This is a Guest post by Lauren Bailey

The power that positive thinking can have in one’s life is no new concept. Many of us know that positive inner thought and a generally positive outlook throughout daily life is a great way to get ahead in your pursuits and feel satisfied about life.

But, of course, while many of us know that these things are true, not many of us actually put them into practice. Maintaining a positive and productive outlook on your life and your personal and professional endeavors can be quite difficult at times. Our lives can pass through challenging moments—some more challenging than average. There are times when it feels almost impossible to maintain that positive mindset. Once our inner thoughts begin to turn negative, a dangerous pattern can easily start to develop.

Rest assured that these patterns are not irreversible. Here are some techniques and tips for actually achieving and maintaining that positive outlook:

Identify Triggers

To seek a more positive outlook on life you have to look inwards first. That is the first mark on the map.

It is your inner thoughts and voice that create much of the negativity or positivity that you feel and display outwardly. For this reason, it is essential that you listen to your inner voice and try to pinpoint the source of negative thoughts. While I do not completely recommend focusing solely on your own negative thoughts, it is the right place to start.

You want to try to identify what things in your environment and events happening throughout your day trigger negative feelings in you. Once you get a glimpse of where these negative feelings come from, you will be better prepared to change or alter those triggers. Listen to yourself carefully and jot down every time you feel negatively or have negative thoughts that disrupt your day. Once you are able to identify a pattern in your negative thoughts, you should be able to respond to them. Start becoming aware when you are entering a situation or atmosphere that causes you negativity and prepare for it accordingly. Try to enter the situation with an already overly positive mindset. This will help preempt those negative triggers.

Surround Yourself with Positivity

One of the most productive things that you can do for your own personal positivity is to try to surround yourself with positive things and people as much as possible. By putting yourself in positive and productive situations, you will be more likely to be positive and productive with yourself.

Oftentimes we can find ourselves stuck in a cycle of negativity. At work or in our personal lives, if there are people or friends who are consistently in a broody mood around us, it can be easy to fall into a pattern of negativity with such people. They say something negative and we respond to that comment with something negative. While the negative talk may be generally harmless, it does put us (and the other people) into a negative mindset.

Cycles of negative talk are very common among close coworkers or friends, however, as well all know, this negative cycle does very little to improve the situation (and in reality usually perpetuates the negative situation). Try to surround yourself with people and situations that encourage positive thinking and a positive attitude.

 It’s All about Perspective

Perspective plays a large and important role in our outlook on life.

If you feel that individuals are “out to get you” or that you are constantly dealing with “bad luck”, it can be extremely difficult to remain positive in your pursuits. You have to take a look at your perspective on life and in certain situations. Don’t victimize yourself (even though it can be easy to do so at times).

You need to take action and responsibility for your own circumstances. If you are unhappy with things, take the actions and ownership to change and fix them. Moreover, rather than looking at things from a negative light, try to shine some positivity onto it by changing your perspective. Look for the positive in things. Even the most negative of situations and the most negative of people have some glimmer of positivity about them. Rather than scrounging things for the aspects that bring you down and make you feel negative, look for the good. It’s not necessarily easy to change your perspective on things, but it can definitely be done and become one of the most important personal alterations you can do.

Lauren regularly writes for online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com

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This is a guest post by Jill Magso from the Silva Team

(Some opinions expressed in this guest post may not necessarily reflect those of the blog author)

High up in the Himalayan mountains, as close to the heavens as man could get, ancient Tibetans understood how to tune themselves to the natural vibrations of the earth.

As early as three millennia ago, the vibrations of singing bowls were used to meditate and heal. Monks, who were skilled artisans in the craft, would carefully tune the bowls to produce the desired harmonics. Their skill and knowledge is immortalized in the wide variety of sounds and shapes of these ancient bowls.

Fortunately, this knowledge has not been lost and has cascaded down the centuries through a lineage of artisans and healers. Singing bowls have become a common tool in the toolbox of spiritual healers and they play a lead role in the so-called chakra balancing.

You do not have to be a healer or an expert on sacred sounds to benefit from singing bowls. According to ancient spiritual traditions, the sound vibrations emanating from the bowls are an effective method of awakening ‘dormant energy’ and for balancing your chakras. Singing bowls are tuned to the vibrations of the seven chakras. Some are also available for the minor chakras.

In a meditation class, a live singing bowl may be played. In healing, they are often placed over top of the head and a frequency that resonates with the crown or other chakra is played. To get the benefit of singing bowls in your private chakra meditation, recorded audio can be used.

Similar to gonging a bell, singing bowls are struck in order to produce sound. To produce a singing sound, friction is produced by rubbing an instrument against the singing bowl. Specifically, a singing bowl is played by hitting the rim with an instrument and then gliding the instrument around the rim to produce the resonance. In some practices, the singing bowl is placed directly on the chakra and then hit to create a vibration, although some advise against this. Another approach is to hit the bowl above the chakra and move it clockwise in a circle. Additionally, you may add color vibrations and crystal harmonics through stones to the chakra being worked on.

As you work on balancing your chakras, over time, your vibrations are likely to change. Suddenly, you will find that your predictable responses from certain bowls are no longer taking place. This may be disconcerting to some. In most cases, it is good news as you have likely raised your vibrations. To adjust, experiment with the bowls that you have on different chakras. Consider getting customized bowls tuned to your new vibrations.

The original singing bowls were made of bronze. Today, crystal singing bowls are popular. They provide the opportunity to use color and sound to stimulate a chakra and are tuned to the Schumann frequencies of the earth.  Antique Tibetan bowls are still sought after for their sacred sounds, especially Himalayan singing bowls.

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Note: this article is about 1,400 words long and takes about five minutes to read. If you want to understand more how to find happiness within yourself then I guess they’re five minutes well spent. The article suggests that we ought to find happiness by discarding certain ‘mental models’ we are used to. More importantly to look within ourselves and seek inner peace through acceptance and other little pearls of wisdom. Enjoy!

The quest of finding happiness is possibly the only goal shared among all human beings – past, present or future. Who doesn’t want to find happiness in his or her life? It’s a silent goal nonetheless. We don’t mutter much about it and most of the time it lurks in the deep inner workings of our minds. Curious isn’t it?

I have written before about the odd fact that in the West we spend billions of research dollars & euros into treating mental illnesses with drugs but not much effort goes into understanding the science of happiness or mental well being. This fact alone compels me to write about the subject.

The title of this article is in itself revealing – “how to find happiness within yourself” suggests from the outset that you should look for happiness within yourself and that happiness is generally to be found within. This is also a very curious thing to me. Why are we always trying to find happiness in all kinds of places but hardly ever attempt to find happiness within?

Harry is 67. He lost his wife to cancer almost three years ago now. He saw his daughter pass through a marriage breakdown and divorce. He hardly gets to see his grandchildren because his daughter moved to another city after her divorce. He misses the fishing trips with his brother Joe who also passed away recently. He is relating less and less to a changing hostile world where he is constantly reminded he is an unwanted burden.

Yet there is one major twist to the story. Harry is happy…radiantly happy. How can this happen? I mean if there are people who have passed through all sorts of heartbreaking episodes and hardships but are happy…what’s their story? Conversely if there are people (and lots of them) who have acquired all sorts of merit, possessions and good fortune yet are deeply unhappy…what does this say about finding happiness?

Finding happiness by losing old mental models:

In his interesting talk, Srikumar Rao tells us how one major flaw in the way we live our lives is that we have learnt how to be unhappy rather than how to be happy. We have built certain mental models of our reality and these limit us or lead us astray from finding real happiness. Naturally this leads us to the understanding that finding happiness requires us to unlearn certain things and look for it in different pathways. It requires us to look into flaws in our belief system and change them.

One of these mental models we adopt is the belief that we need to reach a certain goal or outcome to be happy..the so-called ‘if-then model’ (if this happens then I will be happy). For example that we should get a better income, financial freedom, recognition of our work, sexier bodies, satisfying relationships and so on. It’s always something round the corner which needs to happen first before we reach happiness.

I know you have many times got to the realization yourself that it just doesn’t work that way. Once you reach that corner there is always another corner to reach. Happiness is not found in anything outside ourselves. We already have all the material at hand to be happy. It’s a matter of shifting our perspective and beliefs completely.

Some mental models to take note of and debunk:

• Happiness is pleasure: No. Pleasure is instant gratification – physical or mental. Happiness is knowing that you are where you should be or accepting that you are not and doing your best while you’re there.

• Happiness is comfort or security: We live most of our lives in constant security threats – our jobs, our children out at night, our health, etc. The truth is that security or lack of it is based on perception. Happiness is living well in a very unstable world.

• I don’t deserve happiness: yeah says who? Another human quirk – self-inflicted limitation. Happiness is for everyone, wherever you come from, whatever you did and no matter what’s your idea. Happiness is open-source.

• It’s impossible to find happiness in this world: another example of self-limiting beliefs. Wrong. Happiness is as possible to find as unhappiness.

• People who reached their goals are invariably happy: again..says who? People who reached their goals are not happy because they reached their goals. On the contrary some are eternally dissatisfied and keep on seeking other goals in life – a real source of unhappiness. But yes some people found happiness while reaching those goals since they were living their true purpose and enjoying every moment of it. Their eyes was on the doing and not on the reaching.

Finding inner happiness through finding inner peace

So many stories around us, like that of Harry, seem to point at the overlooked obvious – that you will only find happiness within yourself. Well that’s very good news since you don’t need to look far away to find happiness – like for example running after expensive, energy-consuming and ultimately unsatisfying goals. It’s there right within you. As scientist/Zen Buddhist Jon Kabat-Zinn perfectly immortalized in one of his book titles: “Wherever you go, there you are”

When life rocks your boat to the point of wrecking it or when the proverbial crap hits the ceiling fan you will reach a y-point which will either make you or break you. So many people like Harry managed to find happiness & inner peace through the most turbulent and upsetting moments of their lives by making use of their internal resources…by finding happiness within rather than in external points of reference.

The key to happiness, or in other words that of finding true inner happiness, is by finding your inner peace – that center of calm inner knowing which is the real source of your being rather than those mental projections or models imposed by your social background.

There are many pathways to find your inner peace but before I start sounding too metaphysical I’d reckon that the greatest and shortest path is that of acceptance. Let go of your expectations, inner struggle and frustrations when things don’t turn out exactly the way you want them. Acceptance is an extremely powerful tool to finding inner happiness. It shouldn’t be confused with resignation or passiveness.

We often fail to understand the power of acceptance because it comes from the heart not the mind. Its power in fact comes from transcending the resistance and inner currents of the restless mind which is often the source of our anxieties, stress and inner conflict.

Acceptance is when we drop all our mental models (like the if then model), often in a moment of clarity or awareness where we become conscious that there is another life outside this madness…outside this huffing and puffing trying to acquire one goal after the other in the wrong belief that there is an ultimate goal post called happiness somewhere on the finishing line.

Ask yourself – how much of what’s going on in your life do you accept? Are you constantly feeling you should be at some other point in your life? Or do you somehow feel at peace with all aspects of your life and make use of them with all their limitations?

Other pathways to inner peace:

• Compassion: Some people admirably manage to find the time and energy to help other even when they are facing rough seas themselves. Even though this comes out from an act of compassion and selflessness, it is also a doorway to their own inner peace. In fact although it seems quite hard to do in moments when we are down and out, giving attention to others’ needs is a way of getting ‘out of your head’ which, ironic as it sounds, is a fast remedy to unhappiness.

• Seek support of others: Well it works both ways too. Helping others is a way to shift your center of attention away from your ailments. However seeking any form of support from others is a way of finding reinforcement and encouragement and is highly recommendable.

• Be grateful to everything around you: Because we so often forget of the little miracles happening around us on a daily basis. We only think about what’s missing instead of counting our blessings. Being thankful to life is not some wishy washy magical spell that washes away all your troubles. Rather it is an exercise in which you become aware of the positive and meaningful things happening in your life…a real booster.

Other suggestions on how you find happiness within yourself are welcomed to be shared with others here

Related posts:

1. A Note on Happiness

The theme of this second edition of Soul Hiker espresso is inspirations (after finishing this sentence I just realized I am jotting down this in a cafe` called inspirations…can I call that synchronicity?).

The topic of inspirations has been a pervasive thought clouding my head recently, possibly incited by a felt sense that moments of inspirations have been particularly lacking these days. Admittedly I have been feeling this momentary impasse in my creative journey for a number of weeks. Well, it happens.

Luckily inspirational stuff is not that hard to find if you look out for it. You can start close to home – in your neighborhood, circle of friends, local art gallery all the way to the hyper-connected corridors of the net.

I am listing two of the most noteworthy inspirational gems I have picked for this week. There are others but I have learned a thing or two about attention spans since I have been writing for the web. So here they go:

Cartoons by Steven Bonello: Colleague and friend Steven Bonello is a constant source of inspiration, humor & topics for discussion. He is an exceptional cartoonist with fire in his hand. Some of his sketches might perhaps be a little bit inaccessible to an international audience since his story lines are focused on local Maltese socio-political themes. He has captured in ink some of the thickest political gaffes in local political history and exquisitely conveyed those cultural quirks with flair and perspective.

You can also hire Steven for your own web or print projects…if you’re lucky that is. Steven is serious about his art and will not do it for just a paycheck but only if the proposal tickles his interest.

Progetto Hang: I was idling about in the alley ways of Rome two days ago when I met Luca Bertelli and Stefano Maura busking in Via della Maddalena just behind the Pantheon square. The two music students have partnered together to create and record their first musical project called Progetto Hang. The Hang is a weird flying-saucer shaped, inverted gong like instrument with a beautiful chime and magical overtones that sets it apart from anything I ever heard before. It’s truly mystical and it must be heard to be truly appreciated. The music captured my soul in the first 15 seconds and kept me standing there long time afterwards.

Luca told me that the project site is still under construction but will be updated with content shortly. I am embedding a video of him playing the Hang.

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1. Launching Soul Hiker Espresso

From start I have to be honest by telling you that this post will describe nothing new – nothing you do not already know deep down. From my own observation I can say that most personal growth books and articles convey nothing profoundly new in reality. What they do successfully offer however is a fresh reminder of those juicy bits of practical wisdom that tend to make our lives better yet have the habit of continuously forgetting (Yes we need constant reminders let’s face it! ).

This post is just that. It’s a reminder of something you very probably know but I have colored it differently – hopefully in a way that appeals more to your sense of aesthetic and stick more to your memory.

It’s about a different approach I’ve been experimenting with lately I call the ‘pause, cancel and resume’ method. In short it’s about learning how to stop from the frenetic and constant doing, discarding what’s not vital to your life’s purpose and resume with a lighter and brighter schedule.

I have only started this approach recently but the effects have already been extremely positive and revitalizing. Let’s have a quick look.

Pausing: Life can be frenetic (I told you I’m not going to say anything new ). As Elbert Hubbard put it “Life is just one damned thing after another”. In fact I recently realized that I haven’t stopped for one weekend or one day from beginning of summer. I wasn’t pausing and what’s worse I wasn’t getting away from it all to get a better view and understanding of it.

I then decided to pause. Not in the sense of getting a break from my schedule. No. It was more of a mental pause. It was like shutting down all the mental to-do lists, the what-if scenarios, the constant pressing background thoughts such as “if I don’t get this right asap I will have to pay for it two months down the line” and all that crap.

I’m not sure which were the exact buttons I pushed to get there but apart from awareness and my regular meditation sessions I think the biggest factor was telling (or rather commanding) myself to pause. Simple. I just allowed myself to do it with no ifs and buts. I know it sounds obvious but as I said personal growth is obvious. It’s just that we keep forgetting the obvious.

Cancelling: In the pause state I started having a few but powerful realizations. The biggest one being that life goes on just the same (actually much smoother) without the frenetic doing and thinking. I wasn’t holding the earth but just myself. When I let go, the earth did not drop on my head.

These liberating thoughts allowed me to rethink a few things. What if I could cancel off a few things here and there from my routine? Say trying to solve a longstanding problem or a particular task you have been working on for a long time but got you nowhere.

I had a couple and I let them go. The earth did not shatter. The problem was that I was putting too much false weight on them. I thought that if they are not addressed my life will be stuck in a rut.

Cancelling them has freed up my mind and time and gave me more space to focus on the issues that matter most. I am still experimenting with it and to be honest I found a new sense of fun vanquishing old spectres.

Resuming: At which point should I undo the pause button and resume attending to plans, schedule, worries and all? Well the short answer is never…in the sense of never to go back to the original point of departure.

After canceling and parting away with some of the mental clutter and routine tasks, day to day life can resume with more lightness and less struggle and effort. This pausing, canceling and resuming is a continuous thing. I might get back to some projects I have canceled if I REALLY need to but not for the time being.

For now I am enjoying this new found joy of simplifying my life. Admittedly I am still at the beginning of it all and still experimenting with a few knobs here and there. But overall I think that the method is working magic.

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One of the hottest topics in the personal development world is that of motivation. What sparks it off? and how can we keep motivated in our daily lives? Very often, and quite rightly, motivation is closely associated with enthusiasm and goal-setting, or in broader terms knowing one’s purpose in life. Mmhh…big concept isn’t it?

As with any other bulky concept that has far-reaching implications,  the best way to understand it – and ultimately make practical use of it – is simplifying it and deconstructing it into easily replicable parts. For this matter I had a very good help from my 4 year old daughter.

Kaya springs out of bed every single morning with sparkling eyes beaming enthusiasm for her new day. Every day has some novelty and something new she will discover and look forward to. Her world is one big playground. The unknown is not a source of anxiety for her as in us adults but a space of possibilities were new wonderful things can come her way. Everything is a stimulus that impinges on her fresh mind.

On the other hand, the average adult mind is bogged down by a long list of things to attend to, unresolved issues, unkown variables and dull routine tasks which most of the time are managed by an overworked brain and a tired body.

So what are the constants in Kaya’s world that we can re-adopt? or perhaps what are the constants in us adults that we need to discard or re-engineer?

There are a lot very good practical tips and techniques on improving motivation but I will focus on 7 items that I have observed from Kaya or I sometimes find challenging in myself

1. Don’t forget to Play: All work no fun dulls the mind & spirit. It’s certainly not on Kaya’s agenda. We have to appease the playful/childish part of our mind which desperately seeks leisure and fun instead of boring mundane tasks. Most of the time we shun it completely which puts us off balance and demotivates us.  Having the mind look forward for fun time whether in or out of our daily tasks will keep the motivation engine oiled.

2. Don’t stare at the unknown: Apathy is when we lose traction forward sometimes because we don’t see light (the goal) at the end of  our tunnel (the task or problem). The future is unknown to all of us. If you stare at it too long it may get you. It blacks out your vision and makes you lose the will to move on with your mission.

3. Remind yourself you are the director: I love watching or overhearing Kaya playing and directing roles in some tea party with her dolls and fluffy friends. It’s like she is the director of some movie in her head – “You sit here and you drink this or eat that”. The thing is that she feels part of the creative process – meaning that her plans and ideas are realized in her staged tea parties.   Do you believe you are you your own creative director?

4. Project it in HD: Visualization and imagery are a powerful self-motivating tool. Many practices and disciplines focus on visualization. The ability to project and visualize your goals or a desired situation are a way of instructing your subconscious to act in that direction.  Children naturally have very vivid imagination. When Kaya describes something here eyes stare & sparkle as if the whole thing is happening vividly right in front of her eyes. It’s a full screen HD projection – something we unfortunately lose and forget as our creativity is killed through the education process when we grow up.

5. Simplify, simplify & simplify more: You cannot be very motivated if you are swamped by things running concurrently. I have to admit that this is something I fall victim to sometimes. I have to remind myself to focus down on one plan – one goal. Kaya keeps things simple…of course she’s a child. But that’s it isn’t it? We get bogged down by so many things as adults that it’s hard to keep the fire going on one thing.   Simplifying and decluttering things can help us stay motivated much easier.

6. Get past the future: There is no tomorrow in Kaya’s world. Everything takes place here and now for her. As adults we are very much constrained by future outcomes, plans for a better life, more income or more security. Apart from creating general anxiety, this worrying about the future dissipates a lot of our energy and focus on our immediate actions and hence our motivation.

7. Leave the door open for other possibilities: It’s an irony that the more we learn and experience the more we limit our mind to possibilities. A child’s mind is more open to possibilities because it’s not a full vessel. By associating things to past occurences, we are limiting our mind to be set on certain outcomes only and discard the others. Of course this is in a way inevitable as it constitutes learning. The brain is by nature an associative engine. But through practice we can become aware of this limitation and transcend it and look ‘outside of the box’. This is what creativity is about and this is why children are in general more creative. By opening ourselves up to creativity we are automatically breaking the barriers to motivation.

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Welcome to Soul Hiker espresso – the very first of a series of posts which capture the essence of Soul Hiker in short snippets of interesting and helpful information about personal development and related topics.

This issue’s theme: Improving life through tweaking those filter knobs!

We all have and use filters! These filters make us understand and interpret the things happening around us in a particular way. It makes us learn, act and respond in a particular way too. What are these filters? The filters I am talking about are things like our sensory perception, our beliefs and our past experiences which allow us to recognize patterns and give those patterns meaning.

Ultimately these filters are tremendously powerful stuff we are unaware of. If one learns how these filters work and how to tweak them the possibilities are endless – Learn 100 times faster, work super smarter, have wonderful relationships, persuade people and grow in all aspects of life. Why? well let’s hear it from some experts shall we? These are a few links which will tell you more about filters and how to use them:

5 Ways to Listen better:  A really interesting TED talk by sound expert Julian Treasure. In his riveting speech he explains how we live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by noise which ‘deafens’ our ability to listen and pay attention to our immediate environment. We are losing our ability to listen and make sense of our beautiful world. He shows us 5 very practical tips on how to recalibrate our hearing abilities and improve our ‘sound filters’.

Personalities, conversations & frames: A very interesting post by Children book writer Anna Bradford. Anna talks about the way we filter our reality as our ‘reality frame’. She then quite eloquently argues that some people have the ability to draw other people into their reality frame. Such people can be great communicators, leaders or simply people expressive of their arts and passions.

The secret of persuasion: In this short video, Meredith Bell calls on her experience on the subtle but powerful art of persuasion. This is an excellent continuation to the above link. It shows how we can improve our influence and persuasion through understanding ‘reality frames’ and subjective perspectives.

Free report – Out of the Matrix: In this free report former International Psychic Spy, Gerald O’Donnell, reveals the Shocking Truth about your Mind’s True Power to control and Influence your Life, Surroundings and even Time. Cool stuff!

Related posts:

1. Soul Hiker Espresso: Inspirations of the week

This is a guest post by Jill Magso from the Silva Team

When our personal fountains of good will seem to have run dry or our stores of energy too sorely taxed, it can be difficult to believe that the source for all goodness and good will is really ours all the time. We often speak of filling up our tanks or replenishing our stores, but we rarely take the time to do so. And it is uncommon to be able to actually feel the well bubble up in our body, bringing life, energy, optimism and discernment to our entire psyche and everything we do.

Each one of us, left to our regenerative devices, bathed in a little loving kindness and given just a little space, can feel the fountain of optimism and cheer at least begin to percolate beneath the rocks. Our bodies and minds have within them the blueprint for healing and re-fueling. Sometimes all you need to do is prime the pump to feel the milk of human kindness begin to flow through your veins, into your own heart, and through you out to those you touch.

For today, notice when you feel your personal well of kindness being drawn upon, either because someone is making a withdrawal or a deposit, and notice how full or empty you feel. Simply by paying attention, taking note and being compassionate for our own needs we can begin to clear the way for our own fountain of good.

Step by step to the Meditation:

Find your comfortable seat with your sitting bones pressing into the surface beneath you and your heart lifting from the strength of your connection to the Earth. You can either sit Japanese style on your knees or with crossed legs in easy pose.

Begin with breath observation. For five breaths simply be breathing, noticing how your body moves to accept the breath and then to let it go.This is a guided meditation for which we’ll remain seated. As you inhale, imagine that you are growing roots out and down from your tailbone and deep into the Earth. Follow them with each in breath as they travel down, seeking nourishment and water. Feel them grow strong and begin to work their way between clods of Earth, dislodging small stones as they travel ever downward. Allow every inhalation to swell your roots and give them the energy to dig deeper, connecting you to the Earth.

When you feel completely stable, steady and fed, bring your awareness back up and into your heart. As you inhale begin drawing sustenance up from the Earth, through your roots and up the center of your body into your heart. Allow this feeling to collect here on every exhalation, spreading as a pond would gather from a spring bubbling up through the Earth. Continue for a minute or two inhaling up through your roots and into your heart, until your heart feels like it’s about to run over.

Just as your heart-pond is about to spill over its banks, take your next inhale and continue the path up through your heart center, up and out of the top of your head as if it were a great fountain that upon exiting your head split in every direction and then fell back to the Earth to pool around you and soak back into the Earth. As you inhale, draw this up through your center to the top of the fountain, a few inches past the crown of your head. As you exhale, imagine the stream splitting into infinitely sparkling differently colored lights and falling back down, creating a pool of light and color around you on the floor. Allow this liquid light to pool around you, and seep back into the Earth as a puddle would after the rain.

Stay here, inhaling up through the center of your body, and exhaling down and around your body in a great three dimensional circle, a cycle, a circuit of light, color, energy and health.

When five minutes have passed by timer or by music, bring your attention back to the feeling of your breath moving in and out of your body. Opening your eyes, reach your arms up and over head and draw your hands down in front of your heart.

Jill Magso is a member of the Silva Team and contributes to spreading enlightened ideas and sharing teachings about meditation practices. The Silva Method encompasses a variety of powerful exercises that take you deep into Alpha and Theta levels of the mind so that you can work within your subconscious as well as your conscious mind.

Related posts:

1. 10 ways to improve your meditation significantly
2. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path
3. A simple visualization technique to keep calm under pressure

How many times in a day do we hear ourselves asking the question, “Why did I do that?” Well, definitely more than once. You know you should have showed up for that interview for that dream job of yours but you don’t; you ought to have kept clear of eating dessert at that party as you were on a fat-cutting diet but you don’t; and you should have just put one step forward to experience the taste of success, but you don’t. You are certain of what you should have done but defying all logic and reason, you end up self-sabotaging yourself and doing the exact opposite. Why? The answer is – your self-sabotage behavior. Self-sabotage refers to the process of going out of the way to hold back, prevent or limit yourself from achieving your goal due to unidentified fears, lack of self confidence and negative self image. Self-sabotage encompasses a combination of negative thoughts, feelings and actions that create a stumbling block to success by fighting against your own self interests.

Self-sabotage and the Subconscious

“Was that really me?” The truth is, it was YOU. The decision to self-sabotage yourself was and always is purely your own choice. You might be wondering how could you purposefully do harm to yourself or prevent yourself from getting what you want. Unfortunately, you can and the root cause of the problem lies within yourself, within your subconscious mind. To be precise, self-sabotage is the result of a mental tug-of-war between the conscious and the subconscious mind in which the subconscious mind always wins.

Imagine you have a found an exciting new business idea or have been assigned a challenging project. Initially you find yourself all enthusiastic about it and begin to work dedicatedly towards achieving it. In a few days, you find yourself losing interest in it for no particular reason, all the excitement and enthusiasm fading away and eventually you leave the project unfinished and sweep it beneath the carpet. Most of us have been here, haven’t we? Have you ever stopped to think why this happens to us? Well our subconscious mind is the culprit. Although our conscious mind wants us to stay positive and work towards achieving our goal, our subconscious mind which houses our fear of failure, lack of confidence and “Oh! I can never do this” attitude, ultimately triumphs. Your subconscious mind prompts you to withdraw your efforts and leaves you a failure. So from now on, it wouldn’t be wrong to say – you are what your subconscious mind is and you get what your subconscious mind desires. Hence the harmonious relationship between the conscious and the subconscious mind is key in eliminating self-sabotage. Next time you do something, make sure you want to do it and have complete faith in yourself. After all, you can only lie to others, not to yourself!

Some Common Reasons for Self-sabotage Behavior

1. Fear of Success – Your own past experiences or those of others condition your mind to behave in a particular manner. You may have seen near & dear ones of your friend turning hostile to him after he became successful or you may be afraid that once you succeed, people may begin to pin higher hopes on you and you may not be able to reach their expectations. These experiences and thoughts linger in your mind and become part of your subconscious mind which then associates success with fear or pain. Hence every time you get close to achieving success, your subconscious mind will trigger your self-sabotage behavior and you end up losing.

2. Low Self-worth – You firmly believe yourself to be unworthy of success, achievement, relationships or money, i.e. you feel you do not deserve to have any of the good things in life. This low self-worth stems from your low self-esteem and poor self-image and ends up destroying you.

3. Lack of Self-confidence – You do not have faith in your own abilities and you feel your goals are unrealistic. Your characteristic way of reacting to any challenging situation is “I can’t” and your negative self will always whisper in your ears “This is complicated, back off.

4. Denying the Real you – This behavior manifests itself in the form of a “just-to-please yes” when you actually mean to say “no I don’t want to.” Every time you do something you really don’t want or like to do, you are denying your true spirit, sabotaging your desires and your right to live life the way you want it to be.

Tips to Overcome Self-sabotage

1. Identify and Accept your self-sabotaging behaviors – Some people may show self-sabotaging behaviors when it comes to success, some with money and some others with relationships. Realizing and knowing the areas where you sabotage yourself and learning to accept them are the most important stages in the first step to overcoming self-sabotaging behaviors.

2. Stop making excuses and Take responsibility – Stop blaming others or your destiny for all the things that go wrong in your life. You should understand that only you are responsible for your failure and only you are the one in power to change it.

3. Positive Visualization and Self-talk – Once you have taken responsibility and made plans to change, put your plans into action. In order to change yourself, you should change your self-image. Positive visualization is a method of creating vivid mental images of already having achieved what you really want and experiencing its pleasure. You should consciously allow your mind to visualize this image several times a day and soon you will find yourself believing in it and making efforts to make it happen.

Your mind constantly talks to you and most of the time the communication is negative and scares you away from your goals. Make an effort to listen to your inner communication and replace every negative word, phrase or thought with a positive one. Gradually you will find a tremendous change in yourself and you will emerge a more confident, capable and worthy individual.

4. Ask for Help – If you feel you are unable to get rid of your self-sabotaging behavior all by yourself, ask for help. Join a support group where your friends will constantly reassure your efforts and make sure you are on the right track. If your self-sabotaging behavior goes way beyond your control and you begin to have suicidal tendencies, be wise, turn around and seek the help of a professional therapist or a doctor. They have the skills and expertise to take you through procedures like hypnosis and dialectical behavior therapy in order to read your subconscious mind, find your sabotaging behavior and its reasons and advice remedial measures to overcome it.

As a closing note, a point that repeatedly needs mention is – “always choose what you want and what you believe” and dedicatedly work towards achieving it. By now, you all must know that nothing can stop you, not even your own self, if YOU decide so!

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