Beheaded

Introspection

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How and why?

Why?

Pause for a moment and look at the decisions and projects you’ve started over the past month. All over the place, right?

All you have left in your wake are a bunch of unfinished projects, and trails that lead nowhere. You dream of having your next project be your best work.

Today we’re so wrapped up in a culture of doing that we’re rarely ever given downtime to sit and reflect. This constant cycle of doing even plagues us in our sleep. The moment you open your eyes in the morning your mind starts racing and the cycle begins again. Never a free moment from your thoughts and the distractions of the modern world.

We have over 50,000 thoughts a day, over half are negative and over 90% are just repeating from the day before. That doesn’t leave much room for growth and change

All you need to do is create a little more space. By adding just a little time each day for self-reflection and soul digging you’ll be on your way towards building a wealth of understanding about yourself.

We’re constantly wrapped up in seeking behavior. We never stop for a moment to ask why we’re consuming and doing these things in the first place. The values of our culture condition you to become a passive consumer who fuels the current economic model.

You’re always left with a feeling of emptiness no matter how much money you make, or new objects you buy.

Introspection and reflection are all about getting to know yourself at the core, uncovering your values and then deciding for yourself what’s the best action to take. You take the power away from the way you’ve been conditioned, away from the systems that try to hold you in place and bring your focus of control back to where it belongs, within you.

By taking the time to become an expert of yourself first you have the power to make decisions that make you feel good.

How?

Create Quiet Space. This can come in many forms. For some it may be taking a quiet walk through the woods. For others, it might be grabbing a cup of tea and sitting at the table. For some, it might even be taking a few extra moments to lie in bed in the morning. The crucial element is to make sure no one is going to interrupt you.
Ask Deep Open Ended Questions. Make sure it’s very peaceful and relaxing for you. If it helps take a few deep breaths. Really try to follow your breath, in and out. Let the sensations lull you into a relax state. If you want to start digging with your own questions, just start by asking yourself “what would I love to know more about?” Give yourself permission to roam.
What is my deepest passion?
What sets my soul on fire?
If I had all the money in the world how would I spend my time?
What do I love most about myself?
What are my deepest values?
See What Comes Up With No Judgement. Make sure you hold your heart and mind wide open to any potentials that may arise. If this is one of your first times doing this you may be shocked or amused with what you find. Remember, nothing is to outlandish, don’t judge whatever comes out. It’s all a part of you.
Take Notes
Reflect and Repeat. After you’ve gone through this process let it sit with you and see how it feels. The more often you ask yourself these questions the more clarity you’ll get. Think of it as practice.

Main goals

Continual Learning. You need to focus on always learning new things. Whatever you do, never stop learning. Never stop growing.

Attack Your Distractions. Look at your life. Look at everything that you’re trying to achieve and my guess is the things that hold you back are distractions.

What I want you to think about is how can you start to create a routine? How can you start to create discipline in your life so that you aren’t being reactive, but you’re being proactive so that you’re setting the agenda for the day? Don’t let everybody else do it.

Nine ways to do it

1. Catch yourself when you start the blame game

This is a big clues you’re acting the victim. When you blame other people for your experience, you’re giving away your power, and making your experience dependent on other people.

2. Take responsibility

3. Catch yourself when you’re resisting life

Resistance to the way that things are is another victim behaviour that seriously hampers your ability to play master at life. Anytime you catch yourself thinking, or saying, things like…:

I wish this wasn’t happening…

If only I hadn’t have done that…

If only that…

I wish…

I don’t want to…

I can’t…

… you’re resisting life. And resistance takes an extraordinary amount of energy, achieving exactly nothing. Except suffering.

4. Cultivate acceptance, and asking, Ok, now what?

Once you’ve got over resisting life, then you can take it one step further and ask;

Ok, this is happening, now what?

That short question is magical. It shifts your energy from resisting what’s happening to focusing on solutions. And that’s when magic can happen. You engage both the power of your conscious mind, and the power of your unconscious mind. Solutions come to you while you’re running, or in the bath, or dreaming. Plus you discover that it uses more energy to resist than it does to solve. Forward flow always gathers momentum.

5. Recognise that difficult circumstances are there to test you

Life is not about cruising through easy street banking cash and playing to your heart’s content. Difficult stuff will happen. Illnesses, accidents, deaths, losses, betrayals, divorces, failure… it will all happen to you, at one time or another. What’s more important is how you perceive it and what you do with it.

hen the going gets tough, remind yourself that you can choose to struggle, or you can choose to grow. When the going gets tough, celebrate, because you’re about to get tougher.

6. Establish practices that keep you connected

That means a daily spiritual practice, or five.

The practices that work for me are daily morning pages, walking, pranayama, meditation and movement (dance or asana). Cooking and cleaning are also valuable practices.

What works for you could be totally different and include everything from horse riding to landscape painting to welding. What it is doesn’t matter, only that it brings you into the present because it requires 100% of your attention on the now. And that it connects you to a state of flow, to something bigger than yourself.

7. Learn to pay attention to what you need

Sounds simple right.

Oh I’m hungry, I need to eat. Oh I’m thirsty, I need to drink.

Oh, I’m mentally scattered and ungrounded, I need to meditate.

Oh, I’m emotionlly upset and leaving my body, I need to go for a run and then have a bath.

However, we’re so damn good at deferring and denying our needs, that most of us have no skills at all around meeting our needs.

Our body needs rest, we plough on.

Our liver needs a break, we drink on.

We need to be heard, we don’t speak up.

8. Learn to overrule your mind

Lets get one thing straight. You are in charge. Not your mind.

It’s your mind that chimes in when you take your energetic pulse and realise you need a bath with:

But it’s 2pm, who has a bath at 2pm in the afternoon?

Get used to talking back and saying things like:

I do, that’s who, now leave me in peace.

9. Love yourself

posted at 14:18 · vida

Nov 27, 2017