Tag Archives: thoughts

Crooked Thinking and Limiting Beliefs Part 2

Last weeks blog post became so long I had to divide it into two! This post focuses more on my learning, the reminders that I received during the workshop and some of my thoughts that occurred to me.

One of the main reminders I received in the workshop is that my choice of words is very important and do matter. A lot of re-framing reminds me of non-violent communication (NVC) because it has so much to do with the choice of words that we use when talking to ourselves. Our word choices easily spill out to our communications with other people, but if we focus on changing the words we use with others it will change how we think and vice versa.

It seems much more powerful to focus on, or at least be aware of, both at once. I’m curious if thought rehabilitation would be faster that way?

The following questions began to surface in my mind: How conscious have I been the last couple weeks? How aware have am I right now? Am I in the present moment?

And sadly, I have to say, that these last couple weeks being in the present moment and consciously aware of what I am doing have not been on the top of my priority list. I’ve felt like I’m floating around for the majority of the time. In that moment I renewed my commitment to practicing self-awareness and bringing myself back to the present moment.

Nobody can make me feel anything. The phrase “He made me mad.” is false because he didn’t make me mad. I feel mad when he does that because… Most likely the because is due to a link of an experience from the past. It is my choice to acknowledge the feelings that come up and how I deal with them.

As soon as I say “He made me mad” I’ve given my power away to him. In order for me to not give away my power to anyone else I need to take full responsibility for how I feel and thereby how I act. I never have to act angry if I choose not to act angry. Instead I can acknowledge the feeling and the underlying emotion and choose a desired option such as releasing my anger in a healthy way.

Feelings and emotions are two different things. Feelings are fleeting and can change in an instant. Emotions tend to stay with us and are much more difficult to change. I studied with a psychologist once who liked to state that all feelings come from one of four base emotions: pain, love, fear, joy.

When thinking about negative and positive thoughts, I often see that there are two parts of me. Each part is a plant. One plant is the positive and the other plant is negative. I have a choice of which one I will water and give food to. Thinking negative thoughts will help the negative plant and part of me to grow. But if I think positive thoughts, and change my negative thoughts to positive ones my positive side and plant grows strong. In the meantime the negative side withers and shrinks. The part of me that I pay most attention to will eventually take on a life of its own, making it easier to think in a particular way until its natural.

After contemplating the workshop material for a few days, I’ve come to conclude that I function under the core belief that I am flawed. Looking at myself completely honestly I have many of the thought patterns and behaviors listed.

I’ve put on my war gear and superhero cape and am proud to report that I’m slowly but surely winning the battle of minds.

The picture to the side with the saying “It is easier to build up a child than to repair a man” has been getting passed around on my Facebook. I have to agree: Repairing myself is a lot of work. It takes a lot of time, energy, awareness and constant alertness. It can be serious. A lot is at stake, as in most wars.

I like to make it playful and dramatic because it makes things so much more fun.

In my mind’s eye I put on my fighting gear, which changes according to the activity and my mood . Then I see my weapons – skills, life experience, tools – being brandished and I get ready for battle. I sit down in lotus pose even when I’m in a black latex suit with cats ears on my head like  Cat Woman. Perhaps I’ll be Storm another day. Or maybe a ninja. Sometimes I’m just me.

I’m waiting to catch the thought, waiting for the moment to come where I can best act…

And when that moment comes I pounce on it! I use all the skills, tools and life experience I’ve accumulated to counteract the thought.

Often I miss the thought, that sweet moment when I know I’ve changed this one. The times that I catch them are quickly increasing in frequency, and my superhero self is getting much more skilled. Slowly I am learning the ways that thought patterns like to disguise themselves.

For me, changing my thoughts changes my life. Changing a thought can easily and effortlessly change my entire world; it can create a new world. It can bring things into my life, help me expand what I see and experience, and create more knowing and wisdom. It allows me to know my soul a bit more and allow my Highest Service to come through.

I believe that complete and true freedom comes from ones thoughts. It comes when we no longer have anyone else’s programming (intended or not) running through us even at the subconscious level. It comes when we are able to have all areas in our lives run congruent, in time with each other, in full alignment with all of ourselves.

All of us can attain this freedom, and that we all can change the thoughts that we have if we choose to do so. Yes, it is hard work that ceaselessly needs to be done, but the layers and thoughts do change. That’s how you know you’ve graduated from one grade to the next.

How many grades are there?

I don’t know.

That is why I believe this workshop is so important. What do you think? Thoughts? Do you have moments that you see yourself as a superhero? When? What is complete and true freedom to you?

 

Crooked Thinking and Limiting Beliefs

Last weeks blog post gave you an example of what I would like to discuss today – re-framing crooked thinking and limiting beliefs. Recently at Bridges we took a workshop called “Changing Limiting Belief Systems.” It was a highly valuable class where I learned a lot and received reminders of what I’ve been working on. I would like to share some of of the workshop with you, my lovely readers. Perhaps you will find the knowledge and technique as helpful as I did.

This approach is called cognitive restructuring from my understanding of cognitive therapy. Though a very left-brain approach this technique seems very useful and follows how most people naturally think. Many of us in class discovered we were already doing this work to various degrees. Now we were just getting the vocabulary and a greater understanding of what exactly we were doing. This workshop, and article will, focus on re-framing our thoughts and creating choices for how we respond to situations and people in our lives.

Re-framing is the art of turning something around, in this case a negative thought to a postive thought. This requires acknowledging the feelings surrounding the thought and making a choice on how to proceed. Let’s talk about core beliefs for a moment.

Core beliefs are thoughts that are so strong they seem to be a apart of us and govern us. For many people, but not all, these thoughts are subconscious. They can be brought to conscious awareness and changed with awareness and mindfulness.

Negative core beliefs can cause distorted thinking/crooked thinking which doesn’t serve our Highest Good. For example, having the core belief that I am flawed in some way might lead to me having avoidance behaviours, perfectionism, or being inauthentic.

Positive core beliefs help us a long our path and serve our Highest good. They bring about healthy boundaries, and positive behaviors that protect us as well as authenticity and true unshakeable confidence that comes from inside ourselves.

Reframing involves four steps.

  1. Recognize. Notice the thought and ask yourself, “Is this serving me? Is it positive or negative?” If it is negative, “Do I want to work with this thought right now and reframe it? Where does this thought come from? When did it start? Why am I thinking this?” And my favorite: “What is my motive?”
  2. Acknowledge. Notice and say hi to the feelings that are coming up with the thought. You can’t deny them; they are there and real, and will come back to haunt you if you try denial. Seriously. They will. What are your feelings telling you?
  3. Stop or Disrupt the thought. The beautiful thing about our minds is that we can only think one thought at a time. I know that sometimes it feels like we are thinking a millions things at once: our brain is going so fast, a thousand miles a second, that we must be thinking a million things at once. Not true.
  4. Replace the thought with a new thought. If you don’t do this last and final step you will have a hole left where the old thought was inside your thinking patterns. That means the old thought can easily come back, so simply replace it with a positive thought and a positive way of thinking.

One of the most useful things I received in the workshop is a list of ten common patterns of distorted or crooked thinking.

All-or-Nothing (Black & White Thinking) – Switching from one extreme to another. Eg. “One mistake ruined the whole thing.”

Overgenerallization – Assuming that because something happened once it will always happen. Eg. “I always blow it at the last minute.” or “You always forget to do the things I ask.”

Mental Filter (Dwelling on the Negative) – Dwell on the negatives and ignore the postives. Eg. “I got it right this time but I had to try three times before I finally got it right.”

Discounting the Postivies – Insisting that your accomplishments or positive qualities don’t count. Eg. “I was just lucky.”

Jumping to Conclusions – Part A is Mind Reading. Belieivng that you know what other people are thinking. Eg. “They all thought I was stupid.” Part B is Fortune Telling. Arbitrarily predicting that things will turn out badly. Eg. “Everything is bound to go wrong.”

Magnification or Minimization – Either blowing things way up out of porportion or shrinking their importance inappropriately. Eg. “I’ll never get over it.”

Emotional Reasoning – Mistaking feeling for facts. Eg. “I’m so worried; I just know soemthing is going to go wrong.”

Should statements – Criticizeing yourself or others with shoulds, shouldn’ts, musts, oughts and have tos.

Labelling (Name Calling) – Idenfiying with your shortcomings or mistakes. Eg. “I’m and idiot.” or “Anybody who could do that must be brain dead.”

Personalization and Blame – Blaming yourself for soemthing that was not your responsibility. “Its all my fault” or “If only I’d done more.”

When I went through this list the first time I easily was able to check off four patterns that apply to me. Since watching my thoughts more carefully I’ve checked off more.

Our class was given the following exercise:

For one week record your negative thoughts. You might write them down, or make check marks on paper, or put a penny in a jar for each one that you have. If you are recording your negative thoughts on paper, divide your paper into three columns. In the first column put your thoughts. In the second column identify the pattern. Lastly, re-frame the thought in the third box. This exercise is done to bring more awareness to what thoughts you are thinking and gives an opportunity to practice re-framing, if you are so inclined.

You are invited to join us, and share with me your experiences of this approach and thought patterns. Have you done something like this before? Was it beneficial? How did you change your thinking most efficiently?

Next week is part two of this topic. 🙂

Self-Acceptance

The world is a wonderful harmonious place. It is full of sunshine, rainbows, and faeries. There are little Unicorns traipsing along the rainbows if you look close enough, and the fey regularly come out to happily play. The trees reach up into the sky unremittingly, the birds chirp joyously, and the plants all around us innocently grow. Humans help each other whenever possible and listen empathetically when appropriate. Time doesn’t matter  so there is no rush to accomplish anything because it is all completed right on Universal time. Laughter and joy permeate in the air around us. Kindness and generosity are regular occurrences. There is naught a harmful intention in the air for all is cared for and wonderful to bear.

This is what my brain naturally thinks of the world before I leave my bed. Then I get up. Reality is very far from the perfect fairy tale world that I like to think I live in.

I have been told over and over and over again certain things: The way I think is wrong. I am naive. The world doesn’t work that way. People aren’t kind and generous. I can’t trust people. Helping people is not worth the time nor expense – they are all trying to get something from you. Happiness is not possible unless you have lots of money. And yet money doesn’t buy you happiness.

Most of my life I’ve thought that I am weird. I view the world differently and that, I’m told, is a “bad” thing. I’ve allowed all of the thoughts listed above, and my beliefs about myself that are based on other peoples thoughts to stop my natural tendencies, personality, and who I am from being shown. By doing that I allowed my power to be taken away.

Now that I am in the process of taking back my power and stepping into it there is much to learn and many thought patterns that will gradually be reformed. One thing that I have noticed is that  when I am centred into my heart and grounded the outside worlds opinions don’t matter nearly as much, and I am able to confidently spread my joy and heart openly.

When I was in grade one or two I had my first jarring experience of not being accepted. My parents had enrolled me in a Christian private school that was rather extreme in a lot of their views and actions unknown to my parents at the time. What my parents were concerned about was the high quality of education provided by the school, which it definitely provided.

In class we had been asked if our parents were Christians. I didn’t raise my hand because my parents weren’t “Christians” by the schools definition of the word. The next day during the first recess I was approached by a group of girls. The leader of the group asked me “Is it true that your parents aren’t Christians?”

I, excruciatingly shy, nodded, surprised to be surrounded by so many people. The leader then informed me: “My mommy says I can’t play with you because your parents aren’t Christians.” The other girls nodded, and all of them walked away. I distinctly remember the feeling of shock, disappointment and confusion.

Reflecting on this memory illustrates to me that non-acceptance is taught or learned. It is a belief or thought pattern that until otherwise expressed most children would not think other than total acceptance of what is, whether that be a person, idea, animal, etc.

At first I thought self-acceptance was a value made up of a collection of beliefs, but now I’ve decided that self-acceptance is the sum of deeply ingrained beliefs. If a person lacks self-acceptance this shows with various statements that tell what the person thinks of themselves or believes  about themselves. The same goes if a person has self-acceptance.

The beliefs that dictate if we will or can accept ourselves for who we are define what we think of ourselves. All of these beliefs and self-acceptance rest energetically within the solar plexus chakra. Therefore, self-acceptance is directly tied to and effects  self-esteem, body image, stepping into one’s power and self-confidence.

Hug yourself! Your beautiful too!

Some of the beliefs that may contribute to not accepting ourselves are:

“I can’t do that because its too hard”

“I am too stupid”

“I am too fat”

Versus

“I am capable of working hard to achieve what I want.”

“I am intelligent. It is okay to make mistakes.”

“I am beautiful the way I am.”

The last couple of weeks I struggled with my own issues of self-acceptance. There were many people who came into my life who were mirrors for aspects of myself that I don’t really care to think about or look at. In fact, sometimes I refuse to look at those aspects. When the aspects of myself are mirrored and I find myself reacting strongly to the person mirroring the aspect I know that I am not accepting something of me.

One woman last week stood out in particular. When I saw this woman, I saw me. When I saw her victim state I saw mine. And this was repulsive to me. She was a reminder of a part of me, of who I had been at one point in my life, and I really did not like it. This was a part of myself that I found hard to look at never mind love. It was much easier to ignore that part of me and pretend that it had never happened.

And so I question: Is a person whole only when they accept all parts of themselves?

A person is whole when they are able to accept the fact that they are going to cry, be angry, be upset, have bad days, have bad hair, and that they have a “shadow side”. Sometimes we are going to think “bad” things, we are going to make judgments on ourselves or others, do things that we are going to regret. And all of that is okay. It is all part of our human experience and all part of our own personal journeys.

Boundaries and the Solar Plexus

I was looking for fences, and I found this stone fence sticking out from between two wood fences. When I took the picture I discovered the face... and contemplate more...

This is something that I have personally have a lot of trouble with, though I am far better now than I ever have been. It has taken a long time for

me to understand exactly what a boundary is, what it feels like (which is can be a necessity to me in understanding things fully) and how I encounter them.

When I left Winnipeg I recall Grams telling me that I have no boundaries. At the time I was slightly miffed to hear that, insulted even. Of course I had boundaries! Everyone has boundaries! That statement brought into my awareness boundaries and boundary setting and began my attempts of understanding what she was talking back.

Now I look back and I can see that I really didn’t have boundaries. I barely have boundaries today – though they are formulating and shaping themselves as I become more aware of what I want, like and need.

Not working the last few months I’ve floated along with life as everyone else – aka people who I love and are very close to me – deals with their busy schedules and lives. I’ve gotten bored, unmotivated, tired of working, and also found it very easy to schedule my activities around their lives.

So I’ve been around and very available.

My close friends have gotten used to me being available, and I love interacting with them. Lately, I’ve been highly motivated to finish up the projects that I’m working on by the end of March at the latest. This creates a crossroads for me – set my boundary and restrict my time with these people, or “float”.

Now they are the perfect people to practice setting boundaries with! Sometimes I fail, and sometimes I succeed, but my successes are becoming greater than the fails. Here are some things that I noticed about boundaries as I contemplated them this past week.

I fear creating and setting boundaries. Deep down inside I am scared that if I set one the other person will never want to speak to me again. It’s unrealistic and not true. I counter this fear with the belief that people like people who have boundaries – it makes you less passive and people feel comfortable because decisions are made mutually by taking into account both people’s needs, wants and likes.

Boundaries require awareness of who I am in the physical. A lot of the cues that I get that a boundary is being violated by me or another person is given in my physical body. There’s an intuitive thought or “alarm” followed by dissociating from my body. As I practice staying in my body, it’s becoming more obvious to me when I’ve disassociated. At those times I need to reach back into my body and focus on my breath.

Energetically, boundaries have a lot to do with taking back my power and controlling my life. This stems from an imbalance in the Solar Plexus chakra or energy center (you can read a post on here on MommyMystics website about what the chakras are), and most likely accounts for the pains and shifts that occur in my digestive/solar plexus area.

This is also coincides with the guidance I’ve been feeling and receiving messages of: Its time to take the power back in my life, to stand up for what

Stepping up into my power.

my needs and wants are. By setting boundaries I take control of my life and what happens instead of passively letting the river take me wherever it wants to go. Now I see this and understand it.

When my boundaries are set and stay in place I feel centered and grounded. Overall generally more at ease with life and what is going on with me. I feel like myself, and in my body. My stress level remains low because I feel that I am accomplishing everything that I need and want to do, plus experiencing what I want out of life.

I’ve learned that when I have set healthy boundaries on an energetic level the world around me does not drive me half as crazy. By shielding (imagining I am in a bubble of sorts), sometimes in multiple layers and colors, I am able to enter a Future Shop without getting a headache within ten minutes, or go to Walmart without becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of energy.

With healthy boundaries I am able to speak with people inside and outside of sessions without taking on their energy, emotions or feelings. I can feel my little bubble reflecting off the little bullets of emotions and thoughts. This makes me feel good about myself, which in turn increases my self-esteem. Aha, I think I’m getting it now how self-esteem works and is created… A to-do list doesn’t cut it for me.

Now that I have identified what it feels like to have boundaries and what I feel like when I don’t, reflection brings forth the next question: How am I going to better implement healthy boundaries in my life, and step further into my power?

My answer at this point: Improve communication skills. Awareness. Practice. Your suggestions are welcome.