Tag: byron katie

Mindset

“The enemy is not a person. The enemy is a mindset.” – Daniel Lubetzky (founder of KIND bars)

I have always said that conflicts and wars are never going to cease, until people start looking at things in different ways. Beliefs are entrenched in us from childhood on. We live our lives based on our beliefs, but rarely do we examine our beliefs. Usually, we subconsciously act in ways that will enforce our beliefs. We live in places and we mostly interact with people who normalize our own beliefs. We are often scared to examine our beliefs for fear that we might have been mistaken, or that our beliefs are just conditioned from other people’s beliefs, and these beliefs aren’t actually our own, at our deepest cores. And then where does that leave us without the current framework of our entrenched beliefs?

I’ve written before about the time period in my early forties, when the life of our family “blew up.” We were “the poster kids” for the Great Recession. For years, we had gone along in our lives, in one entrenched way, and I honestly had convinced myself that it would not have been possible to take another direction, even if we wanted to change things up. I believed that we were “stuck” in one town, in one underwater house, in one stressful way of life, with very few options. And then the Universe forced our hands, and all of the sudden there were many options, which we didn’t even realize were available possibilities. We ended up here in Florida, in a better living situation, in every facet of our lives.

A wise friend of mine recently told me that before she makes major decisions or changes in her life, she opens up the proverbial file cabinet in her mind, and explores her beliefs about the situation in a detached manner. She writes them down and really explores if these old beliefs are actually true and make sense for the situation. She then writes down new beliefs that could be truer to her needs and her wants in the present time. My friend doesn’t beat herself up for beliefs that may have limited her in the past. She moves forward with a healthier, more open, more considered mindset.

What do you feel absolutely sure about but wish that you didn’t feel sure about it? Usually these are negative beliefs about health, finances, world problems, politics, relationships, your career, where you live etc. Open up that file folder in your mind, and really explore this belief. Byron Katie devised what she calls “The Work.” Use these four questions as a template to explore your beliefs. You may be shocked with the insights you glean about beliefs that you have been carrying with you for a really long time.

  1. Is it true?
  2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
  3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
  4. Who would you be without the thought?

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2796. What excuse do you tell yourself far too often?

Nutty Friday

Friday is the day for surfacy, lightness on the blog. Fridays are for favorites. On Favorite Things Friday, I share one of my favorite things and I ask you to share your favorites. Before I actually get to sharing one of my favorite physical things, I want to share a great quote by the author Byron Katie:

Don’t be afraid to question your own beliefs. Make sure that these beliefs are truly yours, and that they from that all-knowing, wise, comforting voice from inside of yourself and from the depths of your own heart.

My favorite for today is Skinny Dipped Almonds. They are chocolate covered nuts which are thinly dipped with just a light covering of chocolate. They are just the right mix of sweet and salty. In my mind Skinny Dipped Almonds are amazing-tasting-candy-with-less-guilt. My favorite flavor would be the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter variety. So good!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

    Friday Found

    Hi readers! The best day of the week has finally arrived! This was a “catch my breath” kind of a week for me. I’m breathing steady again. I hope that you are all breathing steady, too! My regular readers know that Fridays are devoted to the fun and frivolous stuff in life. On Fridays, I’m a material girl living in a material world. I call Fridays, “Favorite Things Friday” here at the blog, and I list three of my favorite books, products, songs, TV shows, experiences, etc. I strongly encourage you to list your favorites as well to help add to all of our shopping lists for the weekend. Without further ado, here are my favorites for this week:

    American Leather Company Comfort Sleeper Sofa – We recently converted one of our bedrooms to a nice-sized home office for my husband. We did not want to lose any sleeping room capacity, so we went on a quest to find an actually comfortable, functional and stylish sleeper sofa. This sleeper sofa is revolutionary because it doesn’t have any metal bars or separate mattresses. It is easy to open up and it is unbelievably comfortable. We’ve tried it ourselves! When closed up, it’s a lovely comfortable couch to sit on, and to converse with the man behind the desk. Despite the name of the company (btw, made in the USA, right in Texas), there are many fabrics to chose from besides leather, and the couch comes in all different sizes and styles. If you are going to invest in a good sofa, with the versality of a sleeper sofa, you must check this brand out. American Leather Company has revolutionized sleeper sofas. This ain’t your cousin’s futon bed!

    Integrity by Martha Beck – Martha Beck is a wonderful, engaging (often humorous writer) and her latest book, Integrity, is chock full of wisdom and food for thought. The book also includes several practical activities to help you get back to your own “integrity” which Martha defines this way, “Know what you really know, feel what your really feel, say what you really mean, and do what you really want.” If you like the works of Byron Katie (who Ms. Beck quotes a lot in this book) and Anthony DeMello, you will love this book.

    Kenberrys Cable Management Box Set – My husband’s gorgeous, handmade reclaimed wood desk was getting lost in distraction by all of the cables coming out of his computer and his monitors. This set, found on Amazon, neatly hides all of the unsightly cables away, so that the focus can remain where it should be – on the gorgeous polished wood rings of the desk, and all of the untold history those rings must hold. We found this wonderful, ingenious set on Amazon.

    Friends, have a fabulous weekend! Spend your weekend in integrity: Do what you really want to do! See you tomorrow. Here’s a bonus quote from Integrity by Martha Beck: “Everything that truly makes us happy is limitless and multiplicative, not scarce and divisive.”

    Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

    Declutter Our Minds

    Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love. (this will be the daily mantra of the blog, for the rest of this year.)

    “You spend most of your time inside of your head. Make it a nice place to be.”- Growth Hub

    This is the time of the year, that a lot of us do some decluttering in our homes. My husband went to town on his closet the other day, and he filled up a nice, big bag for Goodwill. My closet cleaning is still at the intention stage, but it is a priority – a major one, that I plan to get to, in the coming days. My friend was asking a group of us for ideas about how to decorate her shelves, after taking all of her clutter, off of them. One member of our friend group, who has exquisite tastes, was singled out for ideas. She is a self proclaimed minimalist, but what I loved the best was her answer. My lovely friend said that you should fill your shelves with what you love, and what makes you happy, because truthfully, you are the only one who sees your shelves on a regular, daily basis.

    The same sentiment certainly applies to our heads, right? We are the only ones with access to our minds. The inside of our heads is sacred space, so holy that we are the only ones privy to what goes on, inside of it. Sure, we can spill out what is churning in our brains, to other people, but oftentimes, what we spill out in our conversations, and our interactions with others, is usually just a regurgitation of everything which we have allowed into our minds.

    When we get on a health kick, we become super conscious about what we are eating and drinking and consuming. We get real honest with ourselves about what is good to put into our bodies, and what about our diets, needs to be laid to waste. When we declutter our drawers and our cabinets and our shelves, we often use the Marie Kondo question, “Does this item spark joy in me?” Perhaps, we should use these same methods, when decorating the insides of our heads.

    I imagine if we wanted to create a real ugly devil’s den inside of our heads, we could fill our minds with every negative news piece we could find. We could fill our minds with ruminations about everything that we don’t like about our jobs, our country, and the people who annoy us. We could fuel the raging fires with our fears, and our worries, and focus our imaginations on possible upcoming catastrophes. What would a decluttered mind look like, though? What if we took it down to the studs? What if we kept open doors on both sides of our heads, so that thoughts could come in, and just as easily pass on through, keeping our minds open and breezy and clear to views which might really resonate with us, down to the true command center of our hearts, where our precious souls reside.

    The older I get, the more I see simple truths. What is good for the body and is good for the soul, is good for the mind. What is happening outside of us, is often just a projection of what is happening inside of us. We frequently forget just how much power and control we really wield, in our lives. Just as we clutter up our houses, we also have the power to clean out what no longer sparks joy. Just as we fill up our bodies with junk food, we can fill them up with wholesome nutrients, instead. Just as we can obsessively click on one negative news story, or triggering social media post after another, we can stop and we can breathe, and we can clean out what does not belong in our sacred mindspace. The irony of it all, is that we are always trying to control and fix “the outsides”, but if we control what is happening inside of us, the outsides usually look a whole lot better. When we take care of our bodies, we have more energy, and we fit into our clothes better. When we take time to really feed our souls with what feels good to us, by communing with nature and people and animals and our Source, we no longer have gaping holes that we try to fill with things that clutter up our lives, or substances that hurt our bodies. When we take the time to cleanse our minds of negative thoughts and beliefs and worries, we have more wide, open space to fill our brains with wonder and awe and amazement about all of the miracles of life surrounding us. When we stay in our own lanes, and when we focus on the only triumvirate that we do have any real control over, that being our own minds, our own bodies and our own souls, the outsides just have a way of taking care of themselves. When we have an inside sense of calm and control and order, we no longer need to concern ourselves with controlling anything outside of us. Trying to control “the outsides” was just our fruitless way of trying to get that internal sense of calm and control and order for ourselves, which has been available to us, all of the time. Ironic, right?

    “Everyone wants peace, inside and outside, and we would all have it if we knew how. Now we know how. It begins with you.” – Byron Katie

    “Create a friendly atmosphere on the inside and outside. Live Friendly. Be a friendly person on the inside. Have the attitude it takes to be smiling internally first.” – Jeffrey Gitomer