Do you struggle with finding focus in confusion? Is it sometimes hard maintaining the energy for your goals, dreams and aspirations? Many factors can impede our “burning desire.” Commitment, faith and follow-through to our bigger dreams and purpose are essential. They help stoke the “fire of desire” back to life when disappointments or setbacks take their toll.
One key ingredient that has surfaced from my own experience and studies in mindfulness and neuroscience is the necessity of compassion. Without a compassionate mindset we can unconsciously berate ourselves and others for “what could have been.” Instead of building up our “fire of desire” to feed the vision of our higher mind, we can spiral into negativity, self-doubt and confusion. Decisions can become messy, difficult and anxiety-ridden.
To use confusion as a focus for clarity:
1. Begin with a Clean Slate
What would happen if in this moment…
You reflected and forgave yourself for the ways you’ve sabotaged any dreams, goals or intentions?
What would happen if in this moment…
You TRULY forgave yourself and dropped the constant mind chatter of the critical voice? How different could this moment be? How different would your life be over time?
What would happen if in this moment…
You let your resentments go and instead channeled that “victim” energy into creative insight?
2. Keep the Slate Clean
Call on the power of the ABCs of Intuition to continue dropping those super strong unconscious patterns and habits that need to go: Awareness of Behavior = Change. It will take time! However it’s worth the investment. And it’s very exciting. Using mindfulness to drop thought and focus on the breath is the precursor to emotional intelligence; we get good at dropping intense emotion and coming back to our centre, just by focusing our attention on the breath. The key is the willingness to be in the discomfort of change! Establish a practice of immediately redirecting negative and limiting thoughts to a “mindful minute” of tenacious peace, followed by a decisive visualization of how you are CHOOSING to respond to life.
3. Practice Mindfulness and Meditation
Research has found that mindfulness leads to calm and clarity. Mark Robert Waldman, neuroscience researcher and author discovered that “When you intensely and consistently focus on your spiritual values and goals, you increase the blood flow to your frontal lobes and anterior cingulate, which causes the activity in emotional centres of the brain to decrease. Conscious intention is the key, and the more you focus on your inner values, the more you can take charge of your life. Thus, meditation – be it religious or secular – enables you to more easily accomplish your goals.”
4. Use Beginner’s Mind to Course-Correct with Compassion
Achieving our goals or creating new systems and sticking to them costs us something; effort – the effort to overcome resistance, to stay in alignment with what’s most important by practicing resolve. We must remember that hesitation magnifies fear while prompt, decisive action crushes it. We must resolve to manage both our memory and our imagination – mismanagement of either creates inferiority, worry and mental monsters that create and keep confusion. Ironically, our willingness to be beginners, to NOT be very good at first, provides acceptance. In that space of course correction, we fan the spark of inspiration within to feed the fire of desire to step up even in the midst of setback and disappointment. Course correction is the art of compassion in action – it’s transformation at its finest. It’s finding focus in the confusion, finding the energy when we feel we don’t have it, starting where and are, and not stopping.
From Clarity to Confusion: for more information contact Cheryl at TheIntuitiveLife.com to learn more or to book me for a private intuitive consultation, coaching program, lecture for your organization or staff training.
