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So far we’ve discussed conditional love versus unconditional love and the three aspects of cultivating unconditional love from within. This week, let’s dive a little deeper into what unconditional love might look like in your day to day life and how practicing it toward yourself and others can help you to get better acquainted with that feeling and therefore tap into it more and more. When someone you care about does something you don’t agree with, do you get angry? Yell at the person? Or sit down with them to find out what happened on more than just the level of your own interpretation? This can be especially tough to do when it comes to parenting because so many parents are fearful that their child’s behaviors will reflect badly on them as parents. This creates a reactive, conditional mindset rather than a mindset of unconditional love, and the energy projected onto the child can affect that child for the rest of their lives, either in good ways or bad ways. In today’s article, we’ll explore ways to train yourself to be loving and assertive rather than fearful and controlling.
From Wikipedia:
“Unconditional love should not be mistaken with unconditional dedication: unconditional dedication or "duty" refers to an act of the will irrespective of feelings (e.g. a person may consider they have a duty to stay with someone); unconditional love is an act of the feelings irrespective of will.”
So, as a somewhat simple and relatable example, when your child is being scolded or “in trouble,” it’s especially important not to withhold love from them, otherwise they will receive the message that they are only lovable if they never make any mistakes, which directly attacks their humanity as being a “bad” thing on an unconscious level. This leads to subconscious conditioning for a perfectionistic mindset, which can lead to failure more often than not, and stagnation due to analysis paralysis. Children raised this way are also more likely to develop low self-worth and procrastinate due to a deep-seated fear of failure as this ends up defining their entire existence. They will fear making decisions on their own, and all of this nervous energy will eventually turn into rebellion during teen years for some and complete shutdown for others.
So, not to be alarmist, but the ways in which we behave toward each other can have a massive impact, especially on our children who rely on us to guide and teach them, not beat them into submission and cause their souls to feel exhausted by the time they’re 12. As parents, we should know better.
As mindful leaders, we should also know better, otherwise, we have no business leading anyone because we can’t even lead ourselves to that point.
The “bad” news? This is extremely common and people are just now understanding the vast impact this has had not only on individuals but also on the collective consciousness of humanity.
The “good” news? This is extremely common and people are just now understanding the vast impact this has had not only on individuals but also on the collective consciousness of humanity.
It’s never too late to become who you truly are and leave your own past and unconscious programming behind, and because this is so common, you will have no trouble finding like-minded people who have experienced similar journeys, and as more people awaken, this understanding will continue to grow and become more common.
Whew! Now that we’ve gone into a little bit of the effects that conditional love might have on people, can you imagine how your attitude toward yourself might be affecting you? If you love yourself and others conditionally, those conditions will permeate your thought processes and be reflected back to you, not only by your own thoughts and emotions but also by other people in your experience.
Love Yourself
Loving yourself means you take the time to reflect on things that have occurred in your life and remain vigilant about whether something is loving or not. This means checking in with yourself on a very regular basis and evaluating how you feel and why, and whether this behavior is actually loving or not. You will begin to notice little things within your experience and we encourage you to use those examples to refine your discernment.
Loving yourself means that you speak up when someone crosses a boundary in the moment, or let it go depending on the circumstance. The more often you do this, the better you will be able to know what to do in the moment. This is the nature of practice.
Loving yourself means that you don’t expose yourself to toxins, be they people, foods, TV shows, music, books, videos, articles, or anything else you consume on any level. Pay attention to what your mood is like after you consume something and this will be a good indicator of whether it’s good for you or not.
Loving yourself means that you know and understand the difference between what is your responsibility and what is not. This doesn’t just refer to tasks and projects, but also to problems and emotions. Are you taking on others’ problems as your own, trying to help but getting drained? Are you feeling worried, anxious, or preoccupied with someone else and their issues? While it’s fantastic to be there for and help others, it isn’t as simple or black and white as that. If your energy is strong and you can maintain yourself well, then it’s time to help others. If you’re scrambling to make everything happen, then there is still work to do on yourself.
Loving yourself means that you are able to meet your own needs. What needs do you expect others to meet for you? While this doesn’t always indicate conditions, it is an important question to reflect on. What needs do I expect others to meet for me?
Loving yourself means being able to validate your own experiences and not depend on external sources for validation. While external validation can be helpful, especially at the beginning of your journey, it can lead you down a path of people-pleasing, which can become unhealthy very quickly.
Loving yourself means enjoying your own company and appreciating who you are deep down. Are you content sitting in silence with yourself? Can you entertain yourself when you’re alone? Or do you lose focus and automatically reach for your phone? While loneliness is a somewhat normal emotion to feel at certain points, it is unwise to allow that emotion to dictate your decisions.
Loving yourself means that you know how and when to say no. You don’t have to do everything for everyone all the time; as a matter of fact, it’s much more effective to cut out anything that doesn’t serve you. That’s not to say that you have to be mean about it or make your problems other people’s problems; rather, it simply means that you are putting your own life first rather than allowing someone else to dictate things for you in any way.
Lastly (although I’m sure there are many more elements of loving yourself), loving yourself means putting yourself, your emotions, and your life first, before all others. This is much easier said than done, especially in certain situations, so re-prioritizing your activities can be helpful and saying no can come in very handy.
Thank you so much for joining us again this week on the Mindful Leader Blog! Loving yourself unconditionally can dramatically change your life for the better, so we encourage you to begin practicing this attitude toward yourself as often as possible. You will see the results evidenced in your daily experiences as you practice, which will hopefully also encourage you to keep going.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
What does it mean for our understanding and consciousness to love ourselves unconditionally? What does it mean for our emotional state? Loving yourself unconditionally means that you fully accept who you are while remaining open to growth and change, you trust yourself to make decisions and can make them quickly based on a healthy combination of intuition and logic, and you will know in advance how your decisions and actions will affect you as well as have a fairly accurate idea of how they might affect others. This awareness and trust in yourself can be developed no matter who you are or what your life looks like, and it begins with cultivating unconditional love for yourself, which will then allow you to unconditionally love others as well. It begins with you.
There are three major aspects to discovering your own love for yourself: knowing yourself, accepting yourself, and trusting yourself. We’ll cover each one in more detail, and keep in mind that this is an ongoing process of inner work. You may begin to think about these things immediately, or it might take a while before something reminds you of it, but I hope that you can gain some insight into this process here.
Know Yourself
As with anything or anyone else, you cannot love yourself if you don’t know yourself, and knowing yourself involves much more than listing off your job, city or town, and what your family circumstance is. These are all external things that do not define who you are, even though they are part of your life.
Who are you beneath the surface of the superficial life you live? Who are you deep down? What do you desire deep in your soul? What dreams remain unfulfilled? What creations have you put on the back burner? What adventures? And why? What are you inspired by? What fascinates you? Do you nurture that part of yourself?
Getting to know who you are deep down also involves getting beyond what your life has conditioned you to believe. Through repetition, things become integrated into our subconscious and then manifest themselves as unconscious behaviors. Sometimes these behaviors are wonderful, such as walking, driving, and breathing. The subconscious takes care of anything you do that is habitual and repetitive, and it does the same thing with informational feedback from your life experience. This feedback is presented in the form of everything the human body can pick up with its senses as well as everything the energetic aspects of our being can interpret. Whatever beliefs are instilled in us through repetition, especially before age seven, is integrated into our subconscious belief patterns. We had no say in the creation of our own belief systems, so it’s important to question what you believe, why you believe it, and whether that belief is serving you or not.
You can redefine your own beliefs. I’m not referring to simply saying affirmations or journaling about your daily tasks. Think about things that you imagine as truth, things that have likely been repetitive patterns within your life. For some, these behavioral patterns will be obvious; for others, not so much. Practice introspection to observe whether any beliefs you touch on give you anxiety or make you angry in any way. These emotionally triggered responses are signals from your body that something was programmed into your belief system that goes against who you are at your core.
Accept Yourself
Self-acceptance means accepting yourself on all levels, no matter what you may have done in the past or in any other plane of existence. This means that, no matter what you or any other version of you has ever done, you know that everything is okay in the bigger picture. Your only real task during this step is to accept yourself despite all mistakes, regrets, and so-called “bad” choices. Did you really make a decision you consider “bad,” or have others reprimanded you for decisions you had to make one way or another? Did you take this type of criticism personally on an unconscious level, allowing it to damage your inner sense of self-worth? This is more common than many of us may realize at first.
Forgive yourself for anything you might still be holding against yourself or carrying around with you. Was the mistake in question understandable on some level? Was there a reason, and you’re beating yourself up over it because you hurt someone inadvertently? Know that everything will be alright and let go of the negative feelings about it by allowing your body to express them in some way. You may need to do this several times before all of the layers of old emotions are purged, but you will feel lighter for it. You may end up crying, exercising (recommended for anger), writing, expressing yourself musically, or any other therapeutic activity that you enjoy.
Accepting yourself also means accepting your humanity as well as your divinity, as discussed in last month’s articles. While you are human and make mistakes, on another level you are an eternal being having a human experience… for the experience. All experiences are valid and important, even those we are outraged or disgusted by. They allow us to learn more about the spectrum on which we exist on so many levels. If everything were as black and white as we tend to act like it is, all humans would look only two ways. Instead, we have such a diverse human species that no two people have the exact same DNA, not even identical twins, as was once believed.*
Trust Yourself
Do you trust yourself? Your ability to figure things out? Your ability to make decisions and handle any and all circumstances that might come your way realistically? While many of us have a basic sense of being able to make decisions and handle life and all of its interesting moments, it often runs much deeper than that.
Do you ever feel worried? Anxious? Stressed out? Overwhelmed? In some cases, this can be an indicator that you don’t trust yourself at a level deep enough to make progress from where you are. So, how do you practice trusting yourself and build upon the trust that already exists?
Whenever you tell yourself you’re going to do something, do it. No excuses, even if you try to talk yourself out of it, even if the excuses start popping up in your head. One example of this is telling yourself, “I’m going to do yoga for 20 minutes and meditate for 20 minutes,” and then not doing anything at all. This is essentially your ego mind trying to keep you stuck in the status quo, so the more often you can keep your word to yourself on things that are good for you, especially things you have to do that you don’t necessarily want to, the stronger that level of trust becomes.
Self-care on a physical level is important for this aspect of unconditional self-love; showing yourself that you love yourself by making sure you are eating properly for your body type and lifestyle (good food should make you feel alert and energized, not tired and sluggish), caring for your body in whatever ways make you feel the best, and despite this seeming counter-intuitive, not beating up on yourself if you happen to make a mistake.
Most importantly for this step is to nurture yourself from within by being kind, compassionate, and loving toward yourself. If someone screaming at you drill-sergeant style doesn’t do it for you, then why would you allow your thoughts to speak to you in a similar way? They key isn’t to crash-diet yourself into a new way of life (and I don’t just mean food). The key is to love yourself into a new level of consciousness so that your new life can unfold with as little forced effort as possible. Are you more likely to be successful long-term if you work yourself into the ground to get there and reprimand yourself for every shortcoming? Or if you work from a place of inspiration and encourage yourself along the way?
When you build trust in yourself, you will find that others trust you more as well. The less you let yourself down, the more capable you will be of not letting others down; not to mention the clarity and insight you will gain along the way. Your life is only yours, and if you don’t show yourself the love, acceptance, and trust that you wish to experience, then why should others show you these things? This happens on an energetic level first, and many people can sense it if your words, actions, and energies aren’t aligned.
All of this mindfulness and inner work will lead you to stepping into your power and authenticity. What is authenticity? Knowing who you are, trusting yourself, and being confident enough in all of the aforementioned to be transparent and vulnerable when necessary. Begin with what is within your control: yourself.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
*Identical Twins:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/health/11real.html
Most of us already understand on some level that loving ourselves is important, but what does this actually mean? In order to truly understand unconditional love, it’s important to begin defining what you consider loving behavior and what you don’t consider loving behavior. During this defining process, we may find ourselves looking at the ways in which people treat us and begin to understand when someone is being loving and when they are not. It’s also important not to take your discoveries personally (despite them being very personal) because most people are living from an unconscious place, unaware of how their words and actions may be affecting others. We all do this from time to time; we’re all human. So, while defining what is and what is not loving can be extremely important, it’s equally important not to internalize or take this behavior personally because it is unconscious behavior. However, by becoming aware of how others are treating us and what we consider loving or not, we can also begin setting healthier boundaries and treating ourselves and others in more loving ways. Read on to learn more about mindfully defining what is and what is not loving in your life.
When it comes to love, many of us have preconceived notions about it that don’t necessarily align with what unconditional love truly is. For example, we live in a society that perpetuates codependency and holding others responsible for our behaviors. In romantic relationships, possessiveness and envy are commonplace. But is this really loving behavior? Or is this a type of unconscious programming based in fear?
It can begin as something that seems trivial and ridiculous, like when you’re kids playing a game and someone makes a mistake and says, “Look what you made me do!” Whether someone else played a part in this child’s error or not, it becomes a really easy, emotionally reactive excuse and may very well expand into a blame-game that escalates to the point of blaming each other for every little thing that goes wrong rather than taking responsibility for their own errors. This is commonly written off as “sibling rivalry” and normalized as well. It begins with seemingly benign comments and behaviors such as this that end up gaining momentum and being integrated into our unconsciously programmed behavior through repetition… without us even realizing it. This is how the human mind operates: we learn, we practice through repetition, and then it becomes an effortless habit as it is adopted into the subconscious or unconscious mind and stored as data we have access to 24/7. The mind doesn’t differentiate between “good” and “bad” habits, which is part of what makes the human mind such a fascinating operating system.
To simplify this concept of unconditional love and help you to better define your own behaviors as well as the behaviors of others, let’s explore the two ends of the spectrum: fear versus love. When I speak about love, I mean real, unconditional love, so one way to figure out if something is loving or not is to ask yourself if there are any conditional aspects to this relationship or the behaviors of the people involved (including your own). Has someone placed conditions on their love for you? Have you based conditions on your love for yourself?
Conditional love is based on a system of approval, reward, and punishment. If you do well, you are loved. If you make mistakes, you are not loved and you must chase the approval of whoever you are seeking love from. True, unconditional love doesn’t need to be earned; approval does. True, unconditional love doesn’t have to be proven; it just is. Remember that inner divinity we mentioned last month? Unconditional love is Source energy, so by feeling unconditional love, we are energetically matching the vibration of the natural state of being of everything in existence (the field of infinite possibilities). Our confusion as human beings is ultimately self-inflicted, so it makes sense that we can also self-inflict positive change if we understand how the mind works and how to utilize it to our benefit rather than allowing it to become our detriment.
It All Begins Within
As we’ve previously discussed, quantum physics proves that consciousness creates reality; thoughts and emotions create form or matter. This is why our outer world reflects our inner world: we are constantly and continuously creating from an energetic level. When you begin to love yourself unconditionally, you will begin to see more acceptance and love from others in your life as well. You may even be shown examples within your life of one thing happening that isn’t loving just for another thing to happen within 10 minutes that demonstrates loving behavior in a glaringly obvious way (or vice versa, of course). This is excellent because life is literally reflecting what you need to see back to you in order for you to exist in a state of unconditional self-love. There can be many lessons leading up to it.
The main takeaway: begin to pay attention to what is fear-based and what is love-based. When you are interacting with others, are there a lot of emotional triggers? Do you and those you’re dealing with react emotionally rather than responding calmly? Do you sit around and gossip about others and then worry that they’re doing the same thing behind your back? Do you or the people you’re close to complain and gripe a lot about things that are out of your control? Are you free to be who you are or do you feel like you must wear a mask to gain someone’s approval? Like you can’t be yourself?
Some of these questions are tough to ask yourself, but we encourage you to really take the time and ponder these for a while. Be gentle and honest with yourself and others during this process, and work through any emotional triggers that may come up for you. What typically works for me is to stop, breathe, and check in with myself. Why does this particular action or statement elicit such an emotional reaction from me? Typically speaking, anything you are reactive about is based on fear conditioning or programming of your subconscious mind, which is why we typically don’t think about what we’re doing or saying… until we do.
Doing this work within yourself will allow you to stop reacting and start responding, giving you a peaceful demeanor as a leader while also giving you the courage and assertiveness to do what needs to be done without unconsciously harming anyone in your life in the process, including yourself.
So, how do you begin to love yourself unconditionally? We invite you to join us next week for a breakdown of the three aspects of unconditional self-love: knowing yourself, accepting yourself, and trusting yourself. Until then, please take some time to introspect and consider whether you are treating yourself with the unconditional love you are worthy of. You may also introspect about how you treat others and whether you are acting from a place of love or fear.
Remember that you are an amazing being with incredible value. Any and all inner work you do for yourself will help you feel more valuable and valued from within, which is where the creation process begins. Aren’t you worth that effort? Here at ECU, we know you are, and we encourage you to continue learning and growing as a mindful leader.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
When we are connected to our inner divinity, it may manifest itself as compassion, unconditional love, inspiration, and an overall sense of well-being regardless of what is going on in our circumstances or physical experience. “Problems” become much easier to solve and feel less traumatic from this perspective despite still arising. This is the power of your intentional focus, and because you focus on the good rather than wallowing in the negative, the negative disappears as the center of your focus. This means that, simply by shifting what you focus on, you can attract more and more positive experiences while also being able to effortlessly attract and see solutions and inspiration for any challenges you may be facing.
So, what does it mean in practical terms to connect to your inner divinity? What might that look like?
When we talk about mindfulness, meditation is the go-to practice because it allows you to quiet your thoughts and bypass them to receive guidance from your divine inner being. It is recommended that you meditate for about 20 minutes a day, but you don’t have to start out with a long practice if you are new or feeling in any way uncomfortable about it from your current perspective.
The amazing thing about meditation is that you can literally do it anytime, anywhere, and there are no special tools required. Meditating essentially trains your brain to connect both hemispheres so that your moods and energies are in harmony. The connector between the two hemispheres is the pineal gland, which is also referred to as the third eye, and neuroscientists have now observed the physical changes in the brain when people experience enlightenment as a stronger connection between the two hemispheres.*
If you want to begin a meditation practice, all it takes is five minutes a day of mindful meditation to get you started in this habit. You can choose to do a guided meditation of some kind (YouTube has countless different types for free), listen to meditation music, or simply focus on your breath or a steady background sound. When you breathe, a very calming technique is to breathe in gently through your nose for 6 seconds, then exhale either through your nose or mouth for 6 seconds, slowing your breathing to 10 breaths per minute. Not only does this have a calming, soothing effect on your entire body, mind, and emotional state, but it will help you to quiet your racing thoughts and begin to control your focus intentionally.
When you’re inspired and having fun, that’s a very good indicator that you’re tapped into your divine inner being or soul. The activity itself isn’t nearly as important as the feeling of it, and being in this frame of consciousness will often lead you toward things that you need on some level and are attracting into your experience. This inspired action ties everything back to the Law of Attraction and the 7 Hermetic Principles, and the more often you are able to get into “the zone,” the more fulfilling your life will be to you.
Oftentimes, if you want to trigger yourself into feeling inspired, it can be helpful to begin the activity that you want to feel inspired to do and allow yourself to get lost in it. For me, this activity is often writing or creating music, so when I want to be inspired to write, I begin writing something and see what happens. More often than not, I find that I tap into my inspiration, get in the flow, and effortlessly write several thousand words at a time, sometimes even more. This is just one example, of course, and you may feel inspired doing something completely different, but that’s part of what you must determine for yourself because no one can do that for you but you.
To figure out what inspires you and how you can start practicing inspiration on purpose, think back to some activities you’ve done that made you feel amazing. Time seemed to disappear, you created something totally effortlessly, and the results were phenomenal and inspired. What activities can you think of that make you feel this way?
If you can’t think of any, my recommendation is to go out and start trying things that you feel drawn to for whatever reason. If you feel drawn to try something, go ahead and try it. Trying new things is one way to begin expanding your life experience, which is one aspect of personal growth and self-mastery. If you don’t know what you like, how are you supposed to cultivate inner peace and joy? Sometimes we have to learn how to “trick” ourselves or our ego mind into change because the ego is so change-resistant. The ego is also responsible for all of your negative and self-deprecating thoughts.
YOU are much more than what your mind tries to make you believe because of conditioning we have all been programmed with from birth. This conditioning comes in the form of thoughts repeatedly thought and words repeatedly spoken, which then become beliefs and are stored in the subconscious mind. To change these beliefs, many of which don’t serve your highest good, one must first observe and recognize the programmed or conditioned behaviors and thoughts so that we can choose differently next time.
Becoming the observer of your own life experience is one way in which we can “rise above,” so to speak, and begin speaking and behaving from a much higher level of consciousness. Your emotional triggers will fade away and then you can begin to practice non-reactivity in your daily life experience. What this looks like is effortlessly maintaining a sense of calm no matter what situation might arise, expected or unexpected, “good” or “bad.”
Observing your body’s responses to situations before judging anything can also help you to mindfully stay in the moment, slow down, be patient, and get a complete idea of what’s happening before deciding how to respond. Once you are at this point, you might surprise yourself with how calm you remain even in situations that might make other people freak out a little and overreact… including the old you. This is one aspect of becoming triggerless, an important self-healing practice if you’ve ever experienced trauma or have a tendency to overreact in the moment.
When you are at this point, you may very well still feel your heart skip a beat, feel your anger bubbling up. That’s perfectly okay, as you don’t want to forcefully suppress these emotions because their energy accumulates over time within your body. You must find a healthy way to release or transmute/redirect this energy so that it doesn’t cause you harm on any level over time. The way to channel this energy is by doing something constructive with it or releasing it through exercise or physical activity of some kind.
To channel or transmute your energy into something constructive, use it. Anger is especially great for this, which sounds strange, but bear with me. Anger is related to passion, so you can choose to channel your anger into something you need to do that is physically oriented. Gardening, mowing the lawn, moving furniture, deep-cleaning the house, or creating some kind of artwork that involves being physical like a metal sculpture or a wooden construction are all examples of this. If a physical activity seems less appealing, you can also channel your emotions into any type of art. This helps you to release any toxic emotional energy your body may be holding onto as well as allowing you to express yourself and create something incredible at the same time.
To release some of your negative energies, you can do exercise or begin a practice of energy healing through meditation. You will know best what you need to do, and as long as you are not causing any harm, the energy will be transmuted or released and you will feel lighter, not to mention more capable of handling whatever might come your way. You will build trust in yourself through these practices because one of the big reasons we might not trust ourselves completely is because we don’t trust ourselves to be able to positively handle our emotions, which can be extremely intense at times.
When you practice these three things on a regular basis, you will become better and better at making decisions and responding from a much higher, more divine perspective. You will “overstand” many things, simultaneously considering the perspectives of everyone involved in a circumstance and holding your response until you have all of the information required to make a wise decision rather than unconsciously over-reacting in the moment. And because you have trained yourself to observe first, you will be able to also observe yourself successfully applying your newfound triggerless attitude within the moment in which you do so. This is very rewarding and will allow you to truly see your own progress and appreciate it, which will help you validate yourself and your own experience as well as pick up momentum as you continue to grow into your true, soul-based self.
We tend to think of words like “divinity” as being far away concepts, not graspable in our physical reality. There’s something magical that unfolds before you in your life experience when you let go of these preconceived notions and understand the relationship between your humanity and your divinity. I hope that the concepts we’ve discussed here help you to make that connection and understand yourself and your life’s journey a little better.
Thank you so much for being here and allowing us to share some insights and ideas with you through these blog articles! Continuous learning fuels continuous growth, so I hope you’ll join us again next month for a new Mindful Leader Blog article.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
*How Enlightenment Changes the Brain
https://bigthink.com/videos/andrew-newberg-neural-enlightenment-101
By now we’re all familiar with the Law of Attraction, partially due to the movie The Secret introducing this concept to the mainstream. However, all 7 of these principles are intertwined and connected, so knowing only one aspect of these allows for only partial understanding and ineffective manifestation of your desires. In today’s article, we’d like to introduce you to the 7 Hermetic Principles, universal laws that apply to everything behind the scenes, whether we “believe” in them or not. These laws include the Principles of Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Causality, and Gender. Let’s explore what they are and how we can apply this ancient wisdom to our modern lives and use it to more effectively co-create our reality.
Before we dive into the meat of this topic, the 7 Hermetic Principles were originally a philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus and followed in ancient Egypt and Greece. A book called The Kybalion, written by “Three Initiates,” is a study of these principles and available on Amazon if you would like to learn more independently. The basics of the 7 Principles can be explained somewhat simply and applied to modern day life if we are able to connect conceptual ideas to physical manifestations, which is how we will be exploring these topics today. There are links and resources listed at the end of the article for your convenience and perusal should you crave more knowledge.
Having said that, let’s dive into the 7 Hermetic Principles, the Law of Attraction being part of them, and how they apply to our daily experiences as we journey through life. Learning about and applying the knowledge of these principles can drastically change your life, and it has been stated by many that this information won’t find you until you’re ready for it on some level, so welcome! We hope that it helps you in your mindful leadership, coaching endeavors, and your life as a whole.
The Principle of Mentalism: All is Mind
The universe is mental; everything is consciousness first. The thought must come before the manifestation at all times, and quantum physics has now proven this law of the universe scientifically, as discussed in the previous week’s article.
In practical terms, “all is mind” means that the thought process must happen before the creation process, so you would have an idea for something and then create it. This happens on many levels at all times, the most obvious of which being the physical creation through inspired action of something that began as an idea.
On another level, the thoughts and ideas create desires for certain experiences or “things” in your life. If you are sending out a certain vibration, it will attract experiences of that vibration, so if you’re in a state of worry, anxiety, and fear, your life experiences will proceed to provide you with evidence that your beliefs (worries and fear in this case; beliefs are just thoughts we have thought repeatedly and are now stored in the subconscious) are true and justified. However, if you approach life from a place of love and inner peace, your experiences will manifest matching that vibration.
This is why it appears that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; the wealthy are constantly looking at abundance and living in it, so it’s very easy to get into a mindset and vibration of abundance because they are continuously looking at it (that’s not to say they have “no problems,” though). Meanwhile, those in poverty are constantly being presented with money troubles, stress, and a sense of lack, which attracts more of a sense of lack and money problems. However, if we can shift our state and focus only on what we want to grow (in this case abundance) rather than being focused on the lack thereof, then we will also attract experiences that align with our vibrational state.
The Principle of Correspondence: As Above, so Below; As Within, so Without; as the Universe, so the Soul
This principle encompasses the idea that everything in the universe (all planes of existence) is connected and corresponds together. Like fractals, the microcosm and macrocosm are connected and reflect each other and interact to continuously co-create whatever the mental and emotional focus is. This principle represents balance and a reflection of our inner world manifested in our outer experiences.
This connection between the microcosm and macrocosm can be most easily imagined when we consider that our human body is home to trillions and trillions of cells and other lifeforms (like bacteria), and the earth is a larger scale of a similar entity, where we, animals, and all life on earth are interconnected yet separately going about our tasks, jobs, lives, and experiences. However, we are directly impacted by the earth and her energy fields, and the earth, in turn, is affected by other celestial beings, the galaxy, and that in turn is affected by other galaxies. You get the idea; everything is connected, large and small.
Whatever you have created within yourself is what will manifest in your experience and be reflected back to you so that you may choose differently or continue to follow the same unconscious conditioned patterns. That is the purpose of us creating our physical experience: to allow us to make adjustments and choose differently next time because we can actively observe the way our inner world affects the outer world we experience.
If someone is dealing with a lot of emotional baggage, repressed trauma, addiction, and so on, then this might manifest in physical reality as conflict, stress, and “evidence” to keep doing things the same way and expect a different result. We cannot expect solutions to arise unless we approach the problem from a place of openness and receptivity, otherwise, our vibrational state doesn’t match the solutions we’re seeking and we end up repeating undesirable or ineffective patterns of behavior.
Likewise, if someone has worked through, purged, and released toxic or negative energies, they will begin to manifest more positive experiences because their mind-body-spirit system is coming into alignment to allow for a much more joyful existence to manifest itself based on your higher vibrational state.
The Principle of Vibration: Nothing Rests; Everything Moves; Everything Vibrates
We live in an illusion of stillness because our world seems solid and sturdy to us. However, when we consider the previous principle and understand that the earth and all of the other celestial bodies are flying through space at staggering rates of speed, it becomes a little easier to remember that nothing is ever actually “still.”
Our hearts are always beating, cells are always at work, lungs always taking in breath to distribute oxygen to the cells throughout the body. All of this happens automatically and effortlessly, just like the planets flying through space. Nobody is pushing or pulling anything; this is all natural, self-organized, and nature is abundant and effortless. Nothing strains or resists in nature.
Science tells us that an atom is energy and 99.999% empty space. The rate of its vibration determines how “dense” an object will appear to us, and these particles then take on form, change form, or are redirected.
What this means for us is that we can change or adjust our own vibrational state of being through changing our mindset. Everything is mental first, and our frequency is directly affected by the thoughts we think, so consciously choosing your focus is one way in which you can raise the rate at which your atoms vibrate. In practical terms, this simply means that we choose to observe our thoughts, choose what we like, discard what doesn’t serve us, and re-create our world from that higher perspective.
What we give our focus to will grow, and we have power over our focus. Why not use it?
The Principle of Polarity: Everything is Dual; Everything has Poles
“Everything has its pair of opposites; Like and unlike are the same; Opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; Extremes meet; All truths, are but half-truths; All paradoxes may be reconciled.”
Even extreme opposites are just different degrees of the same thing. Hot and cold are different temperatures; high and low are just different measurements of a vertical scale. This can also be applied to our inner worlds: hatred and love are opposing emotions; fear and courage; joy and depression. These opposing ends of the emotional spectrum also trigger opposing unconscious behaviors, so again, it is all connected. Some emotions vibrate at a higher rate (the positive ones) and some emotions vibrate at a lower or denser rate (the negative ones).
The Principle of Rhythm: Everything Flows, Out and In; Everything has its Tides; All Things Rise and Fall
There is rhythm between each opposing polarity, so anything that is at one extreme will swing into the opposite extreme in an equal manner. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Like a pendulum swinging back and forth, it is up to us to “steady our wobble” (Abraham-Hicks) and maintain a sense of inner peace and harmony no matter what our outer circumstances look like because we will likely experience all kinds of different ups and downs throughout our lives.
Since everything is energy first and emotions are the energy we feed our personal and individual lives with, and consciousness creates form, then it only makes sense to steady our emotional state first in order to steady our physical experiences. Understanding the ebb and flow, the back and forth, the cyclical nature of our lives, will allow us to better prepare for the ebb and go with the flow as it comes up. We know there will be another ebb and another flow, and both of those are neither good nor bad; what we think of them is positive or negative, and we can choose to be grateful even for the things that we see as “bad” because they allow us to clarify what we want by helping us determine and define what we don’t want. The purpose of the “negative” experiences is to help us refine and gain clarity on what experiences we will choose next.
Part of being able to maintain resilience and bounce back after challenges is not being emotionally attached to anything in the physical world. This includes career, home, vehicle, job, family, friends, and anything else you may encounter in the physical world. Mindful detachment means we care and are present in the moment, but we do not allow those feelings to bleed over into codependency or dependency on physical objects or circumstances.
“You see, whatever happens, I don’t mind.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
The Principle of Cause and Effect: Every Cause Has its Effect; Every Effect Has its Cause
“Chance is but a name for law not recognized.” – The Kybalion
Being able to see the connections between your actions and their consequences means that you will be able to recognize how those actions affect your physical experience. This allows you the option and the freedom to choose differently next time.
There are no coincidences and we are always and constantly sending and receiving signals on a vibrational level, the signals we send out are then attracting similar vibratory experiences to us, and this plays out in our lives. As we observe this and get to know ourselves on that level, we become more and more empowered to change the behavior patterns that don’t serve us and create new patterns that do.
Be the cause, not the effect, but understand that each cause has an effect. By making our choices, we are also choosing the consequences that come with them. By choosing to be the cause and take personal responsibility for everything, including whatever consequences may follow, we step into the empowered role of master and leave the contrasting victim mentality behind.
The Principle of Gender: Gender is in Everything; Everything Has its Masculine and Feminine Principles; Gender Manifests on All Planes
While body gender is a physical manifestation, we each embody masculine as well as feminine energies, and this can be illustrated relatively easily when we consider the two hemispheres of the brain. Part of the brain that is centralized is the pineal gland (within the epithalamus, part of the thalamus), which is also believed to be where consciousness resides and is also referred to as the third eye. How interesting that this is the place where it all comes together, in essence “joining” the hemispheres of the brain and harmonizing masculine and feminine energy at the same time.
This is only the physical manifestation of it, though, and the reason we now know this is because brain scan and imaging technology have allowed us to dig deeper and reveal the evidence that’s been there all along.
When we come to understand that we each have masculine and feminine energies, just like everything else in existence, we can begin to break down this concept and understand how our energies might be imbalanced or out of alignment. Some masculine energy aspects are being focused in action, logic, analysis, and recognizing parts and pieces of things but not connecting it to the whole. Feminine energy aspects are creativity, intuition, flow, introspection, and bringing ideas and concepts together.
When there is an imbalance that leans more toward masculine energy, we may find ourselves leaning toward more masculine behaviors, which can manifest as control, force, and working without a real purpose. When an imbalance leans more toward feminine energy, we may find ourselves caught up in the inner work process, reflection, creativity, and inspiration, but without any structured goals or habits for achieving them.
These 7 Principles, when in harmony within your understanding, allow you to manifest your desires more quickly and maintain your inner peace and joy as you journey from one moment to the next, regardless of your physical environment. If you are constantly surrounded by chaos and stress, this is a good indicator that there is an imbalance in one or more of these areas, and it is up to you to recognize the issues within yourself and begin to heal and release any negative emotions surrounding the experience. This is a process and won’t happen overnight, but there are numerous different healing modalities you can use to help yourself get to the next level of your journey.
In next week’s article, we will discuss how to recognize divinity in your everyday life and create a practice of tapping into it if you so desire. These ideas may sound a little “out there” sometimes, but when we really begin to think critically about all of the connections and apply these seemingly abstract concepts to our everyday lives, we are able to more easily recognize how these ideas impact us from one moment to the next. Quantum physics and the laws of the universe don’t only apply while they’re being studied in a lab or a controlled environment. Remember that the particles that make up everything in existence are all around us and within us and within everything, all the time, while also connected to the Infinite Field of Possibilities. This is happening right now, and in every NOW to follow.
Thank you so much for being here! We certainly hope that you’ve found this information useful and applicable to your life as a mindful leader. Your journey here is an important one and completely unique to you, while your contributions and self-healing efforts are serving a much bigger purpose by creating a ripple effect within the collective. We are all connected, under the illusion that we are separate and alone. As you begin to open your mind to the infinite possibilities, remember that you ARE the creator of your own life, your own reality, and what you create is an echo-reflection of what you have thought and felt.
You quite literally hold all the cards. Time for self-empowerment (because that’s the only kind there really is).
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
Further Reading & Resources:
The Kybalion on Amazon
More on the 7 Hermetic Principles
http://siimland.com/the-7-hermetic-principles/
How Enlightenment Changes the Brain:
http://www.mindfullyalive.com/blog/2016/6/21/the-brain-and-enlightenment
5 Steps to Enlightenment from a Neuroscientist:
For many of us, it happens that we are taught a specific idea, concept, or rule of conduct, but when we grow up and enter the so-called “real world,” we eventually begin to learn that there are as many ways of living life as there are living beings in the world. Okay, so maybe not all of us figure that out, but we at least get a basic understanding that not everything we were taught is necessarily accurate or based in fact, which is typically when we get curious and begin to seek out our own answers. Sometimes when we learn that things are different than what we thought, it can feel like those who were supposed to guide us lied to us or cheated us out of true information in some way, but chances are that they didn’t know what they didn’t know, either, and were just passing on regurgitated information unconsciously. This is the level at which most human beings have operated for generations now, but we each have the incredible ability to not only change and grow our minds on purpose but to literally affect our entire life experience on a physical level by taking control of our consciousness on a non-physical level. Let’s explore some of the science that supports seemingly “magical” spiritual concepts… and how this evidence can be applied to physical reality and our everyday experiences.
So, to begin with, we will need to pull from several scientific areas in order to ignite the imagination with implied possibilities. However, if you are holding onto any beliefs that contradict these scientifically proven and currently-being-studied ideas, then you may want to consider this first (I do this a lot to “clean the slate” and create a beginner’s mind approach within myself):
Everything we know is wrong. Yes, Weird Al was right when he wrote that song, as nonsensical as it is, but the idea is that the best way to learn something new, reprogram your mind, or even upgrade your mindset about any given topic, is to begin by knowing that you could be wrong about everything you think you know. And there’s nothing wrong with that unless you ask your ego, which will likely put up a fight or be triggered just by reading that statement. As always, check in with those emotions, acknowledge them, and remember that everything is temporary.
Having said that and hopefully inspired a beginner’s mind, or at least a level of child-like curiosity, let’s explore some of the evidence and ideas that help tie it all together and support spiritual concepts and beliefs.
Intriguing Fact #1: DMT Helps Us Shift Dimensions of Consciousness
DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is a naturally occurring psychedelic substance within the human brain and is also referred to as the Spirit Molecule. This chemical floods our brains naturally only twice during human existence, once during birth and once during death, and maybe there to aid us in our transition into and out of this physical dimension. Dimensions are levels of consciousness… and down the rabbit hole, we go!
In ancient South American civilizations, they have traditionally accessed this psychedelic substance during shamanic ceremonies through the use of a specific combination of herbs brewed into a tea called Ayahuasca. The reason for the tea is to prolong the psychedelic effects of DMT and trigger a spiritual journey. Normally, in its raw form by itself, DMT is metabolized by the human body within seconds or even milliseconds, and without any consciously perceivable hallucinogenic effects. However, when prepared properly, your “trip” may last under 30 minutes or three hours or more if participating in an Ayahuasca ceremony.
What makes this even more interesting are the similarities of the hallucinations people have. Most often, people describe seeing self-organizing geometric shapes (like fractals) sometimes referred to as machine elves, and many people report interacting with entities or beings of light, who were expecting them to show up and interact. While this can sound a little “out there” on some levels, typically people don’t have such similar experiences across the board with psychedelics, so this aspect is particularly fascinating.
Intriguing Fact #2: Our Physical Senses Are Limited to Perceiving Only 1% of Everything
Our physical senses can only perceive about 1% of what is actually in existence all around us. This includes colors, sounds, and we don’t even have any idea how to measure smells and tastes, or how some of our senses even work. As science uncovers more and more detailed information and we are able to refine the facts and knowledge we have, I’m sure we’ll be able to understand the senses much better. However, that doesn’t change the fact that we human beings are severely limited in our perception in a physical sense, although we can train ourselves to understand and perceive much more by developing our intuition.
Sometimes referred to as the 6th sense, our intuition actually plays a much bigger role in our existence than we realize. How does intuition work? Our subconscious is constantly processing information, always transmitting and receiving information from all around us, so we are able to “know” things without being able to pinpoint why because we “feel” it based on all of the information our mind has already processed subconsciously. Sometimes “why” doesn’t matter as much as “Ah-Ha!”
Intriguing Fact #3: Our Brains Can Heal Themselves via Neuroplasticity
Up until somewhat recently, people believed that the brain was a static thing; whatever you learn in the beginning of life is how you are “hard-wired,” we’re victims to our genetic materials, and there’s nothing we can do to change it. Fortunately, science has given us ample evidence to put away that doom-and-gloom victim mentality and reach for a much more effective perspective: WE are the creators of our own experience, and therefore WE have the ability to re-create ourselves in any way we want to. The implications of literally having the ability to control or change things with our thoughts (combined with technology this has allowed for the development of mind-controlled artificial limbs, among other things), including our genes, is mind-boggling the more layers of understanding you uncover.
Through inner work practices such as forgiveness, gratitude, mindfulness, meditation, and consistent learning, people have been able to heal themselves through all kinds of different ailments. Individuals have healed themselves, for example, from PTSD, anxiety, depression, TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), OCD, and many more. This can be explored even further through healing modalities such as the MAP (Manifesting All Possibilities) system, QHHT (Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique), hypnosis, EFT tapping, Somatic Experiencing, and others. Breakthroughs are constantly being made in these areas, so the world of emotional and mental healing is also expanding and growing with more effective modalities being created and discovered all the time. Certain modalities don’t take much time at all and have seemingly miraculous results, but these results are not so miraculous when we understand that everything in existence is energy and information beneath the surface.
Intriguing Fact #4: Everything is Energy, Information, Light, and Sound
Quantum physics tells us many enlightening facts about life and nature that can seem complex and challenging for us to apply to our individual physical reality in a practical sense. Because some of the information and evidence is completely counterintuitive to what we have been taught as “truth” all along, we humans are resistant to having to change our perspective as new evidence is discovered. But we can! As evidenced by neuroplasticity, our perception is within our control, and therefore so is our life experience.
Back to quantum physics.
“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” – Niels Bohr
So… what is “real?”
Is it what we perceive with our physical senses? Or is true reality the underlying energetic signature within each atom? According to research, each atom consists of spinning vortexes of energy, and upon closer inspection, these contain a number of other infinitely small vortices of energy called quarks and photons, which are what makes up the structure of the atom. Nothing physical. When you inspect the atom even further, you find that 99.999% of the atom itself is empty space. Energy and space are all that makes up our universe.
The one thing to keep in mind about quantum physics is that it’s not some “scientific study” that only happens in a lab. This is going on at a level beyond our physical perception all the time, constantly, all around us as well as within us, as well as within everything else in existence. That means that the results they discover in a lab are applicable to everything, whether we choose to believe it or not. It’s like gravity or the air we breathe… you can choose not to “believe” in it, but it will still be very much at work within your life, 100% of the time.
One of the first and most important fundamental and life-altering conclusions of quantum physics is that the observer creates the reality, and we are, each of us, observers. This means that, simply by beginning to pay attention to our life experience, we can alter it from within by utilizing our mind as it was intended to be: consciously.
Intriguing Fact #5: Our Emotions Are More Important Than We’ve Realized
Our emotional energy plays a vital role in our consciousness, which in turn creates our reality. This is why, in practical terms, you might see someone who complains a lot experience more things that prove the belief that there is always something to complain about. On the other hand, you might see someone who is joyful, successful, and seems to have it all, and they will typically express feelings of gratitude and love more often than not. When you begin to clean up your thoughts, there cease to be things to complain about because you are focused on the positives rather than the negatives.
Scientific studies about how certain mental illnesses and emotional factors play into things such as heart disease have taught us that our emotional states are very much capable of affecting our physical bodies, and when you look at things from a perception of everything being energy, it becomes more and more obvious that our own toxic thoughts and emotions are contaminating our physical bodies and even affecting the collective through our connection to others and to the Infinite Field of Possibility. Like an energetic ripple, we directly impact those around us with our emotional state of being, which in turn affects others, and so on… and we are part of the whole, so the whole must be affected by our state of being.
What typically creates dis-ease within the body is an internalization or suppression of toxic emotions, like when you hold onto a grudge against someone or choose to fuel desires for revenge within your thoughts. Resentment, anxiety, rage, and other fear-based emotions can also have a detrimental effect on your wellbeing on multiple levels.
It’s important to note here that, as we study intangible concepts, scientific evidence may not have been discovered or revealed to the extent that some individuals may need it to be before becoming “convinced” or open enough to reprogram those deep-seated beliefs. Change, especially paradigm-shifting change, always brings with it resistance from those most comfortable in the current status quo, but this is a natural part of the human growth and evolution process. Sometimes we can’t get “there” from where we are, and it simply means that those resisting change are a few steps in consciousness away, or on another path altogether. Either way, it all serves a purpose and it is all a manifestation of the thoughts we think and the emotions we feel.
Intriguing Fact #6: Atoms, Photons, and Autonomous Space Dust
The so-called building blocks of life are literally all around us at all times. The universe thrives on creating life, and life is everywhere! It is in such great abundance, yet we are puzzled as to why we feel so “alone” in the universe. The truth is, we have yet to realize the truth: we are not alone, but we believe we are, therefore creating our physical experience based on the beliefs we’ve cultivated as a collective and individually.
So, let’s allow those beliefs to evolve. What if I told you that molecules from space are able to self-organize into helix-shaped structures similar to DNA? And what if I told you those same structures then revise themselves, evolve, by discarding what doesn’t work and keeping what does. Sound familiar?
This happens on every level of existence, small and large, physical and non-physical. Now think about this… if your cells and all of the little pieces and parts that make up your entire physical body are working together but specifically have their own purpose, each with their assigned tasks, wouldn’t it stand to reason that things affecting your physical body will also affect each individual cell because it is part of the whole? And if consciousness creates form and an observer can change their reality, doesn’t it stand to reason that you, through proper use of your mind and emotional systems, can directly affect the programming of your cells by reprogramming yourself, your perception, and your physical wellness?
These are incredible times we live in! The more mainstream this scientific evidence becomes, the more we will see positive change in the world through individuals choosing to awaken and truly step into their own power. We are all capable and worthy of this power… all we have to do is acknowledge it, tap into it, and trust that our journey is exactly the right journey for us each as individuals. Your inner divinity is exactly that: within you. All of these scientific factors simply serve as encouragement and to help open skeptical minds to new possibilities… infinite possibilities. In each moment, that is what “reality” actually is.
Thank you so much for being here! We hope you enjoyed this article exploring some of the scientific evidence backing spiritual concepts. Please join us next week for a closer examination of the fractal, cyclical nature of the universe and how that relates to our life experience.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
Further Reading (Sources):
DMT
http://chacruna.net/dmt-experience-human-brain-science-of-conscisousness/
“Machine Elves” and More on DMT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N,N-Dimethyltryptamine
Physical Senses
Neuroplasticity
http://reset.me/story/neuroplasticity-the-10-fundamentals-of-rewiring-your-brain/
Quantum Physics
Emotions & Physical Health
https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/how-do-thoughts-and-emotions-affect-health
Space Dust
https://www.wired.com/2007/08/space-dust-its/
More on Quantum Physics and the Infinite Field of Possibilities
We are each a spark of the divine consciousness that created everything in existence. This is especially important to understand and embrace in conjunction with the law of attraction and understanding how manifestation or co-creation of physical reality works, but for now, I’d like to share with you some ideas about the divinity within you. Now, this is not to say that you, “are God,” in a power-hungry, ego-driven way, but rather that you are a part of the divine, whatever label you may prefer to use, and as such, you are the embodiment of the consciousness aspect that creates your daily experience just by BEING. By observing and experiencing your own life and existence, you are influencing how you experience reality, and this implication can be seen proven scientifically through the double slit experiment in quantum physics. Connecting this concept or idea to your physical reality in practical terms allows you to co-create your reality on purpose more easily because you understand that your decisions, your actions, your emotions, and your thoughts all contribute to the development of your perception, and this is happening on a constant basis. Overwhelming, right? It doesn’t have to be. Let’s simplify.
You don’t have to micromanage every thought, word, deed, or emotion every second of every day. That perspective or idea comes from a programmed or conditioned fear-based perception that is very common in today’s world; almost everyone operates from this unconscious fear-based program (but you can reprogram your brain, as proven by neuroscience; more on that in next week’s post) unless and until they begin to see the patterns within their own lives. This fear-based programming creates a need for control of external factors, which complicates everything because you cannot control anything or anyone outside of yourself through fear-driven means without repercussions of the same vibration.
When we try to control the things outside of ourselves, we are approaching the situation from a place rooted in fear. We fear that the things outside of ourselves won’t behave in the ways we want them to, so we try to force the pieces into place the way we think they need to fall into place, even though there is a divine plan for you and your life as a whole which you have already co-created in conjunction with your soul and Source energy or God. Whichever label you feel most comfortable with will work as everything originates from Source; nothing is not from Source; everything in existence, seen and unseen, originates from Source.
If everything originates from Source and Source is unconditional love and light, then why is there so-called “evil” in the world?
The nature of physical reality requires the existence of duality or opposites, otherwise Newton’s Third Law of Motion would be inaccurate. This applies to emotions and behaviors as well as inanimate physical objects; interactions with others and interpersonal relationships as well as everything else.
The same conflict occurs inside each of us as human beings as we grow through everything that happens within our lives. We each have the opportunity to make choices that are either perceived as “good” or “bad,” and how we ourselves perceive and judge those choices on an emotional and spiritual level determines what will come back to us. However, we can direct that by understanding that duality is the human experience; no matter what, we will always experience things that we perceive as “negative” and things that we perceive as “positive.” It is by accepting that we need both to live fully, evolve, expand, and grow as human beings and souls that we can practice mindful emotional detachment and begin seeing things from a much broader perspective of understanding.
This doesn’t mean that there won’t ever be anything “bad” that happens. Rather, it simply means that the circumstances in your life no longer emotionally affect you to the point of becoming spiritually and emotionally not at ease, which can create physical dis-ease within your body if it’s a habitual response.
Do you find yourself living in extremes? Going from one extreme to another? Constantly putting out fires but not getting anywhere? This is your inner emotional duality or conflict manifesting itself as physical experiences in your life. Remember, your consciousness co-creates your reality, and you are co-creating all the time with everything and everyone else in existence, all working together harmoniously to keep the universe running smoothly and as it is supposed to.
Think of the universe like the physical body of Source or God, and all of the contained aspects being parts and pieces that help make the whole function, similarly to our bodies which are home to trillions and trillions of cells and bacterial life forms. As we evolve, everything else evolves with us because it is part of us, but also can be seen as separate. As the universe evolves and expands and things change “out there,” it is actually affecting everything within us as well because we are part of the whole (the universe or Source’s “body” so to speak). Just like the earth’s frequencies and resonance affect us because we are part of her, we affect everything around us in our life experience as well as within us. Whatever we feel and think about most is what we will end up creating, whether it’s perceived as “bad” or “good.”
You cannot have one without the other, and our decision as human beings lies in choosing which type of life we would like to live. What types of experiences do we want to have and participate in? For someone who grew up in an area where gang activity was commonplace and maybe the gangs were even running the community, then a life of perceived badassery and action might be a child’s desire if they come from that world. They wouldn’t know that there’s a better way unless they had been exposed to it, and we don’t know what we don’t know, so this is why we see so many generations repeating the same patterns of behavior.
However, for someone who grew up in a suburban neighborhood with well-to-do parents, living a calm and comfortable lifestyle will probably seem most attractive, so they will likely go to college, get a decent career going, and live as comfortably as they can. Make no mistake, though; each of these examples has its good and bad aspects, and terrible things happening don’t discriminate based on class, race, or lifestyle. In the case of middle-class families, the “negative” aspect might be greed (fear of losing material things) or invisible forms of abusive behavior within a family unit such as emotional or spiritual abuse.
No matter which world you may be from, I bet there have been good times as well as bad, and your experience and perception has been colored by all of it. The key is which experiences you choose to focus on so that they grow. So, for example, someone growing up in a gang-run area may decide that they would rather focus on their education and getting away from that particular lifestyle. Once this decision has been made and therefore the desire expressed to the universe, things will begin to happen to help this child along their way. However, resistance is very common; when someone initiates change for themselves, people around them may begin to express anger, confusion, and other forms of resistance. The reasons behind their behavior will vary, but for anyone initiating change for themselves, it will look like attack for trying to do better. This is a test of resolve; how much do we really want to better our life experience? If it were easy, everyone would be enlightened and joyful and loving already and we wouldn’t have the issues around the world that we do.
For a child from suburbia, this will look like what TV sitcoms and movies portray as “typical” teenage behaviors of rebellion. This scenario can be tough, too, because people in this lifestyle perceive each other as having it all together, and may be raised to uphold a superficial façade of perfection despite the reality being completely different behind closed doors. Now, of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone in this exact way; these are just examples to illustrate that each decision comes with its positive and negative aspects, and it is by embracing them all that we can become peaceful from within.
This is all part of the duality experience. Now, I’ve already said that what you focus on grows… the exact same rule applies to “negative” things, but the saying is what you resist persists. Something has to be released and surrendered to by one aspect or another, otherwise whatever is occurring will continue and pick up momentum or escalate.
But we want the good things to continue and the bad things to be less and less. So how do we go about doing that?
Your inner divine nature understands that everything is Source, nothing is not Source, and that everything in existence is connected to everything as well as to Source, because Source is everything. This includes each of us as well as all living and seemingly non-living things. I say this because everything is made of energy and light, and is vibrating at a specific frequency that holds it in a certain pattern. Our universe and everything in it is literally made of light held together by gravity and given structure by sound we cannot perceive through our physical senses. As mentioned in a previous article, the human DNA molecule gravitationally pulls in and stores photons of light, and the DNA then holds these photons of light gravitationally and vibrates at whatever frequency that coincides with the consciousness of the blueprint information stored within the DNA molecule. There are other incredible things about that experiment as well, but I digress. To read that previous article, please go to:
Now that you have more background knowledge, we can dive into exploring and connecting with your divine nature or soul.
3 Ways to Recognize Your Inner Divinity in Your Everyday Experience
When most of us think of divinity, we think of glowing white clouds, the imagined “pearly gates” of heaven in the sky, or Jesus performing miracles (at least that was what I used to think of based on my conditioning). However, divinity can be found everywhere because Source is everywhere, so you can choose to “tap in” and see divinity within your daily experience as well. Here are a few ways in which your divine inner self may make some noise within your life. Hint: when it does, you should listen, as this inner divinity offers guidance for your highest purpose in this life. It’s just a matter of tuning into it.
You lead with your consciousness, and your consciousness co-creates your life. As a mindful leader, it’s important to understand some of the inner workings of the universe as well as human beings so that you can be the absolute best version of yourself, manifest abundance and solutions quickly and effortlessly, and lead from a place of love and compassion rather than control and force, as these are forms of resistance and can create additional contrast. Remember that love is the key, and when you approach everything you do from a place of love, you eliminate some of the so-called negative aspects in your life and enhance the so-called positive ones. This will allow you to attract and perceive more and more goodness and miracles in your experience, not to mention much healthier and more loving relationships.
Thank you so much for being here! Please join us again next week for more on your inner divinity and how science is catching up to prove spiritual concepts through quantum physics and other fields.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
There are infinite possibilities that exist within each moment if you choose to be open to them. You can direct and guide your moments toward experiences that can be either blissful or uncomfortable. This direction happens as an effect of your emotional state of being or your mood because your energy affects every cell within your body on a quantum level. If you are in a state of love and bliss most of the time, then you will resonate with and attract things that create more love and bliss. If you make an effort to stay in this state of resonance on purpose, you may also begin to notice how your manifestations appear before you. It often begins with taking notice of something as seemingly benign as having a thought or question, and the universe presenting you with the answer to it shortly thereafter. Or maybe something comes up in conversation, and a few days later an opportunity or event or song or whatever pops up that reminds you of the exact same thing, or even is the exact same thing. This is how you begin to learn to direct your personal power to co-create your life intentionally, and quantum physics has proven that this is not only possible but is happening on a constant and continuous basis with or without our conscious focus. It’s subtle because we cannot see it, but something science-based is much easier for most people to put a little faith into at the start, so today we’ll dive into an intriguing, ever-existing, and sometimes taboo topic: how quantum physics is proving the existence of an underlying energetic field (often referred to as the Field of Potentiality) that can be likened to a more realistic interpretation of “God” than a man on a cloud observing us externally. Grab your scuba gear… we’re going diving.
The field of potentiality is very much what it sounds like: an unseen energetic field within, surrounding, and connecting everything that helps make infinite potentialities possible within each moment. If you can dream it, you can bring it into your physical experience; sometimes this requires actions (sometimes quite a lot of them) to get to the point of manifestation, but understanding that this is a process due to being physical and existing in a physical reality can help you to get there more quickly by listening to your inner guidance and inspiration rather than dredging through burnout or any other heavy emotional energies.
How is it that infinite possibilities can exist simultaneously in each moment? To understand this concept, we have to take a look at time itself from a different perspective. As human beings existing in a physical world, we typically experience time linearly because of our density. Our physical bodies need time to adjust to and process things, so we typically need time to manifest changes, adjustments, and revisions within our lives. While changes typically don’t take very long to begin showing results, we humans seem to have a real issue with stick-to-itiveness sometimes, which comes partially from a lack of recognition that we actually experience everything in cycles including time, behavior patterns, annual patterns, moon cycles, planetary cycles, sun cycles, and even the earth’s various different cycles, the longest one we currently know about being “The Great Year” as we revolve around the galactic center, and this cycle happens to be 25,960 years in length. This also happens to be the exact span of time the Mayan calendar covered, and it is theorized that the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21st, 2012 was actually just a marker for the shift into a new cycle. What that shift might mean in practical terms is somewhat unpredictable, but it does bring up some interesting ideas to think about as we are in such tumultuous times of upheaval and emotional purging. Some even this stage, “purge-atory.”
Now, we all have the ability to become “unstuck in time,” so to speak, as Billy Pilgrim did in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. But what does it mean to live in linear time versus living in non-linear time? In linear time, we tend to check the time often, get stressed about being late, and feel pressure to get certain things done in a certain amount of time and do certain almost ritualistic things at certain times. We tend to sleep at night and get up during the day like we’re “supposed to,” and we go trade our linear time for a tool called money so that we can survive, too often just barely. However, if you find yourself existing in non-linear time, you may find that you have zero qualms about taking naps, but sometimes you may sleep for 12 hours. You may work odd hours, following your inspiration, and you understand that things will take as long as they take and stressing doesn’t help anything. Stepping out of linear time can bring quite a sense of freedom because time literally isn’t “real;” it’s a collective perception we have labeled as and come to believe is true. But when you are calm about time, you find that no one around you is stressed about time, either, and it can be a beautiful existence.
Because our perception is everything and is what ultimately directs our co-creation of life, we have the power and ability to experience time-based on our focus. It isn’t actually anything magical or mystical or unexplainable; it’s just a matter of learning to see the feedback loops within your own life that most of us have been conditioned to ignore. As a collective, our perception is that the physical reality is the only reality, that it is what’s “real” and the unseen must be proven or it doesn’t exist.
However, when we take into consideration that the physical human body can only perceive an extremely limited amount of what is actually around us (many animals are actually able to see, hear, and perceive more than human beings), which begs the question: what is all around us that we cannot perceive physically?*
At this point, you may be thinking that this is pretty scary, or alternately that it implicates an infinite amount of potential and possibilities because the frequencies we cannot perceive are essentially other dimensions layered on top of our own. Infinite dimensions, and therefore infinite possibilities, existing simultaneously just outside of our perception. This alone is enough to inspire many to dig deeper into quantum physics, but one of the most compelling ideas that has been proven time and time again is that consciousness creates reality; meaning, you—just by observing and becoming aware of your reality—are changing it.
This was originally discovered by a man named Max Planck, who was the theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918**. It’s called The Double Slit Experiment, and you can watch a YouTube video explaining this experiment in greater detail or demonstrating it if you feel the need. This experiment was demonstrated in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know and illustrates that the mere presence of an observer can change the way particles respond and behave. Quantum particles are literally everywhere in the entire universe, including all around and within us, so imagine what this could mean for us in our daily lives if we apply this knowledge to our habits!
Observing your reality has the power to change it, which is why mindfulness practice is so incredibly powerful. On a quantum level, it actually alters the particles within your body and all of your cells (and even your DNA – search “epigenetics”), and eventually your entire existence changes around you, as catalyzed by your conscious intentions. By changing the way you think and the way you feel from within yourself, you are changing the dimension of consciousness that you most often experience and reside in. See, the way I’ve come to understand it is that dimensions aren’t physical places, either. We have the ability to make “quantum jumps” in our conscious thinking and completely alter our experiences after that by having initiated that change within ourselves. With each choice we make, we are choosing a certain dimension of consciousness.
So, time is cyclical, potentialities are everywhere, and observing is creating change. Knowing the basics of some of these concepts, we can move forward into how you can use this information and apply it within your everyday experience. And don’t worry if you don’t fully understand, especially if this is the first time a concept like this has been introduced to you. Sometimes we have to be exposed to the same information numerous times before it clicks or resonates. It’s best to just have a general passion for continuous learning so that you don’t stagnate in your knowledge or advancement.
The First and Most Important Practice: Actually Observing
You can begin doing this with a very short meditation exercise or by beginning a yoga or stretching routine with emphasis on observing the breath or some monotonous sound, like the ticking of a clock. What this does is strengthen your patience and ability to take notice of things as well as direct your focus. You can then carry this energy of observing into your day and begin taking notice of small things working out for you. For example, if I’m working and have more work to complete in the evening, I often find myself thinking, “It’d be cool if someone else figured out dinner today,” and oftentimes, it happens. Of course, this isn’t always the case, but when it is, I make sure I take time to appreciate every little thing as much as humanly possible and bask in that emotion of gratitude for a while.
You may begin to notice other little things as well. Another recent example is that I was always a fan of Liam Neeson and was very disappointed in my youth when I found out he was retiring. I never put it together that he’d taken several years off after his wife died to raise his sons, and that memory pops up sometimes with the question attached to it, not in a sense of worrying about it, but in a sense of being curious what happened. A short while after the thought popped up, I came across a video about Liam Neeson on social media that was essentially a short biography, and it explained everything and answered a question I’d had quietly in the back of my mind for years. I know this sounds a little mundane as it seems like such a mediocre thing, but when you pay attention to what you’re thinking about, you can watch the manifestations come into your experience and receive confirmation and validation that you are, in fact, co-creating your life experience with your thoughts and emotional energy. This is the dimension of consciousness where manifesting miracles is not only possible but commonplace.
The Second Practice: Gratitude for What Is
Another way to cultivate trust in the universe is by being grateful for every single thing that gives you pleasure, even if it seems small or somehow “stupid.” Be grateful and enjoy even the littlest things, because that gratitude will not only ensure that you are a humble recipient and don’t feel entitled, but it will also continue to attract more things you will feel grateful for. You can begin being grateful for anything; it could be as simple as being grateful for the air you’re breathing. If you’ve ever had an experience where the thought that you might die crossed your mind or worse, you will likely understand how amazing and wonderful life seems after almost losing it.
Another example would be someone who has experienced some form of trauma or abuse finally coming out on the other side as a strong, successful, independent individual. Though the situation itself may have been terrifying or worse, the surviving of it may have inspired a newfound appreciation for freedom, acceptance, emotional understanding, and unconditional love.
Understand that going through challenging times is sort of like a catalyst for switching dimensions of consciousness; you need certain experiences to understand what you must understand to get to your next level, and without those experiences, even if the knowledge is there, you may not be able to apply the knowledge to your life properly. However, when you go through appropriate experiences to illustrate to you and show you what you need to know about any given situation, you can begin to make decisions based on input from the universe/your inner being and the results can be almost overwhelming in a good way. This is another mindset where miracles happen and things seem to almost “magically” work out; it isn’t magic. It’s focusing your gratitude and energies in the direction of your desires rather than your fears.
The Third Practice: Directing Your Focus
Your focus is what determines the type of life experience you have. If you focus on worrying about what might go wrong, obsessing over what someone else is doing with their time (and maybe even worrying that their behaviors hinge on you somehow), or fearing the unknown, then you will attract things to create more of that energy as you journey through linear time. However, if you redirect your focus toward all of the little blessings life offers you each day, more of those little blessings will find you and the more they do, the more momentum you will pick up and the more the blessings will shower your life.
The same is true for your business and career. Taking the time to notice the benefits and blessings coming into your business or company will increase their occurrence and allow you and your team to help propel your company or business forward at rapid speeds.
You can also redirect your focus as far as time is concerned, and this is especially helpful if you are the type of person who feels like you are always running out of time or you don’t have enough time to get everything done. I used to think this way once upon a time, but I understood even then that it was something about my perception or habits and not actually that I didn’t have enough time. We all have the same 24 hours in a day; why are some people so much more productive? Because they have mastered their focus and know that inspired action is the best action for progress. One way I found helpful to create more time for myself was to meditate and either think or speak repeatedly: “I have all the time in the world.” This doesn’t actually create more time; rather, it alters your perception of time to slow it down so that you can get more done, or at least feel like you are.
One last thought about focus… when you’re manifesting intentionally, let go of thinking about whatever it is you’re attempting to manifest. Don’t get attached to any one outcome, and you may be amazed at how well life begins to work out for you. One of my children recently learned that a band they like is on tour. This particular child has a real fascination with meeting bands and so they wanted to be able to get VIP passes. On top of that, they’re only 13 so I would need to go as well. So there were all of these discouraging factors lined up against actually manifesting these tickets, but through bartering with some amazing new friends, the tickets went on sale and were purchased within two days of finding out the concert was even happening. This working out was nothing short of a miracle, so it was another one of those things that was able to be pulled off out of thin air. These are the types of things we experience regularly by practicing mindfulness, and once you begin, you only improve upon what you’ve learned over time.
The reason for this story is to illustrate that there was an idea, a desire; this desire was expressed out loud to everyone who might be able to help make it happen as well as the universe itself, and then peace had to be made with any and all outcomes because there were no guarantees. So we stopped thinking about it and waited to see what would happen, and sure enough, the co-creation was successful, and this isn’t a unique experience. It’s just a matter of understanding what the process looks like from within yourself as you journey through your physical experience, and then noticing the feedback you get from your life experiences.
When you’re working with your team and practice these mindfulness techniques and begin to experience and point out little miracles, coincidences, and synchronicities as they happen, then your team will organically begin to do the same thing and increase the positive experiences exponentially. Being aware and taking notice—observing—is the first step toward really understanding your inner power, and the potentials and possibilities as discovered and pointed out by quantum physics can help you to really connect the scientific “mumbo-jumbo” into practical, applicable lessons or informational input.
You there! You are particles of light guided by frequencies of sound to give you form. The universe is composed of the same exact materials. You are the only human being who can direct your life, so you literally hold all the power and quantum physics proves it. What are you going to do with all of your newfound power?
Thank you so much for being here with us on the Mindful Leader Blog! I hope you’ve enjoyed this article delving into quantum physics and how it relates to our everyday existence. Please join us next month for a whole new series of articles on the divine power within you.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
*For an incredibly detailed article about the known limitations of our physical human senses, please go here:
**Source, and more information about how consciousness creates reality and how quantum physics has proven this:
Not only do you have to trust yourself, you also need to trust your team to help inspire trust from them, especially if you’re just starting out or have recently made any kind of major changes in your life or career paths. Trusting someone else in order to make it easier for them to trust you almost feels like walking into a trap at first; however, the very definition of leadership is to go first ―lead your team by shining example ―so trusting your team and being appropriately vulnerable as a mindful leader is paramount to inspiring trust from them. As always, there are several other ideas to help you be more trusting in your team and help them trust you in return. Read on to learn more.
Your unique “flavor” of mindful leadership can only serve to enhance the ways in which you apply the ideas in this article to your life and career. Some of the most important aspects of building trust begin with your integrity and your ability to have patience with anyone who may be struggling with your leadership style at the beginning. By practicing mindfulness, vulnerability, and building trust, you can only strengthen your leadership skills and continuously build rapport with everyone on your team, both as a team and individually.
The underlying energy of this whole article should be that you’re working from a spirit of authenticity. If you aren’t being authentic, it’s only a matter of time before someone senses it and decides to find out more, so the absolute wisest decision is to be as genuine and real and yourself as you can possibly be. This doesn’t mean you go out of your way to tell strangers all your secrets, but you can definitely share some experiences and concepts that have helped you along the way. This sharing is important to help your team trust you, understand that you’re human and approachable, and it lets people know that you are open and an active participant in personal growth as well as the advancement of your team and company as a whole.
Here are a few other aspects or characteristics a mindful leader might display for building and subsequently enhancing and growing a culture of trust.
Acceptance
Accepting others for who they are brings a level of openness and comfort to an environment, and that is a very powerful tool. Practice accepting others by reserving all judgment about them until you get to know them. Keep your opinions suspended and neutral until you have more information to go on. This will quickly become a habit and will allow you to more easily accept everyone over time, no matter what.
Nonjudgment
This is very similar to the above as you simply withhold judgment about anything until you have enough information to make an educated or informed choice about which opinion to hold. If you think all manner of things about people based on assumption, this will be a detriment, so try not to think anything about anyone or anything so that their label doesn’t become their subconsciously programmed prison.
Vulnerability & Honesty
No one can trust a liar, including your team, so being honest is paramount, especially if you understand that the likelihood of getting caught is fairly high as linear time continues to move forward. When you choose to be honest, you can also choose to be vulnerable, and this makes you much more human and approachable for your team, not to mention much more trustworthy if they understand that you are an honest type. Oddly enough, people are less likely to ask questions of someone they trust or pressure them for information, so being honest achieves the privacy that secrecy cannot because it always backfires.
The Ability to Set Firm Boundaries Lovingly
As you build trust, there may be some tough conversations to initiate along the way. There may be disagreements, maybe a couple of incidents between coworkers… one way to calm the chaos is to sit down with your entire team and have open conversations about what is and isn’t inappropriate as far as individual and group behaviors are concerned. Writing down a set of rules or company culture guidelines as a team together can open up dialogue about how everyone is interacting and help people get to a much better place within themselves, among themselves, and in the company as a whole. If boundaries need to be drawn in the moment, it is your job to take that initiative, mindful leaders. No need to be angry or cruel; no need to be bossy or loud. Simply and calmly lay everything out and move forward with all of the resulting new information.
Communication
The ability to convey an idea, message, or instructions is extremely important in any leadership position. This is how you exchange messages with others, refine ideas, brainstorm new projects, and keep things flowing harmoniously in the workplace. Your communication should be concise, clear, and leave little to no room for misunderstandings. Make sure everyone knows anything vital firsthand directly from you to ensure against workplace manipulation. When everyone is on the same page, it’s much easier to get things done.
Coinciding Words & Actions
When you are somewhat consistent in your day to day activities and interactions with others, they will know and understand that you are in no way, shape, or form a hypocrite and you walk the talk. Not only is this important for building your team’s trust in you; it also affords you the incredible opportunity to lead by example and in doing so inspire others to be much better versions of themselves. This is priceless because it will also allow you to serve as a guide, mentor, and coach to really help everyone as comprehensively as possible. If you aren’t sure about coaching your team or would like to incorporate that skill into your career, please click here to learn about our Certified Mastermind Executive Coaching course.
Fairness
You know those people who try to tell you that life isn’t fair? Well, technically speaking, they are wrong because life is exactly fair. It just isn’t fair in the single-lifetime, small picture perspective we human beings tend to have. However, it is absolutely fair in that we attract everything we experience within our lives based on our inner wellbeing, our emotional energy. When you choose to add to people’s experiences of fairness, they almost always appreciate it and will be grateful to you. This is another example of how you are able to lead by example and help inspire your team to better themselves… while attracting better and better things into your own experience.
Non-Reactivity
An excellent way to ensure that your team is able to communicate with you, even about challenging topics, is by practicing non-reactivity. No matter how shocking something is that someone tells you, no matter how emotional someone becomes, try to practice non-reactivity and stay within your center of peace. This lets everyone know that you are even-tempered, can control yourself, and are reasonable enough to do nothing right away while emotions are high (unless, of course, there’s some kind of emergency). Non-reactivity makes you approachable and helps your team to feel as though you understand them and wherever they’re coming from.
Building trust should be a habitual practice and involve you as well as the entire team, so you may even choose to have a meeting from time to time for open discussions or maybe something fun like brainstorming sessions or team masterminds. You may also choose to make morning or lunchtime meditation mandatory for all team members; this is the simplest and most effective way to drastically reduce workplace stress and conflict, as well as increase productivity and employee morale.
What are some other ways in which you might build trust with your team? Have you tried any trust-building exercises in particular that work for you and your team? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
Thanks so much for being here! We hope you’ll join us again next week for another article about trust.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
The one thing that can truly propel you forward versus continuing to hold you back is your ability to trust in the process; to let go and surrender to your journey while allowing your intuition to guide your actions. This is, of course, much easier said than done, but there are habits and ideas you can apply in your moment-to-moment existence to help you build up this trust in your journey, in your process. When you begin to trust in your journey, you will find that you are calm and more relaxed, less stressed out, and much more open and approachable in the eyes of your team. These inner work practices can help you reach your next level, so let’s explore some ideas behind trusting your journey, as well as why and how it will help you lead a more fulfilling life as a mindful leader.
Just like you and your life, your leadership journey is completely unique to you and how you came to where you are. Your choices are directed by equal parts nurture and nature, until you make the conscious decision to re-examine your belief systems and replace anything that is toxic or doesn’t serve you. Yes, you are allowed to believe something different if you want to! No one can decide that but you. So, as a sort of “obvious” example, you wouldn’t be able to become financially abundant if you have abundance blockages or belief systems about money that don’t serve you (i.e. corporations are evil, money is the root of all evil, etc.). This would need to be a belief that is revised and changed to suit your future lifestyle, otherwise it may feel like you’re spinning your wheels along the way.
As a mindful leader, you balance the ability to guide and mentor your team with the ability to be loving and firm, but without resorting to forceful, fearful, angry, or controlling methods. To help you enhance your skillset and understanding, it’s important to be discerning with what is and is not trusting of your journey, and what that even means in practical terms.
These practices and ideas are things that you can begin without anyone even knowing; concepts you can consider without having to alter your whole life. Typically when it comes to inner work, your breakthroughs are yours and don’t look like much from the outside, but if you’ve had even just one impactful revelation you can recall, then you probably remember exactly how powerful it was and what it felt like from within you.
Your breakthroughs are important! With each new revelation, your brain is creating new neural pathways and evolving as you learn more and more. The information that resonates the most with you could be on any topic, but typically if you find yourself getting really excited or passionate about learning something you feel a kinship with or that really touches you, it could very well lead you to your next breakthrough.
You have the power to create breakthroughs and epiphanies within yourself on purpose simply by learning, studying, or being exposed to new or more in-depth information to refine your knowledge and understanding. However, sitting there reading, watching, taking notes, and so on can take quite a bit of time, and we all know that everyone is busy. Therefore, these ideas are more easily implemented within yourself as a practice of sorts, and can help make you more receptive to things life is trying to teach you about yourself.
Be Open to Learning
Life is always trying to lead you in your right direction, and oftentimes we simply don’t know that this is happening or we aren’t aware of the connections between our inner world and our outer world. When you don’t know what you don’t know, you can’t grow until you learn more. However, when you begin to learn and keep expanding your knowledge on a weekly or even daily basis, life’s lessons will also become easier to interpret as far as what their purpose might be for you in particular. The deeper your levels of understanding of how you operate from within, the more likely you are to achieve self-mastery by extracting the lessons life has to offer you.
Another thing to take note of here is that your journey will be completely different from anyone else’s, and your life experiences so far have also been unique to you. There are so many variables and complexities, which is why cookie-cutter information doesn’t work. However, when you can begin to understand your own inner workings and trust yourself to make the best decisions possible with the information you have, then you can also look back without any adverse emotions such as guilt, shame, or regret. You will know that you did the best you could with the information available, and as long as things can be tweaked, altered, or revised, you can redirect your team’s efforts accordingly.
Applied Knowledge is Power
The more information you can explore, the more knowledge you have the potential to apply within your own life, in practice. Knowledge alone can be a stepping stone, but it isn’t until you apply what you’ve learned that you begin stepping into your true power and seeing massive results. This is, of course, an ongoing process, so it’s not something you do for a few days and then quit; mindfulness practice is recommended daily.
Reading, researching online, watching YouTube, etc. can help you to expand your knowledge about yourself, your inner workings, your emotions, and spirituality as well as quantum physics, among other things. It depends on what types of subject matter you are drawn to, but anything that is expansive for your consciousness is likely to be helpful.
One example of this is that it is common for someone who has experienced narcissistic abuse to become temporarily obsessed with learning about narcissism, the narcissistic family unit, what the emotional and behavioral repercussions and conditioning might be, and so on. This is common because it literally is an experience that shifts your whole reality and makes you question everything you’ve ever been told by that particular person or people. If you grew up in a narcissistic family system, then it is likely that your entire life will seem off kilter for a day or three, but learning the information helps open your perception to healing yourself, and it will also help you to quiet your ego a little bit.
Information can help you to expand your thinking, and that will help you expand your consciousness. The more you know, the more confident you get as well, so it is a win-win all around.
Worry Serves No Useful Purpose
Why do people worry so much? Well, to answer that, we will need to know what worry actually is besides an emotional state. Where does it come from? Does it serve a purpose? Does it do any good or does it attract more contrast because you’re in a vibration of worry?
Worry is a fear of the unknown. More specifically, a fear that you project into the future by thinking about it in a state of worry. Now, as you worry about this unknown future or some fear of something in your future that may be unpleasant, you are cementing that potentiality into your future timeline by focusing on it with your energy and attention (this is one aspect of quantum entanglement because time isn’t linear the way we think it is). The energy of worry will end up attracting more things to worry about, so why bother? It doesn’t do any good.
Ah, but if you don’t worry then what might other people think of you? If you don’t worry about someone in the hospital for example, people may be offended because they expect worrying and it has been distorted into seeming like a form of loving behavior. However, worry is a fear-based emotion, and love and fear cannot exist in the same being at the same time energetically, so your vibration ends up actually being lower and fear-based, attracting more 3D fear-based experiences into your life.
Worrying about someone may actually make them worse due to the energy you exchange with them, so why not send them energies of unconditional love and healing instead? Or, if you’re worried about a project, it may be time to take a step back, put someone else in charge, and let go of control over the situation so that you can work through your worry and find the root cause of it, because worry isn’t a love-based emotion. It appears to be, simply because we have been conditioned and guilt-tripped into believing so, but the energy of worry is fearful and negative, so it ends up not being helpful for anyone in the long run.
Everything Happens in Divine Timing
Life can seem really scary sometimes, especially when there are setbacks, accidents, crises, or other upheavals. However, have you ever taken a moment to look back and make connections that you maybe hadn’t noticed before? Oftentimes, you may find yourself thinking something along the lines of, “well, if this hadn’t happened, then I wouldn’t have found that… and if that hadn’t gone wrong, I would still be way back over here….”
Sometimes life may try to throw you into a situation to teach you something, either perceived as a “good” or “bad” lesson. However, the lessons themselves are not good nor bad; they each serve a purpose, which then helps propel the learner forward in life as well as in career. I have personally had some sequences of events happen within my life that absolutely proved to me that things are very much orchestrated, but not in the surface-level or simplistic ways that are typically accepted as the norm. This orchestration is much more complex than we have ever realized as a species before, and there are many different parts being played on a quantum/micro and macro scale.
Photons of light are attracted via gravity to our DNA molecules, and this is where it begins on the micro/quantum scale. For more information about our DNA, photons, and quantum ideas, please revisit this previous blog post:
Divine timing is when things happen exactly as they are supposed to… which, technically speaking, they always are, even if we don’t understand from our current perception while something is happening. One thing leads to another and to another, and oftentimes, we won’t be ready for something we want and so it won’t manifest into our experience. However, just knowing and understanding that we may not be ready can remove a lot of doubt and anxiety, making our manifestations much easier to experience and learn from as needed.
Knowing (and you may have to think of or experience your own evidence sometimes) that divine timing has you covered can help you relax into your life experience a little bit as a mindful leader. Yes, the “real world” is scary sometimes and it feels like you should be worrying about a billion things, but once you understand that none of that worry will do any good and freaking out or overreacting will actually make everything worse, it becomes much easier to see that relaxing and doing what you can when you can is all you can do.
And that’s okay.
Thank you so much for being here! We hope that this article resonated with you, and if so, please like, comment, and share. Thanks so much! Please join us again next week for more about trust.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
The Executive Coaching University is one of the leading Executive Coaching Training and Leadership Development firms in the world. We have trained thousands of individuals in 39 countries in our proprietary MasterMind Executive Coaching Process™ as well as many other leadership skills. Our programs are approved by the International Coach Federation (ICF), Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), and Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the UK.
