A “Paradigm” simply put is the worldview underlying our beliefs. Our paradigms govern our lives, and therefore it’s important that we bring them under our control. Most of our paradigms were picked up without our conscious choice, and represent our programming.
The whole subject of health with its various component parts of diet, exercise, mind and spirit, has been turned upside down – its true purpose has been inverted or perverted. What do I mean? Eating has become a scientific experiment. We have become obsessed with weighing our portions, calculating the calories, avoiding this, avoiding that, and determining the fat-carbohydrate-protein content of every meal.
The innate intelligence of the body to maintain health has been supplanted and given over to the conscious mind.
When you get a cut, do you need your thinking mind to tell your body how to heal that cut? No, it just does it, and it does it beautifully without the help of our conscious minds. So why have we accepted the belief that we need to micro-manage what we eat in order to be healthy? Our health, when it comes to matters of the body, is the job of our subconscious minds. What we should be doing is training our subconscious minds to naturally crave foods that support health.
It is important to understand how the mind works in order to change our eating habits to support our health and maintain our ideal body weight naturally. Consider the following taught to me by Bob Proctor. It illustrates very nicely how our mind and body work.
Our mind can be divided into two parts – the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind controls the subconscious mind and the subconscious mind controls the body. In fact, the subconscious mind will accept without question beliefs fed it by the conscious mind. Consider our dreams. If when you are sleeping you dream that you are running through a field, your subconscious mind actually sends messages to the muscles to fire, just as if you were running.
Our conscious mind has the power to accept or reject any information that comes to it through the five senses. Our subconscious minds do not. The important thing to realize is that it is our subconscious mind that controls our habits, our actions, our vibrational levels, and ultimately our lives based on our paradigms.
Our subconscious mind even controls the foods we LIKE or DISLIKE.
Therefore, in order to truly change our behavior and ultimately our lives, we must impress upon our subconscious minds new paradigms based on the beliefs we choose to make reality in our lives.
Two very effective tools are visualization and the use of affirmations. Since our conscious mind controls our subconscious mind, visualization is a great way to impress upon our subconscious mind things and circumstances we want to materialize in our lives. We must see ourselves, in our minds eye, having the body we want for instance. But not just see it, we need to mix that image with emotion and feel what it would feel like to have the body we desire. Visualization will give us the picture of what we want.
Affirmations are then used in conjunction to develop new beliefs and paradigms, of new ways at looking at the world. By doing this on a consistent basis, we actually change the paradigms held in our subconscious minds and start to move towards that which we desire. We do this by changing the vibration of our bodies and causing it to take the actions necessary to bring about the changes we desire. And when done properly it all happens effortlessly and easily. We don’t need to struggle with ourselves. It just feels right!
Here is affirmation you can use to transform your paradigm and ultimately your health:
I am the picture of health, lean and muscular with boundless energy. I create my future with my thoughts.
Say this to yourself over and over as you walk, and visualize yourself as THAT. Do it with feeling and emotion, and then mix it with faith. Your subconscious mind will accept this as true over time and begin the work of changing your body to reflect this truth! This is the Law of Attraction – That which is likened to itself is drawn. That is, you get what you focus on, whether you want it or not… Get hold of this fact and you can transform any aspect of your life!
Paradigm Shift
I’ve been talking about a paradigm shift for a while now. I think it is so important. Do you ever feel like you know all the right things to do, but always end up doing the opposite? I know I have. I struggled with this for a long time. It is one thing to know, and yet a totally different thing to do!
Well I have discovered the secret behind why this is. Our actions are controlled in large measure by our subconscious minds. Our habits have been programmed into us, and most of the time we are acting out of our program, from our subconscious minds. We always have the choice to take a different path however. This reminds me of that old Seinfeld episode when George decides to ‘do the opposite of every natural inclination he has’. If you have seen this episode, you saw how his declaration to make this his religion had a dramatic effect on his life. All of the sudden, everything started working for him. He met a new women. He got a new job. He was a new man.
What I finally realized after years of struggling was that I needed to change my paradigms if I wanted real and lasting health. This is the real reason why most people gain all the weight back and then some after they go off a diet. They were able to change their eating habits for a time by sheer willpower, but once they reach their goal they simply go back on autopilot. They never changed their beliefs or paradigms. It is important to realize that so much of what we have been taught is simply untrue and in many respects dangerous, especially when it comes to diet. Instead of reaching for a slice of pizza, we need to think for a moment and choice a salad. Now for those of you saying to yourself, I’m not going to sit around and eat grass all the time. Well my friend that is just your beliefs talking. You see we have been programmed into thinking that all the foods that taste good are bad for us, and the foods that are good for us have no taste. We need to realize that even the foods we like and dislike have been programmed into us and are controlled by our paradigms. If we really evaluate how we feel after eating pizza say as compared to after eating a salad, I think we could agree that one zaps our energy and one gives us energy. But not just that, one is highly acidic and one is alkaline. One will eventually make us sick and one will support our health.
So what can we do? How can we change our programming? Becoming conscious of this is the first step and for some people is all they need to make changes. For others, it will take some work. In case you missed it, Bob Proctor recently put out a few videos dealing with this very subject. To view the last one of the series go here.
What I do is to use affirmations and visualization to change my paradigms. You can make up your own affirmations or borrow them from someone. Say them to yourself over and over until you impress them upon your subconscious mind. Remember our subconscious mind must accept things fed to it by the conscious mind, only the conscious mind has the power to accept or reject things. Here is an affirmation I borrowed from Anthony Robbins: God’s wealth is flowing in my life. It flows to me in avalanches of abundance. All my needs goals and desires are met instantaneously for I am one with God and God is everything. How is that for a paradigm shift? Can you imagine how your life would change if you really believed that on the deepest level of your being? It doesn’t have to be spiritual either. I made a recording of myself reading the following: I am the picture of health, lean and muscular with boundless energy. I love eating healthy foods. Healthy foods sustain me. You can use this technique to change your paradigms and take yourself down the path to health so that next time you feel like a slice of pizza, you find yourself eating a salad instead – and enjoying it!