7 Beliefs of Emotionally Healthy People

We all know the basics of being healthy: eat well, exercise, and get some rest (especially when you’ve got your country’s 500th anniversary to plan, your wedding to arrange, your wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it) because, as they say, if you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.

But how to improve the health that happens between our ears? Today, we’ll do a checkup of seven beliefs emotionally healthy people hold.

Two big footnotes on this. One: no one carries around all these beliefs all the time, without exception. We each struggle in our own way. So don’t be alarmed if you think your own belief system could use some shoring up: Nobody is 100% healthy 100% of the time. Two: I’ll be the first to say there’s no rigidly definitive list of healthy beliefs. But IMHO, these are the biggies, so let’s count them down, leaving the most important for the end.

Belief #7: “I can stay the course.”

This belief gives rise to two attributes: grit and self-control. Grit is staying the course long term: it’s doing difficult or tedious stuff over months or years in service of a larger goal. You might make a commitment to study algebra every night, even if you hate it, to get your GED. You might bring your lunch to work and skip Starbucks for a year in order to save for that Alaska cruise. You might perform your standup routine to some lost German tourists, a couple of drunk guys, and the heckler who’s always there in order to further your comedy career.

By contrast, self-control is staying the course short term: Call this resisting temptation. It’s keeping your cool even when the bank teller seems to be working in super-slo-mo. It’s not taking the bait of the guy with the facial tattoo taunting you from the end of the bar. It’s sticking to your diet even though the Cheesecake Factory’s Oreo Dream Extreme made an appearance in your actual dream.

Don’t get me wrong, we all fall prey to temptation and instant gratification. I fritter away an embarrassing amount of time online myself. But to build our grit and self-control muscles, just like real muscles, we have to exercise them.

Why are grit and self control so important? Because some wishes can’t be instantly granted through Seamless or Siri: A career. A loving relationship. Good health. All these things take time and staying the course to be built and maintained.

Belief #6: “I can do things I don’t feel like doing.”

You can tell this is a Savvy Psychologist list because of this entry. This belief, in my opinion, is the best-kept...

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