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Living Maxwell

Personal

Organic Food vs. Organic Thoughts

As you probably know by now, I am pretty fanatical and passionate about organic food. It is what I love. It has a superior taste to conventionally-grown food.  Also, it is best for my health, the farmers’ health and the planet.

Given that I am so concerned about what I put into my body and my overall health, I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately: organic food vs. organic thoughts.

So, what do I mean by this?

Organic food is clearly the best food for me and is critical to good health. There is no doubt about that. However, when I have negative thoughts, feelings of guilt or doubt, or start beating myself up for a variety of reasons, is that negating the benefits of my organic food habit?

I wish the answer were that cut and dry where I could say “yes” or “no”. Food is very tangible. I can see what I am putting into my mouth and the ramifications are quite clear. Eating fast-food or conventional, fried, GMO food makes me feel sluggish, disgusting and pretty horrible. I know what to eat and what not to eat, have great control over my diet, and am certain that organic food is the most nutritious food a person can consume.

However, when negative thoughts poison my mind, it is not super-easy to turn them around into positive ones. Shutting off the negative chatter is much, much harder than cutting off the junk food (even though I don’t eat junk food) yet doing so is essential for my health as well.

One movie that changed my life forever was What the Bleep Do We Know and was one of the three things that helped me recover from 11 years of antidepressants. And, what that movie taught me was the power of our thoughts. Before seeing that film, I never realized that our thoughts impact our reality. My negative thoughts are not only attracting negative things into my life but they are incredibly detrimental to my health on a cellular level.

Are my destructive thoughts negating all of the good, organic food that I am putting into my body? It is impossible to know for sure but they are absolutely not helping.

However, what this conversation that I’ve been having with myself has done is raise my awareness about the effect of these thoughts and the impact that they are having on my health, from both a good and bad perspective. It is something that I have known for a long time but is a good reminder and keeps me in check.

Health is so important to me that anytime one of these poisonous thoughts comes into my head, I am going to think of this blog post to get me back on the right track.

Just as clean food is critical to our health, so are clean thoughts. I want both of them working for me instead of one canceling out the other.

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On a related note, I recently read a fantastic book by Dr. Maxwell Maltz called Psycho-Cybernetics. He was among the country’s first plastic surgeons and realized that changing a person’s physical appearance did not do much to change the way they felt about themselves. Dr. Maltz believed that it all started from the image that a person had of themselves. Turning around a person’s self-image was the essential first step to improving a person’s life, before surgery or before positive thinking.

His book is very compelling, it has helped me a lot and I suggest it strongly. Here is some rare footage of an interview with him on YouTube.

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Living Maxwell

Personal

The Repercussions of Going on Antidepressants

As I mentioned the other day, there were tremendous repercussions for me going on Prozac during college. Yet at the time, I didn’t have any idea that they would be so disastrous.

What influenced my judgment to go on antidepressants was a real desperation to feel better. And to feel better quickly. Worrying about how this would impact my life 5 or 10 years down the road was of no consideration whatsoever. I wanted relief and I wanted it immediately.

These are the key repercussions:

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Living Maxwell

Personal

Dating Someone Who Drinks, Part II

I put up a post last week about a date I had recently and it generated a good number of responses. During this date, the woman asked if it bothers me to be with someone who drinks.

In that post, one of the things that I said was that I would “deal with it” if all of the other aspects of the relationship were good and that the drinking was kept to a minimum. This response of saying that I would “deal with it” brought an interesting comment from Tancie, and I thought it was worth addressing in its own blog post here.

Tancie stated that the phrase “dealing with it” would bring up resentment and that I should avoid all women who drink if it makes me that uncomfortable.

For me, drinking is a very complicated issue and is not so cut and dry, especially given the fact that I feel so strongly about other things as well — organic food being one of them.

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Living Maxwell

Personal

“I Was Told My Brain Was Broken”

In November, I put up blog entry titled The Repercussions of Going on Antidepressants, and I received a comment on this post the other day that both disturbed me and confirmed what I already knew. I thought it merited its own discussion here.

The woman who wrote the comment calls herself NoRx4Me and left the following information:

I was put on an SSRI at 24 years old during a bad marriage. I needed guidance and support, instead I was told my brain was broken.

SSRI’s led to stimulants, mood stabilizers, SNRI’s, and lithium for a short time. I was a mess. I lost 13 years. I have little memory of those years (especially sad, because I was raising two boys). I didn’t grow as a person at all. I quit dating in 2003 and never developed knew friendships either. I didn’t even realize this was odd until I was off meds.

I probably would have responded like some others on here while I was still under the influence and told you the meds were great. With a clear mind and 20/20 hindsight, I know the facts, my life was destroyed.

And they do cause physical problems; I lost a ton of hair, and my teeth are a mess. I look like I’ve aged 20 years instead of 10.

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livingmaxwell: a guide to organic food & drink