Greetings!

This is the first in a series of articles about healthy living. The purpose of these articles is to share a different perspective that will allow you to live a healthy, balanced life and provide methods for personal empowerment.

Let's start with belief systems. Have you ever really taken a look at your beliefs, and honestly asked yourself "Are these my own beliefs or were they given to me?" Most of the time we will find that allot of our beliefs were given to us by well meaning people in our lives, and accepted without question or thought. This is not necessarily a bad thing, don't get me wrong. The real question is "How are my beliefs serving me?" Are they empowering me and helping me to grow on all levels, or are they limiting me?

You see, the reason it is important to ask ourselves these questions is because our thoughts, perceptions and beliefs create our reality. If you have a fear based belief system, you will draw that energy and people of like mind into your life. People tend to congregate with others of like mind in order to have their beliefs validated. This is normal and to be expected. However, it can be detrimental to an individual if the groups belief system is fear based. So, let us take a look at fear. What exactly is fear? I'm not talking about self-preservation or survival instincts as in a life-threatening situation. I'm talking about our frame of mind. When you get right down to it, fear is usually based in a perception of lacking something. Lacking control, lack of money, lack of self-esteem, and so on. In reality, you lack nothing. If we will be devastatingly honest with ourselves, we will find that each of us has created everything in our lives, right down to our present circumstances. Now, if your present circumstances are not so great, or at least not what you would like them to be, accept that you created this situation. This can be very hard to do. Our ego will usually flare up and attempt to blame others. This is a cop out in an attempt to avoid responsibility. Once you realize that you did indeed create the negativity in your life, you will realize how much power you really have. If you created all of this, what sort of life could you create for yourself if you were to focus your energy in a healthy, positive direction?

When you really look at it, there are only two emotions. There is Love, and there is fear. All others are variations of these two. Fear is an illusion that only has the power you give it. Where are you at? Are you living in compassion and gratitude, or are you dwelling in fear, domination and control? Just as in the previous example, if you have a belief system based in love, compassion and gratitude, you will find that you will attract that same energy and people of like mind into your life. The world really does reflect back to you what you send out. Many of you may have already started this approach and I'm sure there has been varying degrees of success. The key is to remember that this is a process, and like any process it will take time and practice. Oh yes, you will always have life's challenges and tests, but the difference will be how you deal with them.

Until next time, take care and live well.

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