Destiny:
Posted by Amy Hale on November 14, 2011 at 9:24 pm
Have you ever wondered, “how did I get here? Life certainly isn’t turning out like I thought it would.”
A couple of months ago, I was speaking with a group of people who had come together to learn more about creating a better working environment for themselves. Many people believe that they are stuck in employment situations in which they cannot flourish or move forward. One person spoke up regarding her weight as being a problem for her in moving forward with her career. She heard comments about her weight from people around her and she was finding it hard to stick with a process for losing the excess weight.
Since her weight had been confronted from hearing comments of other people, I asked “Do you really dislike yourself the way your are, or, are you more hurt by the comments of other people? Which of these drives your weight loss more?” The woman thought for a moment and then said, “I really just want to be accepted. I think that I’m losing out on opportunities because of my weight. I really just want people to like me for who I am.” As we went on, this person realized she was trying to lose weight to please other people and not herself. She knew she was intelligent and could do more, but she thought others just didn’t see her that way.
What we really had to get down to is who are you going to let create your life? This is something we all have to think about whether we want to boost our careers, be healthier, or prosper in a marriage. It’s hard for many of us to move past the idea that our environment controls who we are and what our future holds, when in reality, the control lies within us.
This week’s experiment:
If you have been experiencing your life as externally controlled, here are some exercises that can help you regain your internal creative edge:
1. Take a break in your daily schedule to settle in with who you really are. Write down what you like about yourself and your life and then write down a few things that aren’t feeling good because they are prompted by other people. Review these lists and look at why you like certain things and why you don’t like others. Is it because you get a feeling of gratitude from yourself or is it because you’ve created a mold that others put together for you?
2. Take all of the desires that aren’t really yours, but the ideas of other people, and meditate on whether or not you really want these things in your life. Do they make you happy or do they only make the people around you happy? Are they truly necessary in your life?
3. Make the choice whether to keep the attitudes and desires of other people in your beliefs.
4. When you decide to relinquish one of the things that truly is not good for you, imagine a chalk board in front of you and erase the unwanted ideas that you previously took on as yours.
5. Write on this chalk board what you would like to include in your thoughts and desires. What will your life be like? Will you be happier? Will you enjoy yourself alone and with others more?
Moving forward in our own thoughts and desires can often take us through places in which negative attitudes hide and want to remain strong. By thoughtfully and deliberately revisiting what we truly want for ourselves can help us along our journey and expose these hidden beliefs that aren’t doing us any good. Being true to ourselves, we become more spiritually enlightened and enjoy the presence of our own company in a different light.
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Posted by Amy Hale on October 31, 2011 at 7:22 am
Remember going to the carnival as a child? You were in such awe as you watched and maybe even participated in the spectacular shows and rides that were offered. The clowns and actors made spectacles of themselves to entertain you and the rest of the audience. If you had a sore toe or were feeling a little blue, having fun helped you refocus on something that made you feel good.
Letting your imagination take you to new places within yourself can also alter your perception and state of being. Even though the world seems like it’s becoming less stable and other people are struggling to pay their bills, you can evolve to a higher state by using your wonderful imagination.
When you are feeling down or negative, do you scold or even belittle yourself for having an attitude that feels bad? Have you ever thought about letting yourself have the negative without attaching yourself to them? Rather, let the come up, however, let them float away just the same. Instead of scolding yourself or judging the emotion as bad, could you just let it be for a moment?
When going through the feelings of sadness, anxiety, or resentment, people tend to forget to allow themselves to be human. Humans are emotional beings. When people stuff their emotions down or tell themselves that they are bad, they learn to distrust themselves and he value of of all of their emotions.
If you beat yourself up for having a negative emotion, this often activates a justification of unworthiness of better things. Our self-worth lowers as a result and guilt sets in for not being in control. It’s a big cycle. However, when you allow yourself to feel and metabolize your feelings and all self-forgiveness to take place, we see things in a different light plus we move from that space instead of resentment.
This week’s experiment:
Recognize your feelings for what they really are. Thoughts about people, events and things generate feelings. Do you best to acknowledge all of your feelings, including the ones that feel bad – like fear or sadness. Allow these feelings to be. Don’t judge them. Imagine them moving through your body and out your feet.
Then work at noticing how that affects your life. You’ll find that you’re more at peace, centered in the present moment, and your get more done with less effort.
Let me know your thoughts and how you do.
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Posted by Amy Hale on April 23, 2010 at 6:00 am
“Wishing is a way to remove oneself from what is going on now. Hope is how most of us avoid growing up.” – Dr. Brad Blanton
I love that quotation from Dr. Blanton. It really puts wishing and hoping in their proper infantile place.
I was having lunch with a friend who is writing a book and as we reviewed the remarkable successes in his life coming from nothing, no advantages, an underdog, how he succeeded academically and in business and in many other ways. I asked him his secret and he said, “Action. Nothing beats action.”
One of the reasons I believe the Owner versus Victim distinction connects with people so quickly and deeply is because ownership is all about action. Taking creative action in the face of challenges and opportunities. Instead of complaining.
Victims spend their days and nights complaining. About how they were not “GIVEN” what they thought they deserved. They are out of action. And I love it when the news delivers a story like the one about the college student who is SUING HER COLLEGE for a full refund of her four year tuition because she “can’t find a job.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 26, 2010 at 5:43 am
Success is simple. It’s our thinking that makes success over-challenging. Success can actually be achieved in two steps. The first step is to decide what you want. The second step is to act on that decision. The best description of the second step I’ve ever read was written by Og Mandino:
“I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 19, 2010 at 2:01 pm
If you’re on the right path, you’ll get to where you want to go. Consistent commitment keeps you on the path.
The hardest thing for people to unlearn is the short attention span that’s been shaped by television, entertainment, letting the kids rule the roost, and by letting pernicious, untrue self-victimizing thoughts snuggle up into our belief systems. And this inability to be flowingly calm and ‘real’ is really just the inability to return the mind to the most important thing it can be thinking about in the present moment. It leads to a lot of much unfinished business. The unfinished business then leads to drama. The drama leads to self-dramatization including wild stories about how other people make us unhappy or destroy our dreams. This self-dramatization replaces the committed life.
As Steven Pressfield writes in, “The War of Art,” “Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Jenny shows up for church with a tattoo. It’s more fun than a movie. And it works: nobody gets a darn thing done.”
Please share your thoughts & converse with me.
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Posted by Amy Hale on January 4, 2010 at 10:36 am
Fear comes in many forms. It’s hypnotic and no one entirely escapes its grasp. People rationalize their fears which helps them excuse themselves from moving forward with their goals and visions for themselves.
Hate is a form of fear. Where there is one, there is often the other. “I hate meetings” could mean for some, “I’m afraid of speaking up in front of my boss because he is mean.” It turns into, “I’ll speak up next time,” but that next time doesn’t seem to ever come.
Some people tend to look at some of their fear on the bright side. “At least I won’t look foolish” or “if I say that, then I open myself up for being put down.”
But then a week goes by and everything is still the same. The person hasn’t spoken up in order to be noticed enough to be a credible part of the team. So s/he stays in the same old cubicle.
Are things better off than a year ago?
If not, things aren’t going to improve by themselves. It’s time to stop putting on the brake and really take some initiative to move ahead? Do you want to spend the next 40 years of your life feeling the same way? How many years are you going to let yourself just hang there in the same place in the hellish dungeon of rationalization?
If you want your life to move, you’re going to have to move it. No one is going to save you. If they were going to, they already would have. So, what are you waiting for?
Un-optimistic fear tends to get people moving forward. I can’t believe how many people come to see me when they find out they might be cut from their job or their doctor just diagnosed them with diabetes. They didn’t move until they were afraid.
So here’s an idea, define the worst thing that could happen if you didn’t accomplished what you want to accomplish? What are you putting off because of fear and what is it really costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – by postponing taking action?
What are you waiting for? If you say you don’t have time or the time is not right, I can almost guarantee that fear is standing in your way and your rationalizing it so that you stay in the same place.
This post is intended to be a wake-up call for you and the wonderful life that awaits you. By thinking about the worst thing that could possible happen by not taking action – like being miserable or bored in the same job, not being able to make ends meet and feeling like a worthless pile or even living with someone you just don’t even like anymore – you can motivate yourself to take action.
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