by Ada Porat | Jul 25, 2014 | Conscious living, Cope with change, Decision-making, Life transitions
No matter how complex the world we live in, we have the power to bring about change – starting with ourselves. At this very moment, you can take definitive action to change your life for better!
Are you stuck in a dead-end job? You can change that! Perhaps you feel trapped in a relationship dynamic where you rescue everyone in your life. You can change that, too!
Navigating change does not have to be difficult. It merely requires the willingness to let go of what no longer serves you and to embrace the possibilities that beckon.
What is the payoff?
The first step is to ask yourself what payoff you are getting from your current situation. Why are you staying in that dead-end job? Perhaps you’ve chosen to trade your creative freedom or true potential for a sense of security. If that earlier choice is no longer true for you, you can choose again. Perhaps being the rescuer in your relationships used to make you feel needed and important, but lately has been stifling. If earlier choices no longer serve you, it is time to make a change!
What is holding you back?
Next, ask yourself what is holding you back from making the change you know you need. What are you afraid of? Do you feel intimidated by the unknown territory outside your familiar environment, or are you afraid of failure?
Fear is a dream killer! If you want to live a fulfilling, juicy life, you cannot afford to let fear squat in the corners of your mind. You need to recognize fear for the measly illusion it is – False Evidence Appearing Real – and evict it from your life!
Are you willing to let go?
Recognize that in order to have something different – experiences, outcomes and benefits – you need to create space for it first. If you want to change your life, you need to let go of old, outdated dreams and expectations. You may need to let go of the fantasy that you could settle for a job that keeps you just over broke, yet deadens your creativity. Perhaps you need to let go of those draining relationships in your life that only take and never give anything back in return.
When we are stuck in our habitual biases and ways of seeing things, there’s little wiggle room to notice other possibilities. To bring about meaningful change in your life, you may also have to let go of the need to understand or map out everything before you act. The excessive need for certainty usually comes from fear. Let go of the need to control everything, trust in the Unseen Hands that lovingly guide you, and you will make space for new possibilities to emerge.
Stay the course
Finally, it is helpful to remember that changing your life is an organic process. It takes time, it can be messy and you may at times doubt that you’ll make it through to the other end. The more you release your need to control the process, the more awareness you will have the Field of potentiality surrounding you. Once you get out of the way, this Field of potentiality will be free to form and create the very outcomes you desire.
Resistance leads to crisis
Our tendency is to resist the need to change until it storms into our lives as a full-blown crisis. Crisis is not polite; it doesn’t ask for permission or schedule its arrival; it just shows up! Crisis demands change. When it shows up in your life, it demands that you leave behind the safety of the known for uncharted territory. It may completely disregard your terms and wishes.
Whether you are facing change or a full-blown crisis, why not try something new instead of resisting? Let go of the qualifiers and expectations you’ve placed on life to give you a sense of security. Your attachment intensifies your pain! Letting go of preconditions frees you up to embrace the process of change.
Crisis is merely unexpected change at an unexpected level and unexpected time. And change can be transformative, depending on whether you embrace or resist it. Give yourself permission to flow with the process of change in your life, and you will experience its transformative power.
©Copyright Ada Porat. For more information, visit https://adaporat.com. This article may be freely distributed in whole or in part, provided there is no charge for it and this notice is attached.
by Ada Porat | Jun 27, 2014 | Body Mind Spirit, Change bad habits, Conscious living, Healthy boundaries, Life coaching
Compassion is essential to human well-being and should be practiced by all of us. To do so, we need to discern between healthy compassion and its cheap imitations: pity and blind compassion.
The cheap counterfeits to true compassion operate on avoidance. Pity seeks to avoid involvement and confrontation by placating from a distance. Blind compassion avoids tough love and defending healthy boundaries. It cuts everyone far too much slack, making excuses for others’ behavior and acting nice in situations that require a clear voice of dissent and personal boundaries.
We often turn a blind eye to the actual issues confronting us and resort instead to the wishy-washy approach of blind compassion which keeps love too meek and kind. Why do we do this?
Most of the time, we practice mealy-mouthed, blind compassion because we mistakenly think compassion should be meek. We are also afraid of upsetting anyone, and we wish to avoid confrontation. Ugh! By compromising on our truth, we turn into resonance junkies who are afraid to say “no” and try to please everyone around us instead.
There is a price to pay for this compromise. When we’re afraid to say “no” with any real authority, our “yes” also becomes anemic and powerless. And by muting our truth, this wishy-washy attitude reflects a lack of compassion and respect for ourselves.
Blind compassion also causes conflicted emotions in us: it confuses anger with aggression, forcefulness with violence, judgment with condemnation, caring with exaggerated tolerance, and moral maturity with spiritual correctness. It ultimately frames us as powerless victims because it silences our inner truth while tolerating and empowering the neurotic, boundary-bashing behavior of others.
In order for us to take our power back and live from a place of true compassion, we need to first return to being honest with ourselves. We need to acknowledge the pain, fear or threat that is triggered in us by others. By honestly allowing ourselves to feel the full emotional impact of what we have experienced, we are able to neutralize and forgive it.
Authentic forgiveness becomes possible only when we give ourselves permission to feel our hurt and meet it with true compassion. It also requires our willingness to experience some interim relationship conflict as we interrupt the dysfunction that has caused the pain.
When we act from this place of self-honesty and forgiveness, we access the power of true compassion. That true compassion empowers us to take appropriate action when necessary. It can be fierce when it needs to interrupt neurotic behavior, without any loss of caring in the process.
True compassion is a powerful form of tough love which ultimately leads to respect and clarity in relationship with ourselves and others.
©Copyright Ada Porat. For more information, visit https://adaporat.com. This article may be freely distributed in whole or in part, provided there is no charge for it and this notice is attached.
by Ada Porat | May 20, 2014 | Change bad habits, Conscious living, Decision-making, Depression, Fear and anxiety, Life coaching, Mindfulness, Spirituality
Emotions are incredibly powerful. In fact, they color everything in life. But an emotion cannot exist without a thought to drive it and give it life. What’s more, emotions can’t be changed simply because you decide they ought to.
Even if you pride yourself on being highly rational, you probably suspect that your emotions are the strongest force in your existence. You may have trouble figuring out how to change the way you feel, even when you don’t like where it takes you.
Put simply, energy flows where attention goes. And it is in the mind that the battle plays out, because your thoughts and your focus of attention direct the flow of energy – and it is in the mind that they can be changed.
As you change your thoughts, you will notice that your mood, feelings and emotions will follow. In due course, your actions and behaviors will fall into line with your thoughts as well.
Understanding this principle is essential if you want to change your attitude.
Your thoughts don’t travel in one direction only. We take in thoughts; yet we also send them out and project them onto the world outside ourselves. Put differently, whatever we enact in the outside world has its origins in the inside world of our minds – and it is not always lovely!
Once we recognize this, we come close to a real understanding of what self-responsibility is. You and I are collectively responsible for the world outside ourselves. Everything in this world – the good, the bad, and everything in between – begins with thought.
The spiritual description of this process takes it a step further, reminding us that we are actually creating the world outside ourselves through the power of our thinking. War, violence and injustice, as well as goodness, kindness and mercy, are all states of mind originated and sustained by our thoughts. No wonder the Course in Miracles calls the original thought of separation the “tiny, mad idea!”
It is through our thinking and the actions that flow from there that we add to our collective well-being – or not.
The Brahma Kumaris teachers of Peace Of Mind meditation teach the same concept with their statement that “Peace is just a thought away.”
Just imagine how exquisite our world and our lives would be if we consistently let ourselves believe and experience that. We would be able to create peace, have peace and offer peace to one another!
This meaningful change starts with taking charge of our thoughts and harnessing what is known in Buddhism as the monkey mind. Here are five simple steps to change the way you feel:
1. Change your thinking – and you will also change the way you feel.
2. Challenge beliefs that hold you back or harm you – and you will change the way you feel.
3. Notice when you fall into dreary or pessimistic thinking and take positive action instead – and you will change the way you feel.
4. Limit the attention you give to what is going wrong or what is disappointing or hurtful in your life – and you will change the way you feel.
5. Increase the attention you give to what is positive, uplifting, hopeful and supportive – and you will radically change the way you feel.
This all seems so obvious! It begs the question of why we don’t automatically weed out the thoughts that hurt us and cultivate supportive thoughts instead. Why don’t we act decisively, knowing that our feelings will change as we do so?
I believe that we most often allow the monkey mind to run wild simply because we don’t realize that our thoughts drive our behaviors. Nor do we realize that we can do something about those thoughts; that we can direct them instead of being overwhelmed by them.
You and I know better now! We can change our thoughts at any time by using these five simple skills to challenge, change, notice, and limit negative thoughts so we can increase our focus on what is positive. In so doing, our emotional well-being will thrive.
©Copyright Ada Porat. For more information, visit adaporat.com. This article may be freely distributed in whole or in part, provided there is no charge for it and this notice is attached.
by Ada Porat | Apr 22, 2014 | Abundance, Conscious living, Gratitude, Life coaching, Spirituality
Everyone in the world wants to be happy; and yet everyone suffers in some way. People the world over eagerly search for happiness as if it were a highly treasured secret.
The search for happiness has led many to explore religion, because all wisdom traditions teach that virtue is a precondition of happiness. Virtue may be defined differently by various traditions, yet the search for it invariably calls the seeker to personal introspection and self-honesty.
Times of social upheaval often serve as a catalyst to ignite this individual search for meaning and happiness. It is when the known certainties of our lives crumble, that we start looking for deeper answers. We may embark on this journey to find meaning in the death of a loved one, mourn the loss of a job or relationship, or survive the turmoil of financial instability.
Seekers often believe that the source of meaning and happiness lie outside themselves. They may seek for it in words, books or teachings from those who have been anointed by modern society as the guardians of spiritual truth.
Buddhism takes a contrasting view: it teaches that true knowledge and meaning cannot be found in any outside power or agency. Instead, it is found in the deep knowledge of truth that resides within each of us, even when we try to hide from ourselves.
Why would we want to hide from our inner truth, you may ask? Because we do not want to see our flaws, faults, weaknesses, and excesses. We fear that they’d make us feel too vulnerable and guilty. We are ashamed to admit to ourselves that some of the things we want are forbidden, illegal, unethical, or fattening.
We also hide from inner truth because we are afraid to face our fears. Although we may appear to be self-confident, we are all vulnerable to failure, defeat, humiliation, loss, pain, and death. We fear these things and so we repress those fears. And so we struggle to repress the truths within that we are not able to face, until it seeps through our defenses to haunt us in nightmares, anxieties and everyday worries.
This unwillingness to see things as they are, is the primary obstacle to happiness. It is the chief cause of our self-inflicted suffering; a form of self-denial that the Buddha called ignorance.
If ignorance is the underlying cause of our self-inflicted suffering, then awareness is the remedy. The keys to the kingdom of happiness lie in becoming self-aware. True self-awareness enables us to change the things we can, to accept the things we cannot change, and to know the difference.
Self-awareness can be cultivated through meditation, introspection and reflection. It requires us to witness our inner state of being without reacting to it. The very act of honest self-observation gives us the necessary insight to change our habitual patterns of thought and action.
When we embark on the journey within, we learn to access the truth that offers true happiness. As we come to understand our own resistance to truth, we learn how to transform it. We learn how to change our habits of negative thinking, repressed emotions, and fear-based action into courageous openness, honest awareness, and joyous equanimity. We learn to accept and relax into existence as it is, rather than to anxiously reject and fight it.
We begin to see how we, ourselves, are the primary cause of our own sorrow. And we come to understand that we can also choose to be the cause of our own release and happiness. We learn to find harmony between our inner being and our outer environment, so that peace and happiness flow.
This process of diligent and honest introspection has the potential to radically change our lives from within and restore a true sense of happiness.
©Copyright Ada Porat. For more information, visit adaporat.com. This article may be freely distributed in whole or in part, provided there is no charge for it and this notice is attached.
by Ada Porat | Mar 25, 2014 | Change bad habits, Conscious living, Cope with change, Decision-making, Fear and anxiety, Life transitions, Spirituality
“Crisis is the dangerous breaking of glass that opens locked windows of opportunity that require perceptiveness and courage to move through with care.”
~Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence Institute
The winds of change are blowing all around, exposing long-held beliefs and calling for a paradigm change. Do you have the courage and awareness to navigate these challenging times?
You have a powerful tool within you that can help you turn the most perilous situation into an opportunity for growth. It all depends on changing your perspective; how you look at things.
Wayne Dyer once said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change.” It is by changing your perspective, that you tap into your potential.
Around us, many souls are held spell-bound by the fear and drama of a changing world. Worries about economic threats, political turmoil and uncertainties around the future have their blood pressure soaring along with their credit card debt. Fear has become a powerful tool in the struggle for polarization and can bog down efforts toward meaningful change.
No wonder that increasing numbers of people are seeking out pharmaceuticals to treat their depression and anxiety in an attempt to maintain functionality, while avoiding the deeper cause and ignoring the signal that something is wrong.
Clearly, when we look out at the world, it appears to be filled with broken systems and people that need fixing. But at the crossroads between the outside world and our inner landscape, the fixing needs to happen inside us if we ever hope to see it change out there. If we want things to change, changing our perspective needs to happen first – we need to change the way we look at things!
It has been said that evolution, like water behind a dam, knows where all the cracks are, and is working on them right now with increasing intensity.
Could it be that something new is trying to happen, seeking the transformation of the whole by requiring the healing of our individual cracks and weaknesses as individuals? Is it possible that the topsy-turvy world out there is out of balance because of an intensified spiritual energy seeking to reawaken the true values of the heart in us – compassion, generosity, forgiveness, and a desire to live in harmony with others?
I propose that the only way forward through this mine field is by changing your perspective. You need to acknowledge and even to embrace the challenges in your life as the messengers they are: harbingers of a Higher Truth that highlights the empty, loveless or meaningless places in your life that yearn for more meaning and truth.
If you continue to anxiously hold onto the way things were, resisting change and wanting no disruption in your life, you will also avoid the potential for growth and evolution, because your personal status quo is closely tied to the larger sense of malaise on the planet.
I remember being surprised years ago when I read Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. He titled one of the chapters “The Gift of Depression.” I had to think about that.
What if you and I learned to suffer more effectively? How would things change for better if you could see problems and solutions as parts of the same coin, instead of failing to notice the opportunities offered by challenges? It requires changing your perspective.
In a world where everything is interconnected, the seeds of today’s suffering may well grow into the fruits that become tomorrow’s happiness. Think back for a moment: who would you be today if it weren’t for your suffering? Did the hardships not contribute to the deepening of your faith and the strengthening of your resilience? In fact, there is a jewel of awareness and growth offered in almost every tribulation.
It is the decisions you made at each point along the course of your life that determined the ultimate outcomes you are experiencing now. And how are they working for you?
If you want to experience different outcomes, you need to make different choices. Have you ever considered what might happen if you make different choices? Or embraced the unknown? Or if you dared to think out of the box and allowed for new possibilities to emerge? Or had the courage to go within, changing your perspective?
Ah, the sky is the limit! Your biggest obstacles are not the circumstances out there that you face; it is your inner resistance that is born of fear. And once you become aware of this, you can embrace changing your perspective, step out of fear and open your heart to the possibilities instead.
As you learn to step into the opportunity to make powerful decisions as individuals, I believe that you will also find the potential within to restore love, hope and unity to the wider world around you.
You could, as Tom Atlee suggests, “use your differences and challenges creatively, not simply as problems to avoid or solve, but as signs of new life pushing to emerge – and as invitations into a new, more whole tomorrow.”
In the coming days, it may be very useful to remember this invitation. Profound changes are ahead and your ability to move forward gracefully, rather than kicking and screaming, depends on changing your perspective.
When you choose to perceive problems as opportunities, you will find the courage to let go of the past and step into the rich possibilities of a future filled with potential to create the lives, the outcomes and the world you yearn for.
©Copyright Ada Porat. For more information, visit adaporat.com. This article may be freely distributed in whole or in part, provided there is no charge for it and this notice is attached.
