How to create Inner Balance
What if it depended on you changing a few things that are well within your control, would you do it?
If you understood that suffering was a state of mind and that you had the ability to connect to your full potential of being by making a different choice to align with your basic goodness, would you?
If you find yourself saying “Yes, but…” then you are like most of us who don’t even realize that we have created circumstances that are conditional for our joy. Everyone wants to feel at peace within themselves but many times our default patterns of thought and behavior are out of sync with the outcome we truly want.
Even when we have a sincere intention to feel better, our habitual methods may be making matters worse.
There are three steps to shifting difficult emotions before they become overwhelming and strip you of the joy in your life.
Steps for Inner Balance
- Recognize the signs of negativity. Notice how your body feels when you are sad and have that awareness trigger a warning signal to your system that action is needed. Many times it is difficult for people to see the signs but when I work with them they can more easily see them early on which is helpful in creating new habits of response.
- Make the choice to respond differently. You can feel the tension begin within your body when a difficult emotion begins to take over. If you can catch these responsive patterns early on you can create sustainable change. It requires that we pay attention to our inner dialog and consciously stop justifying the difficult emotion. At the time our justification may feel like self-soothing but this is part of a habitual pattern in a chain reaction and downward spiral. A new dialog needs to be created that offers hope and the release of tension.
- Only through practice will you be able to create new patterns of habit. It would be great if once we learned this process it would automatically become our new default. It takes practice in the awareness to catch it while it is still small, the desire to change your experience of life and practice to make a new habit sustainable.
Pema Chodron said is so eloquently, “To the degree that we can notice what is happening and develop enthusiasm about no longer sowing the seeds of suffering, the more we tune into the wisdom and goodness of our own heart and mind. As we grow in confidence of our basic goodness we become more connected with the freshness of our being that is so freeing.”
Find out more about developing new practices of self awareness and make the choice to expand the wisdom and goodness of your own heart and mind. See: Women’s Retreats
