Like little boats on a stream – practicing mindfulness everyday.

One of my favourite topics to read about and experiment with is mindfulness and meditative breathing. One of the most important imagery tools I've found involves disconnecting myself from my thoughts and just watching them as if they were seated on individual tiny boats floating along a stream. It's extremely grounding.

To practice this, find a quiet room and take a seat in a comfortable position and just feel yourself breathing (deep, abdominal breathing!). Try to see your thoughts as their own entities, floating by on boats. Do not engage the thoughts, just watch them. It will be difficult at first, you will find yourself analyzing why your friend said that thing the other night, or the argument you had with your partner this morning. When you notice that you have begun to engage the thought, gently bring yourself back to the shoreline by counting down from 10 slowly.

          Then stay again with the moment on the shoreline, watching but not boarding, all the thought-boats floating by.

It will be hard in the beginning as we are so used to just constantly thinking and over-thinking, ie: worrying. But the more you practice, the easier it will be to maintain a mindful state. This is only one aspect of attaining and seeking mindfulness in your life, but it’s helpful to think about your thoughts as things you can choose to think.

By imagining thoughts being physical beings, it makes it easier to push negative ones away. Pair this imagery-tool with the thought-monitoring concept. It will help you manage your anxious or depressing thoughts.

                                                                 Conquer on!

 If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to Conquer The Clouds

Motivating and encouraging statements!

It’s been a long week here for me, and I have been feeling the strain of too much work, and not enough play! I hope you’ve all kept up with this week’s challenge. Don’t fret if you haven’t, but check out this page to see what you’ve been missing out on!

I’ve been dealing with the resurgence of rush-hour after work again as people return from holidays, going back to work and school... I find it pressing on my ability to stay excited about my projects at home when I think about how long it's going to take to get there after work...

So that put me in mind to write down some of the motivating thoughts that I incorporate to stay on top of my projects! These may be relevant and helpful to others if they are slipping into The Spiral.

I have little notes written to myself in various places – I have one that I see almost every morning, as a matter of fact, sitting in my bathroom on a piece of decorative wood. It stares at me, and forces me to read the words. Whether I believe it is irrelevant. Just that it’s there and the words are visible and it’s written in first person embeds it into my mind.

                                                         "Today is yours. Take it!"

It’s scribbled on a piece of yellow envelope.

That is one of a few things that I say/think to myself to keep me going for my goals!

Here is a list of a few others that you can write on a credit-card sized piece of paper and tuck into your wallet. Also, feel free (if permitted) to write little messages to yourself on your mirror, or window even! If you write on little sticky notes, tape them to surfaces you see regularly, like the side of your computer monitor, or spots near your desk at work.

Here are some positive thoughts and motivating ideas to start you off! Write down as many as you like, come up with more, and spread them around your life!

You are awesome, so start acting like it.

·         This might suck but I can do it! (I use this one a for things I might not necessarily want to be doing!)

o   This is important if you find it hard to keep going or you think you are alone in your coping. If it is the daily rigors of life and work that get you down, remember you definitely aren’t alone. It might suck, but you are DOING IT!

·         I am worth my time and effort!

·         This will not kill me; it hasn’t yet!

·         This thought is not reality, it is in my mind!

·         I can choose how I react to these thoughts; I am not at the mercy of my thoughts! (this is very important because it permits a feeling of control, and it’s true – you are in control of your reactions. This is a particularly empowering thought if you feel overwhelmed).

·         This might be scary but I can get through it.

·         Analysis is Paralysis. (this one is VERY important for people who tend to brood on things and situations)

·         Refocus: stay in the present and stay focused. Deal with things when they come.

·         Today is a new day.

·         Only you can heal your life.

·         I am still me.

·         I am allowed to feel overwhelmed. It doesn’t make me less of a person.  (If you find yourself wanting/needing to use this one often, it could be indicative that you may need to take stock of your life and see whether you have too many things on the go!)

·         Seek the opportunity in the situation, not the obstacle. (This will help you to refocus on potentially positive aspects of any situation. There can be obstacles wherever you look and if you focus on them, that’s all you will ever get – more obstacles. What you focus on tends to increase in your life. If you refocus onto the opportunities present, you will begin to see more positively.)

·         This will not be forever.

Please share any positive thoughts or motivating statements that you use or think could be useful! 

                                                          Conquer on!

Other topics you may be interested in:

What motivates you?

Overwhelmed?- Carve a staircase out of a wall!

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to Conquer The Clouds

Weekly Challenge 3 - Week of January 1 – 7

Weekly Challenge 3 - Week of January 1 – 7

Happy New Year and welcome to 2012!

Today is the start of the third Conqueror's Weekly Challenge! I hope you enjoyed last week’s challenge! If you have just started reading, see this page to see what you have been missing out on!

Now that I have used up my daily allotment of exclamation points (!) let’s discuss the challenge this week.

In your new wellness project or on a piece of paper (or even on your bathroom or hallway mirror!) write down 10 things that you enjoy doing or used to enjoy doing. They can be as simple as watching a movie, or jogging/walking with your dog; or they can include traveling and writing books. After thinking about these positive things I want you to commit to doing at least one of them this week. Choose one that you haven’t been able to incorporate into your life for a while, it will make it more rewarding. If you are feeling up to it, incorporate 2 or more of your activities or things on your list into your life this week. It might even be fun if you and your spouse or friend came up with lists of things to do together that you haven’t done in a while, and do them together (like going for dinner, or walks together).

One of the most difficult things about coping with anxiety and depression is that it robs you of your ability to see the pleasurable things in life, or enjoy the fun things that you do or used to do. When negative thinking and associations colour your perspective, it’s no wonder that even gathering the motivation to do something fun is hard.

The challenge this week is to turn the wheel the other way, out of the negative patterns of thinking, and force yourselves (doesn’t sound very fun...) to at least do things that used to be enjoyable.

What generally tends to occur when someone is experiencing heightened levels of anxiety, or a low pit of despair and depression is that they recoil into themselves and shut out the world. It might be hard for someone who is introverted to know when they are withdrawing from their passion because they tend to enjoy solitude over the company of others, however, if you are feeling hopeless and lonely when you would usually feel enlivened and energetic in your own company, you might be sliding down into a depression trough (like the waves of an ocean).

 Recovery from depression and anxiety is hard work. There is no "cure" because it's not an illness with one list of symptomology. It's a large body-system reaction to prolonged stress and internal and external cues and events. Everyone's symptoms are different but there are some similar experiences. And you can reach the point where you can enjoy life and your successes. Many people have trouble with depression and anxiety at some point in their life; knowing how to cope with it is what makes the difference between someone who suffers and someone who conquers. I am not trying to say someone who has depression or anxiety is lesser than someone who doesn’t - not at all! What I am saying is that the perspective of someone who is in the throes of anxiety/depression is very different from someone who isn’t.

The challenge this week will help you to modify your behaviour to break you out of your shell and get out into the world a bit more. It may be hard at first, but if you take it slow and take small steps at a time, it will be a manageable and rewarding experience. Having fun when you feel awful is not going to be easy, so don't feel hard on yourself if you aren't laughing and giddy when doing the things you used to enjoy doing. The key here is just to get back into the swing of doing enjoyable hobbies and activities. You might find you feel more refreshed afterward. Also, this challenge gives you the opportunity to connect with others in a meaningful way. Perhaps you enjoy or used to enjoy speaking with your friends and family over the phone or on Skype. Maybe you can go for a coffee or walk and talk about the positive things in your life. It is important to stay connected.

If going out and doing one of the ten things on your list is too difficult at this point, drop it down a notch and work at compiling a list of happy and inspiring things - 10 or as many as you can think of. The action alone of thinking about happy things will be positive and inspiring. Eventually you can work your way up to completing one of the ten (or more) on your list.

                                                             Conquer on!

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to Conquer The Clouds

13 Beliefs to disbelieve!

Today I will discuss distorted beliefs and how they may be influencing your behaviour.  I am including an exercise to complete, as well!(don't worry, it's kind of fun and very enlightening!)

            Distorted beliefs are rules and principles we follow that are incorrect or unhelpful. We learn many of our beliefs from our family and culture, and inevitably some of them aren’t helpful. By following my tips on thought monitoring you’ll be able to catch yourself automatically acting on your ingrained distorted beliefs. Thought monitoring can also help you discover where your own distorted beliefs lie: they vary from person to person, and most, if not all, people have them.

            Following the instructions is a list of common distorted beliefs, as originally identified by Albert Ellis (a psychologist from the ‘50’s who founded Cognitive Behavioural therapies).

Grab a piece of paper and a pen – make two columns; one will be your thought perspective, the other will be your behaviour perspective. As you read through this list and its descriptions for each point, write a number from 0 to 10 beside each letter. 0 means untrue where 10 means true.

Example:         E. I am only worthwhile as long as I am doing something for someone else.

Thought perspective                            Behaviour Perspective

                                    0                                                          5

This means that you consciously do not believe this statement, but your behaviour shows that you do – at least 50% of the time.

Continue in this manner for every thought, and at the end, make special note of any that you marked 6-10 for in the behaviour column – these are your distorted beliefs.

            You may notice qualities of friends or family as you read through the list and its description here.

           

1. Life is fair.

This is probably one of the most difficult to deal with as we were all raised being told to be fair, and told how fairness and honesty were most admirable. Then of course, we logically assume that life will be fair to us as well. Well – if you truly believe this distortion then you will feel guilty when bad things happen to you. Your logic being that you must have deserved the ill-fate (because everything is ‘fair’, right?). In order to challenge this distortion, you must work at accepting that the world isn’t always fair – in order to prevent the shock when unfair things occur.

2. Everything I do must be perfect – or else I am a failure

This is the driver of perfectionism.  There is importance to realizing that no one or thing is perfect and most of the things that humans do are imperfect in some way. The problem with perfection and requiring it to be ‘happy’ is that you’ll never be good enough and therefore never really be satisfied with your efforts. Keep reading here on Conquer the Clouds and we will address the issue of perfectionism in a future article!

3. I have to do everything I am asked to do.

Control of your actions tends to be in the hands of other people and you will often feel taken-advantage of, as well as resentful of those who ask you favours constantly. Learning to be more assertive will help you challenge this belief. Look for an upcoming article on being assertive!

4. If others disagree with me, then I must be wrong.

The questions to ask yourself when determining whether you follow this distorted belief are these: do you wait for others to express their opinions before sharing your ideas? If they describe different thoughts than you, do you feel embarrassed or feel like changing your opinion? Do you feel you have a right to have your own, separate opinion?  By having respect for your own thoughts and attitudes will permit you to consider other people’s opinions rather than automatically accepting them as fact; this allows you to establish confidence and independence.

5. I am only worthwhile as long as I am doing something for someone else.

This is for all those ‘givers’ out there. You feel guilty or anxious is you take time for yourself or treat yourself.  If you find that your behaviours and thought perspectives score high for this one, remind yourself that you are an entire human being with the entire range of human requirements and rights. It is crucial that you spend time caring for yourself as well!

6. I must always perform at my best.

An example of how this distorted belief works: you have established some kind of personal best – the fastest run, or highest mark, for example. From then on you chide yourself if you do not live up to that benchmark. You allow no ‘off’ days or ‘slow’ days or ‘bad’ weeks. The ultimate thought process here is that you feel anything that isn’t your best is a disaster and that you will continue to worsen.

7. Anger is bad.

As one of the natural human emotions, it has full rights to expression; however, many of us grow up suppressing anger or releasing it in uncontrollable rage-fits. The importance of anger is that it lets us know when people are crossing our boundaries and gives us strength and courage to defend ourselves, when needed.

While it is important that the expression of anger does not violate the rights of another, we cannot violate our own rights by ignoring anger when it does come up.  If you show evidence of believing this (in thought or action) remember that you have the right to be angry; though you do not have the right to hurt another with that same anger.

8. I have the power to change people.

The question to ask to determine if you think/act this way is: do you believe that if you provide or care for someone in just such a way, they will become who you think they could or should become? You may believe that be providing security, love or the force of your personality you can get a person to change (quit smoking, go back to school, quit video games, etc.).  This belief leads to a lot of resentment of the other person as they will most likely remain unchanged even after all of your efforts and energy are spent.

9. Good relationships have no problems.

This distorted belief comes from fairy tale endings fed to us as children (and even so as adults) by mainstream culture. The basis for this belief is that after you have found the “right” partner, you will never need to work on the relationship and it will be always perfect. The truth is that every long-term relationship requires work, commitment and effort by all parties. Any difficulties encountered are not indications that the relationship was doomed from the start.

10. I need someone stronger or more powerful than myself to rely on.

If you believe this one, chances are you feel helpless most of the time. That is the nature of this thought – it makes you helpless. This ends up causing issues in relationships as you fear for asserting yourself or taking control because the other person might leave. You constantly feel as though someone needs to be responsible for you. To challenge this thought and show its deceptive-nature think to some time in your life that you have managed without someone else holding your hand.

11. It is easier to avoid life’s problems than to face them.

The best way to check if you use this belief is to review your actions over the problems you have had during the past year: how many did you put off to be solved later? Did they get resolved or ‘just go away’? Chances are, most problems in your life will get bigger the more you ignore them (think: dealing with loans, the bank, overdue bills, etc...).    

12. It is unbearable when life is not the way I would like it to be.

Do you ever think to yourself: “Alright, when my loans have been settled, the family-issues are dealt with and the other thing are solved, I can finally be happy” ? It is nice to have our “ducks in a row” but, by the time we’ve aligned them all, there are other ducks falling out of line – it’s the nature of life! This belief makes it seem that everything has to be going well in order for you to be happy. But how often does everything come together like this? In order to cope with this assumption you need to allow a certain amount of disarray and upheaval in your life – do not get caught in defining what it will take for you to be happy.

13. The way to be accepted and appreciated by others is to give and give.

If you are someone who has this thought dictating their actions or thoughts, you are likely the one who gives more in your relationships (friendships, bfs/gfs, or even with family). A couple of questions to ask yourself if you find this is a distorted thought of yours is why you give of yourself so freely. Perhaps you are trying to buy love and acceptance because you see yourself as unlovable; do you expect the other person to return in kind? What do you expect? Unfortunately, though giving is kind and generous, extreme giving of oneself (time, gifts, favours, etc.) may cause others to lose respect for you. The key here is to respect yourself just as much as others.

Comment and let me know what your distorted thought and behaviour scores are! Tell me if you think of any more that I haven’t mentioned on here!

                                                                Conquer on!

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to Conquer The Clouds

Thought Monitoring

When you are depressed, it may seem as though your mood is uniformly down-in-the-dumps and low. It’s not, it rises and falls. You may not notice, however, as you are focused on the negative aspects of your life and situations. Also, when you are depressed, you are likely to fall into the downward-spiral trap making it even harder to notice the rises.

            You might not believe me that it rises, but if you think about it, maybe it’s a 2/10 right now, but earlier it was a 3/10. A good exercise for noticing when and what triggers your dropping mood, carry around a pen and pad of paper for a week and whenever you notice your mood dropping (even a little) write down what was going through your mind. It also helps to write down the situation in which you noticed the mood drop. You don’t need to wait for obvious traumatic experiences, just whenever you notice yourself feeling worse.

            Initially this might be frustrating as you draw blanks when questioning what was going through your mind – settle with answering in guesses “uhh... maybe I didn’t want to get bit by the dog I just saw”. That’s fine, work with the guesses for now – it gets you into the flow of noticing your thoughts and your feelings and how they correspond. Eventually it will get easier (as all things do with practice!). These automatic thoughts will gradually start to show themselves. You may start noticing a pattern (which will reveal some distorted beliefs you hold) as you recognize the same thoughts over and over – these are your primary negative automatic thoughts.

            If it gets too redundant to re-write the same thoughts, just put checks or x’s beside the thoughts and tally them up at the end of the week! You will then notice which of these automatic thoughts contribute the most to shaping your mood.

                                                                        Conquer on!



If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to Conquer The Clouds
 

Weekly Challenge 1 - Week of December 18 - 24

Welcome all Conquerors to the very first Conqueror's Weekly Challenge!

I am intending on coming up with a challenge for everyone to undergo every week as we continue our journey of personal development.
This week, I am proposing that everyone of us resists the urge to complain or speak negatively about things in our life. For one week. That's only 7 days.
The power of our minds is incredible and most people are unaware of how quickly one comment about a negative event or situation can turn into a full-blown rage-fest about the entire state of the world. This is a cognitive approach to becoming your best you! Your mind, your friends and your family will thank you when you resist those little nuggets of negativity that come flittering into your thought-stream.

I have challenged myself with this one before, and my results were incredible. I still had the thoughts, of course, but I didn't let them have the room in my mind that they wanted. I acknowledged their presence, but didn't explore them further.

So when you find yourself with the negative thought(s) or comment(s), take a moment, acknowledge that you are having one, but ignore it and do not let it materialize, that is, do not speak it aloud.
Part of the reality of anxiety is that the feelings and thoughts one experiences internally are manifesting in subsequent behaviour. If one can stop the cycle of destructive thoughts and feelings at the behavioural-level, there is only one recourse - the thoughts and feelings must change to accomodate the new behaviour.

This is only a small step in the direction of our best success, but it's a great first weekly challenge!


You got this one Conquerors!

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to Conquer The Clouds