I found this on www.marcandangel.com and it resonated.  So I want to share it with you!

12 Tough Truths that Help You Grow

As you look back on your life, you will often realize that many of the times you thought you were being rejected from something good, you were in fact being redirected to something better. You can’t control everything. Sometimes you just need to relax and have faith that things will work out. Let go a little and just let life happen. Because sometimes the truths you can’t change, end up changing you and helping you grow.

Here are twelve such truths…

1.     Everything is as it should be. It’s crazy how you always end up where you’re meant to be – how even the most tragic and stressful situations eventually teach you important lessons that you never dreamed you were going to learn. Remember, oftentimes when things are falling apart, they are actually falling into place.

 

2.     Not until you are lost in this world can you begin to find your true self. Realizing you are lost is the first step to living the life you want. The second step is leaving the life you don’t want. Making a big life change is pretty scary. But you know what’s even scarier? Regret. Vision without action is a daydream, and action without vision is a nightmare. Your heart is free, have the courage to follow it.

 

3.     It’s usually the deepest pain which empowers you to grow to your full potential. It’s the scary, stressful choices that end up being the most worthwhile. Without pain, there would be no change. But remember, pain, just like everything in life, is meant to be learned from and then released.

 

4.     One of the hardest decisions you will ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or take another step forward. If you catch yourself in a cycle of trying to change someone, or defending yourself again someone who is trying to change you, walk away. But if you are pursuing a dream, take another step. And don’t forget that sometimes this step will involve modifying your dream, or planning a new one – it’s OK to change your mind or have more than one dream.

 

5.     You have to take care of yourself first. Before befriending others, you have to be your own friend. Before correcting others, you have to correct yourself. Before making others happy, you have to make yourself happy. It’s not called selfishness, it’s called personal development. Once you balance yourself, only then can you balance the world around you.

 

6.     One of the greatest freedoms is truly not caring what everyone else thinks of you. As long as you are worried about what others think of you, you are owned by them. Only when you require no approval from outside yourself, can you own yourself.

 

7.     You may need to be single for awhile before you realize that, although the co-owned belongings from your failed relationships might not have been divided equally, the issues that destroyed the relationships likely were. For how can you stand confidently alone, or see the same issues arising in your newest relationship, and not realize which broken pieces belong to you? Owning your issues, and dealing with them, will make you far happier in the long run, than owning anything else in this world.

 

8.     The only thing you can absolutely control is how you react to things out of your control. The more you can adapt to the situations in life, the more powerful your highs will be, and the more quickly you’ll be able to bounce back from the lows in your life. Put most simply: being at peace means being in a state of complete acceptance of all that is, right here, right now.

 

9.     Some people will lie to you. Remember, an honest enemy is better than a friend who lies. Pay less attention to what people say, and more attention to what they do. Their actions will show you the truth, which will help you measure the true quality of your relationship in the long-term.

 

10.         If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never have enough. If you are thankful for what you do have, you will end up having even more. Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold; happiness dwells in the soul. Abundance is not about how much you have, it’s how you feel about what you have. When you take things for granted, your happiness gets taken away.

 

11.         Yes, you have failed in the past. But don’t judge yourself by your past, you don’t live there anymore. Just because you’re not where you want to be today doesn’t mean you won’t be there someday. You can turn it all around in the blink of an eye by making a simple choice to stand back up – to try again, to love again, to live again, and to dream again.

 

12.         Everything is going to be alright; maybe not today, but eventually. There will be times when it seems like everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong. And you might feel like you will be stuck in this rut forever, but you won’t. Sure the sun stops shining sometimes, and you may get a huge thunderstorm or two, but eventually the sun will come out to shine. Sometimes it’s just a matter of us staying as positive as possible in order to make it to see the sunshine break through the clouds again.

http://www.marcandangel.com

Pretalk on First Hypnotherapy Session...the Real Deal



I just had a new client starting their journey yesterday.  And it made me think more closely about what I say to them about the journey they are embarking on and how it applies to all of us.  It also reminds me that I have to be even more authentic in my own process, and not just practice what I preach :) 

This is a summation of my talk:

"I'm asking you to take a leap of faith.  It's time to leave what you THINK you know about yourself and THINK is the cause of what's working against you behind my office door.  In so doing, you can be truly open and vulnerable to your truth.

It may seem scary to you at the moment, but I can tell you from experience that it is only by this total surrender that you can hear your own authentic voice and heal the broken pieces of your heart.  It is only by meeting 'yourself' that you can begin the process on uniting all that you are with all you can be. 

Take a chance and let yourself break open so that you can rise from the ashes of the old, as did the mystical Phoenix of lore, as a fusion of what you were, what you REALLY are and what you are yet to become"

I also recommend a wonderful book I just finished reading that talks about this process in a easy reading style.  "Broken Open" by Elizabeth Lesser

Is There A Difference Between Meditation and Hypnosis?

 

Is There A Difference Between Mediation and Hypnosis?   

I have found that in many talks that I do about Hypnosis and with clients on our initial session, people think that meditation is different from Hypnosis or they ask if it is.  Some feel that they can meditate but not master hypnosis.  Well, the good news is that they are very similar. 

Many of the techniques that are used in meditation are the same with hypnosis.  The principle of both is to relax the mind.  To do that, guided visualization is used in both techniques.  In hypnosis, Hypnotherapist use a technique called Progressive Relaxation which focuses the mind on relaxing the body.  Each part of the body is relaxed, one at a time.  It is deliciously calming.  I also use visualizations that the client has informed me work well to relax them, such as sitting in a meadow among wild flowers, sitting in an Adirondack chair gazing at a still lake, or strolling along the ocean shore at sunset.  Those people that have used meditation before hypnosis recognize the similarities right away.

So what is the difference?

Meditation is used to quiet the mind.  There is no thinking involved.   When conscious thoughts creep in, then repeating mantras or just finding something quite to focus on will move them away.  Focusing on breathing is one of the simplest ways to quiet the mind because focusing on one thing (breath, image) quiets the mind.

Hypnotherapy happens when there is a specific aim to provide therapeutic healing.  There is action involved once the quiet state of mind is attained.  A Hypnotherapist will use meditation techniques to attain the level of mental quietness needed in order to work with the subconscious mind to make change.  This is when the mind is open to therapeutic suggestions for change that the client is looking to achieve in their lives, such as overcoming anxiety, a phobia or fear, healing their sense of self esteem, reducing weight, etc.

Even though both Hypnosis and meditation require a calmed mind, the mediator reaches their goal from stilling their mind and relaxing it.  With Hypnosis, the benefits happen after this state.  A quiet mind is the spring board into the depth of the mind that holds and protects feelings attached to beliefs that are causing the client discomfort physically, emotionally or both.

A Hypnotherapist will use imagery and metaphor, as well as Regression Therapy (if they are trained in its mastery) in order to best create the changes within the subconscious mind to attain mental and physical health… to facilitate change.  It is the subconscious part of the mind that is then power behind all of your feelings, thoughts, actions and habits. It is the single most powerful and goal oriented mechanism known to mankind and it is not rational.  As much as a person can tell themselves (or be told) to stop smoking because it’s harmful to her health, they continue.  The subconscious mind has another plan.  The smoking is a coping mechanism that masks hurtful feelings from the past, such as sadness, loneliness, anger. And because the conscious rational mind and the subconscious mind do not communicate, the conscious want (to stop smoking) doesn’t reach the subconscious mind.  It’s actually in the way of the subconscious mind which is the ONLY part of the mind that can make the changes we desire!  Our logical mind is a ‘thinker”.  Our subconscious mind is a ‘feeler’.  It’s like the languages Mandarin and Cantonese. Both are Chinese languages but completely different.

Hypnotherapy is simply the vehicle which provides the bypass of the thinking, logical, rational mind so that the positive messages can be passed to the subconscious mind for change.

Hypnosis is not better for you because it adds another level to the meditation.  Simply quieting the mind can bring up deep and powerful insights without any effort. The mind, just like the body, needs to have down time.  Meditation is an excellent way to give the mind a break, so that it can work more efficiently.  And hypnosis and meditation can both be used to help someone change.