. Yeah, I know we all know the person in perfect health who still had a massive heart attack. But if you want to positively impact your health on a day to day basis, fill your mind with positive, truthful, uplifting thoughts.
- Implement healthy boundaries with those who you (must) have a relationship with, but don’t have your best interest at heart. You may have a family member or more than one, who just isn’t a good person. Or who is so self-absorbed to the point that being around them is detrimental to your own well-being. These are not easy decisions but important ones, nonetheless.
- If you work in a toxic environment, consider the toll it’s taking on your health. I’m not saying just quit tomorrow. But if it’s serious enough, you might want to put a plan in place to move on.
One way to ensure you fill your mind with good, is to start the day well. I go into more detail in this recent post, so I won’t do that here; but how you start the day can make all the difference in the trajectory of your day, and how you feel by the end of it.
Words can impact how we move from one room to another, according to this study cited…we can move with a spring in our step, or we can drag ourselves along. I want the former.
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