Tag: habits

Throwback Thursday: Embodying a new self

~ meximinnesotana ~ Leave a comment

This is an edited post from February of 2018. Reading it makes me want to dig Joe Dispenza‘s book off my shelf again. Good juicy learning about how to make changes in our lives.

***

I have written before about the idea that there is no “better” you – that self-acceptance and self compassion are the key to any big changes we want to make in our lives.

Paradoxically, we all grow, develop and change over time, and we do become “better” at certain things. It is not that we become better people. I hold the belief that all of us, just by virtue of being born, are worthy of love, compassion and self-regard. However, we strive to become more of who we are at the core, at a soul and spirit level, that identity is typically muted or hidden in an effort to be more acceptable to others.

Right now I am reading “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” by Dr. Joe Dispenza and it is blowing my mind. The title is provocative to me because it goes against the advice we are typically given: just be yourself. While I agree this usually means we should not try to be “someone else,” most of us still yearn to grow and change and evolve to a “next version” of ourselves.

breaking the habit

We yearn for enlightenment, for peace, for a sense of ease in our being. But Dispenza explains how our habitual thoughts become encoded by our neuro-chemical and physical body over time. The mind and body work together to create our reality, and re-create what we have known and experienced usually in the past.

It is only when we become aware of our thoughts, and how they create emotions, which are “coding” for what they become in the body, that we can actively change the reality we are creating.

Dispenza uses the field of quantum physics to challenge our previous assumptions about a Newtonian universe in which there are physical causes and effects, and thus explores the notion of potentials. I really enjoy his explanations of how we can create changes in our lives to move from thinking to doing to being. Though I am only half way through the book, the insight has already exploded my mind in terms of the possibilities.

I have had great skepticism for the self-help idea of manifesting, though I have encountered it plenty of times in the literature I read. I must admit – I am a questioner and anything that is too “woo woo” for my researcher brain is typically dismissed as fluff. But as I consider the neuroscience behind the principles that Dispenza explains, now I understand the theoretical basis for how this may work.

My experiences with meditation, and understanding experientially how my thoughts create my feelings, and how feelings lead to action (or non-action) these concepts are leading me to wild new ideas about how we can create the lives we want. I still have not yet moved to the stage of practice and implementing these ideas fully, but I am sure to experiment with these as I embrace changes in my life going forward.

Hasta luego, amigos!

cristy@meximinnesotana.com

Slow vs fast

~ meximinnesotana ~ 2 Comments

I am sitting here watching the sunrise in my favorite chair with my coffee beside me. Sometimes my mind swirls with all I “should” get done today. Then I remember to take some deep breaths and SLOW DOWN.

I just finished a re-listen of Tom Sterner’s book, The Practicing Mind yesterday. It is about developing focus and discipline in your life. He reports a time when he tried an experiment: instead of rushing from thing to thing, event to event during his day, he tries moving as slowly and deliberately as possible. He discovers a remarkable thing: in that process of slowing down, everything seems to get done faster.

This is something I have noticed at times in my own life. When I am pinging back and forth between screen windows, or thinking in the back of my mind “I have so much to do” I get a feeling of busy-ness that creates anxiety.  When I realize that, I take a deep breath and acknowledge I have time for everything I need to do, I relax. I focus. I engage in the present moment. I get things done, one at a time.

Truly we only need to breathe to survive today. Yes, we probably want to eat sometime as well. But we would survive if we did not eat one day. Yes, we probably want to go to work, because there are consequences if we do not. But we have all the time we need, and going slower may actually help us get the work done faster. 

I love this paradox. As someone who has conditioned myself for that rushed feeling, it will take some deliberate practice to change the habit. But it can be done. I am going to prove it to myself. It runs counter to our culture, and that is just fine for me.

Go slow, friends.

turtles.JPG
Photo credit link – Endangered turtles saved in Ontario

Embodying a new self

~ meximinnesotana ~ 2 Comments

I have written before about the idea that there is no “better” you – that self-acceptance and self compassion are the key to any big changes we want to make in our lives.

Paradoxically, I think we all grow, develop and change over time, and we do become “better” at certain things. It is not that we become better people. I hold the belief that all of us, just by virtue of being born, are worthy of love, compassion and self-regard. However, we strive to become more of who we are at the core, at a soul and spirit level, that identity is typically muted or hidden in an effort to be more acceptable to others.

Right now I am reading “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” by Dr. Joe Dispenza and it is blowing my mind. The title is provocative to me because it goes against the advice we are typically given: just be yourself. While I agree this usually means we should not try to be “someone else,” most of us still yearn to grow and change and evolve to a “next version” of ourselves.

breaking the habit

We yearn for enlightenment, for peace, for a sense of ease in our being. But Dispenza explains how our habitual thoughts become encoded by our neuro-chemical and physical body over time. Our mind and body work together to create our reality, and re-create what we have known and experienced usually in the past. It is only when we become aware of our thoughts, and how they create emotions, which are “coding” for what they become in the body, that we can actively change the reality we are creating.

Dispenza uses the field of quantum physics to challenge our previous assumptions about a Newtonian universe in which there are physical causes and effects, and thus explores the notion of potentials. I really enjoy his explanations of how we can create changes in our lives to move from thinking to doing to being. Though I am only half way through the book, the insight has already exploded my mind in terms of the possibilities.

I have had great skepticism for the self-help idea of manifesting, though I have encountered it plenty of times in the literature I read. I must admit – I am a questioner and anything that is too “woo woo” for my researcher brain is typically dismissed as fluff. But as I consider the neuroscience behind the principles that Dispenza explains, now I understand the theoretical basis for how this may work.

My experiences with meditation, and understanding experientially how my thoughts create my feelings, and how feelings lead to action (or non-action) these concepts are leading me to wild new ideas about how we can create the lives we want. I still have not yet moved to the stage of practice and implementing these ideas fully, but I am sure to experiment with these as I embrace changes in my life going forward.

Hasta luego, amigos!

I am mastering sleep

~ meximinnesotana ~ 9 Comments

To continue along a theme I started yesterday on the power of internal thoughts and dialogue on your feelings and behavior, I decided to go into another personal example.

Some of you know that I have struggled in the past with getting enough sleep. But in the last couple of years I have truly started to understand the difference that getting good, consistent sleep makes for me. It allows me to be less distracted, more engaged, less triggered in terms of emotional volatility.

Good sleep allows me to be more creative, more flexible in my thinking, and more generous in spirit. It helps me keep my weight stable and gives me more consistent energy. Sleep allows me to make better decisions and to pause before responding to stimuli. It “cleans up” the toxic stuff that builds up during the day.

But for years I struggled with periodic insomnia. Notice how I define that in the past tense? In truth, I still struggle sometimes. But I was considering the difference in telling myself “I suffer from insomnia” and changing that thought too: “I am learning to master sleep.”

Sleep

It may seem like a subtle difference. But when I consider the feeling that results from “I suffer from…” it makes me feel bad. It makes me feel defeated. When I instead practice the thought, “I am mastering sleep” I start to feel hopeful, as though I am making progress. It means I have not yet figured it out, but that I am getting there. Actually, that is what is true for me.

Back when I started tracking all this stuff with the Wellbeing Finder about a year and a half ago, I really struggled. Knowing that getting better, more consistent sleep was the goal, I could see what factors led to better sleep. So I experimented with different things, like powering the devices down at least an hour before bed. I was shifting my drinking and eating patterns too. I quit alcohol and cut way back on sugar and flour.

It turned out some of those factors were much more relevant than I thought in getting a good night’s sleep. Now that I am used to receiving better quality and quantity of sleep, I am a total convert! But I need to realize this is a skill that can be mastered. Even though I suffered from insomnia in the past, I am gaining mastery over good sleep.

If you are mastering sleep, do consider what language you use as you learn to embrace this beautiful and restorative habit. Imagine if you used kinder language to describe the process of change, and describe the issues as relevant to the past but not the present. Perhaps that will help you, as it has for me, to let go of the need to be perfect. Mastery is an ongoing process but so very worthwhile.

Letting Go

~ meximinnesotana ~ 10 Comments

Happy New Year, Friends! I hope by now you have slept off any late night parties and begun 2018 with vim and vigor.

It is very cold here in Minnesota, only -11F as I write this (without wind chill). My husband and I laughed at the NYC ball-drop countdown last night when they were complaining about 12F. Wimps, we said! You don’t even KNOW what cold is.

Then we went to bed around our usual time after a few episodes of the Twilight Zone, an annual tradition on NYE. I used to stay up late, and as a morning person, the result is that I nearly always ushered in the New Year tired and cranky. Oy, SO not worth it to me.

HNY
Photo credit link

I dearly love my sleep, the older I get, and I refuse to sacrifice it for something arbitrary like midnight. So I let go of that habit when I realized it was not serving me. When I embrace what makes me happiest and most vital, and let go of doing things just because our culture encourages them.

I spent a lot of New Years in my youth trying to start a new habit, or get on a better eating plan, or become more committed to some new activity. I realize that since I look at January 1st as arbitrary, I do better at starting new things on a date I choose.

Perhaps I use a new season, or a new month or a new week. The past year, I started writing daily as of October 1st. 330 days ago I started meditating daily. So that was February. It happened to be Super Bowl Sunday. Coincidence? Perhaps. I also attended a Satsang session at a local meditation center. But I do not do that regularly. It just helped initiate the ritual for me.

What is more relevant to me this year is not necessarily starting something new, but instead letting go of what does not serve me. They say that adding something new is actually much easier than breaking a habit we do not want. I can see how that is true.

But at the same time, there are a few things that I realize no longer serve me, and I will  work on letting them go, replacing them with habits that are more compassionate and that honor my needs. Here are a few:

Self-criticism – this is a hard one. I have a pretty tough inner critic. But I have worked at being more forgiving lately, and realizing that I am doing my best. That’s really all I can do, and I will continue to honor this.

Self-blame – I have been told I sometimes feel “inappropriate guilt.” A mentor mentioned this to me once when I talked about moving onto a new position but not wanting to let my team down. It would probably serve me to let this one go as well.

Judgment of self and others – It really is impossible to live someone else’s life, and understand what they are going through. Empathy is something to practice, for sure. But beyond that, people need to just be allowed to be who they are, without my imposed story-lines of what they should or should not do.

Doing others’s work – There is another manager on my team (a physician) who conveniently does not always follow the bureaucratic procedures we need to follow for things like hiring at work. In the past I would often pick up the slack to be sure things were done correctly. This year, I intend to let him do his work. By himself. Yes, I want to be a team player. But last year I did more than my share. This year I will let him fail when he does not do what is required for managers. His boss (and mine) is ultimately responsible, not me. My husband will be proud of me for this one, if I can follow through on it. He heard me say last December “I’m done!” when it came to another scenario where my colleague’s lack of follow-through put me in a difficult position.

Whew I guess you can tell what pushes my buttons. And it felt great to get that off my chest. The first three of these things, I have worked to let go, especially in recent months and over the past year of committed meditation practice.

It takes some work, awareness and commitment to change old thoughts that do not serve us. For some of them, they have worn grooves into our brains after thinking the old and tired thoughts too many times. It is not because they are TRUE, it is just because we have practiced them. The good news is that we can practice other thoughts! And over them, we then “weed out” those ones that no longer serve us.

Some thoughts I prefer to practice are:

“I have time to do what I need to do today.”  

“I am doing my best, and that is enough.”

“I trust myself and deserve compassion.” or “I trust my body to tell me what I need.” 

I may set a few goals this year with my husband, because I want to work better as a team when it comes to things like money and savings goals. That will undoubtedly be a topic for a future post, as I examine my own obstacles in learning this new practice.

But for now I feel satisfied with letting go a few things so I can welcome in more compassion and love for myself and others. I’m ready, 2018!

 

 

 

 

 

Compulsive blogging

~ meximinnesotana ~ 1 Comment

Now that I have committed to posting daily since the beginning of October, I realize that I always make time for this activity, no matter what. I start to wonder if that is a little compulsive.

It is nearly 300 days since I started meditating daily, and I recognize the benefit to my life of that consistent habit. Is writing the same thing? Or does it have a down side, a dark side? I suppose any good thing can have its down side it taken to an extreme.

During the holidays when I had a little less access to wi-fi, I pulled out my handwritten journal a bit more. That is a good thing. Electronic media are a nice luxury, for sure. But my brain processes differently when hand-writing is a necessity.

Laptop with watch

I felt a little withdrawal when I was unable to write, a little melancholy. I realized that writing gives me joy, and this blog community I have discovered has become a little more part of my routine than I expected. That said, I adapt to the change in routine that holidays typically bring.

I wrote haiku, did a photo-blog piece instead of a longer journal-like piece and I did more personal reflection instead than public blog posts. Changing it up can be good, despite those habits we cultivate getting modified a bit during the holidays.

I realized that, in prioritizing this blog, I put aside some tasks that I was “supposed” to do this weekend for work. In fact, I chose not to work on them because I prioritized what was important to myself rather than my employer. This is probably related to my tendency as a Questioner, more easily moved by inner expectations rather than outer expectations.

So maybe it is less a compulsion than a strong desire and discipline to shape this writer in me. I can demonstrate to myself that this commitment is not just a fleeting one, but a more fundamental part of how I intend to live.

How do you want to live? Are there things you dream about doing that keep entering your consciousness? Are there nudges you keep getting to try things that make you a little anxious but also excited? What if you committed 15-30 minutes each day to getting those things done? How would your life change?