Thought That Facilitates Healthful Change

Homo sapiens: that's us.  We are wise persons.  Aristotle's called us "rational animals."  And it certainly is true that thinking has enabled our relatively slow and puny species to dominate the globe. On the other hand, the rational animal can be irrational.  We have slaughtered each other on a massive scale since antiquity.  And we slowly, incrementally slaughter ourselves every day that we pursue an unhealthful lifestyle.

What's true for the species is true for you.  What you think determines both what you do and how you feel.  The more you understand and control your thinking, the more physically and mentally healthy you will be.

You could awaken in the morning, look in the mirror, and tell yourself, "Well, I’m one day closer to death" because that surely is true.  Or, you could tell yourself, "Alright, one more day to make the most of life," because that is equally true.  Two objective realities but the one that you choose—your subjective reality—instigates what you do and how you feel after you walk away from the mirror.

So, you need to attend carefully to what you explicitly and implicitly say to yourself.  And you need to target your self-talk to make it as health-enhancing as possible.  Self-talk will persuade you about the value of the health essentials that you choose for change, how you proceed, and whether you persevere.  If you have honestly introspected about the history and conduct of your current lifestyle, you will choose appropriate goals.

Listening to your explicit remarks is manageable and obvious, given sufficient motivation and attention.  It is access to and understanding of implicit thought that separates those who succeed with their lifestyle changes from those who fail.

Sensitize yourself to your implicit thoughts by looking for consistencies and inconsistencies among thinking, feeling, and behaving.  If you tell yourself (thoughts) that you want to lose weight, you will be less frustrated (feelings) when you drive past your favorite bakery (behavior).  Your thoughts are mediators of your behavior.  If you do stop for the cream puff, your behavior has revealed that your true implicit thought is that cream puffs take precedence over weight loss.  And if the joy (feeling) associated with consuming the pastry is stronger than the guilt associated with its consumption, you know that you must modify your thinking if you ever hope to master your weight problem.

Your thought control then is more than just maximizing optimism and minimizing pessimism.  You must modulate your thoughts to be reasonably optimistic to enable you to pursue behavioral goals that are consistent not only with your objective capabilities but also with your subjective/emotional attitudes.   For instance, it would be better first to set a healthful lifestyle change goal that is lower but less threatening than the more ambitious one that you desire and could achieve theoretically.  You always slowly can increase the demandingness of your goal when your emotional confidence matches your thoughts and objective capabilities.  For instance, better to begin with a 5 pound weight loss goal that is less intimidating to you than a 15 pound goal that seriously stresses you.

   In short, a wise person rationally controls his/her animal instincts by adaptive synergistic use of coordinated thought, emotion, and behavior.