Don’t believe the hype!

So you have a thought, something like, “they don’t like me” and then you BELIEVE it.

Then, when you see that person and you are believing that thought and you UNQUESTIONINGLY think that it is true, then your experience will reflect that thought.

You will see what you believe is true.  And anything that argues with or differs with that belief will either be rejected by your mind, argued with or not even noticed at all.

Say for instance that I think “Susan” doesn’t like me.  If I see Susan, I’m going to be immediately reserved with her.  Why should I open up to someone that doesn’t like me?  And Susan will probably pick up on that and be somewhat reserved with me – thereby apparently proving the belief “Susan doesn’t like me.”

If Susan says, “You like nice today,” I might think I don’t believe her, she’s just being sarcastic and totally dismiss the comment.  (There is also the element of whether I think I look nice; if I think I look nice I’ll believe her, if I think I look a mess I won’t – again seeing only what I believe to be true).

If Susan asks to meet up with me, I might then think, if I’m still believing the thought “Susan doesn’t like me,” that she’s just being polite and doesn’t really want to, and then politely decline her offer.

Eventually, Susan will probably get the hint and stop bothering with me.  Boof bang!  Belief proved – “Susan doesn’t like me.”

Susan may have well really liked me but my belief wouldn’t allow it.

We all do it – our minds are very automatic and issue out heaps of thoughts all the time, every day in every moment.  Most of the time we are not even aware of the thoughts but they do affect us – mentally, emotionally and physically.

The thought, “Susan doesn’t like me,” can easily cause my heart to close and my shoulders to hunch up.  If I’m seeing someone as non-welcoming, reactions will come up in my body.  Everyone knows that stress can cause ulcers!  And stress is the result of un-helpful thinking.

Taking that belief, “Susan doesn’t like me,” and using Byron Katie’s work follows this route:

1) Is it true that Susan doesn’t like me? Yes.

2) Can you absolutely know that it’s true, that Susan doesn’t like me?  No.  How can I get into the head of someone else?  How can I possibly know what someone else is thinking or feeling (especially if I don’t even know what I’m thinking half the time).

So no, I cannot absolutely know that Susan doesn’t like me.  That’s a blow to my absolutely certainty in my belief.

3) How do I react when I believe that thought?  Well I pull back, I shrink back from Susan.  I think I am not in good company.  I don’t feel safe.  I feel protective of myself.  I am reserved with Susan.  I tend to think the worst of everything she says.

4)  Who would I be without that thought?  I’d be relaxed and open and just be myself.  I’d be nice to Susan.  I would feel happy in her company.

Ah!  So it’s not Susan’s fault then, that I am reserved with her.  It’s totally my responsibility.  It’s totally my belief.

Then there’s the turn arounds:

I don’t like Susan – well why should I like someone that doesn’t like me?  I don’t like being around someone that doesn’t like me.  Correction, someone that I THINK doesn’t like me which I now realise is not necessarily true.  Find a few examples, of ways in which I don’t like Susan.  Maybe I think she talks too much or doesn’t listen (but wait, maybe I talk too much and maybe I’m not that great at listening either).

I don’t like myself – ah!  so I don’t like myself and I’m blaming Susan for not liking the things I don’t like about myself.  ah! interesting.  In what ways do I not like myself?  Well I talk too much and I’m not that great at listening – that really annoys me about myself.

Susan likes me – oh yeah!  she’s often smiled at me, i’d never really noticed that before.  I just thought she had wind.  And she’s asked me to go out with her and I said no – maybe she’s lonely, maybe she needs a friend?  Oh!  I feel bad now.

After going through this process, and examing all the possible angles, the things that are true for you, the original belief is much much harder to automatically believe.  In fact, it often just falls away like a snowflake once it is looked at and questioned.

Another important thing to understand is where the belief, “Susan doesn’t like me,” resides and who ‘created’ it.  Well it exists in my head – it’s not written on a stone, or a pavement, I can’t buy it, no-one else can see it, it’s not physically real, the only place it exists is in my head.

And how did it get there?  Well I decided to think that.  The first time I met her she was very quiet and decided to interpret her quietness as meaning that she didn’t like me.  So I was the creator of that belief.  And so if I decided to make that belief up, then I’m equally capable of un-making that belief.

And so it lies with me… I am responsible for the thoughts I believe.  Just me.

And it’s not really a question of going into why I thought that and believed it but more looking at what I am believing and just taking some time to evaluate if I can really honestly support that it’s true.  Thoughts can come up willy nilly at all times and in all places and the fact that they come up is not the problem – it is whether you or I believe them, without questioning their validity that’s the question.

Questioning thoughts can really open your eyes and take away the blinkers.

Can you relate to this?  Do you have thoughts that you unquestioningly believe, that cause you stress and unhappiness?

Freeing your mind from negative beliefs

Until I became aware of my own thoughts and the automatic nature of my mind, I was a prisoner to my thoughts.  That sounds extreme but it is true.  The only reality I ever had, was the one my mind allowed me to think.

I had a series of dreams a while ago.  It seemed like every morning I’d wake up with a new understanding and awareness and then as my mind awoke the awareness I felt, slipped away.

One dream that I remember very clearly was being immersed in an understanding and knowing that everything just is.  It is all neutral.  It is only our minds that put meanings and judgements on things.  Calling this bad and that good.  In the dream, I just experienced the neutralness of all things.  It wasn’t something I understood in a mind, thinking sort of way.  It was what I felt and knew – that everything, everything is just is, is just neutral, is.  And then on that morning, as my mind woke up, I saw how it began to put labels on things and meanings on things until that awareness slipped away and I was back in the landscape of my mind.

Recently, I’ve been watching videos of Byron Katie and she definitely understands this.  Her teachings, we she calls ‘The Work’ are an amazingly simple and very effective way of breaking your mind free of all its set thinking, judgements and limiting beliefs.  For anyone that struggles with habitual negative thinking, I would highly recommend her technique as it provides an excellent to dissolve them, once and for all and open your mind to new ways of experiencing and seeing life.

It’s not a quick fix, as Katie says, “There are children in there,” and a lifetime of negative limiting thinking will take some time to address but it is well well worth doing.  It is a process.  First becoming aware of the automatic thoughts that are running your life and then becoming aware of how they effect you emotionally and physically and then, questioning them, exploring them and dissolving them.

If you are looking for a way to free your mind of negative thinking, visit Katie’s site on youtube here and try it out for yourself.  The Work of Byron Katie.

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! 🙂

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.

Learn to take a compliment

I rarely use the word SHOULD.  I’m not too keen on the word.  So when I use it, it’s for a reason. 🙂

If there is one kind thing you can do for yourself, it is this: you should learn to take compliments.

When someone appreciates you, or tells you kind things about yourself, it’s a gift – don’t reject it.

Just say, “thank you” and smile.  🙂 And let it in.

I know this may be difficult for some people and the reason for that is as follows:

when someone has a poor self image of themselves, and someone else tells them they are great, it doesn’t match with their inner belief and so it gets rejected.

Why is it that it’s easier to believe the bad things people say?  Why is it easier to focus on the bad things?

It’s not.  It’s just as easy to believe the good things – it just takes a bit of re-training.  It’s really just a bad habit in thinking and habits can be changed.

So please, learn to take compliments.  Learn to accept them and let them in – it might take a bit of practise, it might seem strange at first but why shouldn’t people appreciate you and be kind to you?  You are just as deserving as anyone else on this planet.

When someone offers you a gift in words, be thankful.

Your Inner Landscape

One of the keys to life is having an awareness of and a degree of control over your own inner landscape – what you think, believe and perceive in your own mind-space.

If you take a dog as an example, well it’s just a dog.  But for some people, a dog represents a massive threat whilst to others, a dog is ‘someone’ to play with and have fun.

So it’s not really the dog that’s the ‘problem’ but our perception of the dog.  Many people own dogs and never get bitten by them.  And then there are some people that are so scared of dogs that they act in a way that makes them much much more likely to get bitten, because dogs sense fear like we smell after-shave.

So not only do our inner thoughts affect how we ‘interpret’ the outer world but they also change our behaviour – and that behaviour can lead to ‘problem’ situations.

So, in so many ways we can create problems just by the way we tend to perceive things.  Our inner landscape is very influential.

In many cases, a dog is a dog is a dog.  It’s our perceptions of ‘a dog’ that can lead to our either a negative or positive experience.

And this is the case for so many things.  When we think we have a problem with a circumstance, it is often not the outer circumstance that’s really the problem but how we are seeing the outer situation.

David Icke describes the world as a movie and that we are the projectors.  He suggests that if we don’t like the movie we’re seeing, then change what we are ‘projecting’.  Or change how we are seeing the world.  Change our own perceptions.  If we can change our inner landscape then our outer landscape can also shift accordingly.

Food for thought…

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.

Write a love letter to yourself

Why not write a love letter to yourself? 🙂

To all the parts of you, that need love.  All the parts of you, that perhaps you don’t really like too much.  Why not give yourself unconditional love?

This is not as selfish as it sounds.

For each one of us, that raises our own vibration, through loving and accepting ourselves unconditionally, we help to raise the vibration of our planet.

Someone that has self-love will naturally find it easy to love others.

So loving yourself becomes good for you and for everyone around you.

Go on! Love yourself :)

The decision to love yourself is probably one of the most important decisions you can ever make.

Maybe you’ve been blessed with loving family and friends and have grown up in a supportive environment so have never really had to make this decision.  Maybe you just naturally do, love yourself.

But if you haven’t been so blessed, the unkind words and actions of others can play in your mind on a loop and cause you to feel horrible about who you are.  Your inner world can then be an unkind and critical place.

Regardless of the actions or non-actions of others, your inner world belongs to you.  I’m speaking about the thoughts and feelings that you carry around with you, wherever you go.  Your inner world is your home, the place you live from.  Almost like a snail who takes his shell with him.

And because your inner world belongs to you, you can take control of it.  Regardless of what is going on outside of you in the world.  Your inner world is your home and nobody else’s.  You are the power in there and you can decide whether to make your ‘home’ a warm and comfortable place, or a critical one.

If your inner world is supportive of you, you will feel good about yourself.  If your inner world is critical, you will feel lousy about yourself.

When you feel good about yourself, you feel strong.  When you don’t feel good about yourself, you are weakened.

You might ask yourself, “Why do I have the right to feel good about myself?” but how about, “Why do you I the right to feel horrible about yourself?”

Why shouldn’t you like and love yourself?

When you like and love yourself, you become powerful.  When you like and love yourself, you become a power for good not only for yourself but for others that are lucky enough to be around you.

The world is full of things and people and places and opinions.  Some people will like you, some will not.  Some people will be kind, others will be unkind.  All of it goes on around you but it is you and you alone that gets the final say on how you see yourself.

So why not, love yourself?

You know, people that don’t really like or love themselves are usually the ones that are unkind to others.  Take bullies for instance.  Their need to hurt another stems from a feeling of lack or insecurity within themselves.  If they don’t feel good about who they are, they try to build themselves up by  knocking someone else down.  Maybe the person they bully makes them feel threatened in some way.  Maybe they want to be like that person or see something about them, that makes them feel inadequate.  But if they just loved themselves, they wouldn’t feel the need to bring another person down.

So loving yourself makes you a kinder person and frankly, the world needs more kindness.

Have you heard the words: “Oh she loves herself, she does,” as if it was a bad thing.  But is it?  Is loving yourself a bad thing?  If more people liked and loved themselves the world could quite dramatically, take a turn for the better.

On a more individual level, the decision to  love yourself can only help improve the quality of your life.  If you can learn to be kind to yourself, supportive, encouraging, patient, understanding then your inner world will be a much nicer place to live in.  And you will find that you smile more, and walk taller and will naturally feel like being friendly to others.  Because when you like yourself, you expect others to like you too.  And a lovely circle is created.  As you like yourself, others like you, which just reinforces your like for yourself and just by liking yourself, you’ve had a positive impact on someone else’s day.

We are all ripples in the ocean of life.