More About Living in the Moment.......

From The Power of Now, “In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real. 'That’s dangerous,' says the ego. 'You’ll get hurt. You’ll become vulnerable.' What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming 'vulnerable,' can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.”  

The definition of "ego" includes how we view ourselves in the world: our confidence and self-esteem.  I previously wondered what people with low self-esteem and little confidence needed to "surrender".  Now, I interpret the passage as releasing how we view and compare ourselves in the world, while knowing we all must have positive self-esteem and confidence to live our best lives.

We can't judge anyone else's decisions because we haven't walked in their shoes.  However, letting go of our egos is really about unravelling the reasons why feel compelled to do things based on what we believe about ourselves.  Then (easier said that done, BTW), we can start over from a place of personal truth:  we all have potential that has not been uncovered.

If you can improve your life circumstances but have chosen to pass up positive possibilities, that is when you need to let go, regroup and choose differently next time.  Holding onto self-loathing and self-judgment (and/or feeling like a martyr) is the opposite of what letting go is all about.  The reasons why we cannot move forward (our negative self-talk) become our own limiting prisons.

When we say "I should have done that already", it's detrimental to the power of the present moment.  The ability to minimize our "shoulda/woulda/coulda" reflex releases the power of the past and future.  If you believe you are too old/young/fat/thin/tall/short/smart/lame to move toward your highest potential, that is when your ego has power over you.  

Fully accepting ourselves allows us the space to change for the better.  It sounds counter intuitive, doesn't it?  We are actually creating the SPACE for positive change.  We begin with the mantra:  "I am acceptable, exactly as I am in this moment".  

Have a great day!

xo
Conni

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It*: Allowing Personal Power

For the longest time, information about our personal POWER being in the present moment confused me.  I didn't understand why I wasn't supposed to savor good memories in the past and why I shouldn't get excited about future events...it didn't make any sense to me.

The book by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, says “See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”

So my first thought was, "that is harsh, Sir."  Victims don't make themselves, and come on, we all complain!  We are human beings and none of us is perfect.  No one wants to be a victim and no one wants to live a life of pain.  We all need empathy.  It's impossible for most victims of abuse to move forward without help.  Most of us need assistance to "walk through" and release emotional pain.  So I respectfully (and somewhat angrily) disagreed with him.

What I have come to realize isn't that we have to repress everything and pretend everything is perfect. The choice is the perspective of knowing we can choose to heal our past negative memories so they don't affect future events.  So, the power in the present moment is about accessing our potential power by removing the attachments of the past and future.

Here is an example:  if your house was burned down as a child, you are probably not going to enjoy bonfires as much as the next guy.  Your filter (or lens) is that "fire is painful, hurtful and bad".  After a few years go by, you might pretend to enjoy a bonfire but probably not completely.  Logically, without your personal emotional trauma, we know that fire is necessary to live.  Another perspective would be to realize that fire is life-sustaining.  We have the ability to release the fear of fire so it goes back to a neutral state, without resisting and reacting.

Therapy, meditation, hypnosis and energy work all allow us to reduce emotional pain.  Knowing that victims are not at fault is key, while victims MUST reduce emotional pain to move forward.  It is never about trying to forget it because it's in the past; it's about doing the emotional healing to PROCESS trauma which allows someone to move forward.

Have a great day!!

xo
Conni

*Yes, I know the phrase is from Mission Impossible :)

Resistance to Change: Why We Impose Personal Structure to Keep Ourselves Safe

If you are feeling safe with all of your personal rules and regs; perhaps it is time to address whether or not your rules are still relevant here and now.  Because, many times, we apply our own rules like they are set in stone and they don't have to be......

I must do it this way (why?).......

I can't do it that way (why not?).......

We are sometimes locked into false paradigms, we hold the keys to opening new doors and we are our only guards.  If your self-talk lends itself to "I cannot, would not, should not do it that way", try to understand why you believe a choice is good or bad, right or wrong.

If you feel safer taking action a certain way, you may need to process memories that made you feel unsafe in the past.  That is how we unlock our own false belief systems.  Perhaps stepping on a crack won't break your momma's back ;)

What are your defining moments?  Self-awareness experts suggest taking a few hours to list the memories that you continue to resist and react to from your past.  If you were locked in a small space or if someone you know was hurt badly when you were young, you may have adjusted your own belief systems and activities to accommodate keeping yourself safe based on those memories.  In reality, your adult mind already knows that you have to be able to swim before you jump into the deep end; but your young mind might tell you it's safer to stay out of the water.

My cousin, who was about the same age as me, drowned when I was a little girl.  I have always had a fear of the water.  I was able to greatly reduce that fear by acknowledging and processing those childhood reactions of feeling unsafe.  Even though I don't think I will ever want to swim competitively, I know and understand my limits are based on current instead of past beliefs.

We create our own resistance to change when we have not processed previous emotional trauma.  It is worth the time and effort to take care of your emotional baggage, then we can have better lives in this moment.

Have a great day!

xo
Conni

Are You A "Thinker"? Sometimes it's not as rewarding as you think ;)

In school, teachers love "thinkers".  As a mom, I told my own kids and everyone else's kids that I love "thinkers".  So many of our subjects in school rely on getting to a deeper analysis to solve the problem and we are rewarded for those problem-solving skills.

As we expand our conscious awareness, we sometimes get caught up in trying to over-analyze the "why did this happen" and "how could they have done that" questions.  In these examples, over-thinking will hold us back from acceptance and acceptance is the key to moving forward with our lives.

When I used to watch those "headline grabbing" stories on TV, I couldn't stop my brain from wondering "why".  I spent hours wondering how and why people do the things they do.....it didn't help me and focusing on those questions truly made me feel worse.  I could become obsessed with every detail as I tried to wrap my mind around someone else's actions.

Acceptance means allowing ourselves to move on without needing to fully understand "why".  We will never understand evil actions.  We will never be "OK" with how evil actions are pre-meditated and carried out without regard to honoring human lives.

Being "OK" with not understanding "why" will allow us to move toward acceptance, without approving actions that have been taken against humanity.  We can then move forward in our personal path to making our world better.

Have a great day!

xo
Conni

Opening the Floodgates :)

Whatever we resist slows down our "flow".  Resistance blocks our highest and best possibilities and potential.  We have the ability to change it through understanding and building our positive beliefs systems, beginning with the belief we are innately enough.Here's an example of how resistance affects us.....

You or someone you know has test anxiety; you are "trying so hard" to remember what you studied and it will not come to you during the test.  Maybe someone told you or you previously told yourself you were not a good test-taker.  The resistance builds with each test you take.  After leaving the testing area, the answers pop back into your head.  Most of us don't understand the insidious backlash of how resistance affects our day-to-day lives.  It holds us back from our potential like a negative force field.

Those of us who resist loving and accepting ourselves exactly as we are in this moment of time create more and more reasons why we are not quite "good enough".  If we only did better, we could love and accept ourselves.  Our negative beliefs attract more negative beliefs.  Those beliefs are the opposite of the truth.  Of course, we still need to build skills, practice, study for the test.  Everything is a combination of mind-body.  We need to work on both.

It is like having a pilot light in our bodies.  We have to begin by lighting the flame of knowing we are innately good enough just because we were born, no need to prove it with actions.  Then, we can enhance our internal flame by positively feeding the fire, but if we don't start with that positive belief, it is extremely difficult to change it.  People who show the world they are outwardly confident may or may not be confident on the inside.

Not one of us is perfect, so striving for perfection could make us feel badly about ourselves if we don't believe we are innately enough.  That is why living in the moment is powerful.  We make a mistake, make amends and move forward without beating ourselves up.  Forgiveness is incredibly powerful, but without knowing we are innately good enough, forgiveness will only take us so far.

How do we change?  On the conscious level, intentions can be effective.  "I intend to know I am good enough in this moment."  "I intend to love myself exactly as I am today."  The biggest bang for your buck is changing beliefs on the subconscious level.  That is where that little voice inside of us says..."hey wait a minute, you can't completely love yourself, remember what happened that time when you did that thing..."

We can change subconscious beliefs, our negative self-talk, with meditation, hypnosis, energy work, or focusing on our intentions to change right before we fall asleep or as we are waking up in the morning.  That is when our brains are malleable and accepting of change.  We all have the capability to change for the better.  The first steps are awareness and intention.

Have a great day!

xo
Conni

My Counsel of Heroes

Napoleon Hill’s book, “Think and Grow Rich”, is a classic for people who believe we can positively influence the course of our lives by changing thought patterns.  He used the concept of a Counsel of Heroes to focus on qualities he felt were his weak areas in his life.  Napoleon Hill used a group of men seated at his Counsel Table.  He was the chairman.  He rebuilt his own character through focusing on a composite of the characters of his counselors.  He called it "voluntary rebirth".

Here is my version of that exercise.  You might want to try it yourself.  Awareness is always the first step to change.  The Counsel of Heroes allows us to focus on our desire to move forward in certain areas of our lives....

Oprah, I wish to acquire from you and impress on my subconscious mind the qualities which enable you to inspire and arouse the population to a greater and more determined spirit of action; for my highest possibilities and potential, using pure intentions of making the world a better place.

Deepak, I wish to acquire from you the patience and ability to live in the present moment and attract people on the same path as I move toward living my heart's desires.  Your steadfast vision to improve yourself and the world inspires me to move beyond my current, self-imposed boundaries.

Martha Beck, I wish to acquire from you a thorough understanding of the principles of organized effort, which you use so effectively to manifest your dreams, to allow something greater than our current circumstances project.  You have provided me the ability to "find my own North Star". 

Tim Russet, I admire you greatly and I am still sad that I did not get to meet you in this lifetime.  I wish to acquire your spirit of persistence, poise, and self-confidence, while balancing kindness and the knowledge of how lucky you are through the Grace of God.  You life experiences were a road map to understanding how miracles can unfold for those who believe in a benevolent world.

Joseph Murphy, I wish to acquire your depth of knowledge and understanding of how to correct the direction of my thoughts.  Thank you for your gift to the world.  Your thought processes were so far ahead of your time.  

I greatly admire my heroes.  They allow me to see where I can change my intentions to create a stronger and more powerful "me".  We can choose to be strong as we become authentic, using our highest gifts and talents in the world.  If you are intrigued by the concept, I challenge you to use it in your own life.

Have a great day!

Xo

Conni

Finding Your Bliss :)

I spent last weekend with seven incredible women.  We met in a beautiful location to move toward our personal destinies as a group.  We laughed and cried.  We validated each other and gently pushed each others' awareness.  I was blessed and so grateful to be the facilitator of the group.

Unwritten
By Natasha Bedingfield

"I am unwritten
Can't read my mind
I'm undefined
I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin

No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten"

We are all "unwritten", but you have to be ready to move forward.  No one can force change upon someone who doesn't want it.  If you believe you are too old, too young, too "purple", it is untrue.  We can all redirect our lives toward our highest possibilities and potential.

To make major paradigm shifts after our belief systems have become entrenched in our minds, it is almost as if we have to cover our eyes and spin until we don't have a sense of direction, then use our intuition to guide us to our "true north".  It is possible, I promise.  We all have the ability to change our circumstances for the better.

If you don't have a group of people in your life who want the best for you, be on the lookout for members.  There is a force in the power of a group.  It can be a force toward good, or not so much.  Step by step, we can all change for the better.  It takes courage, but I believe we all have that courage inside of us.  My heartfelt "thanks" goes out to the group from last weekend.  I am forever grateful that you chose to move forward with me.

Have a great day!!

xo
Conni