With the right thoughts and emotions, we can bring more happiness, health and productivity into our lives. How so?

Food and our psyche

Many of us resort to food when things aren’t going our way. Some of us indulge in foods we know we shouldn’t have, and some of us can’t even think about eating. A 3,068-person study conducted in the US in 2014 revealed that 75% of people experienced at least one stress symptom during the one-month period prior to taking the survey. That’s a lot! And 33% of them fessed up to eating too much and/or unhealthy foods due to stress (American Psychological Association 10. 2015).

Due to the relationship between our mind and our body, we often use food to deal with our thoughts and emotions. But what we don’t realize is that the relationship between food and our thoughts and emotions is a two-way street.

Thoughts and emotions as food

We convert our input sources, such as water, food and air, into energy. When our energy supply is positive in quantity and quality, we feel on top of the world. We put these sources into our body, and hope to efficiently digest and assimilate them so we can get the most out of these inputs. Ok, this is big so let me put this differently.

Allopathic medicine mainly talks about the foods we should or should not eat, but what you eat is only a portion of the energy battle. There are a few other components that are often overlooked.

One of these factors is digestion. The balance of input, transformation and output is what keeps us healthy. When this chain breaks down, imbalances develop, which over time can lead to disease. In other words, it’s not enough to put good food into our body, we must be able to digest and assimilate it for optimal energy, health and…wait for it…performance.

Another component is the definition of food. We think of food as a physical thing we can touch, see, taste and smell. But for our body and mind, food is much more than that. Food is any source of input that can give or take our energy. And that includes thoughts and emotions. Similar to foods, we want to take in good thoughts and emotions. And similar to foods, these thoughts and emotions will need to be digested and assimilated.

Take our “7 ways to healthy eating habits” online course for good eating habits for your body and mind.

3 ways to cultivate pleasant thoughts and emotions

• Develop a gratitude attitude: start a daily gratitude practice and keep a gratitude journal. Get ideas here.
• Stop the negative self-talk: catch yourself when negative thoughts and emotions arise. Acknowledge them and replace them with positive ones.
• Expose yourself to pleasant sensory stimuli: the first contact of a stimulus is with your sense organs. Keep them happy with pleasant and wholesome experiences through sound, touch, speech, visuals and scents. Get ideas here.

Image by Mikhail Nilov, Pexels