Amanda posing with Gratitude Glasses on – they change your world!
PEACE ON EARTH – and in your heart!
I suppose you have been inundated with all sorts of end of year newsletters with new year resolutions etc! And hopefully this one is a little different!
Instead, I am suggesting a New Year Transformation! LOL
(If you were expecting Part 3 of speaking – it’s for the January newsletter!)
SILENCE
In the spirit of testing things out before I write about them – I went to a Qigong retreat in New Zealand in November for 2 weeks. A SILENT retreat! And 7 hours of exercise a day. I have to say, the first 36 hours were NOT peaceful! LOL
However, the amazing thing was that silence is a wonderful way to explore your thoughts, patterns and habits! And for finding out how judgmental one is! Well, how judgmental I was!
I had never done anything like this before and had no idea how much effort talking takes! And how busy it keeps our mind.
Without the necessity to have conversations, I could listen to myself a lot more and it wasn’t always pretty!
I found there was a lot of judging – of everything – and I was not even aware of it! Not to mention comparisons and little twinges of resentment creeping in there! This and several other patterns of thinking kept me anything but calm, peaceful, relaxed and joyful!
Now, I know we are all different but I have a feeling that the judgment and comparing are pretty universal. And we all have our individual patterns based on our life experiences.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SILENT FOR 2 WEEKS!
But you might find that being silent for 10 or 20 (or even 2 minutes) a day might help you find some old patterns that you could change to help you find inner peace!
We have such deeply embedded patterns of anxiety, rushing, being tense, being fearful and many more that we don’t even know they are operating in the background of our hard drive!
And yet they rule almost all our thinking, perceptions, reactions and behaviors.
So pay attention to what is stopping your peace – and you are not allowed to say ‘my partner’!
LOL The reason is always within you!
What are you patterns?
What triggers them?
Where did they start?
Are they valid?
Or as Dr Phil says – “how’s that working for you”?
YUAN TZE
My Qigong master’s name is Yuan Tze and he’s really quite extraordinary. He doesn’t just teach QIgong which apparently was used in China eons ago to keep people well. When they stopped doing Qigong, they had to invent acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine cos now people were getting sick!
He has married Qigong exercises with a philosophy on life that is very useful for staying calm, peaceful, relaxed and joyful all the time!
I would love to share a couple of his ideas. Of course, there is an enormous amount to learn about this system – there are two large books on it – fromwww.yuantzecentre.com, so I can only cover a little of it here!
A GREAT MANTRA
For starters, his most useful and easiest phrase is :
“every day’s a good day; every place is a good place and every thing is a good thing.”!
Repeating this phrase whenever anything takes you off centre does actually work! It helps keep your blood pressure down at least and gives you more time to come up with responses rather than reactions!
NEUROSCIENCE AND F.A.R.C.-ING
Much of what I have written in the past on neuroscience ties into this as well.
We know that F.A.R.C.ing is the secret to change – to focus on what we want to change; be aware of ‘where we are’ or what our state is at any moment;repeat the new behaviors we want and then to celebratewhen we see small changes!
I have another ‘R’ – reverence! Having reverence for everyone and everything has a profound impact on how we feel – it stops judging for starters!
MORE GOOD NEWS:
We CAN re hardwire our brains.
If we F.A.R.C.
So you CAN be different in 2011 – if you want to; and if you are focused and aware enough to catch yourself judging, comparing and losing your reverence and therefore peace!
You mission, should you choose to accept it for 2011, is to eradicate your fears – with F.A.R.C.
Constantly be Aware of your state: are you peaceful, calm, relaxed and joyful? And if not, what program is running in your hard drive? Have you updated the application recently – or is it the version you created when you were a toddler or a teenager or young adult?
Is it an old one from an old relationship?
Do you do regular ‘software updates’ on your brain and heart software?! Now is the time to start. It takes a little time, but make that your mission – to make time for self reflection and find out what truly runs you!
Is it fear?
It often is the master program!
Why are you constantly rushing? Being anxious? Tense? Angry? Controlling? Procrastinating? Judging? Sabotaging yourself?
ANOTHER MASTER
Another mentor of mine whom I have mentioned before – Michael Grinder –www.michaelgrinder.com is a master of non verbal communication. IF you want to speak in public ever – study with Michael!
Anyway, he has a useful method to help you uncover some of those hidden programs and patterns.
I am not so good with word and shapes – so I have used 3 “h’s” instead of stick figures of chairs! I am exercising your imagination! LOL
So Imagine you have 3 chairs in a row like this! The front chair you imagine has the behavior you would like to change in it; the chair behind the fear that drives that behavior and the last one has the need that has to be filled to take away the fear , which will change the behavior! Isn’t that clever!
hNeed hFear hBehavior
So you can thank Michael for that handy little tip!
Whenever we stop and allow some silence into our busy minds, we breathe better and our hearts can be heard. That’s where the peace lives.
So peace on earth and in your heart – depends a lot on what you say to yourself and the programs you have running in your hard drive.
Time for a software check!
Make 2011 a year where you…
•Focus,
•become Aware,
•Repeat new behaviors,
•and Celebrate
•recognize old patterns,
•update your “hard drive’ and the ‘software’ programs running your life,
•allow yourself some silence every day so you notice how you create your moods,
•keep repeating “Everyday is a good day: every thing is a good thing and every place is a good place.”
• look at the needs to be filled to eradicate fears for every behavior you want to change in yourself and others
•and breathe – all while having reverence for yourself and others!
Happy Holidays and a peaceful, calm, natural, relaxed and joyous 2011!
How would that work for you?!!!
ZOOTIES FROM ME!
AMANDA GORE
PPS Sign up for Ken’s newsletter on his website below! On a completely different topic! If you are a leader who wants a more engaged and productive team then another book you can look at is my husbands! He wrote The People Pill after 40 years of leadership excellence! And it was awarded a Gold medal in the leadership category of the Axiom awards over Seth Godin’s book Tribes and Peter Druckers posthumous book! Needless to say I am very proud! www.engage4results.com
