Nepal- Courtesy Brian J. Productions
Are you consciously choosing how to exist in your life?
This question has been buzzing in my head for the last few months, but for some reason it's been hard to conjure up the motivation and inspiration to write much of anything. Feeling stuck in any area of your life where you want to see change and growth can be frustrating and defeating. For this reason, I think it's important to ask yourself Why and How?
The Why- your purpose, the How- the way to get there.
The Why also refers to who you want to be, the How relates to what you feel, think, do, and say to become and be that person.
This is what I think distinguishes an actor from a reactor. The role of an actor is to play a part with intention by consciously choosing how to be in relation with self and with others. It's a daily practice to choose what emotions and thoughts we want to engage with.
For instance, we all have a choice on how we want to feel. We can choose to feel happy or sad, resentful or grateful in any given moment. The fascinating thing about emotions and thoughts is that they are energy. Constantly moving, changing, expanding, and contracting; our emotions are fed by our thoughts and so a cycle begins where we determine what our emotional and mental patterning will look and feel like.
If you are habitually used to feeling sad, disappointed or angry, you have the choice on whether or not to feed these emotions and give them more power over you. I ask my clients to imagine that every time they think a negative thought that reinforces a lower emotion, they are actually choosing to feed the emotion a donut. The result is that the emotion grows stronger as it begins to crave another donut creating a pattern where negative thoughts feed and grow more negative emotions.
This is how the body and mind work together. We exist in the world by being conscious of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and choosing them rather than letting them choose us. These three things are what shape who we are and influence us to either be an actor or a reactor in our life.
The trick to learning how to change how we feel and think is to pause, go inward, and connect with this energy inside of us so that our behaviors can shift and align with a new pattern of emotions and thoughts.
Try this practice as many times throughout the day as you can. First try this alone and then try it when in relationship with others:
1. stop, pause, and connect with your breath and body
2. identify what you feel by asking yourself 'what am I feeling in this moment?'
3. notice what thoughts come to mind, negative or positive?
4. observe your inner voice paying close attention to how you are speaking to yourself, gentle or harsh?
5. get curious about why you are feeling this particular emotion
6. choose how you want to feel instead
7. focus on your heart's center and imagine yourself feeling the emotion you want to feel
8. allow this new emotion to take over as you feel new sensations in your body
9. feed the new emotion with positive thoughts and notice the feeling of expansion inside of you
10. acknowledge this process with love and kindness towards yourself
Now go out into the world choosing to consciously act in the way that brings you closer to who you want to be and what you want to experience as opposed to reacting to your feelings and thoughts and 'what happens to you'.
You are the creator of you and your life!