by Vera Bellamy | Mar 31, 2023
When is it time to look within? As human beings, we are drawn to rest, pause, and reflect on our journeys. When we feel tired, discontent, and lost, it is probably time to do some inner work. It will look like putting that phone down for a day or two or longer, turning the TV off, disconnecting from social media, and grabbing a journal.
There is nothing more powerful that you having to put down on paper the content of your thoughts!!! It might be scary at first – like looking in a mirror – until you incorporate it into daily routine. Then, it becomes an enjoyable activity you are looking forward to doing daily. You learn to slowly start shifting your focus to yourself. It will feel like pouring attention and love to yourself because you are consciously making an effort to understand yourself, and to illuminate your inner world.
In those moments of silence with yourself, you reclaim what has been lost through work, stress, emotional upheaval, drama, demands and expectations. As you spend time with yourself, you create inner peace and boost the joy that has been dormant inside of you. Add some gratitude on the list, and you will be in your way to feeling present, happy, and more like yourself.
1. Shut off your phone on weekends or hours at a time.
2. Fall in love with silence through turning off your TV.
3. Go for walks in nature, and listen to the natural sounds of birds and winds.
4. Journal and Focus on Gratitude
5. Meditate and Do Body Scans
6. Sit on the beach and watch the waves.
7. Pray.
8. Invest in Self-Care.
by Vera Bellamy | Nov 21, 2022
Thanksgiving might be the best holiday in the history of the planet. It’s a holiday that uniquely matters to our spiritual well-being! It eases the angst of our modern minds, which are often way too focused on negativity and anxieties, and it reminds us to focus on grateful thinking and being. As you may know, it’s not always easy to change our habits of mind. Yet, we can learn to change these, and one of the best reframing changes we can make towards this end is to flip the switch from negativity to gratitude.
I enjoy writing my gratitude list every morning. I notice how my energy changes and how my mind stays focused on the blessings that life bestows upon me. To be grateful is to be spiritual. Spirituality is discovering the abundance of your unlimited beautiful and grateful soul, which makes us evolve and grow as human beings. And it doesn’t matter how we get there…, the end result is us becoming a finer version of ourselves.
Enjoy noticing the things that are going well in your life this Thanksgiving!
Let’s reclaim together our joyous spiritual selves through an “attitude of gratitude.”
by Vera Bellamy | Aug 2, 2022
Let’s have a discussion on how to stay open to love.
The kind of love I have in mind here is Agape love, unconditional love, the broader more expansive love towards ourselves, others and the planet. How can we cultivate that love all of the time?
Everybody has love inside of them. You don’t need to search for it, you need to trust that you have an abundant amount of love to give and receive. We are wired to love and we are wired to respond to love with kindness.
Nobody can survive without love. If you take a look at your exchanges, love is everywhere around you. All day long we are exchanging love, like we are exchanging money. One we see, the other we feel and sense. A hello is love, a smile is love, nice words are love, your presence is love, showing up is love.
Always cultivate an open heart. I was in meditation today and was observing my heart. I know from personal experience that when we experience a conflict, rejection or disappointment, we tend to close our hearts.
We close our hearts because we are sad but also because it hurts to feel the pain and disappointment of rejection. This is exactly why we need to reverse our course, and stay open. By keeping our hearts open, we are letting them heal, and allowing them to receive love from other sources — our pets, friends, parents, neighbors, and all of nature. Let the exchange of love keep flowing.
All our hearts are like giant flowers with petals. What happens to a flower when it is closed? We don’t see its essence, its colors, we can’t smell its fragrance. That is why we need to keep our hearts open and beautiful despite adversity. Our hearts are made to be appreciated. Everyone is worthy of love, everyone is worthy of receiving love. We are loving and lovable.
Cultivate the love you have. Let it grow. Love the small acts of love, they will grow your love.
As you expand your awareness, your love will expand. You will naturally make space for love to flourish inside of you. As you start to embrace your essence which the present moment reveals to you, love will replace what is not love inside of you….
So chirp your hearts out and pay attention to the love that flows all around you.
by Vera Bellamy | Jun 20, 2022
If the universe can spring out of nothingness, maybe our whole being can spring out of the thoughts we form in our minds. As we change our thought processes, we are constantly reshaping and retraining our minds, leading to feeling better overall.
Thoughts are charged with emotions. They carry power. They can bring healing, or they can make feel depressed. They can put a smile on your face or they can send you into a downward spiral. They can uplift someone or they can crush someone.
Challenge negative self-talk
Become aware when you are not kind to yourself because it affects your overall energy. Every time you put yourself down, your energy level goes down and you start feeling off. Start elevating yourself with good and upbeat thoughts. Pay attention to the language you use when you talk to yourself. Positive thoughts will bring more gratitude, more positivity, more acceptance and satisfaction to your life.
Focus on the positives in your life.
Validate yourself!!! Stop for 10 seconds what you are doing and write or say 10 positive things about your life and yourself. Acknowledge the beauty of your experiences, or reflect on the lessons you are receiving. That is beautiful in itself.
Embrace curiosity.
Hmm, things and people are interesting… Life is full of possibilities. So when we shift to a place of curiosity, our critical voice diminishes. We observe and notice, without judging.
Meditate to shift your thoughts
Color creates a certain mood in you. So next time you are about to be really hard on yourself or someone else, mediate in silence and give yourself a healing bath of meditative color to shift your thoughts instantaneously.
by Vera Bellamy | Jun 14, 2022
Most people would probably agree that our world needs empathy.
The dictionary defines empathy as the action and the capacity of understanding, being aware of, and being sensitive to the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another person.
If we can feel our own pain, can we naturally fee the pain of other human beings or animals? Are we really wired for empathy, or do we learn empathy?
Psychologists talk of three types of empathy. Cognitive empathy is when you can put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. We cognitively understand what people are going through. Understanding that somebody is hurting is limited, as it doesn’t produce the kind of acknowledgment the other person needs.
Emotional empathy is when you feel and sympathize with the feelings and emotions of others. We need this capacity to maintain relationships and friendships. Some people are better at this than others, for example therapists. Emotional empathy can be treacherous for sensitive people. Feeling somebody’s else emotions and pain without boundaries can cause you to become ill.
To have healthy empathy, we must practice Compassion. With compassion we understand and we feel for someone else, but also are capable of holding a safe place for them to have their own emotional experiences. Compassion is felt more in the heart. We are extending our heart to someone else’s heart, thus making the other person feel seen, heard, and acknowledged.
Transformation is a process. As we heal, we also learn and develop more empathy. Feeling the pain of others is an essential component of good health.
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