By Dr. Ben Lerner

Health is a state of well being in three distinct areas:

1. Physical
2. Mental
3. Social

One of my major rules for Maximized Living is peace management.

A negatively stressful life will rarely lead to a healthy body. A struggling, desperate individual will likely experience illness despite following most of the other important rules of wellness. Even if you could be healthy while experiencing stress, you'd just be a healthy miserable person. And, who wants that?

On the other hand, someone who has peace of mind, knows who he or she is, works hard to emerge victorious over struggles and experiences loving relationships will very likely enjoy ongoing good health. If you're not having a good time living in your body, it's hard for that body to be well or for you to call it healthy. Fact is, you can't separate your wellness from your emotions. Every feeling you have affects some part of your body.

All feelings create physiologic change. Skin, heart rate, digestion, joints, muscle energy levels, the hair on your head and endless cells and systems you don't even know about change with every emotion. These changes can be called the stress response.

Celebrations and tragedies alike cause a stress response in the body. Some stress is unavoidable. The only stress-free people on the planet can be visited at any local cemetery. On the other hand, stress becomes negative only when:

• Your response to it is negative.
• Your feelings and emotions are inappropriate for the circumstances.
• Your response lasts an excessively long time.
• Feeling continuously overwhelmed, overpowered and overwrought from circumstance is not God's grand scheme for your life.

Our personality and emotions are not pre-determined and pre-programmed as we once thought. You are not who you perceive yourself to be! Many feel stuck inside a brain that doesn't work. What science has discovered: You control your genes. They don't control you!

Although your DNA is your basic blueprint, it's triggered by attitude and environment. By beginning to embrace and cooperate with life and recognize that God has made you powerful and not weak, you can start to have a spirit of overcoming, meaning safe stress, versus living as a victim in a state of overwhelm, or negative stress.

For more information on 10 steps to reprogramming your stress, readx the 10 Instructions for Peace by God in, Body By God: The Owner's Manual for Maximized Living. To get help from a Body by God, Maximized Living Provider near you, go to www.thebodybygod.com my Web site.

Dr. Ben Lerner, along with Dr. Greg Loman, owns Teach The World About Chiropractic, a Chiropractic training company. They have helped build the largest spinal correction clinics in the history of Chiropractic.