Posts tagged with ‘personal growth’

See Beings Not Bodies

What happens when you look at someone?
The Practice:
See beings, not bodies.
Why?

When we encounter someone, usually the mind automatically slots the person into a category: man, woman, your friend Tom, the kid next door, etc. Watch this happen in your own mind as you meet or talk with a co-worker, salesclerk, or family member.

In effect, the mind summarizes and simplifies tons of details into a single thing – a human thing to be sure, but one with an umbrella label that makes it easy to know how to act. For example: “Oh, that’s my boss (or mother-in-law, or boyfriend, or traffic cop, or waiter) . . . and now I know what to do. Good.”

This labeling process is fast, efficient, and gets to the essentials. As our ancestors evolved, rapid sorting of friend or foe was very useful. For example, if you’re a mouse, as soon as you smell something in the “cat” category, that’s all you need to know: freeze or run like crazy!

On the other hand, categorizing has lots of problems. It fixes attention on surface features of the person’s body, such as age, gender, attractiveness, or role. It leads to objectifying others (e.g., “pretty woman,” “authority figure”) rather than respecting their humanity. It tricks us into thinking that a person comprised of changing complexities is a static unified entity. It’s easier to feel threatened by someone you’ve labeled as this or that. And categorizing is the start of the slippery slope toward “us” and “them,” prejudice, and discrimination.

Flip it around, too: what’s it like for you when you can tell that another person has slotted you into some category? Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on January 19th, 2012 in General, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in appreciation, authenticity, Consciousness, happiness, honesty, mindfulness, personal growth, Rick Hanson, thoughts and feelings

Step Into the Clouds

Juggling bricks?
The Practice:
Step into the cloud.
Why?

I had a lightbulb moment recently: I was feeling stressed about all the stuff I had to do (you probably know the feeling). After this went on for a while, I stepped back and kind of watched my mind, and could see that I was thinking of these various tasks as things, like big rocks that were rolling down a hill toward me and which needed to be handled, lifted, moved, fended off, or broken into pebbles. As soon as I dealt with one thing-y boulder, another one was rolling toward me. Shades of Sisyphus.

Seen as brick-like entities, no wonder these tasks felt heavy, oppressive, burdensome. Yuch!

But then I realized that in fact the tasks I needed to do were more like clouds than things. Clouds are made up of lots of vaporous little bits, those bits come together for a time due to many swirling causes, and then they swirl away again. Meanwhile, the edge or boundary of a cloud blurs into other clouds or the sky itself. There is a kind of insubstantiality to clouds, and a softness, a yielding.

For example, take writing an email message: It has lots of little parts to it (the points you need to take into account, and the words and sentences), it is nested in a larger context – your relationship to the receiver, the needs that prompted the email – that (in a sense) calls it forth, and it emerges and passes away. This email, this task, links to other tasks, sort of blurs into them. Fundamentally, the email is a kind of process, an event, rather than a thing. It’s like you could put your hand through it.

When I considered my tasks in this way, I immediately felt better: relieved, relaxed. Tasks felt fluid, like streams or eddies I was stepping into and influencing or contributing to as best I could before they swirled on and became something else. Not so weighty or full of inertia; not so resistant, so controlling of me; not bearing down on me, but instead, something I was flowing into. Then I didn’t feel weary dealing with them. They became fun, lighter; there was more freedom in moving through them.

And it’s not just tasks that are clouds. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on January 16th, 2012 in General, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in authenticity, Buddha’s Brain, know yourself, mindfulness, personal growth, purpose, Rick Hanson, self help

Pet The Lizard

Down deep, do you feel at ease?
The Practice:
Pet the lizard.
Why?

I’ve always liked lizards.

Growing up in the outskirts of Los Angeles, I played in the foothills near our home. Sometimes I’d catch a lizard and stroke its belly, so it would relax in my hands, seeming to feel at ease.

In my early 20’s, I found a lizard one chilly morning in the mountains. It was torpid and still in the cold and let me pick it up. Concerned that it might be freezing to death, I placed it on the shoulder of my turtleneck, where it clung and occasionally moved about for the rest of the day. There was a kind of wordless communication between us, in which the lizard seemed to feel I wouldn’t hurt it, and I felt it wouldn’t scratch or bite me. After a few hours, I hardly knew it was there, and sometime in the afternoon it left without me realizing it.

Now, years later, as I’ve learned more about how the brain evolved, my odd affinity for lizards has started making sense to me. To simplify a complex journey beginning about 600 million years ago, your brain has developed in three basic stages: Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on January 6th, 2012 in General, Health, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in appreciation, biological evolution, brain, Buddha’s Brain, change, Consciousness, fear, meditation, mindfulness, Neuroplasticity, personal growth, psychological factors, self help, self love, thoughts and feelings

Empty the Cup

Are you full to the brim?
The Practice:
Empty the cup.
Why?

Once upon a time, a scholar came to visit a saint. After the scholar had been orating and propounding for a while, the saint proposed some tea. She slowly filled the scholar’s cup: gradually the tea rose to the very brim and began spilling over onto the table, yet she kept pouring and pouring. The scholar burst out: “Stop! You can’t add anything to something that’s already full!” The saint set down the teapot and replied, “Exactly.”

Whether it’s the blankness of a canvas to an artist, the silence between the notes in music, bare dirt for a new garden, the not-knowing openness of a scientist exploring new hypotheses, an unused shelf in a closet or cupboard, or some open time in your schedule, you need space to act effectively, dance with your partners, and have room around your emotional reactions.

Yet most of us, me included, tend to stuff as much as possible into whatever room is available – room in closets, schedules, budgets, relationships, and even the mind itself. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on January 1st, 2012 in General, Health, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in Buddha’s Brain, Consciousness, happiness, mindfulness, neuroscience, own your life, personal growth, psychological factors, Rick Hanson, scarce resources, self help, wisdom, work

Give Over to Good

What is living you?
The Practice:
Give over to good.
Why?

In every moment, you and I and everyone and everything else – from quantum foam to fleeting thoughts, intimate relationships, rainforest ecosystems, and the stars themselves – are each a kind of standing wave, like the ever-changing though persistent pattern of water rising above a boulder in a river.

We are the result of multiple causes flowing through us. As Buckminster Fuller famously said, “I seem to be a verb.”

This fact is amazing, but it’s corroborated by both modern physics and deep ecology. We can get silly-cosmic about it (done this myself – not only as a college sophomore!), but the implications are very down to earth.

As unique standing waves, you and I are constructed each moment by the currents – the forces and factors, both internal and external – flowing through us. We have no choice about being lived by these currents, continually given over to them.

But we can choose to give ourselves over to the good ones. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on December 23rd, 2011 in General, Health, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in appreciation, brain, Buddha’s Brain, Consciousness, god spirit, gratitude, happiness, meditation, mindfulness, neuroscience, personal growth, Relationships, Rick Hanson, self help, thoughts and feelings

Every No Gets Us Closer to a Yes

Consider this example: Using a hypothetical number (since I am not aware of the statistics involved in car sales), let’s assume that for every 10 prospective customers that walk through the showroom door, one will be converted into a sale.

That being the case, a car salesman can expect to get a no from nine people before he closes a deal. Consequently, when he gets one no after another, there is no need for him to get depressed, anxious or angry. He doesn’t need to take it personally by interpreting it as a failure on his part. He doesn’t need to get discouraged or demoralized. He doesn’t need to perceive it as a setback or an obstacle. He doesn’t need to look at it as the universe giving him a hard time.

He simply needs to remind himself that it’s all part of the plan; that it’s all part of the law of averages; that every time he gets a no, he should actually be celebrating, because it brings him closer to the statistical number that equates to a yes.

Oftentimes, we get frustrated by things not happening on our timetable. Rather than seeing each “no” as one step closer to our goal, we interpret the “no” as a delay holding back our success. This speaks to our desire to control the universe so that it will do our bidding as we think it should and when we think it should.

The problem with this is that we can’t control the universe. People and circumstances that will eventually cooperate with us have their own timetable that we need to accept. Any attempt to manipulate and accelerate the process is oftentimes a mistake. It can lead us to either a burning bridge that could have been an appropriate path, or finding ourselves heading down a path that, in the long run, will prove to be a road to nowhere.

Acceptance & patience
It is better to accept that it takes time for people and circumstances to come together in a beneficial way for all concerned and to try not to force outcomes. Sometimes it’s best to accept the ebb and flow of things. Sometimes it’s best to not paddle furiously but rather to row our boat gently down the stream. Sometimes it’s best to let things happen at their own pace and have faith that when things don’t happen the way we think they should, it doesn’t mean that they never will.

Bottom line: We needn’t be afraid of rejection and failed efforts — take Thomas Edison, for example. Every time the universe said no to one of his attempts to invent the electric light bulb, he saw it as a help rather than a hindrance. He saw it as an opportunity to put aside an ineffectual approach he was taking so that he could redirect his attention to an alternative approach that might yield the success he was looking for. Every failed attempt brought him closer to success by enabling him to eliminate a wrong way so that he could eventually find the right way.

There is a right way for all of us, regardless of what goals we have set for ourselves. But we will not find it if we get derailed by perceived setbacks, obstacles, rejections, delays and outright failed attempts. Best that we be okay with every no we get and every failed attempt, seeing each as a positive stepping stone to our ultimate success.

Best we stay true to our vision. Best we stay confident and positive. Best we be flexible and stay open to alternative paths so as to modify and adapt our plan when necessary. Above all else, we don’t give up. We keep on trucking. We remind ourselves that it’s never over till it’s over.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Walter E Jacobson, MD on September 18th, 2011 in Career | No comments Read related posts in confidence, motivation, optimism, personal growth, self help, success

The Choices We Make

Take a look at your life right now. Look at where you live, who you spend time with, how you support yourself financially, your level of stress, your state of mind, your health – all of it. Is this the life that you want to be living? Is this a life that you consciously created or is this a life that you created on autopilot?

We make choices every day. Choices that affect how we live and how our lives turn out. And oftentimes we aren’t even aware that we are making choices. We are simply surviving – getting by – and trying to make it through the day. We aren’t thinking about our vision for our future. We aren’t thinking about manifesting our ideal life. We are thinking about what needs to be made for dinner or what time the kids need to be picked up or whether we have time to finish that project for work that is due the next day.But what’s so crucial to realize is that the universe doesn’t know whether we are creating our lives on autopilot or in a conscious state of awareness. The vibrations that we are sending out are exactly what we will get back.

The choices we make today will affect our life tomorrow. Some of the choices we make today will have a lasting impact on our lives far into the future.

Becoming aware of the choices you make on a daily basis is the first step to creating change in your life. When you recognize that you are about to make a choice – ask yourself this question:
Is this choice leading me toward or away from my ideal life?

So often we know what we want for our future, and we can’t figure out why we never seem to get any closer to our dreams. It’s because of the choices we are making on a daily basis that aren’t moving toward that vision. We are looking for instant gratification and seeing life in the small picture rather than putting aside our wants and desires in the short term to make sure we reach our long-term dreams and visions.

Let’s say your dream is to run a marathon.
You know that to do this you will need to start training every day.
You begin the first day by running for an hour, which feels great! You are on your way!
When you wake up the second day, you are feeling tired and sore and think you will just take the day off as a reward for working so hard the day before and start up with your training again the following day.
This is a choice that you made.
Did this choice move you toward or away from your long-term goal and your ideal life?
Definitely away from.

And if this continues to happen, soon you will realize that the marathon is quickly approaching, and you are not even close to being ready for it. And you become angry with yourself because you realize that your choices put you in this situation.
And if you keep sabotaging yourself by not training, you have to ask if this is something that you truly want for yourself. If it is, it’s time to take a look at what is holding you back. Is it simply that you are lazy and lack discipline or could it be deeper issues of limiting beliefs about what you feel you are worthy of achieving?An alternative solution to this example would be to find another way to reward yourself rather than taking time off from training. Perhaps you can go out to celebrate, or make a special meal, or watch your favorite movie.

It all comes back to the choices we make each and every day.
One harmful choice usually leads to another and another…

But the opposite is also true! One positive choice leads to another and another…
This means that if we are conscious of our choices and make sure they are in line with the vision we have for our future, we will be right on pace to reach our dreams!
So let’s first visualize the lives we want to live.
And then let’s make sure we are consciously making choices that lead us closer to this life.
And soon enough you will see that you are living your ideal life and reaching all of your dreams!

Jodi Chapman writes Soul Speak – a daily blog that focuses on seeing life through a lens of gratitude and positivity. She is the bestselling author of the Soulful Journals series – writing-prompt journals that help you go within and get to know yourself better. She is also the author of the upcoming book, Go For It: Get Out There and Start Living! She believes that our thoughts become our reality, and our actions lead us to our dreams. She is happily married to her best friend and co-writer, Dan Teck. They live in southern Oregon with their four fuzzy kids. www.soulspeakbyjodi.com

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Jodi Chapman on August 30th, 2011 in Uncategorized | 2 comments Read related posts in change, choice, conscious living, life lessons, personal growth

Hearing Fear Out

Have you ever embarked on a wonderful new adventure that you were super excited about, and just when you really started to get into it with both feet in – fear stepped up and started listing all of the reasons why it’s probably not a good idea for you to do this after all and tries to get you to see how much safer it would be for you to just step back into your comfort zone?

When this happens, what if we took some time to listen to what fear has to say?
It’s there to protect you – it doesn’t want you to get hurt or fail or be disappointed.
So the next time this happens for you – take some time and write down everything that the fear inside of you wants you to know.

Get it all down on a piece of paper. Give yourself the time and space needed to go within and bring up any reason why your new adventure might not be a good idea or why it’s a scary place to be.
And then you can crumble it up and throw it away.
Or…
You can go through your list one by one and turn it around.
Fear is ego-based and faith is soul-based.
Give your soul a chance to counter each point that your fear brought up.

I think you will find that if you really dig deep and go within, you no longer need fear to protect you on this journey. Your old patterns of letting fear take over will no longer work in your new life.

In my own life, I am writing my first full-length book. It’s a very personal book for me to write, and it requires me going within and really looking at myself and my life with what feels like a magnifying glass. And this can be a hard process that my ego doesn’t want me to go through – it can be painful and yucky and sad to relive certain events or examine my patterns and habits that haven’t always served me. And yet my soul knows that in sharing my story – in putting it out into the world – it will not only help to heal myself, but hopefully others as well who are sharing similar experiences.

So when my fear starts taking over (and boy is it strong!), I recognize it for what it is: a scared ego that just wants me to be comfortable.

And I thank it and let it know that we can’t learn and grow if we always stay comfortable.
And then I get back to writing.

So please take some time today and look at the role fear plays in your own life. Give it a voice – let it be heard. And then either crumble it up or counter what it had to say with all of the reasons why these fears and ways of sabotaging your spirit will no longer work in your new, soulful life.

And then get back to what you know you need to be doing to grow into the person that you were meant to become.

Jodi Chapman writes Soul Speak – a daily blog that focuses on seeing life through a lens of gratitude and positivity. She is the bestselling author of the Soulful Journals series – writing-prompt journals that help you go within and get to know yourself better. She is also the author of the upcoming book, Go For It: Get Out There and Start Living! She believes that our thoughts become our reality, and our actions lead us to our dreams. She is happily married to her best friend and co-writer, Dan Teck. They live in southern Oregon with their four fuzzy kids. www.soulspeakbyjodi.com

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Jodi Chapman on August 25th, 2011 in Uncategorized | 1 comment Read related posts in change, fear, life lessons, personal growth

Pushing Through the Obstacles

Sometimes we are on a roll in our lives where everything feels like it’s going really well and flowing effortlessly.

And then we add something new – something that is out of the norm from our every day life. We stretch a little bit out of our comfort zone and expect things to continue flowing.

And sometimes they do.
But sometimes we come across obstacles where we didn’t expect them to be.
Sometimes we even come across road blocks that seem to be right in the way of reaching our dreams.

When this happens, take a look at these obstacles and notice where they are coming from and what messages they are conveying.

Are they coming from fear – is our ego stepping in and warning us that it might be scary to try new things?

Are they coming from outdated beliefs that we have about achieving success and finding true happiness?

Or maybe we haven’t stretched our adventure muscles in awhile and just need more practice.

Over the past week, I have been writing my book, and I have stumbled upon many obstacles – some that I had a feeling would show up and others that I’ve been surprised by.
And while I recognize them for what they are (old fears and distractions coming up to keep me comfortable), I still have to work through them and move them aside. This dream is too big to allow anything to stand in my way.

I was listening to a powerful telesummit yesterday with Jack Canfield where he was talking about how we can live our ideal life – even with the obstacles.

He brought up the great point that we are always going to have obstacles – but our response to these obstacles is entirely our choice.

We get to choose our thoughts, which means we also get to choose our outcome.

So the next time we are reaching for our dream and we come across an obstacle – take some time to go within and try to get to the bottom of the message it brings up. And then thank it for showing up and teaching you more about yourself, and either push through it or go around it. Keep moving forward.

We are all learning lessons every day. And with each lesson, we are all getting closer and closer to our truest self – our divine soul.

And every obstacle and road block is helping us do just that. They are also great tools to show us just how passionate we are about achieving our dreams and living our ideal life.

Every obstacle we push through and every barrier we eliminate leads us closer to our dreams.

Jodi Chapman writes Soul Speak – a daily blog that focuses on seeing life through a lens of gratitude and positivity. She is the bestselling author of the Soulful Journals series – writing-prompt journals that help you go within and get to know yourself better. She is also the author of the upcoming book, Go For It: Get Out There and Start Living! She believes that our thoughts become our reality, and our actions lead us to our dreams. She is happily married to her best friend and co-writer, Dan Teck. They live in southern Oregon with their four fuzzy kids. www.soulspeakbyjodi.com

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Jodi Chapman on August 18th, 2011 in Uncategorized | No comments Read related posts in challenges, change, dreams, personal growth

The Power of Labels

Have you ever had a moment where you wanted to change in some way, but you didn’t because it seemed too crazy, too out of the box, too “not you”?

The labels we give ourselves are really powerful.
They can define us – and this can be empowering or stifling depending on where the label came from (our higher self or our comfort zone). If your higher self created the label, then you know it’s something great that you either currently embody or you can strive for. If you create labels for yourself from a point of low self esteem, comfort, or because you think you should – then they can hinder your growth and box you in to a life of comfort and stagnation.

I recently took a look at what labels I give myself – both professionally and personally.
I have been designing, writing, and making journals for over six years. Our business completely supports us, and I am comfortable calling myself an entrepreneur, a designer, and a creative spirit. But for some reason I had some blocks with calling myself a writer and an artist. For me, these words were powerful and I had to step back and think if I could truly embody these labels.
It’s so funny to realize this – the power of words is so strong!
I AM a writer and I AM an artist.
I can choose to create these labels for myself and fully embrace them.
Look at your own life.

What labels do you use to define yourself?
What labels do others use to define you?
Take some time today to write down these labels.

You could write: mother, friend, good cook, likes Chinese food, sensitive, artist, computer savvy, deep thinker, seeker, spiritual, nag, dependent, emotional, etc.

Write down every word you can think of that you would use to describe yourself.

Next, take a look and see if it truly describes the person that you want to be – your best self. If it doesn’t, get rid of it. Think about where each label came from. Is it something that you created for yourself or something that someone gave you that never seemed to fit (or no longer fits)?

Are there any labels you would like to add? Anything that you would like use to define yourself?

Here is an example of how powerful it can be when someone else labels us:
Let’s say you have always wanted to sing, but in junior high your choir teacher said that while you had a nice voice, you really weren’t able to project it. So you probably would never be a professional singer. So the label you put on yourself was that you had a soft voice and probably shouldn’t sing in public. Years go by and the love for singing is still inside of you – you receive support from friends and family urging you to use your voice and sing out. But that darn label is still there.

But… what if you created a new label for yourself? What if you said that you were a singer? There is no judgement in this word alone. It just is. You could then embrace that label and do what singers do: sing!

You can also create labels for yourself that you grow out of.

And when that happens, it’s hard to let it go because you have become defined by this label – it is part of you.

What if you loved Chinese food. It was your favorite food ever. And then one day, it didn’t taste as good to you anymore. And you kept eating it because you had labeled yourself as someone who liked Chinese food. And you had created a life around this label – you would go eat it with friends every week, you would cook it for yourself at home. It was a comfortable identity – but it was no longer serving you because you realized that you no longer loved it like you used to.

This is a funny example, but you could take out “Chinese food” and replace it with any part of your life that no longer feels like “you.” And if you do decide to relabel yourself as someone who no longer loves Chinese food – there may be friction. Your friends will no longer get to see you weekly at the restaurant. They may feel hurt and wonder why you are choosing to not be there. They may take it personally instead of realizing that you simply don’t like the food anymore. But you know that it’s simply because you no longer like this type of food. And why would you put a label on yourself that no longer fit?
Continuing to look into the labels we create for ourselves is part of self growth.

If a label is no longer serving you – if it no longer represents who you are or who you would like to become – than replace it with one that does.

“But I always have been that.”
or
“But everyone expects me to be that.”
aren’t reasons to continue being someone that you no longer are.

This isn’t an easy process, but it’s so worthwhile to go through.

It’s part of becoming conscious and truly being aware of how we define ourselves.

The first step is realizing our labels.

The second step is making sure that each label fits who we are and want to become.

Living a conscious life is a lifelong practice that takes some work – but it’s so worth it!

Jodi Chapman writes Soul Speak – a daily blog that focuses on seeing life through a lens of gratitude and positivity. She is the bestselling author of the Soulful Journals series – writing-prompt journals that help you go within and get to know yourself better. She is also the author of the upcoming book, Go For It: Get Out There and Start Living! She believes that our thoughts become our reality, and our actions lead us to our dreams. She is happily married to her best friend and co-writer, Dan Teck. They live in southern Oregon with their four fuzzy kids. www.soulspeakbyjodi.com

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Jodi Chapman on August 14th, 2011 in Uncategorized | No comments Read related posts in change, conscious living, labels, personal growth