7 Ways to Flourish

The way to flourish is to go with the flow and embrace waves of change.  Yet, to embrace change, we also need to get to know ourselves intimately, know what feels right, have courage to do that.  We all need encouragement and down-to-Earth, practical ways to deal with what life throws us.  In this light, reflect on seven ways to flourish in your life, come what may;

1. Recognize your habits

Everyone has habits, or activities they engage in with regularity. For example, you may shower every few days, drink a hot beverage in the morning, eat certain foods through the day, engage in certain routines, like getting together with friends on friday or sharing rituals.  When you go through life performing or conforming to social conventions without question, your behaviour loses power to profoundly change you. Habits do not empower you to live Your Best Life Now.  Seeing habits for what they are, as expressions of the energies of joy, anger, grief, sadness, disgust or other emotions, changes everything. Teach yourself to feel your reasons for doing.

2. Be aware of your emotions

To be human is to feel and express emotions.  Physical existence is about reacting or responding to encounters.  You may not notice how often life elicits emotions and how they can become patterned habits. Reactions are unconscious ways the external world triggers certain emotions. The untrained mind reacts unconsciously.  The trained mind responds with deep understanding of what is happening. This is about cultivating emotions so we internalize more loving ways of responding to others and life experience.  We refine ritual with more clarity and consistency. 

3.  Awaken to contradictions 

Growing aware of what does not jive in your life is a kind of awakening.  As you sense conflicting emotions, turbulent energies, inconsistent choices, undesirable experiences, tense realtionships, you begin to see what is contributing to emotional highs and lows and the sense things are not working.  Every moment is an opportunity for revelations about the real source of resistence inside yourself.  When will you grow accountable? Take responsibility and stop denying your role? What are you ready and willing to see?

4. Be willing to break normal habits

In order to help ourselves change, it is useful to realize breaking normal habits is what enables us to develop different sides of ourselves. Stepping back and observing your habits helps you determine what is helping or hindering your health and well-being, relationships and situations.  

5.  Step outside the familliar

When we travel, visit a friend's home, break away from regular routines, we view life and ourselves differently.  This is why people take time off work to do a caravan tour of their own country, go on sabbatical, visit new places, even take a new route to work or exert effort to notice new things where they are.  Why do more people not do this more often? Fear, perhaps? Shifting roles, jobs, destinations, tasting new things, even moving house based on intuition, all have potential to break patterns develop new confidence and greater self- acceptance. The question is, do you desire change to escape or, for the love of spontaneity and embracing the unknown?

6. Be more flexible

By embracing patterns we see in ourselves, we allow them to harden and take root.  Labels we adopt can drive our behaviours and decisions, and become self-fulfilling prophecy.  As the result, many people perpetuate narrow views of themselves and what is possible.  In the West, true self is often assumed to be patterns of predictable responses to people and the world.  Yet, when you can continue to suprise people, you are actually closer to true being.  We are each complex arrays of emotions, dispositions, desires and different traits that often pull us in different directions.  What happens when you feel okay with diverging from your norm? 

7. Explore what evokes inner harmony

The key to everything is noticing your patterns and working actively to shift them.  Breaking our own patterns helps us realize other people are malleable too, that no relationship or situation is cut in stone.  Talking to yourself helps you work things ou in your life.  Wake up wanting to go to work or take the world by storm.  Feel better about yourself.  Know how you feel and what you experience begins and ends in you.  What ae you willing to do differenly today to see yourself and the world in new and exciting ways?

What if you could transform your life?

What if you have the power to transform how you think and feel right now? Would you do it? You may have heard it said it requires thirty days of consistent change to truly turn a pattern around. Is that always necessarily so?

Many people are beginning to sense they have opportunities for more choices in their lives yet they seem to lack the discipline, the willingness to take initiatives or, the simple inclination. To be here now says something. It means your heart is in the right place. You are choosing to make more conscious choices.  This only helps you.

As your focus on shifts, you contemplate positive change.  One helpful step is to open the mind to how you think and feel.  Self-Disclosure is part of the process of awakening.  You may not realize you are already on a meaningful path to Transform Your Life thoughts and perception.  Tools exist to guide you align with what feels right.

Neale Donald Walsch & 3 Ways to develop faith

Neale Donald Walsch inspires me.  His life story goes from experiences he describes as "misdirected," to being homeless and penniless.  Then, he mysteriously reconnected with the creator, began writing books, and completely transformed as a spiritual soundboard.  The Conversations with God movie trailer is worth watching.  Also invite you to watch the film here.

The words and stories he shares are profound, yet also very simple.  They invite increasing self-reflection so that you can uncover yourself by listening more closely to your inner voice, intuition, and all that lies beneath programming that begins before birth. I update this post to add Eloise King's inspiring interview entitled Conversations with Neale Donald Walsh about God and other things (2016) which I highly-recommend.

One of the subjects Neale explores in his books is the power of faith.  He recognizes how hard it can seem to shift to believe in what you don't initially believe.  This brings us face-to-face with our own resistance.  Ask yourself when in your life you notice your own resistance, when you are willing to shift your mindset to believe something your ego resists? How do you nurture faith and trust in the unknown and unseen? 

As author of many heart-warming books such as the Conversations with God Series, Neale Donald Walsch observes faith as an acquired trait but trust is innate. He feels anyone can develop faith, and apply it at will.  Yet, we must develop faith in ourselves before being able to have faith in things outside or seemingly separate from ourselves.  Seeing through our own self-created illusion of separation is part of the process of awakening or expanding into more of our untapped potential. Imagine how it feels to tune into unlimited being. COuld you imagine the nature of such magnificence?

We develop faith at least 3 ways:

1) By noticing you can (in passively observing others).

2) By experiencing you can (sensing it, perhaps unexpectedly).

3) By deciding you will (with conscious intent).

You can also decide developing faith in yourself, in whatever you choose to work on, is a 3-step process.  You may hear about another person's miracle or apparent good fortune.  You may raise your awareness of what is possible and discen you are experiencing blessings.  You may also decide that you can expect good things and nothing else.  

In essence, we each develop faith our own way.  You may skip some of the above steps, change the order or, simply discipline yourself to believe (or not) for your own reasons.