Living A Longer And Better Life

Matthew M Aboulafia, L.C.S.W. ??

Mood Elevation Emotional Education / MEEE

Living A Better And Longer?Life

May 3, 2023

Exercise and you will maintain your youthfulness and prolong your life: People with a regular regimen can retard their actual age by up to ten years. Exercise is also an excellent means for mood elevation and enhanced confidence and is a powerful part of our well-being. All known and proven scientific facts… As they say, "Google it."?

As I’m 65, I hope to stand as living proof for those who do not take action to begin to exercise.?So, it's no trick for those who need the motivation to take action. Hopefully, seeing is believing.?But, such a motivator is much easier said than done; because we are stressed by daily life, and we don’t feel we have the energy or the time, there is emotional resistance to acting; doing it can be easily dismissed and rationalized away.

Taking action towards a healthier lifestyle is easier said than done. The popular phrase, "Just do it," often falls short in motivating us to exercise or make other necessary improvements. We tend to dismiss or rationalize why we can't make positive changes. But we all know that taking action can significantly enhance our well-being and lifespan. So, how can we overcome our excuses and start acting toward a better life? ?

The most important step is an elevated mood, bringing on a more robust sense of confidence. Elevated confidence will affect your entire life's trajectory. It makes us feel optimistic,?self-assured, and energized. As the power of a good mood gives us confidence, safety, and energy, it shifts our perspective of uncomfortable experiences into manageable ones: We can more easily take on stressful situations.?If we're feeling good, uplifted, and confident, we often feel like we can do anything!?The greater amount of it we possess, the easier it becomes to pursue our objectives. ?

How can we elevate our mood to give us the energy, motivation, and confidence to do what is best for ourselves??

Mood Elevation Emotional Education is a new vehicle that teaches us insight-oriented techniques and gives us pragmatic guidance; It educates and directs us with self-understanding and a clearing away of ineffective and inefficient ways to manage our life: It lets you see and gives clarity regarding life practices that we thought were healthy with methods that are more certain to help elevate your mood; what is more in line with fulfilling our desires, hopes, and dreams.?

Curiously, we are all very much like computers; ?they are run by a program that dictates their operations.?Even though we can think and guide our actions, we do so only by the information we have, our emotional experiences, and our memories that guide our actions.?We go to college or learn training to become more proficient and better at what we might take on as a career. We do so as we know knowledge can be powerfully helpful for making the correct decisions. But if we are running from a weak operating system or faulty knowledge base, we may not make the right decisions. Modern world psychology has discovered glitches and faults in the knowledge and emotional base.?We are all running from ideas and an emotional base that does not bode well for efficiency and emotional well-being.?We now know that once we positively affect this old inefficient emotional knowledge base, we will, in effect, operate more effectively, and our sense of well-being will be elevated. ?

When we gain a deeper understanding of our own psychology and how to improve it, the benefits are tremendous. We gain clarity on practices that we once thought were correct or effective and learn new ways to focus our decisions better. This leads to increased efficiency, effectiveness, and success in achieving our life goals and aspirations. As we become more skilled at fulfilling our aspirations, we also experience a boost in our mood and overall happiness.

As humans, we have an innate desire to take action and create change. When we are unable to do so, it can take a toll on our emotional well-being. Therefore, a significant part of education involves overcoming emotional obstacles and unlearning ineffective lessons from the past. This requires a willingness to improve our lives and the courage to challenge the assumptions we've held onto. The reality is that the thinking and behavior patterns passed down from previous generations may no longer serve us well in today's world. While they may have been truthful in the past, they can now hinder our emotions and perceptions.

We have been taught to guide our lives by what is now out of sync with our new world.??

We now live in a vastly different world from our past, plagued by tyranny, slavery, brutality, poverty, rampant illness, the Great Depression, catastrophic wars, short life spans,?limited access to helpful medicine, and as the result of primitive medical help, the frequent losses of loved ones. A work ethic that was built solely on survival rather than excess.?Our new modern world has turned all of the above on its head.

Most of us live in a world of a different reality from the hardships of past generations. Now with far longer life expectancies than ever in history, and far less hunger and disease, people living into their nineties, we have entered a new era. A world that offers immediate access to a million movies and tv shows.?They are right at our fingertips;?we now select something, and we can sink into a fantasy world for hours: emotionally, we effectively stop time and worry as we find ourselves lost in a big screen surround sound dreamscape.?We have learning opportunities for growth and progress, college education, gym memberships, jet travel, vacations, sporting events, cycle paths for leisurely rides, and cars that can virtually drive themselves—more restaurants than have ever existed at any other point in human history.?

All wonderful, these potential activities, if utilized, can elevate mood and bring us to states of euphoria;?when this mood shift can occur, stress can be—deeply slashed.?When we reduce stress, the organism, us, feel safe. ?Nowhere in prior time have we so easily had these means so close to our fingertips.?Nowhere in previous history have we been so close to elevating the human emotional condition: We now have the option to utilize our capacities for elation to reduce psychological fears and resulting stress, which will further prolong life and lift us to experience another new reality, a potential to experience a complete joy for life.?

Our new world is filled with potential:?We are now steeped in possibility, ways to create feelings of elation that will elevate mood and hence, our most psychological and physical antagonist, reduce stress.?There is now a world of means to reduce the fears of managing life. Many may trivialize some of these changes, but if we take advantage of them, they are profoundly, potentially impactful on our quality of life.?

This is a part of our evolution and human progress: We do not like pain or suffering. We do what we can to make ourselves feel splendid. Electric cars that drive as smoothly as silk. Apartment complexes with pools and tennis courts... Car services can pick us up just when we want a ride. We are elevating the pleasure quotient and lowering the pain quotient. ?

We must acknowledge the significant advancements of our modern world. Our current environment offers us better opportunities to meet our basic needs and create ways for healthy stress reduction, unlike anything previously experienced in human history.

The echoes of fears and cautionary tales from past generations still linger; the fearful precautions subconsciously influencing our decisions and hindering our willingness to embrace change and possibility. This silent wave from our past threatens to topple our newfound appreciation for a world full of potential mood elevation and stress reduction. It's understandable how the stressful lives of our ancestors have left us with their warnings, but we must not let these fears consume us. As humans, our survival instinct can make us vulnerable to these doubts, but it's essential to recognize and overcome them to progress toward a richer future.

How do we embrace this potential for emotional evolution? A life of effective healthy stress reduction that can bring a greater sense of joy to our lives? ?

As I said above, we must challenge old thoughts regarding the meaning and the nature of living one's life. Our difficult history leads us to idealize pain and suffering.?It was our coping mechanism.?A rationale that helped us slog through the difficulties and hardships. If you listen, we can hear the old tropes which idealize suffering as a statement regarding strength and potency.?If you listen, you can hear people talk about having to suffer and idealizing it:?"Oh, I don't sleep much, six hours; I'm too busy."?"I worked 80 hours last week." "Relax? I don't have time to relax."?These are the voices of hardship, the wave from the past.?The message is that we must suffer; we even boast about the suffering. Again, if you listen, you can hear and see people torture themselves because they still live from the hardship model of our past.?

They did not have the options we do, to live for pleasure, or stress reduction. Again, they had little choice but to persevere with the ideals that their suffering was the way of life and that the powers-that-be?(the god/s)would smile down upon them for their life of hardship and pain: This was their rationalization for enduring such a hard life. Coping with pain and suffering was transformed into an ideal, a sign of strength.?It was elaborated upon with an even greater fantasy, an answer to all their misery, something even greater to live for than life, the ultimate liberation from the pain and suffering, the fantasy that their suffering we lead to being reunited with lost loved ones, would be forever pain-free, in heaven. A most powerful reason to continue to embrace the fantasies that abstinence and struggle will lead to a pain-free state.

The cautionary words can be found in our families, friends, colleagues, and religious groups.?It is everywhere. The fantasy of not asking for too much as abstinence will lead to better things.?Again, if we listen closely and have a trained ear, we can hear the cautionary words and thoughts. ?For example, I recently had a client considering a new job opportunity.?It would offer him higher pay, less daily travel time, and the chance to move up the career ladder.?He seemed excited about it but also seemed somewhat hesitant.?I asked him why they were reluctant; they revealed that their parents disapproved and explained that they felt he should be content with their current job. "Money wasn't everything," they told him.?Seeming good advice, happiness should be our priority. But, this seemingly heartfelt good advice had a hidden agenda, the fear of change. They told their son that staying with the devil you know rather than the devil you don't know is better.?

Even if the opportunity is well-suited to the individual, this external influence can often lead to self-doubt and a reluctance to take risks.?My trained skill is to hear, and listen for bad, inefficient thoughts and feelings where there are false inhibitory beliefs, explore the reality of the situation, and assess whether the hesitation is warranted. I am trained to see where a false fear exists; I want to liberate a person from false ideas and feelings which hamper their lives:?Overcoming doubts and fears that may be holding them back from pursuing enriching experiences, whether it's traveling, starting a business, or speaking up for ourselves: Examining these emotions and the limiting fears allows us to make informed decisions that align with our true best interests; to lead a more liberated life of action, success, accomplishment, and the wonderful outcome of elevated mood and resulting life of happiness. Awareness is our torch to see our best course of action.

He and I discussed the job further: It was an excellent fit for him.?He felt confident he could do it and knew if he listened to the doubts and did not follow through, he would regret it; he would have let himself down. My job was to help him work through the doubts and apprehensions so he could push on to a better job; the change was, in fact, a good one. He was paid better, met new colleagues who became friends, and developed friendships with his new boss. The result was an improvement in his new job as well as in his overall quality of life.?

Conquering fears and overcoming emotional obstacles are essential to personal growth.?We will gain confidence from our fulfillment and achievement by eliminating unfounded fears.?Mood Elevation Emotional Education?provides valuable guidance in addressing these concerns by removing false inhibition, the old ineffective beliefs so the way becomes more adventuresome;?we begin to pursue activities that bring stimulating experiences to improve our mood significantly. This could mean removing an inhibition to attending the party one might have been hesitant to participate in, the vacation to Europe, the swimming lessons one wanted, or the courage to ask out that cute colleague... and so on...

We elevate our mood by acting on what we want to accomplish and making it happen.?This is a known scientific fact.?And given the right kind of event, one with emotional significance, is stimulating, it can elevate our mood considerably. For example, if a person goes to a rock concert, their mood is measurably elevated for three days after the show. This is just the power of giving ourselves the right experience to elevate our mood. And when we learn how to string stimulating events together through weeks, months, and years, we can rebalance our entire mood structure: We will better control our moods, elevate our moods, and bring about a new level of behavioral and emotional constancy.?Simply put, a life that is more consistently happy.?

MEEE enables achieving emotional mastery by utilizing our frontal lobe to gain knowledge on maintaining a happy and stable mood. To do so, we must overcome old inhibitions and behaviors rooted in fear and caution. By identifying false fears and taking productive actions, we can better understand ourselves and attain emotional mastery. Moreover, nurturing ourselves emotionally enables us to maintain a positive state of mind and achieve emotional balance.

Conversely, an unexamined fearful life, which has inherited emotionally inhibitory concerns from the past, cautions and reluctance, doubts, envisioning adverse outcomes, diminished ambition, catastrophizing, and limited mood elevation, will increase stress levels. These are emotional roadblocks to truly living life; they lead to bodily stress and tension, harming the body.?Over time this ineffective, inhibited lifestyle, as there is not enough life-affirming mood elevation for stress reduction, will result in an anxious, depressive lifestyle: These states are the result of our being drained of our very being, which makes us feel vulnerable, leading to a?neurotic experience; to feel preoccupied with danger rather than the thrill and excitement life can bring.

Reducing stress is a part of feeling successful and happy. When we feel stressed, we are in a painful state, and our bodies strive to reach a stress-free state.?It's similar to feeling hungry and needing food; we remain stressed until we satisfy that need. Once we take the appropriate action to address the source of our stress, the tension dissipates immediately. So happiness is about taking action and having a resolution.?Too many emotional roadblocks and we can feel like failures. Emotional roadblocks will be our emotional downfall, i.e., a life lacking the luster of success.?

Too many missed opportunities, for success and the resulting reduction of stress, and we can begin to feel like a failure. If this is a repeated pattern, it will damage and lower our self-esteem; we will always feel we are failing. Achieving a relaxed state is our reward and the gratification of completing a task or fulfilling a need, which is essential for knowing we have success and feeling good about ourselves. So again, once we take that necessary action and acquire what we need, the stress fades away, and we feel complete and good about ourselves. We must be free to take action, or we, will emotionally, slowly die. ?

Often, we find ourselves trapped in self-sabotage due to the outdated life lessons and coping mechanisms we've been taught. These methods of stress reduction ultimately harm us, leaving us feeling stuck and unable to reach our goals. You may have experienced the feeling of being in a constant cycle of difficulty and frustration, unable to make progress. This is a result of the emotional patterns ingrained in us from our past experiences, which limit our ability to move forward. It's like being bound to a particular path, unable to deviate from the old programming.

Unfortunately, because of embracing the old mentality of relating to the world, millions of Americans are unaware that they live with self-destructive stress-reducing patterns that profoundly impact their overall well-being.

What are some examples of unproductive means or shortcuts to stress reduction?

Alcohol use can become a dangerous cycle when it's a primary means to alleviate stress. Alcohol and its powerful euphoric effect temporarily relieve stress: The body quickly becomes addicted and falls in love with the feeling of euphoria, the stress reduction, and the resulting feeling of safety. The body feels safe when it is not in a distressed state.?It takes this condition as a safe place. This can lead to a looped pattern of behavior where alcohol becomes the go-to solution for stress relief. And, as stress levels rise, so does the craving for alcohol. The alcoholic will fantasize about that drink and its euphoric effect. Once they start to drink, they continue in a chase for nirvana—the wish to get a hold of feeling purely safe.?

When a person has a limited schema of healthy means for stress reduction, and they have discovered the euphoric effect of alcohol, the likelihood of turning to alcohol to achieve euphoria and its remarkable impact on the body's stressed state increases. To break the loop, it's essential to prioritize healthy stress management techniques for a new life schema of stress reduction to break the cycle.

Obesity is another powerful example of ineffective stress reduction.?Sixty-eight percent of Americans are affected by obesity; too many rely on overeating to soothe themselves to reduce stress. Too many of us are inactive: I mean this in a complex way. Too many of us don’t have the channels to help elevate mood effectively.?They do not take those actions which could and would elevate their mood.?Mood elevation then turns to inactive behaviors. Eating is a passive procedure that does not require any risk-taking; avoidance which results from our old world model inhibits the person from taking risks for doing…The person will remain inactive/passive unless they identify and overcome their old-world fears and obstacles. Until then as the body needs stress reduction, food will remain the quick means for stress reduction and mood elevation…?

Again creating a loop behavior pattern; here, it is food rather than alcohol. Passivity, rather than the action of a schema of healthy stress-reducing behaviors; the low action of effective stress reduction life, can lead to stress reduction by eating; And, when one does become obese and is passive, you have a plethora of illnesses that can occur. ?Heart attack is the primary cause of death, often attributed to an unhealthy diet and inadequate physical activity.

On the deepest level, we now understand that stress can even affect our chromosomes.?Telomeres are the protective end caps of our chromosomes.?Studies have demonstrated that these telomeres diminish in length as we grow older and shorten faster with chronic stress. This shortening results in losing vital information essential for maintaining our health, ultimately leading to poor health outcomes and a reduced life expectancy. Hence, stress can significantly impact our health at a chromosomal level. Furthermore, other bodily stressors such as smoking and alcohol abuse, lack of sleep, poor eating habits, etc., typically triggered by stress, can also contribute to telomere shortening and more adverse health consequences.?

Stress can have a significant impact on our emotional and physical well-being. MEEE enables us to emotional mood mastery and allows us to evolve emotionally and take advantage of our body's natural capacities and mechanisms designed to manage stress. For instance, did you know that laughter can profoundly affect our physical and emotional state? Laughter is just one of the many inborn mechanisms which can be utilized; when we know the many mechanisms and utilize them through our days we are now on another level;?We can better master our mood states. ?

A life of healthy action requires healthy, effective strategies to elevate our moods. But we must be open to and take advantage of these wonderful tools to have their profound and positive effect on our lives.?

Managing stress is essential for physical and mental well-being and can be life-saving. Instead of resorting to self-destructive shortcuts like overeating, alcohol abuse, or smoking, we must learn a lifestyle of healthy stress management methods. Mood Elevation Emotional Education provides a practical approach to reducing stress through productive methods. Doing so, we can experience a positive snowball effect in our lives. For instance, healthier stress-reduction methods can lead to a significant drop in overeating, which, in turn, can reduce hypertension, joint pain, illnesses, lower cholesterol levels, heart attacks, diabetes, cancer, and more.?But to take advantage of a healthy lifestyle, we again to take action and put into place more effective means to stress reduction.?

The new school, the one I advance, encourages us to lead thrilling, joyful lives, not simply survive by playing a safe old-school lifestyle, but to manage a healthy bodily ecosystem.?With this modern psychotherapy, you minimize false fears and ineffective ways of managing life, limiting pessimism and opening the door to feeling the thrill of life through laughter, play, friendship, creativity, ambition, and love. This is definitely not the old world where we are meant to suffer on earth to await the gates of heaven.?This is about utilizing our capacity to lift our moods for a more joyful life: Healthy mood states lead to healthy bodily conditions. By the way, people are best for our community, happy and healthy, not suffering, not miserable. Everyone benefits from elevated mood and discovering being happy and healthy.

We all have the innate ability to experience elevated moods every day. It's a natural prewiring that can bring a new world of potential and optimism. As someone who has spent 40 years helping people, achieving this state of mind is possible.?

Having the opportunity to witness this daily transformation in my clients is truly wonderful. But learning how to tap into and utilize this potential is paramount. Failing to do so is tragic and limits your ability to enhance all aspects of your life, including your life expectancy.?

Life is indeed short, so let's make the most of it by utilizing our modern understanding of how we operate best. By reducing stress and discovering a life full of thrill, love, euphoria, and joy, we can truly enhance our daily experiences. Let's utilize our prewired potential and create a life filled with abundant happiness.