Health Reports:
Here’s a heart tip for the week:
One way you can help protect yourself against heart disease according to research published in the European Heart Journal is to be contented and satisfied – contented and satisfied with your job contented and satisfied with your family contented and satisfied with your sex life contented and satisfied with yourself.
So the question then becomes what can you do to help you be contented and satisfied? What do you do to raise your levels of contentment and satisfaction? How do you decrease your discontent and dissatisfaction?
Here’s one suggestion: Develop a practice of systematically giving thanks every day for things no matter how small or big.
It can be a prayer if you are a believer. It can be a simple expression of thanks if you aren’t.
“Thanks Lord for the beautiful jigsaw I found at Vinnies for 50 cents. Thanks for pleasant weather to get some weeding done. Thanks for the interesting talk on the radio I listened to in the car driving home. Thanks for my friends Pauline and Lorraine and Camilla. Thanks that I’m not too achy this morning even though I did a lot of gardening yesterday. Thanks for the lovely cuddle. Thanks for cold winter nights when it is nice to cuddle up. Thanks for friends who share hugs with me.”
When you start looking for things to be thankful for you’ll always find them. For most of us the problem isn’t that we have too few things to be thankful for. the problem is that we have too many things to be thankful for and we aren’t putting aside enough time to appreciate all we’ve got all the ways we are blessed and fortunate.
Then it becomes like constipation. We all like a good meal but we wouldn’t like all our meals to have to stay undigested inside us forever would we. Giving thanks is like digesting a good meal. Giving thanks is the way we get the benefit from all that we have received.
And giving thanks is one way that we can achieve contentment and satisfaction and help protect our hearts.
Thanks for letting me share this with you today!