Tag Archive for: self help for life

The Law of Vibration Explained | How to Make it Work Wonders for You

The Law of Vibration is always working in your life, whether or not you realize it.  It’s the Law of Vibration that drives the Law of Attraction. After reading this article, you’ll understand what the Law of Vibration is, how it works and how to use it to your advantage.  I’ll keep it simple, so you can understand it easily.

In the past, spirituality and science were polar-opposites. Most of the spiritual philosophies could not be “proved” by science. However, with quantum physics, many spiritual concepts can now be explained scientifically. 

This makes it much easier to understand, believe, and use these spiritual principles to improve your life. The Law of Vibration is no exception.

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Everything is Energy

The first principle of the Law of Vibration is that everything is energy and energy is everything. Quantum Physics states that everything is energy too.

The chair you’re sitting on is energy, a table is energy. You are energy, trees are energy, animals are energy.  Even light and sound are energy.  If everything is energy, then ideas, thoughts and emotions are energy too.

Related Article: The 4 Types of Energy and How to Master Your Energy

If you looked at your body through a powerful microscope, you would find that your body is made up of cells. Zoom in a little more and you’ll see that the cells are made up of tissues, atoms and molecules. Keep zooming in and you’ll discover that these atoms and molecules are pure energy.

Energy is Always Moving

The second principle of the Law of Vibration is that energy is always moving. It never stands still. It never rests. Instead, this energy moves in waves that go up and down. These waves are known as frequencies or vibrations.

Every object has its own frequency or vibration. A chair is pure energy vibrating at a certain frequency that makes it look like a chair.  The same with a table, plant or animal. 

Anything that is solid (including you and I) are a series of cells, atoms and molecules that are continually moving. It’s this movement (or vibration) that makes the object appear solid. We perceive it as solid, because our eyes cannot see the movement or vibration because it’s so fast.

The same energy can vibrate at different frequencies.  A brilliant example is radio waves.  Radio waves are energy and they are all around us.  However, the same radio wave energy has different frequencies.  Therefore, you can use your radio to tune into several different radio stations depending on whether you want to hear the news, the latest hits or classic rock.

Human beings are also energy that vibrate at a certain frequency. However, just like radio waves, we don’t all vibrate at the same frequency. A person that is good with money has a certain energy vibration.  Someone that always gets into terrible relationships has a different energy vibration.

Your vibratory frequency also influences your health.  A healthy human body has a frequency of between 62 and 70 Mhz. When the frequency drops to below 62 Mhz, cells begin to mutate. People with a cold or the flu have a frequency of around 58 Mhz. When the frequency drops below 42 Mhz, cancer can appear.

This explains why you might have a friend or family member that has constant health issues. They seem unrelated, but their vibrational frequency is the common link.

We naturally have a vibratory frequency range that we rarely go outside of.  This is known as a set-point or paradigm. This is controlled by our consistent, habitual and predictable ways of thinking, feeling and acting. As this is subconscious, it requires some effort to change. 

Now your energy and vibratory frequency vary each day.  Therefore, you might have “good” days when everything flows and seems effortless. Or bad days, when everything seems to go wrong.

You cannot see this vibratory energy, but you can sometimes feel it. When you enter a room after 2 people have had an argument, you can feel that energy. It influences how you think and behave. You might decide to tread lightly or leave the room.

Also in social situations, you’ll feel the energy of different people.  Some people radiate energy and light up the room.  They’re positive, enthusiastic, and full of life.  Other people drain your energy by complaining, moaning or thinking and talking negatively. 

So you now know that everything is energy and that all energy is moving or vibrating. That’s interesting, thought-provoking and could make an interesting talking point at parties! However, if you want to transform your life, then this next bit is crucial!

Like Energy Attracts Like Energy

The fundamental idea behind the Law of Attraction is that like energy attracts like energy.  So energy vibrating at a certain frequency attracts other energy that is also vibrating at the same frequency.

To explain this, I will talk about tuning forks for a moment. Tuning forks are used to help tune pianos and other musical instruments.  They have two prongs. When struck, the prongs vibrate and make a sound.

If after striking the first tuning fork, you place a second tuning fork close by, then it will pick up the vibration and make the same sound automatically.

So similar vibrations work in harmony with each other, and we call this resonance.

It’s exactly the same with people.  If you have an abundance mindset, you will attract abundance. A lack or scarcity mentality will attract more lack and scarcity. 

You don’t get what you want; you get what you are. This is super important to understand!  It’s who you are that truly makes the difference. 

But what are you? You are energy that is vibrating at a certain frequency. At the very core, this is who you are.  Your sense of identity, core beliefs, consistent thoughts and feelings can change your energy and vibration.

Energy is Never Created or Destroyed.

How often have you said that you want to create something in your life?  Perhaps it’s a new car, house, relationship or career. Well, the truth is that we don’t create anything!

According to quantum physics, energy is never created or destroyed. It just changes vibration. So anything that you want is energy that is vibrating at a frequency that you cannot see yet.

To understand this further, think about how a dog whistle works.  The sound from a dog whistle is at a pitch and vibratory frequency that is beyond what human ears can hear. However, the dog hears it because their ears are more sensitive to very high sounds. So the dog whistle exists even though we can’t hear it.

Whilst we can’t improve our hearing, so we hear the dog whistle, we can change our vibration in other ways, so we pick up or tune into things that are vibrating at a higher frequency.

So rather than thinking about creating things, focus on changing who you are, so that your level of vibration increases. You then resonate more with the things you desire.

You Can Change Your Vibrational Frequency

Physical objects, plants and animals cannot consciously change their vibrational frequency.  However, we can by changing our thoughts and more importantly feelings and emotions!

The most effective way to influence your vibrational frequency is to change your emotional state.

When you choose to feel happy, you create an energy vibration that is in harmony with happy feelings.  This then attracts more people, situations and opportunities that bring happiness to you.

If you are regularly upset, angry or feel inferior or worthless, then this will send out a different energy vibration and you’ll attract further situations or people that make you feel upset, angry, inferior or worthless.

It all starts with awareness.  Notice how you feel as you go through the day.  What situations or people trigger negative emotions?  What tasks or activities are you doing that don’t feel good?  How you feel is the best way to determine how your vibrational frequency changes from high to low.

How to Increase Your Level of Vibration

Now that you understand the science and the benefits of operating at a higher vibrational frequency, let’s look at some practical ways to raise your vibratory frequency.

Meditation

When you feel stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated, impatient, angry (or any other negative emotion), it’s important to stop this in its tracks.  The best way to do this is to meditate.

Meditation will help you observe the limiting thoughts behind these negative emotions and let them go.  Relaxing the body and mind will also reduce the emotions and put things into perspective.  It will help you achieve more positive emotional states such as joy, happiness, peace or gratitude.

Meditation is also a superb way to get better at stopping old negative thoughts and replacing them with new positive thoughts.

Release Negative Energy

Many people hold negative emotions inside.  They believe that feeling or expressing these emotions is uncomfortable or not helpful. The Law of Vibration responds to long-term negative emotional states, so a good cry, or bashing some pillows is totally fine!

Journaling is also a brilliant way to release negative emotions. Just the act of writing down how you feel can help you release the emotions and gain a fresh perspective.

Eat High Frequency Foods

Every food has a vibrational frequency.  Therefore, eating foods that have a high vibratory frequency will increase your level of vibration.

Here are some examples of the types of foods based on their vibrational frequency:

  • Processed Foods = 0 MHz
  • Meat = 2 MHz
  • Fresh Herbs = 20-27 MHz
  • Fruit and Vegetables (especially the green ones) = 65-75 MHz
  • Green cold-pressed juice and spirulina = 170 MHz
  • Essential Oils – from 52 MHz to 320 MHz

Source – http://www.naturalawakeningssa.com/super-charged-high-and-low-frequencies-in-foods-in-our-bodies/

So what you eat has an enormous influence on your vibrational frequency.

High Frequency Emotional States

Positive emotional states influence the Law of Vibration far more than positive thoughts.  So the more you can experience positive emotional states, the better. Examples of high frequency emotional states are unconditional love, gratitude, joy, forgiveness and enthusiasm. 

You can get into a high-frequency state right now by:

  • Putting on some uplifting music and dancing!
  • Exercising
  • Performing random acts of kindness
  • Expressing gratitude
  • Keeping a gratitude journal.
  • Finding funny videos on YouTube (or other things that make you smile or laugh)
  • Reading inspirational books.

Choose High Vibration Situations and People

Spend more time with people that make you feel good. Those people that emit a higher vibratory frequency. I like to call them “radiators”, as they radiate positive energy.

Also, choose situations and places that make you feel good.  Nature has a high vibrational frequency, so getting out in nature will help raise your vibration.

Positive Thinking

How you think affects how you feel.  Consistent and persistent negative thoughts will lead to negative emotional states.  Consciously choose thoughts that make you feel good, empower you and move you towards your goals and dreams.

When you notice a negative thought, mentally say the word “STOP” and choose the opposite positive thought. 

Also think of those negative thoughts as coming from another person.  This will help you separate those thoughts from your sense of identity.

Become the observer of your thoughts.  Don’t judge them, just notice them.  This is easier to do when meditating, but can be done at other times too.

Related Article: How to Tame Your Negative Internal Voice

To Conclude

When you believe in the things that you cannot see, you open yourself up to a whole new world of possibilities.  The Law of Vibration is invisible, but it’s all around us and ready to be tapped into.

Just remembering that everything is energy vibrating at different frequencies will change your perception and belief about what is possible.  When you apply some of the ways to raise your vibrational frequency, you’ll realize that the Law of Vibration is real. You’ll then find it easier to attract the things you want into your life and experience the “good life”!

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul

The 10 Great Ways to Overcome Obstacles and Adversity

Life doesn’t always go the way you want it to. Unexpected obstacles and challenges can and do arise. They catch you unprepared and create uncertainty in your life until you resolve them. By overcoming obstacles and adversity, you can get your life back on track and gain some wonderful wisdom and insights from the tough times that are now firmly behind you.

How do you overcome obstacles and adversity? It involves a combination of mindset and behavior changes that you can learn and perfect with practice. To make this process easier and less frustrating, I will show you 10 great ways to overcome obstacles and adversity in your life.

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1. Take Responsibility

When things aren’t going the way you want them to, it’s tempting to blame someone else. But remember that when you do that, you relinquish control. You take away your power and feel helpless. It’s like saying, “I have no power to change this”. Or “I can’t make this happen unless this person changes or that situation happens”. In reality, you have more control than you think.

It’s good to look at what you can control, however small that is, and focus on it. You want to take responsibility for the situation and especially your reaction to it. We can’t always take responsibility for things that happen in our life, but we can definitely take responsibility for our reactions to them.

2. Control Negative Thoughts

When life isn’t going the way you want it to go, it’s very easy to think negatively. Then self-doubt kicks in and you lose your self-confidence.

To prevent this, whenever you notice a negative thought or feeling, mentally say the word “stop”. Say it out loud if you can. And then change it to the opposite, positive thought. The easiest way to do this is by asking yourself, “What do I want instead?” and then focusing on that thought.

You can also say “Thanks for sharing”. Whenever you notice a negative thought, just say “Thanks for sharing” and let your mind switch to something else.

Also look out for certain words that you say to yourself, such as “always” or “every time”. If you say something like, “I always stuffed this up”, then question that by saying “always?”, and then look for the exceptions.

3. Focus on Solutions

Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. Remind yourself of why you want this goal in the first place and concentrate on the end-result.

The reticular activating system focuses on the goals you set. When you focus on what you want, that brings people, places and situations into your life in accordance to your wishes. You can read more about this in my article about the reticular activating system.

If you want to look at this in a more spiritual way, remember that your thoughts are energy. Positive thoughts give you positive energy, and that positive energy attracts positive energy. So the more you focus on what you want, the more you’re likely to manifest that with the Law of Attraction.

4. View Obstacles or Adversity as a Test

This is a fantastic way to look at a problem or adversity from a different perspective. Think of it as a signal to learn and grow, or that there’s a fear to overcome. Once you overcome it, you’ll gain the knowledge, the skills and the experience, and you’ll be able to go onto the next step or achieve the goal completely. So think of it as a lesson, a test, a learning opportunity and a way to overcome obstacles and adversity.

5. Talk It Over with a Like-minded Person

You want to pick the right person to do this. Someone you trust and that believes in you. This could be a friend, a colleague, a therapist, or a coach.

Why is this important? Because we can become very engrossed in the problem and unable to see the wood from the trees. Another person can provide a different and more detached perspective. They can see through your blind spots and provide guidance and advice on things you hadn’t thought of.

Even if they only listen to you, you can get stuff off your chest and release emotions such as stress, frustration, or anger. So just talking with someone can help. I covered another great way to release negative emotions in my article about the Sedona method.

6. Relax

There are many great ways to relax. You could meditate or go for a nice quiet walk. Or you could do a progressive muscle relaxation exercise, consciously relaxing all the different muscles in your body. If pushed for time, try my rapid relaxation exercise instead.

When you’re relaxed, your mind is not thinking about anything in particular. This allows your intuition to come to the fore and speak to you. You then gain insights from your unconscious mind.

I often get my best ideas in the shower. I suspect you get them too. I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s because the hot water relaxes your body, then your mind relaxes too and you come up with ideas you just didn’t think of earlier.

7. Focus on What You Can Control

I believe there are 3 components to every upset, adversity, or disappointment. These are:

  • What you can’t control.
  • What you could influence.
  • What you can definitely control.

Let’s say that you didn’t get a promotion.

What’s outside of your control?

The decision of the manager to give that promotion to someone else.

What could you influence?

The possibility of getting a promotion in the future. If you can impress that manager over time, then when the next opportunity comes up, you might get it. Therefore, you’ve got some influence. You can’t completely control it, but you can certainly influence it.

What can you definitely control?

You could go to that manager and ask for feedback. Ask what you need to work on, to get a promotion next time? Then you can start acting on their feedback and gain new skills, so you have what it takes to get a promotion next time.

The good thing is that you can control much more than you think you can. And when you focus on what you can control rather than what you can’t, then you will naturally feel more relaxed. You will reduce stress and anxiety and get a feeling of confidence because you’re focusing on the things that you can change.

8. Look After Yourself

When dealing with adversity, upsets or disappointments, it’s easy to forget to look after yourself. You may start eating badly or stop exercising. You may sleep less because you’re trying to work hard to improve your situation. But that usually has the opposite effect.

It’s much better to eat well, sleep well and make time for exercise because that will improve your physical and mental health. You will make better decisions. You’ll have higher levels of motivation and you’ll be more resilient and positive.

9. Visualize the Outcome

Remember that this current adversity situation is temporary and it will pass with time. Look back at previous difficult times in your life and notice how you overcame them and how things improved. Then visualize what you want. Visualize a successful outcome. If you want to learn more about visualization, read my article on how to visualize correctly and effectively.

10. Keep Going

Keep taking action, learning, moving forward, and growing. Sometimes you require a different approach, so it’s good to be flexible. As you keep focusing on what you want, the obstacles and adversity will start drifting into the past and you’ll experience the success and good times again.

These are my 10 ways to overcome any adversity and obstacles in life. I hope you will apply them in your life and find them useful and effective. Use these to get your life back on track today!

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul

How to Overcome Self Sabotage Today

Why do many people fail to achieve success and happiness? One reason is self-sabotage. It can affect anyone, even highly successful people.

Self-sabotage happens when your subconscious mind keeps you in your comfort zone. It does this to avoid pain, discomfort, and fear. If you feel you are missing out on important events, having trouble with your relationships or doing things that damage your career, you are most likely self-sabotaging. To overcome self-sabotage, it is important to understand this behavior and learn how to get rid of it.

In this article, I will share with you 10 different ways to overcome self-sabotage. Practice and apply them to achieve success and happiness in your life!

Watch the Video Below:

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What is Self-Sabotage?

Self-sabotage is a defense mechanism. It stops you from doing something that might hurt you. It keeps you in your comfort zone. Your subconscious mind might block anything different or unknown, even if it is something that you really want. Self-sabotage is any thought, feeling, behavior or action that goes against your dreams and goals.

So, your logical conscious mind wants one thing, but your subconscious mind wants something else and is fighting against you. Some people refer to that as the anti-self because it’s trying to do the opposite of what you want. Maybe it’s that inner critical voice that says you can’t do it. But whatever it is, it’s trying to protect you. It wants to prevent pain, discomfort, and fear.

Self-sabotage can be very unconscious. You may not even know that you’re doing it. However, these self-destructive behaviors can become habits that undermine your level of success and happiness in life. Behind self-sabotage is often a feeling of low self-worth. Or a feeling that you don’t deserve to be successful.

Consequences of Self-Sabotage

There are many consequences of self-sabotage and some of them include:

  • A feeling that you missed out in life and you don’t quite know why
  • The erosion of your self-confidence and self-esteem
  • Negative affects on your relationships or the ability to get into a relationship
  • Damage to your reputation or career 

Self-Sabotaging Behaviors

Are you self-sabotaging? The answer is probably yes. And why do I think that? Because everybody self-sabotages. Even the most successful people have self-sabotaged in the past. It’s a part of the human condition. We all do it. It’s just a case of minimizing it and doing it as little as possible.

Some of the most common self-sabotaging behaviors are:

  • Not taking calculated risks. Not taking action when there’s an element of risk involved.
  • The inability to say no to other people.
  • Not thinking carefully before deciding.
  • Overthinking or spending too much time deciding and then not taking action.
  • Having unrealistic expectations about yourself and setting unrealistic goals.
  • Having unrealistic expectations about other people.
  • Procrastination or leaving tasks to the last minute.
  • Perfectionism. Behind perfectionism is a fear that I’m not good enough. Perfectionism can lead to waiting for the perfect time to do something, and there’s never a perfect time. Or wanting to get the perfect skills before taking action. Remember, you will never have the perfect skills. You’ve just got to work with what you have and get better over time.
  • Hesitating on a new challenge. Missing out instead of seizing on an opportunity.
  • Seeking comfort or reward. Maybe you’ve got an assignment to do and instead, you think about having a nice bit of cake first and you waste 20 minutes doing that before you even start the assignment.

How to Overcome Self-Sabotage

I will now cover 10 ways to help you overcome self-sabotage today, so you can achieve your goals and dreams more quickly and easily.

1. Become a Self-Sabotage Detective

You want to find out why you’re shooting yourself in the foot. That is not always easy, so I encourage you to do a bit of detective work. First, identify self-sabotaging actions and behaviors. Then uncover the feelings and thoughts that lead to these self-sabotaging behaviors.

Identify the triggers

The triggers could be specific people, tasks, events, locations, or times of the day. Once you know the triggers, ask yourself, “can I remove them?” If you can do it! But in most cases, it won’t be easy to do.  Don’t worry, the other methods covered in this article will help you instead.

Notice your critical inner voice

What is your critical internal voice saying when you’re self-sabotaging? Is it criticizing you for past mistakes? Is it telling you you’re not good enough? Does it say things like:

  • This is too hard for you.
  • You’re a failure.
  • Success requires special traits that you don’t have.
  • You don’t deserve financial abundance, happiness, and success.
  • You are not smart enough or good enough.

Write your thoughts down

As you’re doing the self-sabotaging behavior, write down the thoughts that come to your mind. Getting these self-sabotaging thoughts on paper will make it easier to change them.

Watch out for subtle internal self-talk

For example, you’re looking for a relationship and you’ve been on a few unsuccessful dates. You might say to yourself, “I’m fine on my own”. That’s subtle self-sabotaging self-talk.

People also often say, “just be yourself”. I think that’s a bad idea because just being yourself means you will never change or improve. You will never become a better version of yourself. This one doesn’t seem negative, but it actually is.

Subtle internal self-talk can be thinking that you deserve some kind of treat or a break. Sometimes, we are genuinely tired, but other times it can be just an excuse for not doing something.

It can also be thinking that having another drink, a cigarette, a bit of cake or chocolate, won’t hurt you. These kinds of comforting thoughts can distract you from what you really want and cause you to self-sabotage.

2. Make Your Internal Self-Talk Work for You

It is fear that drives that internal critical voice. Even for the most successful people, up to 80% of their self-talk is negative. So how do they deal with it? First, they ignore it or challenge it. Second, they don’t believe that the self-talk is true. They know it’s just a voice in their head. Finally, they refuse to give it any air time.

The best thing to do is to assume that the negative self-talk or the inner critical voice is wrong. Do it for a week and notice what happens! Then, replace it with positive, encouraging words, words about what you can do. These words need not be super positive, they just need to be the next positive step that you can do, a step that feels believable to you.

So ask yourself, “what can I say to myself right now that is positive and encouraging and will help me achieve what I want in life?”

3. Replace Negative Behaviors with Positive Ones

Every action that you take either draws you closer or further away from who you want to be and the way you want to live. There’s no static point. We’re never standing still. We’re either moving forwards or backwards.

Ask yourself, “what options do I have?”, “What other ways could I do this?”, “What is the obvious first step?” The key here is to take action despite how you feel. Just focus and do the opposite, and then the opposite will become habitual and a part of the normal way you do things.

4. Make the Unknown More Known

People often self-sabotage when they don’t know what to expect. Behind every uncertainty is an uncomfortable feeling of fear and anxiety. We naturally want to move away from that feeling, which is why we self-sabotage.

The solution is to:

  • Set detailed goals and plans.
  • Create a step-by-step roadmap to follow.
  • Start doing these steps. It will help you increase your confidence and give you the feeling that you’re moving in the right direction.
  • Identify anything on your list that seems difficult.
  • Visualize yourself acting confidently and seeing things go the way you want them to go.

It’s easier to overcome self-sabotage when you have detailed goals and plans. It’s also easier to notice your self-sabotaging behavior.

5. Boost Your Self-Worth

The more you feel that you deserve whatever you are striving for, the less likely you are to self-sabotage. To help boost your sense of self-worth, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What are the good things that I’ve done?
  • How have I helped others?
  • What am I proud of?
  • What am I good at?
  • How have I positively impacted the lives of other people?
  • What is good about my life?

Asking questions like these forces your subconscious mind to come up with positive answers. And that’s why these kinds of questions are beneficial in improving your sense of self-worth.

6. Play the Pain-Pleasure Game

Behind any self-sabotaging behavior, there is always a positive intention. This is often to avoid pain, fear, sadness, disappointment, or rejection. One way to get around this is to play the pain-pleasure game:

  • Write down all the things you won’t get, if you keep doing the specific self-sabotaging behavior.
  • Write down all the pleasures you’ll get from doing the positive behavior instead.

For example, you’re self-sabotaging by not going out on dates, because of a fear of rejection. Write down all the pain that you would suffer if you ended up being lonely for the rest of your life. Then write down all the pleasure you will have when you meet your soulmate.

If you’re self-sabotaging your diet and efforts to lose weight, write down all the pain and discomfort you will have later in life if you stay overweight. For example, getting Type 2 diabetes will bring a lot more pain than sticking to your current diet. Then list all the pleasurable things you will have when you lose weight and get to your ideal size.

The goal of the pain-pleasure game is to realize that the pain of not doing something is much greater than the pain of doing it. And that your pleasure later will be much greater than your pain now. Your unconscious mind will pick that up. It won’t have that positive intention that makes you self-sabotage and it will be easier to overcome it.

7. Interrupt the Pattern 

Over time, many self-sabotage behaviors become habits. Interrupting these habits is very beneficial.

Let’s say you’re working on an assignment and you keep checking your phone for social media notifications. Put your phone on flight mode so you don’t get the notifications. Or download apps that will stop you from going to certain websites and apps whilst you’re doing a certain activity.

If you are drinking or smoking too much, or eating the wrong foods, try putting these in different places in your house, so it’s harder to get hold of them. Or even better, do not buy them in the first place.

The great thing about interrupting the pattern is that you’ll notice when you’re doing these self-sabotaging behaviors, which will make it easier to stop it.

8. Question and Then Change Your Beliefs

Your limiting beliefs represent the upper boundary of what is possible in your life. When you reach that boundary, your unconscious mind will start to self-sabotage so you don’t exceed it. The way to get around this is to identify your limiting beliefs and then start changing them.

Pick an area of your life that you feel you’re self-sabotaging at the moment. Write down all the beliefs you have around that area of your life. For example:

  • Becoming healthy involves pain and sacrifice.
  • Becoming wealthy means that I will have no time and no life.

Now, come up with counterexamples. These will become new, positive, empowering beliefs. Here are two examples:

  • Being healthy feels great and gives me massive energy
  • I can be wealthy and do this on my terms and still have a life.

To learn more, read my article about changing your limiting beliefs.

9. Get to the Cause of the Fear

Since fear is driving the self-sabotaging behavior, many people try to repress it. They don’t acknowledge it. Instead, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What am I afraid of?
  • What is scary about this?
  • If it happened, could I handle it?
  • Is this fear more important than my desire for success?

These questions will get you to face the fear and realize that it’s not as scary as you originally thought. It won’t make the fear go away, but it will reduce its power. This is a key step to overcome self-sabotage.

10. Have an Accountability Buddy

Self-sabotaging behavior is often unconscious. But it’s only unconscious to you. It’s often very obvious to someone else. That’s why a good accountability buddy is very helpful. They will spot your self-sabotaging behaviors. This could be a coach or a mentor, someone you pay to see, but it could also be a good friend, someone that can hold you accountable.

When you have an accountability buddy, you’re less likely to self-sabotage because you’re accountable to that person. You need to own up to that person and explain why you did or didn’t do certain things. It’s a great way to help you overcome self-sabotage.

So these were my 10 effective ways to help you overcome self-sabotage today. There are lots of actionable steps, so I encourage you to take the time to apply these into your life right now. When you do, you’ll see some great results and positive changes in your life!

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul

The 10 Misconceptions About Success

In this article, I will uncover the 10 common misconceptions about success. I will bust the myths, lies and limiting beliefs about success and reveal the truth! Once you know these success misconceptions, you will find it easier to take action towards achieving your goals and dreams.  You’ll realize that those old beliefs and excuses are simply misconceptions about success that you can now let go of.

So where do these misconceptions come from?  Often it’s from family, close friends, teachers or colleagues.  They mean well and want to protect you and do what they feel is best for you.  However, unless they are successful themselves, their advice is likely to hold you back.

Successful people develop good habits and take effective action. That’s how they achieve their goals and dreams. You can achieve anything with enough time and focus.  
However, some people believe there are other requirements for success that the average person cannot meet.  These are misconceptions and are not true! In this article, I will help you identify and remove these misconceptions. This will allow you to achieve the level of success that you deserve.

Take the time now to set yourself free of these common misconceptions about success, so you can experience the life that you desire.

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1. Success can only be achieved alone

This is rarely the case today. Most successful people have a coach or mentor to guide and inspire them. You would struggle to find a millionaire that didn’t have a mentor. Successful people also learn from others by reading books or attending training courses.  You can try to go it alone, but it will slow down your progress and increase your frustration. 

2. You need a certain personality trait to be successful

You might believe that you need to be an aggressive go-getter type-A person to be successful or have an extrovert and confident personality. It’s just not the case.  There are many introverted people that have become very successful.

One that springs to mind is the musician Mike Oldfield. When the Tubular Bells album came out in the late 70s, he was so shy that he did minimal publicity. However, because he created an amazing and unique record, this caught the attention of Richard Branson. He had just launched Virgin Records at the time. With his help, the album became incredibly successful.  This new fame was challenging for Mike Oldfield.  However, it became easier for him over time.

There are many introverted people who make money on the internet and rarely talk to anyone. They keep quiet and just get on with it!  So you can be successful with any kind of personality trait.  If you’re a type B, C or D person, don’t use this misconception about success as an excuse!

3. Success requires luck

Successful people generate the most luck because they create more opportunities to be lucky. They take more action, which increases their chances of a lucky break.  By taking effective and consistent action, more opportunities come to them, so they come across as being more lucky. Actually, they’re no more lucky than anyone else. They just create the opportunities to be more lucky.

4. You need an original idea

Some people have become very successful by having an original idea, but these people are in the minority.  There are many people who are successful buying and selling real estate, or doing other activities that many people have done in the past.  Do these activities slightly better or differently and you’ll be on to a winner!

5. Success is determined at birth

It’s commonly thought that successful people were born into the right family or went to a certain school.  I did some research on this and found out that around 75% of recent millionaires came from a poor background. Their strong desire to overcome being poor gave them the motivation to achieve success.

So your background, where you went to school and your level of education doesn’t matter. You will find plenty of examples of people who never finished school who became very successful.

6. Successful people end up alone

When you are very successful, you have access to many opportunities to socialize. So many, you have to turn some of them down. Successful people have a lot of friends, and they’re fun people to be around. There are lots of people who want to learn from them and experience what they’ve learned.  You can have all the social life you could wish for when you’re successful.

7. Success requires an extreme amount of time

Now, it’s true that to be successful, you need to dedicate time to important activities.  In the short-term you may need to prioritize work over some other activities.  However, by working smart, it is possible and doable to be successful without working exceptionally long hours.  The key is to spend time on the most important activities and to know what these activities are.

Consistency is huge too.  Amazing things can happen when you do the same thing consistently over many months or years.  Just check that these consistent activities are taking you closer to your goal.  You can outrun the competition just by being consistent, so don’t let this misconception about success hold you back.

8. Successful people never make mistakes

Successful people make a lot of mistakes, more mistakes than people that failed. By making mistakes and learning from them, you will achieve success.  Take a lot of action, make lots of mistakes, then make corrections and learn from them. You’ll then be on the fast road to success.

9. Success is complicated

It requires a high level of intelligence to achieve success in certain specialist and complex fields.  These include becoming a doctor, professor, engineer or surgeon.  

However, in other fields, success can be simple. You need not be very intelligent. It may even over-complicate things!

Most success comes from realizing what works and doing that repeatedly. It comes from measuring your success and having the flexibility to change.  Success is about being persistent, rather than brilliant.

10. It’s too late

You can be successful at any time of your life and as soon as you decide to do that. If you come up with goals and dreams later in life, you can still be successful. Being older has an advantage, because you have more wisdom, life-experience, knowledge and tenacity. You’re more disciplined and have better success habits. You may have already achieved some success in your life, and you can apply those success principles to your new goal.

So these are the 10 misconceptions about success. As you can see, we have busted some myths and changed some beliefs you have around success. The truth is that anyone with the focus and determination to be successful can and will be successful.  And that includes YOU!

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul

How to Improve Your Brain Power and Reduce Stress and Anxiety

Do you want to have a better brain? One that gives you more happiness, fulfillment and less stress and anxiety? There are many ways to improve your brain power. It’s important not to miss any of the crucial ones out.

In this article, I will cover the Bottom-up, Top-down and Outside-in approach to brain power and brain health. It’s the key to improving your brain power and fundamental in understanding the causes of stress, anxiety, depression, and even insomnia. It also provides the solution to these issues.

If you want to have a better brain, then keep reading as I reveal a lot of useful information that will help you improve your brain power and brain health.

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Factors That Cause Stress, Anxiety, and Depression

Many people think that one thing, often a life event, causes their stress, anxiety, and depression. They also believe that one thing, usually changing their mindset, will solve all their problems. If they change their mindset, everything will be better! But in reality, many things influence stress, anxiety, and depression.

A few weeks ago, I attended a great hypnotherapy workshop here in Sydney. The presenter was Dr. Sarah McKay, a neuroscientist. One of the slides in her presentation showed various factors that cause depression. She then displayed a slide that showed the factors that cause anxiety. It was exactly the same slide as for depression. She then covered the factors that cause insomnia, and that was the same slide too!

I reached out to Sarah and asked if I could share this slide with you. She agreed and here it is.

The above diagram illustrates the 3 areas that influence our brain health. Sarah calls them:

  1. Bottom-Up. This area includes genes, hormones, immune system, nutrition, exercise, and other lifestyle factors.
  2. Outside-In. This is social and environmental factors – stress, life events, education, current circumstances, and family background.
  3. Top-Down. Our thoughts, emotions, mindset, and belief system.

Each of these areas influence the others.

  • Our thoughts influence our physical health. For example, long-term psychological stress can lead to heart disease.
  • Our social environment impacts our brain health. Isolated people have a greater risk of getting dementia.
  • Also, physical health is closely linked to our mood. So, exercise is a key emotional regulator.

When you focus on mindset and forget other factors, you miss some vital components. Maybe you are struggling to get over depression or anxiety because you are ignoring some of these components.

Bottom-Up: Change Your Biology

Improving your brain power starts with understanding and changing the biological and physiological factors.

1. Genes

You might feel that you are genetically disposed to depression or anxiety because someone in your family had it. That could be true, but you can still manage and deal with it. First, by working on the Outside-In and Top-Down components that I’ll cover shortly.

Second, by knowing that something has to fire that gene. It may be dormant in your body, but something has to activate it. You can read more about this in my article on epigenetics.

2. Hormones

There are lots of different hormones in our bodies that affect anxiety, depression, or our general mood. The most important ones are:

  • Cortisol. This is the stress hormone. It is produced in our adrenal glands. It gives us energy, immune function and influences our mood.
  • Thyroid. An overactive or underactive thyroid contributes towards depression, moodiness, and tiredness.
  • Serotonin. The good, happy chemical that stabilizes your mood and makes you feel joyful!
  • Women also have hormones that affect menstruation and menopause. If you find that you have psychological mood swings around those times, then that can be hormonal.

3. Immune System.

When you get a cut or a bruise, your immune system will bring blood to that area to help it heal quicker. It will often become inflamed during that time. That’s supposed to be a short-term thing and go away when that part of the body is healed. The problem is, sometimes we can get long-term inflammation. That is very harmful to the body and is often caused by psychological stress.

4. Gut

Scientists now believe that we have brain cells in our gut. Also, there’s a very strong and sensitive connection between our gut and our brain. That’s why when you are stressed, you often feel it in your stomach. So don’t underestimate your gut.

5. Nutrition

Research has shown that a Mediterranean-style diet is the best diet for improving your brain health and your brain power and reducing symptoms of stress and anxiety. It consists mainly of plants, olive oil, nuts, some fish, and a little meat. Wine and coffee are fine in moderation.

6. Exercise

Exercise is very important. It releases muscle tension and increases oxygen levels. Exercise boosts endorphins, the feel-good hormones. It also helps use up excess adrenaline and cortisol, released during stressful times. That’s why exercise is so beneficial to stress.

7. Sleep

Sarah believes that sleep is the cornerstone of brain health and can improve your brain power. In sleep, our brain consolidates memories and does an amazing cleanup process. Sleep also helps regulate emotions, and cortisol levels. Sarah is also a big fan of napping. A 20-minute nap recharges your brain and improves your brain power and health. To find out more about napping, you can watch her video here.

Outside-In: Change Your Environment

To improve your brain power, it is important to understand and change certain social and environmental factors.

1. Life Events

Sometimes something external, like a life event, can cause depression, stress or anxiety. That life event could be:

  • Being made redundant, especially later in life
  • A relationship breakup or a divorce
  • Long-term health challenge 

It also includes a feeling that you have lost your mojo. That life was better in the past. It’s when you look back at how things used to be, and you feel that life cannot be that way again. As you get older, this can become a common one that can give you feelings of depression and anxiety. The key is to accept it and then work on changing it.

2. Stress

For me, stress is a little different to life events. These are stressful situations that you can control, reduce or perhaps avoid altogether. If certain people in your life cause you stress, maybe you can spend less time with them. If certain activities and commitments cause you stress, perhaps you can stop doing them or do them less often. So unlike life events, you have more control over stressful situations.

3. Social Support

We are social animals and we crave connection. Having supportive friends, family and social connections can help you overcome stress. This will help you live a longer, happier and healthier life. The reason for this is a bonding hormone called oxytocin, which is released in the brain when you connect with other people. Oxytocin makes us feel good, and it lowers the effects of the stress hormone cortisol.

Social connection also requires you to think, feel, reason, and make use of your intuition. And do this quickly!  When communicating with others, you often think on your feet and make quick decisions on what to say next. You’re also sensing how they’re responding to you. That is good for the neurons in your brain. Also, research has shown that loneliness can be as bad for you as smoking.

4. Education

This is about learning how to deal with depression, anxiety or stress. It’s consuming articles like this one, reading books, watching videos or investing in courses and seminars. The more information you know, the more techniques or strategies you’ll have to resolve your problem.

5. Nature

This is one of my favorites. Getting out in the sun and enjoying the fresh air can help you relax and gain a perspective on life. When you take a walk and allow your mind to just think about things, you can come up with amazing new ideas and perspectives.

Getting out in nature also improves your mood. It reduces blood pressure and improves concentration. Being out in the daylight helps you sleep better because it regulates your circadian rhythm. This is the brain’s way of differentiating between daylight and nighttime. The sunlight also helps you feel better and happier. It increases your serotonin and vitamin D levels.

I think many people underestimate the importance of natural light and sunlight. It is a known fact that in Nordic countries, where there is less sunshine in winter, the rates of depression are a lot higher.

Top-Down: Change How You Think

The last area that helps improve your brain power and reduce stress, anxiety, and depression is called Top-Down. This one is about changing the way you think. It’s the area you’re probably most familiar with.

1. Thoughts & Cognitions

We’ll start with thoughts and cognitions, especially your perception of stress. The way you think about stress has a considerable effect on your body. So it’s not the stress itself, it’s how you think about stress.

Kelly McGonigal did a wonderful video called “How to make stress your friend”. In that video, she says that stress itself isn’t harmful. It’s your belief about stress. When you have a negative belief or a negative perception about stress, your body changes in unhealthy ways. When you see stress as helpful and as a preparation for the challenge ahead, your body responds more positively to further stress.

The next time you have any symptoms of stress, whether that’s a feeling in your stomach, sweaty palms or tightness in your shoulders, start reframing that stress. Think about it in a different way. Could that stress be the energy, the excitement, and the anticipation that you need to get on and achieve your goal?

2. Mindfulness

When you’re fixating on a future problem or past regret, that creates worries and rumination. Rumination is having the same thought repeatedly and this will often keep you stuck in a loop. That creates stress and anxiety. Mindfulness is a way of training your brain to focus on the present moment. When you can let go of past regrets and worries about the future, then you can release the stress and anxiety.

Mindfulness is being aware of the present moment and connected with your senses. Connected with what you can see, hear, feel, maybe even taste and touch. You can also use your breath to slow down your heart rate. Mindfulness is a great thing to practice.

3. Feelings & Emotions

Your emotions and your thoughts are closely related. Remember, it’s your thoughts that create your feelings. However, it’s often a lot easier to spot a negative feeling than it is to spot a negative thought.

People tend to either hold their feelings inside (suppress them), or express them. Holding feelings inside is not good for your body in the long-term. However expressing your feelings (especially negative ones) can upset others, especially if they are close friends or family members.

So other options are better. One of them is just to sit with the feeling. A lot of us use alcohol and food to suppress uncomfortable feelings. But, just facing that feeling and sitting with it for 5 minutes, can help it dissolve by itself. So acknowledging and sitting with that feeling can be very helpful.

Or you can practice releasing that feeling or emotion. My favorite way of doing that is the Sedona method. To learn more about the Sedona method, you can read my article about it here.

4. Mindset & Beliefs

This one is about having a positive mindset and beliefs that support you, especially beliefs around stress.  I go into this in more detail in my article on how to change limiting beliefs.

So now you have lots of ways to improve your brain power. As I mentioned at the beginning, much of the inspiration and information for this article came from Dr. Sarah McKay. Check out the links below to find out more.

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul

Why You Get What You Focus On

It’s essential to understand why you get what you focus on. It’s a fundamental component to all success and positive personal change. I can’t emphasize this enough! When you understand this, the way you think will never be quite the same again.

The key reason that you get what you focus on lies in how your brain learns. It learns by focus and repetition. Think about how you learned things in the past?  I’m sure focus on the skill and repetition had a part to play.

However, when it comes to thinking and imagining, we often focus on what we don’t want. We think about the worse outcome primarily because of fear.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Start by understanding why you get what you focus on and how your brain really works. You can then nip your old ways of thinking and imagining in the bud. Life then gets easier, with less internal conflicts and greater peace and happiness.

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What You Think About Is What You Bring About

Everything you’ve achieved in life so far is the result of your thoughts and focus of attention. Any disappointment, frustration, or stress in your life results from not focusing on what you want. The same goes for lack of money, lack of love and feeling lonely.

Most people try to fix a problem by focusing on what they don’t want. They say things like:

  • I don’t want this pain in my body anymore
  • I don’t want to be single anymore
  • I don’t want to stay in this boring dead-end job anymore

There’s a great quote that came from Bob Proctor. It’s “What you think about is what you bring about”. Whatever you focus your attention on, your mind will attempt to bring that into your life, to the best of its ability. So whatever you focus on, you get. It doesn’t matter whether that’s positive or negative.

How the Subconscious Mind Works

I first learned this back in 1993 when I read a book called Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. In this book, he explained how the subconscious mind can’t make decisions. It just takes in what you consciously think about. If you constantly think about things you don’t have, then your subconscious mind has no choice but to give you more of that in your life.

But if you imagine and visualize the things you want, then your subconscious mind helps you get more of that too.  I got this immediately. It was a profound insight for me. It made perfect sense. However, it’s taken me a lifetime to apply it. It’s something I have to remind myself constantly about.

How We Learn

Think about the way we learn. Learning to drive requires your conscious attention and conscious awareness. As you deal with changing gears, steering and all the road rules, this is all you can think about.  

However, the more you practice driving, the easier it gets. After a few weeks, you can easily hold a conversation whilst driving.  This happens because you have impressed the skill of driving on your subconscious mind. It’s now automatic and you don’t have to think about it.

The subconscious mind learns through repetition. It can’t learn any other way! So, if you repeatedly think or imagine what you don’t want, the subconscious mind will pick up on it. That’s how it learns.

What the Subconscious Mind Understands

The subconscious mind doesn’t understand words. It gets concepts, ideas, and the feelings behind certain words.

I will give you an example of how this works. I will repeat several short phrases now. I’d like you to repeat them to yourself, either silently or out loud.

  • I don’t want to get cancer
  • I don’t want to get made redundant
  • I don’t want to get rejected.

What did you notice when you repeated those words? You probably noticed a certain feeling on one of the negative words – cancer, redundant or rejected. Your unconscious mind came up with this feeling for a split second when it heard that word. Most people think the unconscious mind is picking up on the word itself. But it is actually picking up on the feeling.

Experience-Based Neuroplasticity

To really understand the importance of focusing on what you want, it’s good to know the basics of neuroplasticity. The old thinking, probably 40 years ago or so, was that the brain was fixed and hard-wired. That it didn’t change much in someone’s lifetime. Today, we believe the brain can change, that it is flexible, malleable, and plastic. This is where the term neuroplasticity came from.

When you have an experience, your neurons, or your brain cells, will switch on and fire. Once those neurons fire, synapses are created. Synapses are the connections between different neurons. We have a hundred billion neurons ready to act at any point in time, but not all of them will switch on and fire. That depends on the experiences we’re having. The more connected the neurons are, the stronger that area of the brain becomes and the more effective and responsive it will be.

The neurons that aren’t used will wither and die. Why is that? Our brains are of finite size. We can only fit a certain number of neurons, synapses, and connections in it. So it reserves space for those neurons or brain cells we need the most.

Our Experience Shapes Our Brain

Every new experience creates new synapses or strengthens the existing ones. When we have the same experience many times, those neurons get elevated in importance and eventually become part of our long-term memory. As a result, we never forget how to ride a bike or drive a car.

Your experiences alter the physical structure of your brain. All the things you do, the people you hang out with, your feelings, thoughts, and automatic experiences influence the wiring in your brain. It’s all part of who you are now and who you want to be.

What do most people do?

Most people are not deliberate or conscious about what they focus on. Instead, they let other people shape their brains automatically. That can happen in a positive or a negative way. If you let your mind settle on self-criticism, stress, worry, fear, guilt, regret, your brain will give you more of that same experience. Over time, you’ll become more vulnerable to worry, depression and anxiety.

What to do instead?

You need to change the meaning of a situation to make it more positive. Then, the brain strengthens connections around resilience, optimism, gratitude, positive emotion and self-esteem.

Holding any positive experience for at least 20 seconds is long enough for neurons to fire and new synapses to be formed. Just thinking about one positive thing to the exclusion of all others for 20 seconds is enough to get the brain to start reshaping itself.  By creating those new connections or synapses, you’re making a change that’s automatic and unconscious.

Dealing with Negative Thoughts

Even when you focus on what you want, you’ll still get some thoughts about what you don’t want. It’s natural. The trick is to pay less attention to them. You can’t stop all negative thoughts from appearing, but you can pay less attention to them. Here are some great ways to do that.

1. Use a Stop Word

A stop word is a word or phrase that you say to yourself mentally (or even out-loud) when you notice a negative thought.  My favorites are “cancel”, “delete”, or “thanks for sharing”

2. Challenge negative thoughts with questions

Challenging negative thoughts with questions forces your mind to think in different and more positive ways.  A great question to ask is “Do I want more of this?” The answer will probably be no.

3. Practice Intentional Living

What is intentional living? It’s about being aware of the different situations that occur during the day. Then asking “what do I want?” at the start of each new or different situation.

Here are some examples.

  • You are catching the train to work. Before you get on the train, ask yourself, “what do I want?” The answer could be “I want to get a seat on the train” or “I want it to arrive on time”.
  • You get into the office and you have a meeting at 10 o’clock. Ask yourself, “what do I want from this meeting?” The answer might be “I want to express my point clearly”. Or “other people will understand and appreciate what I have to say”.
  • You might meet someone for lunch. So you ask, “what do I want?” The answer could be “I want to catch up and have an enjoyable experience with this person”. Or “I want to have a few laughs and share some common experiences”.

4. Use the “I’m so happy and grateful” affirmation

Here is a great affirmation that will help reduce any negative thoughts. It’s “I’m so happy and grateful that ________________ is getting closer and closer to being in my life.” You fill in the blank with a goal.

Here are two examples:

  • I’m so happy and grateful that earning $5,000 a month passive income is getting closer and closer to being in my life.
  • I am so happy and grateful that reducing my weight to 60 kg is getting closer and closer to being in my life.

 As you do this, it’s important to focus on the positive feelings generated by repeating these affirmations.

Mind-Body Medicine

The core principle behind mind-body medicine is that your mind (your consciousness and your thoughts) influences your brain. This then influences your body. The simple rule behind mind-body medicine is that you tend to get more of what you focus on. If you focus on illness and disease, you tend to get more illness and disease. If you focus on health and healing, you get more of that.

There are countless examples of people who healed from diseases like cancer by focusing on healing and health. They focused on what they wanted. This allowed the brain to influence the body in positive ways.

The Story of Milton Erickson

To illustrate how the mind affects the body, I want to share with you a story about Milton Erickson. He was the father of modern hypnotherapy. At 17, he contracted polio and became severely paralyzed. Doctors thought he would die. But he didn’t want to give up.

He recalled body memories, such as movement and muscular activity. He did this repeatedly. By concentrating on these memories, he slowly learned to tweak his muscles and regain control over parts of his body. Eventually, he could talk again and move his arms.

Still unable to walk, he trained his body further by embarking on a grueling thousand-mile canoe trip–alone with just a few dollars. And after that trip, he could walk with a cane.

This was back in 1918, long before neuroplasticity was even thought of as a word. It showed that when something happens in the body, the brain can find another way. But only if you focus on what you want.

I hope you now understand how important it is to focus on what you want. Keep this principle in the forefront of your mind at all times. It will have a huge positive impact on your life!

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul

What is Epigenetics? | How does Epigenetics affect your health and your life?

Have you ever blamed something on your genes? Perhaps you’ve said things like, “I can’t change that, it’s in my genes”. Now it’s true that we inherit our genes from our parents.  However, once you understand epigenetics, you will realize that this does not mean that your health and your life is dictated by your genes.

Something else has to happen for your genes to be switched on. Epigenetics is all about the study of the other factors that control whether or not genes are switched on.  This is known as gene expression in epigenetics.

In this article, I will explain how you have far more control over your genes than you think. Even if your parents had bad genes that made them more susceptible to certain diseases, it does not mean that this will affect you. Once you learn about epigenetics, you will realize that you are in charge of your health and life.

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Old Beliefs about Genetics

It was a common belief that people were born with a fixed genetic blueprint that determined their traits, behaviors, and health. According to that belief, we are all victims of our hereditary. We can’t influence our genes. Our life is very predetermined and we have very little control over our health.

Until recently, most social scientists, psychologists and other opinion makers also believed that our genes shape our habits and personalities. This means we have little control over our ability to change.  This belief is now shifting.

Genetics certainly play an important part – in determining our body size, body shape, the color of our eyes, hair, and other physical factors.

DNA is More Fluid Than You Think

The fast-growing field of epigenetics has discovered that we can influence our genes in a big way. You can no longer blame your genetic makeup for your health, undesirable habits, unhappiness, or feeling stressed and anxious. Your DNA, which is the carrier of your genetic information, is far more fluid than what we previously thought. We used to consider it as a template. And a template is something that you cannot easily change. It’s now thought more like a script and a script is something that you can change.

Genes Can Be Turned Off and On

The word epi in the context of genetics means at, on, above, in addition to, or as well as your genetic makeup. Therefore, epigenetics is the study of how external forces that include your thoughts, behaviors, and life experiences can either turn on and off, or just leave alone, parts of your genetic makeup.

Epigenetic scientists are examining what makes genes express themselves – what turns them on and what silences them. By knowing this, we can influence their activity and dramatically reduce our chances of getting a disease that was previously thought of as genetic.

If your parents or your grandparents had cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, you could be worried that you might get it too. Epigenetics reveals that you can silence the genetic parts that could trigger the disease. Even if you have the cancer gene in your body, it has to be turned on for you to get cancer. And there are quite a lot of things that need to happen for that gene to switch on.

The Gene Switch Is in Our Control

Switching our genes on or off is mostly within our control. Events that happen in our life can change the way our genes operate. They don’t alter the genes you were born with, but they change your genetic activity. The latest research is saying that only 5% of gene mutations directly cause long-term illness or disease. The other 95% of genes linked to illness or disease are influenced by life factors. These life factors include diet, exercise, life experiences, beliefs, perceptions, chemicals, stress, and negative emotions.

Epigenetic scientists now find that meditation, mindfulness and cognitive therapy can modify epigenetic factors. Your perceptions and thoughts affect your brain chemistry. Your brain chemistry alters the chemistry of your blood. This then influences your cells and the expression of your genes. So, the way you perceive the world, the actions you take, and the life experiences that come from that, influence your genetic activity. In a nutshell, your mind controls your body.

All the positive thinking, affirmations, meditation, and other self-improvement work are helping both your mind and body. Your thoughts and perceptions affect your biology. They affect your body. And the great news is that this places you in the driver’s seat.

Childhood Experiences – Baby Rats Experiment

There is one area that seems to be outside of our control. This is our earlier life experiences. Past events, especially those from childhood, can play a significant part in our genetic activity.

An experiment with baby rats supported this claim. Some of these baby rats were very well looked after by their parents. They were licked and groomed regularly and made to feel loved. When those baby rats became adult rats, they functioned normally in the world.

Some other baby rats had parents that weren’t that good. They received the minimum amount of licking and grooming. When these rats grew up to be adults, they were more stressed than the rats that were better looked after.

So if our childhood experiences aren’t so great, we may be more stressed and anxious in adult life. However, there are lots of things we can do to work on stress and anxiety. Even if we feel there’s something that is slightly predisposed to us from our past, we can still do lots of things to change that.

Passing on Epigenetic Information – Cherry Blossoms Experiment

One very interesting question is whether you can pass on epigenetic information to your offspring. To answer this question, another experiment was done, this time with mice. They placed some mice in an environment where they could smell cherry blossoms. Every time they smelled cherry blossoms, they would get an electric shock.

Over time, these mice connected smelling cherry blossoms to receiving an electric shock. They developed a fear response to the cherry blossom smell regardless of whether they received an electric shock or not.

These mice then reproduced. They then exposed their offspring to the same cherry blossom smell, but with no electric shock. Immediately, these baby mice generated the same fear response. So just by smelling cherry blossoms, they experienced fear.

This research seems to prove that genetic information passes from parent to offspring. In this case, the fear response to cherry blossom. This may or may not apply to humans, but keep this in mind anyway, especially if you are a parent.

Placebo Effect

Epigenetics could also explain the placebo effect more clearly. When new drugs are being tested, some patients get a real pill with active ingredients that can help them with their condition. Other patients receive a placebo which is a sugar pill or a pill that contains no active ingredients.

Some people who take the placebo get some kind of physical benefit. And the reason is they believe they got the real drug. They believe it will work. That belief influences their brain chemistry and the chemistry in their body. It has a positive impact on their cells and the way genes express themselves. Sometimes just a belief that something can work, can bring real physical improvements in the body’s healing.

In Conclusion

You can now see why learning about epigenetics is very important. I hope I helped you understand that you have more control over your health and your life than you previously thought. You are in the driver’s seat. You (not your genes) are responsible for your health.

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul

How To Overcome Any Addiction

Is there something in your life that you feel addicted to, like smoking, drinking, comfort eating or a certain Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) behavior? What would it be like to overcome any addiction and regain a sense of mental, emotional and physical control? In this article, I will show you a 10-step process to overcome any addiction easily and effectively.

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Understanding Addiction

To understand and overcome any addiction, it is good to know the 5 elements common to all addictions. These are:

  • The Addiction must meet certain emotional or physical needs. For example, people smoke to relax, or eat to feel secure.
  • You build up a tolerance or habituation to it. Over time, you do the behavior more often to achieve the same result. Alcohol is a great example. I remember when I first started having a few beers at university. It didn’t take much to get me quite tipsy or drunk. But over time, I needed more alcoholic drinks to achieve the same result.
  • The addiction harms you. The most obvious way is physically. However, it can harm you mentally or emotionally too.
  • It’s something you didn’t want to stop initially. When you were young, drinking alcohol was fun. It helped boost your confidence, self-esteem and lose your inhibitions. With so many positive benefits, there was no reason to drink less or stop altogether. Then later in life, you notice the negative consequences of drinking too much and want to stop. But you can’t! Or more accurately, you believe that you can’t.
  • You receive little or no pleasure from it now. The pleasure and positive benefits are now tiny. However, you still feel that you can’t live without it. So you keep doing it. You have replaced the positive benefits with a fear that you can’t live without it. That fear keeps you doing it.

One addiction that is often overlooked is an addiction to thinking!  Ask yourself, could I be addicted to my own thinking?  If your answer is yes, then I encourage you to read this article on excessive and repetitive thinking.

The 10-step Process to Overcome Any Addiction

Now that you know how to recognize addiction, I will show you my 10-step process to help you overcome any addiction.

Step 1 – Identify the needs the addiction is trying to meet

With alcohol, you may drink to relax, or switch off. Maybe getting drunk gives you that feeling of escapism. Or it gives you the confidence to do things that you wouldn’t normally be able to do.

If you are overeating, food may give you a sense of comfort. Or you eat to escape, relax or relieve boredom. Perhaps you just feel you want a treat.

If it’s smoking, maybe that helps you relax. Perhaps it allows you to hide some social insecurity. Or it helps you fit in with younger people who also smoke.

If it’s OCD, the need to always check things probably reduces anxiety. Or overcomes a fear that something bad will happen. So if you keep doing certain rituals, whatever you’re afraid of is less likely to happen.

Step 2 – Find out how it harms you

You may already know the effects of smoking, drinking alcohol, or eating the wrong food. But I encourage you to do some further research and find out exactly how it harms you.

For example, we know that drinking alcohol will affect your health over time. It will also affect your money because it’s expensive. It can affect your sleep and drain your energy. If you get really addicted, it could seriously affect your relationships and you might lose your job.

Being addicted to unhealthy food will also affect your health, sleep, energy, the clothes you can fit into and your level of self-esteem.

If you smoke, the negative effects on your health are obvious. Smoking also affects your fitness and youthfulness. People who smoke tend to look older. Think about the cost of smoking over a year. This is likely to be thousands of dollars!  What else could you spend that money on?

If you are suffering with an OCD type of behavior, it wastes your time the most because you’re always checking something. You can’t have real peace of mind, and that can get frustrating. You might also have problems with relationships if you’re constantly doing these little rituals.

Step 3 – Identify any Immediate Pleasure

Identify any immediate pleasure gained from the addictive behavior.  This is like step 1, but is more about the sensory experience.  For example, it could be the taste of a certain food or drink. For smokers, it can be that relaxing deep breath as you exhale.

Step 4 – Find 3 other ways to meet the addiction needs

In step 1, we identified the needs the addiction is trying to meet. Now come up with 3 other healthy ways that could also meet the same needs as the old addictive behavior. When you find other ways to meet these needs, the addictive behavior can naturally reduce or stop.

If you need alcohol to relax and switch off, think of 3 other ways that could help you relax? Maybe meditation, going to the gym, reading, or listening to music. Perhaps it’s spending more time with friends. There are so many ways, just find those that help you the most.

Step 5 – Ask yourself, is it really an addiction or just a strong habit?

This is a question I always ask people who come to me for help to quit smoking. I phrase it like this: “If you are on a long flight, and you can’t smoke on the plane, what do you do?” They usually say, “I manage to not think about it. I know I can’t smoke, so I will not think about it for the duration of the flight”. If that’s the case, then it is more of a habit.

Imagine a heroin addict on a plane for eight hours. Would they be able to not think about it? Probably not. Could someone with diabetes, who has to take insulin injections regularly, be able to not think about it while on the plane for eight hours? Probably not.

And as an extreme example, if someone had a gun to your head and threatened to shoot you if you did the addictive behavior, would you do it? Of course not! Why? because you now have a very good reason not to do it! So pretty much everything is more of a habit than an addiction. And just thinking about it as a habit, and not an addiction will help you perceive it differently.

Step 6 – Identify and change the triggers

A trigger is a person, place, thing, or a feeling that makes you want to do the addictive behavior. For example, when you’re having a cup of coffee, you feel you need a smoke. Or when you get home from a stressful day at work, that feeling of stress makes you raid the fridge and eat something unhealthy. The trigger can also be a feeling of loneliness or boredom.

After identifying what the triggers are, find ways to change them. Come up with new triggers. If it’s a coffee that makes you want a cigarette, switch to a different drink.

If you feel lonely at home, and you comfort yourself with eating, maybe you could go out more often. It’s really about being creative with how you plan your life. Remove triggers as much as possible, or replace them with other things.

Step 7 – Make a plan to stop

Start by setting a date, ideally within the next month. Then create plans and backup plans, with lots of ideas on what you will do instead of the addictive behavior. For example, you could make a list of people to call, or different activities to do. Whenever you feel the urge, or even before you feel the urge to do that behavior, you will naturally switch to doing something else.

Step 8 – Be kind on yourself

It’s easy to feel guilty and be hard on yourself because of the addiction and possible relapses. That feeling of guilt or fear can spiral into more addictive behaviors. Or maybe you replace the addiction that you’ve just given up with another addiction. Perhaps you give up smoking and start comfort-eating instead.

Remember that the addiction started for a reason, and that reason was to feel good. So you want to go easy on yourself when you’re finding other ways to feel good. Treat your body with love and care, nourish it well with good food, spend time with quality people, and get plenty of sleep. And the most important thing, love yourself and feel good about becoming a new person with new behaviors.

Step 9 – Think about how you will feel AFTER doing the addictive behavior

People think about the feeling they will have when they do the addictive behavior. But once they do it, they feel remorse or guilt. Instead, think about how you will feel after you’ve done it, before you do it. Then you’ll be less likely to do it.

For example, let’s say you often have a cream cake at night. But as soon as you have it, you feel remorse and guilt. If you think about that feeling of remorse and guilt before you have it, then you probably won’t have that cream cake.

Step 10 – Remove the addiction from your core identity

Smokers often say, “I’m a smoker”. A change in identity could be, “I am someone that smokes”. Then think about other things that are also part of your identity.  Examples include being a good husband, wife or parent, being great in your career, or having wonderful hobbies. Suddenly that old idea of being a smoker is a much smaller part of your identity.

So whatever the addiction is, think about everything else that is also part of you. And when you do that, the addiction will seem much smaller. You will put it in the right place and not see it as an all-consuming part of your life.

Also, if you create a new sense of identity around being fit and healthy, the old addiction will seem alien. It will conflict with your core identity.

Still Struggling and Need Help?

Overcoming addictions isn’t always easy. Many people do it by themselves. But sometimes, you need the help of a friend, a good support group, or a professional.

If you would like me to help you overcome any addiction, you can find more information right here. I am a clinical hypnotherapist and deliver sessions over Skype or Zoom. It doesn’t matter where you live, as I can run hypnotherapy extremely effectively online and at a time that is most convenient for you.

So this was my 10-step process to help you overcome any addiction.  Start putting this into practice today and notice the addiction fade and your life change in a positive direction!

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul

12 Fantastic Ways to Overcome Self-Doubt Today

We all have goals that we really want to achieve. However, many of us never try or give up too soon because of self-doubt. Self-doubt is thinking you can’t do or achieve something that you eagerly desire.

Everyone has self-doubt. Even the most successful people in the world have it. They, like everybody else, have problems. And anyone facing problems will have an element of self-doubt. I also have self-doubt at times. So far, I’ve delivered around 250 hypnotherapy sessions, but I still sometimes experience the feeling of self-doubt when I see a new client. It’s a human emotion. The only people I can think of that don’t experience self-doubt are those with very high egos, who believe they know it all.

If you are not achieving your goals and feeling stuck, self-doubt might be the reason. However, if you use it constructively, it can help you move forward. What is the opposite of self-doubt? It is self-confidence. I will now show you 12 great ways to help you overcome your self-doubt and gain greater confidence instead.

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1. Believe That You Can Figure It Out

After interviewing many high achievers, Brendon Burchard realized that they had one thing in common. They believed that they could figure out a solution to every problem. With enough time, energy, and information, they could always figure things out.

Think about times when you figured out things you weren’t prepared for. Or solved problems you thought you couldn’t solve. When you remember the times, you figured things out in the past, your level of self-confidence will improve. If you found a way then, you can find a way now. This will help you reduce or even overcome self-doubt.

2. Accept Your Self-Doubt

There can be some truth in your self-doubt. There is always a possibility of failing. Accept that. Then take action anyway! Do it purely for the lesson or experience, no matter what happens. Don’t push that feeling of self-doubt away. Instead, accept it and do it anyway. Feel that self-doubt feeling, and then just let it go.

3. Dump Then Destroy

The conscious mind understands verbal language and self-talk. However, the subconscious mind responds to feelings and emotions. The Dump then Destroy process is a great exercise to satisfy both the conscious and subconscious mind.

How do you do it? First, open a new Word document or grab a journal. Write down all your self-doubt thoughts on a particular situation. Write whatever is bothering you and giving you a feeling of self-doubt. Let your mind go wild and aim for around 750 words.

Once you’ve done that, destroy it! If you wrote them in a Word document, move it to the trash and delete it permanently. If you used a journal or a piece of paper, rip it out, burn it, or enjoy putting it in the bin!

This will give you a cathartic effect. This is a feeling of releasing and letting go of self-doubt. You want that feeling to pour out of yourself so that you no longer feel stuck. Try it and you’ll see that it is a simple and satisfying exercise that will significantly help you to overcome self-doubt.

4. Have Clarity and a Plan

Get clear on what you want. If you don’t have a plan, if you have done little research, or you’re not sure what you need to do, you will have self-doubt. It’s like trying to do a presentation without being prepared. Preparation is very important! So get clear on your goal. Work out the steps and create a plan. This will remove doubts and boost your confidence.

Take some time to do this. Identify the goals, steps, and formulate a plan. This might involve buying a course to learn the steps or finding a mentor to help you. A clear plan or roadmap will massively increase your self-confidence.

5. Filter Out Anything that Makes Self-Doubt Worse

Identify the elements that make your self-doubt worse? Are there people that question what you do, criticize you or put doubt in your mind? Perhaps it’s someone that constantly predicts the bad things that could happen, but never offers a solution.

Remember that their advice is often based on fear. Maybe there is a positive intention behind their advice.  For example, not wanting you to get hurt. Still, their advice is based on their own limitations and fear. If possible, let go of those people or spend less time with them. That’s not always easy, but if you can, and you want to overcome self-doubt, that’s definitely a good thing to do.

What about social media? Do you get self-doubting feelings when you spend time on social media? Maybe you’re seeing super successful people that you feel you can never live up to? Perhaps limiting your time on social media could be helpful as well.

6. Compare Yourself to Who You Want to Be

So many people with self-doubt compare themselves to other people. They look at what other people have or do. The problem is, you don’t know exactly what someone else is thinking or feeling. You don’t know how happy or fulfilled they really are.

Instead of comparing yourself to others, compare yourself to who you want to be. Also compare yourself today with who you were yesterday, or a month ago, or a few years ago. Notice the progress you’re making. It’s much more important to focus on progress and enjoy the journey. And everyone’s journey is different. The things you may need to achieve success could be very different for someone else. The fulfillment and satisfaction you get from that could be very different to another person.

7. Visualize Yourself Succeeding

Are you thinking and imagining how things could go wrong? Maybe you’re imagining yourself messing things up. Instead of that, start visualizing what will happen when you succeed. If you can, spend more time visualizing and focusing on what you want to happen rather than ruminating about what you don’t want. That will make a huge difference. Instead of thinking self-doubtful thoughts, start visualizing how you want things to go.

8. Change Your Physical State

This can be a fantastic way to get some instant relief. Go for a walk or a run; do a workout or some jumping jacks. Get your body moving! That helps release stress. It also puts self-doubt back into its normal place, making it easier to overcome it.

9. Act Now

Hesitation plants seeds of doubt. If you keep hesitating, those seeds of doubt get bigger and more of an issue. So act now if you can. If not, then imagine what your best self would do. Then take action as soon as you can and make corrections as you go along.

Instead of Ready, Aim, Fire. try Ready, Fire, Aim instead. Take action and adjust as you go along. Try it, especially if you’re a perfectionist!

10. Change the Meaning of Past Events

Our brain automatically looks at the past when facing a new experience or a problem. We live today based on what happened in the past. A failure or a difficulty that we experienced earlier will create self-doubt feelings and thoughts in the present. We obviously can’t change the past, but we can change the meaning of past events. Start thinking about them simply as events. Focus on the things you learned from the past that can be useful right now. This could simply be something like, I am never going to do that again.

Also ask yourself, how can I be grateful for this experience and for what I’ve learned from it. This will help you create a different perception and change the meaning of past events.

11. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

Your goals, dreams, and the best version of yourself are on the other side of your comfort zone. So what can you do today that is new, uncomfortable, or even scary? If you do it, your self-confidence will improve. Those self-doubt thoughts and feelings will start fading away and you will overcome them.

12. Have a Weekly Evaluation Ritual

We want to change our way of thinking from judging to learning. When you experience self-doubt, your self-talk is often along the lines of:

  • Why did I do this?
  • Why didn’t I do that?

The weekly evaluation ritual helps you change those judging thoughts to learning thoughts. Ask yourself questions like:

  • What did I learn?
  • What went well?
  • Where could I improve?
  • What did I do that made me feel good?
  • What did I do that made me feel a little down?
  • What can I do better next time?

If you ask yourself these questions and do it as a weekly ritual, you’ll change your self-talk from judging and criticizing to learning and evaluating. When you do that, the feelings of disappointment and self-doubt will fade away.

So, these are my 12 ways to help you overcome self-doubt. I hope you found them useful. As always, put them into practice! Try them out on yourself. See which work best for you. And share your experience by leaving a comment below. I’d love to hear how you’re getting on and what helped you overcome your self-doubt the most. 

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul