As I write this I’m reminiscing about my homemade baked goods yesterday as I adjust the cheap tablecloth my laptop is sitting on. Right up until our first guest arrived I was baking my first attempt at a 2-layer cake which was a major highlight for me. Although the steps were simple it was the follow-through I was proud of, I have a tendency to get excited when making the fire but sustaining the flames proves difficult.
But there’s something about this place, my new home, that’s proving to be different altogether. And I think I’ve figured out why.
Yesterday I threw a 90s theme 30th with long-time friends at the brand new townhome I moved to at the beginning of the month. Add to that the confidence-boosting haircut I got the day before I moved, you could say I was vibing high.
My home and heart were filled with good vibes the day of the party. From the moment I woke up to the end of the day the energy was funny and loving. My friends got the most intentional and heartfelt gifts I could have received, right down to the wording in each card. At the end of the night, as Ivan and I were cleaning up all the food and saying our goodbyes, I paused to express gratitude for all that I’ve been blessed to receive. That’s when I realized something.
As everyone packed up food and headed to their cars, I realized the party wasn’t the only thing that had ended that night. The anticipation I’ve held for over a year in my heart has officially stopped because I got everything I asked for.
When you’re ready to have things in your life improve or align, it’s essential that you learn about the energy you put into your world. The energy put into your intention is what gives it the power to make shifts in your life. When you go through the motions of your day on autopilot you are missing out on opportunities to tune in.
Tuning into your experience creates the possibility for you to respond with intention. This doesn’t mean that you have to change up every decision you make, you may very well keep them the same as they’ve always been. What’s important is that you pay attention to what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and the energy you bring to each task, This makes all the difference when you’re working toward or already have a goal of self-development.
Intentionality is bringing a particular kind of awareness and attention to an experience you are facing. When you set an intention for the day or the week, you are essentially choosing an anchor to ground you when life starts to speed up. In order for you to successfully set and follow through with an intention, it’s important that you gain clarity on how this intention will serve you. Start by becoming aware of the part of your life that you’d like to see improvements in. What needs to be improved about your attitude? How are you struggling in this part of your life?
Setting Intentions
Setting intentions at the beginning of your day is like looking ahead and anticipating how you’ll need to show up. Whatever intention you set will begin to show up in the form of opportunities, challenges, and obstacles in what would normally be seen as everyday things. Bringing intention to your thoughts, behaviors, feelings, and ways of navigating through the world allows you to change the way you see things.
Although you cannot control what’s happening outside you, or what may be thrown in your path each day, you can control the ways in which you respond. By setting an intention before your day begins you have something to anchor into in the moments you experience overwhelm, stress, or anxiety.
Before you decide on which intention to set for the day it’s good to get in tune with what you are in need of most. Life has seasons and each season will invite different levels and types of difficulties. What’s important to remember is that this intention is suitable and appropriate for you to ground into when life gets cloudy. Some seasons call for the same intention until you’re feeling capable of moving on to something else. Other seasons call for you to connect with how you’re feeling each day and work from there.
Without energy, an intention is just another set of words, an empty affirmation without the force to back it up. Bringing energy into your thoughts and words gives life to your experience, and that energy continues to flow. The more powerful the energy is the stronger the intention becomes. The more in tune you are with the energy you bring to your experience, the more intentional each of these experiences becomes. Although you can’t always control outcomes and circumstances, you can control the energy you choose to respond to your inner and outer world.
At the beginning of your day visualize what lies ahead for you. Bring into your mind’s eye the typical challenges of the day-to-day, whether they’re massive or minuscule they’re all opportunities. From beginning to end, run through the people you’ll interact with, the places you’ll visit, and the energy you plan on bringing. It’s important to be realistic when looking ahead into your day, while also grounding yourself into your personal power to respond intentionally.
Become aware of what area in your life you would like to improve. Allow yourself to practice accepting the attitudes, choices, and behaviors in this area of your life. Don’t judge yourself for where you are, just notice the patterns and decisions that got you here. Once you make peace with anything that may be unpleasant about your current experience, start getting curious about what ways could make this experience better for you.
What attitude would help enhance your life?
What attitude would help you gain clarity?
What attitude would align you with your higher self?
Consider the opportunities throughout your day that you could potentially practice applying this intention.
How often will these opportunities come up for you?
To acquire a beginner’s mind is to practice freeing yourself of expectations and assumptions about how life should unfold. Expectations leave little room for infinite possibilities.
Those who practice patience experience less stress increased empathy and are more likely to achieve their goals. By deciding to view every frustration as an opportunity to practice patience, you will start to shift to more open and positive perceptions in life.
Acceptance essentially means to receive the reality that is unfolding before you. Acceptance implies there is resistance present, so the question to ask is what circumstance or reality are you currently resisting?
Our thoughts, beliefs, and ideas become stronger with the attention they are fed, creating an attachment. Practice letting go. There is profound power in practicing awareness of thoughts, each time bringing a sense of neutral observation. Rather than latching onto what arises in the mind observe the thoughts as they pass.
Your beliefs begin as thoughts, therefore a belief is a thought you continuously practice. The reason to acquire a nonjudgmental attitude is to create a fresh perspective in place of familiar beliefs. Notice the labels you place on experiences and the limits they create.
Start prioritizing time to be still. Being is our natural state however it no longer comes naturally anymore due to all of the stimuli we experienced every day. Practice being in-between each task you switch to throughout the day.
Develop an inner trust in your decision-making and in the path unfolding before you. Practice this when you find yourself in doubt or fear of unknown circumstances.
Gratitude is the answer to living a happy life. The best way to practice gratitude is to find the good in what frustrates you and what you view as a problem. Everything is an opportunity to practice patience and growth. If you can begin to shift your perspective to thinking this way you are making progress.
Practice a kind and generous way of thinking, being, and living. The way you treat yourself will reflect on the relationships you form in your life. Bring attention to negative self-talk and practice a more compassionate inner language.
These are the attitudes that make up a mindful mind. By embodying one of these you are slowly adding drops into the bucket of conscious awareness. It’s not intended to be a quick process. Instead, it’s intended to be practiced daily, or weekly, as your life transitions from phase to phase.
The more you anchor yourself into an attitude intentionally, the closer you bring yourself to being at peace with yourself and those around you. As you begin to move into this peace of mind you’ll begin to experience shifts in the ways you perceive your life. May you exist with compassion in your heart, gratitude in your soul, and an open curiosity that fills you with faith and love.
Before you dive deep into this article, ask yourself “How am I feeling right now?” A common answer is “I’m fine” or “Doing alright, and yourself?” because it’s one of those questions asked without the intention of truly checking in with how we’re feeling.
Most people will ask this question to their mind, waiting for a cognitive answer to surface. This answer will be the sum of your thoughts on an experience, but not necessarily how you’re feeling. This is a true testament to just how powerful the mind truly is. Even though it’s not where feelings are experienced, this is where the question is answered.
Another way to check in with how you’re feeling is to ask yourself “what’s going on in my body right now?” Weird right? I bet you wouldn’t think to check in with how your body about how you’re feeling today.
The truth is that’s where the sensation of your feelings are being experienced. But before you understand the body, let’s venture into your mind.
Thoughts
Everything originates from a thought. Your beliefs, ideas, assumptions, and worries all begin in the mind. Therefore what you think you then become. But what if you’re not paying attention to what you think?
Well, your thoughts are creating the life unfolding before you, whether you are aware of that fact or not. Of course, the goal is not to suppress your thoughts or control them, but instead, learn to guide them in the direction that aligns best with your desire.
A good place to start practicing this is detaching yourself from thoughts, seeing yourself as the observer of the experience rather than the experience itself. By understanding the power held behind your thoughts, you’ll begin to appreciate the personal power of the mindbody connection.
Imagine your thoughts as cars speeding down a highway, while you, the observer, sits quietly on a bench watching them pass. Watching for the first time will absolutely be overwhelming. Your natural instinct is to jump in because you identify yourself with the mind and feel the urge to control these thoughts, their speed, and their intensity.
These thoughts surface within you but are separate from who you are because you are not your thoughts. You are the awareness of those thoughts. At first, it may feel extremely difficult to watch the speed and intensity that these thoughts are forming at, you may even feel compelled to attach yourself to one trying to stop it.
These thoughts have always been going at this speed, with this amount of intensity, the only difference is you are just now tuning into that experience. You have the opportunity to become the observer of your experience each time an intense emotion pops up, leaving you with two choices. Either reacting with emotion or responding with awareness.
An emotional reaction to something is a sign that you’ve been consumed by the emotion you are experiencing. That emotion decided to take the reins and decide the next best course of action.
This means if you were observing thoughts of anger you’d follow the urge to attach yourself to that thought, leading you into more anger. When you choose to respond, however, you recognize that emotion is a part of your experience, but you are not that emotion.
In other words, you are feeling anger but you are not anger. If you were observing thoughts of anger you would continue to until it dissipates or transcends to another emotion. To respond to a situation means to first become the awareness behind your experience so that you may decide what to do rather than be led by that emotion.
Practicing mindful awareness of your thought patterns and the ways you choose to handle them is a simple and challenging practice. Simple in its nature of just being with how you’re feeling rather than doing something about it.
Challenging because it’s the opposite of what you’ve trained yourself to do all these years. Each time you observe, detach and respond you are strengthening the mindbody connection by separating yourself from it.
Physical Sensations
Let’s revisit the question “how are you feeling today?” a question exchanged so often from person to person that you can answer on autopilot. The question itself asks you how you’re feeling yet people rarely take the time to check in with what they’re feeling.
Instead, they are likely to rely on what their mind tells them about how they’re feeling. Now that there is a separation from you and the mind, and you understand the difference between reaction and response, it’s time to move onto emotions in the body.
Emotions appear in the body as physical sensations, arousals, or reactions to what’s going on in the mind. These emotions show up differently and in many different forms, but the sensations are quite similar. Heart palpitations, dry mouth, tight chest, tingling sensations, and clenching just to name a few.
For instance, if you were to have a negative thought pop up you’d likely be fixated on the narrative in your mind and forgetting about the body you’re in. When you finally bring your awareness back to your body all of the sensations will overwhelmingly hit you at once. When you take the time to sit with each physical sensation as it arises you are awakening to how your body experiences your emotions.
This simple practice helps you gain clarity on your emotions, how you’re feeling, and the power of their presence. Without practicing awareness of how your mind and body are connected you may miss opportunities to get ahead of your emotion and you end up allowing them to dictate your day.
Identifying The Connection
Practicing mindful awareness with your thoughts and physical sensations takes patience and consistent practice. As you begin to identify the connection between your mind and body, you’ll also begin to identify who you truly are.
Because you are not the mind that creates the thoughts, nor are you the thoughts that you think. Just like you are not the body you have and the sensations you experience. The mind and body will always be a part of who you are, but it is not who you are.
Each time you choose to become the awareness behind your experience you create more space between what is happening and your response to what is happening.
MindBody Practice
Identifying the connection and separating yourself from the experience are both simple practices that can be very challenging. A great place to begin cultivating this practice is by identifying your dialogue separately from your bodily experience.
This is best practiced when an emotion is present but not too overwhelming, this will be the practice for the overwhelming moments. An emotion we are all familiar with is feeling anger, so let’s use anger as an example.
With most intense emotional states you will likely find yourself tangled up in the dialogue going on in your mind, so let’s begin by bringing attention into the body. Notice the sensations you are feeling in response to anger and where these sensations are showing up.
Once you’ve tuned your focus on the body use the tool of a deep inhale and a long exhale to relax into the moment. Repeat as many breath cycles as you need to before finding a sense of inner calm, even alongside your anger.
Now that you’ve brought down the intensity and separated yourself from the experience, turn your attention toward the mental chatter. If this too feels intense for you come back to the breath as your guiding tool of relaxation.
A helpful tip is to place your right hand on your belly as you witness the rise and fall of your breath. This can act as a tangible representation that there are constant fluctuations happening within you, the rise and fall of the belly, the ever-changing sensations in your body, the rapid moving thoughts in your mind.
Once you’ve invited an inner calm into the dialogue of your mind, you can begin asking yourself proactive questions. Rather than focusing on what you don’t want to feel, turn the focus toward how you would like to feel.
Start by asking these questions:
What am I thinking right now?
How am I feeling right now?
How is it appearing in my body?
Am I holding my breath or breathing deep?
How can I accept what has already happened?
What action can I take to create change?
What is the next best step for me to take?
How will this action bring me closer to how I want to feel?
Be patient with yourself as you ask questions with unpleasant answers and bring a genuine curiosity to this moment. This practice may seem simple, and possibly uncomfortable, but it is a very important step toward a happier and more aware version of self. The beauty of this practice is that it is always growing with you.
Be gentle as you begin to discover parts of yourself for the first time, show the compassion you would a friend going through a lifestyle change. Practicing mindful awareness is portable and the right time is always NOW.
Remember all change starts with becoming aware and they all begin with you.
The two forces constantly at play in your live are resistance and allowance. Both resistance and allowance show up as energy that propels your thinking, behavior, and even your emotional state. If you are choosing a state of resistance you are refusing to accept life circumstances as they are. Your energy flows where your attention goes, and your attention is what you focus on. Therefore, by focusing on what you lack, dislike, and find unpleasant you are choosing a resistant energy to handle what’s happening. Of course suffering is a part of the human experience, negative emotions are always going to surface and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, even though it may feel that way. The point isn’t to rid yourself of low vibration emotions entirely, but instead to notice when you are fueling the fire that burns them.
By choosing a state of allowance you are opening yourself to recognize what is happening. You allow yourself to experience life as it is, without comparing or fixating on alternative ways it could or should have played out. Instead of investing your energy on what you don’t want to happen, your focus is instead on accepting it already has happened. There is nothing that can be changed except your point of view and relationship to that experience. This is what it means to surrender, to completely accept what is and release your grips on the idea that it could have been any different.
Whatever you focus on you invite more of into your experience. And although you don’t control all of what is happening outside of you, there is control over what is happening within you. As the emotions begin to surface whether pleasant or unpleasant, you can choose what you’d like to focus on. The sensations in your body, the thoughts in your mind, your overall experience, or what is happening outside of you. See, there are multiple facets of experience, each having a unique lesson to teach if you’re willing to pay attention to it. The attention is your investment of energy, that which you focus on is where your energy flows, ultimately amplifying your experience of that thing. Usually, the mind will focus on the most intense feelings occurring in the present moment, it’s up to you to tune in and shift gears.
Letting Go For What?
Surrendering your resistance to allow implies that you are giving up, and in a way you are. By choosing to resist the life in front of you, because you’re stuck on the thought that it could have been different, you are wasting time and energy. You’re giving up that way of thinking for a different way of seeing things. It’s not that you’re quitting on yourself or your plans, but you’re deciding to acknowledge that life has knocked you off course. Instead of pushing forward with your original plan, you’re opening yourself to the changes that have found you and the possibilities that follow. In order for true change to occur, you must step into the shoes of the now and not at the moment when life veered off the course that you designed for it.
To surrender means to release, let go, relinquish your hold of someone or something. Surrendering takes a certain set of attitudes to practice such as curiosity, openness, non-judgment, and detachment. By practicing curiosity and non-judgment you are bringing a mindful focus to your circumstance while dropping your opinion of what should be. Paying attention to what is happening without expectation of what will follow, or doubts about this moment. While openness and detachment help you release the belief that what is happening is personal. Choosing to see beyond the world created inside your mind and expanding to life within the universe, filled with intricate connections and divine timing that’s a part of a much larger picture.
It’s important to recognize unpleasant experiences are not happening to you, they are just happening. Because if you see yourself as helpless against life than you do not see your responsibility to how you respond to it. Instead, start seeing it as if life is happening for you to practice leveling up. Open your mind to the possibility that you are here to evolve into your greatest self and that adversity is here to help you do that. Although life cannot be undone, and there are plenty of experiences outside of your realm of control, you are the one that decides the mindset that moves you forward. So each time you find yourself experiencing unpleasantness or negative emotions, you are faced with the choice of resistance or allowance. You can choose to resist the reality of what is happening right now, ultimately perpetuating a limit that doesn’t need to exist in your life. Or you can choose to allow the reality of what is happening right now, and the difference is acceptance. You have to let go of the belief that whatever happens to you is personal, only then can you choose to allow yourself to practice acceptance.
But what are you surrendering to?
A higher intelligence. You don’t need to be religious or spiritual, you don’t have to have specific beliefs about the universe, energy, or life. All that you need to understand is you don’t have all the answers, so surrender to that fact. Release the idea that you have to have everything figured out and that life must flow according to your mind map. Lean into the belief that it is happening for you to grow, because even when it’s the worst feeling in the world this belief will move you in the right direction. There’s a difference between what is happening and your relationship to what is happening, which is where your energy gets stuck every time. Focusing primarily on the emotional pain you’re experiencing rather than prioritizing how you’re going to bounce back. If something pains you heal it, always, that’s a pivotal part of the process but it’s not the end of the road. Never allow pain to keep you resistant of what else is out there for you.
Expand your awareness beyond the thoughts and emotions that hold you in an unpleasant place. Open up to the idea that this could be used as a way of bringing you closer to a pleasant place. Create space in your mind for the possibility that there is a higher intelligence that can be tapped into and that you have a say in the direction of your life. Allow yourself to explore the opportunity of surrendering when you feel like you’re doing too much, because you most likely are, and surrender it to something that can handle the magnitude. Become mindful of your relationship with whatever or whoever you are surrendering too, and nourish it. Let go of the idea of what society says this higher intelligence is and seek that for yourself. Start believing that you are here for a reason and get curious about it. Contemplate the person you are, who you’d like to become, and what all of this means to you. Give yourself the opportunity to have an incredible life, allow it into your experience by letting go of resistance so you can receive it.
Open up and Allow Life in
Where there is another cycle of breath entering your lungs, there is another chance to choose a more expansive and evolutionary path. Choosing again starts by becoming aware of how resistance is impacting your overall wellbeing and focus. Throughout any given day you’ll be faced with the choice to resist the reality of your circumstance or to accept it’s truth. Accepting where you are in this moment, especially if it’s not where you desire to be, is not a commitment to stay stagnant. It’s simply a practice of awareness without clutching to the thought that the present moment can be any different that it is.
Open yourself up and allow life to flow in and find you where you are. Start trusting your ability to change directions when life throws you an obstacle. Instead of seeing it as something that’s meant to stop you, or that these things are happening to you, open your heart and allow yourself to see the magical opportunity to evolve higher. By choosing acceptance over resistance, you are choosing to create a magnificent life for your future self. Each time the world outside of you causes suffering, look within for the strength to allow this experience in and transcend your darkness into light. The changes you are asking for may show up disguised as pain, transformation, loss, or vulnerable exposure. Acknowledge and honor your feelings, while simultaneously using them as a compass to seek ways to adapt and overcome. There is nothing you cannot be, do, or have in this life once you get out of your own way. Take a deep breath and choose again.
Mindfulness is the practice of moment to moment awareness, awakening to your life as it is. This is a simple yet powerful practice that allows you to adopt a new set of attitudes, to view your world with a fresh pair of eyes. Becoming aware of who you are and what you are doing at this moment brings you out of the thinking mind and into the body, where experiences have been happening unnoticed. By bringing your attention to the experience of your physical sensations you are learning to ground into the present moment, whereas the thinking mind will take you away from it.
Awakening to your life as it is will bring opportunities of profound change into your life. Often people choose only to look at the future to dream, or to the past for reflection as a reference for the change they want. These ways of viewing experience and creating change can only get you so far. It’s the present moment that will reveal all the things about yourself that you’d like to change and how your current lifestyle choices are shaping you as a person. Therefore, if you want to become a better version of yourself tomorrow you have to start paying attention to how you’re showing up today.
The Steps of Conscious Change
A conscious change is one that you are involved in, have contemplated thoroughly, and decide on deliberately. Now is always the best time to time to create conscious change in your life. The first step, as you already learned, is becoming aware of what needs to change. But before any change occurs willingly most people wait until they’ve become frustrated with their own ways or circumstances. The laziness will begin to annoy you, the tardiness will impact your relationships, he procrastination will ruin yet another weekend, the doubts will no longer hold up as truth. You know deep down it could be better, and you also know that the responsibility for these changes falls on you. At some point, you will have to break up with your way of living and welcome change. Choose to do it before you’re at your wit’s end and save some energy for what’s to come. Here are the 3 steps to creating conscious change or A.C.T.
Awareness
Becoming aware of what needs changing is the first and most important step. Nothing can shift in your life until you become aware of what needs to. This is the starting point for inviting the new and releasing the old, where you learn to focus on what is serving your highest good.
Choice
After taking some time to observe there’s of your life you’d like to change, you’ll then get ready to make a choice. Sometimes this choice is a giant leap into the unknown, while other times it’s a simple step in the right direction. Even if it’s a small change it can conjure up some indecisiveness within you. This step is about deciding on what feels the best rather than comparing what “would be” better. You can’t see how things will play out exactly but you can tap into your intuition and figure out what course is best for you to take.
Trust
Finally, it’s time to trust this entire process. Trust in your ability to observe what behaviors, thoughts, or habits need to change in your life. Trust that your choice is a stable one that will bring you closer to who you envision yourself becoming. Trust within your ability to consciously create an overall improved lifestyle for you. Each time you actively build inner trust you strengthen the foundation of your relationship with yourself and your ability to make things happen in your life.
Observing Misalignment
To understand whether you are on the path bringing you closer to who you wish to become, it’s important to know when you’re misaligned or veering off course. An indication that you are experiencing alignment is when you are feeling positive and pleasant emotions. Alignment is the experience of feeling good and allowing more good feelings to find you. This happens when you are thinking healthy thoughts, making choices that line up with your idea of happiness or success and position yourself in a way that invites more of this feeling. An indication of misalignment is when you are feeling negative or unpleasant emotions. In this state of being, you are allowing more of these experiences to gravitate toward you. This happens when you’re thinking of harmful or uneasy thoughts, making choices out of emotional reactivity that do not align with your idea of happiness or success.
Although alignment is the ultimate goal, it’s important that you learn to notice when misalignment is occurring. The most notable thing to become aware of is the experience arising in your body. When you’re thinking troublesome thoughts or experiencing an unpleasant moment, it does not stay only in your mind. It travels throughout the body depositing stress in pockets of your muscles, bones, and internal systems. If you can begin to link your mental experiences with your physical ones you’ll begin to uncover certain patterns of behavior that follow your thoughts. For instance, if you are thinking thoughts of self-doubt your shoulders are likely to slouch and round forward; if you are experiencing an anxious thought that may appear in the body is a fast heart rate or sweaty palms.
Once you’ve become aware of misalignment in your mind you can locate it in your body. The thought patterns you’ve created over the years are powerful and often difficult to shift into a more pleasant experience. That’s why it’s important for you to recognize how misalignment shows up in your body, because that you can change by moving. Move your body in a healthy way, go for a walk if you can, stretch your arms, roll your shoulders back and release the tension in your face, unclench your jaw and take a deep breath. All of these simple choices will help bring you toward feeling better. The closer you are to feeling better the closer you become to alignment. Once you have tapped into the feeling and experience of alignment you can begin to take action toward your goals.
Planning Your Action
Deciding to take action or make an important decision isn’t something to be done without consideration. The right plan of action taking at the wrong time could push you further back than when you started. This is where the importance of alignment comes in. Making decisions in a state of clarity will bring you closer to the change you wish to see, whereas making decisions in a state of emotional reactivity most likely won’t. Although there is a huge difference between allowing your emotions to overcome you and channeling their energy for change, some people can’t quite point out those differences. For most people, emotions running high isn’t something that you thrive off of. It’s actually more likely to stress you out than bring you clarity or confidence about what’s next. This is why alignment and action go hand in hand.
By orienting yourself in the direction of joy, happiness, and success, you are aligning with your higher self. The more you consciously align with yourself the easier it will be to take action. Think of alignment as making your way to the diving board, each step bringing you closer to what you want to do, have, or be. The closer you get the more intense you’ll experience feelings of excitement, joy, and maybe a tinge of apprehension, but you keep moving. toward what it is you want. Now imagine jumping off the diving board as your plan of action, diving into the unknown whether it be by a single step or a massive leap. Don’t rush your way into action without appreciating the role and significance of aligning yourself with what’s meant for you.
Let’s Review
Mindful awareness is the key component in creating any conscious change. Awakening to your life as it unfolds means to release resistance to the state of your life now, so that you may invite new opportunities to find you. Before you begin to make changes you must first become aware of the areas in your life and things involved that need change. In this article, I’ve mapped out 3 steps of creating conscious change that can serve as a guide to making strong decisions that instill your inner trust. By first becoming aware of what needs changing, then making a conscious choice of how to move forward, and finally learning to trust the outcome and your ability to handle it. After you’ve made your decisions and have begun to experience that inner trust, you can learn to build on it by practicing alignment.
The simplest way to practice alignment is to become aware of the moments you’re feeling good and work to invite more of that feeling. This does not mean resisting negative emotions or rejecting unpleasant experiences, these are all apart of the journey. Instead, it’s about becoming aware of both alignment and misalignment, observing and understanding how they both show up in your experience. Misalignment will be tied to negative emotions and bodily sensations of feeling contracted or tight. Being in alignment will feel more open and flowing, with pleasant thoughts and positive feelings. After you’ve become familiar with how it is you want to feel continue striving for that feeling, building up the opportunity to take action. A plan of action is powerful on its own, just like aligning yourself with how you want to experience life is powerful. however, together they become an undeniable force propelling you toward the life you are creating.
You are the creator of your life experience and you are responsible for the ways you choose to respond to the world around you. Every day you are capable of bringing yourself closer to your higher self. It’s in the choices you make, the thoughts you observe, and the behaviors you begin to uncover. Bring a sense of curiosity to what it is you’re noticing within yourself and work on releasing judgment. Who you are today doesn’t have to be defined as good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure. Practice mindfulness with how you are showing up each day as a means for understanding the person you’ve become, not condemning or judging but welcoming. Allow your experience to be one that reveals deeper levels of yourself and uses them as ways to expand.
If you want to create conscious change in your life never stop paying attention. Keep aligning with what feels good and releasing what does not. Keep coming back to the present moment and all of the wonders it has to offer. And when this road gets more challenging than you had anticipated, keep coming back to the breath. Because as long as there is another breath cycle flowing through your body, you have another chance to begin again.
Check out this 5-minute video on How to Set an Intention
mindfullybri.com 