Do You Believe in the Magic of your Choices?

Writing this blog, and doing training groups are my way of helping people own their lives, live out of their deeper selves and feel better in this stressful world.  I want everyone to know the possibilities their lives can take, that each of us can take when we take charge of our minds, thoughts and feelings.  It is always a work in progress to do this, but we can make progress.  The blog will give you various ways to make progress, from different perspectives and with each blog giving you a new method or different perspective on different methods to succeed in this. 

Stress, anxiety and worry can easily become chronic.  When stress is chronic it eventually leads to major illness physically, emotional stress and hampered access to our higher intellectual and creative selves.

Belief in ability to choose our mind sets is one perspective we can take. The other possibility is the  belief that our mind set is fixed, that it is what it is and you are who you are and these things can’t change.  These are two opposing points of you we can start this journey from.  What do you think about our minds, emotions and thoughts?  Can we make some transformations or are we just the way we are?

Research shows our mindset can be changed but each of us must be willing to do the work and understand that making choices in how you want your mind to work is a little piece of magic you can have.  The magic of choice in whether to lose your temper and scream or to catch that urge and take a few deep breaths, take a walk, maybe get a glimmer of the other point of view.  This can be done.  My personal nemesis, the inner critic, leading me into depression, would sometimes take over and I would feel powerless.  Now, finally I can hit the pause button on it and chose to not go there.  Instead, I can do something else, even enjoy my life.  It can be done.  We can each make progress, and let ourselves be works in progress, no done deals.

We are wired to survive.  If a sabre tooth tiger is running after us, our physical systems give us all we’ve got to escape, evade or fight.  But in our lives we are generally  no longer dealing with tigers of any sort.  We have stressful work situations, a variety of issues in our home lives, anger on the freeways and worry about the state of the world.  These sorts of issues go on and on.  They do not produce the short bursts of adrenaline needed to deal with a sabre tooth.  They produce an unrelenting type of stress response which can lead to major illnesses and much emotional distress.  They also lead to a lack of access to certain higher functioning and creative parts of our brains.  I would probably write more if my output was related to whether a tiger might pounce on me.  I’m not sure what the quality of it would be.  It might just be, “Please don’t let the tiger eat me .”  Over and over.  Heightened stress does not improve our creativity or any other capabilities to perform.  It produces responses that are survival oriented.  If we want to come from the best of ourselves, that comes from a calm centered core of our being.  This can be built and strengthened.  We strengthen our physical core muscles doing pilates or other workouts.  I want to teach you workouts for the mind, thoughts and emotions.  I want everyone to have a stronger core emotionally, to not get caught by stress, anxiety, anger or depression.  Or whatever else.  We can reach the point of being able to choose.

To do this work successfully you need to know you can grow and change. 

You need to be willing to set the course you most want for how your state of mind is, moment to moment.  It is your mind, they are your thoughts.  You can be in charge when you work with them.

Learning what will help you is the first step.  Set up your own stockpile of destressing techniques that will lead you into your own deeper potentials.   Practice the techniques and build them into habits.

The first one I am going to tell you about is from HeartMath, as many will be.  The HeartMath folks and their gathered wisdom of techniques have a big section in my techniques area of the website if you want to read more about them.

This is called: “Achieving Inner Dignity Through Heart Focused Breathing”

•  Take a few quiet minutes for yourself where you can be uninterrupted.

•  Focus your attention in the area of your heart.

• Imagine your breath flowing in and out through the area of your heart.

Breath a little slower and deeper, then a little more slowly.  Not too much but a relaxed amount.

Imagine you are breathing in or bringing in increased dignity, inner strength and poise.

Imagine this connecting or activating this core quality in yourself. 

Continue for a few minutes or as long as you comfortably can.

Consider how increasing your inner dignity can help you follow through on the choices that are best for you, even if they are not the most pleasurable in the moment.  Dignity provides more inner strength to keep us aligned to our higher principles.  This practice strengthens our calm and inner strength when it is continued a few minutes, or more, per day.

It can be done for a couple of minutes a few times per day.  This help build your own inner core, and your resilience to make it through tough times more easily.