As the politicians continue to deliberate the best way to handle the current opioid abuse and addiction epidemic, one Colorado company is taking action.

The Executive Coaching University (ECU) based in Golden, Colorado, has been on the leading edge of the Mindfulness Movement since 2004.  As the opioid epidemic has seen explosive growth throughout the US, the ECU realized there was a gap in the proposed solutions to combat this issue, and a potential alternative.  

Currently, the primary plan for solving this crisis does not consider alternatives, only focusing on the challenges directly related to the use of opioids for pain management.  The ECU believes the solution may be found by pursuing Mindfulness as an alternative path altogether.

The opioid epidemic claimed 62,500 lives in drug overdoses in 2016 and has killed more than 500,000 people since 2000, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U.S. government has declared the epidemic a public health emergency and has vowed to fix the crisis and has allocated $17 billion to address this crisis.

The opioid crisis has cost the US $1 trillion since 2001 — and according to health research firm Altarum, that could grow another $500 billion by 2020. Most of those costs come from lost wages, productivity, and tax revenue. Health care costs alone related to this issue topped $217.5 billion during the period between 2001 and 2017.

The ECU is in discussions with congressional leadership to explore its role in helping address this ongoing challenge.

Mindfulness meditation has been shown in clinical trials to reduce chronic pain by 57 percent.  The primary underlying concept is that mindfulness practices can turn down the ‘volume’ control on pain.

Understanding this, and leveraging their past experiences using mindfulness principles and practices with clients, the ECU developed a unique and powerful 30-day program designed to address this issue. Program highlights include teaching participants:

1) Introductory mindfulness principles and practices

2) How to apply these principles and practices in managing their pain

3) Skills and pain management tactics to improve overall happiness, levels of engagement at work, and reducing the amount of stress they maintain in their daily lives.

The program is currently in a pilot phase being delivered by the ECU in partnership with the Colorado Integrated Care Network, a leading local physical care health provider.  The team is expecting to complete the pilot this spring, and pending positive results, release the program for use across the nation.

For more information, please contact the Executive Coaching University: 800.526.6038 or support@executivecoachinguniversity.com

Life is always trying to teach us, help us grow, and offer us the richest experience possible without interfering with our free will to choose our own path in each moment. Sometimes, we make choices that end up not being such great choices, and other times we make choices that propel us forward and help us to gain momentum (and it isn’t always easy to tell which is which until after the dust has settled). No matter what kinds of experiences you’re having, you can choose to shift your focus toward making the most of those experiences if they’re uncomfortable in any way, and savoring the experiences that you enjoy so that you can attract more experiences like them.

That’s part of the key to inner peace and happiness: shifting your focus toward what works for you, toward more optimistic thoughts, and toward extracting purpose from your experiences, especially if they were negative. Giving your negative or traumatic experiences a purpose makes it easier to heal from the trauma and empower yourself to take safety precautions if necessary without going overboard and allowing your experience to completely take over your life. To learn from your experiences but not carry the heavy burden of trauma and the accompanying pain around with you is the goal, and to achieve this goal, your experiences must be validated but the pain released. Openness, vulnerability, understanding, and honesty will all be required. You will need to show compassion not only toward anyone else involved, but also—and most importantly—toward yourself. You will learn to discern between holding someone accountable and holding a grudge.

These are just some of the realizations and revelations that sound like mere words until your life presents you with an opportunity to utilize these ideas in practice. And really, that’s the most valuable type of practice you could possibly ask for, so why not make the most of it in the moment, as things occur?

There have been certain ideas and realizations that have helped others to keep from getting stuck in the limbo of doubt, so to speak, and move more quickly out of challenging experiences by shifting their focus elsewhere. I hope that you find these ideas beneficial on your own journey.

5 Ideas to Help You Learn Life Lessons Quickly

1. Anticipating and fully knowing that you will gain a greater sense of understanding once a particular experience is over can help you tap into your inner strength and allow and appreciate your circumstances or experiences, even if they present challenges for you to overcome. That’s the thing: without contrast or challenge, there can be no growth because growth occurs when you leave your comfort zone a little bit and do things differently.
2. This is an opportunity to use your discernment and any other mindfulness skills you may have learned about in theory. Remember that a practice is a practice; it must be performed daily for best results. Be mindful in each moment, catch yourself if you aren’t, but also catch yourself if you are and be grateful that you now know you can put these skills into practice. The more you practice mindfulness in each moment, the more it becomes a habit, making it effortless to continue.
3. This experience or circumstance is all part of your story, your life path. Even if you think you’ve taken a wrong turn, you are exactly where you need to be from a big picture perspective. This path in life will lead you to exactly what you need to find, each and every time. After it’s all said and done, how epic, coincidental, or ridiculous will this chapter of your life be? What will you learn from it? How have you grown from it? What did it lead you to that you may not have found under any other circumstances?
4. Step into your power and be decisive. The direction you choose for yourself will directly influence the outcome of your circumstance, so choose what’s best for you and as many others as possible. If you find yourself in a constant state of not knowing, make peace with the not knowing and have a general plan, but be flexible enough to allow the universe to introduce you to new ideas or circumstances that you may not have thought of even being possible until they appeared right in front of you. Don’t allow yourself to limit the abilities of the universe within your own perception when the possibilities are literally infinite.
5. Recognize that miracles are always possible, especially if you believe they are. Your belief in them helps to make all things possible, and you may find that some of the things you’re attracting are becoming tangible in your life experience. This is another facet of mindfulness and being aware of everything that’s flowing into and out of your life. As your awareness and consciousness raises by becoming honed, you will also become more and more aware of and in tune with the things that make you feel alive and in alignment versus the things that make you feel sluggish and exhausted. That’s where you can then really take responsibility for your own life and begin practicing more of the positive habits and fewer of the harmful or destructive habits.

Each of your experiences is designed for you to interpret in only the ways you can. You can also choose whether you will actively participate in healing yourself and moving on or allow it to happen to you and fall victim to it. The decision is yours, in every moment… right now. Forgiving the circumstance and anything else surrounding it can only serve you, while falling victim to the circumstance actually gives your power away.

Some questions that might help you with this:

1. What is within my control right now, in this moment?
2. Is there anything I can do or say right now, in this moment, to solve or heal anything?
3. Is there any good that will come of being stuck on one particular emotion?
4. Am I allowing outside influences to direct my emotions?
5. Am I allowing subconscious conditioning to keep me stuck?

If there’s nothing you can do about it right now, what’s the point in worrying (aside from making yourself miserable)? Will feeling badly really serve any kind of purpose? More importantly, will feeling badly keep you in an open, receptive state to see the opportunities coming your way? Chances are very slim, and you’re more likely to find yourself frantically and exasperatedly scrambling for solutions that aren’t in alignment with what’s really supposed to happen. This creates more tension and frustration, and you can probably already tell that none of it leads anywhere constructive.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but when you let go and allow life to happen for you, it may begin to surprise you a little bit. You may begin to have more and more positive experiences because whatever was bugging you before isn’t pulling your focus anymore. And if you take nothing else from this article, understand this: your focus is your superpower. Whatever you focus on grows, so if you choose to focus on the negative and complain all the time, then you will attract more of the same. However, if you choose to focus on the positive and cultivate a practice of gratitude, you will also attract more of the same.

Thank you so much for joining us! We hope you’re enjoying this month’s articles here on the Mindful Leader Blog.

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement

Our past experiences are responsible for about 50% of who we become, as nature and nurture play equal roles in our development* and health. As we’ve found time and time again here on the Mindful Leader Blog, we can choose to either consciously participate in the process or allow whatever automatically happens to be it, as decided by the ego mind or whatever autopilot programs or habits we have running. Consciously participating begins with nothing more than an awareness of what is happening within, which you can begin to recognize in the moment if you direct your focus and are honest with yourself. One aspect of becoming more aware is beginning to realize some of the ways in which your past experiences have conditioned you to behave or react. Just by revealing to yourself that this has happened, you can begin to understand some of the ways you were affected and heal from those experiences.

This is not to say that all conditioning or past experiences should be reconditioned or create so-called negative results. On the contrary; if you were raised in a healthy, loving, emotionally supportive environment, then you probably won’t have much inner work to do at all as this will all come naturally. However, you may still find it comforting to know that, if something that you have believed for a long time doesn’t work in practice for you and your life, then you have the power and the ability to change that and create a different story.

Having said that, I want to dive into the one fundamental aspect of purposely expanding your awareness that anyone can put to use at any time: knowledge. This is especially true now, with the internet being available to most individuals. If there’s anything you want to know more about, you can access it within moments on a computer or smart phone and find many different perspectives on the topic. Applied knowledge is power, so the more you learn, the more knowledge your mind can tap into, the more powerful your ability to respond with understanding and a big picture perspective. How deep you want to wander into that rabbit hole is up to you and how many breakthroughs you can handle at once.

With all of that being said, I’d like to give you an idea about some of the main forms of subconscious conditioning we’re all subject to in daily life as we grow up and learn to make our own way. Each individual experience with these types of conditioning will vary, and not all conditioning will be detrimental to you. The fine details are something you will need to discern for yourself within your own life, but knowing that there are differences and ways in which we’ve been conditioned by systems in place can help you to define what works for you and what doesn’t. From there, you can focus on cultivating what does work and heal any uncomfortable realizations you may have.

Different Types of Subconscious Conditioning to Be Aware Of

1. Familial Conditioning.

Everyone grows up in a family of some kind, and this is one of the most impactful and important environments for us as we grow up: our home life. Of course, there will be some level of dysfunction in most families as we are all human and no one is perfect, so your parents may not have always handled things in the best ways possible, but they may not have known how to. Sometimes there is also abuse, which can range from emotional, spiritual, and psychological abuse to physical and sexual abuse, but it is still only you who can break the cycle and do the inner work needed in order to get there.

While your experiences should always be validated and you may or may not receive that validation from the people who were involved, you can always give yourself validation and seek it from like-minded people who have experienced something similar. The deeper your level of understanding and knowledge, the more you will be able to peacefully love some people from afar and show compassion and forgiveness to those who are still in your life. It’s okay to not get along with everyone and to have a different perspective from the people you grew up around. It isn’t always easy, but there’s nothing wrong with it.

Many times, parents will send messages to their children unconsciously via repetitive words or actions such as withholding love, telling their children, “I know you better than you know yourself,” or, “I know what’s best for you,” and strongly resisting their children’s need to explore and learn for themselves due to a fear of them not coming to the same conclusions as the parents did. While concern for your child’s safety is healthy, overprotecting them doesn’t serve them in any way. When you tell your child, “I know you better than you know yourself,” and communicate to them—directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously—that the only right and wrong is the right and wrong you teach them, and they are scolded for exploring their own ideas and options, that depletes the child’s sense of trust in themselves and makes them heavily reliant on the parent for making decisions. Later on, when the child wants to grow up, this can result in excessive rebellion and troublemaking just to express their power to make their own choices.

Of course, these are just examples, but you may find some link to some family conditioning that may be detrimental to you. A common one is the lack mindset, conditioned into use further by statements such as, “Money is the root of all evil.” When we hear these things as children, we automatically assume that money is evil, when really we’re just given the same choice as with everything else: how to use it. Anything and everything can be used to either help or hurt, so it isn’t the thing itself that helps or hurts; it is the idea behind the thing that helps or hurts. Electricity can be used to cook a man dinner or to cook the man, as Bob Proctor pointed out in The Secret. Similarly, money can be used to invest in housing the homeless or building a bomb to blow them up. The decision to utilize something for “good” or “evil” lies within us.

2. Societal Conditioning.

Western society is a pretty interesting melting pot, but there are a handful of things that society has conditioned us into believing that simply aren’t true, as much as they seem to be while we experience the manifestations they call forth. One very glaring example is that boys aren’t “allowed” to express their emotions unless it’s anger or victory. When this belief permeates a society like it does this one, young men are taught to suppress their emotions rather than dealing with them properly, and this can lead to all manner of dis-ease and energetic blockages as the boy grows up, not to mention translating into dysfunctional and unhealthy relationships as an adult simply because communication of emotion was not taught; suppression was.

Another very dominant example within this is class conditioning. For example, one family might not allow their children to play with a child in a lower socio-economic class, for no other reason than that they are from a lower socio-economic class. Labels are applied and, “so-and-so’s don’t hang out with so-and-so’s,” thinking adopted, and it becomes the normal for everyone involved. Let’s face it… in a world where cooperation and collaboration are exponentially more beneficial and powerful than competition, this paradigm simply cannot work sustainably.

3. Religious or Spiritual Conditioning.

Many people have been raised to participate and believe in certain religious organizations and their teachings as if they are the truth… the only truth. This, “my way or the highway,” mentality also comes from a fear and lack structure, evidenced by the need to keep everyone feeling guilt, shame, and fear through various methods of control and subconscious programming. FOG is used quite often—fear, obligation, and guilt—to keep everyone “in line” and following the status quo.

Many times inadvertently, when a child is genuinely curious and begins asking questions about the religion that may challenge the authority, the question isn’t fully answered or the child is scolded for saying something blasphemous, which they wouldn’t even know is blasphemous because they’re just asking a question. This sends the message that asking questions isn’t okay, and the child may withdraw or find a new source of answers that isn’t so rigid and fearful.

As well-meaning as some of these systems and structures are, they can create more problems than solutions if people aren’t following the belief for the right reasons, and in order for each person to identify their path and make their own choice, they have to be allowed to explore. Because this curiosity and exploration is frowned upon from early on, it helps to kill people’s enthusiasm for life and thirst for knowledge, making them become more pliable and easy to control.

Again, this is only one example and an example of one level of extremes; not everyone experiences organized religion this way, and as a matter of fact, it helps a great number of amazing people make sense of life in a way that they normally couldn’t. However, you don’t have to have a specific religion to know and understand that there are bigger forces at work within the universe than what we may initially think. Science is recognizing the underlying energetic connections between everything in existence now, too, so it’s only a matter of time before more understanding about the mysteries of life are brought into the mainstream.

4. Educational Conditioning.

Like most other human systems currently in place, the educational system is designed to teach people a controlled amount of information over a very long period of time, and much of the information being taught about science and history has been so watered down or is so out of date that it’s barely relevant anymore. The education system hasn’t changed much in over 100 years, and unfortunately it puts a damper on creativity, dumbs down brilliant students, allows students without an interest or ambition to skate by with minimal effort, and infringes on basic human rights such as going to the restroom when you need to.

While the intentions were fine when the system was created, it has become a prison within a prison, where children are taught that it’s better to blend in than stand out, it’s better to be dumb and attractive than to study and hone a skill, and that thinking for yourself and asking questions isn’t acceptable.

Once again, it’s up to you to break free of this conditioning and take your power back. While structure and leadership are important, innovation, creativity, and independent, critical thinking and learning are vital for living a balanced life and tapping into the confidence needed to be your best self. Many of us have issues with believing in ourselves because we’ve never dared to do that before. Why not try it out and see how it goes?

5. Self-Conditioning.

Ah, last but not least. How you condition yourself comes down to one thing: how you feel about yourself and how you speak to yourself in your thoughts, also known as self-talk. Any thought you think repeatedly becomes a belief (Abraham-Hicks), so observe your thoughts and feelings about yourself. Many of us might get caught in thought loops like, “I’m going to be alone forever. Nobody will love me. Who would want someone so ugly/fat/broken/(insert self-deprecating adjective here)? I’ll never find love.” Do these types of thoughts seem even remotely true when you really think about it? Or are they simply your insecurities manifesting as thoughts, which you can eliminate by actively reminding yourself that those things aren’t true?

The way you speak to yourself has a direct impact on how you feel, and those feelings can give the thoughts more and more momentum. This is why it’s important to practice mindfulness and catch yourself before you pick up too much momentum in that direction. By doing so, you are showing yourself that you love yourself unconditionally, and that will steer your life in a whole new direction by attracting more of that unconditional love feeling. This can manifest in many ways, but the main thing you’re actually doing is changing the way you feel about and perceive life, rather than allowing life to dictate your experience to you.

A shift in consciousness often involves something you thought being true revealing itself to not be completely true, or to be false entirely from your perspective of understanding. No matter what this idea might have been, the universe is presenting you with the opportunity to challenge your own beliefs and become more grounded and confident in your truth, your sense of knowing.

Just in case you’ve already started thinking, “Well, who am I to claim my own truth? Who am I to say what makes sense?” The answer is that you are the only person who can come to your understanding on your own. Ask yourself, who are others to dictate your truth to you? I want to share a realization that might help you as it has helped me recently: No one has an objective perspective because everyone experiences life through the lens of their own perception, a perception that is all too often colored by the various forms of subconscious conditioning that we explored here today. I read this recently as a quote by Sterling K. Brown: “Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms.” When we understand this, we can gain a wider perspective of almost everything in life, and we can more easily recognize unconscious behavior in ourselves as well as others and not judge it.

Thank you so much for being here! We hope you’ve found this information useful and that it helps you on your own mindfulness journey.

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement

*Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/abcs-child-psychiatry/201710/nature-versus-nurture-where-we-are-in-2017

Are you the type of person who effortlessly rolls with the punches or do you get stuck on certain aspects of experience and feel powerless to move forward? While these two outlooks can seem a little extreme, the truth is that all of us have both of these capabilities, and we simply choose which one we find works the best for us and our purposes during a specific experience. Each of us is just as capable of going with the flow successfully as we are of feeling stuck. There’s nothing inherently “wrong” with either approach, but I have found that being able to adapt to change quickly definitely makes things feel easier. The main components of going with the flow of life without creating more chaos are openness, trust, and confidence, along with a curiosity about anything that may come, challenging or blissful.

During times of contrast, mindset becomes the absolute key to whether you make it through with your sanity intact or end up taking several large steps back. While you can’t do much “wrong” in the grand scheme of your life and your soul’s eternal journey, per se, it’s not so much about right and wrong as it is about understanding and finding solutions that create a win for everyone. However, in order to do that, you cannot allow stressful times, worry, and other useless emotions to cloud your discernment.

As most things mindfulness and inner work related, this can be easier said than done, especially if these concepts are new to you while you’re going through your contrast or stress. One of the most important aspects is to not allow your stress to get to you or take over your decision-making process and throw toxic shadows onto your relationships. This can happen inadvertently when your priorities become more materialistic or superficial than love oriented, when you lose your faith that things will work out, when you lose your temper, when you begin blaming others for creating the situation without owning your part, etc. These are all things that can happen unconsciously, without you even thinking about it or considering it, and before you know it, there’s an even bigger mess to clean up and more chaos to calm.

It’s much easier and more productive for everyone involved when you choose mindfulness first and put it into practice during trying times. Being able to roll with the punches is like an art form, and while some people seem naturally gifted at this, most of us will need to practice and consciously participate in life to get to that point.

The idea behind getting to this mindset via practice is to completely annihilate your fear of discomfort and contrast in life, so that way you don’t spend so much time worrying about what horrible things might happen and you are more focused on solving the problems that already exist without making them bigger than they actually are. Your experiences all serve a purpose and allow you to grow and evolve as the amazing human being that you are, and remaining open to them will help you to handle things with ease and grace rather than anxiety and turmoil.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the midst of experiences that seem insurmountable or that are completely new. It can be scary! The specifics will be different for everyone; while one person may have money issues, another person may find their relationships in turmoil, and another may be diagnosed with a health condition. One person may be planning a wedding, another may be going through a divorce, and another may have just started a new business venture. No matter what the challenge, it will become easier when you know how to maintain your faith, trust in the universe and what life has to show you, and receive the experiences with receptiveness and wonder.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that everyone goes through ups and downs; no one is immune or sheltered from having life experiences, even if they seem sheltered from an outside point of view. We all face things we consider bad and things we consider good, things we consider positive and things we consider negative. When we focus on maintaining openness and a positive and wise outlook, we often find that we can handle things that come our way with much more effective and less stressful responses.

As a mindful leader, it’s important to maintain a balance between openness and follow through, sticking to the plan while rolling with the punches, so to speak. While this sounds easy enough in theory, it can take some practice to get the hang of it and put your balancing skills to work, so here are a few ideas to get you more comfortable and confident with remaining open to the unfolding of your life… the unknown.

Cultivating Mindful Openness to Life Itself

1. Keep calm by being present in each moment. When challenges or new opportunities come along, it’s easy to fall into a trap of racing thoughts and end up creating more stress without even realizing it. Think about whatever it is that you’re experiencing. What can you do that is within your power right now? If the answer is nothing, or that you have to wait for more information, then let it go for now. Chances are that it won’t be the end of the world and it won’t kill you, even if things seem dire. In this moment, right here right now, does it really serve any purpose to worry or be anxious and stressed out? Is there anything that you can actually do right now to help solve the problem? If not, then give yourself a break and stop worrying.
2. Don’t allow others to make you feel guilty for not worrying. This is a big one, because it can be a fine line to walk between not worrying and being completely ignorant or oblivious to the problems. That’s where your discernment has to come in, and remember that things always look different from the outside than they do from your own perspective, so your not worrying may look like not caring to some. Don’t take this personally; remember that you are the person in the thick of it with all of the information applicable to you, and you have to find what works for you and do that. Just because someone else is accustomed to stressing out and having panic attacks at the end of each month doesn’t mean that you have to live the same patterns. The way you go about handling things is your decision, not anyone else’s, so if you choose to stop worrying because it’s a waste of your energy, then it’s really none of anyone else’s concern.
3. With change comes opportunity, and with opportunity comes infinite possibility. It’s important to remember this because maintaining an optimistic outlook on an emotional level can only help you as opportunities, connections, and ideas begin to present themselves to you in various ways. It’s difficult to see the good in things when your attitude is tainted with fear, worry, stress, and frustration. The same rings true for opportunities that might solve your problems. Sure, stressing out about it can give you some fear-based motivation to make things happen, but you might find that this fearful, forceful perspective can create its own damages in other areas of your life. A positive, optimistic outlook will help you to keep making wise and heart-centered decisions, which will not only bring new opportunities your way, but it will also help you to maintain relationships that are important to you.
4. Trust in your own ability to figure things out. Not only will this strengthen your faith in life, but you will be confident that you can handle whatever might come your way. Part of the reason life gives everyone problems to go through (or really, we give ourselves problems to go through because our souls attract whatever will teach us in the best, most efficient ways possible) is so that you can empower yourself and remember how strong and resilient you actually are. If you’ve ever gone through and overcome a situation you thought you might not survive and then did, you will be able to remember your feelings of strength and empowerment and keep going. You’ve got this! Don’t doubt yourself; trust yourself.
5. Choose curiosity and amusement to replace fear and annoyance. So, rather than dreading whatever it is that you think you might have to go through (creating a self-fulfilling prophecy), remember that this outcome is only one possibility of infinite possibilities in each moment, in each situation. By choosing to experience life with curiosity, you find yourself thinking, “Hm. I wonder how this will all play out?” rather than, “Oh, no. Not more chaos!” which attracts more drama and chaos, by the way. Shifting this perspective can only help you to stop the momentum of chaos and begin to reverse it. Do be aware of your momentum, though, otherwise you might find yourself getting even more frustrated trying to paddle upstream. So, if you’ve picked up a bunch of momentum toward negative thinking, take a nap or get a good night’s sleep so that you can start fresh and do your inner work before negative thinking takes hold.

Openness is an incredible attitude to have toward life itself, simply because it makes everything easier to handle. You literally learn to roll with the punches, and it’s exactly as effortless and self-preserving as it sounds. The challenge only comes at first, before you find your balance and get the hang of maintaining it. Don’t get too caught up on your perceived failures; it’s only through failure that we can learn and gain the wisdom we are meant to throughout our lives. The trick is letting go and trying again; joyful perseverance.

That’s not to say that you won’t feel any frustration or fear, but you will be much more adept at moving past whatever comes your way and not allowing setbacks to determine your state of being or mood. It isn’t about forcibly making your life easier by controlling or fixing everything outside of yourself. Rather, it’s about allowing your life to become easier naturally (via the law of attraction) by relaxing into your experiences and lovingly respecting the fact that you cannot control things outside of yourself. This removes a lot of outer responsibilities that may carry resentment or exhaustion with them while building your inner work skills so that you can effortlessly move through the unfolding of your life with openness, trust, and your own sense of inner peace and knowing.

Thanks so much for being here! I hope you’ve continued to enjoy our articles each week here on the Mindful Leader Blog.

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement

We can probably all agree that every human being eventually has what we perceive and label as “positive” and “negative” experiences. How we choose to handle these experiences can be either constructive or destructive, working with our lives or against them. Allowing or resisting… and what we resist persists, so why not practice more acceptance and allowing rather than resistance? As much sense as this makes, it can be a little more challenging to put this mindset into practice, especially if you’ve never tried before or if you have unhealthy or destructive mental habits. Fortunately, once you recognize your own power to revise your thinking and give yourself permission to do so, you may find your life beginning to change and look brighter, even if it doesn’t feel like you’re doing a whole lot to “make” it that way. That’s part of the beauty… less doing and more being can actually greatly improve your outlook as well as your circumstances, because rather than frantically trying to force the solution you think is right, you can maintain the wisdom and flexibility to only give your attention to your divinely guided solutions, those that you know are right, intuiting your path while using your mind, logic, and ego as the tools they were meant to be. In this article, you’ll learn several ways to reframe your negative experiences and transmute them into personal lessons so that they serve a divine purpose for you and you can more easily release any associated traumas. 

There is true power in knowing, recognizing, and understanding various aspects of ourselves and our lives. When we step into this personal power, we begin to understand that the only thing within our control is ourselves, our inner workings, and our ideas and beliefs. We cannot control the world around us, people outside of ourselves, or the circumstances that flow into our lives. While we can influence these, either positively or negatively, we cannot actually control them. Control implies a fear-based attitude, which affects the resonance or frequency at which our bodies vibrate, which in turn attracts more of the same energetic frequency. However, when we have a peaceful and abundant frequency, we attract more peace and abundance, whatever form those ideas may take.

So, knowing this, I want to help you to gain a deeper understanding of something that you’ve been through that may still hold some sadness, resentment, or trauma. Sit with those emotions for a moment as you think back on all that happened. Do your best to feel those feelings but not react to them. Now, in order to find—or, more accurately, create—the divine purpose within these seemingly negative events, you may want to set your emotions about the events aside. Just for now. When you’re ready, please read the next section.

Six Ways to Find Meaning in the Madness

1. Take a big picture perspective. What can you derive from this experience in the moment? What knowledge or wisdom might you gain from the experience after it’s all said and done? Simply knowing and trusting yourself well enough to understand that you will find purpose in your circumstances can give you strength in adversity like you’ve never known. That’s why it’s important to be receptive to whatever it is that your life is trying to teach you, and remember that everything will be okay after it’s over.
2. Think of it in terms of manifestation. When you express a desire with your emotions or vibrational state to the universe and then release it, the universe begins to conspire to shift your life around and make these things happen for you. It could be something small or something big, but in order to make room for this new manifestation (or the next step on your journey toward it), other parts of your life may need to crumble or fall apart. The bigger the change you wish to manifest, the more your life might change, and these disruptions can feel like the end of the world, especially if it’s a change toward a whole new direction in life. Once you’ve experienced something like this and are present with it as it happens, you can begin to see the connections leading you toward your desired manifestation. These connections may begin to give you clues during the experiences, but you may not be able to understand the whole story until later, after things settle down.
3. Practice and cultivate your faith until it becomes a knowing. You don’t have to put your faith in anything except trusting in your ability to figure things out (Abraham-Hicks) without freaking out. You can call this faith in yourself, faith in Source, faith in life, or faith in God. The label you give it doesn’t matter; your practice of it does. I encourage you to practice this as often as possible with whatever label you’re most comfortable with, and if you set this intention, you may be presented with challenges in the real world to help you with that practice. That’s okay. Move peacefully and calmly through the chaos by knowing that you will come out on the other side of it stronger, wiser, and more in alignment with your divine purpose.
4. Realize that the only person who can see the purpose of your life experiences is you (because you are the only one who has all the information from your unique perspective), and you are the only person who can define the reason for the experiences. There’s nothing that magical about it once you realize that you are the one with the power to transmute your pain into purpose. It’s so important to assign a purpose to experiences that we perceive as negative because it makes it so much easier to let go of the traumatic aspects of it. This is one step in the process of letting go, and coming to this breakthrough can greatly improve your chances of healing yourself through inner work and mindfulness practice, the key to lasting healing. So, if you take nothing else from this information, please absorb this: You assign the meaning, lesson, or purpose to your traumatic experiences, and only you can choose what to learn from those experiences. Your choice, whether you choose to learn something positive or negative (“All men/women are manipulative/abusive,” vs. “These were finite experiences. Is there anything that I’m doing that allows this to be a repeating pattern?”), will determine the course of your next phase in life, your next chapter. We are always involved in the co-creation of our experiences, whether we believe it or not. The key is to empower yourself with strength, knowledge, wisdom, and intuitive awareness so that you no longer attract these types of experiences. When you take responsibility for your part and assign your own lesson, you are stepping into your power by proclaiming with your inner work that you are not a victim.
5. Be grateful for the experiences and lessons you have been afforded the opportunity to learn! Not only will they strengthen your spirit (like being tested in fire), but they will allow you to become the greatest version of yourself if you choose to learn a positive lesson from your experiences. Allow life to teach you by remaining open and completely honest with yourself, especially when it hurts a little bit. You’ll know that twinge when you feel it. Pay attention to it next time it happens. The more in tune you are to these very subtle signs from every aspect of your being, the faster you will move through the lessons you are meant to learn on your way. The best way to do this is to take the opportunities you are given to practice your inner skills and remain flexible, open, and optimistic during trying times. This doesn’t mean suppressing your emotions and forcing your way through; rather, it means that you feel those emotions and allow yourself to be present with them for a short period of time or while you’re meditating or journaling to release them. However, once that time is done, you set them aside and shift your focus to more positive things.
6. Make optimism a practice. Optimism is essentially reframing something in the moment. One person might complain about snow and cold weather. However, another person might be so awed by the beauty of nature that they don’t even care about being a little cold. These are directions of thought; one leans toward complaining and negativity, and the other leans toward appreciation and positivity. It isn’t what’s happening that matters. It’s how you feel about what’s happening that determines your next moments, short-term and long-term. It also determines how you experience life. Are you the type to make the best of a bad situation or the worst of a good one? Pay attention to how you automatically react to things. Take notice. Only then can you take the reins and step into your own power.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Every experience we have within our lives is meant to teach us how to step into our power, and if we aren’t ready for the responsibility of that, we will continue attracting the lessons we’re supposed to learn, creating repeating patterns of behavior and experiences in our lives. Understand that every single aspect of life is divine. It was designed this way (in duality and contrast) for your soul’s growth and evolution, and it was meant to be savored, not shied away from. You are stronger and more powerful than you give yourself credit for, and the sooner you realize it, the sooner you will have the opportunity to thrive rather than just survive.

Thanks so much for reading!

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement

As many of us wander through life and find ourselves feeling bogged down and uninspired by daily obligations—things we take on as responsibilities even though we don’t necessarily enjoy doing them—we may begin to feel like zombies, always busy but never really doing things we truly enjoy. If this sounds like you, then you may have a somewhat simple dilemma on your hands: you’re disconnected from your spirit or inner being, your core essence. It isn’t that you’ve lost your soul or that it went somewhere; it’s just that you aren’t in tune with it (because it is pure love and positive energy, not in alignment with apathy or depression) and your spirit is calling out through your emotions and intuition for you to come back and live a happier, more fulfilled physical life. You may also find that you have physical symptoms or ailments due to this disconnect, which is the way that your emotional state (also referred to as your vibrational state of being in more esoteric terms) can affect the manifestation that is your body. Your systems and each part of your being is connected and has to work together to be in optimal condition, and the essence of yourself can be tapped into or connected with through something very simple and amazing: creativity, especially when you’re inspired. In this article, I’d like to share some of the ways in which you can tap into your creativity intentionally, and how taking inspired action can lead you to exactly what you need, usually in exactly the ways that you need it to.

So, what exactly is inspired action, and how does it help you to connect with your soul? The best way to recognize inspiration and follow it up with action is to pay attention in every moment by practicing mindfulness. You know what inspiration feels like… a pull, like a call to go and do something very specific based on your unique ideas and experiences. Now, the question is, are you the type of person who ignores this inspiration and puts it off, cutting yourself off from your soul by choosing exhausting obligations instead? Or are you the type of person who eagerly goes to clean out your car or take it to the car wash, smiling the whole way because this is exactly what you need to be doing at that moment? It seems to go by extremely fast, and one thing may lead you to another step, and another, and another, eventually bringing you to something you want or need in your life that is absolutely perfect. These steps are the process of manifestation, of being in alignment with something that you desire and then having it come into your life effortlessly.

You may find that you have experiential evidence already for this kind of thing, but the evidence is also only perceivable if you’re paying attention, so I’d like to share a short personal story of experiential evidence with you.

My mom and I were going for a walk and decided to take a different route than usual to see where it would lead us. Along the way, she was worried that the train tracks we were walking on were still active, so I assured her that they weren’t. I pointed out the overgrowth and cracks in the tracks, the broken ties and fallen branches, and it hit me: nature always wins. So I said that out loud… no matter what happens or what human beings build and create, eventually nature always wins. It was a fun thought, I enjoyed it for a few moments, and then let it go out into the ether, ready to continue our walking adventure.

We chose where we wanted to go seemingly at random, and I was just happy to be outside and walking. We ended up at a river across town from where we began, and we decided to climb down to the banks where the bridge was. At the bottom, underneath the bridge and partially in the water, was a huge cement wall with graffiti all over it. In letters clear as day on that wall, it said: “Nature Always Wins.”

This may seem insignificant to some (it was to my mom, but I felt like it was a little miracle), but it’s a perfect illustration of how following your intuition and trusting the process can lead you to the desires you are attempting to manifest. It also illustrates that putting in too much effort or conflicting emotion will actually slow down your progress on your journey.

So, how do you tap into inspiration and allow things like this to come to you effortlessly, whether you know you want them to or not? Little things like this are often memorable and can be helpful in reassessing your own emotional state. If you have child-like fascination and wonder at these types of little experiences in your own life, you’re on the right track! All it takes to appreciate these little things is mindfulness and paying attention, that way you don’t miss it as it’s happening.

Here are a few ideas to help you shift your focus more toward inspiration and connecting with your spirit.

1. Don’t overthink it. The key is to be inspired and take action before your ego and/or critical mind has a chance to tell you it’s stupid or not worth it. If you’re inspired to do something, go do it… you will find the answers you seek. I can attest from various personal circumstances and seemingly dire situations that you don’t have to inundate yourself with information from all sides in order to make the best decision. Sometimes the best decision finds you at exactly the right time, through exactly the right means, and with exactly what you need.
2. Don’t worry about the how; leave that to the universe! If you get too stuck on how something is going to happen, you may inadvertently push away an idea or method that is trying to find its way to you that you may not ever think of on your own. Your limited perspective as a human being is nothing in comparison to the infinite perspective of your eternal soul, so trusting the wiser and more experienced part of your being is not a bad thing. Imagine all of the opportunities you may have found indirectly by allowing the universe and your inner being to direct you. No matter your desire, your inner being or soul is always calling to you from that vibration and is trying to bring you closer to your desires made manifest. This is another reason why trust in yourself and your intuition is so important, and mindfulness can help you to achieve this level of trust.
3. Trust in your own journey. I won’t lie; it can be especially challenging to have this level of trust during trying life circumstances, but as long as you know that everything is always working out exactly the way it is supposed to, for the greatest good and the growth and evolution of existence on all levels (from the tiniest cells to the universe as a whole). Everything happens for a reason, whether we choose to see that reason or not, and oftentimes we are incapable of perceiving a reason that makes sense to us until much later, after we have achieved a sense of peace about what happened and are able to see clearly. Imagine if you were able to maintain a sense of inner peace during trying times, and how much your stress levels and therefore your resistance would diminish.
4. Follow your inspiration. Even if you’re inspired to do something mundane or something that seems like it’s a weird thing to be inspired to do, that’s okay. No matter what it is, as long as it doesn’t cause harm to anyone, you should follow that call and go for it. Whatever it is that you do that makes you feel truly joyous… time disappears, it’s effortless, and you’re in the flow, and these are the types of feelings to pay attention to and bask in those emotions for a little while. Create what you want to create, and watch as your entire existence begins to flourish with amazing possibilities.
5. Take inspired action. Inspired action is way more powerful than any other kind of action, which is why you see some people forcing and struggling their way through life, working 80+ hours a week and not getting to where they want to be. Spinning their wheels and displacing energy. Abraham-Hicks has an incredible analogy about this: let go and stop going against the current! It’s like putting a raft into a river and pushing upstream, then wondering why you’re not getting anywhere. If you simply hop onto the raft and allow the current to pull you, then you’ll find yourself getting to where you’re going much faster and without all the effort and struggle.

As a side note, when good things happen to you, take credit for them! Don’t call it luck or miracles or anything else that takes the credit away from you and the powerful being that you are. It’s important to take responsibility for the so-called negative things in your life, sure, but don’t throw yourself off balance by focusing only on those. You also manifested all of the amazing good things that have come and will come into your life, so don’t sell yourself short by only taking credit for the “bad.” While it’s good to take that responsibility, refusing to take credit for the good things can be very disempowering because you’re essentially saying that it wasn’t you who manifested these good things, it was just luck or happenstance. This actually perpetuates a victim mentality, and to truly overcome that you must take credit for everything, your entire life, not just one side of the coin.

I certainly hope that some of these insights get you well on your way to nurturing your creativity, and therefore nurturing your soul! I hope you join us here on the Mindful Leader Blog next month for more mindfulness and inner work articles. Thanks so much for reading!

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement

Many of us were raised to believe that showing emotions is equivalent to weakness, unacceptable, or otherwise something to be ashamed of (there’s that subconscious conditioning again!). In reality, this is the furthest thing from the truth. You may have heard someone say, “Vulnerability is strength,” before, and this applies here perfectly because being vulnerable requires that you also be completely genuine and sincere in your moment to moment life as well as in your dealings with others on your journey. These things that we are told continuously as children tend to ferment within our subconscious minds and wreak havoc later on during our adult lives as they manifest in issues such as a lack of empathy, constant numbing-out of emotions through drugs or alcohol, or other ailments or types of dis-ease that affect the emotions as well as the physical vessel. Science is finally beginning to understand just how much emotions affect the physical body, and like most types of scientific discoveries, it will find its way into the mainstream sooner or later and become household knowledge, like gravity or the earth being round. In the meantime, I’d like to invite you to continue reading and allow me to share some ideas and insights about how to nurture your emotional wellbeing so that you can thrive on all levels during your physical lifetime.

Your emotional guidance system is exactly that: a system. As a system, it needs maintenance and upgrades occasionally, as well as the release of excess emotional energies that may bog it down and subsequently cause damage to the human body. And here comes the question: how do you maintain and update your emotional system? It looks much different—and much more involved—than the hands-off updates we receive from time to time for our computers. However, take a moment to imagine everything that’s going on beyond the screen when these computer updates happen. Old programs are being deleted to make room for new ones, which are then scanned for threats and installed, giving the entire system an improvement upon the old system. Now, rather than looking at a screen, picture your mind, body, heart, and spirit as the inside of the computer… and you may as well be looking in a mirror.

This work that goes on within is very much up to you to practice, and no one on the outside of you will really understand what’s going on or how amazing it feels to be given a glimpse behind the curtain. Like staring at a blank computer screen as it updates, the people around you will see your exterior and they may recognize that something is changing, but they won’t know what to make of it because they can’t see inside you, just like you can’t see inside your computer.

With that being said, I’d like to introduce you to a few inner work concepts that can help you to maintain and update your emotional system. Some of it is challenging work; not in the sense of physicality, but emotionally challenging. You may uncover things about yourself or your life that you weren’t prepared for, and you will need to be comfortable with emotional releases such as crying or going for a brisk walk or run to blow off some anger. These are practical ideas for you to explore so that you can clear any blocked energies your vessel may be harboring and upgrade your system.

1. Guided Meditation

Guided meditation is effortless as it holds your focus a little bit but also allows you to use the power of your subconscious mind to raise your vibrational frequency—also known as feeling better emotionally—by speaking affirmations or ideas to you based on what you want to focus on. For example, you can find meditation audio on YouTube completely free, and it goes into specifics such as attracting more money, having more positive energy, and many more. Some are longer than others, so set aside some time when you won’t be disturbed and can sit quietly with headphones on and meditate. You will likely find that you feel refreshed and recharged after meditation, and you may even begin to get a really good idea for something and feel inspired. Take advantage of that inspired feeling and do what you’re called to do.

2. Self-Hypnosis

Like guided meditation, you can find self-hypnosis sessions on YouTube, and all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. These are similar to guided meditation but will tap into your subconscious a bit more through visualization, deep breathing, and relaxation exercises. They may even utilize certain sound frequencies that correspond to various brain waves to “hack” into your subconscious, so to speak. All this means is that your subconscious mind is more likely to pick up on the message and adopt it through repetition. Self-hypnosis can also be used to travel backwards in your memories and heal an emotional trauma in your childhood, which is the next inner work concept.

3. Healing Your Inner Child

Going back to painful memories and rehashing them won’t solve anything, so go in with some kind of plan or method of changing the situation if at all possible. Many of us have experiences as children that are traumatic on an emotional level. Those things that seem like nothing to someone outside of yourself (or so it seems) but feel like the end of the world inside? Those are the things I’m talking about. Adults can be insensitive when it comes to dealing with children, and those children who are empathic or very sensitive can be greatly affected by this type of trauma, so much so that it leaves scars that affect them emotionally throughout their entire lives. To prevent this from happening, it’s up to you to go within and begin healing yourself.

4. Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a form of therapy that works with people who have had difficulty overcoming trauma such as PTSD. By paying attention to where within the body the traumatic event has left its mark, you can allow your nervous system to cycle through the entire trauma cycle all the way to resolution or empowerment. Human beings often interrupt this process or cycle in one way or another, so the trapped electrical impulses in the nervous system can wreak havoc on the body after a traumatic event. By working with a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, you can release traumas from your past experience and begin to heal from them effectively. Like any of the other types of inner work listed, this one will also take repetition, but you should be able to feel a difference after a first session.

5. Shadow Work

As ominous as this sounds, it really just means that you look at your faults, mistakes, regrets, pain, depression, and fear without judging or resenting anything, but rather to soften your perception of it and forgive yourself as well as releasing any leftover emotions you may have about the experience you’re focusing on, especially guilt and shame. This can be accomplished through meditation, journaling, talking about it with someone who is aware of what you’re doing, or any other method of exploring your inner landscape that you might prefer. Working in the shadows of your psyche can bring out a lot of so-called negative emotions, which aren’t good or bad by themselves, but they need to be released somehow, so crying, screaming, or going for a run might help facilitate that. Beware of trying to do too much of this at once, because as this purging of emotions happens, you may find yourself getting overwhelmed by those very emotions. The key is to stay there with them. Feel them, allow them to run their course, and breathe deeply. If you have been meditating, this would be a good time to utilize your ability to quiet your thoughts as these thoughts are probably keeping you trapped in a negative thought loop about something or another in your life. Getting those thoughts to calm down, feeling the painful or unpleasant emotion and not thinking anything about it at all (non-judgment), and then relaxing into the relief on the other side of this inner work experience is one method of how you can heal yourself on an emotional level.

Your emotional system needs to be purged of its excess energies sometimes as well, so if you have an argument with someone, for example, and you go for a walk to blow off steam while they don’t, then all of the emotions they had during the argument will still be festering and lurking within their physical body system, stuck there like there’s a kink in a garden hose. It’s important to release these pent up emotions and dilute the chemicals released by your brain for any extreme emotion, especially the ones that are caused by unwelcome or uncomfortable things happening. Whatever method you have for releasing your emotions or expressing something with them, practice it any time you need to in order to maintain your emotional system’s efficacy. When we humans break down after years of neglecting our own wellbeing on an emotional level, it can manifest as all manner of personality disorders, issues, and even physical symptoms and illnesses. The best way to avoid this is by learning to manage the system before it breaks down to that point. This will help you to maintain overall wellbeing on many levels, and you’ll find yourself with more energy and enthusiasm without even trying to do anything except live your life.

And isn’t that the whole point: living a happy life? The most sought-after commodity isn’t a lot of money or fast cars. The things all human beings crave and want and chase after the most are happiness and love, and when you realize that you can’t chase love or happiness out there but that it comes from within, it’s a state of being that you can practice intentionally, that’s when you’re ahead of the curve and can really begin to thrive on all levels.

I hope that this article helps you to learn more about your emotional system and how it can impact every aspect of your life. These are enormously complex and deep topics, so I recommend that you learn more about what you’re drawn to so you become familiar with it and can begin implementing it. Please join us next week for a new article about nourishing your spirit and creativity.

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement

(Disclaimer: If you have any health concerns, doubts, or unease about any of the aforementioned inner work exercises, you may want to do your research and learn what you can about each one before attempting to practice on your own. In many cases, it may be best to consult with a coach or specialist within these fields to make sure you are accomplishing what it is you set out to accomplish with these exercises. Because this is intangible inner work, you are the only liable party, so be aware that any resurfacing of negative emotions you may have belong only to you and are not an actual threat unless you label or perceive them that way.)

One aspect of feeling amazing is taking good care of your physical body. This sounds self-explanatory enough, but it can be a challenge for many people, especially if you are sensitive or empathic to the energies around you. Sometimes this sensitivity can create a barrier in the form of all sorts of things: weight gain, self-sabotage, procrastination, avoidance, overworking, a lack of balance, addiction, and so on. This is essentially our physical body’s response to us needing protection from something or another in our reality, but it typically doesn’t help. Rather than allowing your body’s long-term responses and coping mechanisms to run on autopilot, keeping yourself nourished and healthy is an excellent way of maintaining balance and control over your energy levels, your focus, and your level of clarity. The way you care for yourself will vary for everyone, but there are some basic ideas that may serve you well across the board, so please join me as we further explore this topic of nourishing your physical body.

Your physical health has a direct effect on your emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing, whether you believe it does or not. However, it becomes easier and easier to notice that this is the case the healthier you get, so eating healthy, fresh, whole foods and getting at least 20-30 minutes of exercise a day can have an incredible impact on your ability to focus, not to mention on your body’s ability to function properly. When I talk about your body functioning properly, this includes the emotional aspects of your being. Your emotions are your body’s way of pointing you in the right direction, an indication system, and they tie directly into your intuition. Of course these systems are developed over time through subconscious conditioning, whether that be you conditioning yourself or other people around you conditioning you without even realizing it. This is why it seems so elusive—these are intangible ideas that not everyone is or becomes familiar with until young adulthood or later, and the revelations themselves can be life-altering. I personally have likened it to stepping into another dimension; these so-called dimensions are not physical experiences, although there can be physical symptoms. More often, they are strictly internal, emotional experiences and a breakthrough happens that rattles your perception of reality. The physical manifestation shows up later, as an echo of your inner work.

The more healthy and nurtured you are on all levels, the less likely life changes and circumstantial challenges are to throw you into a downward spiral, and once that kind of thinking takes hold and gathers momentum, it becomes more and more difficult to break free from. This is why mindfulness is so important for your health; being self-aware in the moment, being able to catch yourself when you’re in the midst of it and acknowledge how you feel, offers you the unique opportunity for growth and releasing things that no longer serve you. To be perfectly honest, physical exercise is a great starting point because it provides a number of benefits without you necessarily having to think too much about it, especially if inner work still feels daunting to you, which can happen if you’ve never gone within before.

So, what are some ways in which you can make sure that your physical body is nurtured and valued the way your divine vessel deserves to be? Here are a few things to try as well as to keep in mind as you work toward the best version of yourself that you can be.

1. Try different types of foods and pay attention to how they make your body feel. Does the meal make you feel sluggish? Tired? Like you want to go into a food coma? Or does it make you feel energized? Alive? Happy? The types of food don’t really matter much, although the majority of people will do much better without fast food and TV dinners. Because all bodies are a little different, you can customize what you eat to fit exactly what you need for your best overall health.

2. Make small, daily changes. Any time you’re changing your diet or daily routine, it can be extremely overwhelming to change a bunch of things at once, so try one thing at a time, and if you enjoy it and it works, then you can choose to incorporate that into your daily routine. If you don’t enjoy it, you can explore other options. While some people might enjoy walking or yoga, others may enjoy swimming or lifting weights better. This has to be at your discretion because you’re the only person who can determine which activity you enjoy most and are most likely to continue in whatever circumstances you may find yourself.

3. Don’t use your circumstances as an excuse. No matter what type of situation you find yourself in, self-care must take priority, and sometimes this may require you to get a little creative. If there’s only one option for exercise, for example, it is still your decision whether to do it or not. If you don’t, that isn’t life’s decision… that choice belongs to you, and only you. If there are limited options as far as healthy food is concerned, then you can choose to work with it or not. Either way, your physical body will be a direct manifestation and reflection of your choices, and this is true whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not.

4.  Add a little variety! If you find yourself getting bored or frustrated with your current daily routine, replace one thing you don’t enjoy with something that you do. This could be related to exercise, meditation, food, the way you prepare food, where you work out, or just doing something once a week to add variety such as going on a hike. No matter the case, making one small change is always doable and much less daunting than trying to rearrange your entire lifestyle all at once. There is a process to it, and how else can you know exactly what’s working for your benefit and what isn’t? Variety is also good for some people but not structured enough for others; it’s important to stay aware of what your body is communicating with you.

5. Maintain your mindfulness practice and your ability to be aware in the moment. This can be done fairly easily by meditating, and meditation can be the gateway to becoming aware in each moment and being present in the now. Of course you can always choose not to meditate but rather to simply be more aware, but meditation makes this practice much easier and more natural to fall into, not to mention that it strengthens your ability to be mindful and present no matter what. For many people, meditating for 10-20 minutes a day can mean the difference between wellbeing and misery, so I highly recommend that you try it for a week and see how you like it. The beauty of it is that it isn’t difficult and there is no right or wrong way to meditate; you can do this in whatever way suits you and your lifestyle best, and make changes as needed depending on what works specifically and uniquely for you.

6. Get plenty of rest when you need it. If you find yourself feeling sluggish, drained, stressed, tired, or unable to focus, forcing or struggling your way through things isn’t going to do much good. You may be able to finish whatever it is you’re obligated to finish, but your level of clarity will be significantly lower and you are likely to find that your work suffers for it. Your sleep patterns and sleep schedules are important, and your body and mind absolutely need to be able to recharge on a regular basis. If you find yourself feeling burnt out on your task, you can choose to either change pace for a little while and do something different (if you were doing something that requires a lot of mental focus and clarity, then it might be time to switch to something physical for an hour or so before getting back to your previous task), or you can choose to take a short nap. Naps are not just for babies and toddlers; as a matter of fact, naps and shorter sleep cycles are actually more beneficial for some people than a solid eight hours of sleep, so pay attention to how you feel throughout the day and discern whether a nap might be the right course of action. Set an alarm, and get back to work after you’ve gotten a little much-needed rest.

You can probably tell that this is all based on paying attention and doing the inner work you need to do in order to thrive and be healthy on all levels. The most important thing to remember is that there are no right or wrong answers… only the solutions that best fit you and your unique body, personality, lifestyle, and emotional state. It is true that if you’ve never attempted anything like this—changing your life—that you may get a little bit of a rocky start, and this becomes especially true if you’re battling any kind of addiction or subconsciously conditioned emotional ailment such as CPTSD from narcissistic abuse, depression, anxiety, and so on. If this sounds like you, then you may feel like you’re forcing yourself at first, but remember that it will be worth it in the long run, and all that protesting is coming from your ego or false self. If you make the choice to ignore that part, you may find yourself becoming more and more of who you truly are, and you may even find that it begins to feel effortless after a very short while.

Lastly, if you’re making changes such as these and slip from time to time, don’t get stuck or trapped in a state of beating yourself up or talking down to yourself. This only increases the ego’s, “Haha, I told you so!” attitude and discourages you from continuing to move forward. However, if you don’t make it as big a deal as the ego thinks and you don’t allow self-deprecating thoughts to seep into your mind and emotional system, then you will be much more likely to try again and keep going. You may feel like you’re taking one step forward and two steps back at times, but what about those other times when you take a leap forward and only stumble back a step or two as you land? You should give yourself much more credit for those times and pay less attention to the overall crookedness or indirectness of your life’s journey.

I hope that this article has helped to shed some light on just how important it is to take care of your physical vessel, and that you’ll join us again next week for more on nurturing yourself on all levels for optimal health.

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement

It’s easy to get caught up in the chaos of the day to day, but when you lead a busy life, it becomes that much more important to set boundaries and take good care of yourself on all levels. Doing this mindfully can involve some finagling, especially if this a new concept for you or you have a lot of obligations that have already piled up. Excellent self-care includes but is not limited to reprioritizing, setting boundaries, creating time for yourself to recharge, and not giving away your energy if it isn’t a win-win-win situation or it makes you feel dread or resentment. Although this sounds easy enough, you may find yourself giving in to obligations or requests without truly thinking about them first, which can create more chaos within your life. This can result in a vicious cycle that could very well end in exhaustion or burnout, so please allow me the honor of sharing some thoughts and ideas with you about mindful self-care so that a truly detrimental situation can be avoided.

Nourishing yourself happens on many different levels, but the first step is for you to make the conscious decision and commitment to do exactly that: nourish yourself. This doesn’t mean you have to wake up with a perfect routine tomorrow, but rather, incorporating small daily habits one at a time can greatly increase your wellbeing overall and provide you with more energy, a perception that you have more time, and an increased ability to get everything done that you set out to during any given day. The last thing any of us want is the feeling of burnout, which can also lead to depression or other health problems related to stress. This is the part we want to avoid, so here are a few realizations that have helped me along my own journey, and I certainly hope that they help you on yours.

1. Remember that no one will take care of you as well as you will, no matter how valiant and admirable their efforts. Caring for yourself keeps you emotionally and psychologically healthy, and this includes finding ways to meet any needs you may have, including needs to “talk shop” or socialize. Typically speaking, if a human being becomes too dependent on someone else for their basic care, it creates codependent relationships through long-term conditioning and can result in resentment and—you guessed it—burnout, stress, and depression. To help prevent this for yourself, it’s important to know how to identify what your needs are and how to meet them in the most effective and healthy ways that you can on your own.
2. You are your own best friend! If you treat yourself well, you will attract the circumstances and people into your life that will also treat you well. This is what it really means when they say, “you can’t love someone else until you love yourself.” It’s much deeper than being superficially confident and calling that self-love. Rather, this unconditional love for yourself can be achieved by going within and uncovering various different layers of your personality and why you may choose to keep these aspects of yourself buried or hidden from others. That’s not to say that you have to go shouting all of your deepest, darkest secrets from the rooftops; rather, it simply means that you, within yourself, recognize and become aware of your quirks and idiosyncrasies and uncover what may have caused them and what causes you to hide them. For example, what impression did you get of a certain habit or behavior when you were a child, and how did that perspective affect your subconscious beliefs about that habit or behavior as an adult? Introspecting about this can greatly increase your inner peace as you work through ideas or beliefs that you can now recognize as being false or conditioned. Once you recognize this, it becomes easier to change those beliefs to serve you within this life rather than working against you.
3. Every single human being has been conditioned in some way. All this means, essentially, is that we spend our entire childhoods allowing other people to dictate our lives to us—parents, teachers, older siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents—essentially everyone. When you begin to become aware of the beliefs that were drilled into your head as “truth” by generations before you, you can also begin to analyze them and understand which ones you agree with now, utilizing discernment and your own logic, life experiences, and knowledge from continuous learning. You can then also identify those beliefs that you don’t or have never agreed with and begin to un-condition yourself or replace those belief systems with your own intentionally. And yes, you are the only person who should be telling you what you think! Anytime someone else tells you what to think as a child and it goes directly against your own ideas, it creates cognitive dissonance and conflict within you, which in turn also creates a dependence on those people telling you what to think because you probably get into trouble for disagreeing. This can result in all manner of personality disorders and false programming that will need to be undone as you grow into adulthood, especially if you intend to be a functioning member of society and be fully able to care for yourself. Understanding this conditioning is what many people now refer to as “waking up” or having a spiritual awakening, which makes it way less woo-woo and esoteric than it may sound, especially as science continues uncovering and providing evidence of these ideas.
4. To truly be yourself, you must know who you are. So… who are you? If you’ve ever watched the movie Anger Management, you might remember Adam Sandler’s character losing it a little bit when he was asked this because he was answering with what he does for a living, his hobbies, etc. So, I challenge you today to begin digging deeper to truly uncover the core aspects of yourself. This can be accomplished through inner work and working through what you don’t like or want, in order to determine what you do like or want. Not only does this allow you to be more of who you are, but it will also increase your clarity about your true self and your life as a whole. This will also diminish the power of your ego, organically switching your perspective from one of pride to one of humility. Take that, ego!
5. Not only do you need to know who you are… in order to truly show yourself unconditional love and nurturing, it’s important to accept yourself as a complete being, not just for the positive aspects of your personality or life experience. Of course, those positive aspects are what you will want to cultivate more of, but any shame, guilt, or negativity you feel about yourself will need to be healed and shown love to before you will get to that point. If you think of your emotions as energy, the positive ones being bright and the “negative” or undesired ones being dark, it becomes much easier to imagine how tainted and corrupted our energy and emotional state might be if we allow these feelings of shame and guilt and fear to permeate and fester within us. Having a creative outlet for these types of emotions is incredibly beneficial, and you could say that creatively expressing these negative emotions will get them out of you and allow you to transmute them into something more positive, namely your creative expression. Whether this is painting, writing, woodworking, making ice sculptures, or customizing your yoga routine doesn’t matter; this creative expression will be unique to you and only you can determine what works best for you, your needs, and your lifestyle.

Above all else, making the conscious decision to nurture yourself and committing to it is the main hurdle. Once you’ve done this, even if you don’t get everything “right” immediately, you will still have made that decision and be committed despite setbacks no matter what those might look like, and this will allow you to be compassionate for yourself and for your progress… even if you fail at first. Once you’ve established this decision and commitment within your conscious mind, you can take steps to help yourself through meditation, self-hypnosis, and healing music, among other practices. Once you set your intentions, everything else has a tendency to begin falling into place organically.

Thank you so much for joining us this month here on the Mindful Leader Blog! This month’s topic is nourishing your body, mind, and spirit, so I hope you come back to join us each week for more in-depth mindfulness techniques and ideas.

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement

No matter what walk of life you hail from or who you are, chances are that the way you have grown up into adulthood has involved subconscious conditioning that may not be good for you in the long run. You’ve probably heard of things like abundance blocks, faulty programming, limiting beliefs, etc. These are all labels for subtle nuances of the same thing: the conditioning that happens within the human mind when something is said or done repeatedly. These patterns then become so ingrained that they turn into beliefs, which is how your belief systems are created. And yes, you can change them if they don’t serve you… for example, the belief that divorce is wrong no matter what creates a conflict for anyone who is married to an abusive spouse. Are you supposed to stay and suffer or even be murdered because your beliefs (that you were conditioned to accept as truth over time) state that divorce is wrong? Or are you supposed to adjust your beliefs according to your new knowledge (in this case, realizing that you are being abused, which is sometimes not obvious if the abuse is emotional, manipulative, and subtle) and grow from there? No matter your circumstance, it is your perception, your conditioning, and your subconscious mind that hold all of the power you need to make positive changes. In this article, you will learn how to uncover your subconsciously conditioned programming and beliefs, begin un-conditioning yourself, and re-write the story that you tell yourself very deliberately and on purpose so that you can thrive in life rather than constantly being stuck on survive.

This subconscious conditioning that we all experience is one of the most fascinating but troublesome aspects of the human vessel’s operating system: the mind. While repetition and conditioning can be extremely beneficial to us as we learn new things, it can be absolutely detrimental to your progress as a human being if you are continuously conditioned to believe that you’re a failure, for example. This is typically done without the person doing it even fully realizing it, telling you things throughout childhood such as, “Why can’t you be more like your brother/sister?” or, “Make sure you have a backup plan.” The first statement sends us the message subconsciously that we will never be able to live up to our sibling’s accomplishments or be loved as much as our siblings, while the second statement sends us the message that our dreams can’t possibly come true and we have to have a whole separate plan in place to make money, because you can’t be worth anything without money.

Couple this with societal, media, and religious conditioning, and you’ve got today’s western society, broken down and quantified into countless different personality disorders and psychological illnesses that all stem from the same thing: subconscious conditioning. Yes, I realize that this is a bold statement, but it is truer than we have been able to prove scientifically so far because scientific advances are still being discovered and understood when it comes to the way the brain and body systems work in tandem with our emotions and spiritual wellbeing. No matter what the disease or illness or disorder, chances are that it is caused by a lifetime of subconscious conditioning, piled on top of generations of conditioning before that. We all mean well as human beings, but unfortunately we are all running on brainwashed autopilot and operating from the false assumption that physical reality, as we perceive it with our very, very limited sensory systems, is the only reality in existence. It isn’t. This physical world is a co-creation of everything we have going on behind the scenes from an energetic or vibrational standpoint. The physical world is an echo of everything that has been thought and felt already, so in order to change this physical manifestation in what we perceive as the future, we have to make changes within ourselves now.

So, how do you begin going about uncovering your subconscious programming and changing how you perceive yourself and your place in the world as a whole? Here are a few ideas to think about and consider as you learn more about your unique perspective of reality and how it relates and is connected to everything else in existence. This will allow you to begin seeing how your conditioning happened, and from there you can visualize a different story to replace the old one. Of course there are other techniques you can also research, but I will focus on what I have learned from personal inner experience in conjunction with my studies.

1. What many of us don’t consciously realize is that our perception is literally our reality. Whatever we think is real, is real. We think repetitive thoughts and may have things told to us repeatedly, then maybe we have those things backed up by experiences so we consider this evidence (even though it is merely the law of attraction at work), and then, once we have evidence, it becomes a belief system or very close to “fact” as we continue on our journey. What we must remember is that, just because we have had this one particular type of experience, it isn’t fact or truth, period. It is a version or angle or perspective of truth and a version of what we perceive as real, but it isn’t the experience of everyone across the board, and being able to redirect your focus to attract more positive experiences despite what your past tells you can only help you on your journey.

2. Remember that your experiences, while unique to you and your journey, are not apart from anyone else’s experiences. Rather, they are part of the same collective whole, so each soul (evolving and molded based on experience and life journey) is like a piece to the puzzle of true reality, and only when all of the pieces come together can we truly know and understand all that is from all perspectives throughout all eternity and existence. Breaking that down into a more manageable chunk of information, think of it as though each of us can only see from one specific perspective and the perspectives are infinite in number, beginning with tiny organisms and ending with interdimensional and interstellar beings we have no proof don’t exist (including planets, stars, black holes, and galaxies – how do we know these aren’t sentient and/or conscious beings?). There is so much that we don’t know, so many different points of view, each with its very own purpose, direction, and lifetime. None of these are good or bad in and of themselves; they are just different, but all lifetimes are created to serve the greatest good of all. This can be difficult to accept when we think of people in history who did terrible and cruel things, but when it comes to the infinite expanse of eternity (one dimension, time) and the universe (another dimension, space as we perceive it from our physical perspective), is it really worth getting stuck and dwelling on the horrible things one person did? Or is it better to learn from it and move on toward joy, that way we can utilize the law of attraction properly and manifest better things that come from love rather than beginning a self-fulfilling prophecy of negative thought loops?

3. By comparing our lives with the lives of others but not judging ourselves or them for the lives we have lived, we can examine how they grew up very differently than we did, or what kinds of things were experienced that may have caused similar or even completely different conditioning. If you can find someone spiritual to discuss this with on a semi-regular basis so that you can share your breakthroughs and understand when they share theirs with you, then you can thoroughly take advantage of this process and truly dig deep. If you don’t have a friend available to help you do this, preferably someone who practices mindfulness as well, then you may want to consider hiring a mindfulness or inner work coach to help you pick up and maintain momentum toward more and more breakthroughs. Spiritual awakening de-mystified: it is a series of epiphanies and revelations being peeled back and old emotional energy being brought to surface so that you can be who you truly are, not who others or the world tells you to be. Of course this comes with its own challenges, but essentially, that is what a spiritual awakening is, and embracing it means you are accepting of your path and willing to work with the energies and surrender to life and the amazing journey it has laid out for you.

4. Practice visualization as much as you can so that you can heal your pain and release it, then replace your old memories that may have created conditioning with new stories of those memories that you can then program into your subconscious mind by using meditation, self-hypnosis, and alpha wave binaural tones. Once you get to the point of being able to clear your thoughts, it is time to learn to direct them deliberately by placing new ideas that serve you well into your subconscious belief system repeatedly, that way you re-condition yourself to be much more of who you truly are and less of who you were conditioned to be.

5. Take on an attitude of curiosity and constant learning. Let life be your teacher, because experience is a better teacher than anything else could possibly be. The only exception being maybe if we were able to transfer knowledge of everything via telepathy or touch (remember the movie Paul?), but we have not evolved to that point yet. Because we have imagined it, it is on its way, though. Just like Star Trek and cell phones, not to mention touch screen technology. It is now only a matter of time, isn’t it? Whether you agree or not, this is one of those “wait and see” situations where time will tell what does develop, and evolution will help it happen over time.

6. Allow others to be themselves 100%, and you will find that you are able to be yourself 100% more often, too, because your judgment isn’t being reflected back to you in your physical experience. In doing this, you also practice focusing on not being bitter over circumstances and experiences from your past that were painful. Your outer world will reflect your inner world, and everything is energy first, so it makes sense for us to focus on feeling our best and taking care of ourselves to that end while also treating other people the way we would want to be treated. It all comes back to us, and all of those platitudes and sayings we dismiss as cheesy are really true but on a much deeper level than we may initially understand.

7. Enjoy the fact that every human has layers and is a dynamic, multifaceted being, even if you don’t necessarily “get along” or like each other. Each and every one of us has many aspects to ourselves, our lives, our opinions, our personalities, our experiences, and so on. People also typically have a lot of different talents to tap into, whether we know what those talents are right away or not. We are all different but all pieces of the same whole, intertwined and interconnected, crossing paths with those whom we are meant to cross paths with, learning what we need to learn (and repeating patterns if we don’t learn fast or have trouble recognizing our patterns), and being in exactly the right place at the right time at all times even if we don’t feel like we are. It’s all part of the process, the journey, so we might as well let go and enjoy the ride, roll with the punches, and recover quickly.

I hope that some of these ideas and revelations resonate with you and allow you to step fully into your power, and into who you truly are as a soul. This is the first step toward manifesting the life of your dreams in every way, so congratulations for stepping up and taking responsibility for yourself through mindfulness practice!

It feels scary sometimes, doesn’t it? However, the better you get at being yourself and learning from life quickly, the more you will enjoy the journey and be able to glean insights and wisdom from it. This is not to say that you have to have happy, positive, spiritual days 100% of the time. What it does mean is that you don’t beat up on yourself when you get depressed or discouraged, release those feelings or refocus, and move on.

Go for a walk, meditate, or do something different for a little while. This will help you to lift your mood if you’re down and remember that one aspect of your life is only one aspect of your life, and while it may affect your life as a whole, it isn’t the only thing you could focus on. Sometimes our energies and emotions go to frustration for a reason, like maybe we need a break from that task so we can come back to it later to get it done in a faster, more inspired, and more effective way. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially if you come back and end up being way more productive and get things done much faster, right?

I hope that you’re having a beautiful week so far and join us next month for more inner work insights on the Mindful Leader Blog.

For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:

http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement