How Self-Reflection Produces Self-Healing
How Self-Reflection Produces Self-Healing
Most people can easily see the importance of diet, exercise and rest to their health. However, the practices of inspirational study and journaling often are not seen as being as important. In our experience there is nothing that will more reliably improve your health than daily self- reflection done in ways that actually bring you understanding, inspiration and peace.
It can be helpful to understand how the very processes of life work incessantly to bring you to take the time to reflect on your ways of living. This is how it often works. Most of us have lived our lives with relatively little attention to the impact on our health of the ways we eat, move, think and act. The net effect is that our mental and physical habits have usually contributed more to disease than health. As your inherent strengths and healing mechanisms succumb to your unsupportive and in many cases substantially destructive lifestyle habits, recognizable disease results. Your dis-ease eventually motivates you to think about solutions. This thinking is a rudimentary form of self-reflection.
Because conventional medicine does not encourage use to think for ourselves about how to resolve our health problems, our personal Healing work is discouraged and retarded. After what is usually a long period of trial and error some people are led to discover the connection between their own actions and their problems. Once you gain the precious gift of this understanding your next challenge becomes that of how to actually change your self-destructive actions.
You can struggle a long time trying to change your physical actions if you do not take into consideration your mental-emotional actions. This article you are presently reading is one in an entire "Mind-Body" series that was developed to teach you the enormous causative role your mind plays in your physical actions and therefore your physical results. The “Mind-Body” series teaches you how your mental activities of valuing, believing, thinking, feeling, interpreting, languaging, etc. directly determine your physical actions. If you have done the studying and journaling lessons in this Study Guide you have solid experience of this.
This is why we say to you that if you want to improve your physical actions of eating, exercise and rest it is essential to take time for self-reflection on your mental-emotional actions. Without regular self-reflection you will find that the quality of your diet, exercise and rest degenerate. Your degenerative actions will inevitably produce bodily conditions which will become increasingly painful until they get your attention and motivate you to use your mind to start thinking about how to resolve this. Eventually you will see that the real solutions lay in improving the quality of your mental-emotional activities. Through daily self-reflection as taught to you in this study guide you deliberately use your mental processes in ways that create health and happiness. In time health and happiness rather than pain become what motivates you to continue doing what benefits you.
Self-reflection will be new and ever changing to you every day in the same way as are diet, exercise, rest, recreation and relating. Likewise your "appetite" for these activities is renewed every day and you find them to be truly eternal sources of pleasure.
If you are uncertain how to practice self-reflection I suggest you begin by practicing the various lessons I will provide you such as the following: Clarify your Values; Identify and Transform Your Limiting Beliefs; Increase Your Body of Knowledge; Identify and Transform Your Limiting Emotions; Ask Healthy Questions; Use Language as a Creative Tool, etc..
These activities of valuing, believing, languaging, etc. are not new. you are already doing these things. It is impossible to live without doing them. Self-reflection is the means by which you study and practice using these God given talents in ways that produce the results you want rather than producing disease, poverty and conflict.
Regular practice of self-reflection will improve your ability to perform these mental actions skillfully. And, remember, improving your mental skills is THE way to improve physically. You can view vauing, believing, languaging, etc. as mental skills which you use in the game of life. They are like dribbling, passing and shooting are to basketball. Regular practice sessions enable you to improve your skills. Practice is especially important because in the "heat of the game" you are too engaged in the moment to give critical attention to the quality of your playing. If you are not winning at the game of health and happiness (or relationship or wealth) this is a signal to you to practice your skills. You do this by using and reviewing your journal just as a player would the films of a game. Closely observe the ways you are valuing, believing, interpreting, etc. with regard to eating, exercise, rest, relationships, finances etc. and practice these various mental activities in your journal until you can do it in a way that brings you the results you want.
Self-reflection is the foundational skill to all the other disciplines of healing. If you set aside regular time to reflect on the way you are living you will find that your actions will naturally come into increasing alignment with your sense of what is best for you and those whom you love.