You are amazing

(From UA blog).

Here’s a little game to play.   I think things work better when they’re fun.

You know how it is, when your sink gets blocked up and you need something to go down, and unclear all the gunk?  Well this phrase is a bit like a spring  clean for your heart.

Here it is…

“I am amazing”.

So here’s the game:

Repeat this phrase to yourself over and over.  What you’ll probably find (unless you’ve already done a lot of work on yourself) is that you’ll come up with a whole lot of resistance.  Such as, “That’s not right because… (you can fill in the blanks yourself)”

This phrase is a sink un-bunger.

The more you repeat the phrase, the more the resistances you have to it, will come up.

“I’m not amazing because he left me,” or, “I’m not amazing because Sharon said I was fat,” or “I’m not amazing because so and so called me a loser”…   It’s surprising how many un-useful things we store!

But what happens, when you keep on repeating this, is that you reveal all of those lingering negative beliefs you hold about yourself.  And those limiting beliefs are the gunk in your drain-pipe.  They need clearing!  They’re blocking your energy and you really don’t need them anymore.

Have fun!

Dear feelings…

Dear feelings,

Firstly I want to say thank you.  You may not have always been right, and sometimes you were downright too sensitive, but I know you were only trying to protect me and keep me safe.

I know now that I just need to allow myself to acknowledge you – whether you are wrong or right.

And then I can set you free.

Love, Joy xxx

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We live in a world where we are taught not to express our feelings very often.  Only some types of feelings are okay.  The other feelings, the ones that other people find uncomfortable, we are often trained to repress and hold in – so that we don’t always feel safe to express them or feel that they are valued.

But feelings are feelings – whether they are right or wrong and they just want to be heard and acknowledged.  It’s okay to express them, even if only to yourself.  Maybe by writing a letter that you”ll never send, or having a conversation with someone only in your head…as long as the feelings get heard and acknowledged – that’s the main thing.  That’s all feelings want.

Your feelings may not always right.  I know that sometimes my feelings are really whiffy and far too sensitive,  but they are still feelings.  Repressing them doesn’t help.  So many times you hear the words, “Think positive, think positive,” and they are wise words, but if you don’t let out the feelings first, it’s like putting make-up on a dirty face.  The feelings will stay there, until you let them out.  Until you acknowledge them.

When you repress a feeling, what you are really doing is pushing it back down inside yourself when all it wants to do is come up and come out.  Feelings are like apples placed in water, if you push them down to the bottom of the container, the first thing they are going to do when you let go is pop up to the surface again.  Trying to stop that is like fighting against gravity – it’s a losing battle.  Feelings are drawn to the surface, just as surely as gravity draws our feet to the ground.

So it seems that the simplest answer is to let them pop up – because that’s what they are meant to do (by some unknown law of nature).  And the wonderful thing is when you let them do that, they very often don’t bother you anymore.  You might get a new set of feelings about something else – but not those old ones.

So even if they’re wrong, or even if they’re uncomfortable, know that until you let them ‘pop up’, they won’t go away.  Pushing them down only makes them want to pop up again – that seems to be their nature.  They just want to be heard and acknowledged.  And just doing that releases them and sets them free.

So even if they’re wrong, even if other people don’t agree with them, even if you don’t agree with them, still let them be heard and acknowledged and that helps to release them.

What is your purpose in life?

It’s an often asked question and one that can seem very difficult to answer.  But I think the answer is quite simple: just to be yourself and let the real you out.

To follow your heart, to listen to your inner wisdom, to believe in your dreams… to just allow yourself to be who you really are.

It’s true that some people may not understand you, or agree with you, but what they think is none of your business.

Your job, your mission, is to simply be you – that is your purpose.

A flower does not ask what is its purpose, it is just itself.

Be happy for no reason whatsoever

Babies are our most amazing teachers.  They know all about being joyful and happy.

They don’t need a certain kind of job, or a certain kind of car or house, or a certain kind of income, or lifestyle, to qualify their moments of sheer glee.

They also know how to live in the moment.  Going from tears in their eyes to giggles in their bellies, in the twinkle of an eye.

Truth is, you don’t need anything to make you happy.  It is simply a way of being.  It doesn’t have to be earned or worked for; it is simply a choice.  And a choice of simplicity.

If my cup is full then…

If my cup is overflowing, if I am full, if I am already complete then…

I do not need to ask anyone for a ‘top up’,
I do not need to ask for acceptance if I accept myself,
I do not need anyone to tell me that I’m okay, if I already trust that I am.

If my cup is overflowing, if I love and accept myself, exactly as I am, with all my flaws and imperfections, with all my good qualities, with all my mistakes, with all my triumphs then…

I free myself,
I free myself from self-criticism and hate,
I free myself from guilt,
I free myself from shame.

If my cup is overflowing, if I am so full of love for myself, then…

I have more than enough love to share,
I can be generous and not stash love like a squirrel,
I can trust that there will always be more, that life is abundant,
I can give and receive love freely.

If my cup is overflowing, and I feel truly happy then…

I can share my happiness with all those around me,
I can be like a ray of sunshine on a cold winters day,
I can light up a room, and warm a lonely day,
I can be radiant.

May my cup be overflowing, may I be a gift to this world and to myself.

Thank you Universe.

Just do you

I just want to remind that you that there is no-one on the planet, just like you.

You are special, unique and an important part of this world.

Don’t go comparing yourself to others.  If others have success, so can you.  There is no limit on the goodness available.

Just be you.

Why not take some time to appreciate yourself today?

Maybe, you could write a list of all the good things you’ve done in your life.  Or the struggles you’ve overcome.  Or the things that no-one else can do, just like you.

Take stock of yourself and where you’ve been.  Be proud of you and what you have achieved and learned.

There is no-one in the world quite like you.  There is no-one that laughs like you, thinks like you, smiles like you, loves like you.

You are unique and nature made you exactly as you are for a reason.  You are perfectly imperfect you!

Finding the calm within

In a sense, it doesn’t matter what is going on around you.  It doesn’t matter what the circumstances of your life are.

There is still within you a quiet place.  A place of serenity.  A place of joy.  A place of calmness.  A place of safety and security.

I have found this to be true on many occasions in my life.

There is a way to remove yourself from the swirl of life going on around you and just re-connect with your inner energy again.

This is very powerful.  It can hold you steady in a storm.  It can give you light when all seems dark.  In can give you serenity when all around you is noisy.

Some may call it meditation.  Some may call it day-dreaming.  Some may call it escapism.

It really doesn’t matter what you call it.  The important thing is, that this place, this place within you, is a source of strength and power that you can call upon at any time.  And it simply requires you to switch off from your chattering busy mind, slow it all down and re-connect with yourself.

My Granddad served in the Eighth Army in World War Two and he told me so many tales of life in the desert.  But one of the stories he told me really stuck in my mind.

On the way out to Africa, the Eighth Army travelled by boat.  They used an old meat boat to sail.  Any boat or vessel would do in those desperate times.  And as they travelled, they would come under attack from submarines.

My Grandad used to laugh as he recalled that he let nothing come between him and his sleep.  He’d boast that,  “I can sleep on a clothes line!”

So regardless of the bombing and noise and attacks, every night, at a set time he would settle down to sleep and sleep for the entire night.  However, his sergeant was a worrying kind of a man.  And rather than sleep, he would spend the whole night walking up and down, and up and down, on edge and ever watchful for the next danger.

My Grandad recalled that one morning, after a particularly bad night of bombing, he awoke to find that his sergeant had gone completely grey overnight.  Completely grey overnight!  Now that’s what worrying can do for you.

And the thing is, they both survived the war.  Regardless of all the bombings, they both survived and came home to the UK to start rebuilding their lives.  But my Grandad came back relatively un-scarred, and with a head full of black hair, whilst his sergeant came back with white hair and needed extensive treatment for his nerves.

So within, the most stressful of circumstances, even with the threat of death hanging in the air,  my Grandad found a way to remove himself from the fear and worry of his situation, and give himself a great night’s sleep.  Now that’s what I call strength!

List 10 things that are great about you

Sometimes I hear people say how ‘no good’ they are or how ‘useless’ they are and it makes me feel so sad.

Every one has value and it’s a real shame that no-one has told them that.  Or they haven’t been told enough.

I think it was Mother Theresa that said: “There is more hunger for love and appreciation today, than there is for food”.

So with that in mind…

If you are inclined…

Why not write yourself a list of 10 things about you that are GREAT.  If no-one is cheering for you in your corner, then be your own cheerleader.  Love is one of the most important things in life and it starts with yourself.

So please take a moment to appreciate the person that you are.  Starting from now!

Want to read my list (to get some inspiration)?  Okay.

1. When I smile at a stranger I know it cheers them up.
2. I’m good at encouraging people.
3. I admit when I’m wrong.
4. I can keep a secret.
5. I’ve grown from my mistakes.
6. I have raised a wonderful daughter.
7. Although my life hasn’t been particularly easy, I’ve never given up.
8. I’m an optimist.
9. I’m friendly.
10. I have nice eyes

I’m not being big headed.  It is okay to appreciate yourself.  When you have love for yourself it’s so much easier to have love for others.  What are 10 great things about you?

What is reality, really?

Reality is a funny thing.

What I see and what someone else sees could be two different things entirely, even when we look at exactly the same thing.

We see the world through the filter of our own perceptions.  Our perceptions are shaped by our own experiences.

How we see the world is not so much how it is, but how we understand it to be.

Reality is a funny thing.

Our minds get programmed along the way; by our experiences, our feelings, the people around us, by school, work, television…so many things go into shaping our perception of the world and our own very personal realities.

We are like computers.  And once we are programmed, our minds tend to run along repeating tracks, replacing the newness and wonder that we experienced as babies.

When we hear a new song that moves us, it touches our hearts or gets our feet tapping.  It moves us in some way but when that song gets replayed over and over, then it looses its appeal.  The song hasn’t changed but it has become familiar to us and we stop ‘feeling’ it in the same way.  Just like a room fragrance – on the first day it smells fresh and divine but after day thirty, we can no longer smell it anymore.  The fragrance is there but our brain has filtered it out and we simply don’t notice it or smell it anymore.

Our brains are filtering our experience.  So to fully experience life and all its wonders becomes quite elusive at times.

We make assumptions about people and things and we don’t even realise that we are doing it.  Our filtering just kicks in.

We limit our possibilities because we do not imagine bigger.  We see things as we see things and don’t imagine they could be any different but they can be very different.

We like to label things and think that gives us a quick understanding.  That old question, when you are meeting someone new: “What do you do for a living?”  It’s a way of quickly trying to work out who a person is and what they are about.  But a job title tells you very little about a person. Stereotypes fall into the same category.

There is shamanistic ritual in which they rename every object in use.  So, a spoon gets renamed as a fish and a plate gets renamed as a hook and so on.  It is done, so that things become fresh and real again and are seen for what they are, rather than being labelled.

We label things, we label others and we label ourselves.  We assign to ourselves different labels – we could be too this or too that, a failure, too sensitive, too fat, not good at this, not good at that and by labeling ourselves we define our experience and make it so.  And we so often live within these boundaries as if the walls were as real as if they were built with bricks.

Imagine giving yourself a new name now and a new list of labels.  Instead of being Shirley, you are Clarissa.  Shirley is a bit slow, a bit overweight, a bit of waste of time frankly.  But Clarissa – well she’s something else; she’s funny, she’s classy, she is in a league of her own.

Imagine being like an actress, playing a part.  Instead of doing the Shirley shuffle as you walk across stage; you can swagger like Clarissa and glide across like an old hollywood actress   It’s a silly idea I know but it would make a real difference to the way you experience your life.

Often the way we perceive ourselves can put real limits on our life.  If we can change our perceptions on the inside, we can change our experience on the outside.

Have you ever noticed that when you meet someone who tells you they are great, that you tend to believe them?  Have you noticed that when you meet someone who tells you they are useless, that you believe them?  We emit these messages in the way we walk, the way we talk, the things we say.  We emit subtle messages.

This is just some food for thought.  You might be very happy with who you are and where you are in life and that, I would imagine, would be very much as a consequence of the positive perceptions you hold about yourself and about the world in general.  But if you are not happy with yourself, or are not happy with your life then it really might be worth taking a good hard look at your perceptions and labels you have placed upon yourself.

Red Pill or Blue Pill? The never ending rabbit hole…

I was never sure which pill meant what.  Was it the red pill that meant accepting that everything was ordinary and okay?  Or the blue pill?  Or did the red pill mean that there is a major conspiracy going on, involving the enslavement of human beings?  Or was that the blue pill?  Confused?  I think you are meant to be.

Either way, taking one of them meant questioning nothing and the other meant questioning everything and I mean everything.  One of the pills, red or blue, does is really matter, meant going down a very deep and very long rabbit hole.

Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with thinking.  I applaud it.  We have brains to think, so I admire anyone that does exercise their brain cells because there are quite a lot of people that don’t like to think and that like to take everything on someone else’s say so.  In the wrong hands, that kind of attitude can be very dangerous.  History has taught us that people don’t always tell the truth.  Ask anyone that lived in Nazi Germany and fell for Hitler’s creation of an Aryan history.

But once you start travelling down the rabbit hole, what you find is that it never ends.  And at some point it branches off in multiple directions.  And each of those multiple directions, will take you in another set of multiple directions.  If for example, you like the ‘teachings’ of David Icke and feel that he is speaking the ‘truth’, you will at some point bump into other people who think he is a liar, a fake, and even, shock horror, a free mason.  So who do you believe?  Mr Icke?  Or perhaps Alex Jones?  Or perhaps Bill Cooper?  Or what about Jordan Maxwell?  Or what about Project Camelot?  Or or or…

Every one of these people has had doubt cast on them or has cast doubt on others.  The elusive ‘truth’ has just got even ‘elusiver’.  How much time have you got in this lifetime?  How many rabbit holes are you going to travel down?  And how do you decide which is the ‘right’ rabbit hole?  The ‘true’ rabbit hole?  And, do you really want to spend the rest of your life down rabbit holes?  Have you got fed up with being out in the sunshine?

Recently, there was a little outburst from a man on youtube who claimed to have evidence showing that David Icke is a free mason.  Without getting caught up in the tos and fros of whether he is right or not, what this video shows – to me – is a mind getting caught up in the drama.  Evidence is given to back up the claim, which to my mind is shaky at best, but what do I know?  Mr Icke might be a free mason, he might not be but it is the intrigue and the mystery and the chase and the clues and the… you know… the just want to get to the bottom of it pursuit of it all, that I see.

Our minds love to think.  They love a challenge.  They love a mystery.  They like to be challenged or entertained.  Buddhists refer to our mind as the ‘monkey mind’ because it gets itself up to mischief all the time.  It jumps around and goes off on chases and invents things and jumps to conclusions and performs all sorts of whirls and gigs.  Its very noisy in there.  Anyone that has even tried to meditate for just five minutes will know that those thoughts just don’t stop coming.

And I can’t help but think, that all of this red pill and blue pill malarky is at some level just distraction.  It’s keeping minds locked in and entertained, off following wild gooses into strange and wonderful rabbit holes.  Maybe if we pulled back from listening to all these ‘experts’ who may or may not be telling the truth, we might be able to hear our own wisdom.  But how can you hear your own ‘truth’ when you’ve got the radio playing at full blast?

And so it goes on:  His truth is a lie. And her truth is a lie.  And his truth is more truthful  than her truth, because of an entry of wikipedia or some other dubious blog site that could’ve been put up yesterday in less than an hour.  And we are asked to accept that as evidence.  And well you know, he did THAT handshake and erm…how else do you handshake?

I love Charlie Vietch’s new video “The exposing of Charlie Vietch by Charlie Vietch” because he shows brilliantly just how much crap and nonsense you can make out of anything, if you really want to make something out of nothing.

I’m not saying who is right or who is wrong.  But what I am questioning is how many rabbit holes do you go down?  How many hours are you willing to spend chasing ‘the truth’ when the more you look, the foggier it gets?  And is this the idea of it all?  To keep people so engaged and distracted that they can’t see the woods for the trees?

Our schooling system often teaches us to accept the word of another as the authority.  But history books can be wrong.  And we can be wrong too.  But maybe we know much more than we give ourselves credit for.  Maybe we ought start listening to ourselves more and others less.  And maybe the question shouldn’t be so much what has happened, or what is happening but what to do about it instead.  I mean, a problem is a problem, no matter what way you look at it.  And you can look at it as long as you like, but it doesn’t change anything.  But thinking about solutions does change things.