By Susan Smith Jones, PhD

You can accomplish anything if you do not accept limitations. . .
whatever you make up your mind to do, you can do.
—Paramahansa Yogananda

When I was 17, I learned the secrets to living a vibrantly healthy life, experiencing health bliss, and inviting joy to be my daily default position from my grandmother, Fritzie. At that time in my life, my diet was deplorable. Meat, sweets, and white refined-flour breads were my quotidian pleasures and my health sorely suffered as a result. I was rarely without allergies, and I carried copious amounts of tissues with me everywhere to wipe my runny nose, deal with my sneezing and to take care of all the extra mucus that I was coughing up. It was not a pretty picture and my physician apprised me that I would have to live with this condition forever.

One day when I was visiting with my grandmother, telling her what I learned from my doctor, Fritzie told me that if I followed her healthful guidance and suggestions 100 percent, she guaranteed that not only would my allergies and sinus problems clear up within 30 days, my entire life would also profoundly change for the better: my acne could clear up, my energy would soar, the extra weight I was carrying would fall away, and my attitude would change from hopeless and negative to empowered and positive. Needless to say, she had my attention, and for the next several hours and days (and eventually years), I learned a variety of health practices that—even though they sounded weird and strange at that time—still touched a responsive cord in my heart. That well-known adage, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” was definitely true for me with my grandmother’s loving support. I was ready and my entire life would change for the better because of that wonderful, memorable day with Fritzie—when my new approach to healthy living was engendered.

Along with introducing me to the world of angels and how to maintain a daily connection with my guardian angels and others, she proffered comprehensive guidance on the healing power of natural, plant-based foods; time spent in Nature; and deep breathing, visualization, and meditation. My grandmother also taught me the specifics of taking great care of my body from head to toe (from nasal cleansing, dry skin brushing to slanting and fasting, etc.) so that my body would be better equipped to take great care of me—in other words, how to live a sacred, balanced vibrantly healthy life. (Refer to Susan’s new healthy living books mentioned below for detailed information on healthy foods/recipes and living with vibrancy.)

So my grandmother went from being someone who was strange and weird to me with her “health nut” approach to life, to my greatest mentor (along with Paramahansa Yogananda) and the person who changed my life for the better. Everything that she taught me in those few years before her passing are some of the greatest blessings and life lessons that I still embrace and teach to this day. From her loving guidance, I chose my life career; my passion for alternative and holistic heath care was born. And because of her teachings, I have never taken any prescription medication in my life. Instead, I choose to live close to Nature and listen to my body’s whisperings.

One of the lessons she taught me continuously was that we could all influence our genes and heal our bodies, no matter what health challenge we might be facing. She never believed that old saying that “it’s all in your genes.” She knew that we could heal anything with enough faith, the right diet, and all of the other essential lifestyle choices I write about in my books.

Dr. Dean Ornish would agree, based on one of his latest studies regarding obesity and how lifestyle changes affect gene activity. Children whose parents are obese have a tenfold increased risk of being obese. While obesity in parents sets a predisposition for obesity, it is the combination of food choices, inactivity and genetic tendencies that determine obesity. Can we blame genetics for the problem? On June 16, 2008, Reuters News published an article titled “Healthy Lifestyle Triggers Genetic Changes,” which described a three-month, groundbreaking study lead by Dean Ornish, M.D. It was demonstrated that the subjects affected changes in activity in about 500 genes—including 48 that were turned on and 453 genes that were turned off—as a result of eating more healthful foods, keeping stress levels down, practicing relaxation techniques such as meditation, and exercising regularly. Regarding the study, Dr. Ornish states: “It’s an exciting finding because so often people say, ‘Oh, it’s all in my genes, what can I do?’ Well, it turns out you may be able to do a lot. In just three months, I can change hundreds of my genes simply by changing what I eat and how I live. That’s pretty exciting.”

Fritzie would have loved reading this study and she would have said to me, “See, this is what I taught you right from the beginning, and how glorious that we now have my teachings to you backed by this study.”

The integral foundation of all her teachings centered around two things: 1) self-esteem and how to champion positive self image; 2) stress, what it does to the body, and how to best minimize my stress level when I was feeling overwhelmed by life. For the purposes of this article, I would like to share with you some of her wisdom on self-esteem and then follow up with Fritzie’s teachings on stress and how to manage it well.

Celebrate yourself & champion high self-esteem

Think about how unique, special, and marvelous you are, Fritzie would often say to me. No one else in the world, now or in the past or in the future, is exactly like you. Never, from amongst all the seventy-six billion humans who have walked this planet since the beginning of time, has there been anyone exactly like you. As I thought about this concept recently, I thought about the approximately six billion people living on our planet. Then I figured out how long it would take to count all these people if they passed by me single file, one every second.

Imagine this. A clock ticks out the seconds while you sit in a rocking chair on your front porch. Without taking time out to stretch your legs, eat your meals, or rest your eyes, count each person passing by. How many weeks or months do you think it would take to count the world’s population, one per second? You would have to sit there continuously for about 200 years! By that time you would probably be off your rocker!

This calculation of the world’s population is an amazing lesson in the miraculousness of life. Try to grasp the idea that for 200 years you would never find two people exactly alike. You would never find two whose experiences had been the same or whose fingerprints were alike, or who thought, believed, felt, or talked alike.

And then to that, add the fact that you are the one special being created from one egg and one out of more than 500 million sperm that traveled an immense distance, overcame tremendous obstacles, and won a fierce and challenging competition at the moment of your conception. You are already a winner. What’s more, you are composed of a body, mind, and spirit, and you already have everything you need to live up to your highest potential—to become master of your life. I think that calls for a celebration. You are amazing in who you are and what you can do with your life.

Here’s an uplifting quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that I’d like you to memorize and remind yourself of often: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!”

On a universal level, I believe the thing that people wrestle with most in their own lives is low self-esteem. That’s why my grandmother would always talk to me, and everyone who came to see her for holistic health guidance, about keeping self-esteem bolstered. She taught me that when you embrace high self-esteem and live from an empowered presence, you will be successful in all areas of your life. It’s an inner change that needs to be made.

Look at magazine ads, television commercials, or makeover reality shows; either by innuendo or by outright declaration, they are almost all aimed at changing who we are, making us somehow better—smarter, more attractive, slimmer, richer, and more secure. You can spend millions of dollars changing your physical features, but that will do little good until you change your attitude about yourself and cultivate a relationship with yourself that incorporates your very own divinity. When you do that, chances are you’ll be happy with the physical body that God provided for you, and you will establish a salutary health and fitness program to keep your body temple in peak functioning order.

We must choose to be kind and loving toward ourselves—all the time. Self-image is crucial here. Being vibrantly healthy, living fully, and celebrating life starts with celebrating ourselves. Whether we succeed or fail, enjoy our lives or struggle, depends largely on our self-image. In fact, numerous studies have concluded that the view we have of ourselves is the key to taking control of our lives. Develop a loving relationship, a warm friendship with yourself. Be your own best friend. Out of that friendship all your other relationships form. Stop being so critical, judgmental, and unforgiving of yourself. When you are not feeling good about yourself, you feel separated from others and God. When you see yourself as a failure, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You attract to yourself that which you believe you deserve. Your negative thoughts and attitudes about yourself, whether they originated within yourself or others, convince you of your inability to succeed.

If you feel you don’t deserve success, prosperity, an enjoyable life, happy relationships, or joy and peace, you will settle for less than that to which you are entitled. When you feel unworthy, you cut yourself off from the fullness of life and create more stress. Put simply, when you learn to love yourself and take loving care of yourself, love will come to you in the forms of happiness, health, success, prosperity, peace, joy, and balance.

Living in such a fast-paced world, constantly in a tizzy over one thing or another, conspires against inner peace. The intense pace and stress of our daily lives can very easily put our peace, joy, urbanity, and health—not to mention our spiritual lives—at risk. It’s easy to get caught up in the whirl of today’s hectic lifestyle—especially if we’ve forgotten the truth of our potential. This leaves us less time for self-fulfillment. Deteriorating standards and values lead to low self-esteem and rob many of us of our dignity.

When we feel an inner emptiness, we are less inclined to make the difficult decisions of life and may be tempted to seek “easy” solutions to problems. This “quick fix” approach to life is understandable, since learning to live fully takes time and patience. But the fact is, we can, and must, slow things down if we ever hope to face our own large and small challenges with aplomb and equanimity, on terms that are our own, guided by our purest hearts. We can choose to experience aliveness and become masters of our lives, keeping in mind that this awakening is always an “inside job.”

In the 1960s, Abraham Maslow wrote his famous book, Toward a Psychology of Being, which helped turn around the emphasis of psychology. Psychology was my undergraduate major at UCLA, and I was drawn to Maslow’s work. Unlike most psychologists of his day, he chose to study high-functioning people—those living their highest potential—rather than people with problems. Maslow developed a psychology of being—not of striving, but arriving; not of trying to get someplace, but living fully. He found a common denominator among all his high-functioning subjects. They all had a vision and were committed to it, believed they had the power to master life, and were self-motivated and didn’t let stress get the best of them. Do you believe you have the power to master life, achieve your goals, and make stress work for you rather than against you?

“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.”

—Buckminster Fuller

Stress — a major problem in modern life

Technological advances have increased the pressure to keep busy, even during leisure hours. We talk on the telephone while we drive, watch television while we read, conduct business while we listen to the radio. We are continually over-stimulated, receiving more information from television, computers, radio, and satellites than our ancestors of several generations ago ever could have imagined! This year alone you will probably make more appointments, meet more people, and go more places than your grandparents did in their entire lives. All this manic rushing around creates a life filled with stress.

Given our current pace, we have little time to relax and cultivate relationships with our spouses, children, friends, and nature. Is it any wonder that stress-related diseases are now on the rise? Some studies even suggest that 80-90 percent of all doctor visits are for stress-related com-plaints. Stress-related illness is implicated in our rapidly escalating health care costs, and health problems attributed to job stress are estimated to cost U.S. businesses $150 billion every year.

I see unrelenting stress as a sickness of epidemic proportions—a “busyness” or “hurry” sickness. But you don’t have to let it overwhelm you as Fritzie would tell me whenever I was stressed out. You can choose to slow down and create a life of balance and joy. Let’s see if you can find any of these signs of “hurry” sickness in your daily life.

1.      Do you eat in a rush, eat while standing or walking, or eat while driving?

2.      Does your busy life prevent you from spending much time at home? And when you finally get home, are you too tired to do much beyond collapse and “veg out” in front of the television?

3.      Do you routinely drive too fast, run yellow lights, constantly change lanes, and jockey for position? Are you impatient with other drivers?

4.      Do you talk fast, have problems communicating how you feel, and lack the time to give emotional support to your family and friends?

5.      Is your life so full of undone chores and responsibilities that relaxing has become almost impossible?

6.      When you’re not doing something productive, do you experience anxiety and guilt?

7.      Have vacations become more trouble than they’re worth?

What causes our need to rush and discount our own physical health needs? We can blame it on economics—and the need to make enough money to pay for our chosen lifestyles. We can blame it on the fact that everything’s moving so fast, and we have to, too. But I believe the real cause is something deeper. By crowding our schedule with “more”—more socializing, more eating, more work, more activity, more appointments—we may be trying to fill the emptiness we feel inside ourselves.

When you constantly direct your attention and energies outward, it’s easy to lose the sense of inner wonder, calmness, balance, and beauty where true happiness, joy, and peace originate as Yogananda emphasizes often in His teachings. By slowing down and redirecting your energies inward, not only will you train your brain to relax, you will begin to reestablish the wholesome sense of self-worth necessary to positively change your life.

Stress is a fact of life

Each of us faces tremendous challenges every day. As we get up each morning, we may face myriad stressors—getting the kids off to school, driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic, presenting a career-making (or career-breaking) report to the boss, balancing the household budget, and so much more. It can seem like there is not enough time in the day to accomplish all you need to do. These are just some of the ways everyday life can get us down. If poorly managed, these challenges can lead to many forms of stress, depression, and anxiety.

What is it that causes the most stress for you? For some of us, our biggest stressors might be weather-related situations such as tornados, earthquakes, floods, fires, and hurricanes. Similarly, for most of us, we get stressed out thinking of deadlines and commitments, but stress has many other causes. It can be triggered by emotions — anger, fear, worry, grief, depression, or even guilt. And stress can actually lead to high blood pressure, heart problems, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, headaches, and other illnesses and chronic health conditions.

You may not be able to change your boss’s tendency to favor weekend workdays or control the bumper-to-bumper traffic to and from work, but you do have access to some powerful stress-busting tools. As a holistic lifestyle coach and counselor for more than thirty years, I’ve worked with thousands of people around the world. I offer my clients the simple, yet essential, choices taught to me by my grandmother to bring purpose, harmony, and vibrant health back into their lives.

Yes, stress may be a fact of modern life, but you don’t have to let it become your way of life. You can become the master of your life, create a lifestyle of vitality and joy, and keep noisome stress to a minimum. The path to contentment is in choosing to have your life in balance. To this day, I honor the wisdom of my grandmother’s teachings—especially when stress seems to closing in. Since feeling stressed out may be something you’re familiar with, I’d like to share with you my seven favorite stress-busters.

7 Sure-Fire Stress Busters

1. Get moving! That’s right — exercise is one of the best ways to reduce stress in your life: it relaxes muscles and eases tension. Want proof? A study at the University of Southern California shows that patients who took a vigorous walk and raised their heart rates to more than 100 beats per minute reduced the tension in their bodies by 20 percent. This effect was greater than a second group of patients who were given a tranquilizer! So go for a walk, hit the gym and do some weight-bearing exercises, or give yoga a try. Studies have shown that those who practice yoga have lower stress hormones than those who don’t.

2. Meditate & Breathe Deeply (really, it’s simple). Don’t worry — you don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to know how to meditate. Here are my grandmother’s simple suggestions on how to do it: find a special, quiet space in your home. Spend at least 15 minutes here first thing in the morning and before going to bed. Sit and close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Inhale and exhale slowly and deeply, focusing on the sound and rhythm of your breathing. Mentally visualize peace and calmness. Your day will start and end on a stress-free note. (For an A-Z guide on how to meditate and how this practice will help you quell stress, look younger, heal your body, and achieve your goals, please refer to Susan’s audio books Choose to Live Peacefully and Wired to Meditate.)

3. Eat a stress-relieving diet. Can what you eat really help relieve stress? You bet. Take stress off your digestive system by eating a high quality, organic, plant-based diet with an emphasis on raw foods as well as fresh produce, which is high in water content and, therefore, easily digestible. Especially beneficial are antioxidant-rich leafy greens, such as romaine lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, kale, collards and sprouts. Also, choose from an array of colors—a rainbow full of colors with every meal or snack—when it comes to your fruits and vegetables to benefit from a plethora of antioxidants.  Here’s a great way to think of nutritious food: Colorful produce is the most important health care money can buy. And vibrant health starts in the kitchen by choosing to eat your foods as close to the way Nature made them as possible.

I often say in my motivational talks and seminars worldwide that you can sit down to a breakfast of bacon and eggs and butter and then take your cholesterol- and blood-pressure lowering medications. That’s your right. But if you choose to take charge of your body and eat better foods—a healing natural-foods diet—your body will thank you every day for the rest of your life. Studies show that heart disease can be reversed by diet alone. Many diabetic patients can go off their medication by dietary changes. Kidney stones can be prevented as well as cancer and obesity. These findings demonstrate that a good diet is the most powerful weapon we have against disease and sickness. And it comes down to four things: breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

Look to nature for the answers on what to eat. You won’t find ice cream trees, potato chip bushes, or donut vines in nature. The more natural a food is, the more likely it is to have an abundance of healthy nutrients that boost immunity, protect your body from disease, and promote youthful vitality. It’s your choice and it’s within your power to create a healthy body and life. (Refer to Susan’s 3-book healthy eating and living series published by Hay House—The Healing Power of NatureFoods, Health Bliss, Recipes for Health Bliss—to learn about the 100 healthiest foods, herbs and spices everyone should be eating; a variety of easy-to-prepare natural-food recipes; and the more detailed information on these seven stress-busters and other salubrious lifestyle choices.)

4. Keep your body hydrated. Our bodies are 70% water. Our cells are 70% water and our planet Earth is 70% water. That’s no coincidence. Each day we need to drink at least 8 glasses of water. At a cellular level, dehydration makes us as droopy as a neglected violet. Lack of moisture in faces causes wrinkles the way lack of moisture in plums causes prunes. Drinking “liquids” won’t do. Although herbal tea, freshly extracted vegetable juice and diluted fruit juice can count in the water tally, coffee, tea, colas, and alcoholic beverages actually dehydrate the body. They’re wet, but they’re not water; in fact, they’re antiwater.

We need to maintain proper fluid balance for brain and kidney function, to rid the body of waste material and toxins, and to maintain radiant health. Water is also a safe, cheap, and effective appetite suppressant. Often when we think we’re hungry, we’re actually thirsty. Get into the habit of carrying a reusable, earth-friendly bottle of water when you walk or drive. If it’s there, you’re more likely to drink it. You can refill them from your filtered or purified water source at home.

5. Catch plenty of Zzzs. Lack of sleep undermines your body’s ability to deal with stress. That’s why it’s important to get 7-8 hours of rest per night. One way to tell if you’re getting enough shuteye is to see if you wake at a regular time without an alarm. If you require a buzzer to out of bed in the morning, you’re not getting enough sleep.

6. Laugh a lot. Worried about something? Maybe you’re stressed out about your relationship with a loved one, the monthly bills that are stacking up, or the poor grades your son or daughter is suddenly bringing home from school. Whatever it is, one way to mollify this stress is to make sure your life is filled with laughter.

According to researchers, laughter releases endorphins into the body that act as natural stress beaters. In fact, a good belly laugh gives your heart muscles a good workout, improves circulation, fills your lungs with oxygen-rich air, clears your respiratory passages, stimulates alertness hormones, helps relieve pain, and counteracts fear, anger, and depression, all of which are linked to illness and stress. So be sure to schedule time into your busy schedule to be with friends and family who make you smile and laugh, and go to movies or read a book that tickles your funny bone. Just make sure you’re getting plenty of things to giggle about in your life.

7. Be thankful—and reap the health benefits. Each and every day, take a moment and be grateful for all you have in life. Gratitude, after all, is a great stress-buster. What you think about consistently brings more of the same into your life. So focusing on the positive, even during difficult times, is the best way to reduce and alleviate stress and transform your life. As my grandmother would repeatedly remind me — Attitude is the mind’s paintbrush; it can color anything.

May your days be filled with health bliss and a sacred, peaceful balance.

© Susan Smith Jones

BIO: For more than three decades, Susan Smith Jones, Ph.D., has been one of the world’s most recognizable names and faces in the fields of holistic health and sacred, balanced living. She taught health and fitness at UCLA for 30 years, travels worldwide as a motivational speaker, and is the author of over 25 books, including her latest “healthy eating & lifestyle” books The Healing Power of NatureFoods, Be Healthy~Stay Balanced, Recipes for Health Bliss, The Joy Factor, Herbs: Nature’s Medicine Chest, Choose to Live Peacefully and Health Bliss. To order her books or her audio programs, or to invite her to give a motivational talk to your company or business, please call: 1.800.843.5743 PT or visit: SusanSmithJones.com or SusansRemedies.com.

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