Saturday, March 31, 2012

Trust...

I have undoubtedly been an absent Blogger for the last few weeks.  It has been a very interesting month.  A month of experiences, challenges, tumultuous times, healing, learning more about trusting myself, others and ultimately taking back control for myself. It was a process, one I have been through a couple of times before, but this time I needed to process those experiences to have a meaningful, helpful and useful blog post for myself and those who read and follow.

Just when we least expect it, we all can find ourselves having moments in life where we are forced to deal with the unexpected,or even the expected, as in my case.  But making the decision to regain control, peace and even stand up for what is right and what you believe in can be all about how you view and value trust.  Not only trust in yourself, but trust in what is right, others and trust in believing that taking a leap of faith in order to move forward in a positive direction is the ultimate power of believing in one's own abilities and principles.
I have found myself in the position of having to confront and deal with "trust" many times over the past few years.  I have come to learn that believing in myself has been the key to what I view and my limitless power for myself.  I believe that having the ability to trust is far greater than having confidence in yourself, something I have already blogged about this year. 

While it is true that confidence and inner trust are one and the same in the emotional state. Confidence is your ability to cope and depend upon yourself to create a reality that is dependable. If you don't have confidence, you will create a reality that you cannot depend upon. Trust and acceptance - which go hand in hand, are the most powerful tools we have, the most potent energy available to us.

When you have trust, within you, it produces a positive energy that stills doubt, worry, fear and negative expectations. It has a profound effect on you and others.  When you trust yourself you are able to trust and forgive others.  I have learned that trust and acceptance of yourself  lead to oneness and success.  If you don't trust yourself, it will show up in others and believe me, it has proven true for me over the past couple of years. 
"Where there is a will, there is a way." We've all heard it and lived it at one time or another. It is a mindset that we need to succeed.  Trusting yourself is a necessary component to living and achieving success from inside out in all aspects of our life. We all have all the answers inside us, the more we trust ourselves and do not fear the unknown, the easier your life will flow and the more accepting we can be of taking that "leap of faith," in doing what we believe is the right thing to do. Another of my favorite quotes by Henry Thoreau is that "We are born to succeed, not to fail." I would venture to guess that trust has a unity component to it.  It unites the human and spirit, power and control, thought, emotion, action and energy. It affects the whole of our entire being, allowing miracles to happen. 
Sometimes our own motivation for trust in ourselves comes in the form of hard knocks; I said early one that we all face some tough experiences in our life. This causes some to fold up and give up but others to accept trouble as incentives and get motivated to do hard work, trust in themselves and their own power to succeed over the circumstances, no matter what those circumstances may be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson says that "Self-trust is the first secret of success." I agree that we must always have a point in mind that self trust is the first secret to our success. So trust yourself and your instincts in all things.  Whether those things are related to work, personal life, relationships or with family. Having self trust is a great deal of our every day life.  I believe in the need to continue to learn how to trust in me and in the power of my decisions. In order to do so, I have learned to embrace self confidence, practice creative anticipation, and our own power of positive expectation.

Personally, it's has been important for me lately to identify with this crisis of confidence or inner trust within myself. The reasons for having this crisis will be reserved for the right time and for another post. Regardless, instead of searching for the trust and acceptance from others I thought I needed, it did not take me long to realize that I already enjoyed possession within myself.  All that was left for me was to use it and enjoy the power of becoming one with it.

Trust: It is valuing your personal abilities and what they can give to you - not others. It is no doubt a double edged sword.  So, I offer to all of us that we trust ourselves enough to be, do and have the things we want in life, to create the reality we desire; and to trust ourselves not to do the things that create pain and suffering. Self sacrifice, self sabotage, self punishment. To say no, if it doesn't seem appropriate or right to you, regardless of who and what it is.
We don't have to try to do it all at once.  It is usually a process and depending upon the circumstances, will dictate time.  Regardless, we have to trust and accept, even a little at first and we will feel the difference that this makes in our lives. After all, it's ultimately the little things that bring us the big things!

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Be Careful What You Wish For...The Postive Power of Negative Thought , Part II

Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours. - James Baldwin

Growing up, I was a dreamer.  Oh wait, I still am... Nevertheless, when I was a young dreamer, my mother use to tell me " be careful what you wish for."  She would explain to me that if you continue to wish for something to be real long and hard enough, that those thoughts may eventually become reality. At the time I wondered how is that possible?

While I never understood it, at a young age, I found that in some of the things I would wish for that I would not always think of them being very positive, or even focus on the negative aspect of them.  Of course now I realize that I needed to work through the power of my negative thoughts in order to get through some of the moments of my life or my dreams in a positive manner.  Regardless, there is no doubt about it, my mother was right; for many of the things I wished for did become my reality, whether they were good, bad or indifferent.  There were plenty of times, I would wish for or imagine many different things for myself.  Whether it be to close my eyes so Christmas Day would get here sooner (I remember many of these days), to get through a tough test at school, to become an adult overnight, so I could make and live by my own rules, or that the days and nights would pass quickly, so that that I would wake up and everything that was happening to me would have just been a bad dream.  No matter the wish, the thought, the hope, or the dream, it just seemed to be and that is how I made it through to the next day. 

Present day is no different.  Whether it be to find a way to make it through a tough day, away from a negative influence, situation, or to wish hard enough for the days to pass so that I would be able to be on my way to spend time with my daughter again,  the process just seemed to work in order to get me through each of those moments in a positive manner. 

For most of my life, I have felt that if we believe in ourselves long and hard enough, no matter the situation, that we can become what we want to be and be present where we want and need to be.  I am a firm believer that the power of the mind should never be underestimated, because there is significant relevance to mind over matter.  However, sometimes in order to get to the positive end result that we desire, we must face and deal with the negative along the way.  For some, giving an intentional ear to the positive power of negative thought can be enlightening, instructive and even motivating most of the time.

I will be the first to admit that some negative thinking patterns have the ability to dominate our thoughts and feelings and not end on a good note for us. These thoughts have the power to limit our ability to move forward in a positive and healthy manner to achieve success with the situation, or to successfully pave the way to our life goals.

The lessons I have learned over time and especially recently is that we have to watch and listen to our thoughts.  This will show us where we are emotionally and mentally at the moment compared to where we wish to be. We must first shine a light on our 'negative thought' before we can change it and use it in a positive manner and in our favor.  I will admit that I have made some missteps in my thought process over the years by spending too much time on the 'negative thought,' but I can honestly say, I learned a valuable lesson from that process, which will benefit me as I move into the next phase of my life.

Recently, I have had time to reflect on all that I have experienced and those things that continue to happen in my life, good, bad and indifferent.  I am very lucky to say that I feel as though I have been blessed over the years.  Regardless of the situation, I have learned valuable lessons from those things that blessed my life, as well as from all of the other things that happened along the way.  I am able to find an overwhelming sense of peace for myself in most, if not all of the what and why I have "wished" for, past, present and future.  For me it was being able to include both the negative and positive thought processes in each of those  things that I "wished for" that have enabled me to not only make it through the rain, but sometimes I was even able to dance.