Becoming Aware

As I mentioned in my last post, this year has been an incredible year of change and moving forward for me.  I had been stuck for 22 years behind a wall of shame, regret, depression, despair, fear, and guilt.  At the beginning of 2012, I was referred to a gentleman by the name of Cory Hymas who dealt with emotional eating and the mental healing that needed to take place for freedom from eating problems or really any bad habit or addiction.  My incredible upward journey over the past year has largely been due to the mentoring I received from this great man.  It has also occurred because I was willing and ready to do the work.

So here's the first question you need to ask yourself.  Are you sick of being sick and tired, depressed and discouraged?  Are you willing to do whatever it takes to finally be free of the bondage your habits or addictions have placed on you?  Are you ready to dig deep within yourself, as hard as it may be, to uncover those negative aspects about you, your past, and your negative thoughts and feelings in order to be free and at peace?  Remember I have tried everything and none of it provided lasting change.  This path WILL give you lasting and permanent change but you have to be willing to do the work!  The only one that can change you is you!

Favorite quote #1: 

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own.  No  apologies or excuses.  No one to lean on, rely on, or blame.  The gift is yours.  It is an amazing journey, and you alone are responsible for the quality of it.

This past year has been a journey of becoming aware of my thoughts and feelings and learning to ask the question why about everything.  How can we defeat our negative behaviors if we don't ask the question of why they are there in the first place?  How can we let them go if we don't know where they come from?  These were all questions I started asking myself and thanks to a mentor I was gently guided and helped along.  He never forced me to do anything.  I had to be willing to do the work.  This blog is meant to help mentor you in this process of emotional healing.  If you would like more one on one mentoring then I would be more than honored to help you.  You can reach me at rachellerchase@yahoo.com if you are interested.

One of the first concepts I learned and internalized was in regards to my negative thoughts and feelings.  Every day of our lives, we have negative influences coming at us.

They are divided into 4 groups--negative experiences, negative people, negative thoughts, and negative feelings.  We often don't have control of the negative people and experiences that come into our lives.  Sometimes we do.  Being aware of and proactive about our present circumstances by doing our best to prevent negative interactions with people or negative experiences from happening is ideal.  But the negative will come, thus it is crucial that we learn to let go of past negative experiences and negative people that have affected us.  I'll talk about letting go in an upcoming post.  For now I want to focus on our thoughts.  We can absolutely identify and eliminate negative thoughts and feelings.  But how can we rid ourselves of our negative thoughts and feelings if we don't know they are there?  The trick is becoming aware of them.  If we want to change the direction of our lives, we have to be aware of what goes on in our minds.  Everything originates with a thought.

A thought leads to a feeling which leads to an action which leads to a result which leads to another thought and so the cycle continues.  If I am thinking to myself, "I am so ugly!" then naturally I'm going to feel terrible and ugly, then I am going to act terrible and ugly towards those I love which results in pushing them away--the people that I so desperately wanted to be loved and accepted by--which then leads to the thought of "I am not loved" and then this happens . . .

a downward spiral of negativity that goes on and on.  In order to stop the downward spiral from continuing, we have to stop the cycle.  It is often easier to identify a feeling than it is a thought and that is great if we can do that.  But if we can get to the point where we are aware enough that we can identify the negative thought before it leads to a feeling, then we stop the downward spiral from ever having a chance.

I think it is common for women and even men of our culture to think that if they hate themselves and think poorly of themselves then they are humble.  HATING OURSELVES DOES NOT EQUAL HUMILITY!  In fact, hating ourselves is just the other end of the pride stick.  Let's say we pick up a pencil.  The pencil represents pride.  On one end of the pencil we have the extreme of pride which is egotistical and boastful.  On the other end we have the other extreme which is self-hatred and self-pity.  They are both pride.  Now I was on the self-hatred end.  I grew up with a very deep-seated desire to not be prideful or selfish.  What I didn't know then was that because I hated and detested myself so much, I was still being prideful.  I was still constantly thinking about myself and how I had been victimized and wronged or how I was so terrible at this or that.  And all of those feelings of self-hatred originated with one thought-I'm not good enough.  Because I had had the thought of "I'm not good enough" so often, it turned into a belief about myself.  And that belief became the eyes through which I saw the world.  Everything that happened to me then validated that I wasn't good enough because that was the perception with which I saw the world.  When it comes down to it, our perception is our reality.  If our perceptions are not grounded in truth, then we will be looking at the world in a very distorted and incorrect way and we will end up discouraged and depressed.  Becoming aware enables us to see the truth or error in our thinking.  If we are seeing the world with distorted beliefs and perceptions, then by becoming aware, we can change our beliefs and perceptions so that they are based in truth.  And the truth shall set you FREE!!!

So my first challenge to you is to start becoming aware of your thoughts.  Are they generally positive or negative?  Are they grounded in truth?  Are they predominantly self-condemning?  Start recording your thoughts.  When we write them down, we tend to become more aware of them and we can then see the truth or error in them.  I used a little black book.  It became a "prison" for my negative thoughts.  Once they were in there, they couldn't get out.  As I started to write all my negative thoughts down in my little black book, they started to go away.  Its almost as if I was saying, "Hah!  I caught you!"  They can no longer hide once we have discovered them.  So write down in your little black book all those negative "You are ____" and "I am ____" statements and you will find they will start to disappear.  Becoming aware is the key to changing your life!!!

Favorite quote #2:

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.

You can do this!  Let's just take this one step at a time.  "By small and simple things are great things brought to pass."  You are on your pathway to freedom, peace, and joy!  Enjoy the journey!  The "A-HA!" moments along the way are what make the journey so wonderful!!

be.YOU.tiful!!