Before You Begin
Working Through the Workshop & Your Mind.
Before you begin: let’s take a few deep, grounding breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach, close your eyes, breathe in deep, hold, direct your awareness to your heart, and release. Repeat until you feel centered and relaxed.
Welcome to the RE SELF Mindset workshop. As the first workshop in the Mind series, this workshop will guide you to reclaim your mind as a tool that works for you rather than against you. To help you get comfortable, in the right space (mentally and physically), and get the most out of this experience, here are some tips to make it most impactful:
Be Open
No matter what current mindset you bring to this workshop, the important thing is that you feel inspired to evolve your mindset enough to utilize this experience. Embrace those feelings by remaining open to the process, even when things get difficult or uncomfortable.
Choose a Suitable Environment
Where you do the workshop is equally as important as to how you do the workshop. Pick a physical space that is comfortable, safe, and calming. Make sure you won’t be interrupted, distracted, or disturbed. Maybe this means doing the workshop on your computer instead of your phone, silencing notifications, and placing your phone out of sight so you are not tempted. Set whatever necessary boundaries for yourself, with yourself and others to create an environment for you to center within.
Create Your RE SELF Ritual
This is time for you, with you. Make it a ritual. Your state of mind and environment will help you get into the mode each time you sit down to do a lesson. Add whatever else will help your center and be at ease to support your ritual. Maybe it’s lighting some candles, creating a dim environment, using essential oils, or having plants or crystals around you. All of these elements are intentional actions that have meaning and purpose. Now all you need to do is create consistency to truly make it a ritual. Consistency is key; consistency is medicine.
Increase Impact with Discipline
Discipline empowers your ability to show up for yourself, keep your commitment to yourself, and continually take action in the direction you want to move. Discipline empowers you to do what needs to be done, even when it’s difficult or you lack motivation, which inevitably happens. Discipline empowers balance and freedom.
Whether you consider yourself a planner or spontaneous, creating a schedule will help you keep your commitment to yourself. Maybe you want to do a lesson a day, maybe you want to do one lesson a week to give yourself space and time to digest the lesson and see what you notice in your life - whatever it is, create a schedule. Put it in your calendar and set reminders or alerts.
You may need to adjust your schedule - life happens, be open and flexible. If for some reason you miss your scheduled day, reschedule, make sure you have a plan to keep going. The important thing is that, once you establish a stride, no matter how small, you stick to it. Part of caring for and respecting ourselves is keeping commitments that we make to ourselves. Every lesson is a chance to show up for yourself. Every completed lesson demonstrates to yourself that you can depend on yourself and you are committed to creating and living your life in your own authentic image.
If you have a tough day, pause and consider whether working in the workshop will help you. Sometimes it can be too much, other times, the workshop is a great way to reconnect with the promise of the present and your ability to create change in your life at any given moment. Use this experience to strengthen your ability to hear and honour your inner guidance and needs, while understanding which days call for more discipline and which days call for more rest. If one day you are thinking about not keeping your commitment, ask yourself, “is 30 minutes too much for me to give to myself for my well-being and evolution? Is there really anything more important than that?”
Actively Engage with the Lessons
There are seven lessons in the workshop. Each lesson builds on the last, so do them sequentially and of course, do all that is included in each lesson:
Read the quote. Let it resonate with you. If it speaks to you, write it down.
RE LEARN grounds each lesson in knowledge and wisdom about the topic at hand. Listen to the audio and/or read the material, maybe jot down points you want to remember.
REFLECT personalizes the material to your unique circumstances. Consider and answer the questions honestly and thoroughly.
RE DO integrates each lesson through a different practice to put it into action in real life, outside the platform. Listen to the audio and/or read about the practice in RE/DO and do the practice. Write down the practices you find helpful so that you can utilize them as you see fit.
Write it Down
Writing is an integral part of your work in the workshop. It’s well documented that writing things down by hand versus typing establishes better memory. Using a physical notebook enhances the ritual and integration into your physical being and way of life (as opposed to the digital world). Keep a notebook handy to write down anything that inspires and resonates with you, that you want to dive deeper into and revisit at another time. By writing in a notebook, you can realign to the perspectives and practices that empower your well-being and evolution as needed, outside of and after the workshop. This is a powerful thing. Writing it down, all of it, is a powerful thing.
If you really prefer digital, try recording yourself talking through your REFLECT answers. If that’s not comfortable for you and you prefer to write digital notes, go ahead. It is not recommended to just think through your REFLECT answers. Remember, the more actively you engage with the material and workshop elements, the more ingrained and integrated it is with you and your way of life.
Some of your reflections may bring up heavier things that are difficult to revisit or write down. You may be hesitant to write on these topics and feel as if you are solidifying them by writing them down. When you write about difficult things, you actually get them out of your head and find release. When you give difficult emotions, beliefs, experiences, or patterns of behavior words and get them out of your head and put them on the page, you come face to face with them in a more objective way (not granted by just thinking about or trying to avoid them). What was once entangled inside of you, is disempowered by expressing it outside of you. Seeing the words on the page can empower you to know and choose the way to change instead of carrying the weight of difficult things inside. Challenge yourself to express these heavier things as equally as you do those lighter things. Know that it will benefit you far more than the momentary discomfort of writing it down or the longer pain of it remaining tangled inside. Honour what you need during and after those moments, maybe it’s some extra deep breathing, calling a trusted loved one, or even getting support from a professional. Do what you need to be gentle and loving with yourself and these tender areas. When you write things down you can reference them - the uncomfortable and the empowering - all as teachers. You can see how far you've come, because, with consistency, you will transcend your difficulties only by facing them.
And remember: your work in the workshop is what makes change happen. You can do this! You've done the hardest part - you've begun.
Your Mind // Mindset Workshop Introduction
Our mind is made up of many different elements and influenced by many different functions of our brain. We are constantly interpreting and filtering experiences through our own unique point of view. Our state of mind consists of our emotional and mental state at a particular time. Our mindset consists of our thoughts, beliefs, ideas, established outlook and attitudes we hold about ourselves, life, reality, etc., both conscious and unconscious, that accumulated over the course of time. Our mindset influences not only how we experience our lives, but also how we show up and live our lives; our state of mind and mindset are fundamental to our being, our lives, and our experiences.
Until now, you may have never paused to objectively consider what state your mind is in or what mindset you currently hold. Except, perhaps, you've noticed how your mindset tends to make you feel, negatively and positively, and impacts your life, negatively and positively. Thus, depending on our mindset, it can produce a garden of flowers from our thoughts or it can produce a bed of weeds. Neuroscience research shows that the majority of our thoughts are both repetitive and generated by the subconscious. On average, we have about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day - according to a study, on average, 80% are negative, and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before. (See footnote 1) In addition, it is estimated that 95% of our decisions are the result of our subconscious. (See footnote 2) The subconscious can consist of habits, memories, learned knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, and past experiences, to name a few. So what does that mean for our mindset?
First, it means that cultivating our mindset begins with consciousness, meaning in this case, awareness. Honing objective awareness of our thoughts, beliefs, and patterns of behavior generates useful information that we can then use to redirect and cultivate our thoughts, beliefs, and patterns of behavior in the direction we want to go, using them to help us get there (rather than keeping us from there). In order to determine whether we are planting flowers or weeds with our thoughts, we have to be aware of what these thoughts, beliefs, etc. are that dominate how we think, speak, and act. We grow aware of our thoughts, watching them, by training ourselves as an observer. Objective observation, as opposed to being caught up in our repetitive thoughts, results from bringing awareness to our thoughts, feelings, decisions, actions, beliefs, and patterns of behavior, allowing us to act from an aware and empowered place. With awareness, we can observe, question, challenge, and shift our mindset by discerning what keeps our mindset open (which we will hold on to and cultivate more of) and what creates a closed mindset (which keeps us stuck and so we will let go of it).
Second, it requires us to be utterly compassionate and honest with ourselves. Compassion and honesty help us to avoid creating a dictator in our minds or misleading ourselves in our quest to better understand ourselves, our actions, and the world around us. Being objective in our observations, helps us refrain from judgment, which gets in our way and causes us to be closed-minded. Accepting ourselves in entirety, all of our experiences, patterns of behaviors, beliefs, positive and negative, relieves us to be more understanding and compassionate and thus, more open, objective, and flexible. We wouldn't be who we are today without all that and who we are today, as we are, is who we want to befriend. By befriending our present self, starting with this essential element - our mind and mindset, we can work with it, rather than against it. In turn, this will shift how we show up and how we treat others more compassionately and kindly because we are being more compassionate, kind, and understanding with ourselves.
Cultivating a practice of awareness, starting with our mindset, will have profound effects on our personal evolution and well-being. Feeding that which opens us up, positively impacts the way we think, speak, act, behave, and, in turn, positively impacts our present moment and future. By making our mindset and state of mind a garden, we befriend ourselves and our mind and inner world becomes a sanctuary, as opposed to a place we may have once feared.
Most of us weren’t taught how to do this or why it’s an important part of our development as beings. As we developed and matured, we accumulated ideas, beliefs, and patterns of behavior that helped us do the best we could with what knowledge we had. But now, we are going to dive into our depths and nurture what is necessary for us to heal and continue to evolve. It is a process; one that has no end because our potential has no end. It is never too late, no matter how fixed or permanent things seem. As we go deeper within, we reach the more subtle levels from which these old perspectives stem from. This is nothing to fear or shy away from because it is through this inquiry that we will bring new understanding and perspectives for our continuing evolution and well-being. At our subtle level, we simply exist, as a whole. To understand and embody our wholeness, we are zooming in on an essential dimension of our whole self - our mind. As we continue zooming in, we direct our attention to our mindset, to assume our active understanding and ownership of this dimension of our wholeness. From here, everything else is malleable, including our perception of ourselves, others, the world, and life. As we align with our depth and awareness, we gain deeper perspective, fulfillment, and meaning that empowers change within and throughout ourselves and our lives. This workshop will guide you through this process, with reflections and practices that support you living and thriving in this state.
We've just touched the surface of how much mindset impacts everything in our entire being and lives. We have the power to build a garden of flowers with our mindset. With this workshop, you’ll be planting flowers and doing some weeding while exploring your mindset in depth with the following lessons:
Thinking: Understand the impact and inner workings behind your thoughts to empower your active role in shaping your mind
Awareness: Reposition yourself in the seat of awareness - the fundamental step to shift your thinking, mindset, and experience
Overthinking: Overthinking, fear, and worry distort your mindset and experience; learn how to overcome these tendencies in your thinking and experiences
Thoughts & Words: The words you speak become the house you live in - learn how to make it beautiful, intentional, and authentic
Open Mind: Openness allows you to flow with and access all of the limitless possibilities of life; it begins in your mind - discover just how open you can be as you cultivate and strengthen your open mind
Optimism: Understand the essential role optimism plays in your mindset and how it can profoundly shift your experience and life
Nurturing the Garden: Learn how to continually nourish your mindset throughout the day to stay on your path, empower your well-being, and evolve
You will learn how to cultivate a balanced, open mindset through consistent reflection and practice. Consistency here is key. You are your greatest asset. Your potential is unlimited. Your thinking is also a limit and obstacle to overcome. This workshop will empower you to overcome your obstacles and embody your unlimited potential at the subtle level of your mind by planting flowers with your thoughts and balancing your mind with your heart, logic with intuition, to work together. Slowly, there will be a melting away of all that keeps you from truly knowing yourself, your wholeness, and life itself. All that antagonizes you in this way can be released; this journey of personal well-being and evolution begins by evolving your mindset. You're on the path. Happy travels!
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Footnotes
1. Antanaityte, Neringa. Mind Matters: How To Effortlessly Have More Positive Thoughts. Tlex Institute. https://tlexinstitute.com/how-to-effortlessly-have-more-positive-thoughts/.
2. From Love to Voting: Who Really Decides, You or Your Brain? CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/my-brain-made-me-do-it-who-decides#:~:text=According%20to%20Eagleman%2C%2095%20per,free%20will%20out%20the%20window.&text=Even%20the%20researchers%20found%20the,strongly%20prepared%20by%20brain%20activity.
To see how your mindset shifts from the workshop, take this quick Pre-Workshop assessment →
Once you complete the workshop, you will take another assessment and be able to compare the answers.
Lesson 1 // Thinking
Understand the impact and inner workings behind your thoughts to empower your active role in shaping your mind.
RE LEARN
Before you begin: let’s take a few deep, grounding breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach, close your eyes, breathe in deep, hold, direct your awareness to your heart, and release. Repeat until you feel centered and relaxed.
Our conscious and subconscious thoughts are powerful entities. They shape our perception and interpretation of reality that then impact our actions. We are not our thoughts and yet, we so easily get wrapped up in each thought that floats by our awareness (which we’ll dive deeper into in the next lesson), as though the thought is an extension of us. We are the thinker and the observer, aware of the thoughts. So often we identify with the thinker and forget the power of observation, of identifying with our awareness.
The brain develops patterns of thinking based on repetition. These patterns affect our communication, actions, habits, behavior, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, and emotions. This repetition programs these thought patterns, perceptions, and interpretations that, over time, become a part of our subconscious, that we then act from. As psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” When we consider this, it becomes very clear how important our thoughts are.
As we learned in Your Mind, It is estimated that 95% of brain activity is unconscious. This can result in, for example, unconsciously acting from patterns of thought developed since childhood that do not serve us. Along our journey to who we are today, we've picked up ideas, beliefs, behaviors, habits, perceptions, and attitudes that are in our subconscious. We act from them out of default, even if they cause us to suffer or remain stuck. If old subconscious patterns, beliefs, and negative or unproductive thoughts are fired and wired over and over again, then we can easily feel stuck, as if we're going in circles. But the subconscious isn’t all bad. In fact, in many ways, it is our friend. Imagine having to consciously remember to breathe all day long. Consider how much that would detract from the plethora of other ways we could use our brain and energy. Empowered by new knowledge, we can actually use our conscious awareness to “rewire” that which is unhelpful in our subconscious. When we bring our awareness to what we think and consume - and in turn, process subconsciously - we can actively feed and cultivate a mindset that works for us, rather than against us.
Imagine the brain is a field of grass. Our thought patterns are paths in the grass. The more a path is walked, the more worn it becomes, and the easier it is to follow the path. If, for example, I’ve noticed that the peacefulness I’m trying to cultivate is easily thrown off while I’m driving, I can use my awareness to objectively observe what thought patterns occur while this peace is disrupted. From my observations, I can choose to feed peace with my thoughts because my objective observations help me see it is more important to me to be at peace than to continue to feed old thought patterns or beliefs. Once I notice that whenever someone cuts me off, stops short, is driving too slowly in front of me, or tailing me, I think very aggressively or defensively, I can choose to not react from that worn pattern of thinking and instead open up to consciously perceive the situation from a heart-centered, understanding approach. I respond rather than react, and think instead, “Perhaps that person is having a bad day and is late, I feel for them. I’ll arrive at my destination when I get there; there is no rush. My focus and attention is here in this car and I choose to enjoy my drive and feed peace.”
Curiosity allows us to deviate from the worn path. When we use our awareness to notice, and then we get curious about whatever it is, beyond our immediate perception or interpretation, we open ourselves up to the entire endless field of grass rather than the narrow limits of a few worn down paths. Our brains are incredibly adaptive; we can mold and shape our mindset into whatever we wish. This is called neuroplasticity. The brain benefits from learning; it creates new connections and develops new pathways (literally called neuropathways, just like the path of grass)! We can always form a new path, starting with this very moment. Cultivating a new mindset is the result of consistently deciding to walk the new paths time and time again.
Thoughts, from our conscious or subconscious mind, are connected to feelings. How we think affects how we feel and how we feel affects how we think. By bringing awareness to how we think, we bring awareness to how our thoughts connect with how we feel. By actively cultivating a mindset of our choosing, our feelings follow in accordance with that mindset. We can use our awareness of our feelings to determine what thoughts we are having that contribute to those feelings. Conversely, we can notice what feelings are cultivated through positive thought patterns. For example, if I want to feel peaceful, I can use my awareness to notice what does and does not cultivate feelings of peace both in my thoughts and perceptions of my experiences.
It's not always easy. There are experiences that trigger us to act from a pattern of behavior that we may no longer wish to perpetuate. That is where awareness and consistency come in. We can bring awareness to a situation, even if, at first, it is after the fact, through compassionate, non-judgmental reflection. We can recognize the trigger and decide how to show up differently next time. We try again to walk our new path. We continue our practice. We are compassionate, honest, consistent and patient with ourselves. Over time, we will see our awareness permeate into those difficult moments and be able to respond and take the new path in the moment, instead of reacting from an old one.
Playing an active role in shaping our minds is essential. Our active role is what allows us to choose our perception and interpretation of our personal reality. This can make a HUGE difference. Just as we said before, when we shift our mindset, we open ourselves up to the entire endless field of possibilities that permeates throughout every experience and our lives. It starts with our active awareness (as opposed to passiveness) of what we consume, learn, and the paths we feed through thoughts, words, and actions. From our awareness and active role, we choose the paths we cultivate. It is the difference between continually shaping and programming our minds for ourselves in the present moment or having our mind programmed by someone else and past experiences. With our constant and consistent effort, we break free of old patterns and cultivate the mindset of our choosing. As Erica Spiegelman reminds us in The Rewired Life, “by mastering your mind, you master your life.”
REFLECT
Answer the following questions in your notebook, a piece of paper, or record yourself talking through your answers on your phone and read over or listen to your answers when you’re done.
Dig Deep. Be honest. Be compassionate. Be objective. Take responsibility and accountability. It is of no help for us to be judgmental of ourselves or direct blame elsewhere. You got this!
1. What is my current state of mind, my emotional and mental state at this particular time? What is my current mindset - the established set of attitudes I hold? When does my mindset create peace, hope, love, understanding, openness, and kindness; when does my mindset limit me by creating unbalance, fear, hatred, judgment, chaos, and closed-ness?
2. What are some old patterns of behavior, beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and perspectives I can identify that are keeping me stuck?
3. What might I be consuming, feeding, entertaining, or perpetuating that keeps me stuck in old patterns?
4. What ideas, beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors are perpetuated in my mind that are, in fact, not even my own? (For example, if you experience self-doubt, is this doubt coming from you, or from people in the past who doubted you? a.k.a. is this a learned behavior or beliefs?)
5. What is my current level of awareness when it comes to how I am thinking and my mindset? Do I bring my awareness to the present moment to recognize when I am acting or reacting from a subconscious pattern? Do I reflect and recognize the trigger and my reaction? Do I compassionately determine another approach for next time? What might need to change in this regard?
6. How do I want to feel? What do these feelings tell me about the mindset I am going to cultivate and the thought patterns that will contribute to these feelings?
7. Why is it important to me that I bring awareness to, observe, and cultivate my mindset? What is my purpose in doing so? Why am I cultivating my mindset?
8. How can I embrace curiosity more? What am I currently curious about? What can I do to feed those curiosities? How can taking action on my curiosities contribute to my mindset?
9. What role does consistency play for me in this process? What are typical ways I struggle with consistency? What will I do to prevent and recover from those?
RE DO
1. Set a timer for three minutes or play this three minute sound bath when you are ready:
2. Sit quietly in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and draw your focus to your breath. If you are familiar with meditation and breath-work, try focusing on your exhale while allowing your inhale to simply just be. With every breath, try to touch it, be aware of it, follow it in through your nose, down your throat, into your lungs. Feel the space within you expand. Hold. And slowly release and follow the air out of your body, through your throat to your nose.
As you breathe, thoughts will float into your awareness. When they come in, be aware of them, recognize them, and in a compassionate, understanding, friendly, and non-judgmental tone, remind yourself: "thinking." And return your focus to your breath.
Each time a new thought arises say to yourself "thinking," and return your awareness to your breathing. It’s okay if you get lost in thought, when you realize this happened, remind yourself “thinking” and return your awareness once more to your breath.
3. When the three minutes are over, reflect on what you noticed during and after the practice and how you feel. How can you take what you learned in this exercise into your practice of cultivating your mindset?
No need to feel discouraged if this practice was difficult - allow yourself to get the hang of it by trying it a couple of times. As you get acquainted with the practice, feel free to increase the length of your practice. Like weight and repetitions at the gym, we increase our strength and ability by increasing the challenge.
This exercise is a way for us to practice, out of context, what we are doing as we cultivate our mindset. It is a wonderful exercise to do any time you wish to practice and strengthen these abilities and/or you find yourself overwhelmed, out of touch, and stressed.
This practice is adapted from Shamatha-Vipashyana meditation in Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape.
In Your Day-to-Day
Your thoughts are incredibly powerful entities of which you are the observer and master (not the thoughts)
Observe your thoughts to notice the patterns, beliefs, and perceptions that no longer serve you
Be curious and open to expand beyond limiting thinking, judgments, perceptions, and beliefs
Actively choose to feed and cultivate your thoughts, which will positively affect the loop between your thoughts and your feelings
Use the breathing practice from RE DO to realign, recenter, and empower yourself as the observer first thing in the morning, when you have a few moments during the day, want to recenter, and are feeling overwhelmed by emotions or stress
Lesson 2 // Awareness
Reposition yourself in the seat of awareness - the fundamental step to shift your thinking, mindset, and experience.
RE LEARN
Before you begin: let’s take a few deep, grounding breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach, close your eyes, breathe in deep, hold, direct your awareness to your heart, and release. Repeat until you feel centered and relaxed.
Our thoughts are not "bad." As we pay more attention to our thoughts and mindset, it can be easy to pass judgment on these thoughts and ourselves. “Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.” - William Shakespeare. Our thoughts form judgments that ascribe meaning to the subject of our judgment. Thus suspending judgment begins with the nature of our thoughts. As we discussed in Thinking, we are both the thinker and the observer.
Our thoughts can take us on trips of discovery and inspiration, lead to innovation, creation, and understanding. At the same time, we can get so caught up in our thinking, so singularly focused, that we close ourselves to the vastness of life and the limitless potential of the present moment. When we are caught up in our thoughts like this, we identify with the thoughts as though they are us. When this happens we forget that we play an active role in this process - that it is possible to exercise mastery over our thoughts and minds. We forget that we are the observer, not the thoughts themselves nor the emotions they evoke. We are thinking and feeling; and we are consciousness in the seat of awareness, of observation.
By practicing getting into the seat of the observer - using awareness - we are able to position ourselves with the vantage point of this perspective that is always available for us to access. Utilizing our awareness helps us cultivate our ability to put distance between our thoughts and ourselves; we find our way out when we utilize awareness when we are caught up and feel ourselves closing. The more we sit in the seat of awareness, the more this translates beyond our thoughts and mindset into our everyday, present reality. We open up to witnessing life unfolding with curiosity, peace, and trust, through the ups, downs, and in-betweens.
What Awareness Feels Like
At its core, awareness is a way to experience wholeness within ourselves and throughout the present moment as it all occurs together, our inner and outer experiences, all at once. We are going to do a guided exercise to feel what it is to experience, embody, and expand awareness, to be in the seat of the observer. (You can always walk yourself through this practice whenever you need, with the following steps)
Step 1: Close your eyes and focus your awareness on breathing
Feel your chest rise and fall as you breathe. Maybe you feel your heart beating. Maybe you feel your pulse. Feel the subtle vibration of your living body as it goes about all its processes.
Step 2: Shift your awareness to the space inside of you
Feel the space behind your eyes. Feel the space around your heart. Feel the space that exists within.
Step 3: Expand that space outside of your body
As you are aware of the space within, expand that awareness externally. Feel the boundary between your body and your environment dissolve. Feel yourself as boundaryless.
Step 4: Feel yourself just being
Feel what it is to just be in awareness. You are awareness. Right now, you are experiencing your pure awareness, your existence, purely being.
When we are in our thoughts, as opposed to observing our thoughts, we are engulfed in them; we form judgments, cling to attachments and stories, and close ourselves off. Whether we want to be engulfed in our thoughts or not, we can find ourselves clinging to our thoughts, beliefs, even our ideas of who we are. When we cling, we close. When we resist, we close.
Imagine our thoughts are a river and we are paddling a canoe through them. Sometimes the river is calm and gentle, other times it is chaotic and turbulent. Calm, chaotic, it's really the same thing - just a state that will, like everything, change. That is the experience of life - it is dynamic, never just one thing, always changing, always flowing. When we resist these truths, we become closed off. When we are aware of change, multiplicity, and get to know those truths, we open up. Whether calm or chaotic, we can either cling to the canoe, closed off to all that passes by and miss the full experience or we can let go and flow, going with the river, experiencing the full journey of being in the canoe. When we cling to our thoughts, to the canoe, we are stiff - the ride is unpleasant, dreadful, and anxiety-inducing. When we let go and flow as our thoughts arise, we are relaxed - the ride can be enjoyed because we surrender to the nature of the river in each moment, chaotic or calm, and we are open enough to experience it all. Our clinging to our patterns, beliefs, and perceptions can make the ride miserable, regardless of the river’s nature. Whether our default is to cling or to let go, it makes no difference - we can choose which we actively feed. Practicing awareness is the first step in making this choice of non-resistance. Eventually, the ride will come to an end, the conditions will change; we can always count on this. Our experience will be largely impacted by our mindset during the ride. The quality of the journey, with our thoughts (and our lives), depends on our level of resistance or non-resistance, closedness or openness.
It’s easy to get sucked into our conscious thinking (a.k.a. overthinking, which we will discuss in the next lesson) and stuck in our heads, subconscious patterns, and reacting instead of responding. All of these instances are like our clinging in the canoe. As we strengthen our awareness, in the moment and through reflection afterwards, we can slowly release our clinging, process everything, and be able to enjoy the ride, regardless of whether it’s calm or chaotic.
While we are practicing awareness with our thoughts, it goes beyond thoughts. Whether our thoughts or feelings, day or season of our life are chaotic and turbulent or calm and gentle, we can choose non-resistance - we can be still, fully present, fully aware, acknowledge and experience what's happening. Eventually, the conditions will change; we can always count on this. And it is life, after all, and it's ending one minute at a time. We don’t want to miss anything on this journey; we want to be open and experience it fully. Awareness is a fundamental part of living consciously. Living consciously is to live in that state of awareness that keeps us awake to the entire experience of what it means to be alive and enjoy it!
REFLECT
Answer the following questions in your notebook, a piece of paper, or record yourself talking through your answers on your phone and read over or listen to your answers when you’re done.
Dig Deep. Be honest. Be compassionate. Be objective. Take responsibility and accountability. It is of no help for us to be judgmental of ourselves or direct blame elsewhere. You got this!
1. When do I tend to cling? When do I tend to flow? When I cling, what am I thinking and telling myself that keeps me clinging?
2. What does my clinging look like - what situations do I tend to get caught up in? How does this make me closed off?
3. How can practicing awareness in these situations help me be open and non-resistant? How would I benefit from remaining open and non-resistant, especially in difficult or unpleasant moments?
4. Bring to mind a recent unpleasant moment or situation.
How did clinging to your story of the situation, thoughts, or beliefs make the situation more unpleasant?
If you brought awareness and non-resistance to the situation, and in turn, remained open to the entire reality of the situation, how might you have shown up or processed the situation differently? How might this make the situation feel different (not pleasant, but not more unpleasant as the result of clinging)?
For example:
A loved one is angered by what, to me seems to be a silly thing to be upset over and, caught up in his anger, our communication is hostile, which makes me feel upset so I get mad at him and yell at him for being enraged.
In my clinging to my story, my limited perception and understanding of the situation, that his anger was only because of what I believed was silly, I was dismissive and didn’t even try to open and understand his experience. When our communication wasn’t what I would’ve liked, his anger feeling directed at me disturbed me - I got upset and so things grew even more unpleasant because I reacted by yelling at him.
If I was using my awareness in the moment, I would process his anger before engaging with him. This would allow me to respond differently, rather than react the way I did. (Note the difference between reacting, unconsciously without awareness, and responding consciously with awareness.) My response would be gentle and open, maybe acknowledging his anger, asking about it, and validating it. In this way, our communication could be connective rather than divisive and I could help him suffer less, even though he is upset.
RE DO
Consider an unproductive, repetitive, or negative thought you’ve been experiencing recently. Take a deep breath. Acknowledge that you are aware of your thoughts and can detach from the thought you are holding onto, just like in the canoe, we can cling and we can release.
By releasing, you can now see the thought clearly - as a thought passing through your conscious awareness. This is your chance to get curious about it - where is it coming from? how is it making you feel? Observe it objectively, rather than the subjective experience of clinging and identifying with it.
Now that you've objectively observed this thought, replace it with two or three positive thoughts or affirmations! Repeat those affirmations over and over, out loud, as you feel and visualize their sentiment becoming your reality. (This may take 10+ repetitions, so be patient, focus, and stick with it!)
If you are looking for examples, you can find some on our Pinterest and more on our Instagram. You can take these examples and adapt them to best fit you and what you are cultivating. We encourage you to write a few down in your notebook to repeat each morning right when you wake up and whenever you feel your thoughts or mindset shifts into a negative place.
It can feel difficult when we've been clinging to limiting beliefs, but by using our awareness, we open ourselves up to the entire reality, which expands beyond those limiting beliefs. You may not believe your affirmations at first, that’s okay. Old thoughts patterns and beliefs have been engrained into your subconscious, so it takes time, your awareness, and continually choosing to no longer give attention to that which no longer serves you. Be patient, stick with it, and continue to feed your affirmations.
For example:
Say I’ve just started to learn to play the guitar. At first it was exciting, but now that it’s gotten more difficult, I feel stuck. I think “I’m no good at guitar. What’s the point of practicing?” In the past, this thought would have justified why I shouldn’t practice and would have kept me from improving, maybe even causing me to quit and give up.
Now, I bring my awareness to this thought. I observe it objectively, realizing it’s simply a reaction to the difficult point I’ve reached in my learning journey. Maybe I recognize a pattern of behavior - giving up when things get too difficult because I think I cannot do it or overcome. I decide I don’t want to let this get in my way, so I withhold my resistance to the difficulties of learning a new skill and improving. I replace the original thought with a more open perspective: “I am learning. It’s not easy to learn a new instrument, but I am up to the challenge. Only by practicing will I improve. I am going to practice today and it will make me better. I don’t give up when things get difficult. I can do anything I set my mind to.”
Notice when you do this how empowered it makes you feel and how this empowerment often leads you to take productive action whether it’s practicing a new skill or hobby, for example, or simply walking away from clinging and resisting.
In Your Day-to-Day
You are consciousness in the seat of awareness
Use the awareness exercise (What Awareness Feels Like) to ground yourself in the seat of awareness, recenter your wholeness - mind, body, and soul - and find calm
Exercise awareness and presence to pause, observe and respond rather than react from thoughts, patterns, beliefs, or perceptions that keep you closed and stuck
Practicing awareness is foundational for cultivating your mindset and living consciously in connection with the vastness of life, the limitless possibilities of the present moment, and your role in shaping your experience
Use your practice of awareness and affirmations, like in RE DO, to set your mindset for the day and whenever you are feeling stuck or experiencing negative thought patterns
Choose to redirect your attention away from the negative thought or belief after exploring where it might stem from and feed a new one with an affirmation
Lesson 3 // Overthinking
Overthinking, fear, and worry distort your mindset and experience; learn how to overcome these tendencies in your thinking and experiences.
RE LEARN
Before you begin: let’s take a few deep, grounding breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach, close your eyes, breathe in deep, hold, direct your awareness to your heart, and release. Repeat until you feel centered and relaxed.
As you grow increasingly aware of your thoughts, you may notice a fair amount of your thoughts are the result of overthinking and worrying about something in the past, present, or future. A study conducted in 2015, found that 85% of worries don’t happen and of the 15% of the worries that did happen, 79% of the subjects found they could handle the difficulty better than expected, or that the difficulty taught them a lesson worth learning; 97% of worries are ungrounded and the result of pessimism that has no basis in reality. (See footnote 1)
We all overthink and worry. Sometimes things feel so out of our control - overthinking and worrying give us an illusion of control. Just like with the canoe in Awareness, overthinking and worrying is a form of clinging. But, clinging to these thoughts by constantly replaying and relaying thoughts or a situation in our head, we actually intensify the discomfort associated with the situation. Overthinking fans the flames of our discomfort and such rumination is proven to lead to anxiety or depression. (See footnote 2)
Makes sense right? As we learned in previous lessons, our thoughts affect our mood. If we continue repeating the same thinking that causes us discomfort, we will continue to experience heightened discomfort (as opposed to the natural, situational discomfort that arises every so often). When this continues over time, going unnoticed or unattended, it becomes our state of mind and being - i.e. anxious or depressed. Just like in the canoe, we have a choice to cling to or to let go of our overthinking and worrying. We can learn to be non-resistant, trust, relax, let go, and flow, no matter the calm or chaotic nature of a situation. It might not feel easy at first, but by repeatedly grounding ourselves in reality and what we know for sure, as opposed to our worries, stories, and ideas, we can let go time and time again. From there, we can take action in alignment with what we know for sure and what we need. We can trust and feed optimism and openness, which we will dive deeper into in future lessons.
For example:
Let’s say I have a crush on someone but I’m just not sure how they feel about me. This may be difficult for me to see the objective reality of the situation, so I could easily overthink everything they’ve said to me, their body language when we’re together, etc. and worry that they don’t feel the same way. Or I could tell them how I feel about them and ask them how they feel about me. Maybe that makes me worry about what if they don’t feel the same way? Either way, my thinking is creating more discomfort than talking about it with them. If I don’t say anything, I continue to suffer. If I do say something, they could feel the same way, they could have to sit with it, or they could not feel the same way. Any discomfort that might result from saying something would far outweigh the discomfort of keeping my feelings to myself. Even if they don’t feel the same way, then I’ve actually done myself a favour by learning this so that I can let go of my crush. This example applies to anything from communicating our feelings, going after something we want and facing the possibility of rejection, having a difficult conversation, etc.
Discomfort is also a great teacher, if we open ourselves to its nature as such. To do this, we bring our awareness to the discomfort, suspend our attachment/narrative that the discomfort should not be or that we wish it wasn’t happening, and from there we are able to accept and exist in the discomfort, which will eventually subside, allowing us to not only strengthen our practices and ability to sit in discomfort (making it a little easier each time), but also be open to lessons we can learn from the experience. Your work in this and other RE SELF workshops is making the integral steps for your healing, evolution, and well-being.
Whether ruminating, overthinking, or worrying, all such thinking takes us out of the present moment and further away from reality. In many cases, where taking action would help us create resolve, Robert Herjavec reminds us that, “Thinking too much leads to paralysis by analysis. It’s important to think things through, but many use thinking as a means of avoiding action.” Such overthinking can cause us to not take action in alignment with what our mind, hearts and intuition is trying to communicate to us, which creates more discomfort and suffering. Overthinking can cause us to stay in our comfort zone rather than taking the necessary risks that allow us to evolve, flourish, create, and live our lives in our authentic image.
Part of cultivating our mindset and strengthening our awareness in the present moment is taking the time and space to get familiar with our own tendencies without judgment. Judgment actually keeps us from objective knowledge, whereas suspending judgment allows us to become familiar with and more easily shift our tendencies. By curiously and compassionately observing our tendencies we can notice: I tend to overthink things, or worry a lot, or it is easy for me to get into a depressive state. When we acknowledge and understand these tendencies and what feeds them, we can develop tools and ways to reclaim our balance in these situations before we fan the flames of discomfort (we are learning a lot of practices for this with each RE DO exercise). With this knowledge, we can use our awareness to notice when we’re beginning to overthink, ruminate, or worry. From there we can take the necessary action to create resolve and relieve our suffering.
For example:
Our phones and social media are often sources of these triggers for these tendencies. We scroll through social media and consciously or unconsciously compare ourselves to others, feel unease and discomfort, and drain our time and energy. Our phones and social media are addictive and have been designed to be that way. (See footnote 3) Our phone or social media usage might cause us anxiety, overthinking how others perceive us or react to something we say or share, causing us to constantly check them as the only solution that seems to soothe this anxiety. But in fact, this pulls us further and further away from ourselves.
But, with our awareness, we recognize such behavior and tendencies that deteriorate our well-being, antagonize ourselves, and decide to respond differently. First, we acknowledge these feelings of discomfort as our body’s way of communicating to us that we need something to change. We can demonstrate to ourselves our ability to act in alignment with those needs by showing up for ourselves and acting differently.
We decide that our well-being and relationship with ourselves is more important than what is going on on our phone, and we put the phone down, in a drawer or another room. Maybe at first this is too difficult, so we try another approach by limiting screen time, cleaning out our social media feeds, or detoxing from social media or technology periodically. Any of these exemplified changes in action are the result of being aware, fully present, and connected within enough to honour and respond to our needs. By taking control of our screen time, social media feeds, and usage, we empower ourselves by doing what we need to put the overthinking and worries to rest. From there, maybe we call on affirmations to help ground us in life beyond the screen - returning to the present moment and our personal reality. Whatever the trigger, the important step is to take action in alignment with what we know to be true, our awareness, and inner knowing (what our feelings, heart, and intuition are telling us).
With our awareness, we can bring ourselves back from our overthinking. Like the RE DO practice from Thinking, we remind ourselves in a friendly, compassionate tone, "thinking," or perhaps in this case, “overthinking” or “worrying.” From there, we can ground ourselves in the present moment, take inventory of our thoughts and what we know to be true about the situation, our feelings, and sit with the discomfort, rather than fanning it. This is an important part of awareness (that we often do not talk about) - the awareness of our discomfort. When we give ourselves the space and compassion to get to know our discomfort, we will discover things about this discomfort that we can then use as we ground back in the present moment and align with the life we are creating in our authentic image. Perhaps the story we were telling ourselves is far off from reality or perhaps we notice there's a lesson to be learned (there's always a lesson when we open ourselves to everything as a teacher and fuel for our evolution).
Now it wouldn't do much to talk about worry, without talking about fear.
“Worry is a state of mind based upon fear.” - Napoleon Hill
Fear shows itself in our lives in many ways, especially once we begin to bring awareness to our thoughts, patterns, and beliefs. “We live in a fear-driven society. Why? Partly because of the state and culture of our society, but also because our brains are hot-wired for fear,” says Robert Taibbi, L.C.S.W. (See footnote 4)
Our fears are natural - we are biologically programmed to avoid the threat of danger. This convenient survival tactic impacts our thinking, i.e. worrying, about things we deem a "threat." It could be an exam, an ex, imagined scenarios, a loved one running late, or the state of the world. However, fear-based thinking will only take us so far by keeping us stuck within our comfort zone, taking us down the rabbit hole of worry, and creating more separation in our lives as opposed to unity. And, as Leo Buscaglia reminds us, "Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy."
For example:
Tomorrow I have a presentation. I've been anxiously worrying about it all week as I prepare. This indeed, has sapped the day of its joy. But when I bring my awareness to the situation I can say to myself compassionately, "worrying... I have prepared to my best ability. I am ready for the presentation. I will do great. Worrying doesn’t help me - it’s hurting me because of the stress it causes me. I free myself from worry; I know everything will turn out for the best. I am ready. I will do great." This awareness and declaration to put down my worries allows me to stop clinging to these thoughts and enjoy the rest of my day. I use affirmations in the moment to help shift my thoughts in a positive direction. I cannot control anything beyond myself (how my presentation is received); I can only control my actions (my preparation, doing my best every step of the way, my decision to stop worrying, and giving the presentation).
A lot of our fear is born from the unknown. We can project negative experiences from our past onto current and future experiences without even being aware of our doing so. When we overthink, ruminate, or worry, we often cast the unknown as a negative thing - something to fear, something that is a threat. But the reality is, the unknown is completely unknown. We don't know if the unknown will be good or bad. Just as much as we think about the unknown in negative terms, we can choose to think about it in positive terms. By thinking about the unknown in positive terms, we empower ourselves to take action in the direction of openness and optimism, which can make all of the difference in our lives. Imagine how you would feel if instead of overthinking, ruminating, or worrying about the negative unknown, you perceived the unknown in terms of its unlimited possibilities to turn out for the best. How would that radically change your perspective, state of being, experience, actions, and even, your life? "By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us." - Alan Watts
We cannot change the past; it has passed and we can only heal through it. As we grow up many of us, consciously or unconsciously, are told to “get real” or “be realistic” about our hopes, dreams, and visions for our lives. But this thinking keeps us trapped and disconnected from the truly limitless possibilities of the unknown. We have a choice to make. If we want to live in a state of openness, we choose to understand our past - conditioning, beliefs, ideas, fears, and patterns of behavior - learn from them, heal our mindset and wounds, and explore the ways in which it has contributed to who we are today. We choose to forgive ourselves for not knowing then what we know now. We choose to befriend ourselves completely, as we are today, and empower a shift in the direction of creating our life in our authentic image. This shift starts with our mindset and translates to our whole self, how we show up for ourselves and others, and our present moment completely.
The present is an endless moment that invites us to embrace it. Our full presence begins with awareness. The present moment offers limitless potential and choices for us to make. We take action; we make change. We choose to accept, heal, let go, and enjoy where we are, here and now. Or, we can (choose to) continue to be caught up in our overthinking, because as Laurie Buchanan reminds us, “Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.” At first, it may not feel easy. But with our practice of awareness, it becomes easier and over time, our natural, default mode.
The future is up to you. You cannot control what happens; you can only control you, how you think about and respond to what happens, and your actions. The future is the product of your actions today. By taking action in alignment with your awareness, you are literally changing your future because you are no longer reacting from old patterns and beliefs. It’s not always easy; no one said it was easy. It takes effort and commitment to create and live our lives in our authentic image and limitless potential. What is easy is remaining in our comfort zone and accepting limitations - in this case, the future continues to be the product of unchanged thoughts, patterns, beliefs, fears, and actions. That is what Carl Jung meant by, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” But your work in this workshop empowers your freedom and ability to actively and consciously direct your life.
You can take charge of yourself and your destiny here and now. You don't need to be better or different. Come as you are today, where you are. Befriend yourself, who you are today, be curious about who you are, and start fresh by embracing the limitless promise of the present. It’s okay if it’s a little difficult to believe in or to connect to. That is because, up until now, you were aligned to a different way of thinking and understanding. But with consistent, small daily action and your practices, you will slowly see everything shift. It is from there, without any conditions, that healing, release, well-being, and evolution is catalyzed. This will make all the difference.
With our awareness and full presence, we make the decision here and now, over and over, each moment, to act in alignment with our awareness and presence. And when we catch ourselves overthinking, ruminating, and worrying, out of alignment, unaware, or unpresent, we compassionately remind ourselves, (some version of) "thinking" and we begin again.
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Footnotes
1. Antanaityte, Neringa. “Mind Matters: How To Effortlessly Have More Positive Thoughts | TLEX Institute.” Tlex Institute, tlexinstitute.com/how-to-effortlessly-have-more-positive-thoughts.
2. Chand, Suma. “Uplift Your Mood: Stop Ruminating.” Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA, 20 Apr. 2016, adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/uplift-your-mood-stop-ruminating. (Update: original article no longer available. Learn more here: https://adaa.org/node/4534)
3. “The Social Dilemma.” Netflix Official Site, 9 Sept. 2020, https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224.
4. Taibbi, Robert. “How to Cope in a Fear-Driven Society.” Psychology Today, 28, Nov. 2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fixing-families/201811/how-cope-in-fear-driven-society
REFLECT
Answer the following questions in your notebook, a piece of paper, or record yourself talking through your answers on your phone and read over or listen to your answers when you’re done.
Dig Deep. Be honest. Be compassionate. Be objective. Take responsibility and accountability. It is of no help for us to be judgmental of ourselves or direct blame elsewhere. You got this!
1. What are some of my tendencies when it comes to overthinking and worrying? When do I tend to be anxious, fearful, worried, etc.? What sparks these tendencies?
2. To me, what is the difference between getting to know my discomfort versus overthinking? How and when might I resist sitting in discomfort? How and when do I fan the flames of my discomfort? How does this make me feel?
3. How can I use my awareness of my tendencies and triggers to shift from overthinking? How can I, instead, nurture my thoughts in the direction of acceptance, balance, presence, and compassion?
4. What role does fear play in my overthinking and worrying?
5. How can my awareness help me when I'm stuck in fear-based thoughts? How can I return to the present moment and my power?
RE DO
Exploring Discomfort
Giving yourself permission to feel and sit in discomfort is essential.
Bring to mind an event, situation, fear, or worry you are currently experiencing, overthinking, or worrying about. Get curious about it. Explore your discomfort.
Try lying down on the floor or anywhere comfortable (this helps you feel grounded and supported), closing your eyes each time you ask a question and allowing the answer to arise from within. Ask yourself these questions and be compassionately honest about your answers... Write them down*
How am I feeling right now?
Why do I feel this way?
What might my feelings be communicating to me?
How am I thinking about this that is causing me more discomfort?
Why am I thinking this way?
What are my feelings and thoughts telling me about how I am showing up in this situation that might need to change?
Are these thoughts communicating any subconscious ideas, beliefs, or patterns that are perpetuated yet no longer serve me?
Where might these have originated from?
Why will releasing these help me?
What can I do to starve this subconscious thinking and rewrite the story I’m telling myself?
How can I nourish the flowers instead of the weeds in this situation?
Now, how am I feeling?
As you work through your answers to these questions, feel free to add some extra “why” questions to dig deeper towards the root. Allow yourself to be objective and open to this introspection. This will allow you to help yourself work through your thoughts and feelings for understanding and responding to your needs. Review what you’ve written down to see what insights you can gain, and where you might need to direct more focus, energy, compassion, or healing.
After exploring your discomfort, it’s time to ACT!
Decide what action you can take now to do something to respond and act in alignment with your awareness from sitting with and exploring your discomfort. (If another person is involved in this situation, your action does not need to include them, begin with yourself. If you feel the need to respond to someone, do so after taking care of yourself.)
Here are a few actions you can try -
Journal on this awareness and anything you learned from this exercise. What are some key take-aways to remember for the future?
Repeat positive affirmations to yourself. Say them as many times as you need until you feel them. (You can say your own or you can use the ones featured on our Pinterest "Tool" board or any personal variation of them.)
Start fresh. (And do something now!) It can be something that brings you joy like listening to uplifting music and dancing around, meditating, going for a walk outside and enjoying nature, whatever it is, do something that brings you fully into the present moment.
Is there something you can do to resolve what you were thinking about? Do you need to have a difficult conversation with someone, advocate for yourself, apologize for/forgive something, maybe even yourself? Whatever it is, doing something rather than just thinking about doing something will minimize your discomfort.
__________
Taking action reminds us of our power - our power to sit in discomfort, our power of awareness, and our power to create change in the present moment. We can’t control what happens. We can’t control how other people act. We can only control how we respond. Taking control of our response is the product of awareness.
This exercise is an empowering tool to create change in your mindset, whenever you need, which will translate and emanate throughout your life. Whenever you feel yourself getting upset, anxious, or any other form of discomfort, you can practice this tool. Whether it’s overthinking, ruminating or worrying, these ways of thinking refuse to accept that we cannot control anything other than ourselves, and they cause us to forget that we have control over our response. By using our awareness and returning to the present moment, we free ourselves to embrace the simplicity of life rather than overcomplicating it with thinking.
A clear mind creates a clear life.
To go even deeper we recommend trying this practice with The Warrior Heart Practice by HeatherAsh Amara.
In Your Day-to-Day
Overthinking and worrying intensifies the discomfort associated with the subject of these thoughts
You can let go of overthinking and worrying by grounding yourself in what you know for sure and taking action in alignment with what you know and need
Overthinking and worrying can cause you to stay in your comfort zone rather than taking the necessary action outside your comfort zone to evolve, flourish, and live fully and authentically
Be aware of your tendencies and what feeds them (both negative and positive) so you cultivate practices to reclaim balance before and in those uncomfortable moments
Think about the unknown from a positive perspective to empower your action in the direction of openness and optimism
You can’t control what happens; you can control how you think about and respond to what happens through your actions
Use the 5x5 rule and the questions to explore your discomfort (from RE DO) whenever you need to explore something difficult or uncomfortable to create resolve and release
Lesson 4 // Thoughts to Words
The words you speak become the house you live in - learn how to make it beautiful, intentional, and authentic.
RE LEARN
Before you begin: let’s take a few deep, grounding breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach, close your eyes, breathe in deep, hold, direct your awareness to your heart, and release. Repeat until you feel centered and relaxed.
Our destiny begins with our thoughts. In the quote above, Lao Tzu outlines how our thoughts directly impact our destiny. The first step in our thoughts becoming our destiny is our thoughts impacting our words, and then impacting our actions, our habits, our character, and finally our future. This is neither bad nor good. It just is. If we bring our awareness to our thoughts, we can ultimately begin to notice how they impact our words, actions, and so on. With the power of this awareness, we can make micro and macro adjustments in the direction of balance and authenticity as we see fit and notice opportunities for evolution. This is how we empower ourselves to own our active role in creating our lives in our authentic image.
Like our thoughts, what we say is incredibly powerful and just like our thoughts, our words can plant flowers or our words can plant weeds. What we say reflects how we are thinking - our beliefs, fears, ideas, etc. In The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz reminds us, “Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.” Speaking with integrity, intentionality, truth and love plants flowers. Speaking with hatred, a lack of integrity, against yourself, and gossiping, plants weeds. Awareness is our ultimate tool in planting and watering the flowers with our thoughts and words.
Have you ever heard the saying, "what Susie says of Sally says more of Susie than of Sally?" This means that our speech is a reflection of us, even more so than of what we are speaking about. How we reflect ourselves through our words, applies to our speech just as it does someone else's speech.
For example:
Let’s say someone told their friend that they thought I was ugly. This doesn’t so much reflect my beauty, but rather reflects the limit and inability for the person who called me ugly to embrace others’ beauty without feeling threatened by it or acknowledge the beauty in each and every thing and that beauty is deeper than superficial appearances. Or let’s say after being wronged by someone, I was able to speak about them with forgiveness and understanding. This doesn’t so much reflect that they asked for forgiveness, provided me with a lens to understand why they wronged me, or that I would trust them again, but rather reflects my ability to forgive and understand.
In either example, we can work backwards - Who do I want to be? Someone judgmental or unforgiving or do I want to be someone who is loving and forgiving? If I want to be loving and forgiving, then we can ask ourselves - What would the habits of someone who is loving and forgiving be? What would their actions be? What would they say? What would they think? This is incredibly useful for us if we notice we want to redirect or realign our words and thoughts with who we are and how we want to be. To explore this deeper in your own context, pause and consider those questions and record your answers.
Our awareness allows us to notice how we might be using our words in a rather sloppy, meaningless, unintentional, or unaware way. Using our word impeccably also means being aware of when we are saying words that are not aligned with our authenticity. Our awareness also allows us to notice how we are using our words impeccably, intentionally, and meaningfully. With all of this awareness, we can choose what thoughts and words we feed with more intentionality by pausing and redirecting in the moment of awareness.
When we are not speaking precisely, with truth and love, we close ourselves off. If we are talking to someone and say something that indicates that we are judgmental, we close ourselves off from connecting with and understanding that person deeper, beyond our own limits, understanding, or conditions. We would miss out on the beautiful exchange that happens when we meet people who challenge and invite us to expand beyond our comfort zone, limits, and pre-existing conceptions. When we speak in a way that is open and loving, we experience just that by being open, inviting ourselves and others to expand through our interaction. “Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost,” - Khalil Gibran. In order to feed love and openness, which are fundamental to not only our well-being but the well-being of our relationships and lives, being impeccable with our word is essential. If we speak unintentionally and say things we don’t mean, we close and lose that unconditional love that is always available. If we withhold from saying what we really want to say and mean, we close and lose the unconditional love that is always available if we are open to it. We may notice the ways our thoughts, patterns, beliefs, and ideas close us off from unconditional love; with that awareness, we can choose to feed unconditional love rather than closedness or conditional love. Our awareness allows us to observe our speech and notice what we are feeding or losing with our words. From there, we can get curious and explore why we are speaking the way we are. Are we speaking from fear? Old conditioning? Beliefs that no longer serve us? Or are we speaking from love? Optimism? Understanding? If we notice we are not speaking with integrity, in the direction of truth and love, we are speaking against ourselves or another, then this tells us how we are thinking, consciously and subconsciously. We use our awareness and reflection to make adjustments, and then act in alignment with the integrity of our word. This allows us to demonstrate compassion and understanding for ourselves and others, remain open, and feed unconditional love.
Other times, we may say empty words, make empty promises. Say we’re talking with our friend and they invite us to do something with them over the weekend. It sounds fun so we give them our word, without considering the commitment we are making. We may even forget about the obligation. When the day rolls around, we are reminded of our commitment, and we realize we are not going to keep the commitment, we cause ourselves and our friend to suffer. This is an example of a thought (I'd like to do this), that becomes your words (I will do this), with your action (not following through) that can become a habit ("flaking") and your character (being unreliable or untrustworthy). All of this can be avoided with awareness. When we pause in the moment when our friend invites us, with awareness we can choose our words impeccably while considering and honouring our needs and our friend’s time. We can say, "That sounds fun. I will let you know tonight if I can commit.” This gives us the time and space to not only make sure our calendar is free but also we are feeling up to it.
Instead of being hard on ourselves for being loose with our words, we show compassion and we move in the direction of truth and love. In the case of not keeping our commitment to our friend, we take accountability for our unconscious words and are completely honest with them. We tell them, “I’m sorry for not keeping my commitment. I shouldn’t have committed to you unless I was 100% sure. I am working on being more intentional with my words.” We also get inquisitive, honest, and loving about where these words and thoughts are coming from. Maybe we realized we flaked on this person for any number of reasons. We get to the source. From there we can act in alignment with this inner knowing and accept, forgive, release, let go, and more forward. That way we do not repeat this action again; it doesn’t become a habit nor our character nor our destiny.
Whether it's being unable to acknowledge someone’s beauty or unable to keep a commitment, when we are objectively aware of our words, and what they are telling us about how we are thinking, we can take accountability. Maybe we think that someone else’s beauty (superficial or deep) implies the absence of our own. Maybe we have a fear of missing out or letting people down and so we overcommit even if it means we are going to be unhappy or disappoint someone. Whatever it is that our awareness and honest reflection indicates, we can compassionately help ourselves expand past these limitations so we can open once more in the direction of understanding and love. From there, again, we act authentically in alignment with what we notice and know - because that is what will always benefit us and anyone else involved in the long run.
If our awareness shows us that we are stuck in a negative thought pattern, beliefs, etc., we can use our words in the form of affirmations in the direction of truth and love. Doing so helps us to consciously shift that thinking by aligning to statements that we want to affirm as our truth. In the presentation example from Overthinking, we actually used affirmations: “ I free myself from worry” and “I know everything will turn out for the best.” These are statements that align with the direction we want to move in, how we want to feel, what we want to be thinking. Affirmations are statements we repeat, and by repeating them we affirm them to ourselves as a state of mind to align to. As we say them, we visualize and feel what we are saying. We can use our words to empower ourselves in whatever situation.
For example:
If we notice we have a belief/fear that someone else’s beauty/achievements/success implies an absence or lack in ourselves, we can say, “Someone else’s beauty is not the lack of my beauty. I am beautiful. My beauty does not depend on others’ acknowledgment or standards; it is inherent. Because I see my own beauty, I see and admire beauty in everyone and everything. It is not a threat to me. Acknowledging others’ beauty makes me more confident and more beautiful.” You can replace beauty with whatever resonates for you.
As Lao Tzu reminds us, what we say becomes what we do. By consciously and intentionally choosing our words to shift us in the direction we want to move, they become our actions, habits, character, and destiny. The more we practice awareness, and in practicing, strengthen our awareness, the more these things can shift into alignment, openness, truth and love starting at the primary, subtle level of our thoughts. This alignment creates harmony, bringing us centeredness, clarity, and confidence with which we can more through our lives. What we feed is what we receive. When we are open to life and all of the inevitable challenges and blessings it brings, we begin to feel less resistant or clingy on our path.
It all begins in the mind.
REFLECT
Answer the following questions in your notebook, a piece of paper, or record yourself talking through your answers on your phone and read over or listen to your answers when you’re done.
Dig Deep. Be honest. Be compassionate. Be objective. Take responsibility and accountability. It is of no help for us to be judgmental of ourselves or direct blame elsewhere. You got this!
1. What ways do I notice my thoughts and beliefs (conscious and subconscious) affecting my words? When do I plant flowers with my words? When do I plant weeds?
2. If the words I speak are the "house" I live in, what does my home currently look and feel like?
3. How impeccable with my word am I? Where can I make more room for this? How?
4. How do I feel when I speak in ways that are impeccable?
5. When I notice I am not speaking with integrity, in the direction of truth, love, and openness or when I am speaking against myself or another, what is this telling me about how I’m thinking and my mindset? How can I use my awareness to get to the root of this? How will doing so help me remove these weeds?
6. How will strengthening my awareness, compassion, and honesty about my thoughts and words change the “house” I am living in for the better?
RE DO
Zero Complaints for 24 Hours!
1. For the next 24 hours, we are using our awareness to be impeccable with our words by not complaining. Verbally or in our thoughts.
You may notice some thoughts popping up in your mind about this exercise like, "that's stupid", "I don't need to, I don't complain", "that's really difficult", "there's so much in my life worth complaining about". Whatever those are, notice them, take a breath, and we're going to do the exercise anyway.
2. Record your sentiments about the exercise before you begin. Whatever those may be.
3. Throughout these 24 hours, when you notice a complaint forming (verbally or in your thoughts), catch it with your awareness. You can make a fun little game out of this, trying to catch the most obvious and the tiniest little complaints. When you notice it, pause and use your awareness to see from a higher perspective.
Like the exercise in the previous lesson, get curious about what you are feeling, the story you are telling yourself that is feeding the weed of this complaint, and try to expand to see the full truth of this situation beyond your immediate perception and judgment.
Ask yourself, "If I expand past this point of view that fuels the complaint forming, what else can I see about this situation? What can I be grateful for right now, at this moment?
Finally, determine if there is something you can do to change and improve the situation. If there is, take action.
(You may want to write this instruction down so you can remember what to do when you notice a complaint forming in your thoughts or when you are about to or are in the middle of voicing a complaint.)
When we focus on gratitude, we open ourselves to the entirety of the situation and life. When we complain, we close ourselves off. The next 24 hours are about using our awareness to remain open the entire day, especially when we are closing. (If you had any doubts about the impact this exercise will actually have, do it and you will see just how important and impactful it is when you choose to remain open in the face of closing.)
4. Record your sentiments about the exercise after completing it. Reflect on what you noticed and how you felt throughout this period of not complaining, the challenges that arose and how you handled them. What changed in the way you handled them? How can you bring this practice into your everyday life?
*Note: There is a difference between complaining and acknowledging something we wish to be different and doing something about it. This exercise is meant to bring awareness to the tendency to close ourselves through our word with something like complaining and how we benefit from remaining open, even in difficult, unpleasant, or uncomfortable situations. Complaining is unproductive; complaining for the sake of complaining resolves nothing. When we use our awareness in these situations, we can acknowledge things that need a productive solution. With our ability to pause, be aware, and take inventory of the entire situation, we can openly, compassionately, and productively move forward for resolution.
In Your Day-to-Day
Your thoughts impact your words, actions, habits, character and destiny
Your words reflect your thoughts, beliefs, fears, and judgments
When you speak with integrity, intentionality, truth, and love you plant flowers with your words (which then empowers your actions, habits, character, and destiny to plant flowers as well)
Using your awareness you can make micro and macro adjustments in the direction of balance, openness, understanding, and authenticity
By defining who and how you want to be, you can use your awareness to notice when your words (actions, habits, and character) are unaligned with that
Use your words, like affirmations, to align you to what you want, elevate your thoughts and feelings, and keep you centered and on your path
Use the zero complaints beyond the 24 hours and adjust this practice to notice anytime your words are out of alignment with who and how you want to be
Lesson 5 // Open Mind
Openness allows you to flow with and access all of the limitless possibilities of life; it begins in your mind - discover just how open you can be as you cultivate and strengthen your open mind.
RE LEARN
Before you begin: let’s take a few deep, grounding breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach, close your eyes, breathe in deep, hold, direct your awareness to your heart, and release. Repeat until you feel centered and relaxed.
We all have ways of thinking, convictions, and beliefs that we consciously and unconsciously ascribe to - these inherently limit us, if we want to seek truth and be open to all that life has to offer. To be open like this requires that we be flexible to change, accept when we’re wrong or our views are limiting, and be willing to continually renew and readjust our ways of thinking, convictions, and beliefs in the direction of truth. We all have ignorance, biases, and prejudices. But if we are dedicated to having an open mind, we are able to face, understand, let go of, and expand past our limitations. The more we do this, the more our windows of understanding and experiencing the world and others become clearer and clearer.
Life is difficult, challenging, uncomfortable, and painful. Hard as we may try to avoid this very fact of life, we cannot. Trying to avoid pain, discomfort, and challenges, big and small, means trying to avoid life itself. And life itself is also vastly beautiful, expansive, energizing, and fascinating. The truth is we cannot have one side of life without the other. If we want to live our lives fully, making the most of them and experiencing all life has to offer, then we have to be open to all of life. Through pain we know joy, through challenge we know strength and ease, through discomfort we know peace. We can decide to be fully awake to all that life offers us, the "good" and the "bad" because we know life is too precious, too valuable, too incredible to not experience in entirety. This is what it means to be open.
And openness, to life itself, begins with an openness in our mind, with our conscious and subconscious thoughts, beliefs, and patterns. An open mind allows us to approach life accepting the multiplicity of life, along with the inevitable changes and challenges. We open our hearts; we can embrace everything as a teacher and an opportunity to learn and evolve. We can sit with discomfort, befriend it as the teacher it is, and curiously explore the lessons and reflection it offers us.
You may consider yourself to be closed minded, or you may consider yourself to be open minded. You may prefer the comforts of remaining within your comfort zone, or you may push yourself out of your comfort zone every day. Either way, we naturally seek convenience and comfort. But life is inherently uncertain, inconvenient, and uncomfortable at times. When our mindset is closed (as depicted in the left side of graphic above under “instead of”), we are limiting ourselves. We may try to avoid difficulties and uncertainty in the pursuit of convenience and comfort. We may be carrying beliefs and perceptions that keep us in the loop of closed thinking. Either way, when we have a closed mind, we miss out on everything that lies outside our temporary limits and comfort zone. Everyone's comfort zone looks and feels different, with different edges and limits. When we are challenged to expand our comfort zone beyond its current boundary, we transcend to a more open experience than the one before. We will inevitably face another challenge that pushes us to the new edge; we continue to have opportunities to open and expand. The same goes for everyone: all that we dream of, all the most profound and touching experiences, and some of the truest joys of being human are all outside of our comfort zone. We are both our greatest asset and our greatest limit. Overcoming the ways we limit ourselves begins with our mindset by overcoming the ways our thoughts, beliefs, and ideas close ourselves off to the limitless possibilities for our lives and who we are capable of being.
With our awareness we can notice when we are thinking from a closed mind, and we can shift this towards openness (as depicted in the right side of the graphic above under “try”). We can have a more open mind about certain things and a more closed mind about other things, so our awareness helps us be objective and discerning enough to hold ourselves accountable. How we speak, to others and ourselves, also is an indicator of when our mindset is more closed or open and the areas in which we tend to express closed thinking and open thinking. Sometimes we need to actually hear ourselves in order for it to click with our awareness. That's okay! When our awareness notices an expressed idea or sentiment that is closed (whether it's a thought or belief or what we express with our speech), we can shift our mind and our thinking.
For example:
Comparison is an example of thinking that closes us off to the vast possibilities of ourselves; “comparison is the thief of joy” - Theodore Roosevelt. If I notice I tend to compare myself to people I think are "successful" and when I compare myself to them I think or express something like, "I can't do that because of x, y, z," or “I’m not where they are so I’m not successful,” I can use my awareness to explore that closed belief (conscious and subconscious). Through objective reflection, I can notice the ways in which comparison limits the actions I am willing to take in the direction of my goals and dreams. After exploring where that sentiment originates, I can begin to shift it. Like the graphic above suggests, in this instance, I can remind myself that, “Everyone starts somewhere,” and ask myself, "What am I missing to do that?" or “What is success to me? How do I define success, rather than accepting society’s definition of success?” As I answer these questions, I find the weeds and fertile grounds within, from which I can move forward and expand. I will come to see that my thoughts and beliefs are what’s keeping me closed off from doing that or understanding my current success based on my definition.
Hint: the fruitful answers to these questions have you (or rather “I”) as the subject.
When we are open, which begins with an open mind, we do not resist. We are not stuck or stagnant. When we are open, we can flow in our naturally dynamic nature with life. We have a choice when it comes to how we approach life. By choosing to accept the dynamic nature of life at the macro and micro level, rather than wishing it to be how we think it should be, we free ourselves to embrace life in entirety. That is when we can learn and evolve from all as our teacher and continually expand our horizons of possibility and experience; that is a magical thing.
Life is ever changing; we can change with it or we can remain stuck by our resistance, limits, and close-mindedness. Shifting towards openness begins with awareness. When we know clearly and compassionately what and how we resist or keep ourselves closed, we can choose to open to a more expansive perspective in those situations. In those moments, when we open ourselves to that perspective, we can see lessons waiting to be learned and actions to be taken.
As we learned from Lao Tzu in Thoughts to Words, our destiny begins in our mind, with our thoughts. Our openness to life begins by cultivating an open mind. As children we were born open. As we grew older our cultures and experiences may have consciously and subconsciously directed us to close. That's no problem because with our practice of awareness we will notice the ways in which we have all closed and we can bring objective understanding and compassion to those instances and choose to open once more by taking action supported by our practices. As The Little Prince reminds us, "All grown-ups were once children... but only a few of them remember it." It is simply a matter of remembering. Our awareness directs us towards openness when that is where we point our compass. Having compassion and curiosity allow us to explore internally and externally beyond our comfort zones to tap into an experience far more expansive and lucid.
REFLECT
Answer the following questions in your notebook, a piece of paper, or record yourself talking through your answers on your phone and read over or listen to your answers when you’re done.
Dig Deep. Be honest. Be compassionate. Be objective. Take responsibility and accountability. It is of no help for us to be judgmental of ourselves or direct blame elsewhere. You got this!
1. How might closed thinking or beliefs have closed me off to experiencing life in entirety? What role does resistance play in these instances?
2. How can my practice of awareness help me shift my mindset to be more open? How will practicing awareness and continually opening my mindset shift my experiences and life? How will it feel to move through life with an ever-open mindset and the ability to recalibrate myself to this mindset when I need?
3. When do I tend to resist change and challenge? How might an open mindset help me in these instances?
4. When do I tend to stay in my comfort zone? When do I push myself beyond my comfort zone?
5. How might I benefit from moving outside my comfort zone more? Think about a time you exhibited an open mindset and moved beyond your comfort zone: What approach did I take that made me open rather than close? How can I encourage myself, in those closed moments, to move outside my comfort zone even, and especially, when it feels difficult?
6. Look back at the “Open Mindset'“ graphic in the "RE LEARN" section: What are some instances or current situations where I think or speak in a closed way like some of the examples on the graphic? What could I think or say that exhibits and aligns me with an open mindset instead? How might the outcome change if I use my awareness and reflection to shift towards openness?
7. How will continually opening my mind help me to better relate to and understand others, especially those I might not immediately think I can relate to? How does this help our world?
RE DO
Think about where you are currently stuck or stagnate.
Write an explanation of the situation.
Take a deep breath.
Align yourself with an open mindset and bring your awareness to the situation. Answer these questions objectively and compassionately:
What are the thoughts, story, and beliefs around this that keep me closed and stuck?
What else can I see about this situation when I align myself to openness and limitless possibilities?
Based on my awareness and reflection, what changes with my thinking, story, and perspective as I shift towards openness?
How do I feel as I bring awareness and openness to this situation?
Take a deep breath. Reread what you wrote down.
Now, Take a deep breath. Answer these questions:
How can I use openness to release myself from being stuck and stagnant? How does this look as a continual process (as opposed to a one-time exercise)?
What do I need to do to act in alignment with this awareness and knowing? How do I need to show up for myself and act differently?
Do one of those actions now. It doesn’t need to be a huge leap. Small daily action is more sustainable and attainable. This is just as important. We can know but it is what we do with what we know that makes a difference. This is how we challenge ourselves to get out of our comfort zones and initiate change. If you struggle to get the momentum going, count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and after 5 just act, don’t overthink it, just do.
*When you find yourself returning to a closed mindset, not taking action, or staying in your comfort zone, look at what you’ve written down. Realign with how you will feel when you take different action that is in alignment with your awareness and openness. Whenever you need to, reanswer those questions above. Focus on creating, building, and keeping momentum. If you need to, brainstorm new paths of action and even smaller steps to take so you can do something now, in the moment.
In Your Day-to-Day
Being open begins in your mind with your thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions
If you want to be open, be flexible to change; face, understand, let go of, and expand beyond your limits
To live fully means you are open to all of life, the “good” and the “bad” because you can’t have one without the other
Use your awareness to notice when you’re operating from a closed mindset and then objectively and compassionately explore, understand, and shift your thinking
Being open allows you to flow with life’s dynamic nature; it is your nature to be open - as a kid you were and you can always tap into, nurture, and increase this openness
Realign yourself with an open mindset (through the questions in RE DO) whenever you feel yourself resisting, stuck, or closed-minded in a situation
Lesson 6 // Optimism
Understand the essential role optimism plays in your mindset and how it can profoundly shift your experience and life.
RE LEARN
Before you begin: let’s take a few deep, grounding breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach, close your eyes, breathe in deep, hold, direct your awareness to your heart, and release. Repeat until you feel centered and relaxed.
We've spoken briefly about fear before in Overthinking. Fear and optimism go hand in hand because optimism is a kind of fearlessness. And fearlessness is not the absence of fear; fearlessness is the result of feeling fear and, instead of closing in the face of fear, remaining open. Like awareness and openness, optimism is something we all have that we can cultivate and strengthen through practice.
Optimism is defined as “hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.” Simply, optimism is a willingness to remain open and hopeful, even when we feel like closing. Optimism is an attitude that we can call on and nurture because, as we said before, everyone can be optimistic. Like the other mindset tools and practices we’ve discussed thus far in this framework, we have a choice. You may feel as though you only have a drop of optimism and lean towards pessimism. But by practicing awareness, pausing, and then challenging ourselves to choose to remain open when we want to close and be pessimistic, our experience will slowly shift to reflect openness and optimism. This takes fearlessness to push beyond our conditioning, habitual reactions, comfort zone, and tendencies of pessimism.
Like an open mindset, optimism is a muscle that we can strengthen. Continually exercising optimism in every way possible, especially with things that seem small and insignificant, strengthens that muscle to be strong enough for bigger things that call for optimism, like achieving your dreams or seeing the good in humanity and being hopeful about the future. Only with hope and optimism can we take steps in the direction of meaningful change and creating our lives in our authentic image. Choosing optimism empowers us to transcend our limits. When we don’t nurture our optimism, we don’t have a true North to aim for - what we aim for is perhaps “okay” or “just better,” instead of limitless possibilities. Optimism is a compass that helps us remain on our path, open to limitless possibilities better than we can even imagine, and find our way when we get lost.
We all have experiences that create reactions within us in which we close our hearts and minds in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously. In those moments, we did the best we could with what we had in order to survive and function. As we strengthen our autonomy and cultivate our awareness, curiosity, and openness, we are likely to come face to face with these experiences and the closed thoughts and beliefs that were planted as a result. Though it can be uncomfortable, this is a crucial step that allows us to pull out the weeds of these thoughts and beliefs and heal in order to continue expanding and evolving. The difference is that, this time, when we come face to face with these experiences, we have the knowledge, wisdom, tools, and practices to empower ourselves so we can remain open. We are able to give space to the experiences, which allows us to explore them with gentle honesty, to see the experience and its impact with clarity. From there, we choose to readjust our thoughts, beliefs, and patterns to open once more.
To open in the face of suffering doesn’t mean there isn't something crummy or utterly horrific that's happened. It means we refuse to be closed by it. It’s a choice we make. That is fearless optimism because it is so easy to close our minds and our hearts in the face of suffering. It is comfortable to remain in that place, to move through life perceiving everything as a threat and being closed to try to protect ourselves. But, as we've said before, life is suffering. Life is also profoundly beautiful. If we close in the face of suffering, we also close in the face of deep joy and beauty. On the other side of discomfort, on the other side of processing (and it is a continual process) in order to open, lies a world far more expansive and incredible than any closed, comfortable place. If we want to touch and experience life’s deepest mysteries and joys, then we must be open to it all.
Optimism empowers actions taken in the direction of our goals and dreams (for ourselves, our communities, and the world); it is the fuel that makes our dreams a reality because it refuses to give up the understanding that anything is possible. In the face of inevitable difficulty and roadblocks, optimism says, “we can do hard things.” Optimism is what fuels the sanity of those who seem to insanely believe in their ability to turn their hopes and dreams, their imaginations, into reality. Those who remain open and optimistic to limitless possibilities and potential understand their fundamental role in the process: that it starts at the fundamental and subtle level of the mind. They understand the role of fearlessness in their optimism; they remain open, no matter how hard it may be at times, to the infinite possibilities and promise of the present moment. Those who see this as "insane" are closed to the reality of infinite possibility, which is life itself. You get to choose which you believe.
Next time you imagine something - trying/learning something new, achieving your dream, attaining your goals - instead of perpetuating closed thinking that tells you it’s impractical, it’s impossible, CHOOSE to feed your optimism. Use your awareness to recognize the closed thinking, pause, get curious about where that thinking comes from, and once you understand it, challenge yourself to see the situation with clarity and optimism with an open mind and open heart. From there, you can determine the steps to take today in the direction of your desires. After that, it’s one foot in front of the other, getting up when you trip, patience, and enjoying the process. You don’t need to know ten steps down the road, or even three. You just need to know what you can do today to get you one step closer to the direction you’re headed.
Just as we talked about in Open Mind, as children we are optimistic dreamers. That nature is still within you. As we get older, many of us lose touch with this tendency and shift towards pessimism and settle for what is, rather than going after what can be. Maybe it’s because we don’t feel we have what we need to get to where we want to be. It becomes harder to believe in our optimism. You are older and wiser; you have the knowledge and tools to set those optimistic dreams into motion to make them your reality. It is only a matter of strengthening our awareness, openness, and optimism, which we can all choose to do. With resourcefulness, patience, and determination, we can do anything. Everything you need is within you. It may take time; it’s a process. But as we challenge the pessimistic, dream-crushing voice that closes us off and promises certainty and realism in an uncertain reality, we can allow our voice of optimism to speak and light the open way forward.
REFLECT
Answer the following questions in your notebook, a piece of paper, or record yourself talking through your answers on your phone and read over or listen to your answers when you’re done.
Dig Deep. Be honest. Be compassionate. Be objective. Take responsibility and accountability. It is of no help for us to be judgmental of ourselves or direct blame elsewhere. You got this!
1. When do I lean towards optimism? When do I lean towards pessimism? How can optimistic-empowered action shift my pessimism?
2. How has choosing to be optimistic impacted a certain situation? How can strengthening my optimism and openness positively impact me today and in the future?
3. What is an experience that I closed because of (consciously or subconsciously)? Give yourself space between you and the experience. Ground yourself in the present moment. Take a few deep breaths. Pause before thinking. Explore the experience with gentle honesty. Using my awareness, what do I learn and understand with more clarity as I explore this experience and its impact? With this awareness, what do I need to accept or make peace with to decide to open once more?
4. What kind of attitude, thinking, and beliefs do I experience when considering my dreams and goals? Does this close me off to the possibilities, put me down, or exhibit fear disguised as practicality? Does it keep me from taking action? Where and when might I have picked up this attitude? Does this align with my thoughts and beliefs today and how I want to be? How can I empower myself to take action in the direction of my dreams, how I want to be, and the limitless possibilities for the life I’m creating in my authentic image?
5. How can feeding openness and optimism help me fuel my dreams with hope and confidence? How can feeding openness and optimism help me to take empowered action? What do I need to do? What might my previous answers be telling me about what is keeping me stuck? How will my practice of openness and optimism allow me to release myself from remaining stuck?
6. How can I tap into my inner-child more to feed openness and optimism? What role does belief play in nurturing this child-like optimism? What might I need to heal in my inner-child to do so?
RE DO
Imagining with Optimism
Having a vision for our lives helps guide our actions, staying in alignment with the direction we are aiming at. Our visions can be revised and readjusted countless times. The point is having a direction to go in, to hold ourselves accountable and keep us on the path, even if the direction changes, weeds out that which contradicts and antagonizes what we value and are aiming for. As far as we know, we only get one life. It’s up to us to make the most of it, no matter where we are on our journey.
Consider your vision for your life -
Sit down and for each question, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and then ask yourself the question (out loud or in your head). Allow the answer to come from within (as opposed to any external influence or conditioning that might influence your aspirations). Maybe the answer arrises as a single word or intention from your gut or heart, as opposed to your mind. Be patient, still, and allow your imagination to run wild and show you your answers.
What do you want to do with your life? (You can even try starting at your death - How do you want to be remembered? And go from there) What do you want to experience and create?
What is the most beautiful and authentic life you can imagine? Family you can imagine? Friends you can imagine? Community you can imagine? And World you can imagine? What is your role in each of these?
It doesn’t matter how impractical, difficult, or unrealistic it may seem. Give yourself permission to be “impractical” or “unrealistic” especially if you tend to shut yourself down in the name of practicality. All that matters is that your answer is the most authentic answer for you (not what your culture, society, or even family thinks, but what resonates as being true and authentic for you).
Write down your answers in as much detail as you can - how it looks, how it feels, what it sounds like, what it would taste like, what it would smell like, think of all that you would experience, feel, and sense in this vision for your life.
After defining your vision for your life, answer the following questions:
How can I take charge of my life and see this vision as the outline for my life, not just some unrealistic fantasy?
What would it feel like to believe these aren’t just unrealistic fantasies but they are the outlines for my life? What would it look like to exercise optimism and follow this outline?
What action do I need to take, what changes might I need to make to make this possible? What are small daily steps I can take in the directions of my vision?
Take it a step further: make a vision board
If you feel inspired by this exercise, make a visual collage of images that represent what you’ve written down - goals, people, quotes, anything that resonates with you and your vision. You can do this digitally or physically by printing or cutting out images and collaging them on a board. However you prefer, put your board somewhere you will see it multiple times a day - set it as the wallpaper on your phone, computer, and/or tablet; hang it somewhere prominent as a beautiful piece of art.
For more on the power of vision boards and how to make one, listen to this episode of As It Goes →
Otherwise, take what you’ve written or rewrite it on a separate piece of paper and hang it somewhere you’ll see it often to keep you aligned with your vision.
__________
A note for when the fear creeps in and tempts you to close you... You are daring to play big, to be courageous and fearless, and optimistically follow your outline for your life. That is your responsibility to yourself. The most empowering thing is that you are the one who can make it all possible. You are also the one who can keep you from realizing your vision. The choice is yours. Feel the fear and act in alignment with your vision anyway. That is fearlessness. That is courage. That is optimism. That is ownership and empowerment.
You can dare to play as big as the visions of your dreams written here. With awareness, space, and openness, you can catch yourself when you’re thinking pessimistically about a situation or the future, see it with gentleness and explore it for clarity, release it, and feed optimism.
The more action we take in alignment with openness, optimism, and courage, the stronger those muscles become and the easier it is to exercise them. The more we understand our thinking, patterns, and beliefs (conscious and subconscious) the more we can cultivate the mindset we want. The more frequently we turn to optimism, the more it becomes our default mode of thinking.
This exercises was inspired, in part by Untamed by Glennon Doyle.
In Your Day-to-Day
When you choose to remain open when feeling fearful or pessimistic, your world will shift to reflect that openness and optimism
The more you exercise optimism, in micro and macro ways, the stronger a muscle it is as it becomes your default mode
Optimism empowers you to transcend limits, change and stay on your path, and be open to all the possibilities
Your optimism helps you face the ways you’ve closed your heart and mind, give space to those experiences, understand them, reframe your thoughts, beliefs, and patterns, and open once more
Being optimistic fuels your continual ability to take the necessary actions to make your life in your authentic image; it’s just one step at a time
Use your vision for the future (and your vision board if you make one) to help keep you on your path, discerning what does and doesn’t align to your authentic image and direction with optimism and trust as your compass
Every few months, year (or so, whatever feels right for you) check in with your vision and realign, readjust to keep the momentum going
Lesson 7 // Nurturing the Garden
Learn how to continually nourish your mindset throughout the day to stay on your path, empower your well-being, and evolve.
RE LEARN
Before you begin: let’s take a few deep, grounding breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach, close your eyes, breathe in deep, hold, direct your awareness to your heart, and release. Repeat until you feel centered and relaxed.
Based on the nature of your thoughts, it may feel as though you are at war with yourself. It certainly feels this way when the voice in our head is telling self-deprecating, limiting, or negative stories. It doesn't have to be or stay this way. We can use our thoughts to keep watering ourselves, to keep ourselves growing. Throughout this workshop, we have discussed perspectives, practices, and tools we can establish and use to continually shift our state of mind and our mindset. We can end the internal war by befriending ourselves and acting in alignment with our inner knowing, our unique path, and our vision for our lives. Because when our thoughts, words, actions, habits, and character are all aligned in this direction, it becomes our destiny.
Instead of being at war with our thoughts and our mind, we can be a team, working together to pull out the weeds of closed, limiting thinking and plant more flowers. We are the captain of this team; it's up to us to fuel our team with the nutrients it needs to perform its best, especially on the days when we feel even more challenged to do so. When we master our minds, we are able to use them as tools for our own purpose instead of being enslaved by them. Mastery is the result of continued practice, trial and error, awareness, space, gentleness, and continually going within and watering ourselves.
Remaining connected with our hearts and our internal guidance is essential. When we practice awareness, pausing, and opening, we can be sure to align our mind with our heart, our actions with our internal guidance. Through consistent reflection and practice, we cultivate a heart-centered mindset, a mindset aligned with and empowered by our heart and internal guidance. You - your inner knowing, your internal guidance, that voice deep inside of you - is one of your greatest assets. When listen to this voice and knowing and we are aware, open, and optimistic, we are connected to the vast, limitless potential within ourselves and throughout our lives.
Thus, the key is consistency - consistently nurturing the garden of our minds, and in doing so, the garden of possibility for our lives and the world. As we remain attuned to the micro and macro adjustments being called for from within, knowing the voice and queues of our inner guidance, we take action that nourishes us to flourish. It's not even as big and overwhelming as it might sound. That's because it all comes down to our small, daily actions.
The more we break it down to the micro level and micro adjustments, the less overwhelming the task at hand is. Thus, we nourish our mind by actively setting and resetting it throughout the day with deliberate tools and practices that meet our needs for that day and season of our lives. With our consistent awareness, and pauses, we choose what we set our mind to. The previous lessons taught us ways to set our mind in the most productive, peaceful, and empowering place. In doing so, we can be more present and less caught up throughout the day; we can deeply enjoy life, in the present moment, with its inevitable ups and downs. With a mindset that is our own choosing, there is nothing we cannot face and overcome.
To grow a garden in our mind instead of weeds is an active, daily practice, and so, it begins each morning when we wake up and continues throughout the day when difficulties arise. On the days we lack motivation, we use our discipline as a way to give ourselves what we need, knowing that on these days, we need our daily practice even more.
1. Gratitude:
There are many thoughts that may flutter into your mind as you open your eyes. Actively make one of those thoughts a thought of gratitude. There are many things you may be grateful for, one obvious one is: I am grateful I woke up, that I’ve been given another day to live. You can go a step further and set intentions for the day by saying, "today is going to be a good day (or the best day)!" And just give yourself some space to allow those feelings to sink in and energize you.
Beginning your day with gratitude sets the tone for your day. How can you take the day for granted if you consciously acknowledge how grateful you are to have another day to live? Something as simple and small as expressing gratitude and setting an intention for the day fuels us to move through the day with excitement, openness, gratitude, and eagerness to make the most of the day in the direction of our choosing. This is a small, daily action that reverberates and empowers our active role in our day.
As you move through your day, if things start to feel chaotic or overwhelming, remember your gratitude from the morning (or express gratitude regarding your present moment) and let it fill you with the perspective granted by appreciation. By aligning your attitude with gratitude and optimism, it aligns you with the truth that - it's not so much what we look at, as it is what we see.
2. Positive affirmations:
After you say your gratitude, use affirmations to fill yourself up and actively and intentionally exercise your muscles of openness and optimism and connect with your heart and inner guidance.
Having a list of affirmations somewhere you can easily access them (in your notebook) or memorizing a few that really empower you allows you to actively set the tone for your day in the direction of your choosing. This empowers your centeredness and perspective throughout the day, regardless of what may arise. Furthermore, each morning we repeat these affirmations, we are reaffirming our alignment to them, solidifying them as part of our mindset and experience.
Repeat your affirmations out loud as you visualize and feel them energizing you with what you are affirming. You can also look yourself in the eyes in the mirror and say them. This is a powerful way to feel like you are lifting yourself up and that you are on your team rather than fighting against yourself. If you notice you’re struggling with a specific detrimental thought or belief, come up with an affirmation in the moment to counter it.
You can carry your affirmations with you throughout the day and utilize them whenever you feel yourself closing. Doing so allows us to keep going, to be the captain and cheerleader of our team.
3. Moving through the day with Awareness:
As we discussed, awareness is the first step in cultivating our mindset. Whether it’s strengthening our awareness through the practices offered with each RE DO throughout the workshop or simply (and importantly) noticing the nature of our thoughts and speech, bringing awareness to these things throughout the day is empowering.
It is our awareness that provides insight, gives us space to pause, and allows us to reposition ourselves throughout the day in alignment with openness to nurture not only our garden, but everything we do and everyone we cross paths with.
4. Taking a pause:
With this heightened awareness it may become apparent that there are external sources of negativity in our lives as well as internal ones. Anything outside of ourselves and our actions is out of our control. We can control our actions and responses, such as who we follow on social media, the news we choose to consume, and the people we choose to spend time with. Simply notice and take inventory of the external sources of negativity in your life. When you experience negativity, how does it make you feel? Does it make you want to continue to allow negativity to live inside of you and disturb your inner peace or does it empower you to continue cultivating your inner sanctuary and shifting away from all sources of negativity within and around yourself? How can you make a game out of these experiences, challenging yourself to respond differently and see a lesson to be learned each time?
When your awareness brings you face to face with thoughts, beliefs, or patterns that no longer serve you, pause. Take some deep breaths to center yourself, refrain from reacting, and instead, invite yourself to see things through a new lens - one of objective honesty, compassion, and curiosity (this could be for yourself or someone else). If you’re not ready to look through that new lens, just giving yourself space and time to sit with it is enough. From here you can recalibrate your response in accordance with the openness that results from your introspection. Pausing allows us to put enough time and space between what happened and how we act so that we can see things with a clear perspective and respond instead of reacting out of habit or unconscious patterns and beliefs.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Viktor Frankl
5. Explore & Open:
As you move through your day, present and aware, taking pauses as you notice yourself about to react rather than respond or making unconscious, mindless decisions and actions, take a moment to explore what's going on in your mind and body. Allow yourself to explore, feel, and understand what you’re experiencing. Ask yourself those inquisitive questions:
What else can I see about this situation?
Based on my awareness and reflection, what changes with that thinking, narrative, and perspective as it shifts towards openness?
Use those insights to guide you to open in that situation; and then shift to openness. Feel the release as you choose to open. Use your presence, awareness, and pauses to remain open and present throughout the day. Respond and act differently when your awareness indicates a pattern surfacing that no longer serves you or those around you.
6. Movement:
Movement is a gift we give our bodies that helps us connect with ourselves in our bodies. It also is a gift to elevate our mood. Our bodies are not meant to be sedentary for so many hours of the day. Treat yourself to a daily walk outside, start your day dancing through your morning routine to your favourite music, stretch, try new forms of movement, and do whatever form of movement that feels good to you.
Making it a point to have a form of movement for the day releases chemicals that make you feel good and nourishes your well-being, which will help as you balance and rebalance your mind throughout the day.
7. Gratitude:
Ending the day with gratitude is a great way to reflect on the day and see good in whatever happened. Again, it’s not what we look at, but what we see - challenge yourself to see good, to see a lesson. Some days it’s easier than others, but there are always at least two things we can find from our day to be grateful for. When we shift our perspective and attitude to empower gratitude, we witness our world open up to us and expand in every direction. We witness how blessed and abundant with miracles our lives truly are.
It’s also a great way to put the day down and let it go. Tomorrow is a new day, full of new opportunities, and new discoveries. Processing the day as you need allows you to leave yesterday to yesterday so that you can be present and open to all that today has to offer!
*A note on rest: As we grow increasingly more present and conscious in each moment of our lives, we may feel as though we need more rest. We may simply be more mindful and aware of our bodies’ communicating to us their need for rest that has always been there. Whatever it is, be sure to make space for stillness, without stimulation, to get the necessary rest throughout your day. Rest is productive; it keeps us from burning out and supports our well-being and work as we nourish the garden of our minds.
REFLECT
Answer the following questions in your notebook, a piece of paper, or record yourself talking through your answers on your phone and read over or listen to your answers when you’re done.
Dig Deep. Be honest. Be compassionate. Be objective. Take responsibility and accountability. It is of no help for us to be judgmental of ourselves or direct blame elsewhere. You got this!
1. When is it hard for me to "befriend" myself? How do I put myself down, limit myself, talk to myself in ways I wouldn't speak to anyone else? When am I a friend to myself? When is it easy for me to "befriend" myself? How can I nurture my friendship with myself more? Why will this positively impact my experiences, relationships, and life?
2. How connected am I to my heart and internal guidance? Do I check in with them constantly or do I wait until the pings of my heart/internal guidance become sirens that I can no longer ignore? When has it hurt me to not listen to and act in alignment with my inner guidance? When have I benefited from listening to and acting in alignment with my inner guidance? Do I balance logic and my inner guidance? When could I call on logic more? When could I call on my inner guidance more?
3. When and how do I struggle with consistency? When am I too loose with holding myself accountable and remaining consistent? When am I too tight? How can consistency, discipline, and compassion help me to find the middle balance?
4. How can seeing each moment throughout the day as an opportunity to practice my active, daily nurturing of my mindset, awareness, and openness shift how I move through the day? What do I need to do more to support this? What do I need to do less to support this?
5. Which of the seven practices (morning gratitude, affirmations, awareness, pausing, exploring & opening, movement, and evening gratitude) do I feel most drawn to practice? What do I need more of in my day? Why is it important and impactful to practice these things throughout the day? How will I (and those around me) benefit?
6. How do I tend to describe my day, my feelings, and my experiences (negatively, positively)? How might practicing awareness and openness throughout my day shift this?
7. What are the negative influences in my life? (Remember we are as much ourselves as we are the sum of the 5 people we spend the most time with! You have every right to decide who has access to your energy.) What boundaries do I need to set and honour throughout my day in order to feed my well-being and evolution?
RE DO
Morning & Evening Routine (and Practices)
First take a moment to consider:
What are my habits when I wake up in the morning? Do I honour that space and time for how important it is in setting the tone of my day, my attitude, and my mind? What do I do in the morning that feeds gratitude, positivity, awareness, and openness? What do I do in the morning that undermines those things, the foundation for a strong center throughout the day no matter which way the wind blows?
What are my habits in the evening before going to bed? Do I honour that space and time for how important it is to process and end my day and come home to myself? What do I do in the evenings that feeds gratitude, connecting with myself, awareness, and reflection? What do I do in the evening that undermines those things, my foundation?
Now let's do something different!
(Write down the following in your notebook to bring with you into your PM & AM routines, so you don't need to check back here with what to do)
Tonight, wind down and get cozy in bed at a reasonable hour to set you up for a restorative night's rest:
1. Leave your phone (computer, tablet, etc.) in your bathroom or another room (or in a drawer... out of sight, out of mind) so you're not tempted to interrupt this vital you-time. (If you need an alarm, make arrangements so that you can still hear it and you will have enough time to move through your morning with ease and peace without the interruption of your phone – remember, solutions, not excuses.)
2. Express the two things you’re grateful for that happened today. You can start a list in your journal where you'll write them down for the entire month.
3. Write out a list of positive affirmations that you can say in the morning that make you feel empowered. If there is a quote that you think reading in the morning will help set your day up well, write that there too! Let these come from your heart, from what you're welcoming into your life, what you feel you need more of.
4. Connect with yourself before falling asleep. This is your time to put the day down, however you might need to, to write and reflect (what made today great? what could I have done better?), to connect back to yourself, to imagine and dream, and to drift off into a restorative sleep.
5. If you find you have trouble falling asleep (some factors you might find are relieved by the routine above such as anxiety - as a result of journaling and reflection helping put it all down for the night or no longer being on technology before bed - the light disrupts our sleep rhythm): do a body scan. Starting at your head, with your eyes, your ears, your nose, and your jaw, imagine, feel, and release tension as you envision sleep washing over each nook and cranny of your body as you move all the way down to your toes.
*Note: be honest with yourself about the balance you need with your technology. Everyone is different. As Prince reminded us in 1999, “It's cool to use the computer, don't let the computer use you.” Some of us need to be more tight with this during our routines as we establish healthy boundaries, others already have a balance between themselves and their technology. You can also re-empower your technology as a tool that works for you by listening to different frequencies during this time! You can find these in our Spotify playlist Presence or on our Pinterest board Watch. There are 9 different Solfeggio frequencies you can listen to that serve different purposes - enjoy and explore which resonate most with you each day.
When you wake up:
1. Take a few deep breaths. Don’t be in a rush! Maybe even remind yourself, "there is no rush." This moment is the only moment you're in - live it fully, be present for it.
2. Express your gratitude. State your intention for the day.
3. Take a few moments to connect back with your body and stretch, feel the life pulse into your feet, your legs, your stomach, your heart, your arms, your fingers, your head, behind your eyes, your ears.
4. If you’ve placed something by your bed to read - go ahead and read it slowly, savor every word, and take it to heart. Allow its meaning to fill you with meaning and purpose to move throughout your day with.
5. Say your affirmations out loud. You can sit on the floor or in front of the mirror, whatever resonates for you. If you have a meditation practice or would like to begin one, this is a great time to do so (hint: you’ve done a meditation exercise with our “thinking” practice. you don’t even need an app - just use your breath and repeat that practice).
6. Pour yourself a glass of water, bring it outside, and take in the new day. Connecting with nature is a great way to feel good and start the day. Practice distant looking - all day we look at the things right in front of us, our phones, our computers, books, etc. (in a way, this closes us off to all that expands beyond) so start your morning by looking out, observe the trees, the horizon, the sun, the clouds. This helps us feed openness and nurture an open perspective to all we encounter throughout the day. (Practicing distant looking at the end of the day or at night is a great way to, again, reconnect with this calming perspective.)
*Most importantly, give yourself at least 30 minutes before you check your phone. If you want to play music in the morning, change your notification settings so that they aren't tempting you to check them. Setting boundaries that work for you is so important. This time is sacred. It’s setting your energy, mindset, and foundation for the day. What is really more important? What can’t wait until after that?
By building a foundation of intention, gratitude, positive affirmations, and connection within, you are setting yourself up to move through the day with this solid foundation. (Whereas if we start our day by reaching for our phone, we are immediately taking in what everyone else has to say, we are at the will of everyone else rather than empowering ourselves to start our day with a solid foundation in ourselves.)
As you move through the day, implementing the seven practices (morning gratitude, affirmations, awareness, pausing, exploring & opening, movement, and evening gratitude) you've decided to utilize, make note (in your notebook or on your phone) of what's working and why, how it makes you feel. This can help solidify these practices as consistent ways to nourish and support your well-being, especially when you feel yourself slipping off them.
If you find you're really struggling with your thoughts and negative self-talk, try keeping a thought journal – write down your thoughts throughout the day. At the end of the day you will have an objective representation of your thoughts, you can notice patterns, triggers, etc. As you look over your thoughts, get curious, ask yourself, “Is this the environment I truly want my head to be in? What do I need to feed to shift these thoughts? What is at the root of these thoughts? Where do they come from?”
Nurturing a garden is the result of intention, presence, and conscious living. Take those pauses to check-in with yourself throughout the day, no matter how small a decision or action might seem, to ask yourself if this is really what you want, strengthens your intention and conscious actions. From maintaining the health of your body by choosing nourishing food for energy and movement to keep to engine running smoothly to spending less time on your phone and more time in your physical reality, use your awareness to notice, be compassionate and honest about what's working and what's not, and act in alignment with what you know.
At the end of the day: reflect on how you felt having a day full of intention and awareness.
Determine what worked, what didn’t work so well, make adjustments for tomorrow and continue to establish and evolve a solid morning and evening routine that nurtures your foundation within.
Here are some brilliant reflection questions from Brad Falchuk you can ask yourself as you lay in bed at the end of the day:
Have I contracted or expanded because of my thoughts and actions today?
Has my family contracted or expanded because of my thoughts and actions today?
Has my community contracted or expanded because of my thoughts and actions today?
Has the world and humanity contracted or expanded because of my thoughts and actions today?
"The secret to your future is hidden in your daily routine." - Mike Murdock
Don't forget: consistency is key.
In Your Day-to-Day
Mastering your mindset is the result of continually nurturing the garden in your mind with your practices, when you need them and when it feels like smooth sailing
Use the 7 practices (morning gratitude, affirmations, awareness, pausing, exploring & opening, movement, and evening gratitude) and be open to new practices to actively nourish your mind and well-being, setting and resetting it throughout the day
Just as in RE DO, establish a morning and evening routine for your well-being to take full ownership of the essential, active role you play in your life, presence, and intentionality
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle; use your awareness and be decisive about what you do (and think), empowering your well-being and evolution with aligned actions and thoughts and weeding out what antagonizes you
Review
Congratulations! You've completed the Mindset Workshop!
If you wrote down your answers to the REFLECT sections, this is a great opportunity to go back and highlight/underline what it is you will work on next, themes that are repeated, etc. Perhaps you want to make a list of these few things and prioritize them. From there, think of one action for each area you want to work on that you will do to make positive change. It may be exploring and healing in these areas (which our other workshops can guide you through) or coming up with a converse action, such as, if I noticed reactivity come up a lot, I’m going to pause long enough to respond, instead.
To empower you in this, let's briefly review what we've learned in this workshop...
"Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.” - Osho. Our conscious and subconscious thoughts are powerful entities. They shape our perception and experience of reality. The brain develops patterns of thinking based on repetition. These patterns affect our communication, actions, habits, behavior, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, and emotions. Playing an active role in shaping our minds' is essential. From our awareness and active role, we choose the mindset we cultivate. With our constant and consistent effort, we break free of old patterns and beliefs. As Erica Spiegelman reminds us in The Rewired Life, “by mastering your mind, you master your life.”
We can get so caught up in our thinking that we close ourselves to the vastness of life, and the present moment. We forget that we are the observer, not the thoughts themselves nor the emotions they evoke. We are simply the observer, the thinker, the feeler, the experiencer. By practicing awareness, we are able to position ourselves once more as the observer. Awareness helps us cultivate our ability to put distance between our thoughts and ourselves; we find our way out when we utilize awareness when we are caught up and feel ourselves closing.
Overthinking may give us the illusion of control. By constantly replaying and relaying thoughts or a situation in our head, we actually intensify the discomfort associated with this experience. It fans the flames of our discomfort. With our awareness, we can bring ourselves back from our overthinking and worrying. From there, we can ground ourselves in the present moment, take inventory of our thoughts, our feelings, and sit with the discomfort, rather than fanning it. When we give ourselves the space and compassion to get to know our discomfort, oftentimes we will discover things about this discomfort. Perhaps the story we were telling ourselves was far off from reality or perhaps there's a lesson to be learned (there's always a lesson when we open ourselves to everything as a teacher and fuel for our evolution).
Lao Tzu reminds us, “Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they become character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” Our destiny begins with our thoughts. What we say becomes what we do. The more we practice awareness, and in practicing, strengthen our awareness, the more our thoughts, words, actions, habits, and character can shift into alignment with openness.
Openness, to life itself, begins with an openness in our mind, with our conscious and subconscious thoughts, beliefs, and patterns. We can approach life with a mindset that accepts the duality of life, the inevitable change and challenges. We can embrace everything as a teacher and an opportunity to learn and evolve. We can sit with discomfort, befriend it as the teacher it is, and curiously explore the lessons and reflection it offers to us. We can reprogram our minds in alignment with openness in the direction of our choosing through our practices we’ve cultivated in this workshop.
Optimism is a willingness to remain open when we feel like closing. Optimism is an attitude that we can call on and nurture because, as we said before, everyone has optimism. Optimism empowers actions taken in the direction of your dreams (be those for yourself, your community, or the world); it is the fuel to making your dreams a reality because it refuses to give up the knowledge that anything is possible.
Nurturing the garden of our minds and the foundation of intention and conscious living is the result of small, daily actions. It is a practice that is strengthened with consistency.
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And let’s review the practices we've picked up to nurture the garden of our minds... (In your notebook, write down the practice that you found useful so you have them readily accessible)
"Thinking": Sit quietly in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and draw your focus to your breath. With every breath, try to touch it, be aware of it, follow it in and out of your body. As you continue to sit and breathe, thoughts will float into your awareness. When they come in, be aware of them, recognize them, and in a compassionate and understanding tone remind yourself, "thinking." Return your focus to your breathing. Each time a new thought arises say to yourself "thinking," and return your awareness to your breath.
When you're experiencing an unproductive, repetitive, or negative thought, pattern, or belief: Take a deep breath. Acknowledge that you are aware of your thoughts and can detach from the thought you are holding onto, just like in the canoe, we can cling and we can flow. Explore where that thought originates from compassionately and honestly. Replace it with two or three Positive Affirmations.
Or if you're experiencing an event, situation, fear, or worry: Get curious about it. Explore your discomfort - Ask yourself some questions and be compassionately honest... How am I feeling right now? Why do I feel this way? What might my feelings be communicating to me? How am I thinking about this that is causing me more discomfort? Why am I thinking this way? What are my feelings and thoughts telling me about how I am showing up in this situation that might need to change? Are these thoughts communicating any subconscious ideas, beliefs, or patterns that are perpetuated yet no longer serve me? Where might these have originated from? Why will releasing these help me? What can I do to starve this subconscious thinking? How can I nourish the flowers instead of the weeds in this situation? Now, how am I feeling?
Zero Complaints for 24 Hours! Shift your focus on all that you have to be grateful for. When we use our awareness in situations when we find ourselves complaining, we can acknowledge things that need a productive solution. With our ability to be aware, pause, and take inventory of the entire situation, we can openly, compassionately, and productively move forward for resolution.
When you find yourself stuck in a closed mindset, Align with an Open Mindset: Ask yourself... What are the thoughts and narrative around this that keep me closed and stuck? With my awareness and openness, what else can I see about this situation? Based on my awareness and reflection, what changes with that thinking, narrative, and perspective as it shifts towards openness? How does it feel to bring awareness and openness to this? Take a deep breath. Reread what you wrote down. Now, Take a deep breath. Answer these questions... How can I use openness to release myself from being stuck and stagnant? What do I need to do to act in alignment with this awareness and knowing? How do I need to act differently? Take action.
Defining (checking-in with, redefining) and acting in alignment with the Vision for Your Life: the truest, most beautiful life you can imagine, family, friends, community, and world. Once we get clear about these outlines for our lives, the choice is clear and it's completely up to us. Follow the outline and act in alignment with your visions to make them your reality.
To Nurture Your Garden throughout your day we have 7 practices: morning gratitude, affirmations, awareness, pausing, exploring & opening, movement, and evening gratitude. This is also the result of creating a structured, deliberate morning and evening routine for ourselves based on our own needs, feedback, and internal guidance. Figure out what works and what doesn't, what you need, add to it, detract from it, but be sure to carve out sacred time for yourself in the morning and the evening to nurture your foundation within.
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Depending on where you are in your journey, you may feel as though or find that maintaining this mindset, these perspectives, and these practices is a challenge - almost as if you’re rolling an enormous rock up a hill only to have it roll back down every time it’s almost at the top. There are many reasons we can feel like this. It is a challenge, but one that with consistency we succeed at. The point is that we don’t stop. The other moving piece here is that there is likely a lot more for you to unpack - in your mind and heart. We recommend that you utilize our “Heal” workshop in the Soul series. This workshop will significantly support you in maintaining and evolving your mindset by guiding you through an exploration of your experiences and providing a framework to compassionately understand the ways in which these experiences impacted you, your authenticity, and your patterns of behavior and beliefs that no longer serve you for acceptance, forgiveness, release, and deep healing so you can better know and meet your needs in alignment with your authentic vision for your life.
Thank you for nurturing your garden with this workshop. RE SELF appreciates and honours the privilege of walking with you on your journey. A few things before you go:
To measure the changes in your mindset from the workshop, take this quick Post-Workshop assessment →
To compare the answers between your pre- and post-workshop assessments, you received copies of your responses to the email provided.
We would be grateful if you would complete a short survey on your experience to help future RE SELF users here →
To dive deeper, explore more resources and practices, and stay on the path and keep evolving, listen to As It Goes and check out our resource Library →
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