UNEXPECTED BREAKS

My last blog post was on the 13th of January and here it is February 2nd. I felt I needed to take some time and work on  one of my challenges for the month of January. This unexpected break has helped to work on the emotional struggles I’ve been going through these last 10 months. I’m not saying that these struggles won’t rear their ugly heads yet again in my life, but now I know how to deal with them when they do.

I’ve learned so much through this whole ordeal that I thought I would share a bit of  it here with you. If I sound like a broken record, please forgive me, I learn by repetition.

• I can’t change the way people in my life behave but I can remove myself from situations where their anger and put-downs don’t harm my well-being.

• Perception changes when we change.

• We all change, no one stays the same. If we aren’t changing and growing, then we’re dying. There is no in between. Living a life in limbo is not living.

• Therapy helps us grow, sometimes we get the feeling like we don’t fit in anymore, that’s because we’re growing beyond the group.

• The more I tried to make peace with people who want nothing to do with peace, the more frustrated I became. You can’t make peace with people who don’t want peace. You also can’t make peace with people who only want peace on their own terms.

• Letting go is an ongoing process; it’s not a one time deal. It’s a daily action that takes diligence,  courage, and faith (so much faith!)

• Separating yourself from the people causing discord in your life, is sometimes the only way to heal.

• It takes courage to stand up for yourself, the reward is a healed life.

• Going through this struggle has made me see some traits in myself that I needed to correct, so I don’t repeat the cycle.

• Going to God has been my best refuge and shelter. To hide away in God’s word has helped me to see that I’m not the only one who has ever gone through this kind of struggle.

• There is no problem that is ever too big for God to handle, as long as I don’t keep taking the problem back after I’ve given it to him.

• PATIENCE! Waiting on God and letting Him work everything out on His timetable takes a whole lot of PATIENCE!

Yes, this was an unexpected break but one that I desperately needed to recharge my batteries, and give me a change in perspective. No longer am I trapped in wrong thinking, but my mind is renewed  through the words of God that have helped cleanse me from the ill feelings that precipitated the emotional struggle that was holding me back for so many months.

Thank you dear my readers and followers for your loyalty, your patience, your love, and your encouragement during my time away.

VISUALIZING OUR DREAMS

There are some important steps to visualizing what we need to see to help us grow forward and be prosperous in the world. But we’re not taught these skills in school; they are lessons learned throughout our life. In fact we’re taught just the opposite. “Get your head out of the clouds!” “Stop daydreaming!” “You can’t believe a hunch!” But sometimes we’re told that certain aspects of the visualizing tools are useful like “a mother’s intuition” or “that gut feeling.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could use these valid tools to transform our all the facets of our lives? How would our health be different if we used these tools? Well we can and many people already do. We too can learn to use these tools that will help in visualizing our dream!

Visualizing our dreams makes me think of Adam Sandler’s character in Bedtime Stories.  His niece and nephew would implant suggestions before going to sleep and their dreams would come true. This is what we do when we visualize. But in order to visualize our dreams we need to change the paradigms or examples that we carry with us.

Here are six areas that need to change in order for our paradigms to change:

• Perception: How you perceive the world around you makes a big impact on how you perceive and visualize your dream. If your perception is based on the premise that everyone is out to get you, then you will not be able to visualize your dream because you will constantly be thinking that someone might take your dream away from you, or someone might be better at what you want to accomplish than you. There will always be someone who’s better than you. Your competition should be with yourself, trying to be a better you instead of competing with others is a healthier perception than always trying to compete with other people. 

• Will: Do you have the will to move forward and achieve that with which you visualize? If your will or desire does not match your dream visually, then you will not only have a difficult time when you visualize but you will also have a difficult time following through to the end result. You’re either ready of you’re not. You either have a deep desire or will to change or you don’t. You can’t visualize your dream while sitting on the fence. You can’t try to be healthy one day and then destructive the next and expect to healthy the rest of your life.

• Imagination: Do you have the creative ability to carry a mental image of your dream with you at all times? If you can use your imagination to create solutions to problems not yet seen then you can use it to visualize how your dreams can become a reality. Get your head back into those clouds and find your imagination again. Use it to bring your dream to life, give it a form, a shape. Only you can bring it to life, you can’t rely on your spouse, your parents, or your friends. It’s your dream, not theirs.

• Memory:  Can you remember details about your dream so you can trudge through the difficult areas of life and still maintain your dream? What do I mean by this? Making your dream a reality is not all roses and glory. It’s going to require that you do things you don’t like to do, and things that are just plain menial. But they need to get done so your dream can become a reality. Our memory of what we hold in our minds eye helps use move forward by motivating us to make changes in our paradigm so they’re congruent with the visualization of our dreams.     

• Intuition: Our intuition balances us. It’s what we think about even when we think we’re doing something where we’re focusing solely on what we’re doing. Have you ever been doing something that needed your undivided attention but in the back of your mind you were thinking something totally congruent to what you were doing? Have you ever just known something didn’t feel right about a situation or a place you were at? This is your intuition at work. How do you use your intuition to help you in visualizing your dream? It’s simple start listening to it. Stop listening to the inner critic that keeps playing in your head, whether the words come from a negative spouse, parent, friend, or even yourself. Stop those words. Stop ridiculing yourself. Write out your thoughts about your dream, about the people in your dream and every other aspect of your dream. Instead of living by your emotions as you do this little exercise every day, your emotions will now be on paper and won’t be holding you back from accomplishing what you have set out to do.

• Reason: Can you think logically through a set of steps to work out a problem? While visualizing our dream may include a lot of our own personal emotions that tie us to the dream, we need to get away from the emotions and learn to reason through some points to make our dreams a reality. We have to be able to use sound reasoning skills and prudent judgments when necessary to plow through roadblocks that may come up in the pursuit of our dreams.

I’ve just scratched the surface of these tools and how they are all interconnected with each other and our dreams. Being aware of them is the first step in using them in visualizing what we want in life. Using these tools to change our paradigms will help us in visualizing our dreams and propelling us forward in our health and in our life.

Where do you want your dreams to take you?