7 Things Emotionally Successful People Do Differently

Your emotional health is at the crux of your quality of life. Without happiness, hopefulness and well-being, it’s difficult to reach your full potential and embrace each day as it comes.

Story at-a-glance

• Your level of emotional success is based on your own choices and attitudes
• Emotionally successful people take control of their lives, are flexible, and learn from their mistakes
• Creating specific goals, accepting yourself, keeping your stress in check, and letting go of the “little things” are also important for emotional health

This post is on Healthwise

By Dr. Mercola

Your emotional health is at the crux of your quality of life. Without happiness, hopefulness and well-being, it’s difficult to reach your full potential and embrace each day as it comes.

Your emotional health is also intricately tied to your physical health, such that an emotionally imbalanced person will be at a greater risk of chronic diseases and acute illnesses like colds and flu.

One study found, for instance, that happiness, optimism, life satisfaction, and other positive psychological attributes are associated with a lower risk of heart disease.1

It's even been scientifically shown that happiness can alter your genes. A team of researchers at UCLA showed that people with a deep sense of happiness and well-being had lower levels of inflammatory gene expression and stronger antiviral and antibody responses.2

There is some research to suggest that some people are born naturally happier than others. In one study of nearly 1,000 pairs of adult twins, researchers at the University of Edinburgh suggested that genes account for about 50 percent of the variation in people's levels of happiness.

The underlying determinant was genetically caused personality traits, such as being sociable, active, stable, hardworking, or conscientious.3 But this does not at all suggest that you're born with a certain emotional “personality” and powerless to change it.

Anyone can improve their level of “emotional success,” and your environment and life circumstances also play a role, as there are many other indicators of emotional well-being outside of your genes (or your age).

7 Habits of Emotionally Successful People

In many ways, your level of emotional success is based on your own choices and attitudes. While some people are able to roll with the punches, others get easily sidelined by challenges along the way.

In order to “toughen up” emotionally, such that you’re able to live your life feeling naturally strong and confident in your choices (and in yourself), try some of these 7 habits of emotionally successful people.4

1. Take Control

Rather than sitting back and letting life happen to you, take control and decide to make things happen for you. Become the ruler of your own destiny, so to speak, and take calculated steps to achieve your goals and desires.

2. Be Flexible

Life is likely to throw you a few curveballs. When that happens, will they throw you off course or will you be able to pivot when you need to? Being flexible means you have an open mind and will adjust to whatever life throws your way.

3. Learn from Your Mistakes

Mistakes often offer valuable lessons that you can use to improve yourself in the future. Treat them as tools for improvement rather than letting them define you.

4. Create Specific Goals

Students who set goals earn twice as much money as those who do not. Further, those who set clear, written goals were earning 10 times as much.5 Setting and writing out your goals helps you to have a clear direction and plan for achieving your dreams.

5. Accept Yourself

Strength comes from within, so learning to accept yourself is crucial to being happy. Resist the urge to look for acceptance from others. Once you’re comfortable and strong in your own sense of self, relationships and success come naturally.

6. Keep Your Stress in Check

If you’re under stress, it’s harder to control your emotions. Figure out what works for you to keep your stress levels under control (exercise, talking with a friend, alone time, etc.), and be sure to engage in it regularly.

7. Let the Little Things Slide

Stressing and fretting over circumstances you can’t control or which don’t really matter in the big picture will drain your mental reserves and wear you down. Resist the urge to become a control freak and instead let go of the little inconveniences, upsets, and disappointments that come along the way.

Choosing to Be Happy

What you’ll notice about the habits above is that these are primarily choices you can make for yourself. It's thought that genetics account for about 50 percent of your "innate" happiness while life circumstances make up another 10. The rest is under your control, and the first step to harnessing it is to choose it and believe you can be happy.

Research shows, for instance, that when people were told to attempt to feel happier when listing to music, they were (as opposed to those who were told to simply relax).6 It was the intention to become happier that made a difference.

It might help to consider your emotions as a form of energy. According to Dr. Bradley Nelson, when you feel an emotion, what you’re really sensing is the vibration of a particular energy. Each emotion has its own vibratory signature, and when intense emotions are felt, they can become trapped in your body, much like a ball of energy.

These “balls of energy” can become lodged just about anywhere in your body, where they can then cause disruptions in your body’s energy system, which underlies your physical system much like an invisible matrix.

Your body cannot tell the difference between an actual experience that triggers an emotional response and an emotion fabricated through thought process alone—such as when worrying about something negative that might occur but has not actually happened, or conversely, thinking about something positive and pleasant.

The latter, of course, will help your body to express many of the health benefits associated with happiness, while ruminating or focusing on negativity can literally manifest disease.

The Health Benefits of Happiness

Happiness not only feels good… it’s physically good for your body, too. For instance, past research has found that positive emotions –including being happy, lively and calm -- appear to play a role in immune function. One study found that when happy people are exposed to cold and flu viruses, they’re less likely to get sick and, if they do, exhibit fewer symptoms.7

The association held true regardless of the participants’ levels of self-esteem, purpose, extraversion, age, education, body mass or pre-study immunity to the virus, leading the lead researcher to say:8

“We need to take more seriously the possibility that positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk.”

Further, in a study of nearly 200 heart failure patients, those with higher levels of gratitude had better mood, better sleep, less fatigue, and less inflammation, which can worsen heart failure, than those with lower levels.9

What this means is that investing in your own happiness should not be viewed as a self-indulgent luxury. It represents an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to piecing together your overall health.

Your mind can only take so much stress before it breaks down, yet many neglect to tend to their emotional health with the same devotion they give to their physical well-being. This is a surefire recipe for emotional breakdown.

What Your Emotions Look Like…

Happiness is associated with a smile, sadness with a frown, but researchers have recently been able to use technology to visualize how your emotions manifest inside your body. Researchers in Finland asked 700 volunteers from Finland, Sweden, and Taiwan to think about one of 14 predetermined emotions, and then paint the areas of a blank silhouette that felt stimulated by that particular emotion.

Using a second blank silhouette, they were asked to paint in the areas that felt “deactivated” during that emotion.10 (If you want to try this experiment yourself, you can do so here.) The experiment showed that emotions tend to be felt in ways that are generally consistent from one person to the next, irrespective of age, sex or nationality. As reported by The Atlantic:11

“The mapping exercise produced what you might expect: an angry hot-head... a depressed figurine that was literally blue (meaning they felt little sensation in their limbs). Almost all of the emotions generated changes in the head area, suggesting smiling, frowning, or skin temperature changes, while feelings like joy and anger saw upticks in the limbs—perhaps because you’re ready to hug, or punch, your interlocutor.

Meanwhile, ‘sensations in the digestive system and around the throat region were mainly found in disgust,’ the authors wrote. It's worth noting that the bodily sensations weren't blood flow, heat, or anything else that could be measured objectively—they were based solely on physical twinges subjects said they experienced… [T]he results likely reveal subjective perceptions about the impact of our mental states on the body, a combination of muscle and visceral reactions and nervous system responses that we can’t easily differentiate.”

9 More Strategies to Stay Emotionally Healthy

It’s clear that your emotional state is intricately tied to your physical and mental states. So what can you do to stay emotionally healthy? Like achieving physical fitness or a healthy weight, this is an ongoing process… something that must be tended to each and every day. The good news is that small steps add up and can make a major different for your emotional health. Tips for emotional nurturing include:

1. Be an Optimist

Looking on the bright side increases your ability to experience happiness in your day-to-day life while helping you cope more effectively with stress.

2. Have Hope

Having hope allows you to see the light at the end of the tunnel, helping you push through even dark, challenging times. Accomplishing goals, even small ones, can help you to build your level of hope.

3. Embrace Your Quirks

Self-deprecating remarks and thoughts will shroud your mind with negativity and foster increased levels of stress. Seek out and embrace the positive traits of yourself and your life, and avoid measuring your own worth by comparing yourself to those around you.

4. Stay Connected

Having loving and supportive relationships helps you feel connected and accepted, and promote a more positive mood. Intimate relationships help meet your emotional needs, so make it a point to reach out to others to develop and nurture these relationships in your life.

5. Express Gratitude

People who are thankful for what they have are better able to cope with stress, have more positive emotions, and are better able to reach their goals. The best way to harness the positive power of gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal or list, where you actively write down exactly what you’re grateful for each day. Doing so has been linked to happier moods, greater optimism and even better physical health.

6. Find Your Purpose and Meaning

When you have a purpose or goal that you’re striving for, your life will take on a new meaning that supports your mental well-being. If you’re not sure what your purpose is, explore your natural talents and interests to help find it, and also consider your role in intimate relationships and ability to grow spiritually.

7. Master Your Environment

When you have mastery over your environment, you’ve learned how to best modify your unique circumstances for the most emotional balance, which leads to feelings of pride and success. Mastery entails using skills such as time management and prioritization along with believing in your ability to handle whatever life throws your way.

8. Exercise Regularly

Exercise boosts levels of health-promoting neurochemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which may help buffer some of the effects of stress and also relieve some symptoms of depression. Rather than viewing exercise as a medical tool to lose weight, prevent disease, and live longer – all benefits that occur in the future – try viewing exercise as a daily tool to immediately enhance your frame of mind, reduce stress and feel happier.

9. Practice Mindfulness

Practicing “mindfulness” means you’re actively paying attention to the moment you’re in right now. Rather than letting your mind wander, when you’re mindful you’re living in the moment and letting distracting or negative thoughts pass through your mind without getting caught up in their emotional implications. Mindfulness can help you reduce stress for increased well-being as well as achieve undistracted focus.

Harnessing EFT for Better Emotional Health

If your emotions are a form of energy that can even become “trapped” in your body if they become too intense, using a form of energy psychology to heal your emotional scarring makes perfect sense. Energy psychology techniques such as theEmotional Freedom Technique (EFT) allow you to correct the emotional short-circuiting that may be causing you physical dysfunction. While EFT makes use of the same energy meridians known in traditional acupuncture, EFT does not involve needles.

Instead, gentle tapping with your fingertips is used to transfer kinetic energy onto specific meridians on your head and chest while you think about your specific problem -- whether it is a traumatic event, an addiction, pain, anxiety, etc. -- and voice positive affirmations. This combination of tapping the energy meridians and voicing positive affirmation works to clear the "short-circuit"—the emotional block—from your body's bioenergy system, thus restoring your mind and body's balance, which is essential for optimal health and the healing of physical disease.

Clinical trials have shown EFT is able to rapidly reduce the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed, your body can often rebalance itself and accelerate healing. In the video below, EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman shows how to tap away your stress for increased happiness and well-being.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/07/09/7-habits-emotionally-successful-people.aspx

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The Top 10 Lifestyle Changes to Implement for a New You

27 January 2014

Avoid New Year's Resolution Failure—Make It a Lifestyle Resolution Instead

Story at-a-glance

• Losing weight is a popular New Year’s resolution. According to recent research, your age may have something to do with your level of success
• New Year’s resolutions are notoriously apt to fail. It’s been estimated that only eight percent of people who make a New Year’s resolution actually keeps it. Instead, I suggest making a commitment to simply live healthier from here on
• My top 10 healthy lifestyle strategies include: making pure water your primary beverage, opting for grass-fed meats, improving your healthy fat intake, incorporating intermittent movement, and addressing your emotional health
• The secret of sunlight, and how it affects your health, sleep, and vitamin D levels, is addressed, as is the importance of your gut health
• Lastly, growing sprouts is a simple way to improve your nutrition, and two of the most important toxins to eliminate from your diet are noted

By Dr. Mercola

New Year’s resolutions are notoriously apt to fail. It’s been estimated that only eight percent of people who make a New Year’s resolution actually keeps it. As stated in the featured article:1

“The annual tradition of breaking a New Year’s resolution is observed perhaps just as strictly, if regretfully, as that of making one. Research into motivation, for instance, knows that for a task to be accomplished, the actor must genuinely want to complete it — wanting it to be completed isn’t enough.”

Losing weight is a popular New Year’s resolution. According to recent research, your age may have something to do with your level of success in this venture. But as I’ll discuss below, dieting isn’t really the answer to achieve the health and wellbeing you seek.

Instead of vowing to lose a set amount of weight, you’d be far better off making a decision to improve your overall lifestyle. Normalizing your weight and improving your health will come as natural outgrowths of this.

Why Weight Loss May Become More Difficult with Age

But before we get into that, a recent study published in the FASEB Journal2 claims that age-related fat storage may be part and parcel of a biological phenomenon related to the amount of “white” versus “brown” fat you have. 

So-called “brown” fat is a heat-generating type of fat that burns energy instead of storing it, and this may have implications when it comes to weight loss. (It is colored brown because it is loaded with mitochondria that convert the fat directly to energy to produce heat.)

The brown fat (located primarily behind your neck and around your shoulders) is considered “good,” in the sense that it actually helps your body burn off the “bad” white fat that accumulates primarily on your stomach and thighs.

However, with age, the amount of brown fat in your body tends to diminish, making it more difficult to rid your body of that excess white fat. As explained in the featured article:3

“The exercise needed to burn a sufficient number of calories begins to increase because a slower, less industrious metabolism replaces the heavy lifting once performed by the brown fat. Fortunately, the team’s new research suggests the existence of a metabolic on/off switch that may help delay this process.”

Two groups of mice were observed in this study. The control group was made up of normal mice, while the treatment group consisted of mice in which a specific gene had been silenced. This gene, called platelet-activating factor receptor(PAFR), encodes a protein that is responsible for inflammation and lipid transfer.

The mice whose PAFR gene was silenced became far more obese than the control group. Over the course of the study, their body mass increased by about 25 percent, compared to controls. The researchers concluded that the increased obesity was due to impaired function in the brown adipose tissue. According to the featured article:

“The upshot to this is a newly forged path for research. If future experiments can better target the specific molecular pathway that deactivates the PAFR gene, scientists may be able to develop pharmacological approaches to treat many of today’s common ailments, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, infertility, and ulcers.”

The Top 10 Lifestyle Changes to Implement for a New You

Waiting for a pill that knocks out your PAFR gene in order to improve brown fat functionality is clearly NOT the way to go. Maintaining a healthy weight doesn’t boil down to just one thing. And popping a pill to alter your genetic function is not going to do anything at all for your overall fitness, nutrition, or sleep, for example.

Most New Year’s resolutions do fail, for one reason or another. So how about making a commitment to simply live healthier from here on? Little changes, across the board, can make a huge overall difference in your health.

And when you commit to a lifestyle, it’s no longer about meeting a particular goal, like losing 10 pounds. It’s about making (usually small) alterations in how you live and go about your daily life that build upon each other as time goes on.

One of the key points that many people fail to appreciate for any goal, not just a New Year’s goal, is to write that goal down on paper or on your computer. That simple yet widely neglected principle will dramatically increase your chances of success. With respect to health goals I thought I would give you a jump start by reviewing some possible ones to consider.

# 1: Drink Pure Water

Making clean, pure water your primary beverage is among the most positive lifestyle changes you can make. This means steering clear of all sweetened and/or flavored beverages. Also, limit your alcohol consumption.

Unfortunately, most tap water is far from pure, containing a vast array ofdisinfection byproducts, chemicals, radiation, heavy metals, and evenpharmaceutical drugs. I strongly recommend using a high-quality water filtration system unless you can verify the purity of your water. You can read more about water filtration in this previous article to help you make a decision about what type of water filtration system will be best for you and your family.

Fluoride, which is still being added to many municipal water supplies, is yet another factor that can make the water you drink each day more harmful than healing. It is important to remember that once added, fluoride is very difficult to remove from water. The best way to remove fluoride from your water supply is to never put it in there is the first place. This is one of the reasons we are actively collaborating.

Besides purification, I also believe it’s critical to drink living water. In my interview with Dr. Gerald Pollack, author of The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor, he discusses the importance of “structured water,” which is the type of water found in your cells. This water has healing properties, and is naturally created in a variety of ways. Water from a deep spring is one excellent source of structured water. You can also promote structured water through vortexing. I personally drink vortexed water nearly exclusively unless I am travelling.

# 2: Eat High-Quality Protein

Agricultural drug use has become a major health concern for animals and humans alike, courtesy of factory farming methods in so-called “confined animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), where efficiency and low cost is the primary objective. It’s important to understand that you’re essentially getting a concoction of drugs, including hormones and antibiotics, in every piece of CAFO-raised meat you eat. It’s now a well-established fact that routine use of antibiotics poses a threat to human health, as it has spawned a dramatic rise in antibiotic-resistant disease.

Instead of their natural diet, which is plain grass, CAFO livestock are also fed a wholly unnatural diet consisting of pesticide-laden and oftentimes genetically engineered (GE) grains—primarily GE corn and soy. In my view, organic, grass-fed meat that is humanely raised and butchered is really the only type of meat worth eating, if you want to maintain good health. The same goes for chicken, eggs, and dairy. Another source of high-quality protein, as well as healthful fat, is wild-caught Alaskan salmon. You’ll want to avoid farm-raised salmon (and other farm-raised fish), as their nutritional makeup is altered by their unnatural diet, just like other CAFO animals.

# 3: Get Plenty of Healthy Fats in Your Diet

If you care about your health, you’d be wise to reconsider the advice to follow a strict low-fat diet. For the past 60 years, saturated animal fats have been wrongfully accused of causing heart disease, despite mounting evidence showing that saturated fat is actually critical for optimal health while trans fat is the dietary fat causing heart disease.  Fortunately, on November 7, 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it is now considering removing partially hydrogenated oils—the primary source of trans fats—from the list of "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) ingredients.4

Mounting scientific evidence supports saturated fat as a necessary part of a heart healthy diet, and firmly debunks the myth that saturated fat promotes heart disease. The science is equally clear when it comes to omega-3 fats, found in abundance in fish. Omega-3 deficiency can contribute to serious health problems, both mental and physical, and is thought to be an underlying factor of up to 96,000 premature deaths each year.

Unfortunately, most fish commercially available today are polluted with mercury, PCBs, and other toxic substances, which is why I recommend you take a supplement like krill oil instead of getting your omega-3 requirement solely from your food. As mentioned above, wild-caught Alaskan salmon is one exception, as I believe it still provides more benefits than risks. Healthful fats to add to your diet include:

Avocados	Coconuts and coconut oil (Note: coconut oil is one of the best oils for cooking and baking, as it will not be damaged by high heat)	Olives and olive oil. (Note: make sure to use olive oil COLD, as it will get damaged by heat)	Unheated organic nut oils
Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk, and other raw dairy products	Organic pastured egg yolks	Raw nuts such as macadamia, and seeds	Grass-fed meats and wild-caught salmon

# 4: Move Your Body as Much as Possible Throughout Each Day

Exercise affects your entire body—from head to toe—in beneficial ways. This includes changes in your muscles, lungs, heart, joints, bones, and brain. In fact, researchers recently suggested that exercise is "the best preventive drug" for many common ailments, from psychiatric disorders to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.5 Ideally, you want a comprehensive fitness regimen that includes stretching, high intensity interval training, core strengthening exercises, and strength training. That said, one of themost important aspects of exercise may actually be non-exercise movements, or what I like to call intermittent movement.

Compelling evidence actually suggests that even if you exercise regularly, prolonged sitting is itself a risk factor for chronic disease. My interview with NASA scientist Dr. Joan Vernikos goes into great detail why this is so, and what you can do about it. 

So, please, don’t get discouraged because your resolution to join the gym has already petered out. Instead, perhaps you may be better off focusing your attention on simple everyday movements instead. The key is to frequently move your body, throughout the entire day. Simply standing up from a seated position has been found particularly effective at counteracting the ill effects of sitting. This is something I seek to do every 15 minutes while I am sitting—I even set a timer to remind me.

Other simple everyday activities such as housecleaning, cooking, gardening, doing laundry, and reaching for an item on a high shelf, also fall within the spectrum of movements you would ideally engage in—more or less continuously—from morning until night. You can encourage more movement in your work day simply by moving items you use frequently so that they’re NOT within immediate reach, for example. To learn more about this important aspect of health, please see this previous article.

# 5: Prioritize Your Emotional Health

The connections between stress and physical health are being explored at greater frequency these days. For example, recent news items have reported the links between emotional distress and physical pain6 and chronic inflammation.7 Because inflammation plays a role in most diseases, including cardiovascular disease, asthma, and autoimmune disorders, this model suggests why stress impacts them as well. Happy people are also known to live longer—by 35 percent, according to one study.8Another study found that happiness and contentment increases health and longevity.9

A major part of the puzzle is to be able to effectively address your stress.  Centenarians—those who have crossed the threshold of 100 years of age—overwhelmingly cite stress as the most important thing to avoid. Their lives are marked by as many stressful events as the rest of us, but, they differ in how well they manage their stress. Rather than dwelling on it, they’ve learned to let it go.

The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) can be very helpful here. It’s the largest and most popular version of energy psychology, and is akin to acupuncture, which is based on the concept that a vital energy flows through your body along invisible pathways known as meridians. EFT stimulates different energy meridian points in your body by tapping them with your fingertips, while simultaneously using custom-made verbal affirmations. For a demonstration of how to perform EFT, please see the following video featuring EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman.

# 6: Fine-Tune Your Wake/Sleep Cycle

Sleep is another often ignored lifestyle factor that has a tremendous impact on your health—physically, mentally, and emotionally. The other side of sleep is related to light. It’s actually crucial to get enough light during daytime hours in order to sleep well. I recently interviewed Dan Pardi on this topic.

The quality of your sleep has a lot to do with light—both outdoor and indoor lighting. Light actually serves as the major synchronizer of something called your master clock. This master clock is a group of cells in your brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN). As a group, these nuclei synchronize to the light-dark cycle of your environment when light enters the eye. You also have other biological clocks throughout your body, and those clocks subsequently synchronize to your master clock.

To maintain healthy master clock timing, you want to get bright light exposure during the day. Going outside for half an hour at lunch time can provide you with the majority of light you need to maintain a healthy circadian rhythm. The ideal time to go outdoors is right around solar noon but any time during daylight hours is useful.

In the evening, you want to dim environmental lights and avoid the blue light wavelength. Use blue-blocking light bulbs, dimming your lights with dimmer switches, and turn off unneeded lights, and if using a computer in the evening, consider installing blue light-blocking software like f.lux.10 When it’s time to go to sleep, make sure your bedroom is very dark. For even more helpful tips, please see my previous article “33 Tips for a Good Night’s Sleep.”

# 7: Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels

Getting sun exposure is equally important for optimizing your vitamin D levels. (UV exposure also has additional health benefits beyond vitamin D production and maintaining the timing of your master clock...) A robust and growing body of research clearly shows that vitamin D is absolutely critical for your health. (More than 33,800 scientific studies have been published on vitamin D so far.11)

This isn’t so surprising when you consider that vitamin D, which your body produces in response to UVB rays striking your bare skin, affects your DNA. You have vitamin D receptors throughout your body, which in turn bind to specific locations of your genome. Scientists have identified nearly 3,000 genes that are influenced by your vitamin D levels, which explains its impact on such a wide variety of health conditions, including:

• Type 1 and 2 diabetes
• Bacterial and viral infections
• Cardiovascular disease
• Cancer
• All-cause mortality

The D*Action project was initiated by GrassrootsHealth along with 42 leading vitamin D researchers to demonstrate how health can be achieved right now with what’s already known about vitamin D. The project uses a combination of vitamin D measurement and health outcome tracking to do this. To learn more, please see this previous article.

Measuring your vitamin D performance and taking steps to optimize your level is one of the easiest and least expensive things you can do for your health, and could help you rein in out-of-control health care expenses. So, I encourage you to participate in the D*Action Project, which has multiple concurrent vitamin D programs going on. Simply purchase the D*Action Measurement Kitand follow the registration instructions included. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to get your vitamin D levels tested on a regular basis, and allows you to participate in a truly extraordinary public health project at the same time.

Embed Vit D test order button

# 8: Tend to Your Gut

As with vitamin D, it’s become crystal clear that beneficial bacteria plays an enormous role in your physical and mental health. Probiotics are in fact so crucial to your health that researchers have compared them to “a newly recognized organ,” suggesting we really should consider ourselves a type of “meta-organism” -- in acknowledgment of the fact that we cannot be whole and healthy without the participation of a vast array of friendly bacterial species and strains.

Mounting research shows that the type and quantity of organisms in your gut interact with your body in ways that can either prevent or encourage the development of many diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. Beneficial gut bacteria even appear to have a key role in successful weight management.12

Since virtually all of us are exposed to factors that destroy beneficial bacteria in your gut, such as antibiotics (whether you take them for an illness or get them from contaminated animal products), chlorinated water, antibacterial soap, agricultural chemicals, and pollution, ensuring your gut bacteria remain balanced should be considered an ongoing process. To do so, I recommend the following strategies:

• Avoid processed, refined foods in your diet.
• Eat traditionally fermented, unpasteurized foods: Fermented foods are the best route to optimal digestive health, as long as you eat the traditionally made, unpasteurized versions. Fermented vegetables tend to be among the most delicious. Some of the beneficial bacteria found in fermented foods are also excellent chelators of heavy metals and pesticides, which will also have a beneficial health effect by reducing your toxic load.
• Take a high-quality probiotic supplement. Although I'm not a major proponent of taking many supplements (as I believe the majority of your nutrients need to come from food), probiotics is an exception if you don’t eat fermented foods on a regular basis.

# 9: Take Control of Your Nutrition by Growing Your Own Food

Growing your own food has many rewards, from providing you with fresher, uncontaminated produce and cutting your grocery bill, to increasing your sense of wellbeing and slashing your risk of depression. One of the simplest and most inexpensive alternatives is to grow sprouts. 

Sprouts are actually among the most nutrient-dense foods out there. Topping the list are sunflower seed and pea sprouts, which are typically about 30 times more nutritious than organic vegetables. Both also provide very high-quality protein. Sunflower and pea sprouts are among my own favorites. Broccoli sprouts, known for their anti-cancer activity, are another excellent choice.

Sprouts are also a perfect complement to fermented vegetables discussed above, which are also easy and inexpensive to make at home, from scratch. For more tips on starting your own garden—whether large or small, indoors or outside, for winter or spring—please see my previous articles on the following topics. To browse through all the gardening articles on my site, see myOrganic Gardening page:

• Creating a winter garden
• Creating edible gardens in small spaces, including indoor sprouting
• Getting a head-start on your spring garden by growing seedlings
• Composting made easy, even for city-dwellers
• How to increase your garden yield eight-fold, using high performance agriculture techniques

# 10: Eliminate Toxins

The number of toxic chemicals and their sources is so large, addressing them all could easily require an entire library, but I believe you can help you keep your toxic load as low as possible by becoming an informed and vigilant consumer. This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with non-toxic alternatives. Two offenders that I want to place particular emphasis on though are:

• Artificial sweeteners: Research13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 has repeatedlydemonstrated that artificial sweeteners actually make you gain equal or more weight than regular sugar. In fact, studies have shown that diet sodas may actually double your risk of obesity.
  Recent research has also demonstrated that aspartame worsens insulin sensitivity to a greater degree than sugar, making it a hidden threat to those trying to manage their diabetes.
  Of the various artificial sweeteners on the market, aspartame is perhaps one of the most problematic. At least, it has the most reported adverse effects, including a potential risk of blood cancer. That said, none of them will do your health any good. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, your best, most cost effective choice of beverage is filtered tap water.
• Pesticides and other agricultural chemicals: Herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides are designed to kill the things that threaten a farmer's bottom line. Some of the more well-known offenders include nicotinoids (implicated in worldwide bee die-offs), and glyphosate (Roundup), which researchers now say may be one of the most important factors in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions. 
  To avoid these, and countless other toxic chemicals, your best bet is to stick to organically grown produce, as organic standards prohibit the use of synthetic chemicals. Contrary to popular belief, animal products tend to be the most contaminated (courtesy of the grain feed they’re raised on, not to mention all the drugs they’re given), so if you cannot afford to switch all your food groups to organic, getting organically raised, grass-fed or pastured meats might have the greatest impact. You could then add fresh produce grown in your own (hopefully organic) garden, which could easily offset the extra price you pay for grass-fed meats.

Make 2014 the Year You Take Control of Your Health

Rather than making and breaking your New Year resolutions, I recommend simply committing yourself to living as healthy as you can, from here on. Remember, these are lifestyle changes that, once made, will become automatic and stick with you for the remainder of your life.

Most of these changes are simple, and many go hand-in-hand, such as making sure you’re getting at least half an hour’s worth of bright outdoor sun during the middle of the day and optimizing your vitamin D levels. Ditto for switching to grass-fed meats and avoiding toxins. Do that one thing—switch to organic meats only—and you’ve already made a dent in your toxic exposure. Please also remember to write down your goals as that will dramatically increase your chance of achieving them. I hope this list will inspire you to make some changes in your life that can make a big difference in your health and happiness.

[+] Sources and References

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/01/27/new-years-resolution-lifestyle-change.aspx?