Calming the Mind

Broken to Joy: Mind Games

(video) Sometimes we’ve just got to go for it and let our heart speak.
Here is my heart speaking to yours about a topic we all love: how we’re becoming better people through spirituality, through working with our lovely minds… And how that gets in our way sometimes.
This is the second video where I challenged myself to let my heart speak with out mental preparation and to drop back into heart whenever I noticed my mind talking… the mind to heart pauses can be annoying if you want a fast pace!
You are welcome, for your own sanity, to use the pauses to sink deeper into your own heart.
I’d love to know how this experiment goes for you!
Enjoy!,
Elena
theJoyLab.net

Broken to Joy: Moving from Head to Heart?

(video) This video was a personal challenge… to be in my heart!

First, to speak from the heart with no preparation other than to have the intention to talk about something useful that we can all relate to. Second, whenever I start talking from my mind to pause… and drop back into heart space.

So, the pauses in this video are just that: me moving from head to heart. This is the first time I’ve done this on video so it is a slow process…
This could be annoying to watch!

Maybe if you take the challenge yourself, and every time I get quiet you drop as deeply into yourself as you can, then it might be as fun to watch as it was to make! Who knows?!

It would be really cool to hear how this experiment went for you!

Enjoy!,
Elena
theJoyLab.net

Broken to Joy: How to Recognize Resistance & Make Friends With It

(video) Resistance can be tricky to recognize… if it is working properly it is designed to distract you from the pain underneath it. How can you recognize resistance and how can you deal with it once you do? This video shows you one way that I’ve found works well.

What’s your experience with resistance and making friends with it?

Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net

Broken to Joy: How to Let Go, Part 2

(video) Once we’re ready to quit the cycle of denial and reliving our pain, we can acknowledge it and let it go… Oh happy day!
Here’s one technique that I use with clients for acknowledging pain – without denying or reliving.

What’s your experience?

Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net

Broken to Joy: How to Let Go, Part 1

(video) We tend to do a mixture of two things when we’re faced with something that we don’t like: we deny it and we relive it in our heads over and over. Neither of these are terribly helpful for letting go of the pain.

What’s your experience with these things?

Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net

Broken to Joy Series: How to Be Present Using Body Sensations

(video) The body is an amazing tool for awareness. Eckhart Tolle calls the body a portal to presence and many, many, many traditions use body based practices, because the body, unlike the mind, is always operating in the present moment.

Ground into the body, ground into the present.

Why?

Because a body movement only happens right now. A moment ago was a different movement and the next will change again. Yes, sometimes these changes are quite small and with sufficient attention even they can be noticed. Physical sensations change every moment, too. (Check it out for yourself!)

And, so it becomes a game, getting curious about the body… What is my body doing and feeling right now? How is this moment different? And this one? And this? And as the mind gets intrigued about the dance, the dance of walking, of typing, of running, of driving… the dance of living.

It’s so much fun!
What body awareness practices do you do?

Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net

Broken to Joy series: Turning "I don't know how" into "I can"

(video) The journey from feeling broken to feeling joy can be an arduous one… one major roadblock for me was the pernicious idea, “But I don’t know how to change!”

This video offers a simple way to challenge that belief… Open the door to the idea that, “I can!”

 

(article)
So, here’s me, in pain, with a dear friend guiding me gently and skillfully through my desire to change a destructive habit of thinking “I’m not good enough” (I’m not smart enough, skilled enough, experienced enough,beautiful enough, strong enough, etc, etc, etc), and after we get through a big chunk of what was happening for me (I wanted to stay small and unnoticed, so that I would be safe!) I get scared. I hit a big pocket of fear, and out comes my tried and true, “but I don’t know how to do this!”

And I believe it. I convince myself instantly with those eight little words that I can’t do it.

In that moment, everything stops. I can’t actually go any further because, I suddenly believe that I am not capable of change. I believe that I don’t know how and so I shut the door to any next step that could occur.
Slam!
Bummer.

If you believe that you cannot do something, you make it pretty hard to do it.
Practically impossible.
Because, whether you actually can or not, you probably won’t even try.
And if you don’t try then you don’t teach yourself how to do it.
You don’t give yourself the chance to try and figure it out.
You don’t allow yourself the process of learning how.
You don’t learn that actually, you can.
What a bummer.

This is especially problematic when you feel broken in some way, and that there is no way out – that you don’t know how to change it. That you can’t. And of course, the belief that you don’t know how to grow, how to evolve, leads to stagnation. You stay broken.
Double bummer.

And the real kicker is that this is a belief that you can change if you decide to!
Super!

Beliefs are funny things. Often we believe something so deeply or for so long that we believe that it is a fact, something that we can’t change. And once you believe that something is fact, you act as if it is and you create your reality around that. If you believe deeply enough or long enough that you can’t do things then you will begin to live like that. You get your own nice pile of stagnant muck to carry around.
Major bummer.

What to do?
First realize that beliefs are thoughts and thoughts can change.

You think that you cannot do something. You can decide to change that thought and think that you can. You can decide that it is at least worth trying to figure out how… you can decide to play with the idea that you can do it, that you are capable of change, evolution and growth.
Mega Super!

And if you can get that far, and maybe even if you can’t, feel what it feels like to believe that you can. Feel into what that new belief gives you. And if you can begin to believe it, then open up to that belief, entertain it, cultivate it and see what comes to you as a result. So many times in my personal experience and that of my clients, once this shift is made about something, like magic we start noticing all kinds of things that help us accomplish the task at hand.

I decided to try on the belief that I could change my habit of “not good enough” and suddenly quotes started popping up in emails, friends started telling me stories of how they’d changed, my friend lead an EFT session on it, etc, etc, etc.
Miraculous.
Wonderful.
Life changing.
Super nova.

Exercise for Appreciating and Shifting Beliefs
You can do the following life coaching exercise by asking yourself a few questions and feeling into the answers. For stubborn beliefs, it can really help to capture all of your answers on paper.

First, ask yourself, what do I get out of believing that ‘I don’t know how”? What does that give me? How has that helped me in the past and how does it serve me right now?

Capture what comes. Note down, draw or record the words, images, colors, smells, sounds, scenes, memories, etc that flow past.

Once the flow has stopped, rest for a bit and then put all that you have captured in front of you and let any thoughts, emotions and reflections arise. Somethings may become clear now, or maybe not. The point here is to feel into what your past beliefs were. Beliefs aren’t necessarily rational, so you don’t need to understand them, just feel them.

One common feeling here is protection, that you are protecting yourself. Protecting yourself from the pain of failure, derision, abuse, etc may have been really useful in your past.

I was terrified of being abandoned as a child, for instance, and so I thought that I had to be perfect in everything I did. Otherwise I might get abandoned for doing something wrong. Thinking that I didn’t know how to do some things was a way to not do it, and avoid doing it wrong!
Massive bummer.

Recognize that usually we have these beliefs because of things that we experienced in our past and that they made a lot of sense for those situations. We’re very skilled beings at enduring hardship, at navigating traumatic situations and crisis and surviving intact and relatively sane. If you dig deep, you will usually find amazing wisdom in what you did to survive.

Let gratitude surface.
Appreciate the wisdom that allowed to you navigate situations and live to be doing this exercise today.
You’re a smart cookie.
What a relief.

Second, ask yourself, what would happen if the belief that “I don’t know how”, isn’t true? What would it be like to believe that I can do this? How does it feel to believe that I can? How does it feel to believe that I am able to change, grow and evolve around this? What do I get out of the belief that I can?

Again capture what comes, rest and reflect.

Third, usually one of three things will happen now. Either you will see wisdom in changing your belief and you will change it quickly and easily, or you will see the wisdom in changing and yet it will be difficult for you to change, or you will not see wisdom in changing and will keep your old belief (now more assured in your way of thinking).

For the second situation, I offer this advice:
The simplest thing to do in this case is to look at why you believe that you cannot change your belief easily and quickly, and to go through the same process above with this belief.

In fact you can do this process with any belief that you want to challenge and understand better.

If this process isn’t effective for you, play with other methods of belief exploration (EFT, Body Code, etc) and go from there.

In any case, enjoy feeling that you have choices!

Enjoy!,
Elena

Accepting Rejection as a Natural Part of Life

Notes from Hauts de Nimes

I used to believe that things come into my life as a result of where I was at as a person, my stage of development. So, I would ask myself thinks like, why is rejection coming to me right now? What am I trying to teach myself? And even more important, what can I change so that it doesn’t come again? What can I learn and do so that I don’t ever have to face this again?

The underlying assumption or hope was that the more I evolved the fewer of these difficult things would come into my life. Ah, the life of angles, of saints, of awakened beings…

Which is a great idea, a lovely dream to have. And it is entirely possible that really believing that makes it so.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked for me that way. So far, with all of the stages of evolution that I’ve moved through, these things still appear which has led me to a new idea.

What if rejection comes into my life, not as a commentary on where I am as a person, but because rejection is as normal as acceptance? That life is cyclic, like the seasons, that there is a natural flow of expansion and contraction, of action and rest, of growth and recovery, of complex and simple, of painful and nice, of rejection and acceptance. And that things like rejection will always arrive in their time.

My challenge then becomes to grow and evolve as a person and to deal with these cycles in healthier and better ways over time. And that on that mythical day when I finally sprout wings, that though I will still experience rejection as a part of the natural cycle of life, I will smile through the pain as it flows through, polish my halo and keep on going without wondering what I’ve done wrong. I will know that everything is just perfect, that these times are a part of the natural flow of life, as natural as the tides.

I like this dream even more.

Confidence as a Habit

Hauts De Nimes Tennis Academy

I was assisting at a tennis camp this summer and I noticed that I have some unconscious that are quite confidence killing…

I started thinking about this because we were playing a spontaneous game, tossing balls around while running, and one of the players kept apologizing when he would throw the ball and the catcher didn’t catch it.

It occurred to me that, what if, instead of deciding that his ball throwing was “wrong”, he challenged that assessment and decided to view it as a natural part of learning to throw (while running!) or part of the variety of life? He could appreciate that his crazy throws gives him and the catcher a chance to move in new and interesting ways and adds the fun of surprise into the game. What is there to say sorry about? He might choose, instead, to say, “Thanks!” or “That was fun!” or “Whoa! That was a good one!”

It was such a profound realization that I decided to not apologize for any of my crazy throws. You can imagine how much more confident I felt in this situation by finding fun in the unexpected versus feeling sorry about it.

The point here wasn’t that I threw any better, it was that I thought and felt differently about it. I was immediately more confident, because I was doing the same actions with an attitude that allowed me to believe in the value of my actions. That was a game changer.

And it was a lot more fun to play! And maybe my throws did get better just because I felt encouraged to play and practice longer.

 

Changing Thoughts and Feelings Can Build Confidence

How you think and feel about things determines your relationship to them. Change your thoughts and feelings, change your relationship. A “bad” throw becomes a “fun” throw.

This makes sense especially if you view “bad” as a set of decisions (thoughts). Your bad and my bad might even be different. And though you can probably discover some situations in which a throw would be “unacceptably bad”, like someone getting hurt, unacceptable is probably way beyond the “bad” that you are apologizing for, and that could be reassessed as fun.

 

Changing Your Game: A Confidence Practice to Play With

In any case, if you would like to play with improving your self-confidence, find an area in your life where you would like to improve your self-confidence and do a review of your thoughts on the activities in that area. Identify actions or patterns that you habitually view as “bad” or “poor” and see which ones can be reassessed as “normal”, “interesting”, “spontaneous”, “surprising”, “fun”, etc. Be creative and generous with yourself. And be honest as this will work best if you actually believe what you are telling yourself!

Then you can start changing your habits, from confidence-killing thoughts to confidence-building ones. Changing habits takes some time, so be patient and compassionate with yourself.

 

The Flow of the Practice

Usually you will start with just being conscious of the old patterns after they happen, then as your consciousness of them increases you will become conscious of them while they are happening and eventually you will be conscious of them in time to make new choices.

So, for example you might try this: the next time you are doing those actions just notice your old confidence-killing thought patterns and, after you do them, remind yourself of the possibility of the new ways to view the actions. Keep noticing the old patterns and reminding yourself of other possibilities, just as possibilities (no pressure to change, just a suggestion that change is possible). Eventually, with patience and repetition of the new possibilities you will notice the patterns in time to think the new thoughts before the old ones have a chance to come. New patterns will be established.

 

A Final Thought on Keeping it Fun

One thing to think about is that the less frustration you put into the mix (about how long it is taking to change this habit, that you have the habit in the first place, etc, etc, etc), the faster it will change. This is because frustration adds another layer that you have to work through to be what you want to be.

Start small and practice easy things first to get the hang of it, to build your confidence with the practice and the best way for you to do it. Then work your way into changing bigger, more difficult patterns.

 

And remember that ultimately, you are perfect as you are right now, and not to take anything too seriously, especially yourself!

 

Enjoy!