Delving into the many wonders of self has been a journey of discovery and here are five observations I’ve made with ways to transform them.
Image by Rettenberg
Observation 1. The thoughts you think, create the life you now embody.
Thinking is inevitable, you can’t stop your thoughts. They are like a never-ending train moving you toward a destination and without awareness who knows where you’ll end up.
Do you want to live on autopilot or do you want to get in the cockpit and guide your life in a direction of fulfillment, happiness, abundance, and all those other sunny places out there waiting for you to arrive?
If your answer is ‘yes’ then keep an eye on your thoughts and the more you become conscious of what is going on in your mind, the more you will see why you are where you are right now.
Your thoughts are creating your reality
A simple concept to grasp but maybe challenging to accept. The truth is we are moved by what we think on a day-to-day basis. If you are not where you want to be right now, don’t be disheartened because you have the power to change.
How? Becoming aware and having the willingness to change. Everything starts with an intention and so today you could set the following intention.
‘I will master my mind’.
How to do this? Well, start by getting a notebook and writing out your thoughts. Keep it with you all day and begin to stay aware of the repetitive negative thoughts going on in your mind. Don’t let them slip by you unconsciously.
Once you’ve spotted them, write them out in your book because then you have GOT THEM. Ha! Ha! Like a Venus Fly Trap. Snap! No more flying around aimlessly in your head you can now see them clearly on the page.
Time to change these negative reality-driving thoughts into productive empowering ones.
We are going to begin by giving them a makeover, by transforming them into the beauty that truly resides within you.
For example, You could have written down the thought, I never get anything right. Okay, so not a helpful thought. Let’s banish this one. Begin by drawing a table with two columns. Put on the left side the thought, ‘I never get anything right’, and on the opposite side list all the opposing thoughts you can think of to obliterate this current way of thinking.
Here are some examples of opposing thoughts to ‘I never get anything right’.
I tied my shoes right today.
I brushed my teeth right today.
I made a cup of tea just right for me today.
Keep writing your list until you see the statement ‘I never get anything right’ as totally FALSE.
This exercise is a way of building up a court case against your negative thinking patterns. These negative thoughts are all based on a repetitive unconscious pattern you’ve allowed to run on repeat for so long that it’s now become a belief.
A belief is simply a continuous cycle of the same thoughts running over and over in your mind until you believe them to be true.
This is why we need some dedicated time and attention given to our minds to nudge out these repetitive imposter thought patterns.
If you do this exercise on a regular basis and keep repeating the process you’ll soon change the trajectory of your life. Then you will have a new way of thinking which will begin to create a new way of living.
Observation 2. Unconditional Love starts with YOU!
Loving yourself is so important, just like breathing if you don’t love yourself then the opposite is true and this will cause a cascade of negative effects not just in your life but for those that surround you.
When you have no love for yourself, how can you love anyone else? Just like putting on a life jacket, if you don’t save yourself first, you can’t save anyone else.
This is why it’s so important to start taking steps toward being kind to yourself, as it will change how good you feel inside and the world at large too. The world needs more loving people and it’s down to us individually to create a better future for this planet.
Small steps lead to big changes
We have a lot of trauma in our past, and our parent’s past, and their parent’s past and so we have a long generational chain of pain linked to our bodies and minds.
Blaming our families for this pain won’t make it go away. Our parents learned their toxic behaviour from their parents and so they don’t know any different. I am not saying it is right, or to be disregarded but if you are able to see the chain of events that have led to your current circumstances then you have a golden opportunity to break the bonds of your ancestral past.
Again just like Observation 1 when we become aware of our negative thoughts, we can start to become aware of the ‘chain of pain’, (the painful chains that link us to our past) and this can begin a process of transformation.
This isn’t always an easy process because family members or partners are usually are biggest pain triggers. Meaning they are good at bringing to light the suppressed pain inside of us and often we don’t want to deal with this discomfort instead we would rather suppress it.
The best thing to do if you are triggered by someone is to leave the situation and go somewhere you can be alone, if possible. You don’t want to react unconsciously, you want to notice the jolt of emotion that has arisen up inside of you.
Take your focus off the other person completely and onto YOU. Feel your body, focus on the anger or the sadness whatever emotion is present. Allow it to flow freely, be the witness of the energy, and feel it fully.
This can bring a great release within you if you can just be present with the emotion rather than respond immediately. You want to wait until it eventually subsides and it will, then you can respond accordingly.
Remember, we have to be our own loving partners, as no one can truly fill that cup. No one can make you happy, or sad, or angry, everything is within your power.
A great resource I highly recommend to shift your mind from pain to love is the book, A Course In Miracles. It‘s a book/workbook which offers 365 lessons to gently guide you out of the darkness and into the light. I took the course in 2021 and videoed my journey on YouTube. You can check it out here: ACIM YouTube Channel
Observation 3. Relationships are your biggest teachers
This understanding really helps you to see relationships from a new vantage point. You can become curious to see how your interactions with others are always teaching you something about yourself.
If someone manages to push your emotional buttons, be on alert, and become your own detective searching for the source of the emotion inside of you. Ask yourself, ‘What did they say or do that caused me to respond in this way?’ Then wait patiently for your mind to bring forth the answers.
Many of these deep emotions are seeds planted from our childhood experiences. They can come from many sources like your parents, teachers, friends or peers. Only you know the answer if you allow yourself the solitude and time to find out.
There are many ways to do this and a great book I have found to help with inner child work is Home Coming by John Bradshaw.
Bradshaw beautifully portrays the development process and how to re-parent yourself at every stage within your childhood and teenage years.
Observation 4. Your core values are your guides
What you value most in life is what directs your life. Do you have strong values? Do you even know what your core values are?
Value definition: Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor.
To find out what your core values are, ask yourself. What is of key importance in my life? Your answer could be family, career, money, happiness, freedom, self-respect, authenticity, and on and on I could go.
Choose five key values and write them down.
There are many core value lists online to give you ideas if you are struggling to think of five.
Once you have your list of five, it’s time to look at your life. Are you living by those values? For example, if you put family down as one of your core values, are you giving enough time and attention to your family? If not, how could you alter your life to align with this value?
If you are living by your values, then great, hats off to you. However, maybe after writing out these values, you see you are not aligned with some or all of them. This could show you why you might be discontent with your life and where you could make some improvements to bring these values into balance.
Knowing your core values really can show you a lot about where your life is headed and if it’s going in the direction you want. With awareness, you can steer your life ship to the destination you desire.
Observation 5. Letting go of perfection is how to succeed
Being a perfectionist can be debilitating, trust me I know being one myself. You can spend many painstaking hours correcting things to the point of exhaustion.
The cure is not out with perfectionism and in with imperfection. The cure is to release the control around the things that really aren’t important.
For example, say you wanted to write a book and you can’t get past the first paragraph without it being perfect. Not only does this slow down the creative process, it also can stop you even getting started. You can give up at the first paragraph out of sheer frustration, as you won’t allow for ANY mistakes.
Mistakes are part of life, we all make them, and trying to avoid them is impossible. When you can let go and allow yourself the freedom to make a mistake, it is liberating. As you always have the option to course correct and the added bonus of learning from your mistakes.
Perfectionism like many of the observations I have already highlighted can come from our childhood experiences. You may have had an overly critical parent or teacher and so you’ve learned to fear failure. You’ve been made to feel bad for making mistakes. Once you realise where this need to be perfect comes from you can begin to work on changing it.
With all these observations AWARENESS is the key ingredient. To know thyself and why you do the things you do can unlock barriers allowing you to step into a freer and happier YOU.
I hope these observations have given you some food for thought.
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Sending my appreciation for your time and attention.