Higher Awareness

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What's your best routine?

“For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall into old habits. When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad, I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul and I've not been following my best routine.”

-- Robert Fulghum

How do you need to bring more balance to your life?

Robert Fulghum has shared, “The older I get, the more I realize the importance of exercising the various dimensions of my body, soul, mind and heart. Taken together, these aspects give me a sense of wholeness. I want to be a whole human being rather than one who limps on one leg because I don't know how to use all of my parts. Intellectual, emotional, and physical activity are not separate entities. Rather, they are dimensions of the same human being.”

"There is an Indian Belief that everyone is in a house of four rooms: A physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room everyday, even if only to keep it aired, we are not complete."

-- Rumer Godden

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Celebrate differences

“Souls don’t have races or sexes or religions. They are beyond artificial divisions.”

-- Brian Weiss

Intolerance of differences always exists in people who don’t know who they are, people who don’t have a strong sense of their own authentic self, the soul within.

Intolerance is rooted in fear.

The basis for having a strong sense of self-esteem is to replace our unconscious idea of basic unworthiness with a conscious knowing of our fundamental inherent goodness. As Matthew Fox argues in Original Blessing, the notion of ‘original sin’ must be replaced with the truth of ‘original blessing.’

Being in touch with our essential goodness, we can see the essential goodness in others as well.

“Beliefs separate. Loving thoughts unite.”

-- Paul Ferrini

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Do you believe in yourself?

“We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves.”

-- Orison Swett Marden

What do you believe about yourself?

If you are experiencing a lack of something in your life, chances are that you hold a belief in your subconscious that says you aren't worthy of having that quality. Write in your journal the answer to these questions for yourself:

- Where are you not good enough, not worthy enough?
- How willing are you to receive?

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit."

-- e. e. cummings

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Build the awareness habit

“It is difficult to see the picture when you are inside of the frame.”

-- Author Unknown

Start building the awareness habit: STOP and PAY ATTENTION. Set an intention to become aware of how you automatically react to different things in your life.

For example, how do you react to the alarm clock, the shower, traffic, work colleagues and situations, your partner or children? How do you react to anger or fear in someone else? How do you react to your own anger or fear? Become a witness to your own life. Pay attention to how you do things.

“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”

-- Abraham H. Maslow

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Live in relaxation

"It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work."

-- Henry David Thoreau

Is relaxation possible only when we’re not working? No. With awareness and practice, we can be relaxed no matter what we are doing. In fact, when we work in a relaxed state, our productivity increases as our effort decreases.

For true relaxation, we need to connect with our bodies -- to consciously and intentionally become aware of tension and release it.

"Anxiety breaks a man’s backbone."

-- Hebrew proverb

"Don't hurry, don't worry. You're only here for a short visit. So be sure to stop and smell the flowers."

-- Walter Hagen

How do you work with anger?

"Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains."

-- Helen Douglas

How do you feel about anger, in yourself and in others? How do you deal with it?

Anger is powerful energy. If we are afraid of this energy, we may attempt to deny or hide it. And when we lack control of the energy of anger, we impose it on other people or things.

The ways we react to anger usually reflect how we experienced anger as children and how our own anger when we were young was handled by the adults at the time.

In reality, anger, like any emotion, brings us information. It tells us how we feel about what is being experienced. If we receive anger’s message and learn more about ourselves, the energy will pass.

"Too often we underestimate how quickly our feelings are going to change because we underestimate our ability to change them."

-- David Gilbert

Be open to change

“Balance is a dynamic process; it changes with the days, the seasons, the years.”

-- Sherrill Sellman

How rigid are your routines? Do you exercise for 30 minutes, three times each week no matter how you feel?

Routines and structure can provide a valuable framework to bring discipline to our lives. At the same time, we are always changing and it’s wise to be sensitive to our physical, emotional and mental states so we can ensure that our activities truly meet our needs. We need to be willing to change our patterns when our practices no longer serve us.

“Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“The smallest change in perspective can transform a life. What tiny attitude adjustment might turn your world around?”

-- Oprah

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Use your breath to relax your body

"Breath is the link between the inner and outer worlds."

-- Alice Christensen

We live in very demanding times, and our health depends on our being able to relieve our bodies and minds from constant stress. Breathing with awareness can focus and concentrate our attention inside. This slows down our pace and eases the pressure, anxiety, anticipation and excitement that are common stress reactions.

At any time, you can consciously experience your breathing to help you concentrate your mind and relax your body. Compare how you feel after your session with how you felt before. Write about your experience in your journal.

"Controlled deep breathing helps the body to transform the air we breathe into energy. The stream of energized air produced by properly executed and controlled deep breathing produces a current of inner energy which radiates throughout the entire body and can be channeled to the body areas that need it the most, on demand."

-- Nancy Zi

Why are you doing that?

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."

-- Sir John Lubbock

Throughout the day, continually ask yourself about your underlying motivation. Why are you doing what you are doing?

Is it for selfish, manipulative or fearful reasons? Is it for honest service with integrity? Maybe you’ll discover you don’t know. Perhaps you will see that much of your activity lacks purpose.

This is a great way to become more conscious. Your intention and motives are fundamental to the results you will receive. Set high intentions and your life will blossom.

"The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

What are you procrastinating?

"The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started."

-- Dawson Trotman

Procrastination seriously drains our energy and our morale. What remains undone nags at us.

What are you avoiding? Make a list of items and then review each one. Does it really need to be done? After you've reviewed your list, prioritize it and start one task today.

Please do not procrastinate taking one minute to write down your answer to this question. Capture it on paper and this will help build awareness, commitment and discipline.

"How soon not now, becomes never."

-- Martin Luther

"Talk does not cook rice."

-- Chinese proverb

"Do you know what happens when you give a procrastinator a good idea? Nothing!"

-- Donald Gardner

Stretch yourself

"People are defeated by easy, victorious and cheap successes more than by adversity."

-- Benjamin Disraeli

Today’s social standard is one of mediocrity. The status quo rarely challenges our individual creative power.

Create a brand new world for yourself, one that meets your deepest needs. By doing so, you will help raise the quality of consciousness of the entire world. Use your imagination! Sing your own song!

"Success means fulfilling your own dreams, singing your own song, dancing your own dance, creating from your heart and enjoying the journey, trusting that whatever happens, it will be OK. Creating your own adventure!"

-- Elana Lindquist

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Believe in your unlimited potential

"You cannot see anything that you do not first contemplate as a reality."

-- Ramtha

How do you typically define yourself? Do you tell yourself and others that you are slow and methodical, that you have two left feet, that you are lazy, or unimaginative or that you can’t hang on to money?

In our unconscious self talk, most of us rarely say positive things about ourselves. List the positive and the negative ways you describe yourself. Then look over your list and contemplate how those definitions limit your ability to be cosmic in your outlook and performance.

"Belief has the word ‘lie’ in it... and that pretty much sums up what the world has us believing about ourselves."

-- Doug Firebaugh

"We are what we believe we are."

-- Benjamin N. Cardozo

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