A Counseling Blog: Helping You Help Yourself 

November 2009 Counseling Blog 

November 29, 2009 8:13am Counseling Blog

Imagination: Swami Beyondananda for Some Good Laughs!

His bio reads: Steve Bhaerman is an internationally known author, humorist, and workshop leader. For the past 18 years, he has written and performed as Swami Beyondananda, the “Cosmic Comic.” Swami’s comedy has been called “irreverently uplifting” and has been described both as “comedy disguised as wisdom” and “wisdom disguised as comedy".

As the Swami, Steve is the author of four books, Driving Your Own Karma, When You See a Sacred Cow, Milk It For All It’s Worth, Duck Soup for the Soul, and his latest, Swami for Precedent: A 7-Step Plan to Heal the Body Politic and Cure Electile Dysfunction.

I am writing about Steve because I will get the chance to go see him perform next month and am very much looking forward to it. How nice to get an opportunity to have some good laughs in a manner that I love, combining laughter with spirituality and just plain having fun with any topic. 

It is so important for all of us to remember to have fun and laugh, to go out of our way to experience this form of healing. Laughter helps to destress the body and mind leaving your muscles relaxed for up to an hour afterwards.

It boosts your immune system, helping to rid the body of stress hormones. It releases endorphins for a better sense of well being and temporarily relieves pain. It even improves blood vessel function and increases blood flow to the heart.

And of course when you are laughing, you stop thinking, so it gives you a break from your mind. When you are listening and or watching something funny it helps you to stay focused in the moment. 

Just looking at his website and the unique and refreshingly humorous approach to everything, I am already laughing. I encourage you all to have a look at his website: www.wakeuplaughing.com. It should put a smile on your face. 

Then go find other sources for laughter and make it part of your daily ritual. Find something, anything to make you laugh for at least a few minutes every day. When you think about and make choices on how you want to exercise, what healthy foods to eat, and now laughter...what will make you laugh today!

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November 26, 2009 12:15pm Counseling Blog

Appreciation: Happy Thanksgiving to Me and You!

I really do like bucking the trend. Today is the day where we are supposed to focus on giving thanks for so many blessings in our lives. But have you ever noticed how we are all reminded to be thankful and appreciate what we have. That's all very nice and all, but then how are people supposed to feel when they don't have those things anymore?

If you have recently lost your home, job, financial support, a loved one, etc., it is particularly difficult to be grateful and appreciative. Yes, we can still acknowledge what is good in our lives, but lets think differently about where we place our focus. Lets use today to look inside ourselves.

When you teach yourself to be grateful for yourself, the external gratitude falls into place. If you do not love and appreciate yourself all the other stuff does not matter. You can be grateful until you are blue in the face, but unless you have a loving place inside of you to come home to, that gratitude can easily fade away.

So many people are without that ability to see the delicious goodness in themselves. There is so much self hatred and even more self judgment. Yet life gives us a continuous parade of experiences to give us opportunities to break these habits, because that is all they really are. 

Somebody has taught you somewhere down the line what to think of yourself. Use today to question the validity of what you think is true. Unless you were taught to fully love and appreciate yourself, then what you were told, what you learned about yourself IS NOT TRUE!

You have incredible value that you have never learned about or have been taught to cover up with these untruths. Regardless of your age it is never too late to rip off these horrible beliefs about yourself. There is such freedom and joy in changing your internal beliefs. But you have to make that choice, no-one can do it for you.

Today, on Thanksgiving day, lets put our heads together and be thankful for the endless opportunities to learn and grow. Every experience that you have can teach you something about yourself. There are good things in there, but if you don't know how to look for them yet, the help is here to teach you how.

I am grateful for my own life experiences that have led me to be able to help you. I am grateful for every ounce of pain that I went through because my path has led me to right here. I am grateful that I have enough love and confidence in myself to honor my uniqueness and bare my soul if I think it can help even just one person.

I am grateful that I have been able to turn my life around and I want to teach anyone who wants to know how to do this in their own lives. I am grateful for you and your continued support in what I do.

Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving!

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November 23, 2009 5:09pm Counseling Blog

Quotation: When an Important Message is Confirmed

Given my earlier postings this month about my endless list of things to do, I thought that my Sunday astrological forecast from my favorite site cainer.com was too much fun not to share:

"You have a long list of things to organize, sort out and be responsible for. You will make pleasing progress, provided you follow what you feel truly inclined to do rather than paying more attention to some notion about what you 'ought' to be doing. 'Ought to?' Ought to according to whom? A sense of inspiration is a fine thing. Not so, a sense of guilt or obligation. Duty done in a spirit of willing enthusiasm is always constructive. But if it is done for the wrong reason, how can it ever have the right result? Be spontaneous, relaxed and willing to 'play' with all that now seems so serious. You've far less reason to worry than you think."

This flows together so nicely with the messages I keep giving about how important it is to stop creating stress for ourselves. But we can only do that if we first becomes of aware of how this happens and is being played out in our own lives. 

We keep being told and the idea keeps being reinforced that the source of our stress is out there somewhere. But the only thing that that accomplishes is to keep us victimized. Stress is an internal result of an outward perception.

For so many people these days life is crazy and it doesn't appear to be getting any easier or slowing down anytime soon. There are just too many things outside of our control. Feeling stressed is in your control. You can choose to not feel stressed! But you have to learn how to do this.

In a world that promotes and supports the belief in stress, it can feel like you are swimming against a strong current. But as soon as you give up fighting and go with the current you realize that the current ends up taking you to where you were fighting to get to in the first place! It is one of those strange paradoxes.

But it is understandable that by not being stressed and exhausted you can make better choices, you work more efficiently, you make and take the time to rest, and recharge your batteries. You are in a better position to notice and take advantage of obscure opportunities. You have more fun and life becomes more enjoyable even with all its challenges!

This really is about your self value and taking care of yourself. It is about loving yourself enough that you make some radically different choices than the next person. Mr. Cainer is right, when you think about most of your beliefs, they are true according to whom? What nonsense that we still do as we are told to do at our ages, however old you happen to be. 

Time to question all those nonsensical and harmful beliefs! Stressed? No way!  Choose clever, creative, resourceful, dynamic, and any other word that you can think of. Let chaos fall around you while you remain at peace within yourself in this crazy world! It can be done and I challenge you to try it!

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November 20, 2009 2:57pm Counseling Blog

Gratification: And Why Can't I Have "That"?

Sometimes events just don't make any sense until they fully play themselves out. We moved in January and a few months afterwards I realized that I couldn't find my passport. I was sure that I had given my husband the responsibility of putting it in a safe place before the move. Absolutely positive about that one.

Well, we could not find it anywhere, despite turning the house inside out at least three times. No problem, just a small inconvenience to apply for a new one. Okay, maybe more than small, a bit fussy even, but it was still a solution. I just needed to find the various documentation to file with the application.

Well, could you see this one coming? Despite turning the house inside out another three times, we couldn't find the other paperwork supporting that I was who I was. Boy was I even more sure than ever now that my better half did not live up to his duties. And look at the inconvenience and stress this was now causing me!

As I contemplated what I needed to do to replace the now most basic paperwork, I have to admit to just ignoring it for the next few months even with the regular prodding of my husband that I would eventually need to deal with this. I would just agree and not do anything other think about it for all of a minute.

I am usually a master at finding anything. I can generally easily find what is "lost". I consider it a game even. My success rate is typically very, very high. But this one stumped me. But I just knew deep in my gut that this all was somewhere in the house. It was such a strong feeling that it was not lost or stolen and that it really did not need to get replaced. I also knew that I had to let go of my obsession with blaming my husband and for trying to think it through logically.

There is a parallel story happening in the meantime. For almost a decade I used to have long beautiful nails. You know the ones where other women look at them, usually with narrowed eyes, asking "your nails are beautiful...are they yours?" To which the answer generally was: "of course they are mine, I paid for them"!

After a while of paying for them, I decided that I could do them myself, especially since I was traveling a lot at that time. So I bought all the materials I needed. After a few times I actually got quite good at it, even if it did take me 3 hours. I loved the results and the ability to have them done regardless of where I was!

Eventually I had to stop, since I was doing so many physically active things that stressed the nails that they became a problem, even to the point of damaging the natural nail. The nail kit got tucked away into a dark corner many years ago. 

Fast forward not to the present moment, but shortly after our move in January. All that packing and getting rid of years of accumulated stuff had done a number on my natural nails. They were just so short and not very attractive. I really missed having my long, lovely nails! But I would not risk hurting myself again. Plus I just didn't have a spare 3 hours to spend on them every 3 weeks.

Besides, my nails would grow long in the warmth and sunshine we had moved to...right? Wrong! As months went by, if anything, my nails were getting nicked and scratched and I had to keep filing them so short it was figuratively painful to see. Wanting to do my nails again started to become a strong itch. 

But I kept telling myself, Ewa, do you remember the problems you had before? Remember having your nails catching and get ripped back? The gel lifting from the nails and popping off? The nail bed itself separating from the skin with the constant moisture? If you do your nails again that is what you will end up with.

Fast forward again to a week ago. My nails were progressively getting even shorter, which at this point was becoming literally painful because even though they were so short that there was no white at the tips, I was still getting nicks and gouges that I could only file down past the growing nail bed, which hurt like heck. But if I didn't file them they would catch on things and hurt like heck.

I finally reached the end of my rope. Problems with fake nails be damned! I couldn't live with nails shorter than my nail beds! Between the pain and seeing other girlfriends with their long beautiful nails it was just too much. I was going to throw caution to the wind and do my nails again. I didn't even know if my nail products would still even be usable they were so old.

Well, there is a reason why I have been going on and on about a seemingly unimportant, even frivolous aspect of my life. Because this is really a lesson about when you really focus on what you want, without fear, doubts, or judgment, you are given opportunities to get what you want, usually in an unexpected form. But only if you do not judge the direction in which you are being guided.

You see, I had a lot of judgments and fears about doing my nails again, including it appearing vain. I should feel valued and beautiful without them, they would be a health risk, I will have problems again, etc. All fear based assumptions that stopped me from having what I actually loved....long nails and the ultra feminine look that comes with them.

It was as if the universe gave up guiding (because of my judgments I wouldn't do it and stopped listening) and  conspired to push, push harder, really strongly push me, and then get to a point where it finally had to create pain for me to push me into choosing to do my nails again. So are you (still) thinking "so what, what are you telling us this for...?"

I am telling you this story because when I finally took out the materials to do my nails, lo and behold, at the very bottom of the pretty deep blue bag with white flowers scattered on it, was not only my passport, but all the missing supporting documents. I was dumbfounded!

It all came flooding back. We had already packed up the important papers deeply into the moving truck. I didn't want to carry everything on me as we traveled so I had sought out and thought of a brilliant hiding spot, where no-one would ever find them. And I mean no-one, obviously not even me! It was brilliant! Mmm hmm, be careful what you wish for!

Many lessons learned here. Had I done what I really wanted to do, my nails that is, I would have found my passport right around the time I had first started to look for it. Instead I allowed myself to believe in all the fears from my past about doing my nails. In fact, I had decided that I would have the same experience as before.

Do you realize how often you make a choice because your subconscious mind has decided what your experience will be in advance? We define our current moment based on our past experiences far more than we realize, usually to our detriment.

I thought about the many fears and judgments as I sat and did my nails for the first time in about 5 years. I openly questioned each fear and assumption that my mind had about why I shouldn't do it and addressed every concern with new and realistic information along with different action. That included putting the nails on slightly differently, slowing down and being more careful using my hands, wearing gloves when cleaning etc. I'm okay with that added effort. More awareness really.

So look in your own life to see where you have convinced yourself that you should not do something or that you can't do something and really question the validity of your arguments. If you want something, you can just as easily think of a dozen reasons why you should and can do it as you can think of why not.

Listen to those whispers in your ear and in your heart. Listen, before they turn into a loud voice, a yelling voice, a slap in the head and then the proverbial 2 by 4 to get you to listen! The voices in your head are the ones who are suspect and not the voices of reason like they claim. 

By the way...my nails look great and I couldn't be happier! They took only 2 hours to do with the added bonus of not having to replace my passport! What a gift!

....and of course their mine! 

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November 17, 2009 11:21am Counseling Blog

Capitulation: Letting Go of Yet Another Form of Control

It seems that the recurring theme for me is learning how to better manage the overwhelming feelings of what needs to get done in my life. I have had to let go of the stress and open up to creative solution finding. This means I had to let go of some old beliefs, no matter how great I thought they were.

Case in point is my monthly Ezine. Some months I just don't seem to be able to find the time to write it. I myself made this a monthly goal and it seemed a great idea when I did. Easy even. Until life kept getting in the way that is!

I am sure that there are very many people who know what I am talking about. We all have the best laid plans and intentions. We start out all gung ho and then slowly the obstacles start to appear along the road we have chosen. 

These obstacles take on the form of lack of time, money, energy, or focus, stress, too much to do, too many pressures, etc. Instead of fighting a losing battle and falling further and further behind, sometimes we just need to change our strategy.

With my monthly Ezine I came to the realization that there just will be some months where I will not publish it. This suddenly stops the daily obsession over finding time to do it. Instead, it falls back into a balance of being something that is supposed to be enjoyable for me, a creative process, a process of sharing.

If I hadn't changed my priorities and beliefs about how the Ezine should take shape, then I would have started to become resentful of the time it took to create it. Each one of us has to be very careful when it comes to our perspective on what we think we need to do. 

We have to remember that life is supposed to be enjoyable, that even the day to day mundane things that we do can still contribute to making us feel good. It depends on how you look at things. You have to find your own creative ways to take the pressure off of yourself. No one else is putting that pressure on you.

It is your beliefs that create the pressure, so examine them and you will be surprised at the solutions that you can come up with. I will still get a wonderful Ezine out and I will enjoy the process, whether it takes me one two or three months. I have to make the choice to stop creating undue stress for myself.

Look in your own life to see where you have created a standard that can be altered, even the ones that you previously believed could not be changed. What meaning does it have for you and what judgment do you have on yourself if you do not meet that standard or goal? Change the judgment and meaning first to release the pressure that you have been putting on yourself.

Then make a different choice, changing how you are doing something, the time frame, the expectation, the form that you had been expecting...allow your creative side to help find new solutions for you. 

All my Ezines used to have the date on them and seeing the dates or gaps in the dates acted as a reminder of my not meeting the monthly goal. I recently removed the dates because I realized that they had a relevance and meaning that just was not important. However many Ezines I can create in a year is how many I will create.  

Now it's your turn to look at the things that are creating pressure for you and then finding ways to change the meaning and importance of them. We are all doing the best that we can given the tools that we have to work with and with the challenges that each of us have. Make life easier on yourself.

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November 14, 2009 11:58am Counseling Blog

Justification: How Past Pain and Hurt Appear to be Real

If a person experiences pain from their past, how can that happen when the event that caused the pain is long gone? It just does not add up when you think about it logically. It's the equivalent of breaking a bone and years or decades later saying that you still feel the same pain now as you did when it was broken!

It is impossible to have the same pain now as when an event occurred. So why do so many people still feel so deeply emotionally hurt about their pasts? What happens in a persons brain where there is this illogical connection? To that person the pain is very, very real. These words could even likely offend them.

A person who feels deep pain from their past is convinced without a doubt that their pain is real. It is very real to them. Some would fight to their death to defend that belief. But realistically, the event that caused the pain is long gone in most situations. But the pain mysteriously remains.

To look at it logically, the brain is very much like a computer. The information that it was fed (that a person experienced) is imprinted in the pathways of the brain, especially traumatic events. Every time a person refers to that memory, all the emotions that occurred at that time are still there with it.  

The subconscious mind does not distinguish between the past and the present moment. It only provides you with the information or "data files" that are currently there. It pulls up the memory for you and plops it into your conscious mind. It does not know that the memory is not really happening in the moment.

This is why people can feel the same way they did about an event, whether it was 1 minute ago or 50 years ago! The brain needs to be fed new data and given a new file to understand that the past is the past and is no longer relevant in the current moment. But that is just the start because it is a little more complicated than that.

If a person is used to feeling pain from the past, they have not thought to question whether or not the hurt is valid anymore. It's just a part of them that they assume is normal to feel. No one has taught them otherwise. Many people do not even know that they have an option to not feel hurt. To contemplate not feeling this can actually bring up much fear, because then who are they without that pain?

Questioning pain from the past can bring up existential angst. If the pain isn't real, then all the beliefs that supported the pain and feeling hurt are now threatened to be exposed as invalid. That can be terrifying. In fact that fear can cause a person to hang on even more tightly to their beliefs than before.

Those first few steps can be very precarious. Is a person really ready to examine and redefine life as they understand it? There is a huge unknown looming in front of them. What if that unknown has the potential to bring even more hurt than what they have already experienced? That is enough to stop some people from ever changing. Sheer terror and fear of more pain, whether it is there or not.

Yet, if a person takes even the smallest step towards examining the incredible capacity of the mind and to clearly understand how it works, then that power can be harnessed not to remind them of the hurt form their past, but to experience life radically differently, without any pain at all. Ever. 

From one extreme to the other. It's your choice.

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November 11, 2009 10:24pm Counseling Blog

Foundation: Rediscovering My Own Balance in Life

It seems like instead of being able to cross things off my endless to do list, that more and more things get added to it instead. I have gone through various stages of trying to deal with this giant list and the inevitable pressures that come with it. All the various strategies that I have tried haven't seemed to work very well!

I have tried putting more time into work and less into play; I've tried prioritizing,  reprioritizing, unprioritizing(!), delegating, crossing things off, working harder, faster, stronger.....and my list still grows ever longer. I have not tried running away, but it is oh so very tempting to contemplate it!

Finally, after all these unsuccessful strategies, I am trying giving up. Not in a defeatist way, but the giving up that comes with understanding that I can't control everything and make it work the way I think it should. I need balance in my life. I need to be able to play, to take time off and just do nothing once in a while, to spend time with the people that are important to me, to spend down time with me.

Some things (many things) will just have to wait and get pushed down the list. Understanding that the list will always be there and that there will always be many things on it helps. Thinking that it will ever get fully completed is just not realistic.

Sometimes my blog will  have to wait, the house will not get cleaned as often, meals will be simpler, time spent doing various things will be shorter...I will do what I need to do to maintain balance. What is most important is that I take care of myself. If I am not happy, my list will torture me. I am not okay with that.

Nothing is so important that I choose to be anything other than balanced and happy. It really is a choice and sometimes I have to remind myself to choose it over and over. I have become even more vocal about what I need and want, I say no more often, I ask for help even when I don't think I need it. And it is all okay. 

Living with even the smallest amount of stress is not acceptable to me. There is no need for it. Think of a warrior, with his body in a state of relaxed preparedness. That is what I want to achieve. If I feel stress in my body I work hard to first redefine it in my mind while using deep relaxed breathing to settle my body.

Stress robs me of the energy I need. Stress just creates more stress, as if it needs it to feed on. Being relaxed and ready keeps me fluid and far more able to adapt to the inevitable challenges. Like writing this blog late at night instead of adding it to the to do list in the morning!

The bottom line is that I will use my intuition more and more to guide me to make the choices that will lead me to an ever deeper peace of mind. My personal challenge of my magically never ending to do list has become another incredible opportunity to learn and grow. I am grateful for it!

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November 8, 2009 8:36pm Counseling Blog

Imagination: A Mind Without Fear....

One day an old German Shepherd starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a panther heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.

The old dog thinks 'Oh, oh! I'm in deep trouble now!' Noticing some bones on the ground, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the panther is about to leap the old dog exclaims loudly, 'Boy that was one delicious panther! I wonder if there are any more around here?'
 
Hearing this the young panther halts his attack mid-strike; a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. 'Whew!' says the panther, 'That was close! That old German Shepherd nearly had me!'

Meanwhile, a squirrel who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the panther. So, off he goes, but the old German Shepherd sees him heading after the panther with great speed and figures that something must be up. 

The squirrel soon catches up with the panther, spills the beans and strikes a deal with the panther. The young panther is furious at being made a fool of and says, 'Hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!

Now, the old German Shepherd sees the panther coming with the squirrel on his back and thinks 'What am I going to do now?', but instead of running the dog sits down with his back to his attackers pretending he hasn't seen them yet and just when they get close enough to hear, the old German Shepherd says... 'Where's that squirrel? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another panther!

My moral of the story: Don't let fear let you get eaten alive! If you let it, creativity will always allow you to find a solution, no matter how odd, bizarre or threatening your challenge appears to be! 

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November 5, 2009 6:48pm Counseling Blog

Cinematization: "My Kid Could Paint That"

In this film, there was a big nugget of gold deeply buried towards the end:

"Henri Cartier-Bresson, the photographer used to say that photographing people was appalling, that it was some sort of violation of them, it was even barbaric he said. Because you were essentially stealing something from them, you were imposing something on them. He sensed the inherent unfairness of this transaction.

All writers, all storytellers are imposing their own narrative on something. I mean all art is in some ways a lie. It looks like a picture of something, but it isn’t that thing, it is a representation of that thing. Your documentary is on some level going to be a lie. Its your construction of things. I’ll say that right now if you like, its true.

I mean your documentary is itself going to be a lie. It’s a construction of things. its how you wish to represent the truth and how you decided to tell a particular story. By that I don’t mean that certain things don’t happen, of course they do, its not that there is no such thing as truth. But we come to like and trust a certain story. Not necessarily because it is the most absolutely truthful, but because its the thing that we tell ourselves that makes sense of the world, at least at this moment."

When I heard this I immediately loved the message because it applies to all of us in our daily lives. We all tell stories based on how we wish to represent the truth to try to make sense of the world based on how we currently understand it. Without realizing it, in the innocence of trying to paint this picture that make sense to us, we are unaware that we lie.

We lie in the sense that we give our personal representation of our experience and see it as THE truth, even if it includes how we perceive others. We innocently but wrongly believe that our perceptions are true for everyone else as well and frequently get upset when this is questioned or challenged. 

We all do the best that we can, which changes sometimes even from moment to moment, depending on the different factors that are involved. We all need to learn that what and how we think and believe does not apply to anyone else but ourselves, not even to children. Even they are having their own individual unique experience of life, different than yours.

It is only by asking each other what that experience is, by not making assumptions about other people that we can understand the truth for others, but more importantly for ourselves. When we stop focusing on others, we are put in a position where we have to focus on ourselves....there is nowhere else to hide.

In this process, in this one and only way, can we work at removing fear out of our lives, removing the judgment that we have on ourselves, that limits us from the real truth, the freedom of experiencing life to its fullness. Deconstruct yourself and allow yourself to have a different experience.

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November 3, 2009 10:07am Counseling Blog

Liberation: A New Language of Communication

So many relationships are in crisis. Yet most people wait until it is too late or almost too late to try to solve their problems. They keep thinking that somehow, by some miracle, that things will just change. They keep performing the same behaviors, saying the same things, experiencing the same hurts over and over. 

A relationship is a living entity; it will always be moving in one direction or another. It is impossible to have a stagnant relationship since it must grow, so it will grow stronger or it grows weaker. What makes it grow weaker is fear, misunderstanding, and blame. What makes it grow stronger is self awareness and removal of fear and judgment. 

What we don't understand we fear; what we fear we judge. This in turn creates more misunderstanding. The bottom line is that if you are having issues in any type of relationship, it is because you are not really understanding the other person. You are assuming that you do, but if there is any problem: you don't.

It is very simple, cut and dry. These misunderstandings and assumptions that I regularly refer to contribute to there even being a problem. There are no problems if you correctly understand a situation. If you think that it is the other person that is the problem, that just means that you have made a mistaken assumption.

If you perceive a problem you have already entered into a mild form of fight or flight. From that point, your body and mind have geared up into protective mode. You cannot see things clearly from this space unless you put extreme effort into breaking through the hormones flooding your body. The adrenaline and other stress hormones create a strong filter on your capacity to understand. These hormones create tunnel vision, tunnel hearing, tunnel understanding. 

I can imagine some people already disagreeing with my words, standing ready with piles of "evidence" to the contrary, "proving" the problems they have in their various relationships. But that "evidence' is only from the tunnel. You are so sure about being right about your experience that you don't even know that you live in this tunnel. How would you know that there is more than what you think you know and what you have been taught to perceive if you have never experienced it?

What a catch-22! The mind is so strong and so powerful, that it is such a shame that it is allowed to rule your world. It is actually an amazing tool when you control it and it stops controlling you. A simple test for which is which is this:

Answer the following questions:

1. Do I get easily angry (either letting it out or shoving it down)?

2. Are other people to blame for how I feel?

3. Am I unhappy?

4. If only other people changed then would I feel better?

5. Do other people irritate me?

6. Do I ever think that other people are wrong and I am right?

A yes to any one of these questions is a red flag that your mind is in control of you. Because when you are in control of your mind, you do not experience any of the above. Now these are random questions that I have made up, but I think that you get the point. Any emotional reaction is your mind controlling you.

Going back to the discussion on relationships, you have far more choices than you could ever imagine. Can you imagine learning to speak a foreign language at this point in your life? Does that feel like a daunting task to you? But what if it ultimately gave you unlimited happiness? What if it ultimately gave you warm and loving relationships? What if it ultimately made life easy for you? Would you bother to learn it then?

Then make that choice. Learn a new language of communication. Get out of the rut of not doing it because you can't imagine yourself speaking it or because you really don't know if it really exists. Life can be vastly different by being willing to learn something entirely different than what you know now. Let your quest for knowledge wake up. You real self is waiting for you.

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October 2009 Counseling Blog 

October 31, 2009 4:45pm Counseling Blog

Interpretation: Happy Halloween From a Different Perspective!

In Halloween legend and understanding, costumes were worn to ward off evil spirits in an attempt to protect oneself from perceived harm. In a way, Halloween is played out every day in the masks that we put on in different environments, whether we are at home, at work, in public, etc. 

Unbeknownst to most people, when a person goes into emotional reaction, that reaction acts to push away what they fear might hurt them. It is not much different than the origin of physically putting on a costume.

If I put on my angry costume, it will make you defensive so that you go away, so that you don't see my own fear, misunderstanding, and judgment. If I put on my "you hurt me" costume, then it will likely make you feel guilty and resentful for being blamed, again effectively pushing you away from me.

If I put on my sad costume, I can get you to empathize with my pain, acting like a band-aid instead of effectively looking for the source of the pain and looking for a solution together. If I put on my offended costume, I try to make you take on responsibility for how I feel, instead of looking within myself to see what I am misinterpreting as being unsafe.

If I put on my hatred costume I must really be warding off evil! But is is only the hurts of my own past that I think I still feel the need to chase off. If I put on the costume of apathy then I have successfully chased myself away.

Let this Halloween be the one where we all do what we can to learn that we really are emotionally safe, that we really don't need to wear these masks anymore. It is fear that is behind all these negative emotions and it causes us to hide from the world in case we might get hurt. But it is the fear itself that ends up hurting us by guiding us to believe in ghosts that aren't really there.

Fear leads you to misinterpret and misunderstand what is happening in your own mind and in the mind of others. Fear does not protect you...it is the source of your pain. Fear is the only "evil spirit" that you ever really need to come face to face with. The beautiful part is that in doing so, you learn that fear is not real. 

You stop needing masks and you stop being afraid. You stop thinking that there is something out there that you need to protect yourself against emotionally. You learn to first and foremost feel safe within yourself and then you can project that safety outwards. This is your personal power. Use it to eventually take your masks off and make your personal spooky life a thing of the past!

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October 28, 2009 10:51am Counseling Blog

Imagination: How Do You See Your Life Experiences?

In thinking about what I wanted to write about today, I thought about my own journey to where I am now. About all the fears, hurt, and pain that I had to overcome in my own life. At times it has been a long and hard battle. Many times it had felt like "why bother". Then I think to where I am now.

If only there was a way to allow people to have a glimpse of this journey. To have a preview into the movie of intensely rewarding personal growth, which can be their own life. And I am nowhere near the end of my own growth. But the payoff to reach even just this point is quite frankly, amazing. 

I have many times likened life to be like a video game, where as soon as we master one level of the game, that particular "reality", or how we see things just melts away and a new one almost magically appears. In this next level, there are many new things that we did not know about, that we explore to find both hidden challenges as well as bonuses, some of which we could not have even imagined.

These levels occur within you, all while life goes on around you. Sometimes, when we don't master the level on which we are playing, we have to go back to the beginning of that level and start all over. Sometimes we get stuck at that level and can' seem to move on, experiencing the same hurt repeatedly.

But if you think about it, that level, when you experience it over and over, is so darn familiar! It is because in this part of the video game, you have stopped exploring and you are repeating the same movements again and again. Of course you get more or less the same results each time. It is only when you try something radically different, something totally unexpected that you finally "figure it out" and are able to move on.

And just like with a video game, this experience we call life is supposed to have a large element of fun. It is about exploration, frustration, discovery, dead-ends, excitement, hitting walls, climbing walls, determination, giving up, getting new ideas, falling down, getting up, and on it goes. 

As you get better at this game called life, the hurts go away. Yes, it is possible for all hurts to completely disappear. What a goal to have...consider it getting the best score possible! Like any video game player knows, the fun of the game is the game itself along with your personal achievements in it. If you can shift your focus off of all your problems and look at life as this bigger picture, it will help you put your life into a better perspective, where there is much more joy and far less pain.

You have this control and if you think about it, to control a video game, you use a joystick...not a painstick!

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October 25, 2009 11:51am Counseling Blog

Reclassification: Who is Considered to be a Sensitive Person?

I think that all people would fit the term "sensitive". Yes, even those people that instantly come to your mind as "no way, not so-and-so". In fact the person (s) that you just thought of is actually quite sensitive, you just don't understand how or in which way, because they experience being sensitive differently than you do.

A person who is insecure or who has a lot of self doubt and reacts easily fits the typical definition of sensitive. "Oh, you are just too sensitive. Stop taking things so personally" is the usual response. That particular kind of sensitive person takes in the same information as everyone else, but gives it a lot of extra meaning.

When I say takes in the same information as everyone else, I mean that we are all sensitive to so much more that what we are aware of in other people. We subconsciously and consciously pick up on cues and clues from miniscule muscular micromovements in facial expressions and body language. We can hear the nuances of a persons tone of voice. Our brains can match up tens of thousands of combinations of all three types of input.

Then add to that the words that people choose to use when they speak and the possible interpretations exponentially rockets off of the scale. No wonder the information that we unknowingly take in can cause a lot of confusion for most people! If you cannot parse out some basic meanings, you will quickly end up being defensive at one point or another.

That person that you thought of originally, the one that couldn't possibly be sensitive, that personality subconsciously covers up their insecurites in a way that pushes other people away by how they react. And they usually do an excellent job of distracting you from their hidden sensitivity, don't they!

So lets look at the other extreme. A person who feels relatively secure about who they are takes in this exact same information, but can see it for what is is. All people express their inner selves, whether they are aware of it or not. What most people are not aware of is how easy it is for a secure person to see and understand this. It can be seen because there is no personal emotional reaction to it. It carries no additional meaning than what it is.

In fact, the more insecure a person, the more signals they throw off. It is as if the more a person tried to hide within themselves, to cover up their fears and insecurites, they more they end up flooding their environment with all these hidden cues and clues. This is the real reason why it is tiring to be around some people. Our brains can go into overload trying to make sense of it...if you do not understand it.

When two people with insecurities are together, they see and pick up on all this information, but incorrectly interpret the signals. They understand only enough to know that something is not quite right for the other person. Their insecurites cause them to instantly assume that the signals they pick up from somebody else is somehow about them. They end up making it all about them.

So when one person gets defensive, all while trying to hide their fears, they unknowingly send off a barrage of extra signals. The other person senses this, but does not understand what they are sensing. We tend to fear that which we do not understand. This wave of signals is interpreted as potentially unsafe. The person feels the need to protect themselves from what feels like an onslaught.

This second person now gets defensive as well and they start to subconsciously send off a slew of hidden, but really not so hidden, signals of their own. The cascade of misunderstandings and misinterpretation not only begins it escalates. If this cycle is not recognized or stopped, it happens over and over and over again. The hidden fears and insecurities get stronger and reinforced in the pathways of the mind.

Everyone can learn how to understand this constant information that we are all receiving about each other. We really are not capable of hiding our fears. In fact, the harder we try, the more they show! We are all incredibly sensitive to one another. The difference is how are you interpreting what your sensitivity is showing you about other people. This is yet another tool that you can develop in your quest for personal growth.

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October 23, 2009 8:08am Counseling Blog

Germination: Using Attraction to Plant the Seeds of Growth

If you think about it on a deeper level, why is it that we like some people and do not like others? Why are we attracted to certain people? Why is that we just feel so safe around some people? Why do people feel the urge to take that next step and have affairs?

The answer lies in feeling innocent again. We want to be around people who do not judge us, who appear to accept us exactly the way we are. When we live our day to day lives, most people, especially family and partners, seem to remind us over and over of how imperfect we are. But not with those that we are attracted to.

When we are attracted to a particular person, it really has nothing to do with that person or who they are; it is the reflection of ourselves as being innocent again that attracts us. It is because we have not embraced that feeling within ourselves that we think we see the source of it in another person. 

It is not in them, it is just a reminder of what we are not seeing in ourselves. If you felt about yourself the way another person "makes you feel", you would not be attracted to them. You would thoroughly enjoy the reflection that you get back, but it would not make a difference in how you feel about yourself. You would simply recognize that you are seeing what you already know about yourself.

If you find yourself attracted to another person, ask yourself, what is it that I am feeling right now? Am I feeling special, wanted, not judged, accepted, desired, smart, worthy, and so on? Take the time and effort to identify what is making you feel good in that moment.

Then take that wonderful feeling and literally place your focus on it within yourself. Breath in and out slowly and deliberately focusing on that feeling. What you are feeling is really who you are. You are feeling the source of your essence. In reality you do not need anyone else to make you feel like that. 

If that feeling is usually only triggered by somebody else, then that is a red flag for you that that is a piece of the puzzle that is missing within yourself. This is a feeling that you want to encourage within yourself at all times, not from that external source. Take your focus off of that person, shift your awareness and bring it to that wonderful feeling inside of yourself.

Take that small little flame and nurture it, encourage it, believe in it, embody it. This is just one of the paths that you can take to find inner happiness. It is one tool of many that will uncover the truth of who you are. Live it, breath it, and love it!

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October 20, 2009 8:08pm Counseling Blog

Cinematization: Defending Your Life

This was a hilarious and delightful movie (1991) that was all about overcoming fears. If you managed to overcome fear in one lifetime then you were then allowed to go to the next far better level. If you did not, then you had to come back to earth and try all over again to live a life that overcame your fears.

Even though this is classified as a fantasy, watching it made me raise my eyebrow in that it actually expressed many beliefs that I have about how incredibly important it is for us to face and overcome our fears. Only by going through this process do we allow ourselves to live our lives freely, with full joy and appreciation.

When a person experiences fear, that fear also blocks ones own innocence. Fear is survival mode, which prevents a full experience. It is the caveman part of the brain which has yet to evolve in humanity as a whole. Currently fear is instead largely perpetuated and made to be more real than the existence of life itself. But that is no way to live.

The two leading characters in this movie were well thought out and acted by Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks. You can clearly see how a person with fear acts very differently than a person who does not live in fear. Their experiences (of a person who has fear vs. one who does not) are at times opposite of one another. Their choices are even that much more different.

Our perceptions are the key to removing fear from our lives. Living in fear is a choice, whether a person is aware of that as a choice or not yet. For those who do choose to step into this unknown realm, life drastically changes for them. We don't need a movie to show this to us, but it sure is a great reminder about what should be a priority in your life.

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October 17, 2009 10:12 am Counseling Blog

Education: We Believe Whatever We Choose to Believe

From "The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind" by Carl Zimmer (in Time Magazine) I just read:

"A team led by cognitive scientist Josef Topál of the Research Institute for Psychology in Hungary recently ran an experiment to study how 10-month-old babies pay attention to people. The scientists put a toy under one of two cups and then let the children choose which cup to pick up. The children, of course, picked the right cup--no surprise since they saw the toy being hidden. Topál and his colleagues repeated the trial several times, always hiding the toy under the same cup, until finally they hid it under the other one. Despite the evidence of their eyes, the kids picked the original cup--the one that had hidden the toy before but did not now.

To investigate why the kids made this counterintuitive mistake, the scientists rigged the cups to wires and then lowered them over the toy. Without the distraction of a human being, the babies were far more likely to pick the right cup. Small children, it seems, are hardwired to pay such close attention to people that they disregard their other observations."

People often wonder why they behave the way they do, why they have certain fears and belief systems. To me this short piece sums up the answer. Even as babies, we are focused on watching our parents behaviors to the exclusion of logic. We learn almost exclusively from them or whomever raises us. It is not just physical imitations that we make, we also psychologically imitate them and that forms the foundation of our subconscious minds.

When you train yourself to raise your self awareness, you become highly cognizant of this factor at work within you. You don't judge your beliefs, you just look at them to see what you would like to change and then take the steps to change it. It is very much like learning a new language, where it takes a long time to master it. But the first few times you try to change, not much seems to happen!

The older you are, the more deeply imbedded your beliefs. That just means that it is a little harder to start to get the wheels in your mind turning in the other direction. There is more inertia to overcome, but regardless of age, once you start the process, it just gets easier and easier. 

When you become conscious enough to choose even a few new beliefs and behaviors, you open the floodgates to truly knowing yourself. Life becomes a process of self development in ways that you never even knew were possible. Changing the meaning that you learned as a child is your key.

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October 15, 2009 6:57pm Counseling Blog

Liberation: It is not Perfection I Seek or Need

Well, I finally sent out my newly formatted Ezine tonight, the one that I have toiled over for weeks! In my determination to finally get it out before dinner, I rushed through the last final steps, sending out a beautiful, artistic, creative, helpful, wonderful (I could go on and on you know) Ezine....with a blaring typo in the second paragraph!

A couple of things to comment on here. Nobody put pressure on me to send it out when I did. I had that little tweak in the back of my mind saying look over it one last time (what is one more time after a 100 times!), but I ignored it. Just as I did the thought to wait until the morning to send it out when I was feeling refreshed.

I had seen the mistake before...and to those unlucky people who don't know what I am referring to I wrote "I hope you to this brand new format". The word "to" was supposed to be "like". I was cutting down my love of words from a far lengthier sentence that was "...introducing you to this

So as I was saying, I had picked up that the error was there yesterday, but got distracted with one of the many other issues that I had to deal with, rather than fix it immediately. I have sent this email to masses of people. When it was first pointed out to me by a friend, it was like a shock wave that hit my body. 

Oh the horror of it all! What will people think? I am supposed to be a professional. Will they take it seriously or throw it down in disgust and unsubscribe. How could I make a mistake like that? Why didn't I listen to myself? Oh it has ruined everything because the Ezine isn't "perfect" anymore. Oh I wish I could take it back or send a corrected version. My brain actually thought all of this and more in a millisecond.

In the next second I simply reminded myself that I had a choice here. I was at that fork in the road where I could continue down that path of feeling culpable and worked up about the mistake, or I could simply observe what I did closely so that I could learn and grow from the experience. Besides, this had great blogging potential.

Guess what I decided to do! All that training, hard work, and persistence at changing my subconscious patterned responses has paid off. My first thought was, if that is the worst mistake that I make (in my life), boy am I doing really well! Actually, in the larger scheme of things this is very, very minor. The reality is that ninety nine point nine nine percent of the Ezine is perfect and wonderful. Am I seriously going to focus on the speck of dust on my table? What an opportunity to see humor in all of this. 

I do believe that people are far more forgiving than we all imagine they are when we go into emotional reaction. The only person who can try, judge, and find me guilty is me. So I pound the gavel of justice and declare myself free! Free of all those nonsense thoughts and feelings and free in allowing myself to learn and grow and even love myself through every experience! 

Next! And by the way, I am still open to suggestions about the Ezine so that it can be more "perfect" for all of you each and every time.

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October 13, 2009 12:25pm Counseling Blog

Determination: Will I Ever Figure This Out and Get it Done?!

Over the last few weeks I have been working on creating a new Ezine template. It has been a long and many times frustrating process as I learned first how to use the new tools and then had to create the design and content. Some of the frustration comes from the incredibly long time it has taken to put it together. What I thought would take a few days has almost turned into a month!

Most of the frustration comes when I make mistakes because I don't understand what I am doing wrong when things don't work the way I think they should. But of course the real reason is simply because I haven't learned all the nuances of the newsletter creation service that I have invested in.

This made me think about personal growth and how when people are given new tools, it is initially exciting to have these new interfaces and to be faced with the prospect of learning something new....until you get into the nitty-gritty of actually trying to use these tools which seem so simple in theory!

Yes, it takes far more time than you think to get good at using them. You have to practice using these new tools and it is definitely a process of trial and error. Sometimes lots of error before you realize that you are using the tool incorrectly! Then sometimes the information you read so that you can do something more complicated makes your eyes roll to the back of your head and you realize that your brain feel like a shaken can of soda.

That is when you need to just take a break from it all. The harder you push yourself the more mistakes you will make. You need to stop what you are trying to do, go do something entirely different, preferably something physical, to relax your body and distract the mind and fully give it a break. You have to not judge yourself for not figuring it all out right away.

Regularly remind yourself that every part of your life is a work in progress, that it doesn't have to be perfect, and that there are no expectations for you other than the ones you place on yourself. You can only keep doing the best that you can, which of course changes sometimes even from moment to moment, depending on whether you are hungry, tired, have other challenges or pressures, etc.

It will all fall into place exactly as it needs to and you will be a better person for what you have learned in the process. It is important to note that frequently the end results is a little different than what we picture, so allow for some flexibility so that you can take advantage of opportunities that don't seem directly related at first. 

In the meantime I have managed to create and customize a signup form for my Ezine which I encourage everyone to subscribe to. I "should" be able to get my fabulous new Ezine sent out either later today, or more likely, tomorrow, or even the day after if I come across more challenges that I need to find solutions for! 

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October 10, 2009 8:08am Counseling Blog

Cinematization: The Betrayal

This movie is an interesting documentary about one Laotian family filmed over a 23 year period.  It is a story of their survival in the aftermath of war. There is much to learn and understand about people in this movie, but what stood out was this lovely Laotian teaching that was profoundly spoken towards the end of the movie by the elderly mother. 

September 2009 Counselling Blog 

September 29, 2009 1:06pm Counseling Blog

Transformation: Creating Boundaries & Establishing New Behaviors

Whenever you try to set a boundary or establish a new behavior with someone, more often then not, it doesn't go over well with the other person. In fact, their reaction is usually so unpleasant to us, that we would rather not have to deal with the reaction and our fears win that round. In our minds, it is easier to stay in the same rut than face somebody's anger or disapproval.

The way to be able to pursue boundaries and new behaviors is to understand the other persons response better. The people around us are used to us acting in a certain way. As soon as we change a behavior on our end, it trigger subconscious fears for the people around us. The new behavior is an unknown factor and we tend to fear that which we do not know.

So when you introduce a new behavior, some type of fear is triggered for the other person. When this happens they will go into some version of fight or flight. Understand that this is a result of them not feeling safe. Their reaction has nothing to do with you and everything to do with their automatic reaction to what their subconscious mind is perceiving from that place of fear.

The only way to move through this is to first understand that the reaction is not about you. If you go into reaction, you will not be able to reinforce the new behavior you are trying to make. You will try too hard and force acceptance of the new behavior (which does not work) or you will give up in fear. Instead, focus on trying to better understand the other person to take your mind off of your own fears.

Ask them why they are reacting, what is it that they are are afraid of, did they feel somehow threatened by what you said or did, did it make them feel uncomfortable and if so, how? By guiding the other person into the direction of safety, helping them understand that there is no threat, it will stop their fight or flight response and allow you to keep pursuing this new pattern of behavior.

When you think about the types of questions to ask the other person, they will be the same types of questions that you would ask yourself about your own reaction. What are you afraid of when you go into emotional reaction? How are you feeling unsafe? What assumptions are you making? What meaning are you giving the situation that is feeding your reaction? 

When you take this route in communication for both yourself and the other person, you create a sense of safety within both of you. The first time you take the helm and purposely navigate through the choppy waters of change it still feels uncomfortable, but it empowers you to keep trying to change. It is a process of trial and error.  If you persist in this way, you will successfully be able to create new behaviors and establish newer and healthier boundaries for everyone involved. It is just a matter of safety.

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September 26, 2009 3:05 pm Counseling Blog

Education: Fish, Stress, Exercise and Harmony?

I read the following in an article titled "Fit Fish" by Ann Dermody:

Just like humans, it seems fish need to balance their stress levels. A key finding is that the stress hormone, cortisol, activates a "growth shutdown" response in fish. Thus if the fish experiences prolonged stress, that inhibits production of the primary growth promoting hormone. Take away the stress and bingo! Bigger fish all around .... An added benefit is that the more exercise they get, the more peace and harmony reigns in the fish tank. 

Professor Kevin Kelley of the Environmental Endocrinology Laboratory at California State University, long Beach says:

"We have often seen that fish under conditions of no exercise turn their attention to each other, and show antagonistic interactions ... Stressed fish will not perform as well physiologically ... the best growth and condition of the fish will lead to enhanced overall productivity. Fish are our fellow vertebrates and they have the same hormones and physiology as humans. They can suffer from the consequences of stress much the same way we do".

Well, well who would have thought that fish could suffer from stress and benefit from exercise! But lets get to the point. Many people experience high stress on a repeated basis. When higher and prolonged levels of cortisol remain in the bloodstream from chronic stress the following happens:

Both the body and mind need to be trained to minimize the stress response and to mitigate the effects that stress has on a person. Relaxation techniques can  be taught and taken advantage of to relax the body when stress is experienced. 

Of course exercise should always be a high priority, whether a person is stressed or not. Other options are guided imagery, journaling, yoga, music, breathing exercises, meditation, and even  sex! It is even possible to  learn different responses other than the stress response to daily challenges. 

Whether or not you are aware of it, much of the stress that you feel can become a choice through raised self awareness. Stress is a response to fight or flight and you can be taught to have a different response by learning how to interpret events differently than you do now. When you learn how to make yourself feel safer, you stop going into fight or flight as easily and stop getting as easily stressed.

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September 24, 2009 10:45 am Counseling Blog

Confirmation: Growing Old is Not What it Used to Be

This one is for the men! I have already covered the topic of aging in an earlier Blog and how important exercise is to stay young and healthy far beyond what we currently believe about being old. Yet when I saw this in the headlines and was finally able to find a video to place on my site, I just had to reinforce this message.

This headline was everywhere 2 days ago: "74 year old Tsutomu Tosuka crowned champion in the Japan Masters Bodybuilding Championships". Excuse me but, 74 years old and he looks like that?! If this doesn't inspire you to change your habits  right now, I don't know what else will!

Getting "old", as in the body just wears out and there is nothing you can do about it, is the biggest piece of nonsense. It really is so simple. Eat healthy and exercise regularly. Add to that: learn how to minimize or even get rid of stress and you will be healthier than you could ever imagine.

Stress is not what happens to you, it is how you handle what happens to you. If you control the factors that are within your control, you will have an entirely different life experience. Stop making excuses and start taking action!

Excuse me, but I feel the need to go work out...

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September 22, 2009 5:11 pm Counseling Blog

Liberation: Freeing Yourself From Your Own Mind

I wonder how many people really know how externally focused we are most of the time. The sheer amount of thinking that we do takes our awareness out of ourselves and somewhere out there into the stratosphere. Only occasionally and sometimes only for mere seconds at a time do we actually check into ourselves to see how we are doing, feeling, experiencing.

When we interact with others, we tend to lose sight of ourselves as we become almost completely focused on the other person. We generally put on different personas depending on the situation and what we want to show of ourselves, what we think we need, or depending on what we are afraid of. 

When we become externally focused, we tip out of balance within ourselves, as if that act of reaching outwards mentally acts as a cantilever and puts too much weight on that side. We end up having to compensate for that imbalance afterwards, which takes extra energy out of us and makes us tired.

You can teach yourself to maintain your awareness and watch yourself and how you respond or react in all situations. Just gently remind yourself to pay attention to what you are doing. Stay aware of how you feel in that moment. Doing so actually will help you to feel better.

Taking on the role of the observer of yourself frees you from the emotions that you are feeling or thoughts that you are thinking. It is not unlike having a split personality. You just watch and observe, not thinking anything about what you see. Don't be surprised if you just suddenly feel better out of the blue!

By observing, you stop whatever it is that your mind may be thinking about, worrying about, or what it may be afraid of. Just watching yourself is a freeing feeling that you can practice at any time to bring a little more peace into your life. Try it you will like it!

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September 19, 2009 4:59pm Counseling Blog

Cinematization: Kung Fu Panda

This was a delightful movie that underlined how to maintain one's focus on one's dreams regardless of your circumstances and the pressure of the dreams that other people have for you. The message is sometimes overly simplified and seems unrealistic in certain parts, but overall a thoroughly enjoyable animated movie.

Some of the best parts of the movie came in the form of "wise sayings", some of which were actually new to my ear. It is always refreshing to hear ideas said in new ways that illustrate a point better than you have ever heard before.

The first is: "One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it." I laughed 'knowingly' when I heard it, without really being sure exactly what this meant. I just loved it when I heard it! It felt so universal to all of us.  

Then when I thought about it I realized that it could very easily be applied to how when we try to avoid our fears, we end up inadvertently creating them by the actions that we take in fear. Our destiny is to remove as as many fears as we can within this lifetime. That allows us to move ever closer to whatever the true destiny is for each of us.

The other quote that I loved was: "The mind is like this water, my friend. When it is agitated, it becomes difficult to see. But if you allow it to settle, the answer becomes clear." This is actually a brilliant quote that relates back to what I said in the previous paragraph. 

Every time we are in some form of emotional reaction, whether we are aware of it or not, it relates back to some form of fear, some feeling of lack of safety. Our defenses go up, we get into a defensive position, we go into some form of fight or flight, whether in just some small degree or in a full blown reaction.

This flurry of activity causes turbulence that stops us from seeing what is really happening. We end up seeing only that which supports our fears and emotional reactions. We end up being right, but only about what our fears tell us. Being right is not equivalent to seeing clearly and being able to see the truth.

As long as your mind is agitated for any reason, you are only seeing the agitation as you take action to protect yourself. How do you know if you are seeing clearly? You are seeing clearly if  you are observing what is happening around you through a sense of peacefulness, even joy. Not needing anything from anyone, not needing to give anything to anyone, just being. That is the place of clarity.

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September 16, 2009 12:05pm Counseling Blog

Reinterpretation: What Does Being 85 Years Old Look Like to You?

I am always on the lookout for role models in my personal life as well as for others. Most of the elderly people that I met in my childhood and young adulthood were just that...elderly. One of my biggest fears, and I am sure of many people, is the thought of growing old and becoming ill and frail. 

The first time I ever came across the concept that being old did have have to equate with being weak was in a magazine almost 20 years ago, when I read an article and saw picture of a very buff and muscularly ripped 65 year old male. It was amazing and completely challenged my "getting old" beliefs.

Being well over the age of "29", I see the changes in my own physical form, making me rethink many of my own choices and how they will dictate how I age. Earlier this summer I had noticed that I barely had the strength to pull myself out of the water into a paddle boat. That was a wakeup call about my choices and lack of continually building muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it.

The lack of physical strength does not occur because we get older...it occurs because we stop doing activities that keep us strong. We stop prioritizing our own bodies and let them decline. It is yet another area in which we need to step up our accountability.

This video was sent to me by email. I found it to be tremendously inspiring. Dorothy Dale Kloss's story as an 85 year old showgirl says it all! Read the article in the link above and watch this video. This is one of my best role models for aging ever (other than Helen Mirren looking fabulous in a bikini at age 63!)

If you have ActiveX controls blocking you from seeing this video, temporarily allow them to see it.

I think this was a very interesting post thanks for writing it

August 2009 Counselling Blog

August 31, 2009, 8:57 am Counseling Blog

Examination: You Don't Like That Person? Why?

Have you ever thought about why you don't like somebody? We don't like what that person says or does, their mannerisms, their choices, how they treat us, etc. The labels and judgments easily fly out of our mouths and around in our heads. We are taught from early childhood to think and believe in this way. 

If somebody does something to you that you do not like, that person may as well be physically branded. Our dislike, even our anger at another person is always justifiable to us. Yet what we don't see is that we are only repeating our pasts and defining people from our previous experiences.

If we feel hurt by somebody, physically or emotionally, we do not even know that a different way of thinking exists. If somebody has hurt you their fate is signed, sealed, delivered and then frequently thrown in a dark vault and the key thrown away.

Yet this type of thinking and believing does not punish the other person, it hurts you. It hurts you to carry any form of negative thinking about another person. No matter how justified you feel, it perpetuates the hurt you experienced by you reexperiencing that hurt over and over every time you think about that person.

Why change how you feel? Because it will bring you more peace of mind. Because you will be happier. Because you will be healthier, physically as well as emotionally. Because you will experience life differently when you stop applying past meaning to it.

Lets start with the easier situations. You meet somebody and instantly don't like them. They "talk too much", "they are obnoxious", "they are too hard to have a conversation with", "they complain too much", they look like somebody you don't like, etc. The list is endless why we can not like someone.

Yet have you ever really thought about the deeper reasons for not liking somebody? It is because they remind you of somebody from your past. You have judged this person based on a negative past experience that left you feeling hurt, powerless, and out of control in some way. 

Most people will just avoid these reminders from the past, blaming their feelings on the person that they really don't even know. 99% of us will just avoid that person as much as we can. But that person is innocent. They simply have habits and behaviors that coincide with your past that even now you still do not know how to deal with or resolve.

If you did not have this past baggage, this past association, you would not have any feelings one way or another about this person. You would just observe and notice what is happening for them. You would be aware of the insecurities or issues that this person has and not even think twice about what you see.

You would certainly act very differently with the person in question. Maybe you would ask them more questions to draw out their real persona, not the fear-based one that they show you or try to hide behind. You would find out more about who they really are.

When you judge somebody as not being likable, you are in essence rejecting them. This fits perfectly into that persons fears and insecurities. When we have fears and take action out of those fears, we contribute to making those fears real. We then collect the evidence to support why we are rejectable, reinforcing our behaviors. That is what is happening for the person that you don't like. Can you see how this plays out in people you don't like and when you meet people that you think don't like you?

Now lets look at family, work, and people in closer proximity to us that we don't like, are angry at, or even hate. Those people have hurt you in some way. You don't like that. It is unfair. It is the other persons fault. They hurt you emotionally and/or physically. There is frequently rage at that injustice.

Yet, even as you read this, in this very moment it is all in the past. You have not yet learned how to create boundaries, to believe in yourself enough to take different action with these people that hurt you. You don't know how. You may not even be aware that you have different choices available to you. You have been taught to react and feel the way you do now. Are you willing to learn something different?

When you learn how to believe in yourself, you create boundaries with people that have hurt you. You make very different choices from the ones that you are making now. There is no point in judging or labeling these people that you have been taught to think that you don't like; that you are the "victim" of. 

What is the real truth  is to understand that anyone who takes hurtful actions is hugely insecure and full of fear. It is deeply buried in their subconscious minds. You cannot change them, but you can change how you understand them.

When you simply open yourself up to this possibility, you will stop the hurt by making different choices in how you think and perceive these people. From there you take different actions. When you are emotional, you are stuck in a rut of thinking and act like you have always acted. 

When you stop judging, you see the truth about the other person's issues and when you see that clearly and without emotion, you also see that you have so many other choices in how to deal with them. But first you have to deal with your own fears. All your judgments are just hidden fears within yourself. Are you even ready to see that?

When you face your fears, the cycle of hurt stops. Isn't this what you really want? Shouldn't not wanting to feel hurt be your priority? Then take that finger that you are using to point at another person and point it back at you to look for what you can change within yourself. When you do that, you will make different choices that will stop the pain. There is no other way.

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sara
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
03:37 PM

August 27, 2009, 10:49 am Counseling Blog

Activation: Motivating and Moving Your Body

In the pursuit of a healthier mind, we forget that the condition of our physical bodies contributes to how well we are able to process information intellectually and emotionally. You have heard it before, that it is important to stay active for a number of health reasons. Yet so many people just do not make it a priority.

I notice the absence of movement in different ways when I go for more than a few days without some form of physical activity. I will be more sensitive, easily tired, and my energy levels go down. This affects how I think and process information, my creativity goes down, feel less confident, and life even becomes more mundane and less vibrant.

I understand that I need to be regularly physically active much like I regularly need food. It doesn't really matter what I do as long as I expend energy in different ways. Variety is the spice of life when it comes to exercise. Finding something that you like doing without having to exert huge effort in getting yourself to do it is the key. 

For me it is primarily gardening, fishing, scuba diving, bicycling, walking, swimming, and the odd venture onto the  treadmill. All of them done occasionally with other physical activities being done less frequently. Each activity uses my body differently and with the variety, each activity feels fresh.

You have to try different things before you find what you like doing. A friend kept planting the seed to attend a NIA class with her. This is a wonderful combination of many forms of movement in the form of dance. I eventually went and have added it to my list of things that I do 2-3 times a month to stay active.

After the first hour long class (that I did at a very subdued level), I came home and had to nap for an hour! My body was just not used to being moved in every direction, no matter how gently! It is amazing to rediscover and reacquaint your body with movement. I had not been aware of all those different muscles before!

When I attend one of these classes, it reminds me of how much I used to move my body as a child. We forget to just move around, to wiggle, twist, turn, to play until we are tired. It is an amazing workout just to play when you are an adult! We need to be moving our bodies in all directions in all different ways. We need to keep "playing" and use our bodies as much as possible.

Kids run for no reason other than because they can. When is the last time you just ran from one spot to the other for no reason other than you felt like it? A full sprint that does not have to last long, just long enough to feel your legs windmilling in the effort, as fast as you can. It is so much fun and feels so good!

Being active needs to be fun, something you enjoy doing or it is easy to lose motivation. Try new and different things. Challenge your body, slowly at first if you have been inactive, but then step it up! You will find that if it is something that you really enjoy, that you will naturally challenge yourself.

A classic example is from my own life. When I typically go scuba diving, one dive is plenty; I am tired afterwards. Doing two dives was out of the question. I honestly did not think I had the physical energy to climb in and out of the boat with all that heavy equipment more than once and swim for more than 45 minutes. Doing it for an hour felt like a challenge! Then there was the cleaning and 'putting away of all the equipment! I don't even particularly like swimming!

Until I changed my motivation that is. I have discovered lobster season! All of a sudden, I can not only do 4 or 5 dives in the same day with two tanks, I can swim for 2 and half hours without even thinking about it. The only thing making me come out of the water is that there is very little air left in my tank!

This change in perspective fascinates me, especially as it happened quite naturally. Searching for and trying to catch the lobsters is so much fun that I transcended all my self imposed limitations. I honestly did not think I was capable of this extra effort. But it stopped being an effort when I found a different perspective that made it fun.

What will it take for you in your life to have fun and be more active again? To have a focus so intense that you forget about what you thought you couldn't do? What is that carrot that can be dangled in front of you to make something so fun that you want to go out and play again? Pay attention to what catches your eye and keep trying different things until you find what will make you want to play again!

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August 24, 2009, 2:45 pm Counseling Blog

Cinematization: "Tyson"

I really did not know what to expect when I started to watch this movie other than that it was highly recommended, but I didn't know why. What surprised me the most was the ability of this man to self analyze, to see himself so much more clearly than the average person. To be able to reflect back on oneself, in the public eye no less, takes a great deal of courage.

I think that this movie offers a great example of how to look back upon yourself in the past with little or no judgment. To look at the people in your past and to understand why they acted and reacted the way they did and how and why you reacted to them in turn. Tyson's blunt honesty was refreshing. We all have that ability, we just need to develop it. Many are just too afraid of being judged to go there. Watch this movie to learn how to do this!

To be able to look back at your past with this type of perspective is what allows you to heal your past and to move forward from it with some valuable lessons. If you feel the need to judge your past or the people in it, it is your judgment that keeps you in that past, nothing else. What freedom it is to no longer carry that pain!

We all make mistakes and poor choices along the way. Yet these times are what show us and can teach us what we would like to change. Sometimes it is yourself that you need to change, sometimes it is how you perceive somebody else that needs to change and most of the time it is both at the same time.

In the movie, the controversial ear biting came up. I wondered how that would be dealt with and explained. Tyson passed with flying colors. He explained his actions, held himself accountable, and had moved on from that mistake. He understood why he acted the way he did, why he made that choice, and of course what he learned from that. 

As with all of us, Mike Tyson still has a long journey ahead of him. There is always some area of ourselves that can be bettered and improved. But in order to do that, you need to release your past, the influence it has on you now, and to let go of all that judgment that you have and make it what you used to have. It is, in one sense, just that simple! 

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August 21, 2009, 11:41 am Counseling Blog

Narration: A Taoist Tale

In a small village, a farmer met and married a lovely woman.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how good and fortunate this turn of events was. "Maybe" he  replied.

The wife became pregnant and died during childbirth.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how bad and unfortunate this turn of events. "Maybe" he  replied.

Before the wife died she gave birth to a healthy young boy.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how good and fortunate this turn of events was. "Maybe" he  replied.

As the boy got older, he got lost in the woods one day.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how bad and unfortunate this turn of events. "Maybe" he  replied. 

The next day the son returned with a beautiful wild stallion.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how good and fortunate this turn of events was. "Maybe" he  replied.

The farmer built a corral, but the horse broke out and ran away.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how bad and unfortunate this turn of events. "Maybe" he  replied.

The next week the horse returned with a group of mares.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how good and fortunate this turn of events was. "Maybe" he  replied.

The farmer's son tried to ride the horse, but fell off and broke his arm.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how bad and unfortunate this turn of events. "Maybe" he  replied.

A war conscripted all the young men. Because of his broken arm, the son was not taken.

The villagers all agreed and told the man how good and fortunate this turn of events was. "Maybe" he  replied.

I remember reading this so many years ago I can't remember what book it was in! Yet is this not the story of all our lives? Good, bad, good, bad, good bad? Yet one thing always leads to another, it is inevitable. That is what life is all about. It is about all experiences and to think or only wish for good ones is simply not realistic nor is it possible. 

So why do so many people want what is not possible? It is far easier to accept that life can go in any direction and to let go of the concept of good and bad altogether. We do not need to think of things as good or bad in order to make the best choices. In fact, labeling and judging events prevents us from seeing things clearly as we get caught up in our own blinding emotional reactions.

Personally, instead of the "maybe" answer I like to think "I don't really know what that means" when I encounter challenging moments or even when things appear to be going great. That allows me to stay stable when life quickly changes direction. I thoroughly enjoy what is "good" and I actively seek to see what I can learn when things are "bad".  You can choose to see all life events as opportunities to grow as a person.

What other people think is simply what they think and has no meaning other than what we give it, and does not have to be applied in your own mind. As this quote points out: "What other people think of me is none of my business". Know that you are doing the best that you can with the tools that you have. If you do not like where you are, then find new tools to change yourself because it is something that you want for you!

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August 19, 2009, 11:41 am Counseling Blog

Manifestation: Taking Advantage of Opportunities

Life is loaded with opportunities. You can see them when you are not in emotional reaction or in judgment of what you see. Case in point is that I get oodles of unsolicited emails through my website. I used to at times feel frustrated or annoyed. Most of the emails I would just delete. Lately though, I have taken a different approach and the results have been quite surprising. 

What I have done differently is to read some of those emails with a completely open mind, with a blank curiosity. I have in turn stumbled upon a series of events with just one email. I responded back to this email with questions about what they were doing and how they were doing it and it led to a cascade of information.

From that person's answers, I decided to make some small changes to my website. As I cleaned up a part of it that was outdated, I noticed an opportunity based on the information that I had just gotten. From there I made some more changes. That in turn led me to being in contact with more people, whom when asked, were more than happy to give me information that I needed to make my site even better. It has been a full week of one event leading to another.

This has created a shift in my thinking about what I thought my website needed to contain or how to approach different aspects of it as a business. At times the week has been tiring and even monotonous, but I had goals that I had set for myself, so I kept working until it was done. It is still a work in progress, but at a much higher level, more efficient, and operating more smoothly.

I still have a number of suggestions to follow because as I listen to people's points of view, I like to research them on my own. I usually come up with my own version of a suggestion, if I choose to use it at all. In the research process, I come across even more ideas and then I can incorporate to reach even a higher level than I originally imagined. 

Today is the day where it is starting to really come together. Taking control and choosing to take action is empowering and invigorating. Yet if I had judged that first email as needing to go straight to the trash, I never would have embarked on this journey. 

In the last week I encountered a number of obstacles as I made my choices and reached a couple of dead ends. But each time, instead of frustration or finding evidence that something wouldn't work, I chose to think about how else can I make this work or what else can I do to use this to my advantage.

Sometimes the answer was to start what I was doing all over again in a different format. Sometimes it meant asking more questions about why do you say that or think that way? How did you come to that conclusion? I only made progress when I kept my emotions and judgment out of it.

By taking the position of curiosity, it has enabled me to communicate to others in a way that they are happy to share with me. I am getting more used to asking for what I want directly. If I do not get the answer or result that I want or was hoping for, I either ask again, point out the value to the other person, or try to find out why that person made their choice. Obstacles actually turn out to be stepping stones.

We frequently don't even realize when and where we are thinking in an old, linear, patterned way until we break free of it. That freedom is what propels the movement forward. 

Wherever you feel stuck or feel that you are not getting the results that you want in any are of your life, look to see where you are in any type of reaction or judging what you are seeing. As soon as you let go of it you will start to see the little shiny specks of gold lying around you, waiting for you to find them!

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August 17, 2009, 8:15 am Counseling Blog

Cinematization: "Doubt"

What a wild ride to get carried back into my childhood and attending Catholic schools! That caught my interest right off the bat, though I am always cautious with religious movies, preferring to being a "free" thinker and all. But this movie was brilliantly written, directed, acted, etc.

You will fall into one of these categories when you watch this movie. 

This is one of those movies that does not decide anything for you. It lets you see yourself in how you emotionally respond to the characters. In it's ambiguity you can clearly see how a persons perceptions affects their choices. And there are always multiple perceptions to choose from. 

You can see how a young nuns innocence and is slowly stripped away as she cannot comprehend what is really happening, what to believe on her own, portraying how easy it is to not know what to do, what the "right" choice is. She starts to vent her own frustration and perpetuates the abundant fear based assumptions down the line. Yet her naiveté really doesn't change at all. 

Yet is there really a "right" choice? Everyone is always doing the best that they can, given the tools they have to work with. We all make choices, some that work out well, and other choices that harm us or harm other people. It is not always clear. Yet what is important is how you live your life and feel about yourself as you do it. If you don't feel good about it then what do you do? If being "right" is what makes you feel good then what do you do?

The ending to this movie was profoundly moving. It suggested to me that the burden that a person carries from being "right", the harm that it does to that person and the people around them creates tremendous guilt. That heavy weight cannot be carried for very long before it will bend you to the ground. Your only choice is to learn from your experiences so that you can make different choices in the future. That is the only way that you can move on.

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August 15, 2009, 12:15 pm Counseling Blog

Exploration: The Impact of Big Changes in Our Lives

How many times have we heard or been told to stay in the present moment, not to fret or feel bad about the past, to move on. Well, sometimes we need to grieve the passing of not just people, but events, and even material possessions. This is especially true of big changes and even a series of smaller ones

I found myself feeling resentful and even angry at times over many changes that I recently made, big and small. As people who are familiar with my blog already know, the details are unimportant, it is the understanding and processing of the feelings that is important. I want this lesson to be universally applicable to any situation. 

In this series of changes, I had to let go of many things that I was comfortable with, that I enjoyed, that had contributed to creating many years of great memories. That is now all in the past; all old memories now. 

Moving on is supposed to be good for us; bringing us new challenges and new experiences so that we keep growing and don't become stagnant. It helps to keep us feeling alive with that movement. As many readers know, that seems to get harder to do as we get older! Whether we realize it or not, we become attached to things (and people) much more than we realize until we have to let them go.

So, it has been half a year since these big changes were made and I still periodically can feel myself trying to hang on to the memories, being angry and resentful that they are only memories now, that I will not be able to experience them again. I needed to look more closely at this.

What was really going on for me? I was having plenty of new experiences, mostly good if not great, none of them bad, some challenging but of course that is normal life. So what is it that makes me want to hang on to and why do I keep craving the past like that? 

I kept visualizing the really good times from the last few years and instead of it making me feel good thinking about those memories, I was feeling emotional and sad instead. Time to step back from these emotions and analyze this.

What I finally noticed was that I was looking at the process of grieving. The actual changes were loaded with emotions and it had taken a lot of physical and mental energy to make them. Some parts were almost traumatic to my mind, the attachments were just that strong. My body and mind had needed to rest from the overload. I can see times in the last few months where I withdrew, almost numb, from that overload.

Then came the deep feelings of hurt that started to emerge as the numbness wore off. Yet I wanted to judge myself for having them. I should be grateful and appreciate what I have, stop living in the past, I'm wasting energy, and so on. Every time I judged I suppressed and of course what you suppress only builds!

That explained the recent increase in reliving those past memories. There were so many different ways in which those memories were triggered. Think about the five senses: things I saw, smelled, touched, heard, ate...they all could and would trigger me....many times a day.

The overall feelings were somewhat disturbing, both in an emotional and physical way. There was the contradiction and conflicting feelings of good memories being sad! Every strong emotion that we have is expressed physically in some way. It made me tired; I felt susceptible, vulnerable, and unsafe, making me more easily emotionally reactive on some days. Okay, I can see this more clearly now.

Then of course there was the blame. If only this then that. If this hadn't happened then that wouldn't have happened. With blame comes anger. If somebody had done this or that differently then I wouldn't have had to go through this! Yet it is important to note that if the truth be told, that I agreed to everything one way or another all along the way! :) 

Blaming is just my mind trying to rationalize the hurtful feelings to me, to justify their existence. Well, no thank you, that does not work for me! I know that my mind is doing the best it can based on it's understanding of the past, but I want to find a different way of dealing with this because what I am really seeing is how my own mind is trying to interpret events based on the past, on its subconscious patterning.

Anytime we move into blame or get angry, we subconsciously or consciously feel guilty. Guilt is the natural consequence of hurting someone, whether we are aware of it or not. This is also the should've could've would've stage! So let's see what I can do differently here.

Okay, I need to fully allow myself to go through this grieving process while keeping my mind in check. At times I am more sensitive than usual, so I will let people around me know. I will be gentler with myself and softly guide my thoughts into the direction that I want while telling myself "this too shall pass".

I will refocus my mind so that when I do think of a memory that I tell myself point blank "that was a wonderful memory" "that was a great time in my life" "it is okay to feel sad about it, feel it for a moment, then let it go". Each and every time it reappears I will go through some form of this. Each and every memory.

Now that I understand what is happening for me I can move into a space of compassion (which is just deeper understanding) and rather than get stuck in a lack of movement and hanging on to a feeling, I can nudge myself to keep things flowing and moving forward. I remind myself to move more into the role of the observer so that I can watch the emotions rather than get caught up in and amplify them.

My best results always come when I soften, slow down, and understand myself instead of judge; step back from the emotion to observe myself, gently but firmly guide my mind in the direction I want it to go, and then have patience with myself as I adapt to these changes I am making. 

I am grateful once again for yet another lesson in life, another opportunity to grow from my experiences, trusting this uniquely complicated process of growth.

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August 13, 2009, 1:00 pm Counseling Blog

Adaptation: It Really is All in the Perception!

Barbara Walters, formerly of 20/20, did a story on gender roles in Kabul, Afghanistan, several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked five paces behind their husbands.

She recently returned to Kabul and observed that women still walk behind their husbands, sometimes even further behind them. Despite the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban regime, the women are happy to maintain the old custom.

Ms. Walters approached one of the Afghani women and asked, 'Why do you now seem happy with an old custom that you once tried so desperately to change?'

The woman looked Ms. Walters straight in the eyes, and without hesitation said, 'Land Mines.' "

(By Email)

This is obviously a joke, but it still underlines the fact that when something outside of your control bothers you, there is always another way in which you can choose to look at it. If by some chance this offends you, remember that there is always another way in which you can choose to look at it so that you choose not to feel that way! How you feel is always your choice, whether you are aware of it or not. If you are not aware then choose to learn how to become more aware and make those other choices. It happens one step at a time.

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August 11, 2009, 2:48 pm Counseling Blog

Relaxation: A Breathing Exercise to Quiet the Mind

Most of us do not realize how much we live "out there" with our awareness, instead of in our bodies and even within our own minds. How many times have you caught yourself thinking about something, only to come to, suddenly notice your surroundings, realize that you were tense, etc. We actually spend the majority of the time missing from our own lives, caught up in thoughts that take us away from ourselves.

One of the best tools that you can use to stay within yourself more is to remember to breath. Yes, just that simple task of focusing on your breath, breathing slowly and deliberately deeply into your body brings you back into yourself and helps you focus on the present moment. If you want to completely distract your mind and shift how you are feeling in this moment, do the following exercise:

Breath in for the count of one (think "one thousand and one" to make it a full one second long and to get a sense of timing) and breath out for the count of one as fast as you think the number. Then breath in for the count of two slowly, also breathing out for the count of two. Keep breathing and increasing the slow count, making equal counts for the in-breath and for the out-breath.

As you get to the slow count of the number 5 and higher for breathing, notice how your muscles start to relax more on the out-breath. As you go even higher in the count, notice your hart beating and try to match the count to the rhythm of your heartbeat. Notice how your body feels. Notice how you can actually feel the sensation of the air moving in and out of your body.

As you do this exercise, if you are physically uncomfortable or lightheaded at any point, note the number that this occurs at and stop. You have reached your maximum. Relax and pay attention to how your body is feeling. Notice different parts of your body and how differently you feel as you look around you. Notice how your thoughts stopped when you did this exercise.

If you can comfortably go higher in your breath count, then do so. Notice how when you breath in very slowly that you can bring in more breath than you ever imagined. Feel your belly as well as your chest expand when you breath in and feel them fall back into place as you breath out. Stop increasing the count when your lungs feel full and you are holding your breath rather than taking more air in.

As you go back to breathing normally you will feel rested and even energized. Your mind will feel clearer and any emotional reactions diminished. It is an overall good feeling. It is important to remember not to push yourself when you do an exercise like this. This is meant to gently nudge you  into more self awareness. If you push yourself you reverse the benefits.

So remember to do this exercise any time you want to stop negative thoughts, obsessive thinking, to give yourself a break, to  relax the muscles in your body, to ease tensions, or to simply become more present in yourself. Since worrying accomplishing absolutely nothing, use this to clear your mind and then don't be surprised if some interesting solutions come to you in this relaxed, clear space!

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August 9, 2009, 12:25 pm Counseling Blog

Cinematization: "12"

The movie "12" is a foreign film, nominated for an Oscar. It is intense in the way that it clearly shows how humans have a tendency to automatically act/react without thinking about the consequences. Through a riveting 2 hours and 40 minutes it takes you through the psyches of why people made the choices that they did, based on the their personal influences and interpretation of events.

It is only after questions are asked and the status quo questioned that people start to see the truth about the situation, where the assumptions, even though based on "expert" "facts", are not what they appear to be at all. Slowly the tale unwinds, unveiling personal, political, and social structures that complicate our lives and how we make our choices.

The characters are all so unique and brilliant in their representation of the differences in each of them, differences that are easy to judge, to be repelled by or drawn to, depending on how you see them. There are so many sub-themes that are explained if you read the reviews for the movie  on www.rottentomatoes.com. 

This is just one of those movies that stirs the soul. It leads you and directs your emotions in such a masterful way that you don't even realize that it is happening. That probably has something to do with having to read the subtitles so quickly that you don't have time to think or judge, you just barely hang on for the ride!

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August 8, 2009, 11:26 am Counseling Blog

Cinematization: "The Wrestler"

I have watched many movies that I felt had great messages over the years and that was one of the motivators to start a blog, because not everyone sees or hears those messages. I am a movie buff and love to look for those hidden or not so hidden reaffirmations of what I understand about people. Not in how good or bad people are, but in how our psyches work and how it affects our choices and behaviors.

Case in point is the movie "Lars and the Real Girl" which was a phenomenal movie about healing when a community pulls together instead of judging what they don't understand. Yet one young lady that had seen it with her friend could not get past the part of the blow up doll and stopped watching it. When we judge something, we literally and figuratively stop watching, listening, miss the point, and miss many opportunities.  Life is truly all about how we choose to see it.

The movie "The Wrestler" was a big surprise. It is not often I see a movie so highly rated, at 98%, on rottentomatoes. Even now, 2 days after watching it, it still brings up many emotions about the character, an aging professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" brilliantly played by Mickey Rourke. Where do I begin describing my experience of it? 

There is such sadness about seeing the direction that lives can go, the broken illusions and dreams. How when a person defines their own value externally and that external value is stripped away, how there is little of nothing left in them. I found parts of this movie to be just about heartbreaking, yet in a fascinating way. 

You see how The Ram is so caught in the cycle of what he knows, of what he is familiar with, that warning bells should go off in your head as you watch it. How are we still making choices that lead us to the same consequences throughout our lives? It is so easy to look at another person and see what they could change about themselves to make their lives easier, to bring in that love that they desperately crave. But what about taking that hard look inside your own life?

One of the interesting points in the movie is when the Ram works at the deli. When his mind is clear and open, he turns his job into an art form. The delight of the scene flows off of the screen. Conversely, when he is in fear of judgment and is adversely affected by the consequences of his choices, where his mind and soul are heavy, his job becomes a nightmare. Everything builds up and boils over. It was a brilliant example of how our perceptions and state of mind affect our experiences.

Some of the scenes are painful to watch, both from a physical as well as emotional viewpoint. A person's body can only take so much abuse. Whatever we subject our bodies to does come back full circle in all of us. This movie is also poignant in how even when a person wants to change, they don't because they just don't know how. 

It reflects back to each of us that hurting place inside that we just don't know how to heal on our own, how we just continue the cycle that is subconscious within us. The saddest past is how just a few attempts at change end up becoming evidence to support that hurtful cycle. We end up reinforcing how unlovable and rejectable we are in our own minds instead of persisting and trying again and again until we do finally get it right. 

Yet The Ram has an inner strength to him, where he sees how the choices he makes create his reality and  they bring him to the edge of change. He goes into his own vulnerability, the space where changes can be made. But a series of misperceptions and self judgment stop that opportunity. It is that feeling of getting so close that totally captured me as a viewer. You get so drawn into his character because of this and for many more reasons. 

As with many great movies the ending is ambiguous. A combination of does he "win" or does he "lose"? I guess that is all up to how you choose to see it. One one level he does win in what he knows best, but on another level he loses by giving up in pursuing those changes that he had hoped and strived for and felt he had lost.

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August 6, 2009, 1:59 pm Counseling Blog

Recreation: How to Stop Gossip

Mildred, the town gossip and self-appointed monitor of the town's morals, kept sticking her nose into other people's business.

Several town members did not approve of her extra curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.

She made a mistake, however, when she accused Frank, a new town member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town's only bar one after noon.

She emphatically told Frank (and several others) that every one seeing it there
WOULD KNOW WHAT HE WAS DOING !

Frank, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away.  He didn't explain, defend, or deny.

He said nothing ...

Later that evening, Frank quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred's house ... walked home ... and left it there all night  !!!

Source: Unknown through email.

I will never get tired of saying this. When you don't go into emotional reaction you can access your creativity and find solutions outside the box. A person could argue that what Frank did was hurtful to Mildred, yet that would only be the meaning that you apply to the situation. The action on its own has no meaning other than the one you give it! 

I like to envision Frank as the kind of guy who understood that a person who gossips has a lot of fear that they make up for by trying to important and have value in other people's eyes. They lack a healthy sense of self value and do not know how to be any different than they are. Judging them only causes them to feel even more inferior and resentful, increasing the need to be self important.

If Mildred chooses to go into emotional reaction and be hurt by Frank's actions, then she drives herself further into the catch-22 cycle of  resentment, anger, guilt, punishment, and sacrifice. Yet there is always an opportunity to grow and learn from every situation. She can choose to see how she made an assumption and gave the situation a fear-based meaning that did not exist. From that one simple lesson she could make far different choices in the future.

One little (or big) step at a time!