Stress

All posts tagged Stress

Connecting With and Understanding Yourself…. Enjoying Your Life To The Full

Published 26/02/2015 by inspiringyourspirit

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Understanding Self:

Getting to understand yourself, is an art form that many never achieve in their lifetime, many people believe they know who they are but actually they don’t have the slightest clue!

How often do you shut your self away from the world, and by shutting away I don’t mean going to the top of the Himalaya’s and sitting in a cave by yourself for ten years 🙂 What i mean is; do you switch off from the world each day, do you set yourself time each day to have no interruptions, in a room with just you, no tv, no radio, no newspapers, books, magazines, no phone, no computer,no electronics, no people, no children, nothing to disturb your time with yourself?

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It’s not easy at first, setting aside time in what you probably believe is already a fully scheduled day, getting up, shower, breakfast, dressing for school, work or getting yourself and or your children ready for your day, attending back to back meetings, dropping the kids to school, picking them up, taking them to after school activities, checking homework, making dinner, eating dinner, bathing and dressing the children, putting them to bed, watching tv, reading a book, getting yourself ready for bed…etc, etc, the list is endless, or so we all believe!

We just don’t have any time in our lives for ourself!

Wrong!

It’s your life, you can make choices re your life, you are the master of your schedule and you, only you can make the time! After all, it’s certainly in your own best interest to make time for yourself, your body needs this time, your mind needs this time and your heart certainly needs this time! So why is it we are so bad at setting time for ourselves?….Well, we feel guilty, that’s why! We feel that we are being self indulgent by setting ‘valuable’ time aside just for ourselves,…..Bullsh*t (sorry for the bad language my dear friends)……., take it from me…STOP IT, NOW!, Set up time each and every day to give yourself quality time on your own, start small, it can be 10 minutes per day at first, try this for a few days then increase your time slowly to 15, 20,30 minutes, or even better 45 minutes or an hour, but make sure you set your schedule, set your time, your phone whatever to remind you to go and enjoy time with yourself, don’t give up on yourself, keep the commitment to this time each and every day and I guarantee you will start to know yourself so much better than you do right now, you will have no external influences, just you, your time is your own for you, only you and your meditation, reflections on who you are, where your life is right now and where you want to be, this quality time will enhance your levels of understanding for others, you will be more empathetic towards yourself and to others, your life will benefit from the quality time you give yourself…TRUST ME… give it a try, if you need help, I’m here to help you, if you need help with meditations, just let me know and i will send you some to help you along the way, but please, please my friends…get in touch with yourself and start to enjoy the rest of this life 🙂

Namaste with Love

Always

Mark

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The New ABC’s Attention, Balance, Compassion

Published 27/01/2015 by inspiringyourspirit

Mindfulness.

I’m a Mindfulness practitioner and teacher myself but although Mindfulness is a word commonly used and many people say they are Mindfulness practitioner’s, life coaches etc, may are not! Also, many people ask me what Mindfulness is and how it can be useful for them,their family, their children, their employees, their teams etc so I thought I would share this short TedX video by Susan Kaiser Greenland, her talk explains the simple meaning of Mindfulness into a new learning process “Teaching The New ABC’s, Attention, Balance and Compassion.

I do hope you like this short video and that it will bring you a greater understanding of how Mindfulness could fit into your life and the life of your family,friends and workplace.

If yo need any help, please let me know.

Namaste with Love
Always

Mark

Allow your emotions and feelings to enter your life without judgement

Published 19/05/2014 by inspiringyourspirit

The guest house

The ‘Guest House’ A fantastic way to think about our emotions and feelings. Welcome them into your life, don’t judge them for they may be coming to you for a reason!

Mindfulness and meditation practice allows us the valuable time to connect deeply with our inner self, to spend time with ourself and to listen to what is going on with our mind, body and soul. Lets take a quick look at emotions and feelings through the use of meditation and mindfulness and as Rumi says, ‘welcome them into our guesthouse’.

As we sit or lie and start our meditation, we close our eyes and relax our body, concentrate on our breath, in and out, in and out, we can take our time to bring our awareness to our breath, focussing our attention only on our breath, the feeling of our breath as it raises our stomach, inflates our chest or the coolness of the air entering through our nose, the key is to allow the time for our mind to become calm and concentrating on the breath certainly helps us do this, it may take you some time because you may; at the beginning get caught up with thoughts flashing into your mind, you will hear sounds which break your concentration, feel an itch, cough, hear your children playing, the phone ringing etc, but please take my word for it; with practice it gets easier 🙂 So, back to our breath, in and out, in and out, feel the cool air entering your nose, in and out, in and out, feel the air inflating your chest, be aware of the gap/time in -between the top of your in-breath and before the out=breath starts, then feel the air slowly leaving your lungs, moving up through your throat and up and out of your nose, in and out, in and out. If your mind starts to wander, don’t worry, its normal, just recognise the fact that it happened and bring your focus back to the breath, in and out, in and out.

As thoughts enter your mind place a label on them ‘thought’ or thinking’, you can label them more deeply if it help you like such as ‘ work’, ‘children’, chores’ or whatever helps, but try to regain your composure and bring your awareness back to your breath, in and out, in and out.

Emotions and feelings may arise  like ‘Happiness’ or ‘Anxiety’, if they come; then accept them in, concentrate on your breath, in and out, in and out, what is ‘Happiness’ why are you feeling Happy? Concentrate on your breath and get acquainted with the emotion of’ happiness’, where did it come from and what are the feelings behind it, maybe your feeling so happy that you have given yourself some time for yourself, maybe your heart is telling you it loves you. This is your journey of discovery so enjoy the feeling. If ‘Anxiety arrives, then accept it too, why is it there, what made it arrive? Do you feel anxious because your spending valuable time on yourself? does that make you anxious? Are you anxious of not knowing the outcome? Are you anxious of time and wanting the session to end? Get acquainted with the emotion and allow it to come and to go.

Concentrate on your breath, in and out, in and out.

 

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Also from Rumi as posted by Dr Victoria Lee

The purpose of emotion
A certain sufi tore his robe in grief,

and the tearing brought such relief….

his teacher understood the purity

of the action while others

just saw the jagged appearance.

If you want peace and purity

tear away the coverings.

This is the purpose of emoton, to let

a streaming beauty flow through you.

Call it spirit, elixir, or the original

agreement between yourself and God.

Opening into that gives peace, a song of

being empty,

pure silence.

In this poem, dear Rumi guides us once again toward deepening our spiritual experience. Stripping away the covering imposed by the false self is always the path. This means letting go of our attachment to the ideas we have about ourselves, as well as to the ideas others have about us. The most fundamental of these may be our limiting beliefs–I am incapable, the world is too harsh, I am too old, too young, too attached to obligations, too unable to feel anything transcendent, too ____; when we allow all that to dissolve, Rumi famously tells us that we will find glints of treasure in the dirt of the demolition of the house we’ve built out of false ideas about who we are. Then the streaming beauty emotion is meant to allow us can flow through us.

Then we may look in the mirror–and in every human and animal face–and know that:

Inside you are sweet beyond telling. There is a sun in everyone!

May you look in the mirror today, dear visitor, and look deeply into any human face; look into the eyes of a child. See the longing and see the beauty!

 

Mindfulness and meditation my dear friends can bring you so much awareness and help you come to terms with your emotions, feelings and pain.

Good luck on your personal journey of discovery.

Namaste with Love

Always

Mark

Silence Your Mind and Connect To Your Life!

Published 12/05/2014 by inspiringyourspirit

silence

Silencing the mind, a very important task in order for us to gain access to our inner self, our soul. This is where the magic happens, this is where we need to be to take charge of our lives, the place where we can connect with our true self, not the self we see in the mirror, not the self we hear quietly talking to us, holding us back, causing clatter in our head, the authentic soul self, this is where we can start to love ourself, to connect with source energy, to understand what our body is trying to us regarding our health, connect to our heart and listen, truly listen to our body and where we can learn so much which will help us in our daily lives.

Mindfulness and meditation can help get is there, they can help guide us to quieten our minds and reach inward to our soul.

Below is a link to a short 5 minute video by Thich Nhat Hanh ‘What is Mindfulness’ which outlines Mindfulness for those of you who are looking to enter into a practice of mindfulness and meditation.

If I can be of any help to you on your journey of discovery, please let me know and I will do my best to help you 🙂

Namaste with Love my friends
Always

Mark

What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains

Published 04/05/2014 by inspiringyourspirit

I love this short video ‘What the internet is doing to our brains’. We all get caught up in it, our days are full of distractions, information comes at us from every angle from the moment we awake to the moment we go to sleep, TV, Radio, Newspapers, Smart Phones, tablets, Computers and of course the never ending stream of information and disturbances from the internet, emails, text messages, chats etc.

do something good

We have no time to take a time out, to calm our minds and to just ‘Sit’ ‘to do nothing’, ‘to reflect’, ‘to look inside’ and ‘enjoy our time with ourself’, ‘connecting with your soul’.

If you meditate, you know how powerful even 2 minutes of meditation can be for you, how these two minutes can calm your mind, take you to a place of total relaxation, away from the daily stresses and leave you fully in the ‘Present Moment’

Enjoy the video and take a moment from your day and be at one with yourself.

Namaste with Love

Always

Mark

Help, Help, Help

Published 30/05/2013 by inspiringyourspirit

Help, I’m Going Crazy!

And I thought I was strong enough to get through what I thought was a simple task!

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WordPress is driving me insane and I’m using up all my levels of compassion, happiness and joy whilst trying to add side bar and header bar links!

I just cannot get them to happen! I have tried everything, read training materials, read books on WordPress, tried adding Widgets, Links, Pages and all those options …BUT NOTHING Works!

Is it just me? Am I that computer illiterate ?

How do you do it?…Someone, please come to my rescue!

I want to add links on the side bar and or side bar and header banners to other sites but I’m 100% lost!

I would really appreciate your help my friends

Namaste

Mark

 

 

Are you to busy Dad?

Published 25/04/2013 by inspiringyourspirit

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A conversation between a young boy and his father

SON: “Daddy, may I ask you a question?”
DAD: “Yeah sure, what is it?”
SON: “Daddy, how much do you make an hour?”
DAD: “That’s none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?”
SON: “I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?”
DAD: “If you must know, I make $100 an hour.”
SON: “Oh! (With his head down).
SON: “Daddy, may I please borrow $50?”
The father was furious.
DAD: “If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I work hard everyday for such this childish behavior.”

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.
The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy’s questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?
After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to think:
Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $ 50 and he really didn’t ask for money very often. The man went to the door of the little boy’s room and opened the door.

DAD: “Are you asleep, son?”

SON: “No daddy, I’m awake”.
DAD: “I’ve been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier. It’s been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you. Here’s the $50 you asked for.”

The little boy sat straight up, smiling.
SON: “Oh, thank you daddy!”
Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills. The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father.

DAD: “Why do you want more money if you already have some?”

SON: “Because I didn’t have enough, but now I do.

“Daddy, I have $100 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you.”
The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness. It’s just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts. Do remember to share that $100 worth of your time with someone you love? If we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days. But the family and friends we leave behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. And come to think of it, we pour ourselves more into work than to our family.

Some things are just more important!

 

Namaste

Mark

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