The Word of the Week - Acceptance

"I accept myself exactly as I am."

The above affirmation has helped me in so many ways as I continue upon this journey to self.  I often go back to this phrase repeatedly as a reminder that I need to be kind and gentle with myself, especially when I feel that I have somehow fallen short of a standard that I have set.

Say for example I set myself an intention to be calm and centred throughout the day but end up getting upset or angry for some reason or another.  I would then beat myself up for “failing” in my own personal directive.  However, I am reminded of a wonderful phrase from Iyanla Vanzant that states “you simply cannot fail in life!” This is especially true if you learn to view any mishaps that you have had along the way as a necessary experience for your ultimate growth into higher consciousness.

All too often we impede our development by getting stuck in the cycle of guilt and blame.  These emotions do nothing to lift your vibration; in fact all they do is send you on a spiral of doom and gloom that impedes your development.

Just as a mother would calmly soothe an upset child with a kind, loving and gentle tone, we also need the same loving care, but from ourselves.  If you cannot be kind to yourself, how can you possible expect someone else to be kind to you?  Further, without total acceptance of who you are how can you wholeheartedly accept the kindness of others especially if you feel you are undeserving?

Just for today, accept yourself exactly as you are; a reflection of all that is beautiful, your true essence.

Word of the Week - Reinvent yourself Everyday

The recurring theme that I try to impart in my weekly missives is that you ultimately hold the power and the control in determining the quality of life you desire.  Additionally,  you must own every single thought and its subsequent emotional feeling as deriving from inside of you and not based upon outside events, people or situations that flow into your life.  With this great creative power that you hold within you, did you realise that you can reinvent yourself EVERY SINGLE DAY?

This famous quote, whose earliest recording dates back as far as 1225,  “yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that is why it is called the present,” gives me the impetus to actually put a full stop in my events from the day before.  Even though I have not yet perfected the art, as I am a continual work in progress, I start each day as brand new and fresh!  I try not to hold on to any negativity that occurred the day before, be it a conflict with someone, or a situation that I disliked, and  do everything that I can to leave it where it is and that is in the past!

Before, if I had an argument with my ex-husband or more recently my surly teenagers, I would fester that argument into the next day by holding onto the tense emotions within myself and prepare to go again for round two the following day!  Now this became a habitual behaviour that I recognised I no longer wanted in my life and set about to change my mind set by understanding the above quote.

I realised that I used more of my precious energy by holding onto negativity and decided that I preferred to enjoy every day rather than to start a new one  holding onto to thoughts or situations from the past.

Now, each morning I set an intention that I carry nothing negative forward from the day before and that I start each day as a wonderful adventure, that allows me to  discover fantastic elements about myself with which I can work upon. 

This is how truly powerful you are; so be open to the wondrous creation of life and learn to re-invent the fabulousness of you, because you are an exceptional work of art that need not  waste another second upon your yesterdays.

Have an inspiring weekend!

The Word of the Week - What's in your head?

It only takes a small shift in your perception to become a more optimistic person and increase the amount of joy in your life on a daily basis.  If you were to review your days over the past week, analysing how many hours of the day you were genuinely happy, what kind of percentage would you come up with?

I set myself this very task, and can honestly say that 75% of my days are now filled with joy.  Unfortunately, I would not have been able to make this statement a few months ago, because my days weighted very heavily upon me being very unhappy with only a few moments of happiness occurring throughout the day. Thus,  I would have given myself a rough estimate of about 25% happy and the rest of the day spent in the doldrums.

I would look at the perceived negatives in my life, desperately hunting for a solution only to find myself mired deeper in a depression because I could not find one.  All I did was attract more of the same feelings and found myself on a  proverbial merry go round.  The more I thought about it the more unhappy I became!

There were two key elements that helped me turn my happiness percentage so high, first I developed a high level of gratitude on a daily basis for everything that I had  and secondly, my optimism!  Once I took ownership that ALL my feelings were generated by the thoughts in my head, I made a conscious decision not to blame anyone or anything outside of myself as the cause of my misery. 

I then asked myself two questions to everyone one of my worries, “what is the very worst that could happen and is it happening right now?”  Usually the last part of the question would result in an emphatic answer of no because most, if not all, of the scenarios that I was concerned about, were created in my head and that is the key to unlocking your unhappiness! Get out of your head with your usual way of thinking because if your percentage is quite low (less than 50%) it is a clear sign that you are in need a new way of thinking!

Have a very thoughtful weekend. 

The Word of the Week - A Healthy Dose of Self-Love

Oftentimes, when you embark upon any sort of personal development, you become your own worst enemy. We can be very hard on ourselves when we unconsciously revert back to our old ways of dealing with challenging situations that arise. We berate ourselves for our negative responses, which in turn fuel the ego’s remonstrations of our “perceived failure.”

When I feel myself heading towards this train of thought, I literally start to mother myself, as if I were a small child with a scraped knee, seeking comfort from my own mother, who would embrace me lovingly  and gently soothe my tears away.  Therefore, I would  give myself words of encouragement every time I exhibited  behaviours that caused the current imbalance.

So just for today, I thought it would be lovely to send an encouragement your way, to help inspire you not to give up on your journey to enlightenment.

“You are a beautiful, kind, caring and considerate soul

 who has the purpose of being a light to yourself and others,

as you negotiate through life’s trials and tribulations. 

It’s okay to fall down sometimes

because that only adds to the beauty of the growth with which you are aspiring to. 

All the lessons that you are learning,

both the highs and the lows,

are indeed a BLESSING from the Universe to help you on your way. 

Be kind to yourself in your self-talk,

know that you are a perfect creation of life

and that you desire only to unite and harmonise with the world around you.

Your presence in this world is unique,

in that even though there is an invisible bond that connects each and every one of us together,

your own individual light is necessary to this world. 

You are loved and lovable. 

So shine as bright as the star you intend to be.

Know that when you fall down, you can and definitely do get up,

because that is how powerful love is

and you my friend ARE LOVE.”

As always, wishing you peace and love on this wondrous journey.

The Word of the Week

“Be the change you want to see in the world”

Mahatma Ghandi

When I read this quote, it helps  me to understand that the journey to self-mastery and growth, will be one that will always keep me occupied until I go back to my source and to me, this is exciting!  Every minute of the day I am discovering new things to like and love about myself because I have decided that I am going to commit wholeheartedly to “be the change I wish to see in the world.”  This means changing the way I think, act and respond towards people and situations in my life.  More importantly, it is learning to love myself and others unconditionally.

Now, I would be lying if I said this is easy, it is not!  This has to be one of the most challenging concepts that I am trying to master but it is also the most fulfilling in terms of what it allows me to experience, as I negotiate my way through the minefield of my own learned behaviours and habits. 

Last week, I spoke about responsibility and one of the key elements in learning to love yourself unconditionally is to take full  responsibility for everything that you say and do, especially when you interact with others.  When you realise that YOU create the feelings of separateness from yourself and another person, you have no choice but to own the feelings that you create.  To love oneself requires that you learn to choose feelings that uplift you rather than those that bring you down, plus you have to go to task on the internal work that is required to pinpoint the root cause of your unloving behaviours. This will allow you to recognise, that every interaction you have is an opportunity to commit further to  your own self growth. 

For example, your partner/friend decides to mock you in respect of one of your beliefs.  You then become defensive and hurt that they have said such a thing and you respond by saying something equally hurtful.  Now, this causes a separateness between you and the other person, both of you now view each other without love in that moment. Now, if you go back to the scenario, it was your defensiveness that created the separate feelings.  Your ego used its power of recall from your own learned behaviours to create the emotion of defence and hurt; you then responded in a knee jerk fashion which ultimately made the situation worse.  Conversely, you could have acknowledged to yourself that your initial response is a learned behaviour that will take you away from peace and serenity, secondly, you now give yourself time to recognise that you have no need to defend your beliefs to anyone and that they have every right to voice their opinion.  You further recognise that it is the other persons learned behaviour that caused them to act that way and thus you do not have to take everything so personally. Thus, as a response to the comment you just smile and say nothing because you have now separated the behaviour from the person and can still have love for them, plus you have recognised that your own learned behaviour no longer serves you and you have now replaced it with a more loving response.

You can see by the above scenario, that the inner work that is required IS challenging , but it is also the most rewarding in that it allows you to achieve the goal of being more loving and nurturing to yourself as well as to others!

So I end today's word just as I began…..Be the change YOU want to see in the world!

Wishing you love and blessings for a wonderful weekend. 

Word of the Week - Responsibility

"You and only YOU are responsible for attracting people and situations into your life!"

As painful as this statement may seem too many, the fact remains that it is a truth.  Sometimes things that could be construed as negative occur in our lives to teach us something about ourselves, as a wakeup call to make a correction to our thinking or to our reactions to them.  Often times, out of any negative situation there is always a blessing of some sort hidden in the experience, which is always eventually revealed.

Now I can imagine that the above statement can be challenged in many ways in respect of the personal experiences people have had in their lives, which they would emphatically state that they did not attract such a negative experience into their existence.  However, when you research what that statement means and actually peel away the emotional beliefs and programming's that have helped to shape and mould you, you WILL find the truth in that statement.  Ultimately, you have to take responsibility for the "world" you have created.  Moreover, if you are unhappy with your world, you also have the power and the creativity to change it by going straight to the root cause and that is your thoughts.

As an example, you have asked a friend to do something for you, which they said they would, however, at the last moment your friend lets you down and forgets to do it.  You now have a myriad of emotions, annoyance that they have not done it, irritation at their obvious lack of caring for you and your feelings or even rejection that you feel they do not regard you highly enough to bother with your request.  The first observation is that all of these thoughts and accompanied feelings have occurred in your head.  Secondly, you have also created the emotive feelings that have ultimately disturbed your peace and joy.  Why, because they did not conform to the standards and ideals that you have created in your world where you dictate how people are to react and to respond to you.  Further, you have created this upset without even speaking to the person yet.

To take responsibility means it is imperative for you to explore your thought processes and recognise that YOU create the emotions. Once you recognise this fact, you can either choose to continue to be upset, thus destroying your serenity or you could see it as a teaching exercise and not take everything so personally; more importantly it gives you the opportunity to change a learned knee jerk reaction, to another thought process, which does not disturb your peace.

So this weekend, be a watcher of your thoughts and remember that you always have the power to make another choice!

Peace and blessings. 

The Word of the Week

Language and Affirmations

I have mentioned before in my weekly missives the importance of language and the way we use it in our everyday lives.  I cannot emphasise enough that this shift applied on a consistent basis, will improve the way you think about yourself and your interaction with others so that you live consistently upon a higher level of consciousness.

Words as well as sounds emit a vibration which has been scientifically proven to affect matter.  To simplify in this context, the words you say to yourself  as well as to others, more importantly the way  you say it, affects you and others on a physical level.  When you are living as a five sensory being (i.e. your life experience is limited to only what you can see, touch, smell, taste and hear), words can either uplift or hurt you by the emotion with which those words are said.  If you label and tell yourself that you are stupid, you will become that which you think and say; moreover you will attract people and situations into your life that will reinforce this negative belief. 

This is why affirmations are extremely important when you are desirous to change a particular aspect about yourself that no longer serves you.  However, there is one crucial proviso that renders an affirmation useless and that is the intention coupled with the emotion with which it is said.  You can tell yourself all day long that you are beautiful, but if YOU do not have the intention to eventually believe that you are beautiful, when you repeat this affirmation you will forever be saying the words but the vibration that it holds will diminish because the energy does not match the vibration. Even if you don’t believe an affirmation to be true for yourself at that particular moment you can still activate its power by having the intention that you WILL believe this to be true to you the more you say it.  The affirmation “I am beautiful inside and out” can be initially said in a timid way, almost as a whisper when you do not quite believe it about yourself, but as you continue to affirm these words with the underlying intention that each time you do say it, your belief grows stronger, you will eventually have all the components to make them have a real physical change in your life.

Affirmation coupled with emotive Intention enforces the Belief and leads to change.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

The Word of the Week - Focus

I have been on this "journey to self" for quite a few years now and can finally say what tools work for me in ensuring that I reach my goal of self-mastery.  However, as with all things, it was not without a few hurdles to jump over to get to this point.  What amuses me though, is the very same tools that at first I felt did not work for me, are the same tools that work spectacularly for me now!

To explain, here is a list of tried and tested tools that DO work in the order given:

• ·         Gratitude
• ·         Affirmations
• ·         Changing your language
• ·         Belief in the spiritual laws
• ·         Visualisation
• ·         Trusting your higher self ALWAYS

Now I have experienced failure with all of these processes on my journey.  I mentioned before that my gratitude was not heartfelt, so it did not work.  I would say affirmations but not believe one word of them when the world happening around me was in direct contrast to that which I affirmed.  I would revert to negative self-talk thus my language would always go back to the same negativity I always told myself.   I had an understanding of the spiritual laws e.g. Laws of Cause and effect  or Law of Attraction, but my mind set would  shout quite loudly that these laws do not work for me, for others maybe, but not me!  Any visualisation I had was dismissed as “my pretend view of the world” which I believed would not happen. Finally, in trusting my higher self, my ego would argue with it to emphatically state that everything it was telling me was wrong because “look at my life!”

I do have to smile and be thankful for every situation, because it brought me to this very moment, so that I could share with you THEY ALL WORK but it does take practice.  Remember, you are now stepping into the process of relearning all that you have been taught and the beliefs you hold about yourself, which means you have to add patience and kindness to your repertoire during this wonderful transition.

So let’s start small, this particular affirmation or what is known as “Conscious Auto-suggestion” was developed by the French psychotherapist Emilè Couè in 1922, he wrote a paper noting that imagination is four times greater than the will, thus this affirmation stated 20 times within one and a half hours of rising and just before you go to sleep was proven to help cure medical ailments in his subjects and shift the beliefs from “I can’t to I can!”

                                  “Every day, and in every way, I am getting better and better.”

I guarantee that this little step practiced everyday miraculously shifts your sub-conscious that literally stops you from throwing in the towel every time you hit a bump in the road.

Have a fabulous weekend.