subconscious mind – Creative Meanderings

After a barely successful attempt at staying sane last week, I decided that I needed to refocus on ensuring that I get myself sitting each day to meditate. The truth is that I have been out of practice and a little bit lax on the meditating scene lately. While I do try to keep my positive mantras each day, I have not quite been working on centering and freeing my mind.

Therefore, this week I have decided to get myself up at 5am to meditate before we go to the gym at 6am. I managed to get up this morning, but it was a bit of hard work given that I had gone out last night for networking and was rather tired. Unfortunately, I found it quite difficult to get my mind to clear. Although I was not yet quite awake and it was a good time to meditate before all the day’s thoughts drifted in, I felt somehow tense and lacking the ability to clear my mind. Perhaps it is just a matter to getting back into the habit.

I have noticed that with the extra stress of life these days, changes in my daily patterns and the new activities for the business I am dangerously balancing my mind in the sane side of the world. However, it is also very possible that I could slip and fall into a depression or manic state if I am not careful. So, my mind needs to become a bit more a priority so that I can remain calm, cool and collected. 😛

We shall see how the 5am starts go. We ended up not going to the gym, so I went back to sleep for another hour instead, which was good since I had mall walking anyway for my exercise today. 😉 More on that later!

~T 😀

Aside from the unique stress caused by our current life situation, I also have inner turmoil (a bit dramatic of a word?) regarding my change in lifestyle.

Yesterday I wrote about my recent dabblings into the world of networking and the dreaded ‘housewife’ world. These are just a glimpse of the many ways in which my mindset is being required to shift each day.

For example, I cannot quite decide if it is okay to relax on some days when I feel less motivated to do anything (like today) or if I should continue to push through to keep to a schedule that is almost as if I am working full-time. Or, should I start to adjust my regular schedule so that I can stay awake later to accommodate clients that are going to want evening classes and yet still wake up early to go to the gym with M and start my day as usual. Talk about first-world problems, eh? 😛

Mostly, I worry about finding myself busy at the expense of my sleep and health. Although I want to be able to meet the schedules of clients who probably will have full-time jobs and/or be more night people than I am, I also want to maintain what works for me, which involves getting at least 8 hours of sleep and having enough time to do my writing, house cleaning, exercising and other daily activities. I mean, if I wanted to work ‘hard’ I would have kept my full-time job, right?! 😐

Therefore, I have mulled over how to adjust my mindset a bit more. First, it might be that I have to force myself to make 10pm my bedtime instead of 9pm. This will give me an extra hour at night to allow for clients who might want a yoga session 7-8pm or something like this. Also, I want to continue to wake up with my husband to go to the gym, etc. Thus, this means that likely I will need to block off some time in the middle of the day for me to have a wee nap to ensure that I have the energy that I need for both the mornings and evenings. It reminds me of my schedule when I first arrived here…. 🙂

Now, all I have to really consider is how to deal with days like today when I could have easily put on my sweatpants and hung around the house all day. The only real reason I did not is because there is no Internet or TV in the house to keep me there along with my inner voice telling me I have some things to get done today at least. Still, the other voice inside me says, what’s the point of being free if I cannot allow myself to decide in the morning to sit by the pool all day if that is how I feel?

Ultimately, I think it is just going to take me a little bit of time to get out of the mindset of a full-time worker. Probably once we have some normalcy in the rest of our lives then I can allow myself to relax and settle into this new mysterious world of the self-employed housewife! 😛

~T 😀

_The Power of Your Subconscious Mind_ by Joseph Murphy

This summer really required some reading to get a handle on my mind and my reactions to situations that were beyond my control. Rather than focus on what I could not control, I decided to look into the areas that I can.

Our subconscious minds are very powerful and attract what we spend most of our time thinking about. Therefore, learning to focus on not only positive thoughts but also results rather than NOTs took some work. For example, repeating to yourself “I will not eat bread” generally causes one to eat bread, because the mind is attracting the salient part of this sentence – eat bread. 😛 So, it took some restructuring of what my mind says. However, over time I found that creating thought patterns like this were effective and not only brought about a sense of calm within myself, but also to those around me.

Dr Murphy walks through the various areas of life that we generally worry – finances, relationships, business, etc. – and offers alternatives to thought patterns that do not serve us. He also discusses taking out “I” in mantras where it may be difficult for us to visualize a reality such as “I am wealthy.” There are lots of variations to wealth and for each person there would be a debate on how much is required to fulfil this. Instead, he recommends simply saying “wealth” to attract it in limitless amounts.

I found that using a series of mantras was effective whilst swimming as it can sometimes be a bit tedious to do laps, but with mantras being repeated so as to create the new positive thought patterns, the laps went by quickly. 🙂

Since I was doing this for most of the two months of the summer that we were staying at our friends’ place, it has now become a bit of habit to think in this way that I no longer focus on ‘mantras’ per se, but remind myself to calm my mind.

If you have interest in the mind, brain and patterns this is a very interesting read. Some might find it dry, but it is actually written in a way that it is quite easy to flip the pages. 😉

~T 😀

“Worrying just attracts the things you don’t want” is a quote I saw either on FB or in one of my readings this summer.

When I took up meditation and mindfulness last year M and I would joke that I was learning to “zen my sh*t”. While I still struggle with this and have off days I can definitely say that my mind has started to make a significant shift from stressing and worrying.

A number of years ago I read _The Secret_ , which I had been skeptical about given its rather “airy fairy” hippy spiritual following. However, I discovered that the law of attraction is no joke. We can attribute it to God the father, or Allah or whom/whatever we feel most comfortable with in our spiritual world, but the concept of attracting what we spend time focusing upon cannot be denied as truth.

This summer I have spent quite a bit of time considering the subconscious mind and testing the strategies of positive affirmations. I can honestly say that without this I would be writing suicidal thoughts, woe-is-me themed posts and pondering the stupidity of my actions. However, I am not doing this (am I?) and feel more optimistic than I have in a long time that M and I are on the road to wealth, success, health and prosperity. These are the words and thoughts that I try to focus on.

When worry starts to enter my thoughts I ask myself the following:

Can I do anything about it?
If I can, what is my action to remedy the situation?
If I cannot, what is the use in worrying and possibly attracting more crap my way?

A bit of time focusing on breath, offering compassion to the world and trusting in what I do not know nor have control over helps me to find peace and calm.

The result is that I have not had a massive breakdown recently when I really should have; I am comforting my husband when he is stressed rather than adding to it; I am smiling as we prepare for the movers to deliver the first half of our things to our new apartment.

Therefore, I believe I can confidently say that I am zenning my sh*t quite well! 😛

~T 😀

_The 4-hour Workweek_ by Timothy Ferriss

I mean how can the title of this book not interest you? Who doesn’t want to be able to work only four hours a week and still make a decent living?

Ferriss offers some very tangible and realistic ways to free up time or to use time efficiently to ensure that you have more time for the things that you want to be doing. He also gives good advice on how to make yourself valuable, but also making it possible to keep working while making money.

This along with training of the subconscious mind can really change the working playing field if one wants to make it work. I have already started to take some of his tips such as only emailing at certain times of the day or prioritizing tasks. While I am not yet at the point where I can justify a virtual assistant, I do see where I could potentially use one later when my business starts to kick off.

So, even if you think there is no way that this is an option for your life, I recommend reading Ferriss’s book and seeing what you might take away from it to make your days and life just a little more efficient allowing you more time to do the things you really enjoy. 😀

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Day 22: What story are you grateful for?

Story…the first thought that came to mind was to consider a story that my father used to tell around the campfire. What happened to that tradition? Now, I am one of the worst oral storytellers ever – my medium is the written word. However, I have always been in awe of those who can tell a story to entertain people at parties or around a campfire. I remember my dad telling me made up “native American” stories about the signs “Falling Rocks” or about historical events. So…one I am grateful for? Well, that I am not sure. I have honestly never thought to be grateful for a particular story. Thus, I think I am going to be grateful for the art of my father’s oral storytelling skill rather than a particular story since there are so many to choose from and I am not good at remembering just one. 😛

~T 😀

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Creative Meanderings

Meditating

Mindset Turmoil

_The Power of Your Subconscious Mind_ by Joseph Murphy

Zenning My Sh*t

_The 4-hour Workweek_ by Timothy Ferriss

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