Tag: life

Find Peace in These Challenging Times by Connecting with Your Higher Self

by Mandie

Connecting with our higher selves can calm our nerves, bring us clarity, bring us comfort, and get our minds and bodies back in balance when life has turned upside down. And there’s no doubt that these are challenging and stressful times right now. It’s not always easy to get in touch with that part of ourselves, and it is particularly hard to do so in a crisis because all the the worry, stress, and anxiety is clouding over our thinking and we’re stuck in a fog.

According to The Law of One, a channeled text from a being known as Ra (a collective of soul consciousness that serve as a memory data bank), our higher self is actually us from the future. It’s essentially a version of our soul that’s further along its path of evolution and is accompanying our physical self as a sort of guide/mentor. (If you want to learn more about what Ra has to say click here.)

Connecting with our higher selves can give us a glimpse of our true nature – which from my limited understanding is like a pure love energy with unlimited potential and no fear and resistance. It gives us a reprieve from the anxiety we feel as a result of everything going on in our lives.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
– Buddha

Clear the Clutter

You can’t expect to be able to go from feeling stressed out and overwhelmed to a calm and clear state of consciousness. The struggles of life sometimes need to be addressed in a practical way, or at least make an actionable plan of something you can do toward resolving the problems. Some things are obviously outside of our control, and we’re forced to make the best of things the way they are.

Clear up the clutter in your mind so you can stop spinning your wheels and mentally relax.

Write down everything that’s on your mind – what your thoughts and feelings are about what you’re struggling with. If there are any actions you can take that would help ease your mind, pick one and do it.

“Suffering is due to our disconnection with our inner soul. Meditation is establishing that connection.”
– Amit Ray

Meditate for 5-10 Minutes

I know it sounds short, but here are my reasons:

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a very busy mind. When I try to meditate for 20 minutes or so, I either start getting frustrated with how much my mind wanders, I start falling asleep, or I never even meditate at all because I don’t have enough time.

When I decide to meditate for less time, there’s a higher likelihood of me actually doing it.

Sit in a way that’s comfortable, in a chair or on the floor. Try to have decent posture, and if that’s difficult due to body tension or injury you can sit with your back against a wall or lean against the back of a chair. This tip came from my husband, who’s been studying martial arts/healing arts/mind-body training for over 20 years. You can even lie down to meditate, just proceed with caution if you tend to fall asleep when you relax!

You don’t actually have to be sitting in a traditional posture with your thumb and fingers touching to calm your mind. Although this may be ideal, our busy lives don’t always provide us the luxury of being able to do things in the best possible way. It’s better to make time to practice meditating when and however we can than not do it at all because we don’t have an ideal situation for it.

In fact if we can get better at relaxing our body and mind in any given situation throughout the day, we begin to live in the present moment more and more of the time.

I like to focus on feeling one part of my body relaxing at a time, every time I exhale. Working from the top down, I start with relaxing the face and head, then the neck, shoulders, upper back and chest, stomach and lower back, pelvis, and so on until I get to my feet. I do a few breaths for each body “section.” This gets my focus away from my thoughts and releases tensions I didn’t even realize I had.

Another thing I’ve found helpful is to not get upset when I notice my mind wandering. Just acknowledge the thought, then bring your attention back to your breathing or physical body.

Read something in the spiritual genre

Read something in the spiritual genre that feels true to you. Some of my favorite books, are The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama, The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, A Course in Miracles or related works. Or listen to related podcasts or radio shows. These help remind me that we are more than our bodies and minds and are part of something much, much bigger.

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Photo credit: Kirsty Barnby on Unsplash

March 26, 2020
How to Protect Yourself From Other People’s Negativity

by Mandie

When I was a kid, it seemed like I felt pain more than anyone else around me. Not just physical pain, but emotional pain. I cried easily, over many things. I had an especially hard time when people were fighting around me, and I didn’t even have to be involved. I could feel the negative energy and felt upset and overwhelmed. I didn’t have a constructive way of handling it.

Maybe other people felt just as much pain as me and were simply better at not showing it. Or maybe they learned how to not let it get under their skin the way I did. I will never know. (I don’t believe being sensitive is a bad personality trait that we need to get rid of. It’s driven me to become good at relationships and communication and it’s in large part the reason why I have a compassionate and empathetic personality.)

For years I’ve searched for ways to maintain inner peace, or ways to stop mental and emotional chaos once it’s started.

Here are the most powerful lessons I’ve learned, broken down into five sections below:

1. The real source of our pain

Your thoughts and judgments cause emotional pain – not other people’s words or actions. I used to focus my attention on trying to get other people to change, or my environment to change, to make myself feel better. Although these things can influence how we feel, if we focus only on changing our surroundings and not ourselves, we’ll be playing a game we can never win. Eventually, I grasped the idea that trying to control another person’s behavior is impossible. I shifted my attention to the only thing I could control: myself.

Once I began researching this idea more in depth, I came to understand that not only is controlling someone else’s behavior impossible, it’s also pointless. Whatever problem we’re blaming them for really resides within our thinking.

Here’s what I mean: Two different people can witness the same interaction and perceive different levels of negativity in the exchange. This is due to our own unique set of beliefs through which we view the world.

“Negative” interactions can actually give us opportunities to change something profound in ourselves if we let them. If we perceive things as negative, we are affected negatively. If we perceive things as positive, or at least try to find a silver lining, we are affected positively.

2. Responsibility

Learning that my perceptions and judgments were the true source of my emotional pain is changed my outlook on life significantly. I learned I could influence how much or whether or not I suffered, and I no longer felt afraid of how others were going to act or how I was going to react.

It’s empowering knowing this. But, like Uncle Ben says in Spiderman, “…with great power comes great responsibility.” Once you understand that your interpretations of things matter more than whatever anyone else does, you can’t deny your responsibility – for the way you treat others, the way you treat yourself, and how happy or miserable you are.

It’s easier to blame other people than take responsibility for your inner peace. You feel better about yourself if you can blame others. You get to be the victim and receive attention from others for your suffering which makes you temporarily feel better. You can’t blame others for your suffering anymore. If you do, you’re lying to yourself.

“Accountability breeds response-ability.”
– Stephen R. Covey

3. The two selves: love and fear

I believe that we are more than our bodies and our minds. I believe we have some sort of soul, spirit, or higher consciousness that is beyond our bodies and minds that we have yet to fully understand.

This part of us is said to be our true self – which is pure unconditional love, creative, limitless, cannot be harmed, and never dies. In many spiritual schools of thought, this higher part of us is made up of the same energy that makes up the entire universe and binds everything together.

Some people call this part of us God, or at least say that it’s connected with God. However, when we are young and begin to develop language and understand our place in the world, our minds create an idea about who we think we are (called the Ego in psychology), and how we think the world works based on fear, lack, and limitation. We suffer because we believe the lies our mind creates and try to live as if they were true.

4. The more someone is hurting, the more hurtful they will usually act

Remember the last time you heard someone say something to you that hurt you? The truth is more than likely they were stressed out and/or upset. They were probably functioning from fear. If you reacted by feeling attacked/defensive and wanting to attack back, that means you let their fear pull you in so that you started operating from fear as well.

Albert Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.” You can’t solve fear with more fear. The only way to solve fear is to meet it with love. If you can recognize that when someone is attacking you they’re in a state of fear and then you respond from love instead of attacking back, you will help them as well as yourself.

Of course, you can still communicate to them how you felt about what happened and stick to your boundaries, and that doesn’t mean you’re coming from fear. It means you’re acknowledging the situation and having an honest dialogue to improve your relationship. Acting rude, cold, passive aggressive, or attacking back means you’ve let fear win.

“If you do not have control over your mouth, you will not have control over your future.”
– Germany Kent

5. Accept your emotions – don’t try to change them

Sometimes when I’d get upset about other people’s negativity, I would end up being more upset about how I felt about it than about what originally happened. Because I did not want to be so easily upset all the time, I would get upset with myself for feeling upset! As you can imagine that only made things worse. If you understand that your feelings can’t hurt you unless you stay in that negative state for a long time, you can accept them and move on much easier.

You can say to yourself, yes, I feel really pissed off and really upset about what happened and that’s okay. Your feelings will pass like clouds in the sky. When you don’t like how you feel, you try to make yourself feel differently. That’s when you get stuck. You’re trying to force your feelings away because you see them as being bad, and you will only feel worse and worse. Acknowledging that it’s okay to feel upset will lead to a much faster turnaround from your state.

What strategies do you use for handling other people’s negativity? Add your favorites in the comments!

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(Also published on Addicted2Success.com. Image credit: Unsplash)

November 27, 2019
Function From Love and Watch Life Love You Back
Have you ever noticed when something really good happens to you or you’re in a really good mood, other things in your life seems to effortlessly fall into place? People say and do things and events play out in ways that boost you up even more? Conversely, have you noticed that when you’re in a bad mood or one unpleasantly jarring thing happens, other things in your life begin to spiral downward as well?

That seems to be the case more often than not, in my experience. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence and here’s why:

Everything is energy

“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”

— Albert Einstein

Einstein believed everything is energy. In addition, he’s saying there are different frequency levels things vibrate at (think radio waves). Things we perceive as physical are vibrating at a lower frequency; things we can’t perceive at a higher one. Since humans are a part of the universe, that means we too are made up of energy. I believe we are vibrating at different frequency levels as well, depending on our level of consciousness (which can change).

This explains why some people ‘just click’ when they first meet, why some close relationships seem to grow apart for no reason, why we enjoy a particular kind of music (different music = different vibration frequency), why that can change depending on our mood, why some people can sense energies that others can’t, and a whole lot more.

Our energy affects our environment and other people.

It seems the whole universe is one big cosmic energy interaction that has a kind of order and purpose that we could study for a lifetime and still not completely wrap our heads around. I’ve heard the idea that our energy affects everything else from several other sources as well, and it would make sense if everything is connected.

Scientific sources have also stated that we can affect things consciously. One example is Dr. Masaru Emoto, author of New York Times best seller The Hidden Messages in Water, who studied the effects of human intention on water crystals. He claimed that positive thought, prayer, music, and written words created symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing crystals when the water was frozen, and negative words and thoughts created distorted, ugly crystals.

We are not a victim of our life; we are the creator of it.

The Celestine Prophecy, a spiritual adventure story (one of my all-time favorite spiritual growth books which I reference in other articles), talks about this concept as well.

“…the basic stuff of the universe, at its core, is looking like a kind of pure energy that is malleable to human intention and expectation in a way that defies our old mechanistic model of the universe–as though our expectation itself causes our energy to flow out into the world and affect other energy systems.”

— James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

You may have heard of the law of attraction: the idea that we can consciously create our reality from our intentions and beliefs. Whatever level of vibration we are functioning from will attract things in life to us which are of the same vibration. I think the law of attraction is misunderstood and over-simplified sometimes, but as long as we focus on raising our energy level with honest and pure intentions, I believe it will benefit us and everyone around us.

But there’s another more physical way we create our reality I don’t think is often talked about. We make thousands of decisions every day on how we do everything: our word choice and tone of voice we use while speaking to others, how we drive, how we move and carry ourselves, whether or not we decide to say hi to our neighbor, whether or not we run that errand, whether or not we eat that cookie, and on and on. (This is my husband’s theory, and it’s pretty awesome.)

Whatever our strongest, most persistent beliefs are about ourselves and the world, will literally create that reality for us through our actions.

For a lot of people, these daily behaviors are mostly unconscious; not true for people who have developed self-awareness. But all of these actions are a reflection of our state of mind and vibration level. If we want to change it we can work from the outside in – by conducting ourselves consciously in the way we would if we were at the level we wanted to be.

How do we raise our energy level?

To raise our energy to the level where life loves us back, I believe the answer is by getting into a state of consciousness where love, appreciation, joy, or faith fills us up and leaves no room for the fear and insecurity of the mind.

Here are 11 simple strategies to get you started:
1. Meditate. People have been meditating for centuries. There are many different ways to do it, but the purpose is always to bring your awareness out of your head and realign with your true self.
2. Recall a memory that evokes an emotion like love, safety, or gratitude, or use your imagination to generate the feeling.
3. Go somewhere with beauty, like nature, to bring your awareness to the present and good emotions.
4. Focus on your breathing. It can calm your mind and bring you back to the present.
5. Engage in thought-provoking/inspiring conversation with someone.
6. Exercise.
7. Do something to make someone else smile.
8. Let go of your worries and trust that everything will work out. Trust in whatever you trust in, that everything will be okay (I know, it’s harder than it sounds). Everything is as it’s meant to be.
9. Spend time with your favorite pets (animals naturally vibrate at a higher frequency than most humans).
10. Do something you love to do.
11. If you have nagging thoughts about an unresolved issue that are making it hard to be present, do one thing toward resolving it.
If you’re having trouble raising your energy level due to stubborn, dis-empowering and dejecting belief systems, try this. I say this in almost every one of my articles: You have to become aware of the thing you want to change before you can change it. Practice observing your thoughts, emotions, what you say when talking to others, and how you behave. Once you’ve gotten insight into your belief systems, question the belief’s validity. Is (this) belief I have about (that) even true?

“Questioning illusions is the first step in undoing them.”
– A Course in Miracles

Once you start consciously being able to raise your energy level you may find more people attracted to you, drawn like moths to a light. (If you have an issue with that you can set boundaries. You’re in charge of your life.) People will sense your change on an intuitive level and want to be around you more. They will also be lifted by your energy. They will feel happier, more inspired, think clearer, and be more creative. You’ll naturally bring out the best in others while you bring out the best in yourself – a win-win!

Summary

Everything in the universe is energy, and vibrating at different frequency levels, including us. Everything is connected. Not only does our energy affect everything else but we can consciously put our intentions out into the world and life will reflect them back to us. Another underrated way we create our reality is by every action we take and every word we say. How we conduct ourselves is a reflection of our state of mind/frequency level, and if we want to change that we can conduct ourselves consciously. When we raise our energy level we bring out the best in ourselves, in everyone around us, and we begin to see that life is happening for us, not against us.

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May 21, 2019
The Truth Can Suck. But it’s the Secret to Changing Your Life

By Mandie

Personal growth is not a walk in the park. If anyone tells you otherwise, they’re lying.

Do you really want to change your life? Then you’ve got to get real, you’ve got to get honest, and you’ve got to be willing to stick it out when things get ugly. There will be times you’ll want to quit. But if you keep going, it’s more than worth it. Because if you change yourself, you change your life.

This summer my husband and I and a couple friends were at a Lindsey Sterling concert (she’s an amazingly talented/creative violinist and dancer). In between songs she gave an inspiring speech about her personal growth and overcoming depression.

She said she used to be depressed, and someone told her once that she was choosing to be. She felt upset about it, understandably, but she said she realized that this person was right. She began working on herself and faced some tough truths. She said it took a lot of work, but eventually she succeeded at turning her mindset and her life around.

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
– Joe Klass, Twelve Steps to Happiness

My husband and I have talked a lot about the concept of looking in the mirror and taking responsibility for our happiness, and he helped me through some mentally shitty places. When I heard Lindsey speak I wanted to write about it.

What I’ve learned is that…

1. In order to change any mental or behavioral habits, you have to first look in the mirror and be honest with yourself.

I had to ask myself questions like, am I doing things that are sabotaging my growth or success? Am I doing or not doing things that are holding me back? Am I making excuses for my behavior or attitude? Am I blaming other people for it? What thoughts am I thinking that are making me feel this way?

I’m not necessarily talking about people who are clinically depressed or suicidal. I’m not saying, hey, you can just change your mindset if you try. Some people have more things working against them. Like a chemical imbalance or a gut flora problem affecting their brain for example, or some other cause, which can make changing their mood or perspective way harder.

But we can all still take responsibility for seeking out answers and taking steps toward making changes.

2. Justifications and excuses get us nowhere.

We humans are great at bullshitting ourselves. We make up all kinds of justifications for why we’re doing what we’re doing so we can still feel good about ourselves. But if we want change, we must take responsibility for our behavior and attitude.

3. We must try not to get down on ourselves when we see things we don’t like.

It can be extremely hard to face up to our faults, and equally hard not to let self-awareness crush our self-esteem. I had to be reminded many times that the purpose of looking in the mirror is to grow, not beat myself up over what I don’t like.

4. It’s easy when it’s easy.

All of your worst traits will be most prone to showing up when we’re hurt, scared, angry, upset in some way, or not feeling good.

To paraphrase my husband:

It’s easy to be the best version of you when things are going great. The challenge lies in being true to who you want to be when things are tough.

5. We need to be patient with ourselves.

It can feel like change takes forever. But looking back, it seems like the struggle and growth I went through happened so fast. I wasted so much time being upset about where I was at – that I wasn’t living at some ridiculously high standard I set for myself. Try to remember to be patient with yourself!

Sometimes it will also feel like you’re going backwards in your growth, but in the big picture you’re not. Remember the ups and downs are part of your journey, and a setback doesn’t mean you’re going backward overall.

Summary

If you want to change patterns that are holding you back, the truth will be the key to your transformation and success – and it will also piss you off. You must be willing to look in the mirror and admit the tough truths about yourself, stop making excuses and take responsibility for your happiness, try not to get down on yourself, be aware that your worst side shows up when you’re not feeling up to par, and be patient about change.

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April 29, 2019
How to Stop Limiting Your Potential: 3 Eye-Opening Insights That Can Change Your Life

By Mandie

Have you ever seen one of those videos on social media showing how you’ve been using certain products, or eating certain foods, wrong your whole life? And you say to yourself, “Wow! I never thought of doing it that way!” That’s a little like how I felt when my personal growth mentor (and future husband) gave me some insights on the life challenges I was struggling to resolve when we were first dating.

These insights turned my whole world upside down! I couldn’t unlearn what I had learned, so I had to change my old ways of functioning if I wanted to move forward. It was hard, but it was worth it.

Here are the 3 life changing insights I learned that can change your life:

1. If what you think, what you do, and what you say don’t line up, it can hurt your self-esteem and your credibility.

I said and did things that represented the person I wanted to be on the outside, while I hid the things I wasn’t proud of and lied just to keep on people’s good sides. My mentor figured this dishonest behavior probably was connected to the low self-esteem I struggled with (which affected everything in my life), and he was right!

Besides hurting how I felt about myself, he pointed out, I could lose my friends’ or family’s trust the second anyone found out I wasn’t being genuine. He said if you want people to be able to count on you, you need to actually be the person you present yourself to be.

I practiced paying attention and catching myself every time I was being dishonest. It can take a lot of work, but if you get your values/beliefs, words, and actions in alignment, the person people see is the person that you are. Some will like it and others will hate it, but those who stick with you are the ones who appreciate, respect, and admire you for who you are not for the image of yourself you present.

You will feel better about who you are, your relationships will benefit because people will trust you, and your word will actually mean something.

“Hiding how you really feel and trying to make everyone else happy doesn’t make you nice, it just makes you a liar.” 
Jenny O’Connell

2. What you believe about yourself dictates what you choose to say; but what you choose to say also dictates what you believe about yourself.

Another way I was unknowingly limiting myself was through my language. It seems like common sense that what you say aloud reflects what you believe, but what surprised me was that you can also reprogram your beliefs with what you chose to say.

Say “I need this” enough times when the truth is you want it, and you will begin to believe that you need it. Limiting words are things like can’t, always, never, and need. Non-limiting words/phrases are things like seems like, feels like, and right now.

For example, the statement “I can’t handle my life – it’s too hectic” makes you feel hopeless and disempowered, versus “I’m struggling to handle my life right now,” which reminds you that what you’re going through is temporary, and there’s hope for change in the future. The truth isn’t that you “can’t do it,” the truth is that you’re having a hard time “right now.

Whether you use limiting words/phrases about your abilities aloud or to yourself, you’re teaching your mind what to believe. Instead of using limiting words and phrases that aren’t true, try switching to more accurate and encouraging ones. Such as seems like, feels like, or right now.

3. You don’t need to control how you feel – you need to control how you act.

Trying to control your emotions is like trying to control waves in the ocean, you just can’t do it. And to make things worse, the harder you try the more frustrated you get – adding to your emotional overload. It wastes a ton of energy and gets you nowhere.

Instead, try to let your feelings be; realize that they will pass and focus on what you can control – what you say and how you act. You can feel angry but still talk calmly with the person you’re angry with. You can feel hurt but not treat the person you feel hurt by coldly or rudely.

Not being aware of the separation between feelings and actions can get you into a ton of trouble. I used to believe that if my feelings were strong enough I couldn’t help but act on them. Absolutely not true! This got me into trouble bigtime when I was younger.

I therefore believed that in order to act how I wanted I had to control how I felt. Learning that this too was complete B.S. changed my life. I no longer felt I had to put energy into doing something that was impossible.

“Heroes and cowards feel exactly the same  fear. Heroes just react to it differently.” 
Cus D’Amato

Wondering how to put these insights into action?

Start by growing your self awareness – this is the beginning of all growth. If you pay attention to yourself, you can align your values, words, and actions for a better relationship with yourself and with others, help make your mind work for you instead of against you, and handle overwhelming emotions without doing things you’ll regret later.

What insights have you learned that helped you see the world and/or yourself in a new and positive light? Let me know in the comments!

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(Also published on Addicted2Success.com. Image credit: Twenty20.com)

April 29, 2019
Life is a Balancing Act (short post)

Like holding a pose in dance or gymnastics, where muscles are micro-firing to keep us in alignment, we need to be constantly making adjustments in life to keep ourselves centered. I’ve been thinking lately about how important balance in life for our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being… and how much more I value it than I used to. I was a dancer and a gymnast, and when I was balancing in a pose I appeared still to onlookers, but little muscles throughout my entire body were firing – different ones engaging and disengaging in milliseconds. It’s the same in life. Things are constantly changing around us and we’re tweaking and adjusting things constantly to maintain balance.

You know when you’re out of balance – you feel terrible. And you might not be out of balance for the reason(s) you think. Everything affects everything else. Diet affects mental state, not just your physical appearance. You can meditate but still struggle with anxiety because your diet is crap. You could eat well but still feel drained all the time because you’re not exercising enough. Even things that are “healthy” can be bad for you in excess. Keep all aspects in mind when pursuing health in any form. Look at the big picture. Pay attention to how you feel and try making changes and see how you feel.

March 7, 2019

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