Be Bold, Be Amazing, Be Yourself!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”   Marianne Williamson

What Are You Afraid Of?

 

Why is it so hard for us to be ourselves?  What are we so afraid of?  We’re afraid:

• people won’t accept us as we are
• people won’t like us
• that we’re not good enough
• that we’re not enough.

So what.

Who are you trying so hard to please and why is that important to you?

 

If you’re a writer or artist who waters down your art to appeal to the masses, do you honestly think that everyone will like what you create?  Do you like everything that everyone creates?  Whose art do you like and why?  Your answer to ‘why’ probably has something to do with how the artist expresses him/herself in a unique and genuine way that doesn’t appeal to the masses.

If you work in a corporate environment, you probably work hard to please your boss.  Do you do this by doing what you’re told, keeping your head down and blending in?  Or do you consciously think about how you can be different from everyone else?  If you’re looking for a promotion, would your boss want to promote the person he/she can’t differentiate from anyone else in the department?  Or the person who pushes the boundaries and does something different and amazing that helps the company?

If you’re in a service industry, you want to please your customers.  Do you do this by doing what you think the customer expects and nothing more?  Or do you deliver your services in a completely different and unique way?  Which experience will that customer remember?  Will every customer appreciate your alternative methods of delivering your service?  No, but the ones that do won’t leave and will spread the good word for you.  And you’re better off letting the rest go.

In your interactions with friends and family, do you go with the flow and do what others around you are doing or what you think they expect of you?  Or do you do things your own way because you know it’s a better expression of who you are?  If you’re doing life the way that others expect you to, how happy are you?  You may be accepted and liked but what are you giving up for that?  Do you want to be like your friends or do you want something different?  If you want something different, it may be time to find new friends who will support you in being yourself.

Being Liked Is a No-Win Game

Humans are social creatures who thrive in groups.  We’re naturally drawn to people like us.  With seven billion unique individuals on this planet, no one will ever be liked by everyone.  Not even Mother Theresa.  We’re liked by other people in our groups and the smaller the group, the more meaningful the connections and levels of acceptance.

Working to have someone like you means giving up your version of your life to follow a script written by the other person.  When they don’t like or accept you or say that they’re disappointed in you, it’s because you’re not meeting their expectations.  You didn’t write their rules but you’re making sacrifices to adhere to them.

When we pretend to be someone other than ourselves or purposely hide our true selves, we rob ourselves of the ability to connect deeply with others.  And it’s these connections that make life so meaningful.  Brené Brown has done extensive research on how being open , vulnerable, courageous and uniquely you allows these connections to enhance our lives.  Check out her amazing TED talk here.

Rather than tip-toeing around in fear of that one person who won’t like you (they will always be out there), open your eyes to the group of people who love who you are and what you do.  Play to that group in your own unique way and watch yourself and that group grow.

Banish the Demons

Next, let’s address the internal demons of ‘not enough’ and ‘not good enough.’  Where the hell did these come from anyway?  In my opinion, most of it comes from our school systems that expect everyone to be the same, learn the same things in the same ways and have the same results.  And because our parents want us to do well in school, those same expectations are reinforced at home.  How utterly impossible is that!

We’re judged as “not good enough” if we don’t meet all the standardized expectations.  Standards are based on massive generalizations of people who, individually, don’t meet the standards.  They’re either above or below them. By default, 99% of us aren’t “good enough.”

Good enough for what or who?  What is enough and who decided it?  Who wants to play that game?

The system tells us that our grades in subjects that are irrelevant to us and our future must be good enough to get a “good job” doing something that we’ll hate in a couple years.  Then we’re judged as failures if we want to do something completely different.

As kids we internalize “getting good enough grades” as “being good enough.”  Our society teaches us that what we do is who we are.  We take these beliefs into adulthood without realizing it and beat ourselves up for not being like other people.

A New Beginning

What if we did what we loved from the beginning, without being compared to others and standards?  What if we could use our own unique strengths and passions to create a life that’s uniquely ours?  Our focus would be on how we could best contribute to others by offering our unique gifts.

There would be no fears of lack of acceptance or being “enough” because we wouldn’t compare ourselves to anyone.  If everyone did their best at being their best, there would be a lot more happy people in this world.

Let’s work together to give our children this new beginning.

Simple Steps

1. Identify where you’re playing small in your life or where you’re not being yourself: relationships, work, personal expression, etc.
2. Take some time to write, in infinite detail, all the ways you think, things you do, ways you limit yourself or censor yourself in each of these areas.  Know that you’re limiting yourself if you’re not getting the results you’re after.
3. Write how you feel about that.
4. In each area, write how you would do your life differently if no one ever judged you.  Go into as much detail as possible as if you’re writing the script for a movie.  Don’t write about what you wouldn’t do or what you would avoid.  Write in the present tense how you would do things and how you would think.
5. Write how you feel about that.
6. Find one, small aspect of what you wrote in step 4 and implement it today.  It may be an action or a way of thinking.  For example, if you have been thinking about taking an action but haven’t because you’re not sure how it will be received, do it today and release the judgment.
7. Every few days, refer back to your movie script and implement one more aspect of it into your life.  Make sure the actions are small (unless you’re ready for a big leap, then more power to ya!).
8. Every six months, repeat all of the above steps.

All you have is the present moment.  The past is gone and can’t be changed so forget it.  What you think and do right now is creating your future.  What can you do, who can you be, right now to create the life you want?

Why Do You Want What You Want?

We all have our list of things we want in life – great relationships, a nice home, a healthy body, financial security and more.  Have you ever stopped to askwhere your definitions of these goals came from andwhy you want them?

Are those images in alignment with your values, the things you hold most dear?  Or are they based on what you think you should have in this point in your life?  Or are they what someone else expects of you?  Or are you trying to prove something to someone or be better than someone else? Are you trying to re-live some aspect of your past?

Will obtaining the things you want make your heart happy?

Advertising and media are very good at telling us what we should want and have.  Their messages are so slick that we usually don’t even think about whether we really need their offerings.  We just want them – and now.

Like the practice of waiting 30 days before making a “needed” purchase (at which point you usually realize that you don’t even want it anymore), take some time to consider all the things you “need” in your life.

New Understandings

Relationships

I used to think that the perfect relationship was one where there are no fights.  My first marriage went this way and ended this way.  We never fought but we also had no idea how to communicate.  If I did something to upset him, I usually had no idea what I had done.  My only clue that I had done something that hurt him was his silent treatment which persisted even when I asked him what I had done.

My current marriage has been filled with disagreements and I almost ended it because of that, hanging onto my old beliefs.  Another old belief was that, when things get bad you just leave.  Thankfully, my husband is extremely patient and has been there for me as I’ve learned how to communicate and work out our differences.

Through our many conflicts we’ve both grown immensely and we have the happiest relationship ever.

Home

When we went house hunting about 12 years ago, my husband wanted a yurt on 100 acres.  I told him that I didn’t want to live in a tent.  I wanted a nice home.  So we bought a nice home on 20 acres.  My vision of a nice home was a combination of things I read about in many home and redecorating magazines combined with my interpretation of society’s image of a “nice home.”

After experiencing all these years in our nice home, I now want a yurt on 100 acres.  A nice home has too much space to heat, clean and store stuff we don’t really need.  I’ve stayed in a yurt and I know how beautiful and comfortable they can be.  And it’s amazing how inexpensive a yurt is to construct compared to a nice home (goodbye mortgage!).

Health

I’ve created healthy habits over the years to ensure that my body looked and felt like it did when I was in my twenties.  After I hit thirty, though, things didn’t quite work like they did when I was twenty.  And forty brought even more surprises like my first grey hairs and fine lines.  Never mind what giving birth to three children does to a body.  I had to accept the fact that I’m getting older and my body is different.  It will never again be like it was when I was in my twenties.

Instead of trying to emulate the young models, my new picture of health is an older model from the Sundance catalogs (I haven’t seen her in a while) with long, flowing grey hair and a look of peace in her face.  I’ve also had a therapist who fits this description.  I almost fell out of my chair when she told me she was over sixty.

My views of beauty have shifted from what’s on the outside (to live up to society’s picture of beauty) to what’s on the inside.  That look in the eye of a peace within.  The natural glow.  The relaxed nature.  I just want to feel good.  When that happens, I know I’m beautiful.

Finances

In the financial realm, I remember thinking as I got out of college that when my income reached a certain level, I’d be all set and I would never have any issues with money.  Well, my income got to that level and much more and my financial problems only got bigger along the way.  My underlying feelings of entitlement along with some childhood programming (debt is the American way) got me into some pretty big financial problems.

When it became blatantly clear that my financial habits were no longer sustainable, I had to take a long, hard look at the things inside of me that were creating these problems.  It’s like an old saying goes:  Money doesn’t cure problems, it magnifies them.

I began to examine what was behind every financial choice I made.  Why did I really want what I thought I wanted?   Was it so important to have that I would rob my future and go into more debt?

It seems that the issues that we manage to cover up in every other area of our life become more apparent in our financial lives.  Numbers don’t lie.

It was when I faced my emotional issues, looking at them objectively as an outside observer without judgment, and making new, conscious choices in all areas of my life that my financial life turned around.

The Shift

When I started to make conscious choices that supported my values, all areas of my life improved.

Over the years, the “why” behind my desires has shifted from external sources (what society, advertising and the like say that I should want or to please other people) to internal sources (my values, what’s important to me, what makes me happy).

I used to see things and people in my life as never quite right or not enough.   Now I accept what isand I’m happy with what I have in all areas of my life.  With this I’ve gone from a general feeling of uneasiness to a sense of contentment.

Why do we want all the things we want in life?  Ultimately, to be happy.

Are your choices supporting your long-term or short-term happiness?  “Both” is the best answer.  My advice would be to not sacrifice your long-term happiness by succumbing to your desire for the “quick fix” for short-term happiness.

What have been your experiences in this area?  Have you noticed any shifts over the years?

by Paige Burkes

Mindful Relationships: How a New Point of View Can Dramatically Increase Your Happiness

It’s amazing that we humans are so programmed to be social creatures when all we ever think about is ourselves (usually).

We expect others to accept and appreciate us as we are and yet we expect them to be the way wewant them to be.  Not exactly fair.

We expect those close to us to know what makes us happy and do those things on a regular basis.

Whenever we make decisions about how to spend our time, money or energy, we consciously or subconsciously answer the question: “What’s in it for me?”

How happy are you in your relationships with friends, family and your significant other?

I have found a huge correlation between our personal happiness and how much we focus on others.

When we get all wrapped up in our own issues and wonder why someone isn’t beating down the door to help us, we get angry, bitter and resentful.  We blame anyone we can find for our problems.

The funny thing is, as soon as we stop focusing on our own issues and focus on how to make others happy, we get happier.

You have to give to get.  Reap what you sow.

Take a minute right now to notice how you feel about your closest relationship.

the good

What are all the things you love about the other person and the dynamics of the relationship?

Have you told the other person these things?  If so, how often?  If not, make it a point to tell themtoday.  They’ll never hear it enough.

Showing and verbalizing your gratitude for others in your life is a huge win-win.  They’re happy that you notice and appreciate them and their happiness makes you happy.  They keep doing the things that you like because you took the time to show your thanks.

the bad

What are all the things – large and small – that irritate you about the other person or the relationship?

If you just feel a general negative feeling, define what is creating that feeling.  What does the other person do that drives you crazy?

If that person did the same things around someone else, would the other person interpret it as irritating?

You are the backdrop against which you interpret other people’s actions.  Different backdrop, different interpretation.  Something that you find irritating might be fun and quirky to someone else.

the other person

Rather than thinking purely about yourself and how you see the other person, put yourself in their shoes.

Consider their background and life experiences.  Why do you think they do and think the way they do?

Consider your own background.  Why do you interpret their actions the way you do?

How we interpret their thoughts and actions is our choice.  We can choose to love and accept them for who they are or we can allow things to bother us.

Honest acceptance is a major key to happiness.  Not resignation but acceptance.  It’s not always easy but, like mindfulness, it’s a practice that must be practiced regularly for maximum benefit.

my story

My father used to drive me crazy with his barrage of judgmental comments.  It was as if nothing I did was right or good enough.  My interpretation was that he wanted me to still be his little girl who had to do things his way as long as I lived under his roof.  But I was over 30 years old and I didn’t live under his roof and hadn’t for a long time.

I would let every little thing he said get under my skin and make me angry.  I wasted a lot of time talking about this with my husband and I wasted a lot of energy on the whole ordeal.

Then I started to look at things from his point of view.  He grew up in the deep South with a tyrannical mother and quiet father, neither of whom openly showed their love for him.  His mother constantly picked him apart.  In a misguided effort to gain attention, he became a bully.  To “fix” this problem, his parents sent him off to military school which only exacerbated the problem.

I started to see my large (he’s 6’8”), overbearing bully of a father as a sad and angry 12 year old boy who lashes out at the world because he’s not getting the love and attention he deserves from his parents.  He makes himself feel better by tearing other people down and beating them up.

And none of this has anything to do with me.

He’s just doing what he has always done.  I noticed that he does it to almost everyone he’s close to.

When I asked him to notice it and consider how it affects others, he felt threatened and got angry and defensive.  Questioning it is a threat to his very big ego.

Once I started seeing him in this way (as a 12 year old little boy doing the only thing he knew how), it became much easier for me to accept him for who he is.  He has no intention to change and I stopped trying to change him.

Given the negativity that exudes from him, I’ve made the difficult choice to significantly limit my exposure to him.  It has taken some time but it appears that he has finally accepted this.  He used to complain regularly about how I never call him but that has lessened.

We have light conversations once every month or two.  We make no point in visiting each other (he lives half way across the country from me).  And I’m finally OK with all that.

I’ve realized that I’m much happier accepting him for who and what he is.  I have tried many different ways of improving our relationship that all fell flat.  I feel like I’ve done all I can.  It’s a two-way street and he has to want to change too but I’ve discovered that change is extremely threatening for him.  So I let it go.

ask for what you want

If you’re not getting what you want out of your relationships, I have two questions for you:

1. Do you really know what you want?
2. Have you told the other person what you want in enough detail that they can deliver?

You may be thinking: “If they loved me, they would know.  If they cared for me, they would do what I want.”

Man or woman, none of us are mind readers.  You can’t expect someone else to always know everything about you if you don’t tell them.  We all change and we can’t expect others to fully comprehend our changes.

Take responsibility for your own happiness in your relationships.  If you leave it up to the other person, as well intentioned as they may be, you’ll end up disappointed.

simple steps

• Tell those close to you what you love and appreciate about them.
• Take some time to examine aspects of your relationships you’re not happy with.  How can you see things from the other person’s perspective?  How do you contribute to the issues?
• Tell those close to you what you want in a loving way and how they can make you happy.  Follow up by asking them what you can do to increase their happiness.  Help them give you what you want.

You get what you give.  What are you giving?

Simple Steps to Create More Freedom For Yourself

Think about how all of your lifestyle choices either support or hold back your freedom:

Friends

Do the friends that you’ve chosen support you when you come up with crazy, bold ideas?  Are they open to you living your life on your own terms?

Or do they tell you to “get real” and get off your high horse and join them back in their comfortable mediocrity?

We are the sum of the five people we spend the most time with so choose your five people wisely.

Home

Think about your home.  We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that a big home with a big, fat mortgage provides investment and tax “advantages.”  In most of the country, those investment advantages just don’t exist anymore.  The home we bought over 12 years ago is worth very little more today than what we bought it for back then.

And that “tax advantage?” Sure, I get to pay tens of thousands of dollars in interest to the bank each year so I can reduce my taxes by a third or less of that.  What a deal.  Would you trade me a dollar for $0.25 back?  That’s the tax advantage.

Suddenly renting doesn’t seem so bad.  We’ve been told that rent is sunk money.  Well so is 75% of the mortgage interest you’re paying every year.  And most of your monthly payments are interest.

With renting you’re not so tied to where you live.  You can leave on pretty short notice without worrying about how long it will take to sell your place.  You don’t have to worry about how you’ll pay for those big repairs when they sneak up on you (a new roof, water heater, siding, heating or air conditioning system, etc.).

Think renting can restrict what you can do in your home?  Think about the crazy restrictions placed on homeowners in subdivisions.  It’s nuts.

What are the three highest values in your life?  Does the home you live in support those values?  What kind of home does?

Children

If you have kids, do you feel stuck sometimes because there are just things you “can’t” do with kids?  Think you can’t travel the world because they’re supposed to be in school?

I’ve met a number of people using the world as their classroom as they homeschool their kids (yes, even little ones) as they travel, sail or RV the world.

Don’t blame your kids for slowing you down.  Take them along for the ride.

Finances

How much are you sacrificing your freedom with your financial choices and how you spend your money?

Planning for retirement

Think you need $2 million in the bank in order to retire?  It’s time to rethink the notion of retirement that was established back in the 1920’s – yes, that’s about 100 years ago.  Things have changed a little since then.

The eligible age for social security was set around 65 years of age because that’s about when men started to die shortly after they retired.  Their lives and sense of self were so tied up in their jobs and they basically had nothing to do when they retired so they had nothing to live for and literally died.

You don’t need $2 million to live out your life on.  Find something you’re passionate about and generate some money from it.  Create an asset that generates money for you.   Simplify your life so you don’t need so much.

Do what you’re passionate about until you die.  You’ll die happy.

Financial habits

Is how you’re spending your money and possibly generating debt sabotaging your freedom?  Every dollar of debt you accumulate robs you of the ability to do something great in the future.  Are you selling out your future freedom for a nick-nack or a little fun today?

I unwittingly made that choice for years racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt.  Just when I wondered how the hell I would ever pay it off, I got a big bonus at my job that wiped it out.  Sure it was nice to suddenly have no debt but I didn’t learn anything in the process and proceeded to rack up more debt.  And I think back at all the awesome things I could have done with that money and kick myself – hard.  The stuff I accumulated that created the debt was hardly worth it.

After digging myself out again and doing something I always considered unthinkable, especially for me, like declaring bankruptcy, I’ve finally learned my lessons.  I’ll never have another credit card again.  I’ll never have reserve lines of credit to tap into “just in case.”  Having no safety net made of debt used to freak me out.  Now I know it’s the best thing for me.  I’ve accepted it and am creating a life of abundance for myself and my family.

I have to create my own safety net of savings and I’ve had to make some hard choices in how I spend my money in order to do that.  It’s a process I’m working on, learning and growing from.

I had to hit rock bottom, after repeating the debt cycle a few times before I finally realized all the little,daily habits that got me in trouble.  I’ve become much more mindful of those little habits so I can change them and change my future.

Don’t rob yourself of your future.  You deserve that freedom.

Find and live your passion

What do you have to live for today and for the rest of your life?  Your job?  Or things you’re truly passionate about?

I personally think that each one of us was placed on this earth to help others (people, animals, the planet, you choose) with the unique passions and talents we were born with.  It’s up to us to find out what those passions and talents are and start expressing them to the world.  The world is waiting for you.  That’s what I’m doing here on this blog and with the coaching and products I’m offering.

Most of us have lots of old programming that tells us to stifle our true selves in order to fit in.  It may be difficult to get out there and discover what our passions and talents are.  Those passions and talents may be something that has nothing to do with what we went to school for or what our jobs and careers have been about.  Get creative and experiment.  You’ll never know what lights your fire until you try.

For example, I’m now a writer.  I never thought I could write.  When I started writing my blog, I still didn’t consider myself a writer.  I was just putting information out there that might hopefully help other people (my passion).  And none of this had anything to do with being an accountant or a finance executive.

Think about how you want to spend the rest of your life.  Do you want to stay tied to a job that offers no real security now or in the future?  Or do you want to take your future into your own hands and be happy and free?

How do you define freedom?

How are you living it every day?

by Paige Burkes

we are powerful beyond measure

you are beautiful: whether you choose to believe it or not, it is your choice. if you think that you’re ugly, you will feel ugly, when the truth is, you’re not. don’t let anyone tell your otherwise.

Healing Emotional Wounds

Are you Wounded?

Have you ever tried to put some water on a fresh wound? If you have tired then you must have felt some pain. Water, which can never harm you if you were not injured has just made you feel some pain when it touched your wound.

When we develop a wound we tend to become over sensitive to factors that didn’t use to bother us before.

The same goes for emotional wounds: What if you have some emotional wounds that are making you over-sensitive to factors that other people don’t even notice?

All of these small things that are bothering you may be harmless on their own but they hurt you because they touch your wounds just like the water did.

Emotional Wounds and Emotional Pain

Why do you think you felt that bad when someone didn’t call you?
Is it because that person is bad?
And why didn’t your friend feel bad even if no one called him too?

It’s because he is not wounded. Your wound in this case may be the need for social approval. You may have been wounded before by people who didn’t approve you and so whenever someone ignores you again it hurts, not because it should hurt, but because it touched your wound and reminded you of the past rejection.

How many times do you find a girl asking her friends for reassurance about her looks just afterbreaking up?

Why did she experience pain? Did she love him that much? No, it’s just that she was wounded before. When she was young people always used to make fun of her because she was too slim and now whenever someone rejects her she feels bad, not because of the rejection, but because this rejection touched her old wound.

Why do you think a guy may feel broken and devastated when he gets a rejection letter? Is it because he really wanted the job that much? Not really.

If he wanted it that much he would have felt bad about the rejection but he wouldn’t have felt broken. It’s just that this rejection touched an old wound.

When that guy was a child he his parents rarely used to encourage him and as a result he grew uplacking self-confidence in his abilities.

Whenever he gets a rejection letter he feels bad not because of being worried about his future but because of his old wound that hasn’t yet healed.

Those Wounds Are Making You Vulnerable

Those wounds are making you vulnerable! Things that others usually don’t pay attention to may prevent you from sleeping just because you have some wounds that haven’t healed.

The more wounds you have the more you’ll find that small things bother you and you will eventually become over-sensitive to every critical comment even if the other person didn’t really mean to offend you.

The more wounds you have the less happy you will feel because every now and then something will touch your wound and make you feel bad.

Just like the water that touched your wounded hand in the example above. Some people think that they can heal their wounds by forgetting about them or by keeping themselves busy, however, this strategy always works against them.

How to Heal These Wounds?

Before you can heal any of these wounds you should first identify their location, or in other words, know the reason behind that wound. Don’t be passive but seek your answers and trace your wounds to their origin.

If critical comments bother you then don’t just stay like that. Search the web, read more, think and analyze until you know the root cause and when you finally know the cause healing the wound itself will become much simpler.

Since you are here you can discover the root cause of all of your emotional wounds through the articles on this site. Remember, if you tried to escape or forget about these wounds they aren’t going to leave you alone but they will remind you of their existence with each rejection, critical comment or whenever you get dumped or ignored. Don’t leave your wounds like that, heal them.

2knowmyself is not a simple article website nor it’s a place where you will find shallow fixes, but it’s a place where you will find effective techniques that are backed by psychology and that are presented in obvious and understandable format. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.The book How to make someone fall in love with youwas released by 2knowmyself.com; the book will dramatically increase your chance of letting someone fall in love with you.

what make you a champion ?

Stories about Stories and Stuff, Stuff, Stuff

Don’t know about you, but my life (and life’s work? Work?) is all about stories: listening, telling, writing. I grew up in an extended family of storytellers. Stories, true life and otherwise, could erupt at any time. Often during family gatherings on Sunday afternoons, and always at bedtime tuck-in with one or the other parent.

Those stories encouraged me to become a person interested in almost everything at one time or another, from archaeology and botany to x-rays and zoology. The natural, physical world and a lot in the invisible realms. World literature, the human condition—heart, mind, and soul—all of it. My curiosity knows no limits. Like my family, I’ve been a collector of books, music, hand-made objects, and beautiful things I’ve found in nature: smooth stones, sticks, feathers. Now that my hair is whiter and my glasses thicker, I’ve amassed an amazing amount of stuff. And of course, I would end up marrying a man with the same interests and similar collections. Put them together, and what you’ve got is stuff, a lot of stuff.

All those childhood stories gave me permission to become a generalist, not a specialist. A fox, not a hedgehog. That’s just who I am and what I came here to do. I’d have to agree heartily with E. M. Forster who wrote: “My defence at any Last Judgement would be that I was trying to connect up and use all the fragments I was born with.” So, on good days, I call myself a Renaissance woman. Other days, well, I’m scattered, that’s what I am, especially now that I’m working from home instead of from my downtown office and am sorting through dozens of boxes of books and papers.

what about Living in the Moment : The Art of Now

We live in the age of distraction. Yet one of life’s sharpest paradoxes is that your brightest future hinges on your ability to pay attention to the present.

 

A friend was walking in the desert when he found the telephone to God. The setting was Burning Man, an electronic arts and music festival for which 50,000 people descend on Black Rock City, Nevada, for eight days of “radical self-expression”—dancing, socializing, meditating, and debauchery.

 

A phone booth in the middle of the desert with a sign that said “Talk to God” was a surreal sight even at Burning Man. The idea was that you picked up the phone, and God—or someone claiming to be God—would be at the other end to ease your pain.

So when God came on the line asking how he could help, my friend was ready. “How can I live more in the moment?” he asked. Too often, he felt, the beautiful moments of his life were drowned out by a cacophony of self-consciousness and anxiety. What could he do to hush the buzzing of his mind?

“Breathe,” replied a soothing male voice.

My friend flinched at the tired new-age mantra, then reminded himself to keep an open mind. When God talks, you listen.

“Whenever you feel anxious about your future or your past, just breathe,” continued God. “Try it with me a few times right now. Breathe in… breathe out.” And despite himself, my friend began to relax.

You Are Not Your Thoughts

Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what’s past. “We’re living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence,” says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We’re always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

When we’re at work, we fantasize about being on vacation; on vacation, we worry about the work piling up on our desks. We dwell on intrusivememories of the past or fret about what may or may not happen in the future. We don’t appreciate the living present because our “monkey minds,” as Buddhists call them, vault from thought to thought like monkeys swinging from tree to tree.

Most of us don’t undertake our thoughts in awareness. Rather, our thoughts control us. “Ordinary thoughts course through our mind like a deafening waterfall,” writes Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biomedical scientist who introduced meditation into mainstream medicine. In order to feel more in control of our minds and our lives, to find the sense of balance that eludes us, we need to step out of this current, to pause, and, as Kabat-Zinn puts it, to “rest in stillness—to stop doing and focus on just being.”

We need to live more in the moment. Living in the moment—also called mindfulness—is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize that you are not your thoughts; you become an observer of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them. Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away. Instead of letting your life go by without living it, you awaken to experience.

Cultivating a nonjudgmental awareness of the present bestows a host of benefits. Mindfulness reduces stress, boosts immune functioning, reduceschronic pain, lowers blood pressure, and helps patients cope with cancer. By alleviating stress, spending a few minutes a day actively focusing on living in the moment reduces the risk of heart disease. Mindfulness may even slow the progression of HIV.

Mindful people are happier, more exuberant, more empathetic, and more secure. They have higher self-esteem and are more accepting of their own weaknesses. Anchoring awareness in the here and now reduces the kinds of impulsivity and reactivity that underlie depression, binge eating, and attention problems. Mindful people can hear negative feedback without feeling threatened. They fight less with their romantic partners and are more accommodating and less defensive. As a result, mindful couples have more satisfying relationships.

Mindfulness is at the root of Buddhism, Taoism, and many Native-American traditions, not to mention yoga. It’s why Thoreau went to Walden Pond; it’s what Emerson and Whitman wrote about in their essays and poems.

“Everyone agrees it’s important to live in the moment, but the problem is how,” says Ellen Langer, a psychologist at Harvard and author ofMindfulness. “When people are not in the moment, they’re not there to know that they’re not there.” Overriding the distraction reflex and awakening to the present takes intentionality and practice.

Living in the moment involves a profound paradox: You can’t pursue it for its benefits. That’s because the expectation of reward launches a future-oriented mindset, which subverts the entire process. Instead, you just have to trust that the rewards will come. There are many paths to mindfulness—and at the core of each is a paradox. Ironically, letting go of what you want is the only way to get it. Here are a few tricks to help you along.

1: To improve your performance, stop thinking about it (unselfconsciousness).

I’ve never felt comfortable on a dance floor. My movements feel awkward. I feel like people are judging me. I never know what to do with my arms. I want to let go, but I can’t, because I know I look ridiculous.

“Loosen up, no one’s watching you,” people always say. “Everyone’s too busy worrying about themselves.” So how come they always make fun of my dancing the next day?

Specifically What is the Secret of Life?

The secret of life is genuine unconditional self-love, with no pride included. It’s actually a fairly easy thing to state yet difficult thing to accomplish, however contentment and well-being is completely valued the effort. Once you attain this particular condition of genuine unconditional love, it seems like as though a vivid bright light shines out from within you for the world to see. You’d just like a magnet which every person desires to get near you. Only bear in mind this can be all with out pride getting involved.

Whenever pride enter it could ruin the full process, we all trapped inside a world that is filled with self judgments and others and most of us don’t want that. Pride is much like a little demon within us. As an example a person envy other then your pride is operating, accusing other people for the situation, judging people this only a sample that your pride is operating.

A condition of genuine unconditional self-love , with out pride indicates you are consistent, even state of happiness. Not a lot of not too little. If you value oneself you are aware how great you truly are and kind comments can enhance that for you.

Real love really exist with out judgment, such as completely liable on your decisions and enable others to be responsible for them selves. It will take lots of effort from you to create significant in your life. Living your life with just one previous ways can do absolutely nothing but replicate exactly the same old effects. It will take extreme caution, self-control and determination in making significant , great change in your life. Believe in, persistence, and believe the you are capable is the part of the procedure on developing self-esteem.

Every thing you will actually want on this life is already inside you. All you’ve got to do is to choose to find this . The challenge is to find enough self-love to decide that you are worthy of putting all the work into positive change in your life.