Many people are dissatisfied with their lives. They realize that things need to change but they often do not know what to do. Follow these six tips to get started making your life better than it has ever been.Get rid of the clutter.As the years pass by we tend to accumulate items that we no longer need. These may be items that were given to us as gifts or things we thought we needed but have only used once or twice and no longer use. They are just taking up space and perhaps even getting in your way every day.Get rid of them. Clear them out. Plan on the time to pull them out of the closet or the garage or attic and go through them. Keep only what you need for your immediate use, such as today or next week. If you will not need or use them in a couple weeks, set them aside and create a pile of items you will give away to others or sell.
Go through your closets and discard clothing you have not worn in the past year - it might not even fit you now. Consider how many shoes a person really needs. Most people do not really need more than three or four pairs of shoes. Discard that which you do not need and make room for something else - you'll feel better if you do.Similarly, go through your refrigerator. When's the last time you cleaned that out? Do you really need to keep that near empty bottle of Soy sauce considering you haven't eaten Chinese food in more than a year? Toss it out! Make room in your refrigerator; make room in your life. You will feel better afterwards.
Long before we could detect the smallest particles of matter in the atom the Greek philosopher Leucippus hypothesized of its existence around 450 B.C. Not long after, his follower, Democritus coined the term 'atom' from the Greek ἄτομος (atomos, "indivisible") from (a-, "not") and τέμνω (temnō, "I cut"), which means uncuttable, or indivisible, something that cannot be divided further. Some of the greatest discoveries have originated from the intuitions of man's heart, only later to be empirically 'detected' and rationally understood (if not perfectly), if not seen and touched. Mental health has been a soft science with classified categories of clusters of symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders yet without necessarily an empirical way to detect and diagnose. Many of the symptoms described in diagnoses are based on behavior and reports.
Dr. Amen here explains how science can empirically detect and measure activities in the mind-brain connection. This book has a lot of information regarding mental health problems drawn from Brain SPECT imaging, an empirical tool that Dr. Amen uses to detect 'brain disorders', or diagnosed mental health problems that meet DSM criteria. These are Nuclear medicine studies that measure blood flow and activity levels in the brain (Amen, 5). Dr. Amen also discusses use of PET (positron emission tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), CAT (computerized axial tomography), and EEG (electroencephalograms). Seeing that many mental health problems can be empirically detected in brain function using these tools can be helpful in dispelling stigma and false guilt when there is a medical problem and brain disorder. Without some evidence of the medical issue, people may think that it is 'all in their head' and they just need to get it together, or that they are just a 'bad person'.
What the information in this book adds to my practice is a holistic perspective that includes making referrals and recommending information on medication, nutrition, exercise, social interactions, behavior changes, along with the talk therapies and other treatments I offer as a mental health counselor. Dr. Amen states he is one of very few psychiatrists that offer these types of brain scans and consultation on mental health problems. They are also rather expensive. He states the purpose of the book is not for everyone to go out and get their brains scanned but to explain a wide variety of human behaviors in terms of the images that SPECT provides and show they can be treated on a medical model as well as the traditional psychological and social models (Amen, 15).
Dr. Amen by no means argues that talk therapy is not effective for treating these empirically detected 'brain disorders'. His point is not that physical things can only be treated physically but to show a fascinating explanation of thought and behavior using the brain images. For example, his research shows that depression is associated with limbic system (an area of the brain) over-activity and that bonding can decrease this over-activity (Amen, 41). One example of this is that orgasm is like a mini-seizure in the limbic system and lessens deep limbic activity (Amen, 41). He found that when a patient who was depressed had a scan before and after having passionate sex with his wife his brain scan showed his limbic activity was significantly decreased (Amen, 41). He then goes on to explain how casual sex does not work and is so damaging for many females because they have a larger limbic system than males that bonds more deaply, crashing harder when a bond is broken. He also writes that healthy bonding between mothers and children, between family, friends, and even pets affects the limbic system positively.
Although you may not want to, make a list of the bad things that have happened in your life too. Consider what caused those things to happen and how you can avoid that happening again.In this hurried world many people do not get enough sleep. Our jobs may require more and more of our time, traffic prevents us from getting home in a timely manner, people make small demands on your time which add up to several hours, children act up and take up more of your time (but you should be thankful for your children - they are blessings!), there are many causes for why we do not 'hit the sack' when we know we should.And when we awake we are not rested. We may have been thinking and dreaming about problems at work or in our personal lives, some may suffer sleep apnea, while outside sources such as loud parties next door or noisy neighbors or the couple in the next apartment who screamed at each other all night may have interrupted our sleep several times through the night.
A body that is not rested means a mind that is not rested. It makes for a very difficult day, so do your best to get enough sleep.Set a certain time to go to bed and stick to it. Your body needs a 'pattern'; it needs to do certain things at the very same time each day.If you make time for 'you' and get to sleep at the same time each night, exercise every day and do what you can to eliminate external influences in our life so you can get quality sleep, you will awake rested and ready to go.You will feel much better and your life will go much better in return.Skyscrapers are never built unless a plan has been prepared first. Your life is no different. A plan will help you set goals and goals are important. If you don't know where you are going you could end up going where you never wanted to go, so make a plan.There are short-term plans as well as long-term plans and you should make both.Begin with a short-term plan. What do you want to do tomorrow? Where do you want to go and how will you get there? What do you want to accomplish while you are there and why? Making such a plan will give you cause to think about things you have not considered? What do you want to do next week? Make a plan for the entire week, not just one day of the week.What about next month? What do you want to accomplish next month? Having a better idea will help you make the time to do that and you will begin to make better use of your time.Work your way up to a one-year plan. Where do you want to be one year from today? Why do you want to be there? How will you get there? The answer is one day at a time.
Go through your closets and discard clothing you have not worn in the past year - it might not even fit you now. Consider how many shoes a person really needs. Most people do not really need more than three or four pairs of shoes. Discard that which you do not need and make room for something else - you'll feel better if you do.Similarly, go through your refrigerator. When's the last time you cleaned that out? Do you really need to keep that near empty bottle of Soy sauce considering you haven't eaten Chinese food in more than a year? Toss it out! Make room in your refrigerator; make room in your life. You will feel better afterwards.
Long before we could detect the smallest particles of matter in the atom the Greek philosopher Leucippus hypothesized of its existence around 450 B.C. Not long after, his follower, Democritus coined the term 'atom' from the Greek ἄτομος (atomos, "indivisible") from (a-, "not") and τέμνω (temnō, "I cut"), which means uncuttable, or indivisible, something that cannot be divided further. Some of the greatest discoveries have originated from the intuitions of man's heart, only later to be empirically 'detected' and rationally understood (if not perfectly), if not seen and touched. Mental health has been a soft science with classified categories of clusters of symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders yet without necessarily an empirical way to detect and diagnose. Many of the symptoms described in diagnoses are based on behavior and reports.
Dr. Amen here explains how science can empirically detect and measure activities in the mind-brain connection. This book has a lot of information regarding mental health problems drawn from Brain SPECT imaging, an empirical tool that Dr. Amen uses to detect 'brain disorders', or diagnosed mental health problems that meet DSM criteria. These are Nuclear medicine studies that measure blood flow and activity levels in the brain (Amen, 5). Dr. Amen also discusses use of PET (positron emission tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), CAT (computerized axial tomography), and EEG (electroencephalograms). Seeing that many mental health problems can be empirically detected in brain function using these tools can be helpful in dispelling stigma and false guilt when there is a medical problem and brain disorder. Without some evidence of the medical issue, people may think that it is 'all in their head' and they just need to get it together, or that they are just a 'bad person'.
What the information in this book adds to my practice is a holistic perspective that includes making referrals and recommending information on medication, nutrition, exercise, social interactions, behavior changes, along with the talk therapies and other treatments I offer as a mental health counselor. Dr. Amen states he is one of very few psychiatrists that offer these types of brain scans and consultation on mental health problems. They are also rather expensive. He states the purpose of the book is not for everyone to go out and get their brains scanned but to explain a wide variety of human behaviors in terms of the images that SPECT provides and show they can be treated on a medical model as well as the traditional psychological and social models (Amen, 15).
Dr. Amen by no means argues that talk therapy is not effective for treating these empirically detected 'brain disorders'. His point is not that physical things can only be treated physically but to show a fascinating explanation of thought and behavior using the brain images. For example, his research shows that depression is associated with limbic system (an area of the brain) over-activity and that bonding can decrease this over-activity (Amen, 41). One example of this is that orgasm is like a mini-seizure in the limbic system and lessens deep limbic activity (Amen, 41). He found that when a patient who was depressed had a scan before and after having passionate sex with his wife his brain scan showed his limbic activity was significantly decreased (Amen, 41). He then goes on to explain how casual sex does not work and is so damaging for many females because they have a larger limbic system than males that bonds more deaply, crashing harder when a bond is broken. He also writes that healthy bonding between mothers and children, between family, friends, and even pets affects the limbic system positively.
Although you may not want to, make a list of the bad things that have happened in your life too. Consider what caused those things to happen and how you can avoid that happening again.In this hurried world many people do not get enough sleep. Our jobs may require more and more of our time, traffic prevents us from getting home in a timely manner, people make small demands on your time which add up to several hours, children act up and take up more of your time (but you should be thankful for your children - they are blessings!), there are many causes for why we do not 'hit the sack' when we know we should.And when we awake we are not rested. We may have been thinking and dreaming about problems at work or in our personal lives, some may suffer sleep apnea, while outside sources such as loud parties next door or noisy neighbors or the couple in the next apartment who screamed at each other all night may have interrupted our sleep several times through the night.
A body that is not rested means a mind that is not rested. It makes for a very difficult day, so do your best to get enough sleep.Set a certain time to go to bed and stick to it. Your body needs a 'pattern'; it needs to do certain things at the very same time each day.If you make time for 'you' and get to sleep at the same time each night, exercise every day and do what you can to eliminate external influences in our life so you can get quality sleep, you will awake rested and ready to go.You will feel much better and your life will go much better in return.Skyscrapers are never built unless a plan has been prepared first. Your life is no different. A plan will help you set goals and goals are important. If you don't know where you are going you could end up going where you never wanted to go, so make a plan.There are short-term plans as well as long-term plans and you should make both.Begin with a short-term plan. What do you want to do tomorrow? Where do you want to go and how will you get there? What do you want to accomplish while you are there and why? Making such a plan will give you cause to think about things you have not considered? What do you want to do next week? Make a plan for the entire week, not just one day of the week.What about next month? What do you want to accomplish next month? Having a better idea will help you make the time to do that and you will begin to make better use of your time.Work your way up to a one-year plan. Where do you want to be one year from today? Why do you want to be there? How will you get there? The answer is one day at a time.
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