The Power of Thought

There is little doubt that the quality of our thoughts and intentions affect the quality of our lives. Even scientists, over the last few years, have proven unequivocally that our thoughts affect our bodies—our brain, heart, immune system and even our genes. But our intentions also affect everything around us; the quality of our intentions affects the quality of our life circumstances.

It is the place within us that these intentions come from that is important. Intentions rooted in love and appreciation bring about positive changes—both to a person’s health and their life circumstances. In fact, scientific studies have shown that if you feel genuine care and compassion for a person, you boost your own immune system, protecting you from harmful microforms.

They found this during studies carried out to test salivary immunoglobulin A (s-IgA), which is part of the immune system found in the saliva. Large amounts of s-IgA indicate a strong immune system whereas small amounts indicate a weakened system. During studies it was found that just five minutes of ‘caring and compassionate’ thoughts elevated a persons immune system for five hours, whereas five minutes of ‘angry and frustration’ thoughts lowers their immune system for the same amount of time. These finding have massive implications because they show that our thoughts have a direct impact upon our health. In a real sense, too, it could be suggested that appreciation of your gift of life boosts your immunity to life’s microforms, i.e. ‘negative’ life circumstances.

Although, there are no negative circumstances, only circumstances that we label as negative. It is only our way of looking at things that labels them as either positive or negative and once we label them our thoughts about them affect how we feel. So the power to feel good is within us, right now. It’s down to how we choose to look at things.

Scientific studies show this quite clearly too. Say a person is running late for an appointment. The mental and emotional stress of their lateness causes biochemical changes in their body—elevates stress hormone levels, speeds up the aging process and even changes their genes. But it’s not being late, but instead, the meaning attached to being late that causes these biochemical changes. Simply being late does nothing to the body or to life. But the meaning attached to it does.

So, for our own sake, we need to learn to accept life circumstances. This way we don’t label things as negative and so don’t introduce ourselves to stress, and instead, introduce ourselves to happiness. One of the best ways to do this is to stop dwelling on the past, stop worrying about the future, stop waiting until things are different, better, or improved, and instead, appreciate all that happens during each moment of our gift of life.

Taken from the book New Beginnings by Sandy Newbigging.

Sandy Newbigging is a life coach, author and trainer. Questions or comments email to info@sandynewbigging.com.

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