(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
(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
(video) Patience helps lighten the load. You feel safer and more confident making change easier.
Frustration adds another layer of ick to work through.
What’s your experience with these two?
Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net
(video) Caught up in a storm? How to stop the thunder and lightening?
The third step, after remembering that your thoughts aren’t you (you have thoughts like you have a shirt) and practicing remembering that enough that it is easy to do… you can finally remember in the middle of chaos!
Stepping out of turmoil is but a practice away…
Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net
(video) Stopping all that noise in your head?
First, remember that you are not your thoughts and feelings. Remember that you HAVE thoughts and feelings, like you have a book or a pen. This creates some breathing space in the middle of chaos when your thoughts and feelings seem to be your whole world.
Then, since most of us have a strong habit of thinking as if we are our thoughts and feelings – that our thoughts are all that exist – it’s important to practice this “new” perspective… Changing that habit takes practice, so doing something on a regular basis that reminds us is useful!
There are lots of things you can do to remind yourself… pick one and do it!
What’s your experience?
Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net
(video) A juicy bit… How do we stop the thoughts and emotions that are causing us so much pain and turmoil?
The bad news is we can’t.
The good news is we can create a way to not be overwhelmed by them, a way to step out of them and back into ourselves. We can stop thinking and feeling that our thoughts and emotions are our whole world by remembering that actually we are much bigger than they are… we are not our thoughts and feelings, we are having thoughts and feelings.
Simple. Profound. Effective.
Try it for yourself and see & feel the difference.
And feel free to share your experiences so that we can grow and learn together, from each other.
Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net
(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
(video) Posture can be an easy way to check in with yourself and begin to shift habits.
Notice what you do with your body when you are feeling strong emotions like anger, fear, sadness, etc versus when you are joyful, excited, happy and see physically what the differences are… Then start to notice how you hold yourself in general, even when you are not feeling any emotion very strongly.
Many of us hold ourselves in habitual postures of protection for instance, rounding our shoulders and shielding our chest.
What ever you do, as you notice you can begin to play with those postural habits, gently adjusting the body by taking a deep breath in allowing that to expand, straighten, relax or otherwise adjust to upright alignment.
This becomes a fun game.
How am I sitting, standing, lying right now? What will happen if I breathe into this?
What are your posture habits? What do you do to play with them?
Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net
(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
