Developing a positive attitude

Your thoughts and emotions, day in day out, affect all aspects of your life. Learning to be mindful of your “internal dialogue” will help you recognize thought patterns and how they may be affecting the way you handle the situations of daily living.

Many people have found that, when they tune in to their internal dialogue, much of it is negative. Thoughts like, “I could never do that” and “What if I fail?” can seriously impact the way you behave. The stress associated with attachment to this negative internal dialogue, in turn, affects every aspect of your life.

When we are stressed, certain hormones are produced by the body. When released infrequently, these hormones are harmless but, when produced continuously, they can cause serious damage. Cardiovascular disease is caused in part by the continuous bombardment of stress hormones and by the arterial damage caused by the free radicals created in the process.

Letting go of attachment to these negative thoughts and emotions is very self-liberating. This is a process in itself; however, well worth the effort. Learn and Practice Meditation

Listen to music to inspire you while reading the following text.

The Path to Freedom from Dissatisfaction

1. Recognize first that there is dissatisfaction or anguish in your life
2. Next, Recognize that there are causes of this dissatisfaction
3. Next, Recognize that within the mind there is the potential to be freed from this anguish
4. Finally, Recognize that there is a path to freedom from this anguish

The following tips will help you along the way to freedom from the habitual tendencies of mind that hold you back from experiencing true joy. Inevitably it is your own personal journey.

Sleep more soundly!

Sleep is absolutely essential to improve and maintain energy levels, immune system effectiveness, mental and emotional clarity and overall quality of life. When you feel good, you function better.

The following tips are very useful if you need to sleep better!

• Learn and Practice Meditation
• Decrease mental activity in the evening.
• Make preparations for the next day.
• Take a hot bath before bedtime to help relieve stress.
• Soothing fragrances, lights, and music may help as well.
• Limit activities in bed to sleep and intimate encounters only - avoid television watching.
• If you have trouble sleeping, try sleeping in another area of the house.
• Try listening to repetitive soothing natural sounds (waves, wind, waterfall, stream, etc.) from a selected high quality sound device.
• Natural homeopathic, nutritional and herbal support may prove useful (e.g. calcium, melatonin, passionflower or valerian before bed).
• Turn off all the lights, especially fluorescent lights which have an unnaturally high frequency.

*Melatonin (key hormone involved in sleep/repair cycles) production may be inhibited if you sleep with the lights on.

 

Develop your positive attitude!

Here are some ways to help you develop a more positive attitude and better manage the stressors in your life:

• Listen to internal dialogue. Divide one or more sheets of paper into two columns and, for a few days, jot down in the left column all the negative thoughts that come into your head. Rewrite each thought in a positive way in the second column. Practice doing this in your mind until it becomes a habit. (For example, “I’ll never get this finished by the end of the day!” could become, “I will probably get most of this finished by the end of the day.”)
• Learn to communicate. Not saying the things we feel can lead to a sense of frustration, hurt, anger or anxiety. If you find communicating difficult, or are afraid of arguments or bruised feelings, take a course in communicating effectively always having the intent of non-harm.
• Get back to basics. Reconnect with old friends, take the dog for a walk, visit an art gallery or listen to your favourite music. Enjoy a long, relaxing bath, read a great book, tell your child a story, or ask an older relative to tell you one! The simplest things in life give us the most pleasure.
• Help someone out. The simple act of helping others (humans, animals or Nature in general) helps us to feel joy. Pick up groceries for an aging neighbour, volunteer at your local hospital or read a book to someone with failing eyesight. If you are unsure of how to help out in your community, call your nearest volunteer centre.
• Find your spirituality. Research has shown that those who have developed their spirituality through associating with other spiritual individuals or having their own personal mindful beliefs, live longer, more satisfying lives. The secret is practising those beliefs, either through organized worship, or simple meditation in a quiet place.
• Learn and Practice Meditation
• Allow yourself to be loved. The ability to love and be loved is the most basic human trait. We, as a society, have become disconnected from this most basic need - fear-based emotions (depression, loneliness, guilt, attachment and anger are the symptoms). Finding ways to reconnect with others is extremely helpful in developing a positive attitude. The following link is very enlightening. The Web of Love - Reconnecting with Source www.WebofLove.org
• Allow yourself to laugh and find humour in the simplest of things. Laughter is a powerful mood elevator. If you are feeling down, read some jokes, watch a funny movie or just act "silly" once in awhile. At times, it is a good thing to let yourself see the world through a child's eyes.
• Participate in new physical and mental activities to improve confidence levels and coping mechanisms. Building confidence could be as easy as learning the meanings of new words, learning about new topics or if you are right-handed using instead your left hand more frequently (left hand connects with the more spiritual, intuitive and creative right side of the brain).
• Follow the principles of holistic health - enlightened body, speech and mind in harmony (better nutrition and exercise help improve mood and attitude)
• Remember that the mainstream media focuses on information that leads to attachment to fear, negative thoughts and emotion. Find other more positive things to do with your precious moments.
• Learn to communicate your needs more effectively. For example, instead of using common language of subordination expressed by such words as "no", "don't", "should", "stop", "good", "bad" and "have", you could instead try expressing your needs by stating "I need you to...". This peaceful language expresses needs and does not judge. For more on this refer to the book Non Violent Communication.

 

 

Decide to Have a Positive Day!

Our inner critic is the internal voice of negative judgmental self talk. It is the nagging feeling, the inner voice that makes us critical of ourselves and others.

We learn to be critical of ourselves as we learn to march to the drummer of others wants and needs, we learn to be critical of others when they do not conform to what we want or expect.

The inner critic speaks loudly in judgment of ourselves and other people. It is a voice that yearns to castigate. It is the voice of enslavement to our egos and to the wants of others.

Sometimes our inner critic will leave us with feelings of self doubt; sometimes it will allow us to feel negative and critical of others. When we listen to our inner critic, we listen to negativity that separates us from our best self and also from others.

Our best personal and professional selves come from a place of self love and acceptance. When we can truly love and accept ourselves we can also see those in our world as collaborators on our path of personal learning. Love is a path which brings us closer to the seed of creation and to a place where we can grow, learn and to share joy with others.

We are all partners on a human journey, and the greatest challenge in our roadmap to personal and professional success is to cleave to our humanity, to the values of sharing and caring that make us brothers and sisters on the road of life.

Take a day this week to stomp out the voice of your inner critic; to free yourself from self imposed negativity and judgment.

Silence all criticism and negativity for 24 hours. Concentrate only on the good in yourself and in others that you meet and interact with. Give the inner critic a day off, and in so doing spend a day with your highest, greatest and best self.

By Irene Segal http://justcoachit.com/

Key Examples of Positive Affirmation (self-talk) to Help You:

• I will think of myself as Successful!
• I will have positive expectations for everything I do!
• I will remind myself of past successes!
• I will not dwell on failures, I just will not repeat them!
• I will surround myself with positive people and ideas!
• I will keep trying until I achieve the results I want!

Helpful Books - A Path to Freedom and Wisdom:

• The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness
  The mind is the source of all experience, and by changing the direction of the mind, we can change the quality of everything we experience. When you transform your mind, everything you experience is transformed. read more...
• Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom
  Joyful Wisdom identifies the sources of our unease, describes methods of meditation that enable us to transform our experience into deeper insight, and applies these methods to common emotional, physical, and personal problems. The result is a work at once wise, anecdotal, funny, informed, and graced with the author’s irresistible charm.
  read more...

• Mind at Ease
  This uniquely insightful overview and practice guide presents a thorough introduction to the Mahamudra tradition. Mahamudra teachings are presented as a means of seeing things in a positive and open light. Even things we might normally regard as bad and undesirable can be interpreted in a more uplifting way due to the expansiveness of the Mahamudra vision."read more...
• No Self, No Problem
  No Self, No Problem is about how to realize the ultimate meaning of life in each moment by dissolving all notions of ego identity. It asks that spiritual seekers wake up to their true nature, which is already enlightened. Based on the Buddhist wisdom tradition, this easy-to-read book discusses in simple but profound and inspiring language how we can live a life full of love, satisfaction, and happiness. read more...
• Ocean of Definitive Meaning
  Ocean of Definitive Meaning offers a detailed, uniquely comprehensive presentation of instructions on both the view and the practice of Mahamudra. In the teachings contained in this book, Thrangu Rinpoche has distilled the essence of the Ninth Karmapa’s massive text into manageable proportions and has given pointed guidance on the implementation of its instructions. read more...

 

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