Wellness Wisdom

Excerpt from Chapter 1: Intend to Be Well

One of the most powerful steps you can take to enhance your wellness is to simply create the intention to do so. Wellness is about choice. Wellness is the part of our well-being that describes what we have, rather than something we’re lacking. When we’re sick it’s easy to proclaim to anyone who will listen, “I am so sick!” When we are well, we rarely walk around saying, “Oh, I am so well!” But the mind would love to hear this message more often. You might even make wellness communicable simply by talking about it!

Wellness is an active process, a choice, and a way of life. When we intend to be well, we make proactive choices that enhance our lives so that we feel more successful in all areas of our existence. That’s wellness—and you want more of it or you wouldn’t be reading this book.

When we focus on wellness, our wellness expands. In contrast, focusing on illness usually keeps us ill. You can choose to keep focusing on illness or you can begin to observe your thoughts, make a choice to change them, and create more episodes of spontaneous wellness in your life. You can enhance your level of wellness even if you have a chronic or serious illness. Setting the intention or stating a goal engages your mind to begin creating thoughts, feelings, ideas, and images of being and staying well. Affirming that you are already enjoying an abundance of wellness engages your subconscious to provide the spark that can light the flame of wellness within you. It also raises your energetic vibration so you can attract more of the same.

In setting intentions, you will want to involve your thoughts, words, and feelings, and then add a plan of action to your vision. Simply thinking about wellness more than sickness will get you moving in the right direction and writing down your intention is powerful. However, if you stopped there and sat in your living room waiting for wellness to walk in the door, you might be waiting for a while. It is important for your intention (thought) and word to be combined with feeling and then to be followed up with action. Identifying and drawing in the feeling that surrounds what you want is a very important step in this process.

We have over 60,000 thoughts a day. How many of your thoughts today are proclaiming your wellness? Do you spend time thinking or talking about what you want in your life or about what you don’t want? Your answer to that question is important because what you think about all the time is what you will experience. Another way to say that is: What you think about expands. Think back over this past week and recall where you put your attention as it related to the concepts of wellness or illness. Did you spend time thinking about what part of your body didn’t work right or were you focusing on moving toward a higher level of wellness? Did your conversations include more talk of aches and pains, or joy and ease? Sometimes it seems that we’re all in a contest to see whose story holds the most pain or sickness. The winner really is not the one who feels worse than you! Giving wellness your attention will strengthen your intention to feel better than you do right now.

I have noticed I often avoid colds or minimize the symptoms of a cold by honoring my body’s need for rest and by not over-scheduling myself. But I wasn’t always this healthy. My old medical records are quite thick and several years ago I looked over them with amazement. I found page after page of notes describing conditions I haven’t even thought of in the last 20 years. Back in 1984, one doctor actually wrote in my chart, “She is overburdening herself which leaves her no time for herself and the only way she gets taken care of is by getting sick.” Ouch! My wellness path took a startling new direction after I realized that I seemed to be having accidents or illnesses in order for people to take care of me. None of this was at all conscious. Up until that time, I really didn’t know how to take care of myself because I was too busy taking care of everyone around me. This focus of taking care of others while ignoring my own needs was in my DNA (and I swear it’s in estrogen) so I spent a lot of time putting others first. Does this story sound familiar?

This awareness shifted my life considerably. I began to observe my thoughts, feelings, and actions surrounding illness. This shift continued when I became acutely aware of the thoughts I attached to my first sniffle or sneeze. I had developed quite a talent for planning ahead to feel miserable—I could even envision how many days I would be off work. That was after the first sneeze! I now make the choice to “think well” rather than to “think sick.” Instead of believing, “Oh, I’m going to be so sick!” I declare, “I am well, I am well, I am well!” On rare occasions I might still find myself dealing with a minor cold, but it passes quickly and I don’t pay much attention to it. Instead I pay more attention to myself and ask, “What can I do to take care of myself today?” I have also learned not to criticize myself when I am sick, thinking that I “should” have been able to avoid the illness.

Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we just get sick. When that happens, pamper yourself and let others pamper you too, if that’s what you like. Sometimes we may just need the time to slow down and stay under the covers. And sometimes life deals us a chronic or life-threatening illness that we didn’t ask for. In those cases, we can still focus on what is working in our body and create ways to be as well as we can be, despite our illness.

If you want to feel better and you don’t feel well now, allow yourself to daydream to remember how it felt when you were in better health. Act as if you feel well and keep focused on the feeling that is behind your intention. The result will be magical.

You can choose to put your attention toward being well and to treat your body the best you can all the time, not just when you are sick. You can also observe, rather than judge, your patterns and choose to create new ones that may better serve your well-being.

After you set the intention, then put your attention to it. Add the sensation of the feeling and you’ll find this to be a simple yet powerful concept. An old proverb states, “If you plant turnips you will not harvest grapes.” What seeds of wellness are you planting? What would you like to harvest?