By Dr. Mark Wiley

If you think you’re too busy to take care of your health, I have good news. Three simple concepts can put you on track to improved wellness and a healthy homeostasis: Be mindful of your thoughts. Be careful what you consume. And take care of your body.

What You Think

Our reality truly is based largely on our perceptions. As an observer, you change the world around you by the mere fact of observing it and bringing to that observation your own beliefs and assumptions. Both deeply held and newly formed beliefs and assumptions help create the reality of our lives and, thus, our health.

If you (consciously or unconsciously) believe that, for whatever reason, you cannot be healthy, you will prove that statement correct. Yet, if you believe the proper wellness method and dedication to healing will cure you of your health issues, you will prove that statement correct.

Beliefs are the building blocks of our reality, and they color our world perceptions. Following beliefs, reality is manifest by our thoughts, emotional energy and actions.

Related Article: Are Your Emotions Causing Your Illness?

You have heard people complain about their health, saying: “Nothing can help me. No one can figure out my problem. Everything I try fails.” Perhaps you have made similar statements yourself at times. The more you think about your pain, suffering and failures and the doctors’ failures to help you, the worse you feel.

But you absolutely can improve your health by changing the way you think about your health and how you feel about those thoughts when you are having them.

What You Put Into Your Body

What you believe about your health-reality influences everything you choose to put into your body: affecting the foods you choose to eat and the medicines you decide to take. Psychologists have well-documented the idea that eating disorders originate from our association of food with stress relief and our experience of eating as an emotional replacement for unrequited love.

But you may need to rethink your relationship with everything you put into your body. That includes not just food and beverages, but pills, drugs, herbs and supplements.

Think about why you may be taking certain drugs, like an anti-inflammatory medication. You may think the drug will help reduce the swelling around a joint and quell the pain associated with it. This is correct — for a limited time, after which you will need another pill or two to stave off the pain. In this way, your thoughts related to pain, swelling and anti-inflammatory drugs lead to your reality of taking medicine to manage your condition. This may be acceptable for a short time in conjunction with other pain and inflammation-reduction measures. However, ingesting pain pills for a prolonged period is bad for the body. The reality: The negative effects of the pills outweigh their limited benefit.

Related Article: Control Your Weight To Control Your Disease

Instead, use more natural approaches to pain. Adopt an anti-inflammatory diet that includes plenty of aromatic spices and wild salmon and excludes dairy, fats and sugars. That allows you to put things in your body that can help your healing process instead of just covering up symptoms.

On days when you feel motivated, your thoughts lead you to better food choices, better pain-reduction choices and better feelings overall. However, on bad days when you feel stressed, tired, extra achy or less confident in natural alternatives, your thoughts begin to wrap themselves around the idea that stronger, synthetic medicine is the better and faster way to go. The immediate pain management gained will indicate this to be a correct assumption. So you will continue to do just that.

But know this: Pain is not a condition; it is a symptom of a condition. Changing your perceptions, thoughts, assumptions and beliefs on this topic will lead you to make better choices about what you put into your body. Over time, those consumption choices will lead to better health and feelings of well-being. Change in this area can begin with something as simple as skipping that second cup of coffee or mug of beer, foregoing the Italian hoagie lunch in favor of a roasted veggie salad, replacing soft drinks with water and foregoing pharmaceuticals for natural herbal supplements.

What You Do With Your Body

Your thoughts can derail your beliefs in outcomes, squash your enthusiasm for making beneficial changes and lead you to make poor consumption choices. In this same direction, you need to make good choices about what to do with your body. The way your body looks conveys important visual evidence about the state of your health.

Exercise, for example, makes a big difference in your health. Exercise improves muscle tone, flexibility, lung capacity and heart health. You know people who exercise when you see them. They are often fresh-looking, wide-eyed, nimble, strong and clear-thinking, and they seem to feel free within their own bodies. Not all people who exercise are like this, but it certainly describes many people who exercise regularly for years.

Related Article: How To Make Everyday a “Fitness Day”

What you do with your body goes beyond exercises like including yoga, tai chi and Pilates. Taking care of your body also includes getting massages, maintaining correct posture while you work at your computer, stretching, receiving chiropractic or acupuncture treatments, being still in meditation and attending to injuries, rashes and burns in the correct way and in a timely manner.

Everything is related in health and in life. A systems approach is needed to fully grasp and embrace what it means to live in self-directed wellness. Being cognizant of and purposeful in what you think in your body, what you put into your body and what you do with your body affects how you feel. Now that you know how simple the model for change is, you can begin setting actionable goals for yourself to help restore your optimal health. At their core, these ideas are simple, but they can make big improvements in how you feel and how you face your busy life.