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Center Stage isn’t the Only Place to Stand ; You Can Add Beauty from Any Angle

If it Walks like a Duck….

Watching the tv series “Grimm” tonight, reminded me that we all have a frame of reality that we were taught long ago.

As children we were conditioned to perceive things in a certain way.  We were taught by our families, our culture, our friends, and our particular religion, to accept certain realities and to reject others.

Any reality which we were conditioned to reject, was programmed into our subconscious as basically invisible.

We were conditioned to create certain associations about types of people. The brain can sum up a stranger in a manner of seconds based on the way they are dressed, their body language, and the way they speak.

This subconscious categorizing of people can protect you from danger and guide you towards the right person to ask for help. But not all of the things we were taught were correct.

Some lessons were taught to us by misguided, though well meaning, family members,  friends and teachers. People tend to hold onto whatever they were taught growing up. Therefore they pass the same biases and inaccuracies down to the next generation.

Each generation then tried to assess and rearrange their own thoughts and beliefs to fit their own situations, but there is often a lot of bleeding over of false beliefs from one generation to the next.

While grouping certain types of people into “safe” and “unsafe” categories can serve us to a great degree, it can also lead us right into danger.  It can also  lead  us away from people that would benefit our lives if we got to know them.

Your intuition is always your best and first line of defense. It also can suggest to you to go in a certain direction, even when you’ve been conditioned not to.

But typically we are taught to ignore our intuition…our gut feelings…and lean towards whatever biases we were brought up with.

Depending on what kind of parents you had growing up, you might have been given a feeling of independence and  confidence in your own judgement. But that’s not always the case.

You may have had parents that were controlling and manipulative. They may have intentionally crushed down your confidence, as well as your faith  in your intuition. They may have programmed you to believe that their opinions were somehow superior to your own senses.

You may have even been intentionally mislead about how to assess the people that you meet, as far as who to trust and who to run from.

Whether it was intentional or not, the things you learned as a child were taken in by your brain and processed at the age level that they were given to you.  Then those beliefs were reinforced,  or even contradicted to confuse you, at various ages growing up.

No matter what,  the things you learned about your world as a child, must be re-evaluated as an adult.

We cannot rely on what we were taught as children.

We cannot rely on what parents with a hidden agenda, or even good – intentioned parents conditioned us to believe.

We most certainly cannot rely on our own interpretation as a child, on those same things that were taught to us.

As adults, we must identify what beliefs are being held in our subconscious. Then we need to evaluate the truth of those beliefs. We also need to decide which of those beliefs are serving us well, and which ones might actually be harming us.

Our brain will find simple ways of making judgements because it’s faster and takes up less energy and time. If we don’t consciously think about things, we will go right to the associations that were conditioned into us as children.

No one ever told us to re-check these associations as adults. The people that wanted certain beliefs and biases programmed into you will probably  not come forward and tell you to re-evaluate them for yourselves now.

The end result is a tendency to change the facts right in front of you, in order to make them fit your beliefs.

The better option is to look at the facts realistically,  and then to re – evaluate your beliefs to fit the facts.

When you alter the facts, reframe the facts, disregard what you see to be true, or generalize things to fit what you were taught, you are in danger of more brainwashing,  and mind control.

You are in danger of letting that “perfect stranger” right into your house, because you were taught to categorize them as safe, when they may be exactly to opposite. Even if your gut is telling you to keep away, your subconscious belief system is pushing  you to make quick associations.

You can miss opportunities that might be really good for your future, because you were taught to be suspicious of certain things, or you were told time and time again that “someone like you” can’t achieve certain things.

Maybe you were taught that “someone like you” can’t attract certain kinds of people. Maybe you were covertly conditioned that certain types of friends or jobs are out of your reach.

Possibly,  someone was trying to protect you from disappointment, because they were infused with the same beliefs …. that they could not have certain things, or attract certain kinds of people who are “better” than they are.

Or maybe someone conditioned you to deny yourself opportunities because they actually had some hidden agenda for keeping you sheltered from knowing what you can actually do in your life. Maybe they wanted to keep your self esteem low, so they could wield a certain degree of control over you.

It could be that a teacher you had was the one that taught you to “stay in your place” to the degree that you are still holding a subconscious belief that you actually have a “place” or a status that you were born to stay in.

As adults, we need to re-teach ourselves. We need to re – train our brains to see what we see, and to believe things based on what we discover to be true.

As creative beings, we have the right to our passion and our personal inspiration.

You have a right to your dreams, your visions and to realize any talents that you think you might have.

Also remember that your intuition is there to serve you. If someone or something doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t.

If something feels like its calling you, then don’t give up and run the other way just because someone once told you that those kinds of dreams are for some other kind of person.

Protect yourself and prioritize your needs and desires, rather than always strive to fit within whatever box you were told was yours to fit into.

Let yourself let go of  whatever mental chains were placed on you at a young age.

Love others who deserve your love. Help others when you can, but not to the point where you are being used and exploited.

If it’s walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.

Believe in Yourself

What to Live For

Live for yourself. Create your reality. Listen to your inner voice. Nurture your inner child and your emotional wounds.

Live for the connection of all living things and for the value of life and existence.

Live for loving others. Do random acts of kindness. Search out special people to share intimate relationships with.  Passion and sensuality are part of being human and part of spirituality.

Live to love animals and nature. Be kind and mindful. Treat living things with respect and care.

Live for your visions, hopes and dreams. Be creative, inventive and original.

Live to fight against evil and injustice. Be the advocate for those who have no voice.

Teach others to be sometimes still, and other times to roar like a lion.

 

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Helping Others Begins with Self Love

You have to take care of yourself, before you can really take care of someone else well.

You have to make yourself comfortable,  before you can find the best ways to comfort someone else.

You have to find yourself,  before you can help someone who is lost.

You have to be standing stable,  before you can get someone off the floor.

You have to save yourself, before you can begin to help someone save themselves.

You are Special !

Shine and a Cure Bunny Pic

Self Love and Restoring Balance

Life needs balance. Our bodies are systems of balance. We need a balanced diet or we become sick.

We need balance between work and play, rest and activity, and focus vs. relaxaxing the mind.

We need balance between socializing and time to ourselves. Too much of any one thing throws off something else that is equally important.

Our physical and mental health are dependent upon this critical balance.

We should not negect nature for technology. Nor should we forget about our family and friends because we become too focused on work.

The reverse of any of these statements is also true. We should not neglect our work, our dreams and our vision for our family.

It is a constant struggle to keep things in balance. Every physical problem has to do with something being neglected for the sake of something else.

On-going, extreme imbalance will cause disease, illness, fatigue, and a lack of wellness.

Ancient Chinese medicine was based on the idea of sickness and disease being the result of imbalance. This was an entire system of trying to connect certain health problems with particular imbalances.

The ancient Chinese medicine developers believed that by identifying imbalances early, you can prevent serious illness and diseases.

There are entire health arts related to identifying imbalances, and restoring imbalance in the body. Acupressure, acupuncture, yoga are all about restoring and maintaining the fine balamces within the body.

These arts also restore balance between the mind and the body. It is clear that physical health is intimately intertwined with mental and emotional health.

At any given time, something is bound to be in an imbalance. Our goal should be to look at imbalances if we feel like something is wrong.

Moderate to severe mental health problems can be your body’s way of communicating to you that it needs something. It could be that something is in starvation.

We can become emotionally starved for love and compassion. We can become starved for physical touch.

Emotional starvation can cause every system in the body to suffer. The mind will suffer as well and cognitive processes will slow down.

We were also made to be able to think and create. Being stuck in a routine job and living on autopilot can cause imbalance in your life.

We were made to have a balance, which includes variety and change, as well as the comfort of some predictability.

Remembering the importance of balance will help you to be able to identify and restore balamce to yourself. It is also something useful to pass down to your children or teach others.

Whenever you feel like you are having trouble keeping up with something in your life, or that something is being neglected, see what might be drinking too much energy and time from you.

If something is being neglected, it is due to something else taking too much of your time and energy. We do not always want to admit what that something is.

Even if you are not ready to make a dramatic change, yoi may be able to make smaller ones. Without change we cannot move forward.

Staying stuck in the same unhealthy routine will slowly starve your body and your mind.

Accept your tre self and nurture yourself without judgement. Restoring balance is not about self judgement. It is about self love.

Love Your Inner Child

Posted on June 10, 2015 by gentlekindness

Love your inner child.

We all still have the inner child inside of us. Sometimes the inner child takes over and feels things as if we were that vulnerable small person again.

If you had any mental abuse or other abuse during your childhood, then your inner child will still feel the unfairness of situations and experience it as if you were back in time. Sometimes we can have a feeling of helplessness, that is the same as we felt when we were small children or teenagers, and dependent upon others for most everything.

Sometimes certain people may behave in such a way that triggers the trauma response from things we experiences as children. As an adult we are not sure where this severe emotion and feeling of helplessness is coming from.

We may react to the person out of our trauma response, rather than act out of thought. If we are sent by our brain back to that feeling of helplessness, then we may feel angry, afraid or sad.

When dealing with manipulative people, we need to be in an emotionally detached state of mind. Then we can observe what they are doing and not get caught up in the emotions of our inner child.

Keeping an emotionally detached state, when dealing with manipulative people, will help to keep you from being taken advantage of.

We do not have to feel what this person is trying to force us to feel. We can choose how much emotion this person is going to be allowed to get out of us. Maybe they are not even worthy of you getting upset to please them.

Perhaps we do not have to comply with their desires when they are unreasonable.  After all those are their desires not yours.

Listen to your inner child and care for them.

They are still a part living inside of your mental makeup. Your inner child has wounds that may have not have healed. Maybe your inner child still feels helpless and as an adult you sometimes fall into a learned helplessness state.

Learned helplessness is the feeling of being helpless in a situation even when you have the power to walk away or make changes, such as controlling your response. People can push you around and manipulate you easily when you are in this state if being.

You are not helpless and you can control your responses in situations. But your inner child needs to be tended to, if you are going to able to take more control over situations where manipulative people are trying to dominate over you.

If the inner child has things to say, then they need to be heard. They were treated unfairly in situations and perhaps they were not given the love and feeling of security that they should have been given.

You can comfort your inner child by communicating with them and telling them that you understand that they are hurt and confused. Let them know that people could have and should have treated them differently in many situations. It was unjust, unkind or abusive.

When there are times that are appropriate, you can have this communication with this part  of yourself that lives inside of you.

Time seems linear but as far as your inner child is concerned time is stuck at the point where their developmental growth was interfered with.

They are stuck in the pain of the time on your life where you were most vulnerable and your rights were violated.

Children and teenagers should be given respect and room to express their thoughts and feelings. If your was not, then they may still have thoughts and feelings that they want to let you know about.

Care for this inner child, as if they were under your guardianship, because they are. Ignoring them will cause for them to come jumping to the foreground when you are in stressful situations, especially ones that remind them of injustice they experiences.

It is okay to still carry those feelings from your childhood, but it can be damaging to you to ignore them. You would have treated the child differently, if you had been the adult caring for them. The same goes for when you were a teenager.

Let them know that you would have done things differently in the situations that are bothering them the most. You can go over the situation.

Allow your inner child to tell you what they are hurt about.  

From an adult point of view, evaluate where the caregivers did things that were thoughtless or selfish. Then tell your inner child that it should not have happened that way and you would not have done that to them.

Let them know that they deserved to be treated better. Even tell them exactly what should have happened and how a loving adult, like you, would have cared for them.

Any feelings that are being carried by your inner child, are valid and they matter. They cannot be left unattended. This will only cause for you to become disabled in situations where another person is attempting to manipulate you.

Some kinds of toxic people are very good at targeting the people that have a wounded inner child.  They can tell and they know where to push your buttons, to make you go into the learned helplessness mode.

Love yourself and your inner child.

It was unfair that you were mistreated as a child or a teenager. You need to let your inner child know that you know this and are feel for them.

Care for yourself and your inner child. Learn to identify when you are being triggered by a situation that is making you feel that vulnerability, helplessness and unworthiness. Children who grew up with people who made them feel unworthy of love and attention, carry that feeling into adulthood.

Let your inner child know that they were always worthy of love and affection.

You were worthy of your feelings and thoughts being listened to. As an adult you are also worthy of love. You are worthy to have your feelings about situations respected and considered.

Once you can know that you are just as worthy and special as anyone else, it will be easier for you to make your voice heard and let others know that their feelings are not the only feelings that matter.

Blessings,

Annie