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Your
body appreciates your ability to influence your world: Why
it's worth the trouble to hone your skill.
Quality of life
improves as you increase your ability to affect the world around you.
As you become a better problem solver, learn to see possibility where
you previously saw only limitation, and persist in the face of
challenge, it's not hard to imagine that your results in life will
improve. Depending on where you focus your attention, you could create
better personal relationships, increase your income, take up a more
satisfying line of work, or generate any number of other positive
outcomes.
Your health will improve, too. Not simply when you focus on
health-related goals. When you improve your personal effectiveness in
any area of life. Let's look at 5 reasons why.
Reason #1. Your immune system responses improve. Psychologist
Dr. Albert Bandura, in his book Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of
Control, reports 3 mechanisms by which personal effectiveness can
influence your immune system. First, personal effectiveness gives you
greater ability to cope with stress. You are less likely to feel that
stressors control you and more likely to see that you have the ability
to control them. Uncontrolled stress depresses immune function.
Second, a sense of personal effectiveness decreases the likelihood for
depression, and all the chemical changes that depression brings about
in your body. Third, immune function can be affected by "expectancy
learning." Mere thoughts about your perceived ability to cope with
life have a direct influence on your immune system.
Reason #2. Your body structure changes. The word "state" comes
from the same root word as "to stand." Your STATE affects how you
STAND. "STATE" refers to such things as your alignment with courage
vs. fear, forgiveness vs. resentment, possibility vs. limitation,
resilience vs. vulnerability.
The word "posture" reflects both a mental and physical position with
respect to your environment. So does the word "attitude." When you
align yourself with productive states, your body responds accordingly.
Unfortunately, the same thing happens when you're aligned with
limitation. Poor body alignment creates muscular aches and pains,
premature degeneration of discs and joints, fatigue, and a host of
other health challenges.
Reason #3. You become more proactive. When your personal radar
screen registers "something wrong," a person who believes he or she is
effective in life will be more likely to take prompt corrective
action. Why? Because they'll have more confidence they can make the
changes they want. And when it comes to health, sooner is often a much
better time to make those changes than later.
Reason #4. Personal effectiveness in any given area has a holistic
effect on the rest of your life. As your effectiveness increases,
you'll be less tolerant of inadequate results in the more challenging
areas of your life. You'll no longer allow limiting beliefs like "I'm
just not good with money" to define your results. You'll begin to
realize that any areas of your life that you let go are let go because
you chose to focus your attention elsewhere, not because you lack the
capacity to learn new skills.
Reason #5. You're more likely to experience living in accordance
with your genuine life plan. This itself is immune-enhancing.
Satisfaction replaces the conflict and guilt that occur when you know
you should be doing one thing, yet consistently do something else. It
also makes you more focused and careful—less likely to succumb to poor
choices and "accidents" that occur when you're distracted in life.
Why all the fuss? I believe that enhancing your skill in the area of
personal effectiveness is the single most important thing you can do
to improve your health status, regardless of the challenges you may
face. If you're currently blessed with good health, enhancing personal
effectiveness is the single most important thing I know of to maintain
your health at its most optimal level.
Personal effectiveness is a learned skill. Regardless of your
current ability to consciously affect your world, you can always
enhance your skill through education and practice.
Our current Wellness Challenge participants are engaged in such a
process right now. If you're not involved yet, don't worry. More
opportunities will be coming up soon! Stay tuned...
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