self-awareness
Gratitude – A Message From My Guides
Sometimes when you are fearful or worried, the last thing you would envision thinking about is gratitude. When you are deep in grief, after the passing of a loved one, being grateful is also not your first thought. When you have lost a job, or have a sick child, the remote idea of gratitude can be the furthest thing from your mind.
However, it is during these times of worry, grief, or fear, that gratitude can be very helpful. If you can focus on even a small success, or a tiny attribute for which you can be grateful, it can make a world of difference to your perspective. Although changing your perspective will not necessarily alter your present circumstance, it can help you cope with your current reality.
Gratitude comes in all shapes and sizes. It can manifest in many forms at any time of the day. It does not have to be something magnificent or worldly, although it certainly can be something momentous, if that is what comes to mind.
Take a few minutes each day to be mindful and appreciative. Your focus can be as simple as having a safe home, or even a nice smile. Or it can be as complex as gradually improving health, or increased financial stability. It might be thoughts of a solid friendship, a dependable baby-sitter, or a full refrigerator. It can involve only yourself, or members of your family. It can encompass your entire neighborhood, your faith, or your workplace.
Resentment And The Empath
Do you have a tendency to re-experience past injustices — real or perceived – while holding on to those old feelings of anger connected to them? If so, it means you are harboring some form of resentment. Empaths are especially prone to resentment, simply because we tap into emotions, past, present, and future, much more than most people.
Resentment forms when we become angry towards a person or situation, and then hold onto that anger. Some people harbor their resentments for many years, refusing to let go of it. Over time, whatever caused the original anger and initially led to the resentment, may be forgotten, but the resentment remains. It is like a still-smoldering ember left after the flames of a fire have subsided. The fire no longer rages, but the ember remains smoldering, and all it takes is a spark to set that fire raging again.
For the empath this rekindled ‘fire’ may be triggered every time they enter a new relationship. No harm has been done, yet, but the empath may be so on guard, and overly vigilant to any slight that resembles their past hurt, that it easily sets off another destructive blaze. They expect the worst and try to protect themselves against it, but in the process the thing they fear the most may re-emerge from the past, unhealed resentment.
For many empaths, lack of boundaries also lead to dashed expectations, typically followed by resentment. As an empath, you feel the heart of the person, and know that there is love. Once connected into the, “I know they love me,” their bad behavior can be overlooked. Continue reading
How To Remain Grateful
In our daily life, it is all too easy to lose sight of the good things. We tend to get lost in negativity and stress, and we are also affected by the opinions and drama of those around us. At times it can be overwhelming.
In these moments we lose our sense of spiritual awareness and connection. I often speak with clients who experience exactly this. Indeed, it takes practice and re-commitment on a daily basis, in order to maintain our balance and inner peace, and remain true to our beliefs and mantras.
One of our own worst enemies is actually our false beliefs about ourselves. It is so easy to allow self-doubt to take over and let the negative thoughts creep in. Self-worth is a daily challenge for most, if not all of us.
To remain grounded and positive, I find that doing my daily gratitude list really helps get me back to that spiritual place within. When you are feeling low, or have had a stressful day, try keeping the following set of reminders posted as a list on your fridge, or somewhere you can see it daily. It will help change your focus.
What am I grateful for today? Who or what made my life easier or better today?
Did I allow negativity to affect me today? How can I remain grounded and avoid that next time?
Is there a better way I can deal with that difficult person or situation?
Meditation Made Easy
No doubt you’ve heard of the many physical, mental and spiritual benefits of meditation. And like many people, you are keen to give it a go, but still don’t know where to start? Well, it doesn’t have to be complicated or intimidating. According to Shunryu Suzuki, the Sōtō Zen master who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, approaching meditation with a beginner’s mind is actually ideal.
The most common misconception it that meditation is a state of “thinking of nothing” or “clearing your mind.” It is simply impossible to not think at all. One would basically have to be totally unconscious to achieve that. Instead, meditation is a spiritual practice in which we learn to be more mindful – to center, breathe, and achieve greater calm, inner peace and clarity.
Meditation is about embracing whatever is happening in the present moment, but without getting caught up in any of it. Meditation is about going with the flow, instead of resisting or suppressing your thoughts and feelings.
Meditation in its various forms has been practiced by cultures all over the world for millennia. The oldest documented evidence of the practice of meditation has been found in ancient Indian wall art that dates back to approximately 5,000 to 3,500 BC.
Meditation is an awareness practice, or an enhanced state of consciousness. It does not have to be associated with a specific religion or spiritual tradition. Anyone can meditate, no matter what their belief system. It also does not have to involve sitting or lying passively. It can be anything from coloring mandalas, to taking a walk in nature.
How To Overcome Negative Thought Patterns
There are times when one may be feeling very serene, and completely at peace with ourselves and the world. One may even be feeling highly satisfied with the spiritual growth and personal healing you have accomplished thus far. Then, quite unexpectedly, you lose your sense of alignment. You suddenly feel ‘disconnected’ from the source of our being.
This feeling is especially triggered when one feels overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities, or the constant demands of others. And once we slip into this negative state of mind, many deeply buried, unpleasant memories tend to emerge in our consciousness in the form of haunting ‘flashbacks.’
I recently heard a friend referring to this experience as cognitive distortion. We can so easily begin to catastrophize, and expect the ‘other shoe to drop,’ once our anxiety level becomes this amplified. The mind is powerful and under these circumstances we tend to indulge in a lot of ‘what if’ thinking. The mind races, imagining all the worst case scenarios as potential outcomes.
This kind of catastrophic thinking typically takes our mind into two directions. Firstly, it puts a truly negative spin on the current situation. And secondly, it causes us to anticipate all the many, many things that could possibly go wrong in the future.
Polarized thinking is another problem for some of us. This thought pattern is when we only see things in terms of right or wrong, and this can lead to setting unachievable standards for ourselves and others, as well as send our stress levels through the roof! Polarized thinking crops up when we find ourselves basing our hopes and expectations on, for example, getting that dream job, impressing other people, finding our soulmate, becoming famous, and so on.
Aligning Yourself To Attract Lasting Love
When I do readings, many people usually want to talk about their love life. This is a valid and meaningful subject for all of us. Having a meaningful, harmonious and loving relationship is a wonderful part of the human experience. However, it is also true that a relationship often does not solve many of the problems and issues we have as a single person.
It is important to understand that we carry our consciousness with us everywhere we go. If you assume that you will find a relationship that will ‘make you happy,’ then you are deeply mistaken.
Yes, we may draw temporary relational circumstances that allow us to feel a little better about ourselves, but without a firm structure of personal happiness, we will eventually engage in self-sabotaging behaviors that cause the relationship to become unsustainable.
Again, we will carry our consciousness with us everywhere that we go. If we are discontent being single, we will find a way to be discontent in the relationship also.
Every relationship is the product of co-creation. Too often when a relationship does not work out, it is easy to point to the other person and say, “You did this to me.” And it makes sense, because if the original assumption is that the other person will ‘make us happy,’ then we will also make the automatic assumption that the other person can ‘make us miserable.’
Feeling Like You’re Not Good Enough
Sometimes we put our heart and soul into a relationship, only to get cheated on, or dumped for no reason. The main question that usually comes to mind in this type of situation is, “Why am I not good enough?”
Take a moment and consider the relationships of relatives and friends, who have gone through similar a experience. Some people are able to jump right up and move forward, while others sit and wallow in self-doubt and self-loathing – sometimes for years.
Working with many people over the years, one of the biggest eye openers for me has been that it is typically the partner who is left behind, and then struggles to move forward, who compromised the most in the relationship. They usually gave, and gave, and gave, and didn’t receive much in return. Their needs always took a backseat in the relationship. They would sacrifice more and more, until there was nothing left for them to give, while their partner did not change and simply kept using and abusing them.
If you constantly compromise on what you really want from a relationship, the union will at some point simply disintegrate. The other person is never going to magically become someone different. That person you hoped they would become, after you moved in, or after you gave a little more, or after you married them, or after you had a child with them…never shows up. What you see in someone from the start, is simply who they are.