KissMeGoodnight
eRomance Series:
Secrets To Looking Young,
Feeling Young and Being Young
( 17 pages )
ATTITUDE AND AGING
Thankfully, researchers
are finally beginning to understand and accept the link between
mind and body. Even though the physiological make up of emotions
themselves have not yet been identified, some researchers
suspect that a small portion of the brain called the insular
cortex may be the key.
The insular
cortex regulates the autonomic nervous system which controls the
automatic functions of our body such as breathing heartbeat
and blood pressure. It also plays a role in higher brain
functions and helps to process anger, fear, joy, happiness
and sexual arousal.
Laboratory experiments
with animals indicate that when the insular cortex is stimulated
for long periods of time, causes a kind of damage to the
heart muscle that is similar to sudden cardiac death. Other
experiments with people who have epilepsy who were undergoing
brain surgery that exposed the insular cortex found that
stimulating the area with mild electrical pulses changed
the person’s heart rate and blood pressure.
Is it any wonder,
therefore, that years of sorrow, anger and other negative
emotions may cause a malfunction of the insular cortex? The
research continues.
Whatever happens
in that six inches between your ears, one thing is certain.
Optimism, laughter, love and other positive emotions can
counteract many harmful effects at any age, even in your
sixties, seventies, eighties and beyond!
A happy
outlook appears to trigger the release of endorphins. Endorphins
relax the cardiovascular system and cytokines which alert
the immune system to pay attention in detecting abnormalities
like cancer cells.
The University
of California, Riverside began a research project in 1921
whereby they followed the aging process of over 1,500 people
who were preteens when the study began. The researchers concluded
that among those subjects, such positive attributes as dependability,
trust, agreeableness and open-mindedness were associated
with a two to four year increase in life expectancy.
Let’s
explore some tips for developing a better outlook on your
world.
Listen carefully
to yourself. If you have put yourself down since childhood,
over a lifetime negative subliminal message can take their
toll by turning you into a pessimist. Spend one week writing
down the phrases you use in your “self talk.” Chances are
you will find that you repeat a dozen or so phrases over
and over again that reinforce that negative image. If you
know about them, you can change them.
If an issue is
not resolved it will continue to plague you and you will
relive the negative emotions tied to that issue over and
over again. Write yourself a letter spending about 20 minutes
a day for four days and write about what you feel. Forget
grammar, punctuation and so on. No one else will see this
but you and you can throw it away when finished. Once you
begin to write, don’t stop until the time is up. This exercise
will help you organize your thoughts and get them out of
your system. By the end of the four days most people feel
much better about themselves.
Seek out new challenges
and opportunities. Always have something that is a goal just
over the horizon. When you begin to close the gap and reach
that goal, set another and another. Keep yourself consistently
moving ahead.
Try and do one
new thing every week or month. Visit a museum, go to the
zoo, go to a book signing or lecture. The goal here is to
eliminate monotony which is a sure killer of optimism.
Look for a new
marvel of nature each day. Discover an abundance of happiness.
Spoil your pet or if you don’t have one, visit the human
society and adopt one. Learn to laugh at yourself. Allow
yourself to experience grief but don’t let it control you.
Find someone who
is worse off than you and lend a hand. Volunteer at a hospital,
visit a nursery or a shelter.
In a preliminary
study, researchers at the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder
Creek, California, a biomedical research center that examines
mind-body connections, asked 30 men and women to think for
five minutes of either a compassionate moment in their lives
or a time when they were upset or angry. “We found that simply
recalling one episode of anger depresses the immune system
for up to seven hours – but one episode of feeling compassion
or caring enhances the immune system for about the same amount
of time,” says Jerry Kaiser, the Institute’s director of
health services.
Armed with that
information, stop for a moment and think about how often
you feel either end of that emotional spectrum. Makes you
think a bit deeper about how we have the power to actually
destroy ourselves through our emotions, doesn’t it?
Here are a few
quick tips for increasing joy, hope and optimism that will
work no matter what your age:
- Make a list
of at least 50 great things that happen to you every day.
- Laugh a lot.
You’ll heal your body and your mind.
- Discover a
new challenge each month.
- Try meditating
for just five minutes each day.
 
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