Body & Mind As One

If you stood there bare naked, would your eyes go straight to that extra belly fat you've been carrying around for a long time or would your attention and first reaction go to all the parts you love most about yourself? We've all been there and done it and stand guilty as charged. We have trained our eyes and mind to almost automatically set our attention on our "flaws" every single time we look at ourselves.

In theory, our body is made up of flesh, bones, blood and skin that has trillions of cells residing inside with its respective functioning organs working throughout our whole lives for us but in reality, our body is like a sacred temple we were supposed to take good care of religiously. (metaphorically speaking)

Instrumentally, we were "built and designed" to work the same way. To have the 5 important and crucial main gifts that allow us to enjoy life no matter where and when we want to do so. We just got to tune in and be in harmony with them.

We have eyes to see, ears to hear, nose to smell, mouth to taste and our largest organ - our skin to feel texture and sensations. Yet, we all take these for granted and choose to nit-pick on the most superficial part of us that more often than not, doesn't even serve a functioning purpose, let alone giving us pleasures of any kind. In fact, giving it attention just stirs up even more insecurities, doubts and every possible negative feelings. Some would want a higher nose bridge, smaller nostrils, bigger lips, bigger eyes, and the list goes on.

In order to connect our minds to our body, we got to learn to come to terms with what we've got and embrace its rough edges and the thing about beauty is, it really lies in the eye of the beholder. If you can't even love yourself just the way you are, how can you expect anyone else to even begin to do so? When you carry negative feelings for yourself and criticize harshly, it will reflect and bounce off right out of your skin quite literally.

Beauty does indeed lie in the eyes of the beholder and that person has to be you. Because the world sees you, through your eyes.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Body-and-Mind-As-One&id=9493771

5 Common Insecurities That Lead to Burnout (and How to Avoid Them)

Your 'strong work ethic' might actually be fear.

Last week I worked with a client who prides himself on his strong work ethic. Hard work and excellence matter to him (which is awesome!). The problem? He's burning himself out with 14-hour workdays. And he's calling it "strong work ethic". 

I asked him if it's really strong, healthy work ethic or if some of his hang-ups might be getting in his way. In other words, is it really strong work ethic or are you letting some of your demons drive the bus?

I'm talking about stuff like having your hands in too many projects because you're afraid to let go of some control (hello, founder's syndrome). Or failing to empower perfectly capable members of your team because you don't trust them to do a good enough job. Or working at 150% capacity for a 1% enhancement in output or work quality (spoiler alert: not worth it).

To be totally transparent, I'll go ahead and raise my hand here. Sometimes I let my demons drive the bus. But you know what? It always makes for some pretty crappy outcomes. Always.

Sometimes we come up with sneaky ways to feel noble about overworking ­- like calling our perfectionistic, control-freak behaviors "strong work ethic". That's not noble; it's fear thinly veiled as virtuous work behaviour. 

Wonder if some of your demons are driving the bus at work? See if you can spot your hang-ups here:

1. Perfectionism thinly veiled as a commitment to excellence

Yes, it's 10 pm, but your presentation/report/(insert your deliverable here) isn't quite perfect yet. You tell yourself you just want to do an amazing job, but what you really want is to shield yourself from criticism or judgment. Do this kind of thing often enough and you'll find yourself burned out and not very on the ball. Which, ironically, leaves you more open to criticism and judgment.

Perfectionism isn't a commitment to excellence. It's a defense mechanism, and it doesn't make your work better. Don't go there.

2. One-upmanship thinly veiled as devotion

Some people wear their burnout as a badge of honor. In fact some industries have built dysfunctional cultures around this very thing. Industry insiders are expected to drive themselves into the ground in order to be a part of a very exclusive club. And to make things interesting, it's not just an expectation, it's a competition! Bragging rights go to the most miserable, cantankerous and overworked bastards who can survive until they drop dead. It's like The Hunger Games, except with grown-ups in suits.

This kind of one-upmanship is one big messed up pissing contest of misery and martyrdom, which is not a game you want to win, by the way. Opt out.

3. Self-exploitation thinly veiled as dependability

I'll just push through this project now so things will be more manageable later. I'll take one for the team. You told yourself that last month, last quarter, and now that you think about it, last year. Only the work never seems to let up.

Pushing through can set a dangerous precedent. It sets unreasonably high expectations for how much you're going to throw yourself into your work. People aren't going to be too psyched when you finally slow down to a more reasonable pace. Why? Because all of a sudden it looks like you can't do your job very well any more - especially if the people you work with have no idea how much time and effort (not to mention blood, sweat and tears) you're putting in. Don't set a pace you can't maintain.

4. Avoidance thinly veiled as commitment

You're burning the midnight oil because, frankly, it's better than being somewhere else. You could have a personal life, but there's some stuff there that you'd rather not deal with - like loneliness or boredom or a crappy relationship. As a person who is divorced, I'll admit this used to be me. Sometimes a late night at the office is better than a tense night at home. Distraction by any means necessary, right?

You won't win employee of the month by logging empty hours like this. You're better off coming out from behind your desk and actually dealing with the uncomfortable stuff you're avoiding. Your personal life will feel infinitely better when you do, and as a bonus your work will improve.

5. Control issues thinly veiled as leadership

But what if the people I delegate to make a mistake or a bad decision?! That's not a possibility, my friend, it's a certainty. Wait. What? Yes, you read that right - the people you delegate to are going to make mistakes and bad decisions. Sometimes. Just like you. Because the people you employ and work with are fellow humans - savvy, talented, hard-working, and occasionally fallible humans. Let them do their jobs. The company won't burn to the ground if you have dinner with your family tonight.

Still breathing into a paper bag? Consider this: your control freak ways are probably clogging up the works with inefficiencies and causing more harm than good. Go home.

http://www.inc.com/sarah-vermunt/5-common-insecurities-that-lead-to-burnout-and-how-to-avoid-them.html

Yes, Fear Is Inhibiting Your Love Life. Here's The Fix

Love is difficult to capture in words because it encompasses so many things. A dictionary might say it’s a feeling of deep affection or a strong affection for another person. Yet love is far more than a feeling; it is a force, an energy. Love is not only something you send to or receive from others; it is also an energy you connect to and experience.

Love is not something you want but rather a calling to who you are.

Redefining Love

Think of love as formless, timeless, limitless, boundless, abundant energy swirling around within and around your body. Authors such as Richard Gordon and speakers such as Christie Marie Sheldon have established this phenomenon in recent years.

In love, anything and everything is possible. It doesn’t matter whether you are awake or asleep, young or old, poor or rich. You already have love, and different than having food or water, love does not come in a limited supply. Love is not something you want but rather a calling to who you are. You are far more than what you physically can do or see. Love is in you, around you, part of your creation.

What About Romantic Love?

People often confuse passion with love. Each of us is inundated with images of passionate sex, passion for looks, money, possessions, fame, power, and attention. Let me set you straight: Love does not crave any of those things, because it already is everything.

This universal love is also respectful of who you are and what you need. It is capable of removing what you don’t need while retaining what you do. Similar to how you might pull the weeds from a garden without disturbing the root system of a plant, love releases negative emotions while supporting your intuition and ability to sort things through.

Don’t Believe These “Love Lies”

“Love lies” is a term that captures a branch of self-limiting beliefs about love. Self-limiting beliefs stem from feeling “less than” or being told (by yourself or someone else) you are not enough. Love lies spin off these beliefs. As a result, you may find yourself being rather sarcastic, consumed by negative thoughts, or bitter about love.

Love is energy, you are energy, therefore you are love.

Left unrecognized, these little lies help build protective walls, hardening the energy around your heart. This makes love seem obscure, sketchy, and rather elusive.

Nothing gives me more satisfaction than exposing a love lie. It is like finding the clues to a mystery or solving a puzzle. Here are some untruths I have come across either in myself or in my clients:

• You either have love or you don’t.
• You have to wait for love to come to you.
• Love isn’t for everyone.
• Love means “taking care of someone else.”
• If your family didn’t tell you or show you that they loved you, then you pretty much grew up without love.
• Love hurts.
• Love shows up only when you are a size two or have lots of money.
• You need love.
• It is rare to find true love.

As you ponder these statements, know that what makes them false is that each of them is dependent on love coming from somewhere or someone else. Lie, lie, lie, false, false, and more false. Love is inside you. People and circumstances reflect what you feel inside.

These lies are based on your fear of losing love or perhaps never getting a chance to have it in the first place. (FYI, never having love is complete bullshit. Love is energy, you are energy, therefore you are love.) Love does not come to you, it comes through you. You don’t need love: You can’t need something you already have.

I must confess that for most of my life, I confused choosing love with taking care of someone else. It didn’t matter if it was a friend, boyfriend, relative, or complete stranger; love was always a way for me to reach out and give something to someone. It never occurred to me to find love within. Yet the love within yourself is the strongest source.

How Fear Disconnects You from Love

So if this wonderful universal love is inside you and all around you all the time, why can’t you feel it? Because fear has gotten in the way and blocked your access to it.

You are probably used to thinking of fear in a very literal sense — being afraid of spiders, for example. But the fear I am talking about in this book is an even bigger concept than that. I’m talking about fear that’s such an inherent part of your life that you don’t even realize it’s there anymore.

It controls your decision-making, negates your ability to love yourself, and forces you to be less, do less, feel less. This type of fear shows itself in a variety of ways — such as insecurities, anger, stress, anxiety, blame, doubts, jealousy, lack of self-worth, and straight-up bullshit lies.

Are You Subconsciously Living in Fear?

But, you say. I’m not afraid of love! I’d do anything to have more love in my life! I believe you, but I think you might actually have some sub-conscious fear in your life. How do I know? Well, Dr. Bradley Nelson, author of The Emotion Code, reports that human beings are only about 10 percent conscious.

In other words, you might only be aware of about 10 percent of what is influencing you. Your fears might be lurking in that other 90 percent. The good news: Choosing to access universal love will help you clear out those fears and reclaim the path to love.

Tuning into love in the midst of negativity is like pulling the plug on fear. It will drain away and love will prevail.

The tricky part is that your conscious mind is influenced by your subconscious mind. The subconscious is the invisible part of you easily swayed by images and subliminal messaging. When you veg out in front of the television or computer, fear, negativity, and toxicity are more likely to reach you. Fear works like novocaine, numbing your ability to experience love.

You may be subconsciously buying into beliefs, illusions, and fantasies that play off a “lack of” or fear mentality rather than love. The truth is, love and fear do not mix. In fact, negativity hates love. It is its worst nightmare. Tuning into love in the midst of negativity is like pulling the plug on fear. It will drain away and love will prevail.

In my healing practice, I have discovered that two of the greatest fears human beings have are that they will never really know what it is like to be truly loved by others — in other words, that they will never “find love” — and that they will never know how to love themselves.

When you are afraid you won’t find love or keep love, you may end up “chasing love” or going overboard to find it. For example, you might want to “be nice” but then overcompensate by regularly doing things that others are more than capable of doing for themselves.

In other words, you try to “find” love via nice deeds. For example, I have seen grown, intelligent women sprint home after working all day to cook dinner for a boyfriend who could be cooking for himself.

Unfortunately, when you “find love” under these circumstances, it’s attached to fears of not being worthy of love. Universal love is never attached to worthiness — but you can see how well-meaning but fear-based actions can easily cause you to misinterpret the universal love.

Now, if you are like me, you are probably thinking, Crap, this choosing love thing is going to be HARD. You may be realizing how much of your life has been driven by fear and how difficult it will probably be to undo. I get it; I have been there. In the beginning, I was all geared up to take on the challenge.

What I have learned, and what I hope you will learn from my choices [notice I don’t say mistakes; I don’t believe in them] is that choosing love actually comes from a place of non-effort. What do I mean by that? The more you try, the less you actually feel. It is the trying that leads to tension.

Love happens when you sense and feel the direction. Something inside of you softens, listens, and trusts the path you are choosing regardless of the outcome. So don’t worry about the workload. It’s all gonna go smoothly when you give up trying to control love, I promise.

Subconscious Fear Thwarts Your Efforts to Choose Love

Science is finding that if you have a subconscious belief that you are fat or unworthy, or that life is unfair, your subconscious mind will knock out your efforts — unless, of course, you release these beliefs and build new ones (which we’ll do in this book). Your subconscious mind will return you to your “original state” of feeling fat or unworthy despite your efforts to change them. Only truly releasing those beliefs will allow you to build new ones.

Choosing love aligns you with your soul. Your soul is the part of you that remembers where you came from (love). So to choose love means to bring your soul back into your body. It is the blocks of fear that get in the way, and as these blocks are removed, you will be able to experience love’s power.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-23042/yes-fear-is-inhibiting-your-love-life-heres-the-fix.html