Time for inner work

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.

Thrive with Gratitude

Thrive with Gratitude

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.”

How We Create Happiness (a scientific study)

How We Create Happiness (a scientific study)

We have the apparatus to be happy, says Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness.

His study found is that our frontal lobe helps us create a psychological immune system to fabricate happiness anytime we want. What are the applications of this study for us chasing happiness everyday of our lives?

Happiness is not linked to outcomes. “Happiness is not a thing to be found,” says Gilbert. It doesn’t matter if you get this particular job or find that particular relationship. Any other possible outcome can make us feel as happy as the one we really focused on in the first place.

The wisdom here is that changing goals or taking a different route from the one you envisioned would not make you less happy.

Or we could say that atttachment and ungrounded expectations could lead to unnecessary disappointments. Having a more relaxed view of things and of life in general, and having flexibility will surely lead to more happiness.

Having too much freedom to choose or change, says Gilbert is the enemy to happiness. This is definitely a shocking revelation, right? But it is exactly what this study found. Our psychological immune system works best when you have limited choices, for example when we are married. So if you are married and feel unhappy, maybe you could reconsider your happiness quotient, work on your marriage, add a few more grateful things to the situation, and change your view about the alternative options to more happiness.

The idea however of reducing your options frees you to make better choices with less stress and can, in fact, lead to greater fulfillment.

Another point the author makes is that having too much ungrounded passion and ambition in life can lead to disastrous results. I think that we can find plenty of examples in all walks of life to demonstrate this statement. But the main point here is that nothing in life is as important as keeping your integrity intact. Anytime you have to lie or cheat, or compromise your values, you are taking the risky road of becoming unhappy.

When we understand that happiness is not a goal or a thing but originating in our own physiological makeup, we can empower ourselves to lead fulfilling and rewarding lives.This is a very wise study supporting the idea that we create our own happiness.

How to Stay Open To Love

How to Stay Open To Love

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.

 

 

Your Thoughts Matter

Your Thoughts Matter

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.