By Deborah Fairfull ~
Sometimes life is full of unexpected twists and turns. Through it all, the one thing that is always constant and stable is you!! You are your own best friend—capable of triumphing in whatever life may present to you. Yet it is common during challenging times to feel that the situation reflects on you personally, affecting your confidence, emotional stability, health and ability to move forward in life.
The good news is that it is possible to regain control and create the life that you desire. In my personal experience, I have found that this is possible by changing my perception rather than the situation. Due to our reactive world, anxiety and depression are increasing globally. The World Health Organization states depression as the leading cause of disability (2011).Greater awareness of how our inner world affects our outer world will collectively give us the ability to turn these statistics around.
Your mind and body, reflect your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes. If you end up in situations you do not desire (such as physical and mental disease), despite your best efforts, this can indicate your unconscious thoughts, beliefs and attitudes are running the show. However, if you learn to go beyond the mind in terms of unconscious and reactive behavioral patterns, you can live from a conscious state of awareness.
Clues to awareness are:
- You are able to observe your thoughts and feelings; meditation for 20 minutes every day helps to develops this skill.
- Your mind feels neutral (no stress), calm, still and receptive.
About 10 years ago I was living the most idyllic life I could imagine. I owned a multi-million dollar dream home, near the park and beach. I had beautiful children, a successful business and wonderful friends and family. On the outside everything looked perfect. In hindsight, I realize that I was always unconsciously carrying feelings of anxiety and stress. These inner feelings ultimately led to my life taking a turn for the worse. My husband and I lost the majority of our material wealth, and we separated under the pressure. This forced me to look at my internal world and rebuild my life in a more conscious, stable way.
At the time I couldn’t understand how I went from having so much to losing the things that were important to me. I became depressed and found it difficult to difficult to function on a day-to-day basis (then with three children under six); everything was such an effort! The combination of kinsesiology, counseling, yoga and eastern and western philosophies, helped me to make sense of my thoughts and feelings. I realized that my unconscious fears had landed me in the exact situation I didn’t want!
Yes, I had been successful in terms of material wealth, but only because I had worked incredibly hard. I discovered that I had the unconscious belief that it was only when I struggled and strived, was I worthy of success. This approach is exhausting and not sustainable in the long run!!
I discovered I also had a HUGE unconscious fear of losing my dream home (which had happened to my parents when I was younger), so despite my best efforts, I was unconsciously recreating history all over again!
Back then I was always slightly stressed and anxious, trying to keep my life together in the way that I wanted. I unconsciously feared that something was going to go wrong and so it did.
I now know that I am enough. Expressing my gifts and talents in a joyful, effortless way is my birthright – and I am worthy of success, just because I’m me.
I know that I will always live in the right home for me, surrounded by love and laughter. I can create a joyful existence anywhere. I flow with life. After four years, I reunited with my husband to create an even better marriage based on a more conscious approach.
I now understand that:
- RELAXING my mind and tapping into the loving awareness within, is how I know that everything will be okay. I have trust and faith in my future—even though I do not know what it looks like right now!
- When I stop trying to control everything based on stress and worry, I flow with life. Often my future works out better than I could have imagined.
- When I let go of my “mind-made” anxieties and worries, I open myself to co-creating with a force far greater than myself—The Universal Intelligence field (also known as Love, God, Tao or Intuition). It is always there to guide me on the right path, when I remain open and let it.
After years or even generations (due to emotional patterns, passed down from family to family) of stress, worry, depression, anxiety and illness, it is possible to turn your mental state around from entrapment to freedom.
At the time my life was turned upside down, I couldn’t understand why. Now I realize this was just part of my journey to becoming more aware. It has given me the opportunity to work on my unconscious patterns, many of which were generational to create a new way of being for my family and myself.
Unconsciousness is a step on the journey to consciousness. We need to understand the duality (opposing forces, such as happy and sad for example) in our life before we can embrace our inherent beauty and oneness.
Going beyond the constructs of the mind and consciously living in an expansive loving state, is how we will evolve—anxiety, depression and stress will be a thing of the past, just as small pox, no longer threatening our well-being. Making our mind our friend, rather than letting it rule us, will allow us to transform the world to a place of love and beauty.
Live joyfully, nurture your spirit, value yourself, find courage, express wisdom; use your compassionate voice—we are all on this journey together.
Deborah Fairfull has been both a student and teacher of psychology and philosophy for over 20 years and is the author of Bliss Every Day: A Practical Guide to Find Peace and Happiness (available on amazon.com). For more information, visit www.Deborahfairfull.com or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/deborahfairfull.