Make Life Your Self Help Program

Many a self help program will recommend turning aspect of our lives into “practise”. It refers to turning each of our regular activities into a vehicle, via which we can further our own personal growth. Such self help notions go back a long way – thousands of years, in fact. Finding the benefit in any particular situation can transform that situation to our advantage. It was the Buddhists who talked, for example, about mindfulness where even, it is suggested, tasks like washing the dishes, if done attentively and with focus, can have a transformative effect on our inner lives over time.

I certainly believe that every situation we are in offers us an opportunity to work on ourselves. Traffic jams are a common example where I am personally concerned – especially living in London and travelling, as I do, between several clinics a day. Whenever I find myself arriving at another clogged up standstill moment, instead of fretting and looking repeatedly at my watch, I’ll often turn off the radio, sit still and just be. I pay attention to the feelings in my body and use the time to ground myself in the moment. What started out as an obstacle quickly transforms into a gift. It took a bit of time to get into this kind of practise, don’t get me wrong, and I am still working on it – and probably always will - but over time I have come to regard such moments as elements of my own bespoke self help program of life.

The remarkable thing is that there are a few studies coming out now that show us that these notions – far from being unsubstantiated wishful thinking – are actually real and provable. One I particularly like was carried out on a group of hotel maids: They were divided into two groups. One group was given information about exercise and its benefits. This was followed by more precise information about their own work – e.g. Hoovering, dusting etc. – and how each of those activities helped them burn significant calories to the extent that, through their work, they were actually exceeding the recommendations for regular exercise as laid down by the Surgeon General. Each activity was listed and it’s benefits laid down in stark terms. The second group of maids was given only the general information about the benefits of exercise and none pertaining to their specific job.

Only four weeks later it was found that both groups of maids had continued working in the same way – their activities (on the face of it) remained the same day in day out, but the first group, who received the work specific information, had begun to lose weight – losing an average of 2 pounds! – and lowered their blood pressure by an average of 10 points.

Though their patterns of activity remained the same, the only thing that changed is how they saw the work they did. They believed the same routines were now a beneficial practise for them and, lo and behold, that is indeed what they became.

So next time you’re in a situation you’d otherwise consider mundane or even a pain, find a way to make it work for you – your physical, mental or spiritual health - and I assure you, over time, it will do just that. Then you’ll be fashioning your life into your very own self help program. That, at the end of the day, is what I believe we’re all here for.