Positive thinking can lead to positive events
My fiancé turned to me today and said, “I’m going to do something. I’m going to try not to be negative for at least 24 hours.” I thought it was a pretty good idea, so I decided to try it along with him. We’re pretty big fans of trying different challenges (see my previous blog about the Satan diet we tried – and failed) so it seemed like another fun one for us to try.
We were not very successful. It was Friday, so we were both at work, and both very anxious to get the weekend started. I’ve been dieting for our wedding in September, so I’m pretty much hungry all the time, and Awesome suffers from tension headaches after looking too long at various electronic screens. We both tried hard not to complain, and when I said I didn’t like something on a website I was using, I told Awesome that I was “just commenting.”
For the wedding, we’ve both been trying to get into shape, and our approaches are very different. While I like to think positively, Awesome tends to berate himself into working out and eating well. I’ve tried to tell him about the power of positive thinking but he doesn’t think it works for him. All the times before when I’ve tried to lose weight, I used to beat myself up if I didn’t do my full workout, or if I ate a brownie and went over my calorie intake for the day. Now instead, I say to myself, “I’ll try harder tomorrow.”
recently did a study demonstrating the effects that positive thinking had on weight loss. The study followed 84 cleaning women – half were told that their jobs met the requirements for exercise as set by the Surgeon General, and the other half weren’t given any information about their activity level. Researchers found that in a month, the women who were given the exercise information lost weight even though they hadn’t changed their diet or exercise regimen. The group who wasn’t given any information lost no weight.
We are still trying to think positively — not just for weight loss purposes, but with our life in general. If good thoughts help people lose weight who aren’t even trying, think of what it could do for our entire life – or yours.
Emily Little (nee Campbell) was a perpetually single girl who recently met and married her Mr. Right. Her blog, Dating Emily, has been a two-year diary of her adventures in relationships. Her life of bar-hopping and casual dating has turned into one of dog-walking, craft-making and budgeting for eventual home ownership. But just because she can make a mean casserole doesn’t mean her adventures are over. As she prepares to become a first-time homeowner and eventually, a mom, she is discovering that the adventure may just be beginning.