While health is not totally within our control, certain behavior choices will affect us positively and reduce future health risks, here you can understand why it is important to make healthy choices, the types of factors that influence our healthy and unhealthy habits, and how to make responsible decisions by taking the right active steps to improve our healthy behaviors.

I want you to take a moment and think of the term ‘health’, and see what comes to your mind? Is it lack of illness? Being physically fit? Having a positive attitude? Having balance in your life?
Without doubts, all are correct. If so, why are there so many variations in our perception of health? Is it possible that these differences are due to an increasingly enlightened way of viewing health that has taken shape over time?
Did you know that in the year1900, average life expectancy was 47 years? If you survived an influenza pandemic, or an outbreak of cholera, you were considered lucky. However, today, life expectancy is 77 years, and the concept of health means much more than just not being ill.

The definition of health has progressively evolved into a concept known to as wellness. Wellness refers to the ever-changing process of achieving one’s potential in six interrelated dimensions of health: physical, social, intellectual, emotional, environmental, and spiritual.

Let’s explore each dimension.
When you think of the words physical health? Usually, the first thing you can envision is a physically fit person – someone with a toned, buff physique. And as most of us know, physical health it’s not always defined by an excellent physique. To be physically healthy means you have the ability to perform all of life’s daily activities, such as getting out of bed, preparing dinner, socializing, and all of the other small tasks you may complete each day. These are called activities of daily living. Each one’s ability to perform these functions determines their physical health.

The second dimension of wellness is known to us as social health. This is one of the abilities we can have that will satisfy our interpersonal relationships, adapt to social situations, and behave appropriately in daily activities.
Intellectual health refers to the ability to think clearly, solve problems, and effectively meet life’s challenges. Now, do you have hobbies that you enjoy? Keep in mind that Hobbies are part of your intellectual health – a part that is often overlooked. Are you overlooking your hobbies?
Emotional health refers to the ability to express emotions when they are appropriate, and controlling them when they are not.

Finally, spiritual health is a dimension that may involve a belief in a supreme being, or a guiding sense of value in life. Wellness integrates all of these dimensions in an effort to find balance among mind, body, and spirit. Take a few moments to think about your strengths in each dimension of wellness.

Now that we know what it means to be healthy, what efforts can you make to prevent illness and disease? The Body Mind Connection hypnotherapy initiative places an emphasis on healthy living and disease prevention. Examples of disease prevention include deciding not to smoke cigarettes, live stress free or practicing safer sex. The Body Mind Connection initiative provides educational and mental support to help individuals reduce preventable lifestyle behaviors that could lead to chronic disease. For example, the hypnosis community programs can encourage people to lose weight in order to lower their risk for diabetes and heart disease.

Perhaps you are in perfect health right now. You may be wondering why changing bad habits into healthy habits matters. After all, you are young and eating McDonalds isn’t affecting your waistline, so why worry? The lifestyle choices we make now will affect your health years from now. Consider the example of eating too much fast food: losing weight can be a struggle, and a lot more difficult than making some changes to your diet today. Overweight can also lead to more serious illnesses such as high blood pressure or diabetes. What are some other healthy behaviors you can practice on an individual level?

Now that you know why it is important to make wise health decisions, are you ready to prepare for a behavior change? All of these factors fall into one of these three categories:

Predisposing factors include life experiences, knowledge, cultural heritage, and beliefs. For example, if your parents smoked when you were a child, this is a predisposing factor that you too are likely to become a smoker.
Enabling factors include abilities; physical, emotional, and mental capabilities; commitment to health; or resources that make health decisions easy or difficult. How would positive enablers affect behavior change? That’s right – they encourage you to change. And negative enablers? They work against your intentions to change. For example, if you want to join a gym but it turns out the closest one is on the other side of town, this would be a negative enabler. On the other hand, if you find an economical fitness center on your way home from work, this is a positive enabler.

The final category is reinforcing factors. These include the presence or absence of support or encouragement of significant people in your life. For example, if you are trying to limit your alcohol intake, but your friends binge drinks every weekend, you’ll likely be tempted to abandon your efforts and join them.

Do your friends and family influence your health choices? The answer is of course. Healthy behaviors usually start in healthy homes, and if friends offer encouragement, you are more likely to stay motivated to change your behaviors. However, if you didn’t start having a healthy habit from home and your friends aren’t helping, than I have good news for you, since hypnotherapist like myself and others are trained and willing to help.

Now that you’ve analyzed the factors that influence your behaviors, the next step is to choose a strategy to make the change. Most behaviors are impossible to change immediately. Therefore you need help to reach your goal, and with a professional hypnotherapist it is often easy, because they will help you with the necessary small steps that you can take with success. This process is referred as rehearsing and shaping while been in trance.

For example, you have not exercised in a while and decide that you want to begin jogging three miles every other day. You realize that presently you would need oxygen if you tried to run even a few blocks. So, you decide to build up to your desired fitness level and begin by rehearsing and shaping the new you within your subconscious mind.

Let’s pretend that you are now in trance with the help of your professional trained hypnotherapist, and you are experiencing a total relaxation, and your hypnotherapists now guides you into taking the necessary small step to success; such as walking a half a mile to a mile several days a week, once you’ve done it in your mind, it becomes part of your reality, since the subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination, once you experience it in your mind it becomes your reality. Remember, behaviors don’t develop overnight, so they won’t change overnight.

Hypnosis followed with visualization can transform unhealthy behaviors into healthy ones. If you allow your hypnotherapist to guide you properly by teaching you how to use visualization to help you plan of action ahead of time, you’ll be better prepared when you put yourself to the test. For example, suppose you’d like to lose weight. Your hypnotherapist will guide you into using your Imagination by setting and practicing exactly what you will do in your mind and aloud. Verbal and mental rehearsal will greatly improve the likelihood for success.

One of the most effective strategies for changing behavior is modeling. This is simply learning behaviors by seeing yourself watching the new you performing it. Controlling the situation often positively influences your behaviors. Situational inducement refers to influencing a behavior by using social settings to control the behavior. For example, you may be more apt to losing weight if you socialize with people who walk or involved in more physical activity.

Positive reinforcement seeks to increase the likelihood that a behavior will occur by presenting a reward for the behavior. Positive reinforces can be something to gift yourself with, a fun activity, a tangible reward, or approval from those around you. If you could choose one activity reinforce with which to reward yourself after one week of success in your new behavior, what would it be?

Changing self-talk, the way you think and talk to yourself, play’s a huge role in modifying health-related behaviors. Self-talk must always be positive and believable.

Okay – you’ve decided how you are going to make your healthy behavior change. Next you’ve got to contact a trained professional in your area or not in your area, in today’s internet marketing; you can easily set an online session to set some goals. How can you set a realistic health goal? First, decide your ultimate goal. If there is more than one behavior you’d like to change, pick the behavior you’d like to change the most to work on. Than pick up the phone and call me or any other hypnotherapist you may want to work with and book your first session, you may be surprise how fast it can change your life style. If you like this article please share and feel free to give us a call if you have any questions for us or share your comments here.