Top-Down Processing
Over at Occupational Adventure, there is an interesting post about how our brain is wired:
“If the top is convinced, the bottom level of data will be overruled.” In other words, what you believe, you see. That has so much potential to be either an amazing asset, or an excruciating obstacle.
Take a look at your life. More specifically, take a look at the idea of creating a life that feels fun, meaningful, and fulfilling. How do you see it? Is the top convinced that it’s possible, or a pipe-dream? With a 10 to 1 ratio of information going down as coming up, you can see why - however you see it - you’re probably right.
In other words, we see what we believe. A great example of this is the success of placebos–our belief is that the medication will help, therefore it helps. This basically means that our brain is wired for visualization and manifestation. Our picture of reality is literally based 10x more on our beliefs than by what is actually in front of us. If we wake up and and believe that it’s going to be a crappy day, everything we see will reflect that belief. If we believe we are ugly, every time we look in a mirror our ugliness will stare back at us. If on the other hand, we believe that great things are going to happen and that we are beautiful, the things we see will reflect that belief.
Just imagine the power of our physiology at work here. It shows the amazing power of positive thinking in a very concrete way. If we deliberately reprogram our beliefs to focus on positive things, what we see around us will be positive. The momentum of that positivity will lead to wonderful things.
09.18.07
Body Acceptance Round Up
I’ve added a bunch of new links to the sidebar under “Body Acceptance.” The abundance of resources and support for this topic is overwhelming (in a good way). Here are a few I want to highlight:
12 Steps to Health at Every Size
Health at Every Size is a way of life that focuses on how you’re feeling (sound familiar?) and making friends with your body instead of what you weigh or what body type you have.
Good With Cheese
This is one of my new favorite blogs because it is about a woman’s journey to listening to and accepting her body. And because she’s hilarious.
You Don’t Have to Be Pretty
Here’s an oldie but a goodie that is worth a re-read (every. freakin’. month.). It’s about how we don’t owe prettiness to anyone. We only owe happiness to ourselves.
Here are some particularly good posts that I’ve come across recently (they may not have actually been written recently, but they’re new to me.):
Crush-Worthy
This right here sums up one of the best thing about participating in the Health at Every Size movement: The joy that comes with a lovely realignment in priorities.
You Won’t Go to Hell Because it Tastes Good
This post challenges us to remove moral judgment from what we eat.
I dare you
The Rotund dares us to go an entire day without thinking or saying negative things about our bodies.
09.16.07
Doubts (Revisited)
The past month kicked my ass.
It’s hard for me to type it, and then copy it into Wordpress, and then publish that. Here I am, the self-appointed Queen of Positive Thinking and then events conspire to knock me down and question everything in my life. To say the least, it’s been a humbling experience. Less than a week after I wrote a post Titled (oh merciless irony!) Doubts:
Stop struggling. Stop clawing. Stop working. Let go. Get out of your own way, stop making things more complicated than they are (which is not at all). Do what comes into your mind to do, when it comes into your mind. Trust that the worst possible thing that could happen to you will always be the best possible thing that could happen to you. Life is as easy or as hard as you think it is. The Universe always says yes to what you think and ask.
Stop looking outside of yourself to find happiness. That means stop waiting for people and things and money and situations. Let them go. Turn “what is†into the best day of your life. Turn your focus inside…
I was facing a situation that shook me to the core of everything I have become. The details aren’t really important—I can easily explain them away, put a positive spin on them, change them into a blessing, etc. What’s important is how they affected me: I was in a state of complete despair. I mean that literally—I was at a point where I had no hope, I was angrier than I remember ever being, where I felt the last three years of my life were a complete waste, where I felt completely spiritually abandoned, where the only thing that felt real to me was that despair. Everything I gained since I moved to Colorado felt like a joke, and once I started questioning a few things, everything became questionable. My mother called it the Dark Night of the Soul, but I called it a big steaming pile of poo.
My words about letting go and stopping my struggles and finding happiness inside were taunting me. I had even printed them out along with the affirmations below them and hung them on the wall behind my computer before everything broke open. When my crisis began, I would glare at them in defiance and think, “I’m amazed I have friends if this is the kind of crap I’ve been saying to them. I’m a jackass.” I came face to face with exactly how hard it is to hear those things when times are tough.
My mother, going through a slightly less traumatic but still difficult crisis of spirit herself, kept trying to talk me down. “There’s a reason! There’s a reason! Something’s coming. You’ll be ok. Just surrender and let go.” And the core that is intrinsically who I am desperately wanted to believe that. The fiery ball of resentment that had taken me over kept demanding, “Less talk! MORE RESULTS!” And I went into that spiral of bitterness that results from fear that being upset was just making everything worse, but who cared if I was questioning everything I believed in. My whole existence became that spiral. I didn’t even know how to live my day much less live my life. It felt like a failure of staggering proportions. Here I was, completely and utterly incapable of following my own advice and what was worse, my ever-reliable brain couldn’t figure out how to move on.
So I’ve been recovering from that. And I wish I could say that I magically got everything back and here I am in happyland again, la la la. It’s not true though. I got beaten down so far and became so tired in all four of my bodies (physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual) that I had no choice except move on. Well that’s not true, I had a choice: I could either stay upset and do nothing and feel nothing or I could just put one foot in front of the other and make little choices to make myself feel better. It was time to take my own advice by doing what I could in any given moment to make myself feel better because I couldn’t live feeling bad all the time anymore. Things are the way they are and I can either live with joy and hope or I can be sad and bitter. And since I made the decision that I was done being sad, the joy and hope have started filling the empty spaces. What a wonderful affirmation, no?
So here’s my revised plan for letting go–this is how I’ve convinced myself to join the land of the (happy) living again:
- There’s nothing to figure out. There’s just me and how I’m feeling and how I’m reacting to my life.
- There is only now. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow will take care of itself.
- I am always allowed to feel, to think, to eat, to move, to say whatever/whenever/however I want.
- Affirm that my intuition will never fail me, even if it leads me in painful directions.
- Tell myself over and over (whether I’m feeling it or not): The Universe always says yes.
Yes, the past month kicked my ass, but I’M BACK!
08.20.07
Synchronicity
Here’s this week’s installment of you asked, I’ll answer:
For the person who came to the site with the search phrase, “tips on bringing more synchronicity in your life” there’s an easy answer: Notice it. Synchronicity is “old reliable” when the Universe is trying to send us messages. The more we look for themes in our lives and make a point to keep an eye out, the more we’ll see. The other trick is to follow your intuition. Synchronicity is often the way we get “you’re on the right track!” messages when we tune in.
08.18.07
Doubts
So you’ve been working hard reaching for better thoughts and facing your fears. Or maybe you’ve been working hard at thinking about reaching better thoughts and facing your fears. But things still kind of suck, but you don’t want to think about how they suck because that would just make it worse right? But if you’ve been working hard and things still suck at some point they either have to turn around or you will start to doubt that you have control over things after all. And you really, really don’t want to doubt things. But they keep creeping in and just when you thought they were going to get better, they kind of got worse.
So then you wonder if this is the “healing crisis” you’ve heard about—where during the healing process, things get worse before they get better because you’re getting at core beliefs. Healing or not, it’s definitely a crisis. You’ve got bills to pay and work to do and a life to live and what if this whole line of reasoning is bullshit? And then you struggle to nip that line of reasoning in the bud. But damn, it’s not fair how easy it is to slip into a terror spiral, but how hard it is to claw your way to a positive thought. Why is that anyway? And while you’re on the subject, why are doughnuts really bad for you, but twigs and leaves are great?
“Why can’t things be easy?” you ask. Where’s your found winning lottery ticket? Where is your miracle? How long do you have to work at being happy before you’re actually happy? How long do you have to pay for old mistakes? Why can’t you watch The Secret or read Think and Grow Rich and then automatically get it and never have to struggle again? Why couldn’t you remember what you knew before you were born? Why are you so far from where you want to be? How long are you going to have to imagine where you want to be instead of looking around at what is?
If that sounds even remotely familiar, I have an answer for you. It may not be what you want to hear, you may wish you knew me in person so you could drive to Denver and smack me. That being the case, I’ll work up to it by saying that all of those questions are my questions. So if they’re familiar to you, know that we are soul mates. The answer is a poem dedicated to me. So here it is:
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08.17.07
Sporadica
Hello party people! I’m just dropping a note to say that for the next month or so posts are going to be infrequent as I spend some time working on getting some non-internet things done. That said, I’m shooting for at least once a week for a nice, meaty post.  Tomorrow is going to be the day for this week.
Here’s hoping everyone is having a wonderful summer, full of lots of happy thoughts and activities.
08.10.07
The Importance of Aesthetically Pleasing Things
As you might now if you’ve read anything I’ve written, I am all about abundance these days. I want to surround myself with people and things that make me feel good. I want to live with the assurance that if I release myself to the creative process of life, everything I want will come to me. I wasn’t always this way though coming from the extended family that I did—who often celebrated how long they’d had something rather than it’s functionality or condition. I very much had the mentality that if it worked we used it. I often “made do” with many of the things in my life because they were there and there was no point in spending money to buy something that was better or prettier when what I had worked just fine.
Can you see how “making do” has an energy of stagnation and lack? Now, I’m not talking about the beat up pair of shoes that you love and make you feel like you can walk a million miles when you’re wearing them. That has an energy of love. I’m talking about the things that you’re keeping around just because they work, and you’re having a hard time justifying getting one that is more pleasing because it seems like a waste of resources. This is where I circle back around to the title of this post: I think it’s really important to surround ourselves in aesthetically pleasing things–whatever that means for each of us.
If you read almost any book on organization or motivation, it’s going to tell you that you have to find ways to want to do things. If you’re trying to organize, that means buying baskets and folders that you want to touch and see around the house. Maybe it means finding some fun pens you love to hold and use and see their ink on paper. Have you ever noticed that when you encounter people who have a hobby or a career they love, they have surrounded themselves with the fun gadgets and accoutrements that go along with their activities? When you go over to someone’s house who clearly likes to entertain, they typically have pretty dishes and glasses (not necessarily expensive, but pleasing nonetheless). Families who like to spend time in the living room will often have big, smooshy couches that make you want to dive right in.
My point is, those things display the passion and joy of the people who own them–even more, those things help fuel the passion and joy for those people. I’ll give you an example. I love to cook and bake. I find such creative pleasure in finding a recipe, adding my personal flare, and then receiving the warm appreciation from those who eat what I’ve made. One of the results of my passion for cooking is an obsession with pretty and useful kitchenware. So I have a standing mixer to help me whip up eggs and cream and batter and bread dough. It removes a lot of the grunt work that I find unpleasant. (Some people love to get their hands in floury dough–and I totally appreciate that inclination. Personally, it gives me the heebie jeebies.) I bought some extremely lovely Nigella Lawson ceramic measuring cups. When I look at them, not only do I feel a surge of happiness from their shape and color, but they remind me of the joy Nigella Lawson brings to everything she makes and her life in general.
So what happens when we surround ourselves with things we love? Imagine what your life would be like if everywhere you looked, you saw something that made you smile or feel good. How would you approach doing tasks that you would otherwise feel are unpleasant if you have beautiful or fun tools to do them with? What if you never had to “make do” with anything, but could either find joy in what you have right now, or manifest something that puts you in a happy state of mind?
Transforming your environment into something that pleases you is typically something that happens little by little over time (Extreme Home Makeovers aside, of course), so I’m not suggesting that you throw everything you don’t like away and spend every dime you have to buy new things. Because ultimately this is not about things it’s about an attitude and a state of mind. If we retrain ourselves to think that we deserve to have an environment that brings us joy, to choose to surround ourselves with things we love on a day to day basis, we will be shifting our awareness towards abundance and we will continually affirm that we deserve to live joyful lives.
Share the story of how something you love found its way into your life at the Uncover Your Bliss forums.
08.07.07
Using the Law of Attraction to Receive What You Want
Many of you have been playing with the idea of manifestation. You’ve bought into the idea (mostly) that your thoughts actually create what’s going on in your life and if you’re anything like me, that idea has probably filled you with empowerment and dread. “I can create the things I want? Awesome!” “All the crap in my life is my own doing? Gaargh!” This post will be my attempt to remove at least some of the dread from the amazing process of deliberate creation and has been inspired by the book The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent by Esther and Jerry Hicks. The book gelled a lot of ideas that I couldn’t quite reach and has been an invaluable resource in my growth process.
First a refresher: The Law of Attraction states that there are three steps to manifesting what we want. The first step is asking which happens a thousand times a day—every time we have a preference for something. We cannot help but ask and even though we are compelled to drum the point home, focusing on asking for the things we want is unnecessary because our wanting does it for us. The second step is the answering which the Universe does for us so once again our attention is not necessary. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that our attention to how the things we want will come into our lives only limits possibilities and is usually detrimental to the process. The third step is receiving and this is the part of the process that requires our full focus. That is the step I’m going to be talking about in this post.
I’m going to cut right to the chase and tell you that the crap in our lives serves a very useful function. The experiences we don’t want are here to inspire desire for what we do want. If we encounter someone who is mean to us, we automatically ask the Universe to be surrounded by people who treat us with respect. If we can’t pay our bills, we automatically ask to be surrounded by abundance. If our cars break down, we automatically ask to have reliable transportation. If we never had displeasing experiences, we would never feel the joy of the creative process and its results.
Why, oh why, do they have to hang around though, right? If their purpose is to help us ask for things, why don’t they go away after we ask? They stick around because we are focusing our attention on the asking and on why we’re asking instead of receiving what the Universe always brings us in reply. So, we can’t pay our bills and we automatically ask to be surrounded by abundance. And instead of thinking, “Oh yay! This unpaid bill was a reminder that I want abundance and now I’ve asked and now it will naturally flow into my life because the Universe always answers yes! I’m so glad I couldn’t pay my bill!” we think, “I hate the fact that I can’t pay my bills. I wish I had more money. My bank account is so empty. I don’t even want to look at these bills.” Even though the Universe always answers yes and is responding by bringing abundance into our lives we cannot bring it into physical manifestation until we know—until we feel—that it is here.
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08.02.07
….. And We’re Back!
I thought about coming back from my summer hiatus last week (or even earlier this week), but then the symmetry of not post for a full month seemed nice and I didn’t. What did I do during my break from the internet?
- Re-read the Harry Potter series in anticipation of the new book (which. was. awesome.),
- Sweltered in the heat (which was not awesome),
- Took my last Reiki class (I am now a Master Teacher, huzzah!),
- Spent time with my mother (which is always nice),
- Listened to the buzzing in my head,
- Played a bunch of Wii,
- Moved the forums from my own system to Zaadz.com (more on this in a minute),
- The rest is a blur.
Of the items on the list, two are particularly relevant to Uncover Your Bliss:
The first is my Master Teacher status. I am in the process of developing class materials and I will begin teaching Reiki in September. I will be offering classes online as well as in person for those in the Denver metro area. I will post more information including dates and outlines in the near future.
The second is the forum move to Zaadz.com. If you receive my newsletter*, you know about this already. Here’s the announcement:
Uncover Your Bliss Forums Are Moving to Zaadz
For a while now, I’ve been cross posting many of my blog posts to my Zaadz blog. Recently they launched a service for business owners that offers community features likes forums and this handy, dandy newsletter. I like the features so much, I’ve decided to move the forums over to my Zaadz site.For those of you who don’t know, Zaadz.com is a growing online community of people who believe they can change the world through love, connection, and responsible capitalism (you can read their mission for more info). The ideals of the group fit right in with what I love about online community and when I was offered the opportunity to leverage some of the great tools and resources I jumped at the chance.
So what does this mean for you?
First, you’ll be receiving a newsletter approximately once a month to update you about what’s been going on at Uncover Your Bliss. The newsletter will highlight upcoming events, recent blog entries (which you’ll be able to find at Zaadz and at uncoveryourbliss.com), and any fun discussions going on in the forums.Speaking of the forums, to participate in any of the discussions, you’ll need to register with Zaadz. Ordinarily I would avoid a situation where members would need to sign up for a third-party account, but Zaadz is an incredibly responsible, non-invasive company. You will not get spammed and you then have access to other fun resources such as your own blog, your own discussion forum, and lots of good vibes wherever you go on the system. If you’ve already posted to the other forums, feel free to move what you’ve posted over (or not, it’s up to you).
I’m a huge fan of the Zaadz.com community and feel very comfortably intrusting this part of my business with them. I hope you’ll take the time to create an account to post in the forums and explore Zaadz. Feel free to contact me about any questions you have regarding this transition or signing up.
*If you’d like to receive the newsletter, you can sign up here. You do not have to be a member of Zaadz.com to get the newsletter.
