The psychology of health

Peace, Diane Leonard

I want you to have vibrant health. I want you to have the full power of your body, mind, and spirit available to you. This means unraveling your beliefs about health and determining for yourself what you can do to create more health and vitality in your life. Right now.

When you think about vibrant health, what comes to mind? Strength, vitality, ease, sunshine? Vegetables, meditation, running? Smiles, love, open hearts?

Power, freedom, confidence, security?

The picture of health that you have in your mind is affected by what you know about it (from the culture), what you believe about it (from imprinting and early childhood messaging), what your motivations are, and how you are motivated related to the concept of health, what you believe you are capable of related to health, the insights you have about how to achieve, maintain, or maximize it, the behaviors in which you engage, your lifestyle, and your resources.

Let’s say I could give you a formula to follow. Maybe it’s a little complex. Maybe it involves certain foods to eat and exercises to do and some spiritual practices to follow. But it’s doable. Will that create health? Not if you aren’t utilizing your personal agency, your intuition, your body-wisdom, your understanding of yourself as you go about following the formula. You must be an active co-creator of your vibrant health. If your psychology around the concept of health does not involve yourself as an active co-creator who is responsible and accountable for your own decisions and behaviors, you will be disempowered and likely experience less optimal health than someone with the view of their own agency and primacy in the process of health.

Motivation plays a role in the psychology of health as well. Motivation has two aspects as it relates to the psychology of health. 1) the ideas, outcomes or feelings that motivate you to create vibrant health in your life. Motivate is from the Latin for “move” so you can think of motivation as the incentive to create movement in a certain area or behavior. You have certain things that motivate you to create health in your body and your life. 2) Access to motivation is transient and unpredictable. You may have many things that motivate you theoretically to achieve vibrant health. But access to the feeling of being motivated to take action or move is often fleeting. This has a direct effect on your behavior related to health.

Capabilities: Are you capable physically, emotionally, mentally, and financially of doing what is required to have vibrant health? Do you have the knowledge, the know-how, the support, the access to resources, and overall ability to create vibrant health in your life? What capabilities would you need that you don’t have now? What capabilities do you currently have that will aid you on this journey?

Insights: What has your own experience taught you about health or lack thereof? Your experiential knowledge of what health is has an impact on your personal psychology of health. Perhaps you have had experiences that have led you to distrust conventional medicine? That would lead to the belief that conventional medicine will not help you to create health or perhaps that you must find your own inner authority when it comes to creating vibrant health. Perhaps you have had experiences that have led you to believe that conventional medicine holds the answers to all your ails. This will create a psychology of health that externalizes authority. Two people with the same health ailments--one who externalizes authority and one who internalizes authority will have two very different experiences on the way to optimal health, and likely different results as well.

Desires as they relate to your personal psychology of health are similar to motivations. The things that motivate you are often your desires. However sometimes we are motivated to “move” away from certain outcomes. Desires on the other hand, inspire us to move toward certain outcomes. Desire is from the Latin "desiderare" which means to “observe or feel the absence of” the thing you are wanting. Your desires affect your psychology of health. If you want to be thin, your constellation of health will be different than if you want to be fit or strong, let’s say. These desires all create different outcomes, sometimes subtle, sometimes profound.

The behaviors you engage in and your overall lifestyle have a significant impact on your personal psychology as it relates to health. For example if you are a smoker, you will have to remain in an active state of denial about your health to engage in activity that is so contrary to wellness. This is not a cultural construct. It is borne out in the experiential realm. While smoking provides a nicotine hit, and that feels rewarding and pleasurable, the experience of smoking and the more salient aspects of the experience tell us that there are multiple components of the experience that are quite displeasurable--the smell, the cough, the smoke, the cravings. Your psychology of health will have to compensate for behaviors that experientially decrease health unless and until such time as you shift or motivate away from the problematic behavior, whether it be sugar, addiction, lack of hygiene, a sedentary lifestyle, etc.

If you identify as a “healthy person,” you will have a view of yourself and your health and therefore the personal power you have to create health that is very different from someone that does not consider themselves a “healthy person.” This is a very important consideration as you look to create more vibrant health in your life. How you see yourself and the words you use to describe yourself play an enormous role in creating your reality. Therefore, consider yourself a healthy person! And if that does not ring true for you right now, start doing things that will help you create vibrant health and consider yourself “a person who is doing things to create health.” Understand that if you do not have an active sense of yourself as a healthy person, then your psychology of health is probably externalized. And this is a point of leverage. If you can shift that sense of yourself toward more personal agency, then you will likely create more health via your lifestyle, behaviors, and beliefs.

Beliefs shape our reality. Your beliefs are essentially all the things you tell yourself about health as you understand it. Some of these beliefs will be shared with others. Some will be unique to you. Some beliefs will be experiential, some will be factual in nature. Some beliefs will be pleasant and hopeful, others might be distressing and pessimistic. Your beliefs about yourself, your world, your power, your authority, your fate, your luck, your resources, your support system, your responsibility...all these beliefs affect your psychology of health. A belief like “My doctor makes sure I stay healthy.” has a very different psychological result than a belief like, “I make sure I stay healthy.”

Another way your beliefs affect your psychology of health is when there is an absence of belief about something. For example, some people believe sugar is bad and strictly limit it. This will create a very different health outcome than someone who doesn’t have a belief about sugar at all. Doesn’t consider it good or bad. Doesn't have any beliefs about it at all. In the one case, the belief creates the behavior of avoiding sugar. In the other, the absence of a belief creates a lack of behaviors motivated by sugar content. This difference might be subtle or large depending on how the lack of belief plays out behaviorally.

Beyond our conscious or semi-conscious beliefs however are our limiting beliefs. These are beliefs that create limitations in what we view as possible for ourselves and our lives. There are innumerable variations of these beliefs as they relate to health. You could be limited by the belief that you’re not a runner or a vegetable eater or the belief that you are somehow frail or destined to be sick. You could be limited by the belief that only experts can help you or that there is nothing you can do to create more health. You could believe that some aspect or state of health is out of your reach. These beliefs limit what you believe is possible in terms of the health you can achieve. This has a significant impact on your personal health psychology.

Limiting beliefs exists at the subconscious level and in most cases, we are not aware of what they even are or that they even exist at all. We simply can’t see beyond the limits in the first place because our programming has essentially told us the limit is where things end. There is no possibility beyond that place. This makes them a little tricky to work with. First we have to figure out these beliefs are operating in the first place, then we have to get a handle on what exactly the belief is, then we need to transform it into something much more expansive and empowering. The good news is that all this is not only possible but pretty easy if you know the steps to take.

All together, our thoughts, beliefs, motivations, intentions, behaviors, insights, and capabilities constellate to create our personal psychology or worldview or mindset or experience of “health” in our lives. To optimize health, you can address leverage points in your psychology related to health. When we are striving to create the life we want, the health we want, the vitality we want, or whatever it may be...we need to use the leverage we have in whatever form available.

Desiderata, Max Erhmann, 1927

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.

And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.