5 Tips to learn from your emotions

How often have you realized that people can detect things about us that we don’t naturally sense or acknowledge in ourselves? Consider whether you easily notice when other people behave in ways that you feel are wrong or, evoke discomfort. What should you do about that? What can you get out of this to improve yourself?

1) Move beyond identifying what others do wrong. You may readily notice when people make mistakes or anticipate when they’ll make them. You may discern how other people could improve results. Many people never ask, and if some do, they may resent your feedback. It’s all in how you say it. Only the truly courageous and open-minded seek feedback and apply it. The discerning among us, evolve to read into the reactions of others and the meaning behind emotions evoked in ourselves.

2) Rethink whom you emulate. We all have role models. People refer to workshops, seminars, tapes, DVDs and a host of other sources of information to guide them. Yet, listening and observing others won’t necessarily trigger transformation in yourself. The answers you seek always lie within. Other people may raise your awareness about how you can uncover innate talents or create new habits and patterns. Ultimately though, you must exert the effort and nurture the discipline.

3) Recognize your strengths and talents. You may take your own innate skills for granted. You may focus on the frustration of weakness and overlook the flip side. Perhaps you don’t know how to handle joy of compliments? It may not occur to you to take steps to read between the lines and develop yourself further. As people draw your attention to what you do well, this is a sign to move to the next level. 

4) To repeat affirmations and good intentions aren’t enough. You can boost your morale and inspire positive change in yourself with a few words, yet, if you don’t change your behavior longer term, your life will remain as it has before. You may feel better because you feel you take some action, at least initially. However, you are also your own most influential motivator. What will you do differently?

5) Self-directed learning can emerge from good intention. Decide to become the person you envisage would be required to reach your specific goals. Your ideas may or may not be compatible with those of people around you. You can grow to evaluate what works and doesn’t work.  A process of trial and error will enable you to find your way. Rather than seek to change others, become the model you imagine.

Learn to perceive beyond the physical

I recently opened a fortune cookie that offered me the following message:

Nature, time and patience are the three best physicians.

This piece of advice caused me to reflect on healers and different types of healing. Some people limit their idea of healing to the physical realm. You may think of physiological diseases, broken bones, ripped cartilege, and high blood pressure. You may assume that if a person doesn't offer you a way to eliminate such physical problems, then he or she couldn't be a true "healer." What if you moved beyond these assumptions?  What if you decided to perceive beyond the physical?

The heart and mind

Consider that a person's heart and mind can be in worse shape than his or her physical body. The state of your heart and mind may actually be revealed as physical symptoms you assume manifest as other health problems. Underneath it all, if your soul is tormented, if you feel depressed, or if you permit fear to control you, then you may hold yourself back from living life to the fullest. Luckily, that can change.

Maybe you know someone who experiences physical setbacks. As the result, he or she may feel useless or helpless.  Such a person needs strength and may not know where to find it. Yet, we each hold a key to becoming healers if we so desire. We must simply learn to heal ourselves. You might ask, how would you proceed?

Your true self

No matter what your age or stage in life, you can learn to express feelings. They offer clues to your inner balance.  You may write about feelings, verbalize them or, find another outlet. You may model people around you or, devise reactions outside of what you were taught. As you explore feeling rejected or hurt, and if you complain, you express dismay. To repress any kind of feelings is debilitating. Why not acknowledge all feelings to heal and work through them instead?

If you feel intimidated, abused or exploited, then healing process involves learning to understand that people try to control others when their lives are out of control.  Anyone insecure, who is lacking in self-worth or esteem, actually feels inadequate, powerless or afraid.  Stripping someone of power for a time boosts self-importance, but this fades.  Whatever thoughts or energy you send out, it will affect you in a similar way.  Your true self makes itself known through balance and imbalance. 

Healing has already begun

You have already unlocked the door to this mystery of healing. The fact you have the desire to heal is a stepping stone to other positive experiences. You may not sense you need a miracle cure, but you can always benefit from guidance during your own healing process. Believe your inner power will make all the difference. Unleash it.

Each of us always has choices and free will. We decide how we will think and how we will live. As you evolve to raise your self-awareness, you can discover many of the answers you seek inside. Keep searching. The quest is part of why you exist now.

What is it with fortune cookies?

I recently opened a fortune cookie that offered me the following advice:

Nature, time and patience are the three best physicians.

This piece of wisdom led me to reflect on healers and different types of healing.  Many people limit their idea of healing to the physical realm or, only to things they can see or feel.  Think of physiological diseases, broken bones, ripped cartilege, and things like high blood pressure.  You may assume that if a person doesn't offer you a means to eliminate such physical problems, then that person couldn't possibly be a healer.

The Beauty of Finding Real Love (Guest post by Urban Monk)

The Beauty of Finding Real Love  by Albert Foong (Urban Monk)

The word Love is nowadays a corruption, a defilement. It is abused, overused, and now misused – describing a mere game, or another feeling in disguise - passion, lust, attachment.   This is the most painful thing to say – how many have ever known the real thing? Reviewing your sense of love can enable you to heal from within.

Selfishness in love’s clothing.

“I love this song.” “I love my car.” “I love you, my darling!”  

These are plastic counterfeits, describing a game straitjacketed by rules and structures and conditions. Romantic love is just about selfishness. It is just a biological urge, made into a ritual. Familial love is purer – it comes close, so tantalisingly close, but is so often just as flawed.

Even worse, love can become a duty, a knife held at their throat. “I love you!” you say to the other, and it really means – "Son, now make me proud with your grades," "Father, you have to provide for me," or, "Mary, you must sleep with me."

At the core of it all is the self. What some of us call love is just pure selfishness. If we are alert, honest – it is all about how another makes us feel, which one of our needs they fulfill, how much of our reputation they have enhanced. Me, me, me.

Love – Love, with a capital L – it is just the opposite. There is no clinging, no attachment. It thinks nothing of getting, merely of giving. A lover thinks only of himself, herself, but a Lover thinks only of the other.

The doing of love

In between Love and false love would be cultivated love. It is one that is practiced, trained. Perhaps it would be better called compassion.  That word is not so polluted.   This love is beautiful, commendable, but it is still not the real thing. But practice it, and one day you’ll find that the real thing will begin to shine through.

Give and share unconditionally. It will be hard, for we have been selfish, full of ego, for so much of our lives. But continue to strive for it, and let it slowly reduce the delusion of separation. Smile, simply to brighten his day, not because you want something from her. Caress him, not out of duty, simply because you want to ease his pain. And in that brief moment the ego isn't there.

As the ego completely falls away, only Love remains. It is no longer cultivated; no longer something you have to remind yourself to do. The lover disappears, the act of loving disappears, the loved disappears, and it all melts into one.

Our self-hatred and self-dislike

What is the biggest reason we give out counterfeit love, plastic compassion? What is the reason we don’t know Love? Simply because we have not loved ourselves.   How can we give what we don’t have? If we are filled with sadness and anxiety and anger, what will be in our hands as we reach them out to others?

Everyone is always talking about the grandeur of loving others. Love your country! Love your parents! Love your friends, even love your enemies! Who has ever said to you – find Love within, for your own being?

The result of this grievous omission: almost all of us have been filled with a subtle sense of dislike for ourselves. What is depression, what is low self esteem? How common is it? The numbers speak for themselves.

The pathological critic

Self-hatred can come in so many forms: people-pleasing, self-destructive behaviour, addictions, and your everyday unhappiness. But it all begins with the little voice in our head.  Some spiritual teachers call it the ego; psychologists call it the inner critic, the pathological critic.

Where does it come from? The condemnation that has been heaped on us from the day we were born. Again and again - our parents, society, peers, bosses, religion, teachers – on and on it goes. Sometimes they meant well, often times, they didn’t.

But it doesn’t matter – for they have already left their marks on us. Even when they stopped, we carried on their abuse internally. Their voices lived on inside our heads. Sometimes the inner critic sounds like our own voice, sometimes it sounds like an authority figure, or a parent. Very often it comes as feelings, thoughts, and images.

This critic constantly judges, criticises and compares. Every negative thought, feeling, anxiety, should and should-not, even the reliving of abuse and insults – all of it is the critic, which has lingered for so long, many of us don't even know its there. We don’t know that we can choose not to believe it; we don’t know there is a way out.   How common is this? Psychologists believe that everyone – everyone! – has an internal critic. For some a minor annoyance; for others, a lifetime of tyranny.

Fighting the critic

It is very likely that much of our actions, our seeking for material goods or lovers or fame and success, and even our drive for self-improvement, are driven by this subtle sense of self-hatred.

Trying to control our thoughts is self-violence. Forcing ourselves to be like this, to stop doing that – yet more self violence. Fighting your emotions, forcing yourself to be happy, all that silliness, it is just the same thing.

I fell into this trap, when I decided to fight my way out of my deep unhappiness. What was there to fight? Unhappiness and depression and low self-esteem came from fighting myself, and now I was fighting my tendency to fight myself – how absurd. I was merely cutting myself deeper.  Happiness, peace, everything that we seek within – they simply come when we find acceptance and love for ourselves.

Radical, unconditional love

And so the antidote to the poison and the condemnation is radical, unconditional love. Loving everything – even the critic itself! Accepting everything so deeply, that all the silliness begins to melt away.

You can never be anything other than what you are, right now, in this very moment. This very moment is all that exists – for when the future comes, it will be now. Accept yourself as you are – that is perfection.   Stop all that seeking and searching, for something outside of you, for that is the perfection of the neurotics.

Relax into yourself, accept your internal conditions and your external surroundings. Accept your perceived flaws, your fake imperfections, your humanity exactly as they are.  And what if you have been hurtful and hateful? Perhaps you don’t dare to love yourself for having done and said all those things. Doesn’t that mean you’ll go out and do more of those?

But pain is what you cause because that’s all you have inside you. When you fill your cup with love, what is going to overflow? Don’t you want to find out?

How do we do it?

Love yourself, on all levels of being: Emotional, mental, physical, and on the level of energy.  Love your negative thoughts. Love your self condemnation, the mental movies and images. Don’t fight them. Let them be. Don’t cling to them, nor try to push them away. Talk kindly to yourself, counteract the critic, talk back to it.

Love your sorrows, the gaping wounds in your heart, your anger and loneliness, and anxieties and fears, all of that. Accept them, say yes to them, cuddle and love them. Let that be the healing force. Emotions are there to be felt and accepted. Instead of running away from them – simply turn around and face them.

Love your body the same way. Strip naked, and go in front of a full length mirror. Face and look at every part of your body. Don’t avert your gaze. Don’t judge, grimace, any of that. Just look at your body, every part, and smile at them. Send loving thoughts and energy to each section. Love it completely – the imperfections, the scars, the injuries, the diseases, let them all be there, and be loved.

Play with energy. Create a loving energy in yourself; fill up every pore and every cell of your body with love. Sometimes you find it hard. Sometimes you try to fill up your insides with love but all you feel is discomfort. That’s almost inevitable – almost everyone carries sorrow and pain inside them, that they’ve stored up over the years. Love and accept that discomfort until it heals and dissolves.

Simply undo all the poison you’ve had piled on you. All day, every day. Be alert that you have not fallen back into old habits, that the critic hasn’t crept back in.   One day, you will find your entire being has begun to glow with joy, a quiet bliss – and that day is when you begin to see Love.

I’m honoured to be able to guest post here at the Dreambuilders Australia. This post covers some of the most important lessons I’ve ever learnt – it might sound simplistic, but it has made a huge difference in my life. I’m grateful to Liara for giving me a chance to share it with her audience.

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About Albert Foong:
Albert runs UrbanMonk.Net, a practical personal development blog that has enhanced the lives of many readers, moving them out of suffering and into a life of joy, love and success. It draws upon ancient spirituality, modern psychology, real life experiences, and everything in between.

Pondering those New Year's Resolutions?

As the end of the year approaches, lots of people take the opportunity to review where they are, where they've been, and where they hope to go in the future. Some people dream of realizing new goals or simply doing what it takes to stay on track. What about you? How do you feel about your recent choices and behaviors? Which valuable lessons have you learned? What would you do differently next time around?

Perhaps you're you the kind of person who made plans this past year and didn't follow through? You may have given up on your goals, been indecisive or, changed directions. Maybe you did accomplish meaningful things and already think about what's on the horizon? No matter what, its useful to periodically review your life. You can evolve to discern whether you're moving in more or less desirable directions.

1) Ground yourself. Whatever you sense you have or haven't accomplished, its the perfect time to focus your energy and attention on some recognizable reference point. If you feel confused or forgetful, you can learn to balance your body and spirit. All you have to do is figure out where you are and where you'll go from here. It will help to connect with nature and eat healthy food to increase your vitality.

2) Rest assured. Although you may be uncertain about how you'll complete the tasks you set out for yourself, you can nurture faith that you will be guided every step of the way. As you learn that its not about you per say, but your relationship with everything, then its easier to reframe a sense of progress in 'the big picture.'

3) Centre on feelings of joy. Let's say you're unsure what to do. You may not have even begun thinking of resolutions. No worries! Start by focusing on the ' now.' Make choices that enable you to feel good. Permit your positive feelings to orient your compass. Seek ways you can bring more joy into your life and enrich others.