YOUR LIFE A-Z:PERCEPTION

WHAT EYES ARE YOU LOOKING THROUGH

PERCEPTION

PERCEPTION matters.  PERCEPTION is an amazing ability to sense a situation (any) through your senses, which also include your biography and biology.  For instance if you have a history of not being heard or understood, perhaps you have developed a PERCEPTION that what you have to say is very uninteresting and that you are not as smart as though around you.  That PERCEPTION is dangerous and harmful to your self-esteem and it hurts you.  Instead, maybe you have been around very self-absorbed people.  So, always question your PERCEPTIONS.  How did you come to believe certain things?  When did you come to believe certain things?  For instance if you were four years old when you PERCEIVED that the world was out to hurt you, and perhaps the age of four was very hurtful.  However, at the age of twenty-nine you will need to update your PERCEPTION.  You have many more options as a twenty-nine year old than you did as a four year old.  PERCEPTIONS really do affect your belief system and how you see the world and yourself.   Thus, it is important to examine your perceptions and update them based on the reality of your life as it exist today.  Facts and truth are always filtered through your internal belief system and it is best to compare the facts to what really exist in the world around you.  A four year inside of you should not be ruling your adult life.  Developmental stages make a difference to how you come to believe what you believe. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z: FEELINGS

ALIVE!

FEELINGS

It takes microseconds to register FEELINGS within your body and those FEELINGS are responses to your personal biological Affects, empowered by your scripts (history and belief system).  The coaching process helps clients identify FEELINGS building an awareness of connection between the past and the present.  For instance, if you are walking down a grocery isle and you hear a mother shame her child by saying something like, “Don’t act so stupid,” at first you may just be annoyed at the bad parenting.  Being annoyed is a FEELING.  Depending on your own childhood history and personal experience with shaming messages, you may discover that in a few hours you are experiencing deep sadness or anger.  Sadness and anger are part of your nine-affect family.  At first you may not make the connection between your sadness and anger and the earlier grocery store scene.  However, if you will explore your affects you may come across personal childhood scenes where you were shamed publically several times.  Now, your system is beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together and your memory elicits other FEELINGS such as betrayal, hurt, and discouragement about your childhood.  FEELINGS are internal radar systems that help us live more in the present by being emotionally healthy.  When all of this activity lurks in the unconscious then often non-productive behaviors take over such as overeating, using substances, or checking out emotionally in front of the TV for hours.  FEELINGS are important to pay attention too whether they seem small like, “annoyed” or big like “betrayal.”  Make a pledge to stay connected to what you are FEELING.  I guess you could say FEELINGS are personal greetings not to be ignored.

YOUR LIFE A-Z: EMOTION

GET IN TOUCH WITH YOURSELF

EMOTION

·       Affect is the innate, biological response to the increasing, decreasing or persistent intensity of neural firing. This results in a particular feeling, facial and body display, and skin changes. Affects feel rewarding, punishing, or neutral in their own ways. Affect makes things urgent.

·       Awareness of an affect is a feeling.

·       A feeling plus memory of prior similar feelings is an emotion. (From www.Tomkins.org)

EMOTION is at the heart of your positive and negative existence and it springs from a complexity of biological wiring that makes us who we are.   If you are feeling flat about your current life situation then it is possible emotions have become scary to you and you are unconsciously working hard not to feel.  EMOTIONS are scary when we have been shamed for EMOTIONAL expression in the past.  Have you ever had the experience of an EMOTION and found yourself curious as to why you would feel that certain way?  That EMOTION is full of information about something in your memory bank that is currently not consciously available to you.  Healthy people have a wide range of EMOTION and are EMOTIONALLY available to his/herself and others.  EMOTION is the spice of life and without a wide range of EMOTION then life becomes dull and boring.  Invite your EMOTIONS to have expression in your daily life. Color your EMOTIONS. Write your EMOTIONS.  Journal an EMOTIONAL letter to yourself or someone you care deeply about. Explore your EMOTIONS and flex your EMOTIONS to change the daily landscape of your life.

YOUR LIFE A-Z :HAPPY

HAPPY

What is happy to you?  What are you really saying when you say I just want to be happy?  As I have said,  “Happiness is not an illusion, but neither is it a destination.”  I see it as a space within you.  The dictionary defines contentment as a place of happiness and satisfaction.  Being HAPPY is a space or place wherethere is a reservoir of positive energy, decorated with fond memories, and an invitation to sit and enjoy the present moment, using all of your senses of smell, taste, touch, hear, and feel.  Experiencing the moment is a space within you as the moment passed already, so it is a pause button of HAPPY.  HAPPY space is a choice.  We can choose to focus on bad memories, ugly situations, and things in the past that were not fair.  Or we can choose to be anxious and worry about every possible thing that can go wrong in the future or we can place the present moment on “pause,” and allow ourselves to switch channels in our head and enjoy the creation of HAPPY.  If we did this as often as we check our Facebook every day imagine how lush, lovely, and exhilarating our HAPPY space could become.  We would enjoy going there to experience the joy of being alive, as well as the moment of sweet contentment in the facts.  These are the facts: If you are reading this you are alive, be grateful.  If you are grateful you will count your blessings and if you count your blessings you will enter your HAPPY space.  Yep…that is fact.