Facing Adversity Positively

“Keep calm and carry on” is a wonderful saying that you can take to heart when you are trying to keep a high vibration in the middle of adversity. But it is not easy!

When you are in a difficult situation, your fight-or-flight response is in full active mode and you are hyper focused on the problem at hand. This is okay – you have to be primed for action and rapid problem-solving; however, that heightened state of a stress response, can cause you to make decisions that are not in your best interests. You do not have to let adversity keep in you in a state of low vibration – let it come, and then let it go!

A stress response is a reactive state. Things come flying at you, and you react. Many of these reactions can be counterproductive in that they may not have the long-term in mind. Here are some ways to learn to be more positive during adversity, so that you keep your vibration as consistently high as possible, and your choices serve you better:

1. Whenever you are faced with a decision during this adversity, do not make it immediately (whenever possible). Make sure you can take as much time as you need to make an informed and less emotional choice. If you can defer your decision for a day or more and give yourself time to consider all your options, great. If you have to make a decision faster, insist on at least a few minutes to breathe and ask your higher self for guidance. It is essential to be open to hearing/feeling an answer you may not like.

2. Listen to your inner wisdom by heeding what your body is telling you. A decision that looks right on paper could be wrong for you – any tension, queasiness, uneasiness, anxiety, in your body is a very clear signal that a particular choice is bad for you. Visualize yourself in a calm and happy space, choosing “Door #1” and pay close attention to your physical response. Then, visualize yourself taking that choice back and choosing “Door #2” – again monitor your physical response. Go with your gut feeling. Your inner wisdom will not steer you wrong!

3. Take time to express gratitude for this situation. This is the tough part, but you will find that if you dig into the amazing opportunities for growth and learning that this situation is bringing to you, you will see that it is possible to turn a problem into a cherished teacher. No, it will not make the situation fun, but it will make it feel important in a GOOD way.

4. Admire yourself! Give yourself props anytime you handle something gracefully, powerfully, confidently, compassionately, kindly and in a way that respects and honors you and your values. When you do not handle a situation in a way that you feel good about later, face it – accept that you made an unfortunate choice in your response, and learn from it.

Shifting your perspective to one that honors the inherent lessons and growth opportunities in the situation will help you see it in a more positive light.

With thanks to Christie Marie Sheldon http://www.loveorabove.com/blog/tips-for-being-positive-in-adversity/

Harmonious Reationships

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain  or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
- Rabindranath Tagore

Crucial insights can be lost when it comes to relationships. People think they are doing it right, when they believe every feeling and concern must be communicated and continually have “the talk” about what is going on, and endlessly process what happened when an interaction becomes difficult, but

sometimes we can overdue the communication by trying to keep everything out in the open.

Now, an honest, open relationship is a beautiful thing, and we should not accept anything less. But it does not all hinge on good communication. When we do not own our emotional reactions we bring tension, conflict and separation to our relationships.

Own Your Emotions

Instead of taking a breath and meeting our own experience when we feel frustrated or hurt, we blame, criticize, fight, manipulate, and spend our precious time rationalising our opinions to ourselves and everyone around us.

We have moved away from the solo activity of being present with our experience. The effects? We are driven to engage when we are emotionally charged, not calm. (Not a good plan.) Our minds spin in judgment and confusion, trying to make sense of it all.

Is this what you really want? Do you want to foster friction and divisiveness—or do you want to meet the people in your life with an open, loving heart and mind?

Turning Toward Your Inner Experience

The beginning of a bold and courageous way of being is to turn your attention away from the other person and directly into yourself. You stop seeing others through the veil of your own pain.

What happens? Compassion naturally arises—for others and for yourself.

Your reactions to other people are a beautiful invitation for your awakening. They reflect back to you areas of unexplored emotion and show you how you hide from yourself.

Here is what is possible: Being triggered by others becomes a time of celebration. You get to see where you are stuck so you can be free. Then you show up open and kind in your interactions. When you start reflecting on your own inner experience, you make some amazing discoveries.

• If you lash out at your partner in anger, you might realize you are actually afraid.
• If you judge and constrict your children, maybe you feel helpless as a parent or scared about what might happen to them.
• If you are waiting for affection, you may be missing the opportunity to know yourself as already whole and complete.

Take any relationship that causes you stress or discomfort, and like a trail of breadcrumbs, follow your reaction back into yourself to its source. It will guarantee you an illuminating discovery.

Meeting Your Reactions For Harmony In Your Relationships

Often, the strong feelings that arise in our interactions echo an unresolved relationship from our past. If you were criticized by an overly demanding parent, it will not take much for a boss correcting your work to seem like a tyrant in your eyes. If you were abandoned in your youth, a friend calling to cancel plans at the last minute may cause you to feel like you are five again.

Any reaction that seems too intense for the situation at hand has undoubtedly triggered some old, undigested feelings.

What to do when these emotions are revealed? Acknowledge them. Experience how they feel in your body. Own them so they do not complicate your interactions.

Learn how to be with your experience. It is absolutely the most loving thing you can do for yourself and everyone else.

When you meet your emotions within yourself, you bring harmony to your relationships. You are no longer sensitive and reactive. You are available for the deepest intimacy with all that is.

With thanks to Gail Brenner http://gailbrenner.com/2014/12/harmony-to-your-relationships/

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A healthy Mind Leads To A Healthy Body

We feel emotions in our bodies and some emotions can deeply harm us. Learn how to achieve a healthier state of mind.

We ‘burn’ with anger, ‘tremble’ with fear, feel ‘choked up’ with sadness; our ‘stomachs turn’ with revulsion. Everyone tends to experience unpleasant emotions as unpleasant bodily symptoms and thus to feel physically distressed when emotionally distressed. That is the bad news.

The good news is that we have the power to change negative thoughts and feelings into positive, rational, motivating thoughts, and in doing so, help create a healthy mind in a healthy body.

This transformation, which is part of emerging fields in psychology focused on mind-body health, is very important because it can greatly boost our chances of achieving what we want in life, including a fitter, healthier lifestyle.

By changing our minds, we really can change our lives.

The Healthy Mind and Body Connection

Mind-body medicine originated more than 4,000 years ago, when physicians in China noticed that illness often followed periods of frustration in their patients’ lives. Today in western societies like the U. S., medical professionals also share the view that emotions, life events, and coping skills can have a very strong influence on health.

Healthy mind-body medicine is now part of exciting new fields such as psychoneuroimmunology and behavorial cardiology.

Psychoneuroimmunology focuses on the relationship of our thoughts and emotions to our brain chemistry and immune system.

Behavioral cardiology is the application of psychological and social factors in the assessment and reduction of cardiovascular risk. It is an important field for a number of reasons, including reducing recurring heart attacks, helping patients recover sooner, and improving family support.

Chronic Stress can make us Fat - and Sick

It is the long-term consequences of an anxiety-filled existence that are particularly troubling. Over time, chronic emotional and psychological stress can:

• Promote fat storage
• Retain salt in the body
• Destroy the body’s resistance to cancer, infections, and illness
• Cause infertility and sexual dysfunction
• Exacerbate diabetes
• Deposit cholesterol in blood vessels
• Accelerate heart rate and increase blood pressure, and thicken blood so it clots more readily, which makes you more prone to suffering a heart attack or stroke.
• Calming the mind 
• To guide people toward healthier states of mind, emerging throughout America are major medical centers with wellness divisions offering stress management, relaxation training, guided imagery, and cognitive therapy techniques. Add them to healthy eating and exercising and you maximize your control over your well-being.
• Stress Hardiness 
• Attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that are linked with a healthy mind and body.
• A key goal of mind-body techniques is achieving an overall approach to life known as stress hardiness. Stress hardiness is associated with four important personality traits that buffer the impact of stress and improve coping. These characteristics of the stress resistant or healthy personality are identified as:
• Commitment - An attitude of curiosity and commitment to yourself, your loved ones, your work, and the world.
• Control -  The belief that you can respond effectively to situations that arise in your life, rather than feeling hopeless and incompetent. 
• Challenge -  The ability to see change as exciting and an opportunity for growth rather than viewing it as frightening and fearing failure.
• Connection - The enduring assurance that you are understood and validated by those you are closest to.
• Other attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that are linked with good health include:
• Social Support - is protective against the effects of stress and has been found to be associated with longevity.
• Emotional disclosure - By keeping a journal or speaking with others, emotional disclosure helps people cope with events. Also, people who use these strategies have lower blood pressure and report fewer health problems compared with people who do  not.
• Humour - has been demonstrated to have “stress-busting” qualities and reduces the body”s physiological response to stress.

• • To read the complete article go tohttps://www.pritikin.com/home-the-basics/about-pritikin/how-pritikin-works/16-healthy-mind-healthy-body.html
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Life Strategies

Life Law #1: You either get it or you do not.
Strategy: Become one of those who gets it.

It is easy to tell these people apart. Those who "get it" understand how things work and have a strategy to create the results they want. Those who do not are stumbling along looking puzzled, and can be found complaining that they never seem to get a break. 

You must do what ever it takes to accumulate enough knowledge to "get it." You need to operate with the information and skills that are necessary to win. Be prepared, tune in, find out how the game is played and play by the rules.

In designing a strategy and getting the information you need — about yourself, people you encounter, or situations — be careful from whom you accept input. Wrong thinking and misinformation can seal your fate before you even begin. 

Life Law #2: You create your own experience.
Strategy: Acknowledge and accept accountability for your life. Understand your role in creating results. 
You cannot dodge responsibility for how and why your life is the way it is. If you do not like your job, you are accountable. If you are overweight, you are accountable. If you are not happy, you are accountable. You are creating the situations you are in and the emotions that flow from those situations.

Do not play the role of victim, or use past events to build excuses. It guarantees you no progress, no healing, and no victory. You will never fix a problem by blaming someone else. Whether the cards you have been dealt are good or bad, you are in charge of yourself now.

Every choice you make — including the thoughts you think — has consequences. When you choose the behaviour or thought, you choose the consequences. If you choose to stay with a destructive partner, then you choose the consequences of pain and suffering. If you choose thoughts contaminated with anger and bitterness, then you will create an experience of alienation and hostility. When you start choosing the right behavior and thoughts — which will take a lot of discipline — you will get the right consequences. 

Life Law #3: People do what works.
Strategy: Identify the payoffs that drive your behaviour and that of others.

Even the most destructive behaviours have a payoff. If you did not perceive the behaviour in question to generate some value to you, you would not do it. If you want to stop behaving in a certain way, you have got to stop "paying yourself off" for doing it.

Find and control the payoffs, because you cannot stop a behaviour until you recognise what you are gaining from it. Payoffs can be as simple as money gained by going to work to psychological payoffs of acceptance, approval, praise, love or companionship. It is possible that you are feeding off unhealthy, addictive and imprisoning payoffs, such as self-punishment or distorted self-importance. 

Be alert to the possibility that your behaviour is controlled by fear of rejection. It is easier not to change. Try something new or put yourself on the line. Also consider if your need for immediate gratification creates an appetite for a small payoff now rather than a large payoff later.

Life Law #4: You cannot change what you do not acknowledge.
Strategy: Get real with yourself about life and everybody in it. Be truthful about what is not working in your life. Stop making excuses and start making results. 

If you are unwilling or unable to identify and consciously acknowledge your negative behaviours, characteristics or life patterns, then you will not change them. (In fact, they will only grow worse and become more entrenched in your life.) You have got to face it to replace it.

Acknowledgment means slapping yourself in the face with the brutal reality, admitting that you are getting payoffs for what you are doing, and giving yourself a no-kidding, bottom-line truthful confrontation. You cannot afford the luxury of lies, denial or defensiveness.

Where are you now? If you hope to have a winning life strategy, you have to be honest about where your life is right now. Your life is not too bad to fix and it is never too late to fix it. But be honest about what needs fixing. If you lie to yourself about any dimension of your life, an otherwise sound strategy will be compromised.

Life Law #5: Life rewards action.
Strategy: Make careful decisions and then pull the trigger. Learn that the world could not care less about thoughts without actions.

Talk is cheap. It is what you do that determines the script of your life. Translate your insights, understandings and awareness into purposeful, meaningful, constructive actions. They are of no value until then. Measure yourself and others based on results — not intentions or words.

Use any pain you have to propel you out of the situation you are in and to get you where you want to be. The same pain that burdens you now could be turned to your advantage. It may be the very motivation you need to change your life.

Decide that you are worth the risk of taking action, and that your dreams are not to be sold out. Know that putting yourself at risk may be scary, but it will be worth it. You must leave behind the comfortable and familiar if you are to move onward and upward. 

Life Law #6: Life is managed; it is not cured.
Strategy: Learn to take charge of your life and hold on. This is a long ride, and you are the driver every single day.

You are a life manager, and your objective is to actively manage your life in a way that generates high-quality results. You are your own most important resource for making your life work. Success is a moving target that must be tracked and continually pursued.

Effective life management means you need to require more of yourself in your grooming, self-control, emotional management, interaction with others, work performance, dealing with fear, and in every other category you can think of. You must approach this task with the most intense commitment, direction and urgency you can muster. 

The key to managing your life is to have a strategy. If you have a clear-cut plan, and the courage, commitment and energy to execute that strategy, you can flourish. If you do not have a plan, you will be a stepping stone for those who do. You can also help yourself as a life manager if you manage your expectations. If you do not require much of yourself, your life will be of poor quality. If you have unrealistic standards, then you are adding to your difficulties.

Life Law #7: There is power in forgiveness.
Strategy: Open your eyes to what anger and resentment are doing to you. Take your power back from those who have hurt you.

Hate, anger and resentment are destructive, eating away at the heart and soul of the person who carries them. They are absolutely incompatible with your own peace, joy and relaxation. Ugly emotions change who you are and contaminate every relationship you have. They can also take a physical toll on your body, including sleep disturbance, headaches, back spasms, and even heart attacks. 

Forgiveness sets you free from the bonds of hatred, anger and resentment. The only way to rise above the negatives of a relationship in which you were hurt is to take the moral high ground, and forgive the person who hurt you. 

Forgiveness is not about another person who has transgressed against you; it is about you. Forgiveness is about doing whatever it takes to preserve the power to create your own emotional state. It is a gift to yourself and it frees you. You do not have to have the other person's cooperation, and they do not have to be sorry or admit the error of their ways. Do it for yourself.

Life Law #8: You have to name it before you can claim it.
Strategy: Get clear about what you want and take your turn. 

Not knowing what you want — from your major life goals to your day-to-day desires — is not OK. The most you will ever get is what you ask for. If you do not even know what it is that you want, then you cannot even ask for it. You also will not even know if you get there! 

By being specific in defining your goal, the choices you make along the way will be more goal-directed. You will recognize which behaviors and choices support your goals — and which do not. You will know when you are heading toward your goal, and when you are off track. 

Be bold enough to reach for what will truly fill you up, without being unrealistic. Once you have the strength and resolve enough to believe that you deserve what it is that you want, then and only then will you be bold enough to step up and claim it. Remember that if you do not, someone else will. 

To read the full article go to http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/44

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