Originally Sourced From https://www.thelawofattraction.com/proactivity/

We’ve all seen the wonderful results achieved by proactive people. From world leaders to business owners and people who are confident in the dating scene, proactivity can lead to fast, significant results.

Indeed, it’s one of the key predictors of a successful Law of Attraction work.

Those who score high on proactivity are better at manifesting their life goals. But what can you do if you’re not proactive? What do you need to do to change?

We’ll start by looking at what it really means to be proactive. From there, we’ll start to look at how you can begin to be more proactive in your own life.

We’ll offer five practical techniques you can use starting today, and we’ll also explore how you can spread proactivity to those around you.

Finally, we’ll consider the idea of proactive manifestation, and how you can use what you’ve learned about proactivity to become more effective in achieving your dreams.

What Does It Mean To Be Proactive

Let’s begin with this foundational question: What does it mean to be proactive?

Firstly, it doesn’t mean taking intuitive on a particular thing.

Rather, it’s a kind of mindset or attitude shift that means you act rather than reacting.

You become active, rather than passive, and you play a role in creating the events that develop around you.

In addition, being proactive means to make decisions that serve your long-term ends, not just making choices when you’re forced into it.

In sum, the proactive person directs their own narrative instead of drifting along on the river of other people’s decisions and desires.

With this in mind, it’s helpful to break proactivity down into its key features – these are the features we’ll help you cultivate with our five techniques.

The Key Features Of Proactivity

Taking a proactive approach to life, then, involves the following major features:

Anticipation: you look at long-term goals, not just the present. So, for example, you don’t react to the mood of the day but rather organize the day around the future you want to create. You think ahead to anticipate your own needs and opportunities.

Change-orientation: you actively seek out and create change, rather than just adapting to it if it occurs in your life.

For example, you don’t only think about changing jobs when you’re made redundant – rather, you actively and continuously question whether your current role helps you grow. You embrace change even when it’s daunting.

Self-directedness: you don’t need to be asked by others to act, and nor do you need to be given a set of detailed rules to follow.

For example, if you meet someone with whom you’d like to develop a friendship, you ask them to do something rather than assuming that they’ll ask you if they want to get to know you. You are comfortable writing the rules for yourself, and prioritize growth over the fear of rejection.

Of course, these are just the key ingredients of proactivity. Recent psychological research also suggests that other factors in maintaining a proactive attitude involve planning, reflecting, and envisioning.

Planning means brainstorming steps to take and following a roadmap you design for yourself. Meanwhile, reflecting is all about continuous monitoring of your progress, and changing course when things aren’t working as well as they could.

Finally, envisioning is similar to the creative visualization work advocated by Law of Attraction practitioners – it’s dreaming about the future, and believing in the potential to turn that dream into reality.

Comparing Proactivity To Other Behaviors

Proactive work has some similarities to related behaviors, but it’s good to have a clear idea of the boundaries between proactivity and other traits.

Firstly, proactive isn’t quite the same as proficiency. When you’re proficient, you meet specific rules effectively – but it’s possible to do this without being proactive in the slightest.

Secondly, proactivity is distinct from adaptability, which measures how well you respond to changes. Once again, since proactivity involves seeking change, you can be adaptable and yet never proactive if you never actually deliberately create change.

To be clear, both proficiency and adaptability can also help you manifest more effectively, and in many cases, proactive people are also proficient and adaptable.

However, it’s important to be aware that simply becoming proficient and adaptable isn’t enough to make you a proactive person. There must also be a drive to create change and to plan for an abundant future.

5 Ways To Start Being Proactive

Now that you have a clearer idea of what being proactive means, let’s look at concrete ways you can work to become more proactive in your own life.

We’ll look at five proactivity and productivity tips that you can bring to your Law of Attraction work, helping you to manifest more effectively than ever before.

Develop Foresight

One of the best proactive thinking skills to hone is that of foresight. To become proactive, you have to learn how to better predict what’s coming. While you don’t need to be psychic, you do need to pay attention to patterns.

For example, the behavior of people you know tells you a lot about what you can expect from them in the future. And the natural cycles of the economy give you information that’s useful if you’re planning to start a business.

However, proactive people never get bogged down in one possible future – they’re always aware that foresight requires creativity.

To develop foresight, challenge yourself to predict at least two things that will (roughly) happen this week. Write down the patterns and clues that justify your predictions.

If you get it right, hold onto that information. If you misfire, notice where you want wrong and recalibrate for the next weep’s attempt at the same exercise.

Prevent Problems

As noted above, the more proactive you are, the more you take initiative in life. One significant aspect of taking initiative is to practice anticipatory problem-solving.

In other words, take steps to prevent or minimize the damage caused by something that might not even be on someone else’s radar.

This is empowering – instead of surrendering to luck and circumstance, you take control of your own situation as best you can. While such a strategy is fallible, it optimizes your chances of success.

To combine initiative with your Law of Attraction work, think of three things that might stop you from attaining your goal. Then, come up with a battle plan for tackling each of these blocks to manifestation.

Throughout, maintain a positive attitude – you can beat these setbacks. And if you don’t do so every time, turn those moments into lessons – what will help you find and solve problems more effectively next time?

Plan For The Future

When you’re focused on what’s going on in your life, it’s easy to get sucked into one-step thinking where all you consider is the present moment.

To be more proactive, you need to look at what’s going to happen and try to anticipate what will happen next.

Ask yourself: how can I plan ahead to ensure success tomorrow? This is all part of proactive vs reactive attitudes – you need to see each decision as one in a chain of decisions that all add up to your dream future.

One technique you can use to develop better planning skills involves breaking all your goals down into smaller goals. So, for example, say you already know you want to manifest a new business.

What do you need to do to get there? One of the steps might be building a website. Then that goal can be split into further goals – such as writing a biography and uploading images.

Don’t Be A Bystander

As much as being proactive involves pushing ahead and acting independently, it also requires us to interact with other people and the world.

More specifically, if you’re proactive you’ll be an active participant in life and not an idle observer. In psychology, the bystander effect refers to our tendency to act more slowly when others are present.

For example, if someone is in distress, we’re less likely to and help them if there are several other people nearby. The same can be true for opportunities – we might not grab at an opportunity because others are there, and we assume they’ll be quicker or more deserving.

Now, what can you do to move out of bystander mode? Some psychology experts suggest it has a lot to do with self-awareness.

So, for example, keeping a diary and sticking to daily mindfulness practice can help you become more in time with others and how you respond to their presence.

Start Performing

The biggest key to proactivity is just to commit to a decision to stop procrastinating. You must jump into being decisive, rather than simply planning to change over the coming weeks or months.

However, acting now doesn’t mean acting impulsively. Rather, it means making a careful, considered decision and turning it into reality immediately.

To reach this state of mind, try practicing. For this week, write down three things you’re going to do. For each of them, write a plan for the stages that these goals will involve.

Keep them limited and manageable at first – such as getting rid of old clothes, or having an important conversation you care about.

In the old clothes case, for example, your plan might be this: find at least five things to give to charity, five things you can give to friends and five things you’ll wear more often.

If you follow such a list every week, proactivity becomes second nature.

How Do I Make Others Around Me Proactive?

Of course, much of our work is done with others, so you may be wondering how to induce proactivity in people around you.

Firstly, simply modeling a proactive attitude can go a long way – others will see how well it works for you, and want to emulate it.

In addition, the Law of Attraction tells us that your proactivity will draw more and more proactive minds toward you.

This gives you the best chance to find an ideal business partner, a promising romantic partner, or even just a wonderful new friend.

Further, don’t be afraid to share your proactivity tips with others. You can explain how they’ve helped you, and how you think you and the other person can benefit from tackling a proactive life together.

Using The Law Of Attraction To Proactively Manifest

Everything that you’re learning and putting into practice about proactivity will make you a better more manifest.

The core traits of both types of people overwhelmingly overlap, so by developing a proactive mindset you also cultivate a mind that uses the Law of Attraction to its advantage.

Plus, proactivity is innately positive – it’s forward-moving, it’s bold, and it represents trusting and valuing yourself. All of these boots your vibrational and helps you stay in a place of abundance, attracting more good things into your life.

There are many ways to merge manifestation and proactivity techniques, but let’s end with two of the most powerful – living “as is” and creative visualization.

Living “as if” is a Law of Attraction exercise that challenges you to act, walk, dream, and talk as though you already have all the things you want.

This is exactly the kind of technique that also pushes you to embrace change and create calculated risks. Meanwhile, creative visualization is all about building up a detailed mental picture of what you want.

Picture yourself meeting that goal right now. In so doing, you both embody proactivity and help to attract your dream goals toward you.

The post How To Promote Proactivity In Your Life To Manifest appeared first on The Law Of Attraction.

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Originally Sourced From https://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/three-steps-to-establish-healthy-eating-habits-that-last/

As any dietician, fitness blogger or biology student will tell you — if you want to lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than your body is burning. While this simple rule can certainly be a useful tool to incorporate into your larger health and fitness plan, cutting calories does not make a healthy diet. In fact, over-prioritizing portion control can lead to negative health consequences of its own, without offering the desired benefit of improved wellness and fitness. 

A healthy diet is, at its core, more about understanding what goes into the food you eat than it is about reducing portion sizes. If you can learn how to improve the foods you love, you can begin to make those foods fit into a holistic long-term diet that allows you to truly enjoy your relationship with the food you eat.

Learning healthy eating habits is essential if you want to achieve lasting results, improve longevity, boost your energy and elevate your overall wellness. To establish a holistic diet, you must first understand what nutrients your body needs to function at its highest potential. Then, you can begin to discover ways to incorporate those nutrients into your everyday diet. Here, we’ll dive into an easy-to-remember formula that can be used as a guide along the path to establishing healthy eating habits that last: inform, incorporate and indulge.

Inform: Are you getting the nutrients you need?

When you begin to understand what essential nutrients and ingredients to include in your diet, you can become empowered to make informed decisions when it comes to shopping and meal preparation. For those who are new to the world of healthy eating, however, understanding nutrition can feel like an insurmountable task. 

If you want to create a more balanced and healthy lifestyle, it’s important to be informed about the nutrients you may be missing, and where to find them in the grocery aisle. Eating fresh ingredients and avoiding processed food, for example, can help guide you toward healthier options.

To avoid information overload, it’s important to stick to science. Conduct your research with reputable blogs and sites, and consult with a doctor or nutrition expert for any concerns you may have. Once you’ve established a baseline understanding, you can begin to choose foods that are rich in essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.  

Next, remember to check the nutrition labels on the foods you buy. While lengthy lists of ingredients may seem confusing, organizations like the Center for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Agriculture offer useful guides to help consumers understand the food labels they’re reading at the checkout counter. By making a conscious effort to pay attention to the ingredients in your food, you can be more mindful of avoiding unhealthy ingredients such as trans fats, cholesterol, sodium and sugars.

You may also consider working with a professional. Each person has different needs and goals — there is no one-size-fits-all diet plan. For this reason, it’s best to consult with a nutritionist, dietician or medical professional to assist you in designing a routine that will yield the most benefit for your specific health needs. Most personal care physicians can offer patients a referral for a reputable nutritional expert, and organizations like the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics offer referral resources. 

Incorporate: How does nutrition fit into your lifestyle?

The next step in achieving a healthy diet is to incorporate those essential nutrients into your meal planning. With a working knowledge of your nutrition needs and health goals, you can begin to establish a sustainable, healthy lifestyle and build new habits.  

It may seem daunting to completely overhaul your weekly grocery list, and such a stark change may be difficult to maintain — so start small. Incremental changes can build over time into a fulfilling lifestyle change that works for you. 

For busy parents, students or people with limited mobility, shopping for fresh ingredients can be a challenge — especially during a global pandemic. To boost your diet, consider incorporating supplemental food products to help ease the transition. Incorporating high-quality fortifying products, like multivitamins, protein supplements, and additive powders, can be an effective way to reach your nutritional goals. 

Consider products that offer a range of essential ingredients, such as protein, fiber and omega-3 fatty acids, or vitamins like A, C and K. Nutrients such as these can support critical functions like brain development, and can protect against common health concerns like macular degeneration and cataracts. Many of these products, such as EasyKale, can be easily added to meals and beverages to help increase the amount of essential nutrients in your diet, without requiring a special trip to the grocery store. 

These small lifestyle changes can bring about much larger health benefits, and lay the foundation for a more balanced diet.

Indulge: Are you making space for the foods you love?

Once you’ve established a strong routine with balanced meals and improved nutrition — remember to indulge on occasion! Many well-intentioned people fail in their diet plans when they view nutrition a tedious task, rather than a natural component of a more fulfilling lifestyle. Maintaining a health-conscious diet may feel like a chore if you completely eliminate the foods you enjoy most. 

For any diet plan to be successful in the long term, it must hold space for the meals you love. Enjoy the foods that make you happy, and consider ways to improve them. It becomes easy to indulge when you are empowered with a thorough understanding of your nutritional goals, and how to include those nutrients in your regular meals. By substituting unhealthy ingredients and adding key vitamins and minerals to the recipes you enjoy, you may find that your favorite foods still have a place on a healthy dinner table.

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Bilal Qizilbash is the Founder & CEO of EasyKale 

The post Diet is Science: Three Steps to Establish Healthy Eating Habits That Last appeared first on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement.

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Originally Sourced From https://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/why-romanticized-love-is-destroying-relationships/

Divorce rates are currently at 40-50% in the US and even higher for subsequential marriages.

Marriage satisfaction is 58%, so something is not working.

What has gone wrong?

Love is the top reason for people getting married in the USA.

But where did this come from?

We have to start with a history lesson, so buckle up.

Throughout history, marriage used to be an arrangement created to promote the family unit’s survival and safety.

The industrial age changed all that.

As safety increased and resources became independent of the tribal collective to survive, individuality took form.

They didn’t rely on the tribe or family to survive, so the concept of marriage for safety stopped making sense.  

Marriage used to be seen as a duty, not something you did for personal fulfillment or emotional satisfaction.

The new economic realities of the 19th century merged with the ideas that sprung from the Enlightenment about individual rights and the pursuit of happiness, and the result was Romanticism.

The new ideal was to get married for love.

Love was to provide the ever after happiness and feeling of meaning, worthiness, and value that individualization had torn apart when our sense of tribal communities fell apart.

With a lack of social meaning and purpose, we looked for a partner to fill that gap and make us complete.

It wasn’t until the relatively recent 150 years ago that the ever-popular “happily ever after” idea was born.

So, what’s wrong with this new idea of a soulmate everlasting love, you might ask?

Feelings are unreliable, unstable, and not consistent in any way or form.

As wonderful as the drug of oxytocin & dopamine can be, they are nature’s way of making us bond and invested enough to have sex and make babies.

This chemical cocktail only lasts a few months to 2 years max, and then the honeymoon stage is over.

During this stage, you will idolize your partner.

You love that they are so spontaneous. Later you will likely see the same traits as annoying and unreliable.

We see all our partner’s traits positively and even make some up that are not even there.

It’s a state of obsession, and there is a reason it’s been compared to obsessive-compulsive disorder as the chemical imbalance and behavior are similar.

Eventually, the unnatural high from nature meant to draw you together to mate will go away, and now it requires skills and self-awareness to create a much more in-depth and profound love of companionship.

Frequently couples think the love is gone, which means the relationship is over, so they leave to see the next drug of chemical intensity that we call in-love.

Or they accept to live in disappointment and resentment as the data above indicate.

Emotions also don’t tell us anything about long-term compatibility.

We often feel attracted and fall in love with an ideal when we meet someone that unconsciously shows traits we wish we had or that makes us feel seen, accepted, and valued.

Who we fall in love with is also motivated by our attachment style, and so does not indicate in any way that this person is healthy or nurturing for us long term.

The In-love feeling is based on a fantasy.

As we see traits we desire in the other, our brain is designed to create a story based on our desires, expectations, and past experiences.

These stories tend to have an overly optimistic bias setting us up for disappointment because of the chemicals.

We tell ourselves these stories about this person and how perfect they are.

We idealize them and become obsessed with this fantasy.

This is not love.

Love is safety, trust, and seeing you partner in all their glory and mess and accepting them in that space.  

And, that takes time, effort, and a whole lot of growth on both parties.

Our rush to have sex also blurs our vision through chemicals that make us feel connected to people that are not compatible.

We rush to sex because we feel anxious and believe that sex will create the bond and safety we crave and validate that we are desired, wanted, and enough.

As a dating coach, I help people find their most suitable match.

We are all a pain in the a.. to live with.

We have different backgrounds, triggers, goals, expectations, communication styles, attachment styles, love languages, and ideas of roles in a relationship, so there are bound to be many misunderstandings.

If we don’t have the skills to navigate this, it’s bound to go wrong even if we started with a bang and felt we found our soulmate.

Intensity is like a drug, taking us out of everyday life’s mundanity and makes us feel whole, worthy, valuable, and alive. But it is an illusion that will not last.

Slow down and take time to get to know each other.

Focus on what shows compatibility instead of the quick, intense emotions that will mislead you.

I am not stating emotions do not matter, and you should be with someone that makes you feel miserable.

Emotions matter.

My point is that we need to restore the balance between emotions, sensation, and logic.

It’s what neuroscientists call integration, and it’s how we function the best and make good decisions.

There is a reason I recommend premarital counseling. Without these skills, you are leaving love to luck, and as we know, that does not turn out well most of the time. 

Love requires skills.

You got this far; that’s an achievement.

The four skills I teach in couples therapy and that you need to create long-lasting love are

Self-awareness

You won’t get far without self-awareness.

I know the fantasy of romantic love lied and told you that your soulmate should magically know what you need, but let’s be honest. You don’t even know what you need half the time.

Even a mother is wrong 70% of the time with her baby.

You have to become aware of your wounds, triggers, needs, and boundaries so you can communicate these to your partner. This is something I teach people in marriage therapy.

This requires a lot of self-reflection and turning something inwards; we often dread as that could mean meeting some of those uncomfortable emotions when there are no distractions.

Mindfulness, journaling, and therapy are all great tools to expand your self-awareness.

If you don’t understand yourself, how can you expect someone else too?

Regulation

Attachment is two nervous systems linking, and that’s why scientists have found that our close attachments impact our nervous system far more than those we are not connected to.

When relationships go to hell and back then, it’s because our brain and nervous system have been hijacked by fight or flight, and we are not to toddlers fighting it out.

No chance that will end well.

Being able to restore calm in ourselves and our partner, so our adult brain comes online is imperative to mature love and longevity of your relationship. 

Vulnerability

The essence of intimacy is our inherent need to be seen and accepted.

As we grow up, we learn quickly to adapt and hide parts of ourselves to get acceptance from our parents’ teachers and peers.

Once we find a partner that can allow us to show these parts and be accepted, we feel an immense connection and love.

I call it coming home.

Responsiveness

How we respond to our partner sets the foundation for safety and love.

Emotional attunement

Is how we can tune in to our partner’s emotional world and seek to understand their experience?

The old saying, “do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” is valid.

If your partner ends up agreeing with you, but at the expense of their self-worth or humiliation, then you both lose.

Being right is also subjective as we all have different expectations and values of how the world should function, so no one is ever right. We just have different experiences.

Seek to understand your partner’s experience with questions such as.

How did you feel when…?

Attachment reassurance

This is perhaps the most important skill that I work with couples as a relationship coach.

Love flourishes when we feel safe, and it dies when we feel unsafe.

Knowing your partner’s and your attachment style and making each other feel safe is paramount to nurturing lasting love.

Turn towards each other

When we have conflict, tension, or stress, we either turn away from each other or towards each other.

Turn away is when we attack, blame, criticize, or disengage. They create a disconnect, resentment and slowly break a bond.

Turning towards is when we engage and try to understand our partner’s experience and find win/win solutions.

To do this, you first have to regulate, so you are calm.

Acceptance

Vulnerability turns into intimacy when it’s met with acceptance.

Similar intimacy dies when met with judgment.

So, if you feel judgement, look at what makes you judgmental.

Are you scared or fearful of something?

Does what your partner express make you feel inferior or not good enough?

Once you heal yourself, you can meet the world with acceptance, and acceptance does not mean you have to give your partner everything they need or want.

It just means you accept their experience and needs as valid.

Thomas is the Founder of Zensensa.com the leading institute for relationship intimacy.He is the author of two books and the host of the Zensensa podcast. A dating coach, relationship coach, confidence coach & sex coach. Provides premarital counseling, couples therapy, online marriage counseling, relationship counseling & marriage therapy. Marriage counseling near you.

Trained in Somatic relationships therapy.Created the 3-step love model, end people pleaser syndrome.

The post Why Romanticized Love is Destroying Relationships appeared first on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement.

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Originally Sourced From https://www.thelawofattraction.com/breathing-exercises/

You’ve probably heard quite a lot of people saying that breathing exercises are the key to a happier, healthier life.

They’re said to help you combat anxiety, to take a more relaxed attitude to stress, and even to get a more restful night’s sleep. But why are breathing exercises so effective?

And out of the many that you can find online, which should you choose to get the best results?

We’ll explain the main benefits of breathing exercises, helping you to understand why they’re so often recommended.

Then, we’ll move on to look at the very best breathing exercises you can try for a range of different problem – techniques that work well for both anxiety and stress at the moment, ones that help to reduce stress over a longer period of times, and ones that help you relax or fall asleep.

We’ll close by looking at how self-hypnosis can enhance what you can get from your breathing exercises.

What Are The Benefits Of Breathing Exercises?

Deep breathing techniques were used in ancient Buddhist and yoga practices, and continue to be used today.

How you breathe can impact every system in the body.

Increasingly, deep breathing benefits and scientifically documented and supported by evidence.

For example, a large study performed at Ireland’s Trinity College found that breathing is linked to focus.

By regulating our breathing, we can reduce the production of noradrenaline -a chemical messenger that helps you concentrate but that increases anxiety by flooding you when you’re stressed.

Daily breathing exercises, it turns out, help you produce just the right amount to do your best work while still feeling relaxed.

In contrast, shallow breathing reduces your resistance to disease and keeps you in a cycle of stress.

Further, deep breathing:

• Improves posture
• Increases energy level
• It detoxifies the body
• Improves digestion
• Breathing relaxes the mind and body
• Reduces inflammation
• Improves blood flow
• Lowers your heart rate and blood pressure

The Best Breathing Exercises To Help With Anxiety And Stress

As noted above, consistently taking shallow breaths can contribute to stress and anxiety.

For one thing, if you don’t breathe properly then you don’t always get enough oxygen into your body or get rid of enough carbon dioxide (which is a waste product).

Some research on breathing patterns suggests that shallow breathers are more likely to not only feel anxious.

They are less likely to have panic attacks, experience chronic fatigue, and struggle with low mood.

Here are two new approaches to breathing that you can try today. Both are designed to help you de-escalate when you’re feeling anxious or stressed.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

The diaphragm breathing technique is safe for almost everyone but check with your doctor if you have a respiratory condition.

To practice the technique, sit or lie down in a quiet place, wearing comfortable clothes. Put your hands in your lap, rest them flat on your bed, or put them on the arms of your chair.

Next, put your left hand right on your stomach and right hand on your upper chest. Take a deep breath in from your abdomen – not your throat – and count to three.

If you’re doing it right, your right hand won’t move but your stomach will rise under your left.

Take a short breath, then exhale to a count of three. You should feel your stomach drop-down under your left hand. Repeat this pattern for 5-10 minutes, noticing that you become more relaxed over time.

If it helps, you can say an affirmation on each exhale, such as “relax” or “calm.”

Start Using Long Exhales

When you first start trying to work on your breathing, you might notice that simply taking deeper breaths doesn’t really reduce your anxiety. This is because deep inhales actually active your fight-or-flight system.

If you focus on lengthening your exhales instead then you will see big differences.

Exhaling is connected to your parasympathetic nervous system, and you can exploit this link to help your body relax.

When you feel the urge to take a deep breath, try a long exhale instead, fully emptying your lungs. Then, let your inhale develop naturally, as your body sees fit.

For each following exhale, spend longer on it than you do on your inhales. For example, try inhaling to a count of five and exhaling to a count of seven.

Best Breathing Exercises To Reduce Stress

Now, let’s look at two breathing exercises to reduce stress. These are particularly useful if you don’t only experience episodes of anxiety but also tend to feel that your life is stressful.

Practiced frequently, these exercises can help you to better cope with stress and improve your ability to regulate your own emotions.

Visualization Breathing Exercises

There are two key visualization breathing exercises you should try.

The first involves inflating an imaginary balloon.

This might seem odd at first, but it again helps to activate that parasympathetic nervous system in a way that relaxes you.

To do this exercise, find a comfortable position, breathe normally for a couple of minutes, then concentrate on filling your abdomen like a balloon with each inhales.

On each exhale, picture air slowly seeping out of that balloon.

Picture the balloon in your mind’s eye throughout, perhaps as your favorite color. This exercise helps to train you out of breathing shallowly.

The second visualization exercise starts the same way – with you getting comfortable. Breathe from your diagram, and on each inhalation imagine every feeling of stress in your body filling your chest.

Next, as you breathe out, imagine the stress goes out with your breath. Repeat this at a slow, steady pace to gradually get rid of stress.

Mindful Breathing Exercises

There are plenty of other stress-busting breathing exercises you can try, but one of the most powerful of all is the Shamatha (“Breathing as Is”) technique.

To do it, get comfortable in either a sitting or standing position. Start by increasing your awareness of your own body, noticing the weight of it on your feet, and the sensation of the chair or floor beneath you.

Keep your back straight, and relax your gaze, fixing it on a central point so that you are not truly looking at what’s in front of you.

Turn your attention to the natural rhythm of your breath, paying special attention to the way your stomach rises and falls.

As this is a meditative exercise, your mind may wander at times. Gently redirect it, and refocus on the breath

Mindful Breathing Exercises For Relaxation

While it’s undeniably helpful to learn breathing techniques for stress, it’s also important to learn exercises that you can use to relax even when life is going well.

These techniques will help you get a good night’s sleep, and may also help to slow your heart rate and regulate your blood pressure.

Using Calming Breathing Exercises

This exercise can be performed alone or as preparation for the technique below.

The idea is that you can prime yourself for relaxation by choosing the right place and by getting your body ready.

This means finding a quiet, calm room, taking off your shoes, and wearing your most comfortable clothes.

Next, find the most natural position for your body, and either close your eyes or softly focus on something in front of you.

Try to focus on nothing but your breathing.

This is very similar to the meditative exercise above, but it’s more about focusing on breath than on your body.

Within minutes, you should feel more relaxed.

Using Progressive Muscle Relaxation Techniques

Once you’re sufficiently relaxed, you can move on to practice a progressive muscle relaxation technique. It’s best to do this one sitting, but the good news is that it can be done anywhere – whether you’re at home, at work, or traveling.

The core activity is tensing and relaxing all of your muscle groups, one by one. This releases tension you’re holding throughout.

To do this exercise, close your eyes and focus on your feet. Deliberately tense them, then relax them.

Work up past your ankle to your knees, thighs, buttocks, your pelvis, abdomen, chest, hands, arms, the front and back of your neck, both sides of your jaw, and your brow.

As you tighten and release each muscle group, keep your breathing slow and steady. Notice how fluidly you move and how different your body feels afterward – how loose and comfortable it feels.

If you’re not used to this exercise it’s easy to lose focus before you’ve finished. Experts on anxiety and relaxation suggest that you can better maintain focus by holding your breath to a count of five while you tense your muscles, breathing out when you relax the muscles.

Deep Breathing Exercises For Sleep That You Can Practice

Now, almost any of the above exercises can help you prepare for sleep. However, certain further techniques specifically target getting a good night’s sleep.

These breathing exercises for sleep can help you combat insomnia and help you set aside the stresses of the day, marking a transition from activity to rest.

Square Or Box Breathing Technique

Sometimes called square breathing, the box breathing technique trains your attention on them that you’re drawing into your body with every breath.

Sit down, keep your spine straight, take a breath in, and then exhale as exhaustively as you can – aim to get all the air out of your lungs.

Next, breathe in through your nose to a count of four, and hold your breath to a count of four, focusing on the thought that you’re drawing fresh oxygen into your blood.

Finally, slowly breathe out through your mouth, again focusing on releasing all the carbon dioxide through your exhalation.

Three-Part Breathing Technique

Finally, the three-part breathing exercise is very easy to follow and also primes your body for sleep.

The first part involves simply taking in a long, deep breath. Inhale slowly, so as not to trigger your fight-or-flight response.

The second part is to exhale, noticing the movements and feelings of your body as you do so.

Repeat this a couple of times, then do the third part of the exercise – slow down the speed of your exhalation so that it lasts double the time of your inhales.

So, if your inhalation is to a count of five, make your exhalation to a count of ten.

Learn To Relax with Self-Hypnosis

At this stage, you have a wide range of breathing exercises under your belt, helping you to combat anxiety, control stress, and get a good rest.

If you like how you feel after these exercises, why not try our self-hypnosis for relaxation program as the next step? By leading you into a receptive, calm state and accessing your subconscious mind, self-hypnosis can help you get rid of the stubborn thoughts and feelings that trigger stress and anxiety.

Hypnosis can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but it can help you achieve your goals and overcome internal limitations that are holding you back.

The post Essential Deep Breathing Exercises For Anxiety And Stress appeared first on The Law Of Attraction.

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Originally Sourced From https://www.thelawofattraction.com/self-deception/

We’re not always honest with ourselves. We make promises to change without following them through, we sometimes avoid uncomfortable truths, and we twist the facts to help us feel better about our situation. Worse still, we don’t even always know when we’re actively engaging in self-deception.

But why do we do this? How can we become more aware of when we’re lying to ourselves? And how can we end this habit for good, developing a healthier and more truthful relationship with ourselves and the world?

Starting with an exploration of why we lie to ourselves, we’ll then move on to consider how you can tell when you’re self-deceiving.

From there, we’ll look at the positive task of becoming more honest with yourself, offering five concrete strategies to help you stop lying to yourself in the longer term.

When we’re truthful with ourselves, we start to live a healthier, happier, and more authentic life.

Why Do We Lie To Ourselves?

Firstly, what is self-deception? Essentially, it’s telling lies to ourselves in order to feel better. You can think of it as an escape route that we use to cope with a difficult thing we don’t want to face.

We don’t typically do this on purpose, but our subconscious instigates self-deception in order to protect us.

There are all sorts of reasons why you might develop this response. Perhaps you saw others doing it when you were growing up, and you learned the lesson that this is the way to cope with uncomfortable emotions.

Alternatively, maybe you went through a particularly traumatic experience and you simply can’t cope with any more pain or difficulty.

We all self-deceive sometimes, but it gets more problematic the more we do it.

This is because self-deception is like putting a bandaid on a massive wound – it has limited temporary effectiveness and does nothing to address the underlying issues.

Recognizing Signs Of Self-Deception

So, it’s important to be alert to self-deception because it undermines happiness. However, we must be very careful and alert to pick up such defense mechanisms.

To that end, let’s look at three core signs of self-deception, fleshing them out with self-deception examples that will help you understand how such signs might appear in your own life.

You Avoid Confrontations With Difficult Situations

Firstly, think about your default response to difficulty. Perhaps someone is annoyed at you, for example. Do you try to talk it out with the person you’ve irritated, or do you avoid them?

Do you face up to your role in the annoyance, or spin a story that says the other person is to blame? If you tend toward avoidance, you likely also tend to self-deception.

In other words, when you feel something negative, your instinct is to go in the opposite direction rather than face up to it now.

And this kind of chronic avoidance requires building a web of interconnected lies, so it can very quickly spin out of control.

Self-deception is also often linked to procrastination when it comes to difficult tasks you don’t enjoy. So, if you’ve ever thought to yourself “I need to learn how to stop procrastinating”, you may just have a self-deception habit as well.

You Rationalize Bad Behavior With Self-Deception

Learning to stop justifying yourself and your negative behaviors are crucial to leaving self-deception behind. We all make mistakes.

For example, we forget to call someone who is waiting to hear from us, we mess up on a work project, or we say the wrong thing and hurt someone’s feelings.

How we respond to making such mistakes can be a sign of serious self-deception. If you’re self-deceptive, you’ll have a strong impulse to rationalize your own behavior.

You outsource the blame to someone else, or you deny that there’s any blame involved. For example, you might think “Yes, I said something mean, but he deserved it”, or “Yes, I was late with that task, but it’s my boss’s fault the task wasn’t clear.”

And where there’s no one else involved, you may paint yourself as a victim of life circumstances, rather than a person with agency.

You Are In Denial

A related but subtly different sign of self-deception is simply denial. While the above description of rationalization involves telling a false story about a true event, denial involves rejecting the event itself.

So, being in denial might involve thinking that you don’t eat too much, even though you’re overweight and that weight straightforwardly implies that you eat too much.

Similarly, you might reject the idea that you have a drug or alcohol problem, thinking “I’m just having fun at the weekend”, or “I deserve to relax.”

Denial is one of the most dangerous aspects of self-deception, and one of its most extreme manifestations.

It suggests a basic difficulty in managing challenging or uncomfortable emotions, and it can stop you from seeing the most important changes to need to make. In the weight case, for example, the denial brings comfort but it comes at the high cost of health risks and low self-esteem.

How To Stop Lying To Yourself

So, now you understand what self-deception is about, when it might happen and how you might detect it. Now, how do you stop self-deceit and learn to deal with reality?

Here are five strategies you can use if you want to create a future where you don’t lie to yourself.

Start Taking Constructive Criticism As A Positive Thing

One of the most powerful actions you can take is reframing constructive criticism as useful feedback. Of course, you shouldn’t accept unkindness, bullying, or verbal abuse.

However, when someone who cares about you tries to suggest something needs to change, try to see that there is probably some truth in it and that this truth takes you one step closer to a happier existence.

After all, when you know what you’re doing wrong, you have a rough blueprint of what would be right.

While no one enjoys hearing about their weaknesses, it’s better to know about them and work to change them than it is to continue to have negative traits.

And if you aren’t able to think of anyone who would offer you this kind of well-meaning feedback, dedicate some of your energy to the quest to find true friendship. With the right love and support, self-deception becomes progressively less necessary.

Stop Putting Things Off

We referred above to a connection between procrastination and self-deception. In particular, consider the habit of saying “I’ll do it tomorrow” in order to avoid tasks while still feeling good about your productivity.

If you can learn to stop procrastinating, you will start to create meaningful, lasting change. So, when you feel yourself gearing up to generate an exclusive for why you don’t need to engage with something difficult, take a deep breath and choose to deal with that thing right now.

If you struggle to beat procrastination in the early days, one thing you can do is reward yourself in small ways for completing difficult tasks.

Whether you eat something you particularly like, take some time off or buy a small luxury, you can slowly start to rewire your brain.

In particular, things you used to associate with negativity become tethered to the dopamine boost of rewards, and you no longer want to procrastinate.

Keep Your Emotions In Check

Strong, difficult emotions are the primary driver for self-deception.

So, if you become more aware of your emotions and work on examining them, you can stop the self-deception cycle in its tracks.

As you feel an intense emotion like anger, fear, or shame, take a deliberate pause.

At this point, you might rush into self-deception in order to hide from discomfort. Actively resist this urge and let yourself sit with the emotion.

Ask yourself where it came from, and what would need to happen to address it head-on.

This can all feel very foreign at first, but if practiced often enough it can become your new default.

Daily mindfulness practice can do a lot to help with emotional awareness and regulation. Through meditation and mindfulness, you can learn to detach from intense feelings.

Rather than drowning in them, they become passing experiences that don’t define you and don’t have the power to destroy you.

Quit Doubting Yourself

People often notice that they become more prone to self-deception when their self-esteem is low. And a major ingredient of low self-esteem is self-sabotage – thinking that you can’t do things, or are not good enough to have things.

This itself can be a form of self-deception, so a vicious circle easily results. One way to disrupt that cycle is to work on boosting your self-esteem.

In particular, remember that you’re never too old to try new things or to attempt to change. As long as you’re alive, there’s a chance to make your life better, richer, and more fulfilling.

In time, being bold enough to try new things creates a positive cycle that deadens self-deception. You feel better and better about yourself, so there’s less need to hide from anything that feels difficult. After all, you know that you’re a valuable, worthwhile person, so transient mistakes and sources of shame are only blips to be overcome.

Don’t Give Up

Finally, building resilience is a reliable way to reduce self-deception. When you’re resilient, you believe in your ability to bounce back after difficulties, and you know your own strength.

As with self-esteem, the more resilience you have the less you feel you need to hide from things that feel painful. But how do you go about doing this? One basic way of boosting resilience involves simply taking good care of yourself. Nurture your body and your mind, and hold boundaries if someone attempts to drain your energy.

Another resilience-boosting tactic is to persist at times when you would normally have given up.

Whether you’re in pursuit of a particular goal or attempt to resolve an interpersonal difficulty, push past the point at which the past version of you would have said “Never mind.” Often, you’ll find that this perseverance proves that you can get what you want if you simply refuse to give up.

Try Self-Hypnosis To Improve Self-Esteem And Confidence

By now, you’re better equipped than before to avoid self-deception. You know what it is, how to spot it, and how to create a life without it. However, if you want to be true to yourself and stay honest, it’s also wise to work on your core self-esteem.

After all, we only self-deceived when we believe the truth about ourselves is too horrible to face. Using self-hypnosis is a particularly powerful way of changing the way you see yourself, helping you to build a more positive relationship with your authentic self.

By tapping into your subconscious, our carefully designed self-esteem hypnosis program gives you the support you need to see yourself as valuable, strong, and empowered.

We tackle some of the most common limiting beliefs that keep people avoidant and insecure. If you want to be good to yourself and ensure you never again need to self-deceive, this program is a wonderful step in that direction.

The post Self-Deception: Understanding How To Be True To Yourself appeared first on The Law Of Attraction.

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Originally Sourced From https://www.thelawofattraction.com/living-with-purpose/

Do you ever feel like you don’t really know where your life is going? Perhaps you’ve pursued a few different projects, hobbies, and careers but quite felt you’d found your calling.

It’s frustrating to live in this way, and it’s hard to measure progress. You can easily feel burnt out and disillusioned, as well as like you’re not really contributing anything to the world.

In contrast, when you live with purpose, you’ll naturally find balance in life. This leads to long-term satisfaction and fulfillment. But how do you get there? How do you find your purpose, and what can you do to ensure you live in alignment with it?

In this guide, we’ll explore why it’s so important to live with purpose, and why those without purpose suffer as a result.

More importantly, we’ll offer three concrete routes toward living with purpose, with an emphasis on practical changes you can make as soon as today.

What Is The Point Of Living A Life Of Purpose?

Broadly speaking, having a sense of purpose means that you know what you’re contributing to the world and to your own development. Your days have structure, you have concrete goals in mind.

While everyone has rough days and difficult times, if you have a life of purpose then your default state is one of happiness and satisfaction.

With this in mind, let’s start to refine our ideas about why it’s so important to have this sense of purpose and to explore the connection between a lack of purpose and deep distress.

Why Do We Search For Purpose?

We all feel the need to have a purpose in our lives. Without it, we start to think “I feel lost and out of place.”

But why? The crux of our search for meaning likely has a lot to do with our awareness of our own mortality. We know that we have a limited time to make an impact and leave a legacy.

So when we feel out of place, we can’t help but wonder whether our life really matters. In addition, many of us are driven to make the world a better place, and when we lack purpose we’re painfully aware we aren’t creating positive change.

What If I Have No Sense Of Purpose In Life?

If you’re feeling lost and have no sense of your life’s purpose, you can feel hopeless and stuck.

You may begin to think that life is meaningless, creating a negative feedback loop of sadness and inertia.

In this circumstance, the most important thing you can do is consciously devote energy to changing your mindset.

This won’t happen overnight, but if you take some time every day to work on shifting your perspective then you’ll gradually begin to find meaning again.

And we’ll explore below, there is concrete, reliable steps you can follow in order to recover a sense of purpose and empowerment.

What If I’ve Been Feeling Lost With No Purpose For A Long Time?

If you’ve never felt like you’re living with purpose, it’s important to be aware of just how much this will have shaped your thoughts and feelings about yourself and your potential.

When you spend years feeling lost, you can start to see your time on earth as meaningless – and this is devastating to your self-esteem.

You may feel like you’re simply sleepwalking through life, never really trying to push yourself or develop your talents. However, even if you feel like you’re truly a lost soul, there are still things you can do to finally find a purpose and experience joy in your life.

How To Start Living With Purpose?

Now that you have a rough sense of why we need a purpose in life and how it affects us when we lack such a purpose, let’s look at how we can find meaning and joy by discovering your purpose. These four steps will help you learn how to find your purpose and passion in life.

Finding The Right Balance In Your Life

Many people wrongly assume that living with purpose means devoting all your resources to one particular goal.

However, to be a happy, fulfilled person it’s important to learn to start living with purpose in multiple areas of your life.

To this end, try to think about your life split into the following three elements: professional, social, and spiritual.

To be both purposeful and balanced, challenge yourself to set goals in each category every day.

For example, one day you might do part of an online course that improves your professional skills, reach out to a friend for a chat, and listen to some of your favorite songs.

Start Exploring Your Ego

Often, we lack purpose because of the way we think about ourselves. This means that if you want to find satisfaction, fulfillment, and purpose, you need to be willing to engage in ego work.

Ego work isn’t necessarily about having a big ego – it’s about reflecting on who you are and your place in the world.

Firstly, consider that many of us have a huge number of false beliefs about ourselves. Some of these come from negative figures in our past, others come from painful experiences, and yet more come from societal messages about success, value, and beauty.

To learn more about your purpose and what makes you happy, you need to silence those old voices. And to silence then, you need to give them airtime – albeit briefly.

An exercise that can help here is to write down negative beliefs you have about what you can achieve and consciously form replies to them.

For example, a belief like “I should just be happy with my lot” can stop you from pursuing growth or ambition. A replacement belief that’s healthier and more growth-promoting might be “I can be grateful in my life while striving to be even better.”

Secondly, keeping a daily journal can help you live a more purposeful life and facilitate ego work at the same time.

Each day, try writing down what you want to achieve tomorrow, and reflect on how the past day made you feel. When did you feel most alive and most engaged? These are clues to your true purpose.

Visualize The True Purpose You Want

Creative visualization is a cornerstone of the Law of Attraction work, and for good reason. It helps you build a vivid image of what you want to create in the world, making it real. You can tailor this technique to the aim of finding purpose in life, accessing your subconscious, and visualizing the best version of yourself.

Start by spending a few minutes engaged in deep breathing, inhaling through your nose, and exhaling through your mouth. Then, close your eyes and ask yourself “Who do I want to be?”.

Let the image develop slowly. Where would you be? What would you be doing? How would you be feeling, and who would you be around? You might be surprised by some of the details that emerge.

When you’re in a meditative state, your defense mechanisms are down and you may realize long-suppressed dreams and desires.

You can perform this exercise multiple times, focusing on different areas of your life. Once you reach a stage where you feel like you’re starting to know your true purpose, you can continue to use visualization to support this goal.

Every few days, simply take 10-15 minutes to inhabit your inner vision of what you’re working toward.

Question Yourself And Your Choices In Life

Finally, no matter how you’re living your life, make a habit of actively examining how you’re feeling about it. When we’re busy, it’s easy to just keep pushing through our days without really stopping to think about whether we are happy and fulfilled.

Ask yourself: is this truly what I want in life? If I could change one thing, what would it be? Entertaining these questions on a weekly or monthly basis ensures that you never stagnate, and never return to that old place of lacking purpose.

Remember that questioning yourself and your choices don’t have to mean criticizing yourself or taking a negative view of your worth.

Instead, it can be about nurturing and caring for yourself – a practice similar to asking a friend “Are you sure this is what you want?”. Allow yourself to get things wrong sometimes, to be imperfect.

And when you feel life is less than ideal or regrets a choice, try to draw a lesson from it. What can you do differently going forward in order to be happier? What is one step you can take today in order to move away from an outdated choice or habit?

Find Your Life Purpose With The Law Of Attraction

You’re now armed with several techniques that can help you find purpose and stay focused on the things that bring you joy and fulfillment.

However, if you want to learn even more about your true purpose and grow into the very best version of yourself, the Law of Attraction can give you the resources to do so.

By offering you techniques similar to the visualization exercise above, the Law of Attraction teachings can show you how to better understand your desires and turn them into your reality.

Meanwhile, if you’re still struggling to find a sense of purpose, simply developing a more positive mindset can go a long way toward helping you see who you want to be.

Law of Attraction teachings focuses on connecting you with gratitude, abundance, and growth. All of these things help to open your mind to your full potential, giving you the tools to create a life of joy and purpose.

The post Living With Purpose To Find A True Balance In Life appeared first on The Law Of Attraction.

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