Are You Strategically Living Your Life?

Strategic planning is typically thought of in terms of how large businesses and nations design a plan of action to accomplish their specific goals — but it is a fabulous tool for individuals as well. If you find yourself disappointed by your life, consider taking a look at how strategically you are living it.

Some people worry that being strategic is about being manipulative. Certainly there is a fine balance between passivity and trying to live life according to the “my way or the highway” approach to influencing the course of events. I think of being strategic as actively engaging in shaping and directing your life. It is about being thoughtful, careful, and purposeful — the antithesis of simply drifting along being caught up in whatever situations and circumstances you happen to bump into in the course of your life. Strategic living means being smart enough to embrace the opportunity of playing an active role in determining what you are creating, promoting and allowing in your life.

If you were investing in a business, wouldn’t you want to know that it was being run by individuals who were well versed regarding the opportunities and challenges they faced? Wouldn’t you want them to use their resources (people, money and time) in such a way that they maximized the company’s short- and long-term return on investment? Most likely, it would be important to you that these returns be measured not just in terms of money, but relative to such other factors as alignment with the company’s mission, and their commitment to such values as integrity, social consciousness and the quality of their relationships with employees and other stakeholders.

Now, let’s apply this thinking to how you assess your own life choices. Being strategic is about getting off autopilot behavior and being thoughtful about the choices you make in your life. It means living within the context of having a good understanding of who you are, what matters to you, and what resources and options you have available.

As a life coach, I work with this perspective as a means of increasing my clients’ self-awareness, wellbeing, enjoyment and creative self-empowerment. Making thoughtful and strategic choices about how you live your life can have an enormous impact on your level of satisfaction and enjoyment.

There are three fundamental, ongoing, and interrelated activities involved in strategically living your life. They are: creating a plan, keeping track of results and altering your course based on those results and the unanticipated surprises life brings your way. A good strategist needs a great sense of humor and an appreciation for the power of the unknown because no matter how thoughtful and thorough your planning techniques, life will throw you curve balls. It’s humbling, but the alternative of having no plan means being at the effect of your life rather than being an active participant and driving force.

Our lives tend to be very complex and to include conflicting priorities and demands on our time. A seasoned life strategist is like a juggler trying to simultaneously stay on course with specific plans for each major aspect of his or her life. For example, you might have plans for your spiritual life, family, career, finances, etc. For a novice planner, I suggest picking the one area of your life where you are experiencing the greatest challenges and starting there. As you stabilize one area of your life, develop a plan for another aspect and learn to develop skill in making the tradeoffs that are necessary between the various aspects of your life.

Whether strategically planning for your entire life or just one area, here are some suggestions:

When developing your plan:

    • Begin by identifying what you value most that is essential to your success and happiness.
    • Take stock of your resources.
    • Set one to three measurable goals that are in alignment with your values and realistic in terms of your resources. For example, “I want to lose five pounds by November 1, 2013” rather than “I want to lose weight.”
    • For each goal, develop a plan of action — what specifically needs to be done, when, where, and by whom to achieve success?
    • Consider who else will be affected by you pursuing your plan and enlist their support.
    • Always remember that reality will never match your plans — be a good sport and expect unanticipated occurrences.

When keeping track of results:

    • Set up some consistent method of keeping track of how well you are doing as you move forward in time. How will you know if you are on course or not to achieve your desired result?
    • Create a visual measurement tool. For example, if you are working to lose weight, you might record your weight every morning.
    • Be honest with yourself, pay attention to results, and respond and adapt accordingly.

When altering your course:

    • Use your feedback as feed forward. You will never know ahead of time what is going to happen. Don’t give up because life is different or harder than you expected. Just alter your expectations and plans as needed and expect that to be part of the process. After all, it’s not so much about reaching the finish line as it is a matter of developing your skills and abilities and doing your best.

Ultimately, strategic living is an organic process of fully engaging in your own life. So dream, imagine and plan for your heart’s desire to manifest in your life. Our dreams are much more fun when we actually bring them to life.

/by

Obesity, Addiction, and Repression – Part 2

Part 1 of this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-johnson/addiction-recovery_b_1929196.html addressed the dynamics of excess body weight being a side effect of addiction whereby food is used to repress and numb unbearable (often unconscious) emotional content.  In other words, in order to really understand the dynamics of weight gain and loss, we need to shift our focus away from obesity as the result of the simple physiological equation of calories in and calories out.  Instead, we need to consider that the real problem is the emotional weight that put the physical pounds on in the first place.  In order to maintain a physical weight loss, we have to lose the corresponding emotional weight as well.

 

Part 2 now speaks to emotional weight loss.  There are all kinds of physiological theories about why the vast majority of people who lose weight regain the lost pounds and then some.  My own experience on this journey has given me a different answer.  As mentioned in Part 1, I engaged in deep inner work using NET (Neuro-Emotional technique) http://www.netmindbody.com/for-patients/an-explanation-of-net for two and a half years before being ready to begin my physical weight loss. Since writing Part 1 of this article, I went on to cooperate with ease and grace through the process of losing a total of 126 of the 144 pounds I wanted to lose.  Then I hit a wall and suddenly began to revisit my addictive behavior of acting out with chocolate and becoming less rigorous with my weight loss program for a period of five months. I regained about 20 pounds. The good news is I am not horrified!  I know this is not simply a matter of me lacking discipline and being helpless and hopeless.  I don’t believe that it is just a matter of time before I regain all 126 pounds and then some.  Instead I have a new perspective that has to do with the correlation between my physical and emotional weight loss.

 

Throughout my weight loss, I continued to work with an NET practitioner.  Then, some events in my current life triggered yet another pile of deeply repressed emotional issues coming up for release.  I think my addictive acting out was an act of self-protection whereby I was trying to keep these emotions at bay as I had in the past – that was my go-to method of self-protection.  Much like pulling up a blanket when cold, I had lost 126 pounds of physical weight, but only 106 pounds of emotional weight and felt the need to pull back on those 20 pounds to protect myself while catching up with my emotional weight loss.  I simply wasn’t ready to maintain the smaller physical body yet let alone to lose the additional 18 pounds that would have brought me to my target weight.  It freaked me out at first until I recognized that my “acting out with chocolate” was happening for a very good reason.  This was simply a red flag letting me know that my physical weight loss was getting ahead of my emotional weight loss and I had more inner work to do before I could continue to lose more pounds.

 

I no longer see this as gaining or losing weight or the battle that typically represents.  Rather, I am inhabiting my life’s journey with greater conscious understanding and compassion.  I see now that when I entered into addictive eating again (which had been gone for a year and a half), that was an act of self-protection in relationship to emotional content I had not yet released that was being triggered by events in my current life.  Seen in that context, it’s far less scary and far more manageable.  The answer was NOT to stop eating the chocolate, but to figure out what emotional experience I was attempting to protect myself from.  The good news is I am finding my answers and beginning to drop weight again.  I have come to realize more deeply than ever before that this entire process is FOR me – even the regaining of lost weight.

 

I strongly suspect that I am not the only one challenged with body weight issues for whom this is true and perhaps this is a key to all addictive behaviors.  We seem to focus too much on stopping the out of control behavior and not enough on what throws us into these coping mechanisms and why.

 

I think it is interesting to note that we live in a society that doesn’t even have lingo for emotional health.  We speak of physical and mental health, but not of emotional health.  We are highly complex creatures with conscious and unconscious physical, mental, and emotional dynamics all intertwined.  Unraveling the knots takes courage, willingness, time, patience, wisdom, and in many cases – competent help.

 

Here are some of the specific things I have learned on this journey of releasing my excess physical and emotional weight:

  • Sometimes the experiences and emotions that were repressed from childhood look very minor through our adult eyes, but at the time may have been overwhelming to us, and so we buried them and have avoided them ever since.
  • Rather than freaking out at a backslide, it helps to explore its origins with self compassion and the assumption that it is simply feedback that you have some more inner work to do to prepare yourself to be able to sustain further physical weight loss.
  • Long-term weight loss is a balancing act of physical, mental, and emotional dynamics.
  • Don’t give up because of a backslide or if the rate of your weight loss isn’t keeping up with your desired timetable.   Stay present in the reality you are experiencing and work with that reality rather than trying to change reality.

 

/by

Obesity, Repression, and Addiction – Part One

For many of us who struggle with excess body weight, “success” in losing weight is soon followed by regaining those pounds and then some.  Just now, at the age of 64, I am recognizing why this has been happening to me and perhaps to many others.  I have long suspected that the answer that would break me free of this yo-yo pattern is psychological rather than a matter of finding the right diet.  We are told that fat serves as a protection.  I found that it was not the fat that I was using to protect myself, but rather my food addictions were my method of protection.  Obesity was a byproduct.

Since self-judgment only adds fuel to the fire, I choose to view this issue with curiosity and without judgment.  To support myself in figuring out what I was doing to sabotage my ability to maintain a healthy weight, I have worked for 2 ½ years with a practitioner of NET (Neuro-Emotional Technique).  According to www.net.com, “NET is a mind-body technique that uses a methodology of finding and removing neurological imbalances related to the physiology of unresolved stress.”  For me, NET offers an amazing way to bypass conscious and unconscious defense mechanisms to get at the originating cause of an issue that is currently manifesting in my body and my life.

I began working with NET for the sole purpose of finding out why I had been unable to remove and keep off my excess body weight.  Essentially what I found was that the repression of emotions is a survival mechanism held in place through addiction.  In my case, since my addiction of unconscious choice was food, the byproduct of this pattern was obesity.

Here’s how it worked for me – from my infancy until my father’s death, the psychological message I consistently received from him and internalized was that I was somehow fundamentally unacceptable.  This same message came from one of my siblings as well and continues to this day.  As an adult, I have done everything possible to heal these relationships but whenever coming face to face with this rejection, and the absence of love from them it hurt at the core of my being.  While I am able to cope with the occasional, yet always unpleasant, encounter as an adult, as a child they were a devastating and constant barrage.  As a matter of survival, I repressed my feelings and fears about being deemed essentially unworthy, unlovable, and unacceptable.  Over time, I accumulated an enormous reserve of repressed, unmanageable emotions.  No matter how I worked on myself as an adult and how well I learned to cope with current encounters, I never recognized or acknowledged the emotional pain and stress I had been unable to endure as a child nor the fact that I was carrying this trauma around with me like a beach ball held under water.  Apparently, not being aware of this nor feeling safe to feel what had been emotionally life-threatening to me as a child, I unconsciously held it below the surface.  What I have come to realize is that I accomplished this in two important ways through my addictions.  First, they were my way of numbing the pain and keeping it on an unconscious level until I was ready to deal with opening Pandora’s box.  No wonder I would regain the weight whenever I lost it – I had been depriving myself of my addictions which were my protection – my repression mechanism!  Secondly, I had been embodying the message of my unworthiness through obesity – perhaps the most shameful and socially visible of all unacceptable, albeit taboo, ways of being.  Other addictions you can hide, while obesity is in your face.

So, here’s an irony to this – if my sibling had not continued to treat me with such distain, I might never have put this pattern together and found my path to freedom.  So, thank you to all those who have pushed this button to get me to this point of liberation!

You might wonder, how do I know I have broken free of this pattern?  The answer is simple.  First, for three months now, I have not experienced any food compulsions.  I have been to a wedding reception attended by my sibling and on vacation for a week recently and neither one triggered the usual desires or excuses for “treating myself.”  Secondly, I am steadily and easily losing weight without the fear of regaining it.  For the first time, I am confident that I will be able to sustain a healthy weight.  Third, I am going through an emotional release very similar to grieving where weeping simply rises to the surface and spills out of me seemingly unprovoked.  The tension and stress of holding down this childhood trauma is finding expression and finally being replaced by a profound sense of inner peace.

If you can relate to my story and suspect that something similar might be going on inside of you with whatever your addiction(s) of choice might be, here are some suggestions:

-Set the intention of compassionately understanding and freeing yourself.

-Make time for introspection to explore your own situation and to get below your storyline.  Be a non-judgmental, curious detective and ask yourself questions like: “What awful truth do I suspect is true about me?” and “How did I get the idea that that was true about me?”  “How did I cope with this as a child?”

-Believe and affirm to yourself that it is possible for you to be free from your addictions.  Don’t tell yourself that you are an addictive personality, or that you are too far gone but rather be open to the idea that your addictions have been serving and protecting you in some way until you can get to the place where you don’t need them anymore.  See them as a survival mechanism rather than as your downfall.

-Find someone wonderful to facilitate and bear witness to your journey.  This might be a personal coach, therapist, NET practitioner, etc.  Just be sure it is someone you feel emotionally safe with and whose skill impresses you.

-Be patient.  This may take longer than you would like, but know that it is possible.  On the way, avoid judging yourself and the ongoing expression of your addictions.  The healing process can often be invisible at times, but trust that it is happening.

When we are children, we don’t have the psychological resources to protect ourselves from the atrocities that others may inflict upon us.  This trauma is often stored somehow in our bodies.  Repression and other defense mechanisms help us to survive until we can hold our own in the world.  However, the damage done to us while children must itself be healed and released in addition to understanding and freeing ourselves from the related difficulties experienced in adulthood.

/by

Do challenges devastate you or define you?

As a life coach, I spend a lot of time helping clients to pay close attention to their autopilot reaction to challenges in their lives. What you consider to be challenges and how you respond to them are defining factors in the quality of your life.

Next time your sense of well-being is disturbed, try the following 5-step process and see if it leads you in a better direction. Don’t be surprised if you get stuck on the first step. This is profound work and doesn’t happen overnight. The key is to keep practicing with deep personal honesty until this response comes naturally to you.

1. Attitude: Your attitude will pre-determine your ability to work with and learn from life’s challenges each and every time they show up. If you tend to think of them as ‘wrong’ and as ‘things that shouldn’t happen’ then you will automatically be thrown into a defensive and confrontational posture. On the other hand, if you receive them as simply calling you or the situation into question, a more relaxed, self-trusting, and open response is possible. If the same pattern happens again and again, rather than going into high drama defensive victim mode with such thoughts as ‘here we go again,’ ‘this always happens to me,’ ‘everyone else . . . ’ or ‘what’s wrong with me?’ try another point of view. Rather than suffering through the challenges that come your way, consider embracing your life as a perfectly customized journey of learning, growing and healing. Give yourself permission to be vulnerable and to explore your own behavior without trying to justify it as ‘right.’

2. Feel It, Name It, and Rename It: Once you have opened up your attitude and are ready to learn from your experience, take a few deep breaths and focus inward to what it feels like inside of you meeting this unexpected and perhaps undesired experience. Are you scared? Mad? In shock? Be really honest with yourself and name your feelings and name the challenge. For example, I am working through a challenge with my downstairs neighbor. She complains about things like the fact that she can hear my cats running down the hall. This triggers anger in me and I tend to fly into judgment of her as a small-minded person with a princess complex. My mind reels with anger at her choice to make an issue of everything and anything I do that she doesn’t like, rather than choosing to acknowledge all the things that are good about having me for a neighbor and/or choosing to contribute to creating a harmonious shared living environment.

When I look below the surface I see that this trigger relates to a much deeper issue I am working on that has to do with feeling profound sadness when I encounter all the big and little ways that we choose less than the goodness, kindness, and caring that is available to us in our relationships with one another. When I see any presenting irritation in that context, I am better able to respond in a way that encourages my own learning and growth rather than falling into the same old pattern of judgment and self-preservation. When I redefine the true issue at hand in this way, I take ownership of it by recognizing the difference between the deeper issue and the outer trigger of the situation at hand. By renaming the true issue, I can respond more appropriately.

3. Neutral Observation: Neutrality means not belonging to or favoring either side in a challenge. It is the opposite of analyzing and judging the behavior of others as a way to feel righteous or good about yourself. Neutral observation occurs when we choose to activate that part of ourselves that is not IN the situation involved, but rather is able to move around it and look at it and ourselves from many points of view, free of our triggered feelings and thoughts. This is how we gain insight instead of just running the same old reactions from our past. When we are open to a new point of view rather than automatically making the situation, other person, or ourselves ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ our imagination and deeper insights can lead to entirely new and more rewarding ways of seeing what is really going on.

4. Inner Work: Always do your inner work as described in steps 1-3 above before deciding how to respond to the outer situation. Think of the outer situation as merely the hook or trigger that is calling you to finding greater inner freedom. When you have done your inner work, rename the challenge as your own personal learning opportunity as in the example in #2 above. Trust that what comes your way in life is FOR YOU not against you.

5. Outer Work: Having stepped free of your autopilot, knee-jerk reaction to a given challenge by doing your inner work, it becomes fairly easy to choose how you want to respond to or engage in the situation at hand. As tempting as it is, for example, for me to say something judgmental and unkind to my neighbor like ‘get a life,’ or ‘you better be careful or your mind is going to get so small that you’ll lose it altogether,” I have learned that it serves me far better to say something like, ‘yes, isn’t it a happy sound when my cats run down the hall,’ or to quietly say a prayer for the highest good in the situation and to go do my own inner work.

I know these steps seem simple when you read them. I’ve heard many a client dismiss or become irritated by my guidance towards one of these steps, defensively thinking they already know this. But, the name of the game here is not intellectual knowledge, but application. It is in the doing that we learn. Practice, practice, practice and then challenge yourself to take this process deeper and deeper until you really get free.

/by

What Kind of Relationship Do You Have With God?

I was recently on a panel discussion on HuffPost Live about the reality of death and how it can test our faith. We were discussing a post by a teenager named Alice who eloquently expressed her mental and emotional reaction to death and her rage at God for the death of people she cared about. It reminded me how essential it is to take a look at our own assumptions and demands about God and what kind of relationship we have with God.

Our fundamental assumptions and beliefs about the existence or nonexistence of God and what kind of god we imagine informs how we live our life. Like Alice, people of all ages rage at God for not conforming to their expectations of what and how God should be. Alice said “…but there’s something about sitting at the funerals of people who were close to me that makes me want to kill God.”

So, how do we kill God? And then what happens? This kind of rage at God is essentially a mental construct. Let’s use the example of turning against God when someone you love dies. The typical sequence of events goes something like this: We attribute the occurrence that we did not like or understand to God. We then decide that the intensity of the grief or hurt we experience is incompatible with the actions of a loving God. We conclude that God therefore cannot be loving or worthy of our belief. We resolve the tension between reality and our beliefs by rejecting God. The only thing this really accomplishes is to make us feel more in control of the situation. We fire the inadequate god of our imagination and take on the job of god ourselves. But what “god” are we getting rid of: God or the god of our imagination?

When we demand that “God” make sense to us we are dealing with a very small god. This is a god limited by the human mind, imagination and perceptual capabilities. It is a god in our image. In the grander scheme of the vast and complex universe we inhabit and those that lie beyond our knowledge, that’s a very puny god.

What if God were so beyond our capacity to comprehend or talk about that the only valid response was what Rudolf Otto, author of “The Mysterium Tremendum,” refers to as drop jaw awe? What if everything that happens is somehow perfect for all involved? What if God is really worthy of our awe, gratitude and love? What if the real problem is not God, but rather our limited thinking?

The questions of God’s existence or nature and the spiritual dimension of life are the most profound inquiries we can explore. It is an adventure of the heart, body, mind and soul in a maze filled with shortcuts and dead ends. Many reach the dead end of demanding satisfactory proof of God’s existence and perceiving none conclude that God does not exist. Others, like myself, can’t get past the glory and beauty and wonder of a tree and spend a lifetime seeking a deeper attunement with God. This is not a quest for the faint of heart, but for me, the blessings have been magnificent.

I like telling people that I don’t believe in God. The truth is that after many years of intentionally focusing on building my awareness of God, a life-threatening car accident in 1997 brought me over the threshold from belief in God to knowing God’s existence and presence in my life. My knowledge of God is beyond words, or my mind, and is not transferable to others. I consider it a blessing beyond anything else I could imagine receiving in my life. My primary identity has transitioned from that of a woman with certain mental, emotional and physical characteristics to knowing myself as a divine being having a human experience as that woman.

I don’t think any of us should settle for a god that is unworthy of our love and awe. So, if your god seems too small for you, consider exploring the following questions:

  • How do you define God?
  • What assumptions do you make about God?
  • What limitations do you place on God? For example, do you think you should always be happy or that people, especially children, shouldn’t die?
  • Is God a mental concept to you or a guiding force in how you live your life?
  • What kind of relationship do you have with God?
  • What would make your relationship with God better than it is now?
  • What do you think is the purpose of your life?
  • What would have to change for you to know God?

I don’t think anyone is “right” or “wrong” based on what they believe or don’t believe about God. Each of us is wherever we are on these matters and that is our personal truth. However, I do think the question of God’s existence and nature is worthy of our personal attention and exploration. We owe it to each other to respect our differences in this regard for indeed, if I stood in your shoes or you stood in mine we each would see what the other sees — that’s the irony of it all.

 

Please feel free to leave a comment below or to email me at judithjohnson@hvc.rr.com.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or tweet it or share it on Facebook.

If you would like to suggest a topic for a future blog or ask me to address a particular situation or issue, please email at the address above and I will see what I can do.

/by
,

7 Tips for Talking About Health and Money With Elderly Parents

Not since your conversation about the birds and the bees have you and your parents faced such a difficult conversation. Sooner or later, adult children and their elderly parents need to talk about the parents’ medical, financial and legal affairs. The inescapable truth is that at some point the responsibility will fall upon the children to ensure the quality of the parents’ care, to carry out their wishes and to finalize their personal affairs. Having an effective dialogue about this will depend on the family’s unique circumstances, the parent’s mental, emotional and physical condition and the quality of family relationships. Here are seven tips for successfully discussing these sensitive private matters.

Above all else, be gentle, kind, loving and supportive – treat your parents as you would wish to be treated.

I welcome your comments.

If you would like to suggest a topic for a future blog or ask me to address a particular situation or issue, please email me here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

/by

5 Steps To Finding Your Individuality

When it comes to going after what you love in life,
don’t take “NO” for an answer.
— Regina Brett

Much of our stress and dis-ease in life is caused by living a life that does not resonate with our own inner truth. We hide from ourselves and each other in big and little ways each day. We find ourselves blaming and judging other people, our situation or circumstances for our unhappiness, not realizing that its deeper source lies within us. In failing to recognize and honor our own truth, we sacrifice our own well-being. Why do we do this? I’ve noticed that it is usually for one of three reasons — either we sacrifice ourselves to please or support others, to conform to social norms, or we are too afraid of what might happen if we really gave ourselves permission to be fully ourselves.

Having it your way doesn’t mean that we should all be selfish, greedy and self-centered. Rather, it is about being honest and true to ourselves by living life as a reflection of our inner truth. This takes courage and ruthless personal honesty.

Each of us has a unique set of preferences, needs, talents and abilities that affect how we see ourselves in the world and how others see us as well. Among the strongest influences on our identity are our gender, race, family, socioeconomic affiliations, culture, moment in history, etc. No matter how similar we are to another, each of us has our very own unique way. Just as we might prefer to “hold the pickle, hold the lettuce” on our burger, we each have a personal sensibility about many things in life. We might prefer the country to the city or the color turquoise to red. We might have a great voice, tremendous business acumen or parenting skills. Being conscious of your own talents, abilities, preferences and deeply held beliefs and values is the foundation upon which you can build your life your way.

Each of us is an original and can’t be replaced. When we fail to recognize and celebrate who we are, it is a collective as well as a personal loss. The less we live as who we are the less alive we are. Knowing ourselves and what we are capable of contributing is not only personally liberating, but socially responsible as well. This doesn’t mean that we are all meant to be stars. Many of us contribute quietly or to only a small group. The point is to be who we really are and to give our best. Anything less cheats us all.

If you are feeling out of sync with yourself or with the world, the following five steps will help you find your way to living your life your way.

Step 1:  Develop the Willingness and Ability to Recognize Your Own Inner Truth:  Many of us have only a vague sense of what matters to us, yet we are quick to judge anyone who doesn’t agree with us as though the whole world should share our point of view.  It takes time and intention to get below this surface level of encountering life to develop a clear understanding of who we are and what really matters to us so we can live from the inside out.  Paying attention inwardly is essential to really getting to know ourselves.  The truth is we all hear voices in our heads – unfortunately, for many of us the voices of fear, doubt, self-sabotage and judgment often speak the loudest.  Listen for the voice that values you, your skills and abilities and is always there to encourage you on to find the courage and creativity to face whatever life brings your way.  This is the innocent yet powerful voice of your true self.

Step 2:  Develop the Courage and Commitment to Honor and Embrace Your Truth: Once you have come to recognize the voice of your own inner truth, create a routine of checking in at least once a day to see if you are on track.  If you are facing difficult challenges, a lot more inner focus will be required.  Ask yourself questions like: “When was I on course/off course today?”  “What is working for me and what is not?”  “How can I tell the difference?”  Listen and notice if the negative voices try to insert their point of view.  Their ultimate message is always to give up and see yourself as a failure and/or as unworthy of what really matters to you.  It is important to become conscious of what they are saying to you because only then can you do something about it.  Assert your own power by refuting the negative remarks.  Respond to inner negativity by reframing your perspective in a way that you can see your own courage and goodness and build upon that.

Step 3:   Trust Yourself No Matter How Uncharted the Territory:    No matter how long you have been afraid or following someone else’s lead, the opportunity is always there to wake up and get into the driver’s seat in your own life.  If you haven’t done so yet, why not now?  Everything in life involves choices and trade-offs.  No matter how high a mountain of change might look to you, always remember you progress one step at a time and you get to control your pace.  The more you trust yourself and the wisdom of honoring your own truth, the easier it will become to make this your normal way of behaving.

 Step 4:  Give Yourself Permission to Be Happy:  Remember Henry Ford’s famous quote: “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”   We die a little each day when we don’t believe that we have the right to live according to what is true for us.  The willingness to be happy gives us the ability to be happy.  Try it!

Step 5: Practice Being the Real You Until it Becomes Your Natural Way of Being:                                                                                                                                           The more authentic we become, the happier we get and happiness that is rooted in truth is a beautiful thing.  Since our lives are reflections of our inner relationship with ourselves, a life built on truth is about as good as it gets.

Celebrate and share the gift of who you really are!

/by

Enthusiasm: The Fifth Law of Spirit

The beautiful thing about the sequence of the Laws of Spirit is that it so clearly delineates what needs to happen in our hearts and minds to be open to the flow of God’s wisdom, love, grace, and blessings in our lives. Ultimately, it leads us to the fifth Law of Spirit: enthusiasm. In “non-God” terms, enthusiasm is the state of one’s mind and emotions where we are free of personal considerations and open to experience life as it is. Through acceptance, understanding and love it is possible to shift your perspective on whatever person or situation you are dealing with and find yourself in a state of enthusiasm for the perfection of the situation on some level.

In its spiritual interpretation, enthusiasm refers to moving past your mind and emotions to tap into divine energy, or for those who speak in non-God terms, achieving the most clear, pure, open, and free state of consciousness possible, what the Buddhists call “nirvana.” It is an expansion of consciousness beyond the mundane yet evident in how we handle the mundane. It is an expression of those qualities that nurture inner peace, openness, unconditional loving, and awareness of God’s presence in our lives. Enthusiasm is beyond the emotions where every cell of your being is in alignment with what you are doing, you are filled with joy, and synchronicity is familiar territory in your life.

A more common understanding of enthusiasm is that “oh goody, I got what I wanted” feeling — the “I’m so excited I’m getting married,” or “I got a big raise,” or “I got a publishing contract” kind of excitement. Indeed, that is a kind of enthusiasm, but here we are looking at a more profound form — the kind that emanates from your soul.

A great example of enthusiasm came from a reader, Elaine Mansfield, who wrote in regarding last week’s blog on the Fourth Law of Spirit — Love. She described her husband’s way of moving through the last two years of his life with cancer as follows:

Vic was often alarmingly ill and mentally jangled by the medicines and the disease, but decided from the beginning that even though he was too messed up to focus in meditation or study his favorite spiritual teachers, he could be kind to everyone — me, his sons, the nurses, the custodians in the hospital, his students, his doctor. Everyone. As you would expect, he received buckets of love and kindness in return and everyone who helped him get to the other side learned the power of spiritual love and human kindness.

Many people pay lip service to believing in God or a particular spiritual principle. This man demonstrated how to breathe life into his beliefs. What a blessing to all who knew him or hear his story.

Consider if there is a place in your life where you might benefit from some enthusiasm. Ask yourself:

  • What are my deepest beliefs, and how do I live those beliefs?
  • In what area(s) of my life do I play God instead of opening to the divine flow?
  • How might my life be different if I surrendered my willfulness and “won’tfulness?”
  • In what area of my life or in what relationships do I feel out of alignment with my highest self?

I think the human condition makes it pretty difficult to sustain our enthusiasm — unless we are as evolved as the Dalai Lama, who giggles all the time. But it matters in what direction we strive. The quality of our lives depends on it.

Ultimately, enthusiasm is a delightful inner experience that is always available to us. All we have to do is to surrender into it by journeying through the process of acceptance, cooperation, understanding, and love.

I hope you enjoyed this series on the Laws of Spirit and would love to hear your thoughts and comments.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

/by

5 Essentials For Breaking Through Your Negative Thought Patterns

Are you caught in a web of stinking thinking, or are your beliefs the bedrock of your success and happiness? If you want to know why you are happy or not, take a good look at your most fundamental beliefs about yourself. Do you believe that you are the kind of person who is:

  • Worthy and capable of happiness and success?
  • Unlucky in love, life, business, and/or health?
  • In need of proving yourself to others?
  • Blessed with wonderful talents and abilities that you enjoy sharing?

Do you believe that it is someone else’s fault if you are unhappy or not making your dreams come true? Do you run an ongoing inner commentary of your judgments of everyone else and what they do that doesn’t agree with how you imagine you would approach the situation? It is so easy to fall into these traps and not even realize it.

There are five keys to moving out of negative thought patterns and into the territory of greater happiness and success:

  1. Get really fed up. That may be a surprising key, but think about it. Until you are really sick and tired of being sick and tired of how things are going in your life, you are not likely to reach the point of doing anything about it.
  2. Choose to hold yourself accountable. Stop blaming other people and circumstances for your negative thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Embrace the fact that it is not only you who is responsible for what you are currently creating, promoting, and allowing in your life, but you are the only person who has the power to change the direction of your life. Sure, you might be inspired by someone else, but you are the captain of your own ship and will either continue to repeat the same negative patterns on autopilot, make a half-hearted effort to change, or you will one day recognize the power you have to change it all.
  3. Excavate your most fundamental beliefs about yourself. Get intimate with yourself and be ruthlessly honest about how you really feel about yourself. Start with the questions at the beginning of this article and probe deeper with your own inquiries until you are satisfied that you are looking at the truth about how you see yourself.
  4. Change your mind about yourself. I know, easier said than done — but this will not happen without your intention and commitment to set yourself on a healthier and happier course. Do you treat yourself like someone who deserves to be loved, honored, and cherished? If not, why not? How would your life be different if you actually treated yourself in this way?
  5. Be willing to fake it ’til you make it. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and habitual negative patterns of behavior will persist until you stop investing in them. So starve them off and fan the fire of a new and uplifting way of seeing yourself.

Neuroscientists have helped us to understand our freedom and adaptability to changing our individual and collective beliefs and behaviors. Simply put, repetitive thoughts form neural pathways in our brains, as neurons that fire together get wired together. These pathways become like superhighways — the autopilot route traveled. Unless we challenge our thought patterns, they become an unconscious “truth” we live by. The good news is that our brains have the ability to change our synaptic wiring. This “neuroplasticity” enables us to question and change our way of being for better or worse both as individuals and as a society. Use this information to your own advantage by rerouting your superhighways if they aren’t taking you where you want to go.

It is also important to be willing to consider that just because you believe something doesn’t make it true. In reality, most of our beliefs are inherited from other people — parents, religious leaders, teachers, our culture, etc. For example, in my current work to help transform the culture of death in America, I speak and write about the fact that we are taught to fear death and to consider it something that shouldn’t happen. This belief is deeply imbedded in our cultural response to death, and is the cause of much of the pain and suffering experienced in relationship to death. In contrast, those who have achieved some level of existential maturity about the normalcy of death and accept its reality are not only spared the suffering associated with denying and resisting death, but are free to consider other ways of relating to death. For example, they may find life itself sweeter and more precious knowing that time is limited.

Another consideration is the fact that many of the conclusions we reached about ourselves as children or the defense mechanisms we put in place in reaction to those things we couldn’t handle as kids have remained unchallenged autopilot settings of our adult behavior. It is always a good idea to do some spring cleaning in your mind — especially if you are unhappy, feeling hopeless, falling into addictions, or otherwise decreasing your health and vitality. Sometimes you just need to update your software.

Be patient with the process of change. You may have to just keep going deeper until you get to the real root of why you believe what you do. Many years ago, I worked with a woman who was always blaming and judging others for her constant state of depression and misery. Other people, and especially her “friends,” were perpetual sources of disappointment for her. They never seemed to measure up to her ideal of how they “should” behave, which was of course how she would do things — “the right way.” She had no tolerance or appreciation for the nuances of life. Everything was either “right” or “wrong.” Ironically, those behaviors she disapproved of were always where she was placing her focus and expending her energy in resistance and judgment. No wonder she was always so disappointed, disapproving, and disconnected until she finally learned to hold herself accountable for her unhappiness.

It can be humbling to admit our own culpability for our unhappiness, but it’s the only path to personal liberation. Greater happiness awaits — so eat a little humble pie and get on with it! You have the power to believe your heart’s desires into existence.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

/by

Cooperation: The Second Law of Spirit

Cooperation, the second law of spirit, is the proverbial wisdom of making lemonade when you have lemons. You might have been in the mood for ginger ale, but what you have is lemons. So either you go to where the ginger ale is and fulfill that desire, or you stay where you are and make the best darn lemonade you ever had. The key to cooperation is working with what is present rather than working against it with negative expressions of dissatisfaction, judgment, denial, and resistance.

When you encounter a situation and find yourself interpreting it as a matter of someone else hurting you or the situation being unfair to you in some way, try to find the space between the situation and your understanding of it. From that position of neutrality, consider the possibility that you are misreading the situation and that your suffering is a result of that rather than the situation itself. Life happens. Sometimes we like it and sometimes we don’t. When we suffer, it is usually because we are not accepting the situation (the first law of spirit) and therefore cannot move on to cooperating with it. Cooperation is only an option when you are in a state of acceptance. Rather than thinking the other person should change their point of view, consider expanding your perspective so that it is larger than your hurt. See if you can look with compassion at those involved with you and yourself and recognize that you are all doing the best you can and sometimes we bump into each other in unpleasant ways. Cooperation is about responding to those situations in a kind and responsible way for the highest good of all concerned. And that’s not always easy.

Did you ever notice how much easier it is to cooperate with something you like than something you don’t? Yet, even in our enthusiasm, we can sometimes go off the deep end and be out of sync with others involved in the situation. Cooperation is something you do inside yourself, not something you demand or expect from others. It is about achieving balance inside of you and acting from that place.

The key to cooperation is to be of good cheer (or get to good cheer as soon as you can) and to go with the flow of whatever circumstances you find yourself in. Does this mean being passive? Absolutely not! Quite the contrary. It means being fully conscious and responsible for the choices you make and the impact of your behavior on yourself and others.

Consider the following situation I found myself in recently. For two weeks I had been trying to get an appointment with my hairdresser. She offered me a date when I had another commitment, and we went back and forth on emails to no avail. She kept giving me reasons why she couldn’t accommodate me and no options for when she could. I was not of good cheer when I wrote back letting her know that as a client for over 15 years, I was not pleased. I asked if perhaps I was failing to pick up on a hint that I should be looking for a new hairdresser. Her answer, still offering no appointment times, simply said that I wasn’t alone in not being able to get an appointment. Clearly I was getting nowhere with her, and was moving farther and farther away from my good cheer. In anger, I contemplated calling my previous hairdresser. Then I caught myself. I was neither accepting the situation nor cooperating with it. No wonder I was angry! So I ate a little humble pie and admitted to myself that it was neither the situation nor my hairdresser that was responsible for my distress. I caused that all by myself! I forgave myself for getting caught up in this state of affairs and chose to find my way out by first establishing acceptance inside myself. The facts were simple — I wanted an appointment and my hairdresser was unable to accommodate me. Instead of getting mad about it and making her wrong, I decided to look at my options. My hair looked awful and I was going on a trip and needed the psychological lift of an overdue good haircut. Besides, it is wedding season and I need my hair to look good for officiating wedding ceremonies. As I thought this through, I noticed that my anger was gone. I was able to see that it was the cut, not the color, that was most needed. So, I did make an appointment with my previous hairdresser, who happens to also be a friend, and she gave me the haircut I’ve been wanting for months. Then I returned from my trip and found an email from my regular hairdresser to have my hair colored the next day. Pretty good, huh?

Things seem to have a way of working out when we are not spewing forth a lot of negative thoughts, behaviors, and energy. So next time you find yourself resisting your reality, see if you can step free of your point of view and observe the situation from a position of neutrality. All kinds of possibilities and opportunities are visible from an impartial stance that are imperceptible from a biased point of view.

One of the most beautiful things about cooperation is that it allows others to have their needs met as well. That means there can be multiple winners and no one has to lose. In the example of my need for a haircut, I got a great cut, my usual hairdresser got me off her back, and my previous hairdresser got the satisfaction of giving me a great cut and we had the opportunity to spend some time together in our busy lives. That’s a lot of winning. So, next time you get caught in a situation where you are hurt and unhappy, look for a pathway out of it that leads to as much winning as possible for all concerned.

I hope you will tune in next week for the third law of spirit — understanding. Until then, I look forward to your responses and reactions to this piece.

Cooperation, the second law of spirit, is the proverbial wisdom of making lemonade when you have lemons. You might have been in the mood for ginger ale, but what you have is lemons. So either you go to where the ginger ale is and fulfill that desire, or you stay where you are and make the best darn lemonade you ever had. The key to cooperation is working with what is present rather than working against it with negative expressions of dissatisfaction, judgment, denial, and resistance.

When you encounter a situation and find yourself interpreting it as a matter of someone else hurting you or the situation being unfair to you in some way, try to find the space between the situation and your understanding of it. From that position of neutrality, consider the possibility that you are misreading the situation and that your suffering is a result of that rather than the situation itself. Life happens. Sometimes we like it and sometimes we don’t. When we suffer, it is usually because we are not accepting the situation (the first law of spirit) and therefore cannot move on to cooperating with it. Cooperation is only an option when you are in a state of acceptance. Rather than thinking the other person should change their point of view, consider expanding your perspective so that it is larger than your hurt. See if you can look with compassion at those involved with you and yourself and recognize that you are all doing the best you can and sometimes we bump into each other in unpleasant ways. Cooperation is about responding to those situations in a kind and responsible way for the highest good of all concerned. And that’s not always easy.

Did you ever notice how much easier it is to cooperate with something you like than something you don’t? Yet, even in our enthusiasm, we can sometimes go off the deep end and be out of sync with others involved in the situation. Cooperation is something you do inside yourself, not something you demand or expect from others. It is about achieving balance inside of you and acting from that place.

The key to cooperation is to be of good cheer (or get to good cheer as soon as you can) and to go with the flow of whatever circumstances you find yourself in. Does this mean being passive? Absolutely not! Quite the contrary. It means being fully conscious and responsible for the choices you make and the impact of your behavior on yourself and others.

Consider the following situation I found myself in recently. For two weeks I had been trying to get an appointment with my hairdresser. She offered me a date when I had another commitment, and we went back and forth on emails to no avail. She kept giving me reasons why she couldn’t accommodate me and no options for when she could. I was not of good cheer when I wrote back letting her know that as a client for over 15 years, I was not pleased. I asked if perhaps I was failing to pick up on a hint that I should be looking for a new hairdresser. Her answer, still offering no appointment times, simply said that I wasn’t alone in not being able to get an appointment. Clearly I was getting nowhere with her, and was moving farther and farther away from my good cheer. In anger, I contemplated calling my previous hairdresser. Then I caught myself. I was neither accepting the situation nor cooperating with it. No wonder I was angry! So I ate a little humble pie and admitted to myself that it was neither the situation nor my hairdresser that was responsible for my distress. I caused that all by myself! I forgave myself for getting caught up in this state of affairs and chose to find my way out by first establishing acceptance inside myself. The facts were simple — I wanted an appointment and my hairdresser was unable to accommodate me. Instead of getting mad about it and making her wrong, I decided to look at my options. My hair looked awful and I was going on a trip and needed the psychological lift of an overdue good haircut. Besides, it is wedding season and I need my hair to look good for officiating wedding ceremonies. As I thought this through, I noticed that my anger was gone. I was able to see that it was the cut, not the color, that was most needed. So, I did make an appointment with my previous hairdresser, who happens to also be a friend, and she gave me the haircut I’ve been wanting for months. Then I returned from my trip and found an email from my regular hairdresser to have my hair colored the next day. Pretty good, huh?

Things seem to have a way of working out when we are not spewing forth a lot of negative thoughts, behaviors, and energy. So next time you find yourself resisting your reality, see if you can step free of your point of view and observe the situation from a position of neutrality. All kinds of possibilities and opportunities are visible from an impartial stance that are imperceptible from a biased point of view.

One of the most beautiful things about cooperation is that it allows others to have their needs met as well. That means there can be multiple winners and no one has to lose. In the example of my need for a haircut, I got a great cut, my usual hairdresser got me off her back, and my previous hairdresser got the satisfaction of giving me a great cut and we had the opportunity to spend some time together in our busy lives. That’s a lot of winning. So, next time you get caught in a situation where you are hurt and unhappy, look for a pathway out of it that leads to as much winning as possible for all concerned.

I hope you will tune in next week for the third law of spirit — understanding. Until then, I look forward to your responses and reactions to this piece.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

/by