Healing Rites of Passage

Your entire life experience is filtered through your perspective. Your perspective is your filter. Its been formed throughout your life by those most influential in your development: parents, siblings, community and teachers. 

You come to understand the concepts of right/wrong, good/bad and should/shouldn’t, but they aren’t written in stone.

You have little to no control over this process as you are growing up, however as an adult you absolutely have the obligation to examine these concepts to see what actually is yours and what is not.

To bottom line it; if you emanate from negativity, your experience of life will be negative (and vice verse.)

Now, if you emanate from negativity you will defend your perspective citing evidence that backs it up. You will show me exactly how life has been unfair and has handed you one bad blow after another. You will have beliefs echoing the thought of ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’. You believe that bad events follow good events.

Although our stories are all individualized and unique, the basic premise is the same: ‘there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ (William Shakespeare)

“Good” and “bad” things happen to everyone, you’ve only to listen to someone else’s story to understand that…but how an individual tells their story varies. How can someone who’s had so much tragedy speak with such joy? How can another be so burdened by something we think is such a minor disappointment?

Perspective: It’s all you!!!!

When you choose to seek validation from outside yourself, you will be starved for it. This will result in negativity because you will be left in a void. External validation looks like waiting for praise, seeking acceptance and needing sympathy. What happens then is you keep score with the subconscious expectation of achieving 100% positive. You look at every ‘bad’ event as taking away from that 100% goal. The things that don’t go the way you’d like end up being scored with more value than things that do. In fact, you might discount ‘good’ events by explaining them away as coincidence, luck or charity. You have stacked the deck against you. Without knowing it you have actually set yourself up to continue to have a negative experience of life.

Conversely, when you validate yourself you live in surplus and any additional external validation is just icing on the cake! When you believe that who you become through your experiences is the point, not the events themselves, your perspective shifts dramatically. You get it that the control is all yours. Internal validation looks like accepting praise gracefully – but not relying on it, feeling comfortable in your own skin and having empathy for others. You don’t score your life in any kind of way. You take the good with the bad. You make every effort to create some good out of the bad. You’ve stacked the deck in your favor and have set yourself up to continue to have a positive experience of life.

And let me stop you before you say, “I can’t help it! I was raised like this!” Our programming is not permanent. It is meant for us to outgrow. Or more importantly, it is meant for us to overcome. We are adults. We are responsible for our own thoughts and beliefs. With new understanding and information we can make our worlds bigger and brighter. We don’t need to be confined in a world constructed of misbeliefs and misunderstandings. Our beliefs are just thoughts we think are true and keep thinking them.

So think again.

When you find your mind wandering in the negative look for three positive things to counter it. This requires a lot of paying attention. Awareness is key to making these changes. You can’t be satisfied just doing the same old thing – or rather, thinking the same old things. You have to examine everything with new eyes. Don’t just accept anything at face value, no matter who’s belief it is.

Not sure you’re thinking a negative thought? Its easy to tell, do you feel lighter/brighter or darker/heavier while you hold the thought(s)? The most positive of thoughts will make you tingle so much you feel it throughout your body.

Conscious daily practice will yield the quickest results. Pretty soon all your thoughts will be positive ones and you won’t remember any other way!

Ok, now off you go to do your positive thinking work!!!

I love you.

~Jade