How to live in a Higher Awareness

We all do it from day to day, dig our heads in the sand and get so caught up in our troubles and struggles that it is hard to stop and look out. So how do we move from the circle and doldrums of everyday life to a higher awareness that gives us peace and tranquility?

1.       Decide who you want to be, not what you want to do: Most people wake up each morning and start to think about what they have to get done that day. The list starts to stack up and we start making a plan of how we will accomplish it all. A slight shift to a higher level of awareness is deciding who you want to be that day. I wake up each morning and say “today I want to be a blessing”. That shift takes you from planning your actions to planning your reactions. You will have things to do every day, and just like the day before you will be able to get them all accomplished because you have to, but what you don’t have to do is go about your duties with a great attitude. You attitude towards your to-do list changes every aspect of your day.  Example of the shift, you are waiting at the drive-thru for your breakfast and you are thinking of the things you need to get done, you may be inclined to feel impatient with the line of cars or the time it takes to get your order. On the flip side, if you woke up and said today I want to be a blessing, in the same situation, you will be thinking of how you can bless someone in line. I often pay for the person behind me. That makes me more patient and gives me the joy of giving first thing in the morning which is a great way to start your day.

2.       Realize you are not your thoughts: Wayne Dyer taught me this valuable lesson. It changed my life as the title of the book said it would.  We all have a range of thoughts that enter our head every day. They can range from rational to irrational, up and down, happy to angry, and are triggered by so many things that it is hard to keep them positive all the time. When you reach a higher level of awareness you realize that you are not any of your thoughts or feelings until you act on them. This is sometimes hard to grasp but just think about how often feelings and thoughts change and how often our initial reaction to something isn’t best or quite right. Something that made your blood boil yesterday may not seem so awful today. And the thing that made you happiest yesterday most likely is not still making you happy today. Often people when they are mad, assume the thought or feeling is correct, and then act upon the anger. Once you realize you are not your thoughts or feelings, then when the anger boils up, you notice the anger, know the anger will not last and therefore decide to not act on it. Therefore, you wait to act until your feelings and thoughts are stable again. This shift will change every aspect of your life but it takes practice. Once you learn what thoughts and feelings best serve you and start to only act on those, then your life will start to reflect the positive emotions instead of the negative.

3.       Realizing everything happens for a reason: So going right along with waking each day wanting to be a blessing, when you shift to a higher level of awareness you realize everything is a blessing. You move from the place of wondering why bad things happen to you, to a place of knowing all of the bad is necessary and placed in your life to teach you something and move you in the direction you need to go. It is only when we don’t learn from the hardships that the time was wasted. A lot of people find this answer in their faith. Knowing that their higher power is in control of what happens, they find peace knowing that everything is brought to them for a reason and ask themselves what is God trying to teach or show me. Any time we have a hardship and wonder why is this happening to me, the sooner we can find the lesson and learn from it, the easier it will be to move on from it and the happier our life will be. Often people are encountering the same hardships over and over because they have not learned their lesson the first time so of course they are doomed to have them repeated. Once you open yourself up to this awareness you will notice there are no coincidences and things will start to makes sense on a deeper level. You will notice and be grateful for the fall that led to an MRI that detected your cancer sooner. You will be thankful for the long line at the drive through kept you from an accident up ahead. You will be grateful for the party you didn’t get invited to that allowed you the time to catch up with an old friend. It is all a blessing.

How to thrive during a transition

It happens every day we wake up.  Life comes at us and we have the daily choice of how we respond. Sometimes though it seems life is throwing more our way than we know how to handle. Life seems to have slowly changed and then we wake up and we are on the other side and we don’t know how to process and accept our new place in life. I find lots of clients suffer from anxiety or depression when dealing with change because although it is inevitable, change is hard for most. Here are some ways to help move yourself through change so you can get back to feeling like yourself.

1.     Acceptance: From the point in which life happens to the point we accept what happens we suffer. A lot of change that happens in a person’s life is out of their control. The sooner we can accept and live in the reality of that, the less we have to suffer. To gain acceptance sometimes we have to change our perspective. Instead of feeling like everything is happening to us, we have to allow the space to know that everything is going exactly the way it should be. Instead of looking at the burden of the change, it is so much better to find the blessing that lies within every change. Whether or not we accept the change, it has already happened, and knowing it was for a reason, makes it easier to swallow.

2.     Act Instead of Reacting: Every day we have a decision to make steps towards the life we want. When we start to take action towards the life we want, we can choose our day and how it unfolds, instead of just responding. Therefore, when life changes the sooner we can start taking action to make the change work in our favor, the less anxiety we have over the change. The truth is we never know what our future has in store for us, all we can do is our small part to shape it. For example, you hear you are going to get a new boss. That makes you very anxious because you don’t know what to expect and you were very happy with your old boss. Your mind starts to spin on the “what if’s” of life. What if the new boss is mean; what if the new boss is rigid; what if he thinks I am dumb, and so on. Instead of worrying about all what if’s that you can’t control, move into a place of action that helps create the relationship you want with your new boss. If you want a friendly relationship, write a welcome email to the new boss or bring the new boss breakfast. Take action instead of just worrying and then rest easy knowing you have done what you can to make the change in your life a positive one.

3.     Fear or Forgetting Everything is All Right! Most of the time when things change we have a lot of fear of the unknown. Fear is necessary to keep us out of harm’s way, but most of us fear things that never come to fruition. Having this fear keeps us from accepting and acting on the changes happening in our life. We all have fears, so when they well up, we have to analyze them. I start with asking myself how likely is this fear to come true? Is there anything I can do to reduce this fear? (if so, take action). What if I changed my perspective to expecting the best instead of the worse, how does that feel? Once we realize that our fears are most likely either unfounded or beyond our control we can go back to acceptance. Realizing that if we take the action we need to and accept the change, we have nothing to fear.

4.      Letting go. This goes hand in hand with acceptance, but sometimes we have to let go of what we thought our life was going to look like before we can accept the new life we are in.  I admit when I got divorced I was lost, I had a picture of what my life would look like and I woke up one day feeling like that picture was shattered. Now what do I do and who am I? I was holding onto a picture of something that was no longer there and no longer served me. But to truly let go I had to give myself time to grieve. It was overwhelming for sure, all the new options of life spinning in my head, where do I start? What I had to do, and I encourage you to do, is to sit in your feelings and be sad, upset, mad, and feel whatever it is you feel. Get it all out and really feel it. But once you have your pity party and mourn the loss of your old life it is time to start taking action towards the new life you want. Even when it is overwhelming I encourage you to take the first little bite of the new life sandwich. Before you know it you will look back and have moved boldly in a new direction that you wanted and created. We all have the ability and opportunity to change the picture of what we want out of life every day. Just remember life is a journey, not a destination, and our attitude and response while on that journey is what makes our life a positive or negative one. Everything is a blessing if we chose to see it that way.

4 Things keeping us from a perfect relationship

Choosing a spouse is one of the most important and impactful decisions you can make in your life. So once you have chosen that special someone you want to create and maintain a wonderful love together. Most of us start out that way while we are in the honeymoon stage and find ourselves slowly creeping more towards arguments, tension, and even resentment.  Below are 4 things that can keep your honeymoon from being a lasting one.

Wanting to be right, not happy.

People who want to be right, argue, people who want to understand, discuss. This is the core to a lot of relationship issues. The sooner we can get to happy, the better our relationship will be. All relationships encounter issues, but when they are communicated are you trying to be right or are your trying to be understanding? When we get to a place of opening up about our issues let’s be kind and find understanding before fault. Own up to your part in the issues first and instead of blaming your partner try to understand your partner. Most of the time your partner wasn’t intentionally hurting your feelings, there was just a misunderstanding.

Not being the partner you want

I find that many clients of mine have a list that they carry around of things their partner does or does not do that they like or dislike. Many times in one’s life we look to other people to make us happy and when we aren’t happy, it has to be our partner’s fault. BUT what we fail to realize is that we are often just as responsible and just as often not being the partner we want. If you would like to get sweet cards from your partner, instead of secretly wishing they would buy you one, buy them one.  If you wish your partner would say more sweet things to you, start by saying more sweet things to them. When we are willing to give what we need, you open the space to receive what you need. You will see that when you start being the partner you want, your partner will follow. Don’t wait for them to start, you start and let them follow.

Not believing true love is possible

Many of us after failed relationships give up on the idea of a soul mate or true love. We put limits on how good a relationship can be or we become jaded over how well two people can really get through life together. These are all very limiting thoughts. What most of us don’t realize is these limiting thoughts keep us from being the partner we want. We look for signs of failure, we hold back in case it fails, we keep our options open, we settle for less than ideal because we don’t believe ideal exists. All of these things keep us from a truly happy relationship. We have to go into each relationship being open, giving all of our love, and believing that happiness is achievable. If we don’t believe we can never achieve.  Start by being open in your thoughts to your current relationship being the best one you have ever had and lasting a lifetime. How does that feel? Hopefully much better than holding onto a notion that it may end.

Not being respectful at all times

We all know we shouldn’t yell at each other, physically harm each other, cuss at each other and the very blatant forms of disrespect. But this is another respect issue that can keep you from a very happy relationship that a lot of us find ourselves creeping to as we stay with our partner longer and longer. It is the pick on each other game. Example: while at dinner with friends talking about a recent trip she says “he always has to use GPS because he always gets lost, I am way better at directions than him”, he says “I had to wait forever in the mornings for her to get ready because she takes forever to do everything”. While these comments may seem harmless and can even be true, pointing out your spouse’s shortfalls, especially in public is disrespectful. When you are with someone, you should be their biggest fan. You should want everyone to know how lucky you are and why you chose this wonderful person. When you tear them down in public, you not only make them look less desirable, you make yourself look even worse because you chose them and are now being disrespectful. None of us are perfect, we never will be, pointing that out every chance you get creates tension and hurt feelings that are not necessary. Try mentioning only positive things about your spouse, more likely than not, they already know what they are not good at and you pointing them out only makes them feel bad. Try saying “I love that I get to help him with directions on our trip, we even call me Tom Tom” while he can say “ I don’t mind waiting on my girl in the mornings because she looks so beautiful everyday”.  These are comments that take your frustrations and make them beautiful, like the relationship you want.

Of course, we will all have issues in our relationships, we are all human after all.  But when we can make a few small changes, they can cause a ripple effect that changes the dynamics of the most important relationship we have in our life. It will take some time and some self-awareness but I promise if you can implement these 4 things, you can extend the honeymoon and have a relationship that is nurturing, supportive and loving.