Showing posts with label opening your heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opening your heart. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Thank you for the Beautiful Blogger Award and The Very Inspiring Blogger Award


The Beautiful Blogger Award


Almost three months back, I received The Beautiful Blogger Award from MeaningfulWesternLife,and The Very Inspiring Blog Award from Make Believe Boutique.  Despite my major delay in giving thanks, and passing this special award onto other great bloggers, I was, and still am thrilled to have received it. Better late than never right?

So let me just start by saying, THANK YOU, MeaningfulWesternLife, who writes about cultivating joy and meaning in a western society lifestyle, for thinking of me when sharing this award. Your blog was one of the first that I ever began reading and your words have been very inspirational, and meaningful to me. And THANK YOU Make Believe Boutique, who describes herself as a quiet and reflective artist, who continually seeks to understand the aesthetics of authenticity through gratitude, service, curiosity, creativity, beauty, and compassion.I have always enjoyed reading many of the simple, yet incredibly beautiful and enlightening post she has shared. She inspiring and the peaceful character which her words carry with them have always touch me.

Please take the time to check out both MeaningfulWesternLife and Make Believe Boutique as well as the wonderful blogs nominated below. Stop in, say hello, congratulate them, and let you heart be touched. Thank you again for the awards!

Monday, December 3, 2012

Changing Requires a Paradigm Shift. No one said it was going to be easy!


This morning I came across this post by A Thousand Shades of Gray discussing the paradigm shift we go through as humans whenever we’re in a process of personal transformation and growth.
Kurt Lewin developed the Change Theory that is today, the epitome of change models. Lewin is also regarded as the founder of Social Psychology and contributed vastly to the field. On the most basic level, Change Theory describes the process of change that occurs in humans, society, organizations, etc., as conscious and in three phases:
(1) Unfreezing Stage: The stage where a person becomes cognizant that change is needed and reflects on ways to change.
(2) Moving to a New Level or Change Stage: This stage is a process of change; changes in thoughts, feelings, behavior, or all three. This stage is   often liberating and the belief sets in that the new way is better than the old way.
(3) Refreezing Stage: This stage involves establishing the change as a new habit or process. It becomes the norm.

Any process where significant changes occur can be emotionally, spiritually, and mentally difficult.  But these paradigm shifts are a part of life. Be patient with yourself during these times and embrace the process with an open heart. A Thousand Shades of Gray provides some advantageous reminders to help you do just that.
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A Thousand Shades of Gray

-"Love is a thousand shades of gray, and we know / There’s not a safe or certain way to go" ~~Tina Dico 

Three Truths and One Wish

Posted by  in AwarenessBasic GoodnessChangeHabits,Letting GoLife RehabLoveThree Truths and One Wish

Paradigm: A conceptual model that is used…to understand complex phenomena. A paradigm includes assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that determine how something is understood. New paradigms develop when observations cannot be explained by current assumptions and beliefs, (source).
I am undergoing a paradigm shift. It is difficult, scary, and slow, but necessary. As I “live into” this change, there are some things I am discovering, finding to be true.
Photo from A Thousand Shades of Gray
1. Truth: Paradigm shifts usually don’t happen quickly. At the very least, they probably won’t happen as fast as you’d like. For most of us, it’s not like flipping a light switch. We have to ease into it, take it slow, give it time and space, stop and start, over and over, again and again, take a few do-overs, wait almost to the point of boredom or giving up–because the full shift doesn’t happen all at once.
2. Truth: Your intellectual understanding of the new paradigm will happen before you are able to fully embody it. You know, but find yourself still acting in those old ways. You move through your habitual patterns and ways of being, watching them with a new awareness, but still stuck in them. It’s tempting in this in-between to think it would be easier to go back to ignorance, to wish for that blindness, to see it as a sort of bliss, but there’s nothing there for you anymore. Once you see a new way, a better, more sane way, you can’t unsee it.
3. Truth: “Love is always in the room with you.” You’ve got this. It’s so certain, it’s as if it’s already happened. You don’t need to be afraid of freaking out or falling apart. The things you are afraid of either won’t happen or won’t be nearly as bad as you’d imagined. You can soften, surrender, let go, relax. Allow yourself stillness, silence, solitude, and space. Shine your light, sink into and manifest your truest self, embody supreme confidence.
One wish: If you want to shift your paradigm, may it go quickly and without obstacle. If you are lost in a fog of confusion, about yourself and the world, or in the midst of change, may you awaken to the light of your true nature. May you know your basic goodness, your innate wisdom and compassion and strength. May we all soften and relax and maintain good cheer, no matter where we are on our path.
*READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE  BY JILLSALAHUB HERE: http://thousandshadesofgray.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/three-truths-and-one-wish-20/

What is...With an Open Heart?

What is …With an Open Heart? Well, it’s my best attempt at making a change in my life and opening myself, and my heart to the world. There are so many things I could try and say to explain this little blog, and the reason why I’m started it, but every time I try, I struggle to find the words. So let me just start by explaining my feelings leading up to this blog.

Feelings: I’m afraid of them!!

I’ve been running from them for nearly eight years. At first, this was easy, and made life a hell of a lot easier. How do you feel? Fine. Did that bother you? I couldn’t care less. I basically just shut down. I turned off my feelings and stopped caring.

Or I believed I stopped caring and feeling. As you can imagine, this eventually backfired; over the years my repressed feelings manifested into other problems. My anxiety increased, my fear of rejection increased, my need to be perfect got the best of me, my judgment of others often made me a mean person, my relationships suffered because I refused to be open, honest, and intimate with others, and I missed out on a lot of great opportunities. In the end, I closed myself off to the world in order to keep myself from hurting and from feeling negative, difficult emotions. However, what I really did was close myself off from amazing experiences and feeling some of the most amazing feelings.


Lets fast forward a little bit…

About a year and a half ago, I signed up for, Introspective and Personal Growth Seminar; one of my required counseling courses for grad school. In a nutshell, this class was devoted to self-awareness, and recognizing our “unfinished business”. That is, the unconscious, repressed crap we as individuals harbor inside. Dealing with these emotions is imperative to being an effective therapist. It is also what we do as clinicians to help others (it’s really all about self-awareness). So here I am, reading hours a day about how important it is to be self-aware and to take care of my issues prior working as a therapist, and I’m doing exactly the opposite in my life! I honestly knew for at least six months, that I needed to make a major change in my life, but this course opened my mind and my self-awareness in ways I had never explored previously. I tried really hard to open myself up to the world and to others, but I still struggled. I spent the next year increasing my self-awareness, and being very introspective. What I didn’t do was speak about any of it. I still kept everything in. I recognized my feelings, and understood why they existed, but I only gave myself minutes to sit in them. What can I say, they made me so uncomfortable!

Can you guess what happened next? Yup, that’s right, I eventually thought I was about to have a nervous breakdown! I found myself incredibly emotional –about everything! I felt like I needed to run away from my life and I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore. I was stressed beyond belief, wasn’t sleeping, I was very anxious, and felt incredibly incongruent in my life and in my feelings. It was time for some MAJOR CHANGES!

Today, this blog is an overt attempt to be open, honest, and true to myself. Sure, I don’t need a blog to start living with a more open heart. However, being this open, and this honest terrifies me; and so, facing this fear is an important step forward.

I hope this blog can be a place of happiness, small pleasures, positivity, honesty and intention. I’ll write about personal experiences that have opened my heart, to interesting things that have sparked my curiosity and passion for life, to empirically validated research about self-awareness, happiness, and the power of positive thought (I mean, after all, I am a nerdy grad student), and everything in between. If you like it –awesome! If you don’t, there are plenty of other blogs for you out there.

I have spent most of my life following my head. This year, I’m following my heart.