The Pathway to Happiness is through Self Awareness
Being happy is Easy. When we are happy our lives and relationships are effortless. If we watch children we see that happiness is their natural state. It was also our natural state at one time. Eliminating the areas and causes of unhappiness in our lives that we haven't been trained to do. If you find yourself to be unhappy in areas of your life then there are steps you can take to return to your natural state of joy. You can also accomplish this while being practical and living in the real world of family, relationships, and career while you do it.
The cause of unhappiness and emotional reactions stems from our false beliefs.
As I’ve worked with clients over the years, I found that I had to begin with the same essential steps. Whether the issue was jealousy, anger, relationship, body image, gambling addiction or self judgment. Everyone needed the same fundamentals to deal with their mind and their emotions. This starts with learning to shift your point of view so you can break the spirals of stories in the mind. Many spiritual traditions call this becoming the observer. The second step is to recover some personal will power so that you can refrain from reactions. The third step is to inventory and change beliefs that cause the emotional reaction. Once the false belief is dismantled, there is no longer any emotional reactions to fear. This opens the door to expressions of Love which is how we create happiness in our relationships and our lives. The steps are straightforward but don't happen without attention and action.
1. Change your Point of View
Most of the emotional drama in your life is created because we look at and interpret things from the point of view of Inner Judge or Victim. The victim point of view is generally of fear, low self esteem and powerlessness. Judgment is generally from a point of view of being “right”, ego, and involves criticism. Sometimes the Judgment couples with the Victim and things become twice as painful! Before you can effectively change a belief, you need to step outside the voice inside your head and become neutral. If you don't, these two voices will comment with criticism. This can take us in a downward emotional spiral. Changing our point of view a critical first step that many approaches fail to implement. Talking about changing point of view isn't enough to make it happen. That is why I provide practical real world exercises to help you make this happen.
2. Regain Personal Will Power
Knowledge that we have another choice isn’t enough to make changes. When we are having a reaction there is emotional, and physiological momentum that can over run our good intentions. It takes personal power to hold back this momentum. There are several exercises that are specifically focused on regaining personal power. As we shift the point of view, we build a time gap in which to see a different choice. With increased personal will power we can utilize that gap of time to exercise to refrain from reaction. By refraining we retain energy that we can now utilize in ways we want. As we practice these exercises our personal power grows and the speed of change increases.
3. Identify and Dismantle False Beliefs
At the core of emotional reactions are false beliefs. (Also called agreements) These false beliefs are generally not very obvious. Often they are imbedded in our thinking, or layered underneath our internal dialogue. I will share ways for you to identify core beliefs that often make us feel trapped in our lives. In order to change a belief we need to see it clearly without the filter of judgment and victimization that we removed in the first step. Once clarified from this observer viewpoint it takes only little effort to change a core belief. Once the belief is dissolved so are the emotional reactions that accompanied them.
4. Make New Choices based in Love, Respect, and Happiness
As you dissolve the false beliefs and the associated fear you no longer make decisions out of judgment and victimization reactions. In the beginning this may be unfamiliar as you no longer have the voice in your head telling you what you should do. Your options expand as you have more time to clearly consider choices. You will learn to weigh other people’s opinions as just that, opinions. You can now make choices based in what will make you happy. Your criteria can become what is kind, and what is loving to yourself and others.
Being happy becomes simple and easy again the same as when we were children. Except that with awareness we are no longer naive, we are wise. We choose to express ourselves with love, gratitude, and respect as a conscious choice. In this way create happiness in our lives and our relationships.
(http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/)
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