Achieving Happiness Without Seeking Success Validation

We’re all used to achieving happiness from external circumstances, events, people and things. We are taught from a very young age to depend on other people’s validation to fuel our own self esteem. Whether this is in the form of compliments, awards, likes, tags, applause. It all depends on how an individual perceives his or her own success validation. True and lasting happiness comes from within yourself, where you are happy, calm and at peace no matter what is happening around you.

If you find yourself unable to resist achieving happiness by seeking outside validation, through social media and things people have written or said about you, and you feel a range of bad feelings as a result, you may want to take back the control.

Why seek Success Validation from the Outside?

There is a reason you feel a compulsion to validate your own self through what other people say and do. And once you pinpoint and resolve that, you will no longer be interested in achieving happiness by curating likes and “hits” on your social media posts. When you’re no longer emotionally affected by the comments of others and thus be able to achieve genuine happiness.

This isn’t about willpower. This is about reimprinting your mind to achieve a more sustainable model of happiness. The reason you’re hooked to seeking success validation by your social media posts, or learning more about what others are saying or thinking about you, is the same reason people do drugs, drink excessive alcohol and watch horror movies. It’s chemical.

Whenever you experience something that makes you feel angry, outraged, indignant, fearful, and any other stressed state, your brain and body are flooded with stress chemicals, such as adrenaline and cortisol.

This is why you feel drawn to experiences that make your body release more of these chemicals. So if getting onto social media or gossiping with someone makes you feel happy, you are receiving a “hit” of that chemical concoction – whether it’s joy, anger, fear, or any other intense state.

This keeps you coming back for more of the same for achieving happiness. In order to break that compulsion, you need to break the pattern. You need to make the conscious decision to achieve success validation without depending on that particular activity. As you do this, the “hit” you get from those particular chemicals will reduce, and so will the compulsion.

Now, in the beginning this can seem almost impossible – because your body and brain are telling you that you need those chemicals. This is exactly how a drug addict feels, so in a way, you’re addicted to achieving happiness from other people and circumstances.This will be experienced as a physical compulsion – and the conscious mind will then apply logic and reason to try to make sense of these compulsions.

You may find yourself coming up with a range of reasons why it’s okay (perhaps even necessary) to expose yourself to this stuff that doesn’t feel good. There is a way to take this compulsion away – quickly and effectively, using Eutaptics – so that you naturally are not interested in the things you know are detrimental to your well-being and your time management.

A list of ways to avoid seeking success validation:

1. Social media is a wonderful way to keep in contact with friends and family; but it can also be detrimental to those who simply can’t pull themselves away from it. Scientific research into social media addiction has shown that Facebook is the most addictive. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that it allows the user to talk about themselves.  Cut down on the time you spend on Facebook or other social media platforms. Take it slow, instead of being on social media for 5 hours a day, slowly reduce 30 mins every other day. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying social media in moderation; however, if you find it’s affecting how you feel, or impacting on areas of your life in a negative way, it’s time to make a change. Fortunately, there is a way to break this addiction fairly easily and without needing to go “cold turkey”.

2. Does achieving happiness mean needing to comment or reply to comments on videos, posts, pictures or anything else? If you find yourself unable to resist reading stuff that other people have written, and feeling a range of bad feelings as a result, you may want to take back control. This is not about willpower and dragging yourself away; there is a reason you’re feeling this compulsion, and when you resolve that, you will no longer be interested never mind feel emotionally affected by the comments of others.

Read the rest of the article here:
https://fastereft.com/blog/achieving-happiness-without-seeking-success-validation/

You Are Special!

Calming video of Cabo San Lucas

Sometimes, I imagine myself sitting on a beach, the warm sun bathing my face as I listen to the water greet the shoreline. I instantly feel the stress leave my body as the water recedes and I feel at one with the earth, with myself and it feels good. I go to my happy place a lot and videos like this help me escape.  Enjoy!

Draw your future and take control of your life

Go get your journal and start mapping out your future...it's a small step that can change the course of your life!

Healing Music to Let Go Of...

Let Go Of Mental Blockages, Remove Negative Energy, Unwanted Emotions & Stress
417 Hz - The revelation of truth allows the listener to release and convert the appearances of difficulty and setbacks, bringing order and inner listening to new heights of personal self-transformation. 

Enjoy!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy1NOTIzSJQ

How Gratitude Helps Us Get Better at Dealing with Change

This article written late last year by Theo Koffler, has a wonderful message and one that  resonated with me. It was written post election last December and he put a spin on the negative feelings that most of us were feeling.


He wrote:

These past few months have been more tumultuous than usual—I think we’re all ready for 2016 to wrap up. The election has left reverberations of fear, distrust, and uncertainty in its wake. No matter what political views you hold, you can likely feel the sense of disorder hanging over the nation, and even the world.
Unease and negativity are not always entirely bad. Good can emerge from acknowledging your feelings and the airing of your opinions. There’s inherent value in in working through discomfort. Fear and uncertainty are often the first steps along the path toward personal growth. Disagreement and challenges may be uncomfortable, but unpleasant emotions that accompany growth often prompt introspection and have the ability to widen one’s worldview.

 The work begins with you. This holds true in situations both big and small. You do your best and still fail to get the promotion; you try to persuade your family to have a holiday meal at your home but lose out to someone else; you feel sabotaged or burdened by a health issue. Disappointment and frustration are big feelings. It’s natural to feel negative in the face of a situation that is less than ideal, but eventually within every obstacle, there is an invitation to heal and cope. The problem emerges when you get stuck in the negative feelings and find yourself unable to accept things as they are. Spending the majority of time in the negative feeds your darker thoughts. It gives them strength and allows them to take root and develop into grudges and deep-seated pockets of anger. The thoughts you feed are the ones that grow. If you focus on the problem, the problem gets bigger, and before you know it, you’re a giant ball of anger, frustration, and sadness.

Train Your Brain to Notice the Good, Too

So, how do you find resolve? How can you train your brain to choose a path of neutrality or balance— especially after a prolonged negative outlook? The answer is simple but not easy: you turn toward your authentic feelings as there is always a measure of pain. You are called upon to meet your roadblocks and challenges with acceptance, not to turn away.
Start by acknowledging every emotion without judgment. Spending all your time on what doesn’t go your way overshadows the experiences in your day-to-day life that bring you an appreciation for life. Name these moments, and call them up in your mind. According to UC Davis psychologist Robert Emmons, the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude, contrasting the present with negative times in the past can make you feel less unhappy and enhance your overall sense of well-being. Emmons postulates that an attitude of gratitude is essential especially under crisis conditions as it builds up a psychological immune system that cushions you when you fall. It can help you gain perspective on life and can help you cope with crisis.

Four Practices to Foster Gratitude

Changing your thought pattern isn’t easy. If you find yourself triggered by a negative event, stuck in a negative thought loop, or unsure how to begin, try some of the following tips:

1) Keep a gratitude journal. Each night before you go to bed, take a moment to write down three things that made you feel grateful throughout the day. Robert Emmons’ research demonstrates that keeping a gratitude journal for as little as three weeks results in better sleep and more energy.

2) Set an intention to pay attention. Take time to acknowledge all the encounters that make you feel grateful.

3) Engage a family discussion. If you are a parent with teens, start a family
conversation by asking: What obstacles are you facing? Or, share a time when you were open to a new experience and you benefited from it. Having your family members express their present moment experiences can help set the stage for more connection, appreciation, and compassion.

4) Start a class discussion. If you’re an educator, gather your students in a circle and ask them to think about 10 things they’re grateful for. After a few moments of reflection, engage them in a structured discussion by asking: “Share one person that you are grateful for in your life and why.” Student-driven conversations can help build an appreciation for their diverse experiences as well as their common humanity. **

It may not come easy at first, but the more you express your thanks and gratitude on a daily basis the more natural it becomes. So even if it feels forced, stick with it and commit! Trust me, nothing can stop the flow of life and apparently it has joy, suffering, delight and happiness.

The link to this article can be found at:
http://www.mindful.org/gratitude-helps-us-get-better-dealing-change/?utm_content=buffer95b69&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The Acupressure Points Tapped in FEFT Explained

A Brief History on Meridian Points

Robert G. Smith developed FasterEFT but the acupressure points used in this healing technique has been used for thousands of years. However, their purpose in FasterEFT healing serves a slightly different purpose compared to purely acupressure therapy, that we will explain later on.

Acupuncture is very popular in Chinese Medicine, ancient and modern. It is only in the recent years that this type of healing has begun to become more popular in non-oriental cultures. In the west, scientific researches has been conducted over time to map its efficiency.

While acupuncture requires needles, acupressure does not, it is simply applying light to moderate pressure on the meridian points of the body to alleviate physiological issues. Traditional Chinese Medicine holds the complete understanding about these Meridian Systems and how they affect the body, not just in addressing pain and body issues but most importantly, how they affect vital organs. Manipulation of these points if done properly can contribute to overall physical and mental wellbeing of an individual.

In FasterEFT we only manipulate 5 main points, which are:

The area between the eyebrows

This area is also known as the acupressure point GV 24.5, some call it as the “third eye point.” The benefits of applying slight pressure in these point is to alleviate mental stress, calm an upset stomach, deals with frustration, headaches and mental congestion.

The area beside the eye

This acupressure point is just beside the eye outside the eye socket, close to the bone but not exactly the temple. The point is also known as the G1, it helps with temporal headaches, migraines, conjunctivitis.

Under the eye

This point is the bony surface under the eye. This acupressure point is said to relieve headaches and other stress related issues originating from strains of the eyes.

The point under the collarbones

This point is known as the Lu1, but more popularly known as the Letting Go acupressure point. This point is used to release anxiety, depression and overwhelm. This is a very important point in acupressure therapy and known to be very effective in letting go of grief and loss.

The wrist acupressure points

The wrist contains several acupressure points. In FasterEFT, it is just grabbing the wrist and not suggested to apply pressure on each of the points. It is accompanied by the phrase “Peace” while slowly breathing out. Points TW5, P6 and TW4 are local pressure points touched when you grab your wrist, they are known to treat a syndromes and disorders relating to the hand and the arms, but their purpose in FasterEFT is to end a tapping cycle as you completely let go.

The following is the tapping visual guide:

You can find the visual guide and the rest of the article here: 
https://fastereft.com/blog/acupressure-points-tapped-fastereft/

Today Is the Best Day: A Year of Living Mindfully

 Alex Matthews wrote this article a couple years ago, but it is as relevant today as it was then and the content is timeless. We can learn a lot from being present, in the moment, not by sailing through life in a mindless stupor as we conquer our "to do" lists.

Alex writes...
I never met my maternal grandfather — he passed away before I was born. He was a wise, kind man. A devout Christian who also encapsulated, beautifully, the concept of mindfulness — of living in the present — with the saying “Today is the best day.”
My mother has often said this to her children. For her, as well as my sister and me, it has become a sort of mantra, something to aspire to, to live by.

“Today is the best day,” means appreciating the here and the now and all the goodness that this contains. It involves acknowledging that we do not live in the past or the future; we occupy the present, and so we better darn well make the most of it. Happiness is not a destination you will reach, but something to be accessed now. We can so easily dwell on what we don’t have, or what we want but haven’t got yet (or had, but lost). “Today is the best day,” means letting go of those preoccupations, turning the focus on what you do have, on your life and its bounty today.

I’m not making a list of resolutions this year. What I do hope, though, is that I appreciate, every day — or even most days — that Today is the best day — and that I manage — again, on most days — to do the following:

Make the effort. While some of life is just about showing up, beautiful things happen — connection, fulfillment, growth and learning — when you you take responsibility and show initiative. This applies in all facets of your life — socially, on a sports field, at the office, at home.

Let go. (Or, as Taylor Swift would say, Shake It Off.) Experiencing critical thoughts and negative emotions — anger, frustration — is natural; so is caring about what people think of you. But holding on to these emotions and perceptions holds you back; they distract you from your own purpose. Take note, and then let them go. Live your life; because it belongs to you and nobody else.

Go with the flow. Don’t passively accept the things in your life, but don’t fight the unchangeable and inevitable either. Surfing lessons have taught me that getting into a flat panic when taking a tumble doesn’t do the least bit of good — all the thrashing in the world won’t get you back above water. Rather, acknowledge your environment, understand the challenges, and then respond to them. In other words: float, don’t flail.

Breathe. Something as simple as breathing has the power to shift your internal emotional landscape and boost your mental and physical wellbeing. On an Art of Living course, I recently learnt the Sudarshan Kriya, a daily breathing meditation (with many scientifically proven benefits). In the few weeks that I’ve been practicing, I’ve found it to be an incredible tool — reducing anxiety, improving focus and helping to create a sense of balance. Breathing doesn’t make a shit storm disappear, but it does help you to step back, and weather it better. Yoga, with its emphasis on the connection between the breath and different postures, is another powerful tool to get you to breathe, bringing bring balance and focus.

Make imperfectly, rather than nothing perfectly. I sometimes have the near-crippling worry that the words I write just aren’t good enough. The worry is almost strong enough to make me avoid writing altogether (a bit problematic, as this is how I earn my living). I have to constantly remind myself that it’s OK to create things that aren’t perfect; that it’s better to create something with flaws, than never attempt something at all. When we create, the sentences that fall flat teach us as much, if not more, as the ones which sing. We grow by doing. The more we do, the more we grow. Craft isn’t the end — it’s the in-between: it’s not a product, but rather a process, and one in which there should be joy (as Srikumar S. Rao will tell you in this incredibly inspiring presentation on work, happiness and the present).

Find the original article here:
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-matthews/today-is-the-best-day-a-y_b_6406084.html

Gratitude through natures beauty

Feeling down? Having an off day?
Maybe Louis Schwartzberg is just what the doctor ordered.
Sometimes the very thing we need to lift our spirits are the things that we don't see, the things we take for granted.

Slow down, take a few deep breaths and tune into nature's beauty as seen through the eyes of someone a little wiser than ourselves...

The best chronic pain management technique

Chronic pain is one of the leading causes of stress which eventually hinders an individual’s ability to achieve and sustain a happy life. Pain, in all its forms, is the mind’s signal that there is something misaligned. The uncomfortable feeling that makes moving, coping and living difficult is often manifested as pain.

Acute pain is usually much easier to address, with the physical symptoms present, acute pain can be addressed with medical intervention and a person can recover more quickly. In terms of chronic pain, the feeling of discomfort lasts longer and can be mild to severe, often medical science has no definite answer to its cause, hence, there is no cure.
Such as in the cases of fibromyalgia and the vast spectrum of invisible illnesses that fall under the chronic pain category.

 The primary reason FasterEFT is one of the best chronic pain management techniques is because it complements other forms of therapy. It is non-invasive and will not cause any adverse side effects even if applied when you are under medication. Of course, it is always best to ask your medical practitioner.

FasterEFT’s premise of operation in chronic pain management involves the mind and how pain is produced by the mind. It is a mind and body healing modality that is proven to allow an individual manage and eliminate chronic pain by accessing the power of the mind to heal and transform itself and the body.

The following are 3 simple facts about chronic pain:

Read the rest of the article here:
https://fastereft.com/blog/fastereft-best-chronic-pain-management-technique