Uplevel Archives - Page 8 of 26

Are You Using Negative Affirmations Without Knowing It?

Did you know that our brains only understand positive language? For example, when we say, “Don’t eat dessert today”, our brains only interpret, “~~Don’t~~ eat dessert today”.

When you look at the course of the day, how often do you think in negative affirmations vs. positive affirmations? It’s crazy to think we have the capability of thinking 60,000 THOUGHTS PER DAY. Yes, 60k!

Of the 60k are you managing your brain in a way so that you are directing it’s course? Are you mindful of the positive or negative thoughts you are generating?

Here are a few more examples of just how easy it is to use negative affirmations when we’re not aware of what we’re doing:

Don’t spill the drink
- Be careful with the drink
I won’t mess up on the next date
- I’m going to show up as my authentic self
Don’t forget to breathe during the presentation
- Focus on your breath
Don’t get mad
- I understand emotions only last 90 seconds if I allow myself to feel

Knowledge is power, and when we understand how our brains work we are better equipped to manage the direction of our thoughts.

Ask yourself, how can I re-phrase my thoughts so that they are USEFUL to me?

Exercise:

Get a piece of paper and create 5 huge bubbles on the page. These bubbles represent the 5 major thoughts a person has every day until it is solved, at which point a new bubble appears (because our brains are THAT good at problem solving).
Inside the bubbles write a word or phrase that represents the major thought and/or problem you find yourself constantly thinking about
Of the major thought and/or problem statement, re-write how you can now use positive affirmations vs. negative affirmations

Remember, our brains are ALWAYS at work. Give it something positive to work on and watch the magic unfold.

In brain wellness,

Susan

Susan is a Life Coach based in Seattle, WA. Her main focus is to coach people build a strong emotional container so that we can experience the fullness of life coming from a place of deep confidence. Susan also coaches clients looking to heal adrenal fatigue by using a mental meta-model aimed at breaking down old mental patterns and behaviors so that we can finally tap into our own personal power.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Your Imagination: How Often Do You Use It?

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

~Albert Einstein

A little inspiration on this beautiful Monday morning!

Could we ever have imagined a life where letters would come from a screen? Where you can punch a few numbers and contact your mom in less than 2 seconds? Where you can see virtual pictures of anywhere in the world through a tiny screen in your hand? Where you can press a button and have whatever you want delivered to your doorstep in a few hours?

Our brains do such a good job of keeping a record of our capabilities based on past results, but it also does a good job of keeping you exactly where you are because it’s safe.

In the past, we needed to be safe. Safe from lions, safe from starvation, safe from blistering cold weather.

Now? Now we know better yet our brains haven’t evolved with our pre-frontal cortex.

So, how are YOU using your imagination to dream big? What NEW frontiers are you asking of yourself so that you can grow and evolve to a bigger, better version of you?

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Friday Focus – 5/25/18 {Taking Action}

Sometimes it’s hard to take action, especially when you don’t know what the future holds or how you even feel about which direction to go toward.

But I’ve learned time and time again, and coach this as well, that not taking action IS action – you’re just directing your energy the other way!

Oftentimes we let our perfectionism get in the way of taking action. We don’t want to mess up, or better yet, FAIL, because how horrible would that be?!

But guess what? Staying still doesn’t make it any better. Sometimes, we need to take one tiny, small step in order to gain a data point so that we have more information. And sometimes, we need to take a couple of steps in order to get better information.

It’s the only way we’ll ever know.

Besides, what we’re most afraid of isn’t necessarily what happens, what we’re afraid of is how we deal with what happens. It’s our thoughts and emotions about the situation that cause us suffering.

It can either be a learning experience or a time to shame ourselves. Which one will you choose? Because yes, our brains are that powerful to create both realities.

So, in what ways will you take that one, small step? How will you choose to think about this next goal of yours? Will it be an adventure or will it be something you have to do?

The choice is yours, always.

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Deanna Ritchie on Unsplash

False Positives And Why They Aren’t Good Long Term

Have you ever taken action in order to feel better?

Whether it’s calling your co-worker as soon as you can to smooth over an argument, doing the thing you didn’t want to do because it would make things “easier” with the family, or here’s the clincher, buffering in the form of food, alcohol, or the internet in order to feel better instantly.

If you’ve ever been in any of these situations, and trust me, there isn’t a human in the world that hasn’t done this at least a few times, I’m here to tell you there’s a more effective and insightful way of truly making yourself feel better than taking action on a a false positive.

We call these actions a false positive because while you may feel better in that moment it doesn’t truly allow you to act from a place of true honor, and it only temporarily relieves you of your pain until the next situation comes up where you have to act again in order to not feel discomfort.

The reason why it’s so easy to act on false positives is because we instantly feel relief, and to our minds the pleasure of relief indicates that we should return to this pattern of behavior even though it doesn’t necessarily mean the action was justified.

Unfortunately, we are only playing defense with the false positives.

The more we act on false positives, the more tired we become in the long run because we are constantly in a reactive state.

What if instead we became friends with discomfort? Isn’t that why we act so fast on false positives? Because we want the discomfort to go away?

What if instead we got to know the discomfort and we got to understand why we feel the way we do, and that the reason we feel the way we do is because of an underlying belief that is causing our pain?

For example, you’re anxious about an upcoming presentation you have to give at work and thinking about the speech and all the ways in which your nervousness will show is making it unbearable. So you reach for the bag of cookies, and before you know it the entire bag is gone.

Or here’s another one, you get into a raging fight with your partner and can’t believe how angry your partner is when you know full well you seem to be “right” in this particular situation. You are fuming and find yourself pouring a glass of wine (again) in order to take the edge off.

You see, in both examples we turn to the false positive in order to feel better when really, what we need to do is face the discomfort of what we are feeling in order to understand what is REALLY going on.

In the example of the presentation, if we dig deep enough, that anxiety could really be masked as fear of rejection or acceptance, and that can hurt big time. In the second example, that anger can be a mask of feeling hurt, not seen, or unloved.

When we really get to understand what the discomfort is trying to tell us, we allow ourselves to truly honor the feeling we need to acknowledge and accept so that we can process in a healthy way and develop patterns and behaviors that serve us, not limit us.

By practicing this self awareness we can get to the real work and growth of our own emotional maturity so that when we experience life and its wide spectrum of situations with confidence in our abilities to handle ourselves wisely.

In mindful wellness,

Susan

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Friday Focus – 5/18/18 {Managing Expectations}

When we give ourselves a moment to think about what we really want in our lives, we, for better or for worse, realize the imaginings of a perfect fairytale.

We want the perfect partner and loving relationship, we want a career that fulfills us, we want a beautiful home with perfect neighbors who become our best friends, we want to travel the world and have the most exciting foreign experiences, and so it goes on.

While desiring a certain level of success and growth of our own potential is perfectly normal, what gets us into trouble is with our expectations.

Typically when we think of these future focused desires what we aren’t thinking about is the reality of life:

The inevitable arguments and ups and downs of any intimate relationship that, if handled well, only strengthen the bond between two people
The nuances of what it means to work with other people as you are on the path of a fulfilling career
The renovations of an aging house
The airport delays and possibly even stomach flus we get while traveling to foreign countries

And the moment our expectations aren’t met we end up having a harder time managing our mind and the myriad if emotions that surface.

What if instead we understood life was 50/50? That when we come across the valley, we understand it will take time to cross it in order to get to the mountain top.

Instead of being surprised, angry, or frustrated when things don’t go your way, because hey, life right?, we are met with acceptance and understanding that sometimes things happen.

All of this is said so that when we manage our expectations we are allowing and living with more lightness in our lives. Less heaviness, yearning, grasping and more lightness.

Can you notice a subtle shift?

When looking back at your most recent disappointment, what was you expectation of the outcome? How did you manage your emotions and how can you use the 50/50 rule when it comes the future expectations?

So, here’s to managing our expectations and allowing more lightness into our lives.

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Unsplash

The Secret

“Therefore the secret of all power, all achievement, and all possession depends upon our method of thinking.

This is true because we must be before we can do, and that we can do only to the extent which we are, and what we are depends upon what we think.”

~Charles F. Haanel

Our minds can lead us to the largest and unthinkable potential of ourselves or the exact opposite.

What thoughts are you thinking yourself towards today?

In mindful wellness,

Susan

Photo by Unsplash

Speak It Out Loud

Oftentimes we think through solutions, problems, worries, past/future events in our minds, but in doing so what we don’t realize is that we begin to ruminate and voice our thoughts (and God forbid our worst nightmares) in ways we would never talk to our family and friends.

A long time secret I’ve shared with as many people as I could is simple, yet effective – speak it out loud.

Say it out loud! Rationalize, debate, worry, do whatever it is you would typically “say” to yourself inside your head.

What you’ll quickly realize is:

You always speak to yourself in a more calm, soothing, objective way than you would inside your head
You begin to realize once you speak it aloud once, it’s typically rare you repeat yourself again and again. In you mind, it’s much too easy to think something over 100 times and get no where
You are solution oriented instead of repeating a problem over and over again
You speak to yourself you would a friend or family member
Things aren’t as bad when you bring your thoughts out into the open instead of inside your head

In a sense, you’ll quickly realize just how silly we can get in our heads.

Give it a shot and see how it feels.

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Joe Gardner on Unsplash

Doing The Work

“We can only teach people how to open the door – but they must walk through (themselves).”

~Owen Fitzpatrick

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

Trusting The Season

What if we were in a season for a reason?

Have you ever had those moments in your life where you wonder, “Why is this happening to me? Why do I feel this way? Or, What’s going on? When did Life get so hard!”

If so you may be in what is called a Season.

We all go through seasons. Sometimes we’re in the valley and sometimes we’re at the peak of the mountain top, and other times we’re in transition. Wherever we are, as humans we tend to gravitate toward the peak of the mountain top and unfortunately most often we forget that seasons are there for a reason.

If you think about the times in your life where you learned the most or where you grew the most it was probably after a period of hardship – the valley.

Ironically when we’re in the valley we’re too busy being in anguish or trying to resist or fix what’s going on to see the bigger picture instead of asking ourselves, “What’s the lesson here? What is the Universe trying to tell me?”.

What if instead we looked at life with curiosity and we looked at ourselves in a more loving way and trusted the season. What if we just relaxed and trusted that we were in a Season for a reason?

Resisting the path only makes things harder.

After all, when we look back at our lives don’t we always look back with a twinkle in our eye and say to ourselves, “I’m glad I learned that then.”?

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Jasper Boer on Unsplash

What Causes Suffering?

Just remember, it’s not that stress, worry or fear is bad, it’s how you perceive these to affect your life that is causing suffering.

There is a purpose behind the fear, stress and worry.

What is it trying to tell you and can you accept and acknowledge the purpose lovingly so that you can further disengage the suffering caused in your mind?

Every small discomfort and trigger is a gift from the Universe. It is Life trying to further evolve you and ready you for your next big adventure.

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Alexandre Chambon on Unsplash