Letting Go, Today

By Dr Jaime Kulaga

UNFORTUNATELY, as we continue on this journey in life, we have to leave the fairy tale endings to Disney.

Sometimes the bad guy does win, the cheater ends up marrying his beautiful mistress and your worst fear does in fact happen.

Pic courtesy of www.quoteeveryday.com

Since this is life and we can't realistically turn to Disney for the happy endings, we need to let things go and take control over what we can control, our actions and reactions.

Letting go isn't easy. Even in a brief moment of frustration with a partner, letting go can be tough if you are trying to prove a point.

But, when we have to let things go that are fueled by a human's strongest emotions, that is when marching on becomes one of the hardest things to do.

Anger, love and fear are some of the most powerful emotions a person can have.

If love can lead to an entire life of fulfillment (happiness, health, true partner), and anger could lead to death (violence and murders), with such extremes, how can we let things go in the midst of our emotions ruling us?

Here are 3 tips that you can implement to help you Let Go, Today:

1. Challenge fear

Often when we let go of the past we are actually letting go of comfort. I understand that anger, fear, pain, and a loss are not comfortable like your couch.

But the body is used to acting, reacting and thinking in one certain way. It is easy to be the same way; it takes energy and effort to change.

Your mind wants to keep on in a direction that is familiar with, even though it knows it is not necessarily good.

Fear creeps up in your mind. Fear lets you know that if you let go of what is holding you to the past, you might not have a good future.

We fill the unpredictable holes of our future with fear, not joy. I suppose the truth is, your future is not guaranteed and definitely could end up not in your favor.

Fear tricks you into thinking that it is better to stay "as is" than move forward because of this unpredictability.

But the reality also is if you are struggling to let go of something, you aren't in a place you want to be anyway right now. So, take the leap and let go.

And, if one reason you are not letting go is for the fact that fear is telling you a "what if" story that is no excuse either.

Often, fear keeps you miserable because it convinces you "what if things get better?" "What if she/he changes?" "What if next go around, I get the promotion?"

Instead, challenge fear and say "what if I leave and things go great for me?" "What if I let go and am finally happy?"

The outlook is much better for your future than your past because you can create the future, you can't change the past.

Living in consistent anger or fear destroys opportunities that come your way and ensures that your peace within is crushed. Prove fear wrong and challenge it.

Try letting go and begin to embrace your future. Hold onto your future like you currently are holding on to your past. What you are currently doing is not working, so shift your actions elsewhere.

Make goals for what your body, mind and spirit needs and focus on that this week.

If it makes you feel better to make a list of all your fears and pains and set it aside for the week to come back to next week, do that.

Let it go for one week and next week decide whether or not you want to come back to the list of pains or continue on your new path.

2. Don't let anger control you

Literally see anger as a person that you are arm wrestling. When anger is consuming your decisions and taking away your happiness, think of him as pushing down harder on your arm. Fight back.

No one controls you, no emotions control you. Take back the power and slam anger to the table.

If anger encourages you to seek revenge, feel jealousy or become greedy he is pushing your hand further toward the table.

Play him back by hitting the gym, doing something good for you, or moving your life forward. Don't lose this battle.

3. Rid of the physical pain

If you have pain within you, chances are it might also be around you. This week begin ridding of the physical pain - and by this I mean items that are reminders of a negative past.

It is not easy to rid yourself of physical items that remind you of pain, but neither is waking up looking at everything that reminds you of this pain (which in turn elicits rage, anger or torment within you).

It is not fair that you have to start each day or week being reminded of hurtful things. Stepping your foot into the week with anger, fears or frustration puts you behind from the get go.

If you have managed to rid of a person who hurt you, don't let them linger around in symbols all day. Finalize the last chapter and start a new one. Will it be easy to physically let go of items?

Absolutely not. Whether your mind tells you or not, you have the strength to move forward.

Got pictures? Toss them. If you can't toss them for whatever reason, please don't have them sitting in 8 X 10 frames over the fireplace mantel for God's sake!

Put them in a box and lock them away. If you have children, and they want certain photos out, explain to them your pain and allow them to put a couple photos in their room away from you.

If there are certain clothes that remind you of painful events, donate them. You can buy more. If there are certain rooms that remind you of anger or pain, rearrange the room.

Purchase new items for the room or hang up inspirational photos/paintings in that room. Whatever you do, this week, physically downsize your pain or anger.

When you ground yourself to the past, you are stuck there. This means that you are literally making your future, your past.

Instead, this week, your goal is to select one of the tips from above and begin "Letting it Go, Today" and start creating a future that is anything but your past.

Dr. Jaime Kulaga is a Certified Life Coach, Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Motivational Speaker.

She is the author of the upcoming book "The SuperWoman's Guide to Super Fulfillment: Step-by-Step Strategies to Create Work-Life Balance," to be published in March 2015.

She is the inspirational founder of the nationally known SuperWoman Workshops. Dr. Kulaga has been featured internationally for her expertise in Work-Life Balance. http://www.mindfulrehab.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8803061

How To Forgive And Forget: The Truth About Forgiveness

By Doc Orman M.D.

MUCH has been said about forgiveness throughout the ages. Despite all the spiritual and self-help advice we receive, however, most people still find it very difficult to forgive.

While we often say the words "I forgive you" or "let's forget and move on," still deep within our hearts we are not really letting go of most of the anger and blame we feel against someone who may have seriously wronged us. This can result in ongoing personal suffering that, for some, continues to last throughout their lifetime.

The reason why most spiritual and self-help advice about forgiveness doesn't help is because it doesn't delve deeply enough into the actual causes of our anger and blame in the first place. When you correctly understand the true causes of anger in human beings, you begin to deeply appreciate that the most important causes of anger and resentment lie mainly within us, and not with the behavior of others or whatever may have happened in the past.

These internal causes are anger-producing thought patterns and action patterns that become triggered within in our bodies. Often, these internal thought patterns and action or behavior patterns produce "false internal realities" within us that we automatically assume to be true, but that have little correspondence to the truth about what really happened. But we end up getting angry and holding on to our anger anyway, because our bodies automatically assume that all of these "internal realities" are indeed true.

For example, automatic anger-producing thoughts such as "someone did something they shouldn't have done" or "I was hurt or harmed by what happened" or "the other person was unilaterally to blame for what occurred" are frequently incorrect. As a result of these mistaken "internal realities," we conclude that a crime has been committed and that someone should apologize, offer to make amends, and/or be punished. When none of these things occur, or sometimes even when they do, we may find it very difficult to forgive.

There is no way you can "let go" of your anger or truly forgive the past as long as "false internal realities" remain unchallenged within you. You cannot pretend "all is forgiven" when you are certain that: a) you were seriously harmed; b) the other person (or yourself) was unilaterally to blame; and c) this person should have done something different.

THE SECRET TO TRUE FORGIVENESS IS TO CHALLENGE YOUR INTERNAL ASSUMPTIONS THAT LEAD YOU TO BELIEVE AN UNFORGIVABLE CRIME WAS ACTUALLY COMMITTED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The best way to do this is to recognize where your automatic assumptions, which are causing your anger and resentment, are false or misleading. Once you challenge and disprove these "false internal realities," your anger and resentment will quickly disappear, without you having to do anything to try to force this to happen.

Even when a true crime, such as a theft or murder was committed, it is still possible - although not easy - to forgive the offending party. This can sometimes be done by challenging your automatic assumption that the person should have "known better" or should have behaved in a different manner.

Copyright (c) 2013 M.C.Orman, M.D., FLP

Doc Orman, M.D. is a physician, author, stress coach, and founder of The Stress Mastery Academy. To learn more about his advice on how to forgive, as well as how to solve other lingering stress or anxiety problems, visit http://stressandanxietysolutions.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7451728

Why Success is Happiness

By Alex Markham

The pursuit of success is a natural human drive. We all desire success in one form or another. Perhaps you want to get a promotion, or run a successful business, or be respected for your art. But if we are going to put a good deal of our energy into achieving a goal, it’s worth taking the time to ask ourselves whether the goal is worth attaining.

If we ask ourselves why we wish to achieve anything, the inevitable answer is that we believe it will make us happy. Now we must ask ourselves if this is true, and whether there might be a quicker route to happiness, and most importantly, whether the pursuit of this future happiness is jeopardizing our happiness today.


Happiness is never far away

The Greek philosopher Aristotle proposed an experiment about happiness. He said that if you ask anyone why they are doing what they are doing, their ultimate answer will be because it makes them happy.

A person starting up her own business might initially say she wants to make money and have more freedom. Ask her why and she’ll say because it will let her spend more quality time with her family, ask her again and she say that this quality time will bring her happiness.

We all pursue happiness most of the time every day. But we rarely stop and ask ourselves – are we pursuing it in the most efficient way? We’ll examine how efficient our business plan is, or our work schedule, or our golf drive, but we don’t stop to look at whether we are efficiently moving towards happiness.

In order to achieve the goal of happiness you should consider asking yourself whether your life map is leading you towards happiness by the fastest route.

The title of this article is powerful. Understanding the idea could make your life easier. We all want success, and we all want happiness. So what happens when we unify these two powerful ideas? Two words, with one meaning. Success and happiness are the same.

For me, realizing this has been a very liberating process. The old me who was stressed, addicted to work, constantly traveling and never arriving, has been allowed to relax. I no longer pursue my goals with the same fanaticism or fervor. Is this a good thing?

A lot of people are attached to fervor, believing that with great motivation comes great rewards. I disagree, because I recognize that the more I want something, the more I push it away. In fact, through letting go of our attachment to outcomes, we become more likely to achieve our goals, and moreover, we become more likely to be happy.

Don’t burn out your life living like a fanatic. Take a good look at your map, and ask yourself, if it leads you to happiness. It shouldn’t take long to reach happiness because happiness is never far away. A few minutes of mediation, spending an afternoon with your family, playing some sport with old friends – these are the things that will bring you happiness today.

It’s easy to be happy, as long as you are willing to let go of your intense desires, and let things be. Find your patience, find your inner peace, and realize that happiness is right here, right now, waiting patiently for you
——
Alex Markham is a life coach and creator of www.InspiredPrimate.co.uk. His passion is learning what makes people happy, and sharing ideas for living the happy life. Check out Inspired Primate to learn more about how to be happy.

Article source: http://tiny.cc/HappySuccess

Are You Struggling with Resistance?

As Carl Jung – the founding father of analytical psychology – one famously stated, “What you resist, persists.”

And if you’ve ever tried with all your might to put a difficult incident, situation or relationship behind you, only to find it coming back time after time, his words will ring true.

This sense of ‘struggle’ that we often experience when we resist a particular outcome is the subject of an email that dropped into my inbox the other day from Dr Robert Anthony.

A psychotherapist, NLP practitioner, master hypnotist and personal performance trainer, with over 30 years’ experience, Dr Anthony is one of my personal heroes.

Not only does he impart incredible wisdom, in my view, he’s authored some of the finest personal development products ever seen.

Products such as The Secret Of Deliberate Creation, Self Confidence Creator and Deliberate Creation Instant Self Hypnosis – all well worth investing in, as I have myself.

In the meantime, however, below is that email. I hope you find it both interesting and beneficial:

“Breakthroughs do not happen when we are stressed. They happen when we finally let go and stop struggling. Resisting is at the heart of struggle.

Although what we are resisting feels like it is ‘out there’ the resistance is really inside of us. That is, if you are resisting anything, you are really resisting yourself.

When we resist something we increase the amount of struggle in our lives and this in turn increases how much scarcity we experience.

When we resist, we make things harder than they have to be. By making things difficult we create struggle and prolong getting where we want to be.

We make things complicated because we are afraid to decide. It is partly our fear of the unknown – what will happen if – and partly our fear of making a mistake.

The excuse I hear most from my clients is that are afraid they may make the ‘wrong’ decision.

There is the fear that somehow they will permanently be locked into the consequences of their choices.

But consider this for a moment. What if there are no ‘wrong’ choices, only choices. Even if we don’t make the best choice, we will be guided to what we need to learn.

All great athletes understand this concept. They know they can only anticipate so much, but have to make constant instantaneous decisions IN THE MOMENT as each new situation arises.

So who wouldn't want to stop struggling? More people than you can imagine. I struggled for most of my life with the illusion of struggle.

The power of any illusion is its ability to keep us thinking the illusion is real.

When you give up struggle it involves letting go of both the past and the future to activate what is needed right now.

It is not your hard work that creates the results, but your ability to give up struggling and forcing things to happen.

Flow happens when we accept and embrace ‘WHAT IS’. Flow happens when we release our death grip on resistance and insistence and instead step back and take more conscious actions.

Flow is the lack of resistance. It is effortless. The magic in life is believing in possibilities and the getting out of your own way.

Today will bring you a new awareness, a lesson or a manifestation that you are making progress – IF YOU LOOK FOR IT!

Truly Caring for Your Success!

Dr. Robert Anthony."

The Power of Letting Go

If you’re one of those people who’s seen the much talked-about movie, ‘The Secret’ perhaps – like me – more times than you could actually admit without feeling a tad embarrassed, there are probably particular scenes, anecdotes and ideas that stick in your mind.

(Briefly, in case you’re unfamiliar with what might be described as the quintessential ‘self-help’ movie, its main focus is to outline and explain the Law Of Attraction, which essentially states that what you think and, more importantly, feel  about on a regular basis becomes your reality.)

Well, one of the stories that always resonates with me is that of Jack Canfield – one of the people behind the ‘Chicken Soup for The Soul’ series of books – who relates how he has brought wealth, a beautiful home and many wonderful experiences into his life using the Law Of Attraction.

His method, outlined very roughly here, involves deciding what he wants, believing he can have it, believing that he’s worthy of it and then spending a short period of time every day, eyes closed, imagining that he’s already achieved the goal, with real emotion and gratitude. Then he just carries on with his day.

Having tried this myself, I have to say – again probably like a lot of people – my results have been mixed and often less than satisfactory. Or at least that was the case until I really understood the Power of Letting Go, which Jack does include in his description, in the sense of simply carrying on with his day.

Emotional detachment, that’s the way

But the point was only hammered home to me after I’d studied certain written materials by a couple of his fellow Personal Development leading lights – Dr Robert Anthony and Dr Joe Vitale, who’s also a star of ‘The Secret’.

In his best-selling book ‘The Attractor Factor’, Joe outlines five steps to manifesting what you desire in your life. I won’t spoil the surprise here – go get the book as it’s a great read – suffice to say the final step involves ‘letting go,’ or becoming emotionally detached from what you’re trying to achieve.

Apparently, if you find yourself in desperate need of what you claim to be trying to manifest, your emotion is one of scarcity – in other words you’re focusing on the fact that you don’t have it, rather than the experience of already having achieved your goal. So you’re just pushing the desired outcome further away.

Of course, maintaining detachment is easier said than done, but it certainly works. A very simple example from own experience involves the retirement of a colleague and a party being organised on his behalf. As he was a long-standing member of the team, we wanted to invite staff who had long since left the business.

Gratitude and a positive vibration

One name that came up was that of ‘Rocket Ron’ – he was crazy about motorcycles, you see – and no-one had seen him for over a year. Efforts were made to get in contact with him via one or two telephone numbers. Someone even stopped by his last-known address to see if he was still there, but to no avail.

I had known Ron a little through the day-to-day activities of the newspaper where we worked at that time – me as a writer, Ron in the photographic department – and brought to mind both his face and some of the conversations we’d had, laughing to myself about some of the more comical exchanges.

Then I just carried on with my work, without giving the matter any further thought…. or ‘letting go’, if you will. After all, though it would be nice to have Ron at the farewell get together for one of our soon-to-be former colleagues, it wasn’t that big a deal and it seemed we could do nothing about it anyhow.

That evening, I stopped off at the supermarket on my way home – a massive retail outlet, not a small local store. And yes, you guessed it, as I was making my way down one of the aisles, there was the man himself and I was able to invite him to the party.

It’s the kind of experience we can all relate to. You think about someone you haven’t heard from in a long time and someone suddenly mentions their name to you or they call you out of the blue. Some would call it pure coincidence, yet the latest studies in Quantum Physics are suggesting that we all really do play a part in creating our own universe at an energetic level.

So how do you achieve and maintain the level of detachment needed for manifestation? I guess it just takes practice, though one way I’ve found of doing so is to simply feel grateful for something – anything – in my life, once I’ve focused on my goal. This takes my thoughts away from the desire, while keeping me in a positive frame of mind, or ‘vibration’, if you like.

Still, haven’t got it down to a fine art, but I’m getting there!