Thank You
I want to say a big thank you for joining me on my recent happiness workshop. I hope it has made a difference in your life and at the very least, made you start to “think” about obsessive thinking and how it negatively affects you.
Once you understand it, you can work on fixing it 🙂
Below is a quick summary of what we talked about as well as the practices I suggested you try on your home. In addition, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, there is a coupon code giving you 10% off any of my workshops or bead bracelets.
Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter 🙂
Thank you again – Mat
Workshop Overview
Meditating is frustrating – you simply realize how noisy your mind is and that you can’t control it.
Mindfulness silences the mind – actively focusing (intently) on the bodily senses engages you with the body and takes you out of your mind. If you focus with intensity on the sights, sounds touch, taste and smell of everyday objects, your mind cannot think about the past or daydream about the future. It cannot criticize or judge. But only if you keep overriding your minds natural tendency to want to drag you off into a conversation.
Study the Details – once our mind has identified something, it generally stops looking and moves on to something else. Study the details to stop your mind from doing that. When it does start telling you stories, simply come right back to studying the details.
Intensity – focus like the bomb will go off if you cut the wrong wire.
Start Small – like any new skill, start with small object your can hold in your hand and practice for just a few minutes. Once you get better, you can practice 24 hours a day and expand your view to a larger scene.
Stop the story – when you embody mindfulness, your mind slowly goes quiet and stops telling you stories about how awful something is, or how somebody did something to you, or how things should be different, or why do I have to do that. You will experience happiness in the mundane. Washing dishes becomes like watching the most amazing sunset. Buttoning your shirt is no different than swimming with dolphins if you’re mindful. The joy is still there. It’s only your mind that gets in the way of that happiness.
Productivity – goes up when you can remain focused even with distractions.
Procrastination – goes away when you don’t have your mind telling you that something will be difficult or there’s something more fun.
Relationships blossom – and flourish when you listen openly without judging what people are saying and without fear of being judged yourself.
Start noticing your inner being – you become aware of more subtle sensations going on in your body. You’ll know when you’ve eaten enough. You’ll know when you eat things that are bad for you. You’ll go to sleep when you’re tired.
Love versus the other thing – you’ll notice how love and anger affect the body. Love puts your body in a thriving mode where it can flourish, heal, repair and grow. Your health will improve. Illness will disappear. You’ll have more energy. The negative emotions fill your body with cortisol and adrenaline that put your body into survival mode. They shut down essential functions and cause real harm to your body. It’s a survival mechanism that should only be activated rarely by physical danger, but now our mind experiences mental danger and produces an almost constant trickle of these harmful chemicals.
Story time – when you use your mind to visualize, it does actually release these same chemicals into the body. So thinking about something that upset you will release harmful chemicals. Thinking about something positive, happy, loving, will release healthy chemicals into your body. When you realize your thoughts cause this stress, you’ll see why it’s important to stop the thoughts. When there’s a pebble in your shoe, take your shoe off, take our the pebble, put your shoe back on. The story about who’s fault it is, why it shouldn’t have happened, how you think better shoes or boots would have prevented it. That’s all unnecessary and just creates that negative environment for your body.
FLIP – FLOP
To feel the change in your body and observe your body chemistry changing. Sit quietly for a few moments as though you are going to meditate. Allow your body to relax and your breathing to slow.
Now move your awareness within your body, somewhere just above your stomach, and observe the sensations.
Now think of a happy memory. Maybe a wonderful vacation or a social situation. Picture that memory as clearly as you can. While you do that, try to also keep your awareness within.
Once you can feel what happiness feels like, your positive chemistry. Now switch to a negative thought. A bad experience you may have had. Maybe somebody cut you up on the highway. Maybe you got into an argument with a colleague. But again, picture the confrontation as vividly as you can, while also keeping half an eye on your inner being.
Keep flip flopping between the two thoughts until you can feel the different energies in your body. The different chemistry. One feels good and healthy. The other harmful and destructive. One moves upwards towards the heart. One moves down and ties the stomach up in knots.
Decide which one you would prefer to have in your life.
Unconditional Love ……. er hem …… Extreme Health Hacking – Do your body a favor, try to make unconditional love your default response to everything. All the health benefits, none of the negatives.
Loving Kindness Meditation
This meditation can be quite emotional, so you should make sure you’re in a safe place where you know you won’t be disturbed. It’s not something to be afraid of, but emotions can release quickly. Overwhelming joy rises when negative blockages are released.
So we start out sitting as though we’re going to meditate. Relax your body, relax your muscles. Breathe easily with your eyes closed.
Then when you’re relaxed. Picture somebody in your life that you know you love unconditionally and that loves you unconditionally. Maybe a parent, grandparent, maybe a best friend, spouse, lover or whoever. Hopefully there’s someone special.
Now spend a few moments and picture their face. Visualize them with as much detail as you can. Picture their face just a few feet in front of you, and see them smiling at you, happy, full of love. Now smile back at them and say, “I love you, I wish you nothing but peace, happiness and good health.” Now picture them smiling even more and saying the same thing back to you.
Next, visualize somebody you know who is a good friend. Someone you trust. Smile at them and say, “I love you, I wish you nothing but peace, happiness and good health.” Now picture them smiling even more and saying the same thing back to you.
Next, visualize someone who you know, but not too well. Maybe a colleague. Maybe someone you see often in a store. Smile at them and say, “I love you, I wish you nothing but peace, happiness and good health.” Now picture them smiling back at you and saying the same thing back to you.
Then visualize someone that you can’t stand. Somebody really awful. Maybe a historical figure. Maybe a bully from your past. Someone you disagree with. But do exactly the same thing. Picture there face and tell them that you love them, and wish them nothing but peace, happiness and good health.
There’s one more person that we add to the end of the list, and that is yourself. Smile at yourself and say, “I love you, I wish you nothing but peace, happiness and good health.”
Very often we forget to love ourselves. We don’t think we’re worthy. But there’s that word again, “think”.
By doing that, you’re slowly overriding your mind’s natural tendency to pre-judge others. And to change your behavior towards people you may think negatively about. You’re changing your negative chemistry to a positive state. And that will hopefully carry over to your everyday life.
Fall in Love with Everything – so I like to take the loving kindness meditation one step further. Sit in your living room or your office and just look around the room. Each thing your eye falls on, try to feel that same loving sensation. Fall in love with your stapler. Your coffee cup. You sofa. Everything. If you find that hard, bounce back and forth between the person you used as your “unconditional love” person and the inanimate object you’re looking at.
Project Love – when you start to look for love in the world around you, you will see love all around you. Basically what you project onto the world is what you see reflected back at you. There’s a saying, “a hungry man only sees restaurants”.
Summary
Happiness is easier than you think. Stop thinking and you’ll be happy.
Understand that so much of what we think about is completely unnecessary drama created by the mind. The conversations in your head can only be heard by you, but the harmful effects of judging and criticizing trigger a primeval chemical response in our bodies that does real harm.
Meditation allows you to relax your body and release the stress that gets built up.
Mindfulness allows you to stop your mind from chattering and prevents the stress building up in the first place.
Working to change your chemistry by extreme health hacking (unconditional love) is the best thing for you and everyone that ever comes into contact with you.
The world is what you make of it. Go out and enjoy your newfound happiness 🙂
Thank You
If you made it this far – well done 🙂
You deserve some goodies for your effort.
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