Calming your mind

Each one has to find his peace from within.
And peace to be real must be unaffected
by outside circumstances.
Mahatma Gandhi

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night with frantic thoughts about all the stuff you need to get done the next day? Do you ever feel unsure about where to start because you have so many things to do and not nearly enough time to get it all done?

Everyone has these feelings occasionally, but you can begin to overcome them by learning to calm your mind. A calm mind is a more alert, attentive and proactive mind, and in learning to remove your anxious thinking, you can learn to enjoy your life more.

Gaining peace within

When your mind is racing non-stop, you will be hard-pressed to find inner peace. The faster your mind races, the more anxious and frustrated you will become, and this causes you to be unproductive. You really don’t have to go on living this way. There are many ways to calm your overactive mind that you can easily learn and will help you lead a more calm and peaceful life.

Stop-Breathe-Say

If your mind starts running a million miles a second, and you are not sure which way to turn next, try to stop, take a breath and repeat a positive affirmation. When you use the power of positive self-talk (rather than negative self-talk), you will begin to reprogram your mind to work in newer and different ways.

When things feel like they are getting completely out of hand, you can use an affirmation like, “I trust in my ability to relax. I am calm and peaceful.” Although this may not be the case at this exact moment, if you repeat this a few times, and actually listen to yourself saying it, you will begin to believe it. This will help you change your internal dialog in those precious few moments when you are tempted to give in to the craziness that is surrounding you.

Positive affirmations are important because they give you permission to turn off the negative dialog racing through your mind and replace it with positive thoughts. The negative dialog feeds the feelings of fear, doubt and turmoil, and when you replace them with peaceful affirmations, you change your life and your outlook, one positive statement and one positive step at a time.

If you have a hard time believing that this strategy will work for you, give it a try. But you must approach this with both an open heart and mind. It really does work! In a very short time you will begin to feel more at peace and you can reap the benefits in every area of your life.

Sidestep the craziness

Many People think and feel that they cannot do anything about the crazy lives they lead, the inner discontent they feel and the crazy people they work and socialize with. I can assure you that this is not the case. When you use positive affirmations, you can reprogram your brain so that there is only room for positive thinking. You will be surprised to find how quickly a positive affirmation like,  “I trust that there is a plan for my life, even if it has yet to be revealed to me” can work for you.

If you feel as though your life has gotten knocked off course and you do not feel that it is possible to get back to leading a calmer life, why not give a peaceful affirmation a try?  If you repeat the positive affirmations often enough, you will soon begin to believe them, and you will be able to turn a seemingly simple statement into your desired reality.

Thoughts?

- Article source : http://basicsmatter.com/calming-your-mind/#sthash.67Ss6qOE.dpuf

Benefits of Exercises and Yoga Stretches for Lower Back Pain

As more and more people ask more and more from their bodies, injuries to their bodies are becoming a normal part of our society. Things like the X games, where skateboarders and bicyclists attempt death defying feats, on their skateboards and bikes, are becoming commonplace. Even regular sports like football and baseball can result in cringe inducing videos of athletes getting hurt.

If these people, arguably in top physical condition, can get hurt, you and I don't stand much of a chance do we? Sadly, lower back pain is a part of many people's lives. That's why exercises and yoga stretches for lower back pain are becoming increasingly popular with every passing day. Yoga stretches, along with normal bodily exercise, are certainly a good route to go; when you are suffering from lower back pain.

Exercise, combined with a good, nutritious diet and plenty of rest, is something everyone should do on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it takes something like a lower back injury, for people to realize just how frail their bodies are. By that time, it's too late. The damage has already been done. We just have to fix it as best as we can and do everything in power to prevent it from happening again or getting worse down the road.

When you combine exercise and yoga stretches for lower back pain together, you get two excellent tools in your arsenal of healing. Exercise is great for building up strength and endurance. Yoga is perfect for maintaining elasticity and flexibility; two great attributes every muscle should have.

Elasticity will allow your muscles to extend and flex over and over again without causing any tears. Flexibility is needed when you need to over extend or over flex your muscles. It allows them to twist and turn whenever you need them to. Where most people would strain or sprain a muscle, yoga keeps your muscles limber enough to handle the task without injury.

Bodily exercise and yoga stretches for the lower back help not only the part of your lower back that's causing pain. But they help the entire rest of your body, too. Any type of exercise can get your heart rate up. An increased heart rate can help you burn off calories and fat, resulting in a leaner, stronger you. It can also keep your entire cardiovascular system running more effectively, letting your heart pump more efficiently. That can lead to less chance of a heart attack down the road.

Much like exercise, whenever you do yoga, you will be using more than just your lower back muscles. All of your muscles will receive the benefits of yoga as you move from one yoga position to the next. Each of your muscles will become more limber and flexible, allowing all of them to twist and bend more smoothly and efficiently whenever you require it.

As you can see, the benefits you receive from exercises and yoga stretches, for lower back pain affect far more than just your lower back.

Check out this website for more information.

Positive Affirmations - Over 500 Powerful Affirmations

Positive Affirmations - Over 500 Powerful Affirmations For Your Success

How to use affirmations to boost confidence and self esteem

Anyone that knows me or has visited this blog before will know that although I am a huge believer in positive thinking, I’m not necessarily a believer of affirmations*. 

But affirmations can be useful; as long as you use them properly and stick to a few basic rules. 

Confidence and self esteem are linked with a positive mind, so those of you that are trying to overcome negative thoughts may find it useful to say some daily affirmations.  Here are some tips of how to use affirmations to their best potential.

1)     Make sure that you always say them in the present tense, not past and definitely not future.  “I am calm and in control” for example. 

2)     Sometimes, an affirmation such as “I am calm and in control” is a stretch too far, in other words your mind automatically rejects it.  The way to get around this is to say “I am calmer and more in control every day”.  Still in the present tense, but now you are easing yourself into the affirmation and it will not be automatically rejected as unbelievable.

3)     Make sure that you say the affirmations in a positive tone (either out loud or in your head).  This is a time to be bright and breezy not monotone or bored!  Sound confident and you will trick your subconscious into believing that you ARE confident.

4)     Do it a lot!  You can’t just say the affirmation once or twice and then give up.  Positive thinking is a habit, just like negative thoughts are.  So rinse and repeat many many times.

5)    Don’t give up.  Eventually if you stick to the above 4 simple rules, the affirmations will start to have an impact on the way that you think and your confidence and self esteem will grow.

You may not notice this improvement as it will be gradual and long term, but try keeping a journal to keep track of your thoughts and you will really notice an improvement. 

You can also use your journal for making notes of really good affirmations that you can use.

* When affirmations won’t work;  when you have a past trauma or negative event that is ‘stuck’ in your energy field which needs to be cleared. 

* * * * *

Please feel free to leave a comment, your favourite affirmation or tips of how you have increased confidence or self esteem.  Please use your real name and NO SPAM!

Article source : http://www.healingthatfeeling.com/how-to-use-affirmations-to-boost-confidence-and-self-esteem

5 Questions To Ask Yourself If You Want To Get UnStuck

If you are working on your emotional issues on your own (limiting beliefs or negative thoughts) and want to find an easy way to move forward, questions are great way to do it.

Asking yourself specific coaching style questions will help you to think outside of the box and see your inner blocks from different angles, rather than the blinkered view that we become accustomed to as we get ‘stuck’ in a rut.

Do you have a BIG goal?

If you want to achieve a specific goal, for example starting your own business or moving to a new city or country, asking these questions will also help you to get clarity on why you want to achieve the goal, what your life will be like after you achieve the goal and what are the hidden inner blocks that are stopping you from reaching the goal – your limiting beliefs and past emotional trauma.

Try these 5 questions for starters….

1)       What would have to change to make your life perfect?

To get you started, this question is the basis of everything that YOU feel is currently wrong with your life.  So everything that you list in this answer needs to be dealt with carefully.   Is it a limiting belief (I am not confident enough/I don’t have enough money) OR is it something that you want to change such as your job or a specific relationship?  

All of these things can be addressed by using EFT or Visualisation techniques to change how you feel about them – OR you can make it part of your goal to change it (for example get a new job or start your own business).  This is the time to decide what is a limiting belief and what is a true goal.

2)       What are you tolerating/putting up with?

Following on from question 1, this is an interesting question because it will bring up some of the areas in your life where you are ‘settling’.   Address anything that comes up with the usual techniques (journaling, EFT, Visualisations etc).

3)       What would you try now if you knew you could not fail?

This SHOULD bring up your true goals, your life’s purpose or the thing that is most important to you but that you are terrified to try in case you fail.   Once you have put a voice to your goal, it is easier to work on the hidden blocks that are standing in your way of achieving it.

4)       Who should you be hanging out with – so that achieving this goal becomes natural (ie. who’s already doing it?)

So now we have some clarity about your goals, and some ideas of the hidden blocks that are stopping you from achieving them, we are now moving on to the motivational questions, the things that will really move you forward towards them.  It should be obvious why this question has been included and yet this step is so often overlooked.  But lets get real here – you are never going to achieve a goal of becoming a world class surfer if the only people you ever hang out with are sitting on the sofa watching TV!   The same goes for ANY type of goal. 

Find the people who are already doing what you want to do and ‘hang out’ with them, either in real life, at events or even online.  You can get great insights from people just by being on their mailing list or on their Twitter/Facebook.   If they make videos, you can also subscribe to their YouTube account.

5)       What will happen (what is the cost) of you NOT doing anything about this?

Quite often when it comes to moving forward and taking a leap towards our goal we are worried what will happen when we act (we fear failure or just embarrassing ourselves) but this question is a great one for helping our subconscious mind to realise that there is a cost to NOT acting on our dreams.  If we do nothing, we achieve nothing so what is the real cost of you not taking action and moving towards your goal?

What do you think?  Do you use a journal?  Have you tried asking these type of questions when Journalling or even just asking yourself the question last thing at night before you go to bed. This can be a great way to get in touch with your subconscious mind and it will throw back an answer at you the next day or a couple of days later (usually when you have stopped thinking about it).

I would love to hear your comments or feedback on this.  Also, if you are struggling to erase your past emotional trauma and would like some help, please get in touch, I would love to help you.

Article source : http://www.healingthatfeeling.com/5-questions-to-ask-yourself-if-you-want-to-get-unstuck

Attaining Everlasting Happiness

Happiness is something we all could do with a little more of, but today’s fast-paced lifestyle of increased work stress and financial uncertainty has left many of us with a shortage of it.

We seem to spend massive amounts of effort worrying about the state of the economy, whether or not we’re got that big promotion and the price of gas, leaving little time to truly allow ourselves to be happy. However, a general increase in happiness could well be the answer to most of our worries…

Happiness and Positive Thought

Now, we’ve all heard of the power of positive thought made famous by The Secret. Well, scientifically speaking, there is truth to it. Keeping one’s brain happy with good, pleasurable thoughts, according to Dr Teresa Aubele of Florida State University, actually helps with our ability to be more productive and improves our cognitive abilities. Studies have shown that happier people are more creative, have increased problem solving abilities and are generally more productive. Oh, and are nicer to be around!

So, just how do we keep our brain happy? Well, it’s not as hard as you would think! Keeping a positive frame of mind will immediately increase your happiness. Spending time thinking negative thoughts and dwelling on past mistakes has been proven to drain your brain of energy.

By thinking positive thoughts we engage the part of the brain known as the Prefrontal Cortex. The prefrontal cortex is basically the epicentre of our emotions and the one place where we can control how we feel.

By keeping an optimistic, positive outlook we actually generate more serotonin, which in turns gives us that calming feeling of well-being. The moment we start so slip into a pessimistic frame of mind we actually stop ourselves from reaching our true potential. Neuroscientists have proven that a positive frame of mind increases activity in the prefrontal cortex. This increased activity is what drives us to complete our goals and reach the heights we wish to.

Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, one of the world’s leading experts on happiness, talks about how the need for a positive outlook is essential to increasing, and maintaining, our happiness levels. Negative-minded people have been shown to spend time thinking of how they don’t match up to those around them, mulling over past mistakes and considering the things that could have been. This attitude not only hampers their happiness but decreases their chances of being successful in life.

Professor Lyubomirsky goes on to caution us about letting ourselves dwell on past failures. By allowing ourselves to continually relive the negative emotions tied to our own regrets, we lower our ability to be happy. It’s a proven fact that reliving past glories or triumphs can help motivate us and increase productivity, but the same can be said for negative experiences. While introspection and learning from our mistakes is a vital part of growing as person, we need to be careful we don’t allow ourselves to become too caught up in the emotions of negative events.

Decision making goes a long way to avoiding such regrets and it is here we can make a big step to ensuring lasting happiness. Be careful about making those snap decisions. Rather, take your time and consider them properly. Even those decision we feel have been unconsidered can be proven to be quite the opposite.

Take a situation like choosing one college over another. Perhaps you think you chose where to do a post-graduate degree almost on a whim but in fact it was a decision most-likely backed up by prior knowledge. This knowledge you could have accumulated through experiences such as interactions with other people or things you might have read.

With correct decision making and a positive outlook comes an increased level of happiness and productivity. This ultimately leads us to be more successful, which is something we all strive for. Wealth and happiness have always been thought to go hand-in-hand, with rich people cited as being the happiest of us all. This isn’t entirely the case.

Wealth and Happiness

Wealth and happiness really comes down to our basic needs. If, for example, you spend most of your life living close to the poverty line a sudden jump increase in wealth will massively increase your happiness. With this influx of money worries such as where the next meal is coming from, how to make rent or providing basic things for your family disappear. These basic needs are what control our happiness.

The increase in happiness due to wealth does scale down. If a financially comfortable person comes into more money, their level of happiness will rise but in a much smaller fashion. Money is something that can have a positive and negative effect on our happiness. Some extremely rich people have been found to be deeply unhappy. A lot of people set themselves financial goals but often find themselves a little surprised at how little reaching that goal impacted on their happiness.

It really comes down to how we use our wealth. Buying a bunch of fancy, new things will definitely give you an instant high. However, this happiness has no lasting value to it. The impact is more immediate but also peters out over time. Choosing more philanthropic ways to spend our money will immediately increase our levels of happiness.

Look at growing yourself as a person. Learn a new hobby or take up an interest that you’ve never done before. This will not only give you the satisfaction of learning a new skill or meeting new people, but it will give you something that can be enjoyed for a long period of time and sustain your happiness.

Also, look to contribute to those around you. A study was done with 4th, 5th and 6th grade students. Over four weeks they were told to do at least three acts of kindness or charity per day. Most of these acts occurred at home and outside of the school. However, the kids showed a marked increase in happiness as well as popularity at school. The effect of the charitable acts had a positive impact on all facets of their lives.

By connecting with other people and growing relationships we allow ourselves the opportunity to create bonds that will give us a lasting happiness instead of a quick once-off jolt like a new gadget or vacation. A happy life ultimately comes down to our frame of mind and by creating situations where we continually feed our happiness we can ensure that we have lasting happiness.

Article source : http://www.freeaffirmations.org/attaining-everlasting-happiness

Self Help Tips That Will Make A Difference In Your Life

Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Read this article for some tips on personal development.

Use your work time efficiently. One simple solution is to go on more breaks while you work. While this may sound odd, taking frequent breaks gives you time to relax and re-energize, so when you return to your work, you are more productive.

Put your core principles into practice. Your individual core beliefs are what support your sense of self. Use your faith in these principles to drive your faith in yourself. Best of all, following your beliefs encourages consistency, and this is a much desired character trait.

Accept your limitations before engaging in personal development. If you acknowledge you are tiny and unimportant in the world, it will cause you to realize the lack of knowledge you have. Once this idea gets instilled in your mind, you will want to know, understand and learn new things, therefore, improving yourself.

Create a personal development plan by determining what your personal values are. You will not be happy or motivated if your plan goes against what you believe in. Instead, work on aspects of your life you want to improve that mesh well with your individual beliefs. By spending your time in these specific areas, you can make the changes in the areas that matter and have these changes stick with you.

Don't think physical activity is only for when you want to lose a few pounds. There are a variety of great reasons to exercise. Exercising stimulates your body to produce all kinds of chemicals that ultimately result in a happier, calmer you.

It is impossible for you to properly care for the ones you love, unless you take care of yourself first. No matter how much progress you have made in your personal development, always make resting and restoring yourself a top priority.

Try talking to the pastor at your church, or a therapist; it can help. These people have lots of training and experience with this sort of thing. They are able to look into your life from the outside and analyze things you can't see. By speaking with a professional about your problems, you can lead a much healthier and enjoyable life.

Make sure you treat all people with respect, no matter who they are, how powerful they are or what benefits you can obtain from them. How you treat them reveals more about your own character, than it reveals about theirs.

If you suffer from anxiety, consider heading to a movie with a friend. You will be thrust into a busy setting and out of your comfort zone, but you will not have to excessively socialize with others. This will give you the chance to get acquainted with the idea of being around more people.

Focus on the things that you have determined are most important to you. Personal development involves focusing on the important things in life while allowing negativity and unimportant matters to drift past.

This article demonstrates that creating a newer, better life is a goal that is well within your reach. Remember all the advantages and happiness you are bringing yourself through these changes.

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