By LAURA LEONARD
Doctor of Chiropractic
Los Alamos
What if I told you that you are the only one in control of how you feel and act in your life? That’s a tough pill to swallow for many of us. Life’s difficulties seem easier when we can blame external events and other people for poor outcomes.
The reality of this paradigm is that it actually makes life much harder in the long run. Yes … there are really hard things sometimes devastating things that happen to us which are out of our control.
Some of us are more challenged in life than others. Doesn’t seem fair does it? The old saying, “When life gives you lemons make lemonade” seems like a load of garbage if you have more lemons than you could ever use. I promise you it is not. The more lemons you have the better you get at making lemonade … if you have the right formula.
What does all this have to do with your health? Learning and applying the right formula puts you back in control of your life by changing how you react to external things. Once you begin to apply this in life you achieve an immediate reduction in how much stress you feel.
Stress raises blood pressure, affects sleep, causes weight gain, leaves us feeling exhausted and shortens our lifespan. Blaming others for our difficult situation is appropriate in many cases but in the end, we end up victimized and give away our power when we react this way.
Seems easier said than done, which is why we need a formula to help us understand how to be successful at changing the way we think about challenges.
E + R = O or EVENT + RESPONSE = OUTCOME
(Jack Canfield “The Success Principles”)
RESPONSE is the variable which you are in control of. The EVENT is out of our control. There are two choices here:
Blame the event for the outcome.
Change your response to the outcome.
There are three RESPONSES you have control of:
Your reaction/behavior in relation to the event.
Thoughts and beliefs about the event.
Your vision of the desired outcome.
Blaming the event (person, situation or thing) leaves us in chronic stress, takes our power away, keeps us in the past, victimizes us and leaves us out of control. You are 100 percent in control of your response, your beliefs and your vision for the future. Taking on 100 percent of the responsibility may seem overwhelming at first but it is the easiest path toward building your self-esteem and resilience to difficult situations.
It begins to matter much less about what others do to us when we work on the response portion of the equation.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” –Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor
Dr. Leonard’s practice focuses on posture and performance using a combination of soft tissue release, adjustments and exercise recommendations. She also coaches patients on nutrition, self-care and body awareness so they can manage themselves in between visits. Los Alamos Chiropractic Center is located in the Mary Deal Building on Trinity Drive.