The Optimal Health Mindset

Probably the single most important step you can take to reclaim Optimal Health for yourself and your family is to adopt the right mindset. It is your mindset that you have already that has brought you this far – to be actually reading this BluePrint. It is your mindset that will determine what action steps you actually take. It is your mindset that will determine how easy or difficult each action step will be to implement. And finally, it is your mindset that will determine whether you will stick with the changes you make or progressively slip back into destructive habits.

In other words, it is your mindset that allows you to leverage the knowledge I am giving you into the reality of Optimal Health, and that is the sole purpose of Optimal Health Works.

There is nothing more important.

The 7 key steps to achieving Optimal Health:

1. Establish your core life values
2. Know who you are being healthy for
3. Desire
4. Faith
5. Specialised Knowledge
6. Action Steps
7. Action

While I spend most of my time talking to you about steps 5 to 7, you can see that steps 1 through 4 must come first if you are to get any result. These four steps are the four parts of the mindset for Optimal Health. Let’s consider each in turn.

What are your core life values?

Have you taken the time in your life to write down your most essential values? If you are living your life in alignment with your own core values, you will have a life of fulfilment, joy and reward. You will be operating from your strengths. Since most people have never done this, most people have taken on the values of others pushed upon them by TV and magazines. Some of these values are totally spiritually bereft. Others are just not yours so trying to live by them will make you weak.

If you are going to live a life in your strengths, achieve what you want and be fulfilled, you need to first be clear on what your core life values are. Let’s do that now. You’ll need a pen and paper.

I want you to come up with a list of words that resonate deep within your spirit; that represent what you truly value. You will end up with a list containing typically between 5 and 10 words. Maybe you can just write them down straight from your heart but most of us need a little more help to work out what they are.

I’ll tell you the easiest way. On your piece of paper, write down a list of the people you most admire in the world. They may be alive or dead. You may have met them, seen them on TV or just read about them in a book. They may be real or fictitious – even a cartoon character! It doesn’t matter, just write them all down. Don’t worry if any of them seem silly. That’s OK too.

Now, next to each name, write the one word that describes what it is about that person that makes you resonate with them. These are your core values. Easy huh?

Spend a little time reviewing and re-adjusting your list then stick it up where you will see it every day. Keep a pen handy and review your list a few times per day. You will find that some of them are just different ways of saying the same thing. Work out which words have the most power for you and strike out the duplicates. Check to see if you can think of different words that may mean more to you than the ones you wrote down first. As you go through your day, consider if you may have missed any.

Over the course of a few days to a few weeks, you will get a final list that you will find will remain largely if not entirely unchanged for the rest of your life. These are your true core values. Now you know what they are, you need to live your life according to them. While sometimes that will mean extra work, you will always be renewed of spirit afterwards which will give you the drive and energy to live a fulfilled life.

Now I want you to spend a moment and choose which of these core values underpin the importance of being healthy. You will probably find it is all of them. While being healthy is not on most people’s list of core values, being healthy is essential to living true to any core value. So if you want to be true to the core of what God made you to be, Optimal Health underpins that success.

Who are you being healthy for?

I always say you are being healthy for three.

At the very least you are being healthy so you can fulfil your potential to be who you are. But who is that actually for? If you have family you care for, you may place more importance on them than you do on yourself. This is common with mothers. If so, then be healthy for them for only with optimal health of your own can you give from your true potential.

If you believe in God (and even if you don’t), then you must be healthy for Him. Your body is the magnificent vehicle you have been given to house your spirit and it is your duty to maintain it. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, Who is in you, Whom you have received from God? ... So use every part of your body to give glory back to God...”  1 Corinthians 6:19-20.

And finally but not least, be healthy for yourself. You feel better. You live life more true... and you look better when you are healthy too!

So be healthy for your family, for God and for yourself. You see, there is nothing selfish about it. Quite the contrary. It is selfish to neglect your health as everyone around you suffers.

Desire

Let’s make it real. Based on your core values and being healthy for three, create a strong desire to be healthy. Visualise it clearly. Here is a powerful exercise to lock your desire for healing into your body. You’ll need about ten minutes.

The Optimal Health Meditation

Sit somewhere comfortable with your spine straight but relaxed. Close your eyes. Visualise a globe of warm healing light enveloping the base of your spine. Breathe in gentle and relaxed. As you do, breathe healing energy into the globe making it glow brighter bathing your spine with healing warmth. Breathe out and as you do, breathe all the tension and negativity out of the globe. Move it up one level of your spine and repeat. When you get to the top of your spine see the globe enveloping your head. Relax all the muscles of your face. Lower it to your throat. Then your chest, your abdomen, your pelvis. Travel the healing globe to your hips, the front of your knees the front of your feet. Bring it back up through the back of your ankles, back of your knees and back to the base of your spine (your sacrum). Finish by allowing the globe to envelop the whole of you, then the whole of your home, the whole of your town, the whole of your country, the whole of the planet. Open your eyes.

Do this once on arising in the morning or before retiring at night. You can do it twice a day when you first start if you want.

Faith

There is nothing for you to do to have faith. In fact, the less you think, the more faith you will have. This may sound odd but it is true. It is important to use the mind where it is needed and to turn it off when it is not.

Trust in the healing process of your body even when it isn’t the one you’d hoped it might be! Remember that the healing power of your body has infinite intelligence behind it.

Further Reading

Four of my favourites:

1. The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal  by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. A guide to managing your energy to get full engagement of your mind and body in your purpose.
2. The Gabriel Method: The Revolutionary DIET-FREE Way to Totally Transform Your Body by Jon Gabriel. A revolutionary book on weight loss... but contains clear insight into the power of the mind-body connection and how failing to address blockages in this connection will hold you back. It also gives you tools to release these blockages.
3. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckart Tolle. A timeless classic on the nature of the mind and how it likes to hijack your spirit. Eckart gives tools to put your mind back in its box so you use it when you need it and not when you don’t.
4. Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller--Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Napoleon Hill, published 1938. The result of 20 years of research into the common strategies of the world’s most financially successful people. You can use the knowledge to achieve any area of success in life.

Key Message

• The right mindset is the single most important step you can take to reclaim Optimal Health
• There are four parts to getting the right mindset:

1. Establish your core life values
2. Know who you are being healthy for
3. Desire
4. Faith

Making It Real

1. Establish your core life values now
2. Do the Optimal Health meditation once or twice a day
3. Have faith in the healing process of your body. If you do the right things, your health will improve