4 Tools to Manage Your Mind - Part II

In the last blog, the focus was on spiritual strategies to help you feel less anxious and afraid. Today, we’re exploring ways to harness the power of your mind to help control your thoughts so they don’t control you.

Ready?

1. Intention

One of the ideas we discussed in the last blog was: How you start your day is how you live your day. Remember?

Intention ties into this beautifully.

Imagine this: as soon as you awaken in the morning, you set a conscious intention for how you want your day to be, and how you want to experience it.

Easy, generous, joyful, peaceful, gentle, loving. compassionate…

We can use this tool for any situation we are facing as well.

Perhaps you have an upcoming meeting that’s causing anxiety. How would you like it to go? Stop and really set an intention about it, and about how you’re going to show up.

2. Affirmation

Using affirmations is another way to solidify your intention.

It’s also something you can use throughout the day if/when you feel like you’ve fallen into fear or anxiety. It can return you to a sense of balance, equilibrium and groundedness.

Utilizing affirmation can help calm your nervous system as well as re-set your mind.

Ones that can be helpful with fear and uncertainty include:

• I am safe.

• Life loves me.

• Life brings me only good.

• Out of this situation only good will come.

3. Input

What are you reading, watching and listening to? In other words, what information is going into your mind?

Are these sources serving and supporting you? Or are they creating even more anxiety and fear?

Of course, it’s important to be informed, but not at the detriment of your mental health. Think about it this way, you aren’t helping anyone if you’re in a constant state of anxiety and fear.

4. What Are You Feeling?

It can be super easy to emotionally detach or intellectualize what you’re experiencing.

Especially when the sensation is uncomfortable like – dread, rejection, shame, anger, disgust. Typically, the first reaction is to ignore it or push it away.

What would happen if instead of ignoring or pushing away that feeling, you allowed yourself to identify it and be with it?

The idea here is to cultivate a relationship with your feelings, to hone in on them – the ones you like experiencing as well as the ones you don’t.

When we do this, they negative ones are less likely to hijack our entire system, too.

Alright, so here are 4 more practices to add to your self help toolbox to support you in managing uncertainty, anxiety and fear.

Let me know how it’s going!

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4 Spiritual Tools for Managing Uncertainty

Let’s be honest, some days are just hard, especially if you’re a sensitive person!

We can glance up from the microcosm of our lives, and gasp at what’s happening across the globe, from searing heats and drought to political discord.

Maybe you’ve found yourself, your emotional self, teetering on the edge - trying hard not to fall into fear or anxiety- as you face this elevated level of uncertainty.

To support you through these times, I’ve put together tools to help you manage the discomfort you’re feeling be it anxiety, apprehension, dread, fear…

Over the next few weeks, I’ll provide you with tools and practices you can incorporate and use. This blog, is focused on the spiritual level. In subsequent weeks, we’ll look at mind habits, body practices, as well as community engagement.

Let’s dive in!

When I say the “spiritual level,” another way to think about this is as a way to connect with something greater than yourself. It also helps us remember that we are not alone.

Here are 4 ways to do that:

1. Starting Your Day

There’s a wonderful expression my husband used to say all the time. Then I heard Louise Hay use it as well: “How you start your day is how you live your day.”

How do you start your day?

Upon waking, do you immediately check social media, your email, or the news?

What if you began a different way? With a thought of love, or a prayer? With meditation?

For the past few years, I’ve begun my day by reading my Course in Miracles lesson, one for every day of the year.

2. Meditation

In 1997, when I first began to meditate, I almost didn’t launch my practice. The healer I was working with told me I needed to start.

My response was, “I don’t have time.” I was, after all, working, had a long daily commute and a a 2-year-old 

Her response? “Make time.”

And I did even though I HATE getting up early in the morning. I made the decision to meditate which meant I got up, half awake, and sat in front of my altar (which was a shelf in my linen closet in the hallway.)

5 minutes. It’s all you need to do. Sit quietly for 5 minutes.

Why not do an experiment? Start your day with 5 minutes of meditation. Sit up in your bed. See what happens.

3. Prayer

Some people say prayer is how we ask God (oneness/universal consciousness) for what we want, and meditation is how we receive the answers, by getting quiet and listening.

Prayer is also the antidote to worrying, which is what often happens when we fall into fear.

And here’s the really cool part. You can pray about anything and everything no matter how big or small.

One way I like to use prayer is by truly envisioning how I want the world to be. It’s so easy to get caught up in thinking about what we don’t want. But instead, try focusing on what you do want to happen instead. Perfect healing.

4. Guidance

Sometimes we crave clarity. Of course, this can come from prayer and meditation, from asking and listening for answers.

It can also come from astrology, tarot, runes, I Ching, or even asking a question and opening a book at random.  

I have multiple decks of oracle cards that I use when I want some direct guidance, or even to give me a sense of a theme for a period of time. In fact, I just pulled a card to offer insight about this month!

Alright, so there are 4 ways you can connect to greater wisdom and guidance to feel less alone, less anxious and grounded. In the next blog, we’ll dive into managing our minds!

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4 Ways to Manage The Fast Pace of Life

Is it just me or are you feeling like we’re in a moment of rapid change?

I look around and everything appears to be in motion. People moving homes, getting different jobs, tackling new health problems…

Even though my life feels relatively stable, I’m traveling more and am busier than ever! 

And while that all feels exciting, especially after the cloistering we’ve done these past few years, I find that my heart rate can get elevated from managing both the amount of change as well as the rate with which it is happening!

If you can relate, here are a few tips that might help you feel more secure during this time:

1. Prioritize

Sometimes the sheer quantity of tasks or opportunities you have can feel overwhelming.

What if you ordered them?

I used to work with a coach who suggested that you not only label your To Do items 1-10 based on the urgency, but to then go a step further and add letters. So, your list becomes: 1A, 1B, 1C…

Whenever I do her method, I’m always amazed at the amount I get accomplished and how much calmer I feel going systematically from one item to the next.

2. Be the Eye

Okay, so life is swirling around you. How can you stay in the center rather than be flung about on the edges?

The easiest way is to close your eyes and breathe. From there, imagine yourself in the resting place. Some people refer to it as the cave of the heart, others a field. I often think about it as love’s refuge.

It’s the place of peace within that is always available to you.

When you consciously take a moment to re-center, it gives you the opportunity to feel more grounded, present, and less frenetic.

Now, even though the pace of change may not have altered, it isn’t having the same effect on you.

3. Remember the Truth

Despite what’s happening “out there,” you are always safe.

Come back to this truth.

One of the simplest ways to remember this is with an affirming statement.

It can be as forthright as, “I am safe right now.”

Or, “despite the change I am experiencing, I am safe.”

Perhaps you might be inspired to say, “I embrace change easily and effectively.”

If none of those resonate with you, think of the words that feel reassuring to your nervous system.

4. Tap It Out

Lastly there’s Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

This is a technique in which you physically tap parts of your body. It has an incredibly calming effect. I teach one simple technique in this video.

Whatever change you are experiencing, remember that it IS for your highest and best good.

So, why not release your anxiety and embrace this newness?

Use these tools to help.

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Becoming Self-Realized

When I graduated from college, I was intent on saving the world from a climate disaster.

I’d taken classes on hydrology and fossil fuel use in my senior year that awakened me to the impending doom on the horizon.

And despite the fact that I actually graduated with a degree in art history, I pestered my way into an internship at the Union of Concerned Scientists. There, we created and ran a nationwide symposium on global warming.

It was 1989.

Within a year, I was half a world away in Hong Kong, struggling to figure out how to continue doing environmental work when I lacked an engineering degree and my Cantonese was lousy.

Determined to make a “difference,” I began teaching.

But more than anything, what really captured my attention, was an intense desire to know myself, to heal myself, and to understand what I was doing on this crazy mixed up planet.

Three decades later, not much has changed.

I still try to affect change, but the greatest emphasis is still within. In healing myself, and in deepening my spiritual practice.

It might sound weird, but as Ramana Maharshi, an Indian saint says, “Your own self-realization is the greatest gift you can render the world.”

Otherwise, all we’re really doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (sorry, can’t remember where I heard that one).

And if Ramana Maharshi is correct, how do we actually do that, become self-realized?

I know from firsthand experience that this idea can feel unattainable… but don’t get discouraged. It’s common to erroneously think self-actualization is a journey to a destination that feels impossible to reach.

Take comfort, because, thankfully, that isn’t true. Instead, think about it like this: “Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.” (ACIM W-p1.188.1:4)

Or maybe the way my teacher Ma Jaya used to talk about it will resonate with you more. She used to say, “the difference between you and me is that I know I’m God and you don’t.”

So, what is this exactly? This recognition, this acknowledgement, this self-realization?

It’s a willingness to completely accept the totality of who you are.

To accept your beauty, your innocence, your greatness, your magnificence, your light, your love, as well as all of your quirkiness.

You could start with a statement such as: “I love and accept myself today.”

You could add an even though part too, if you want, so the statement would be: “I love and accept myself today…

• even though the world feels fearful.

• even though I don’t know how.

• even though the idea of this feels scary.

• even though I don’t believe I deserve it.

For all of us who are in a body, the world situation these days feels precarious and uncertain.

Being a solitary person, it’s easy to think you don’t matter, or what you do won’t make a difference.

But one person stepping into this realization, this self-actualization, really does change everything. We know this from heroes of the past and present- Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Louise Hay, Oprah Winfrey, and on and on.

So please! Join me.

Be a light worker. Be a spokesperson for love. Step into the magnificence of who you are. The world really needs you.

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