Archive for March, 2010

Words DO Matter

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Everything we do, say, feel or think with intent matters! We may own a  great many things, but the only thing we truly own in life is our word. Somehow this concept seems hard to understand for some, even though there is evidence all around us proving this point over and over. Ever heard the saying “misery loves company?” In German the saying “Gleich und gleich gesellt sich gern,” translates into “alike flocks to each other.” Sometimes it can definitely be beneficial to attract your equal. However, this concept tends to do the opposite in most cases. Hence, a martyr will attract people who are also martyrs, or feed into their stories of victimization and fear. An addict will hang out with those who support the addiction, fanatics will hang out with other “like-minded individuals,” and so on. Most of us will not go out of our way to hang out with those who are vastly different, because most of us are not comfortable with situations and people that are foreign  to what we are used to.

Now, coming back to how our words matter. If I am an upbeat, light-hearted person, if I am dedicated to treating people with love, compassion and kindness, chances are I will attract predominantly others who do the same. This is why our words are so important. I, for example, have decided to no longer allow situations or individuals in my life who do not serve my higher self. It does not mean that I am vicious, mean or angrily discard whoever doesn’t agree with me!  There is a huge difference in that. An example would be a friend I have on FB who is not only cynical, but a die-hard atheist. He is, however, not a negative or mean person; he’s not a downer. Hence, I welcome his words, because when he disagrees he does so in a intelligent and coherent manner. People with different ideas challenge me and provide room for growth, which I welcome, as  long as they are intelligent and kind. Attacking another, lashing out, being passive aggressive, mean, belittling or using bad language to bring your point across is not ever acceptable!

No, what I am talking about is intent, namely our core values, character if you will. Being dishonest, disloyal, mean, two-faced, insulting, constantly depressed, passive aggressive or “broken” in any other way that actually affects others, affords me the right to quietly! walk away. I have no attachment to changing you, or “make you see the light.” I do, however, have an attachment to only sharing time and space with individuals who support my mental, emotional and spiritual growth. So how we conduct ourselves matters big time, across ALL MEDIUMS!

People who know me will attest to the fact that I am always the “same.” I do not speak, write or act differently on the job, as I do at home. I do not have an “online” persona, I never created a false profile, I never posted pictures that were 10 years old, depicting me when I was younger and thinner, to make myself look better. I am who I am across the  board. I am well aware that the words I put out there have an effect on people. I am aware that they create an image of me and I have learned to be careful with my spoken word, because I don’t randomly want to throw up whatever is in my head. These days I am making it a point to think before I speak and to realize that writing negative, angry or accusatory words will only create the same in return. I am aware that no one is ever going to be inspired by rants that point fingers and make people feel bad about themselves. I am also no longer so attached to who is reading my words. I no longer want to “change” people and I realize that some people will not hear me no matter what choice of words I use and no matter what my intent is. The only control I do have is control over myself!

The only way for me to overcome my debilitating weaknesses is by hanging out with those who don’t  bring them out consistently and who don’t drag me back to a place I am trying to leave behind. I am careful with what I write and how I word it. I do feel a great sense of happiness, calm and peace these days and I have to make sure that I am not feeding the beast from the past. I choose to not be a bitter, judgmental and sad person. The difference between now and then is I CHOOSE CONSCIOUSLY.

So for those who claim that their words have no power, think again! Your words have more power than you might realize. Having to choose words more carefully also means thinking more carefully about the state of mind and emotion we are in. Choosing different words means choosing different emotions and a different mindset. And our mind, emotions and words do create our reality and do attract whatever it is we put out there. So before I send my word out to the universe, I make sure my words come from the right intent, and what is the right intent? That would be the one which serves my highest purpose! 

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Balance

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Approx. 12 years ago I started to embark on a journey of self-discovery and attempting to find my purpose in life. On this path I studied many different philosophies, a few different religions, scientific discoveries and anything else that served me in my insatiable hunger for wisdom and knowledge.

When I studied Kabbalah for a while, I kept hearing how the Tree of Life is all about balance between the elements, or translated into life, the mind, body, spirit, will and heart. This concept made perfect sense, but I saw no way of ever putting it into action. After all, I had always been an extremist, either stuck way in my head, over-thinking everything to death, or on a spiritual journey, isolating myself from other people because I rather wanted to astral travel. My heart was either in a state of euphoria, or totally shattered and broken, my will was not all that apparent to me and my body I had never taken care of at all. I rather saw the body as a useless vessel I didn’t want to have a whole lot to do with.

Of course, over the years my extreme sides would shift and I’d stop with my spiritual journey altogether, leaning towards not believing in anything at all, despite the evidence I had for certain things. I had always been an all or nothing kind of woman. I either told you EVERY single thought that would pop into my mind without a filter, or I’d completely shut down and not say anything at all. I’d either loved you to death, or hated your guts. I would either be completely loving and giving, or absolutely angry and bitter. And the more I practiced the “bad” sides, the easier they became.

I still don’t know what exactly launched this great transformation I started about a year and a half ago.  It sure as hell couldn’t have been Andrew, because I hadn’t even met him yet. All I know is that something “clicked.” It was this great “aha!” moment where suddenly I got what kept me back, what made me miserable and where I stopped blaming others for it anymore. I suddenly understood how imbalanced I had been, but most importantly, I knew how to fix it!

I decided that I needed to give this a try, because my extreme states had not produced a whole lot of happiness or peace of mind. I did an inventory on a piece of paper and concluded the following:

  • Relationship/Emotion = 0/all over the place
    I had severe trust issues, wanted to fix broken people and hence, kept attracting them. My self-confidence was shattered and reduced to a pile of rubbish, not to mention severe doubts in myself and thinking I am not good enough for anyone.
  • Wisdom and Knowledge = who knows
    I had stopped my journey approx. 4 years prior, namely when my life took a turn for the worse. I couldn’t even concentrate on most decent books anymore. World of Warcraft worked just fine as a numbing method
  • Spirituality = gone/broken
    I had gotten bitter and disillusioned after a bunch of bad events in my own life and the life of a couple  close friends had occurred. I started to get more and more cynical and less enlightened. Come to think of it, I turned into the people I despised the most
  • Body = what body?
    I smoked, I ate whatever the hell I wanted and hadn’t seen a gym in about 10 years. I used to do kick-boxing and Hapkido and now had a story in my head how I didn’t want to be judged by the beautiful people and jocks. That I did the judging didn’t really occur to me at all!

Within the past 16 months I have cleaned up my life. I stopped my stories and excuses and I simply did the work. I stopped talking and simply did. My trainer recently told me that I am a machine now. This is absolutely right in the sense that I just do. I no longer dissect it all to death, so I can start talking myself out of it, i.e. make an excuse. Sometimes it almost scares me how easy I can now go into the mode of “just do it” and overwrite what has held me back for the past 10 years!

Now, I work out all the time. I hate cardio but that doesn’t stop me from doing it. I generally do not eat junk or fast food anymore and make it a point to avoid certain items altogether.

I am trusting. My heart is healing nicely, the scars start to fade and this is due to altering my behavior. I now focus on the things I have control over, which renders certain arguments useless. I don’t really focus all that much on how I can “improve” my husband, because I am really focused on improving myself. I am no longer a control freak, because I realize that I only have the power to change my own ways. I feel love and compassion most of the time these days, not to mention an almost endless amount of energy.

I am exercising my mind by reading, keeping myself informed, asking questions and broadening my horizons again. I surround myself with people who have answers, or good questions. I am searching again for wisdom and truth.

My spirit is soaring these days. I meditate again. I read tarot again, I am studying to become a Reiki master, I am predominantly surrounded by others who also have dedicated their lives to make the world a better place. I have eliminated people, situations and places that no longer serve me and keep me from becoming my higher self.

I learned that the only way for me to be the best I can be is having balance. A great mind is not all that great when the spirit, heart and body are broken. A stronger and healthier body creates a stronger and healthier mind. The endorphins released when working out create an almost euphoric state, which contributes to a healthier heart and happy feelings.

I realized that in order to heal others, I’d first have to heal myself. I am learning balance by no longer looking back to the past and no longer pointing fingers at others. The only finger pointing I do these days is at myself. I let go of my attachment to “fix” another and I no longer care so much what others think. I speak my truth, not to “convert” anyone else, but to answer the questions people ask me.

I remember many years ago someone told me that I would make a great teacher. I answered “I don’t want to teach the sleepers. I want to teach the ones who are at least half awake.” These days I attract a different crowd altogether. I think I am ready to teach now, because I am no longer willing to lecture.

I am no longer a victim. I am no longer someone “bad things happen to,” but I am instead an empowered individual, someone who feels loved and worthy of love, someone who can give more freely now, because she no longer pours her energy and love into buckets without a bottom.

I still wander off the right path at times and “default” into wanting to tell someone off, but then I just wonder if it is worth it and what it would alter. I am not perfect or exactly where I want to be. Who knows? Maybe I will never get there, but at least I am on the right path now, I am on the path of balance.

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Building Your Intuition

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

EVERY human being has intuitive gifts. Unfortunately, 98% of the population chooses not to use them. Let me be clear, the best intuition is going to be absolutely useless if it is constantly overwritten by your thoughts, if you don’t hone it, or if you flat out ignore it! Who you are and how you appear to others is a direct result of not just your spoken word, but also your actions. Claiming to be intuitive while ignoring your gut feelings and dissecting everything to death, is the equivalent to a morbidly obese person telling you they are athletic or fit.

We all have it! “It” being the nagging feeling that we are in danger or that something is wrong. We can sense when we are being lied to, cheated on, or disliked, just as we can tell when someone clearly likes us, loves us, admires us or is honest with us. Listening to this inner  voice, however, is a different ball game! I therefore challenge  you to think about the last time someone pulled the wool over your eyes, especially when someone cheated on you. And now tell me that you didn’t sense it/see it coming/knew it. If you start asking around, you’ll find that almost everyone you’ll talk to will tell you something like “I knew she/he was being dishonest,” or “I knew that something was up, I just couldn’t prove it.”

I learned to listen to these hunches, because I found that my gut is never wrong. It is my mind and emotions that are wrong, a lot! By trying to give someone the benefit of the doubt, by talking myself into the story of not having any proof,  by arguing that there is no way I could have possibly seen this coming, etc. I effectively talked myself out of avoiding some very bad situations and bad relationships in the past. I knew in past relationships that he was not the one, but that wouldn’t stop me from convincing myself of the opposite. Thankfully these relationships ended before I married them! So, if you are interested in truly honing your intuition, here are three skills that will help you do so:

  1. Meditation or reflection. Find a quiet place, sit and listen to your “inside.” Acknowledge when mundane thoughts comes in, such as “I have to do the laundry” and let these thoughts go. Focus on your breathing and pay attention to what comes up for you.
  2. Focus and be specific. For example, think of a new person you may have met. This could be a person you met at work, at the gym, in a bar or anywhere else for that matter. Focus on your very first impression of this person. What did you “sense?” What thoughts, images or feelings came up?
  3. Practice. Write down, if you can, any first impressions you get of people, situations or before you have to make a decision. For example, if you meet a person who seems “shady” write that down and also note why you sense that. Check back with this “journal” a few weeks later and check on how accurate you were.

To start strengthening one’s intuition, one has to get in touch with oneself first and be aware of how one feels or what one senses. I, personally, have a hard time explaining why I sense what I sense about people at times. There have been numerous situations where people would tell me how great someone is and I would meet them and think “this is a time bomb ready to go off,” or “wow, he/she has everyone fooled but I am sensing that this person is …” <—insert here.

I find that the five senses are the easiest to fool. It is this “sixth sense” that tends to be dead on and extremely accurate! If you are interested in studies that have been done on this, I can recommend the following book “Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell. It is proven that human beings can recognize danger before they are actually acknowledging in their conscious mind that they are in danger! By listening to your inner voice, you can start avoiding the painful, dangerous or negative people and situations you DO have control over. Trust me, life becomes much easier and happier this way.

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Why Visualizing Works

Friday, March 5th, 2010

People have often asked me how one meditates. People ask, how do you quiet your own mind, when you barely find the ability to focus on a book you want to read? Hence, for all those who quiver when being presented with the idea of meditation, I want to call it something different, I am going to call it “visualization;” and I say everyone can do it, unless you are void of all imagination and don’t know how to daydream.

Why is it so important to do this? Because if one visualizes specific things over and over, they become imprinted in one’s subconscious mind, and THIS is what creates  your reality. There are plenty of people who try to argue this and swear that their reality is created by conscious choices. Which is predominantly true for “healthy” people.

Let me demonstrate this. Most people have encountered at least one drama queen in their life. What I mean by that is a person who has one bad thing happen after another. A person who gets into car accidents, loses jobs, has abusive relationships, no or shitty friends, is lonely, maybe was diagnosed with cancer, gets evicted, loses their home, etc.. I think you get the picture. A lot of these things can happen to “normal” people, but what makes the “crazy makers” (how my therapist used to call them)  stand out is that it never ends. It is one bad thing after another and it is never their fault. They are a constant victim of life and circumstances and while they often do have small glimpses of “truth” their story remains “It isn’t my fault and I did nothing to bring this on.” I am sure you know what I am talking about here.

To a degree one could argue that it isn’t their fault, would there not be such a thing as actively creating one’s reality. Excuse the words I am using now, but victims and martyrs have no free will at all. They are slaves to their stories of victimization and know how to suffer so much better that they actually create these bad situations, subconsciously! There is no free will, because they are conditioned to expect the worse, to “never win” and to “always get beaten.” They are not only more than three times more likely to get into accidents, but also more than five times more likely to get terminally ill. They are actively poisoning their mind, body and spirit and as many can attest, their surroundings.

Many of us had bad things happen to us. We are all survivors of one thing or another, but what differentiates us and defines us in character and spirit, is how we are dealing with the bad things and how we are treating those around us as we are hurting. Lashing out, abusing and bad-mouthing others are definitely not the strong suits of great spirit and character. Justifying one’s bad behaviors and insisting on not being at fault, having no accountability and pointing fingers is another indicator of the persons I have described above. If you now add on how no one ever does or gives enough to them, you’ll have the full picture. Like a virus, they are sucking up your energy and emotions and still remain a bucket with a huge hole on the bottom.

We do have free will and we can visualize what it is we want for ourselves. We can visualize the life we want to have, the jobs, relationships and friendships we would like to attract and we can actively work towards it by making conscious choices that support these images.

When we drop our attachment to being a victim and take true responsibility for our own well-being and state of mind, we create a world that is fairly free of suffering and predominantly filled with joy and happiness. The more we become our “higher” self, the better the quality of our lives become.

It took me a very long time to really grasp the concepts of this. When I hit rock bottom emotionally, I felt I had nothing else to lose and gave it a try. Every time I was feeling angry and bitter, I told myself out loud “STOP!” Every time I envisioned horrible things, I stopped it and if I had no tools to envision happy things, I watched a movie that made me happy, or listened to a song that makes me feel better, etc. Every time my mind would follow the hard-wired neuro-pathways in my brain to suspicion, obsession, fear and paranoia, I’d stop in mid track and either talk about it to someone I trusted, saying things like “I need your help right now,” or working out. Every time I wanted to spew negativity on my blog, I walked away and didn’t write at all. Hence, the large gaps between blogs at times.
I would find activities, words and actions that would deter the bad and negative energy, and create positive and healing energy instead. One could call it spiritual alchemy.

What started happening was remarkable! Not only were people who no longer served my path taken out, but I started attracting whatever I wanted, LITERALLY! For example, after Yahoo laid me off, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what I wanted to do. I bounced from one idea to the next and attracted NO JOB! Finally, one day my husband asked me, “well, if you could do anything what would you want to do?” I said “I really want to do fraud prevention for gaming. I want to catch bad guys for gaming, because I love to game and I think it would be fun.” Within less than a month I received an offer as fraud consultant for one of the largest gaming companies in the world.

While I was working for them though, I realized that I actually didn’t like working for gaming. I felt that working in the gaming world was really not so different than working in the entertainment industry, which was one I always vowed I’d never work for. My contract was actually not running out until March 31, which didn’t stop me from quitting in February!
I delivered and fulfilled my contract. At the same time though, I started networking again. I was networking with so many different people that job interviews started literally pouring in. At one point I was interviewing with three companies at the same time, one of them being one of the largest corporations in the world and dangling the ultimate carrot in front of my nose.

So here were the choices: A giant who was never really rejected from anyone, a smaller company who helped people find their life partners and finally, the third one, another smaller company who actually has a mission statement that reads that they are dedicated to being a positive force in people’s life. What do they do? They provide psychic readings and astrological charts.

As soon as the job for the Psychic site was posted on LinkedIn, I received an email from one of my ex Yahoo employees. She felt that this would be perfect and after reading the job description, I had to agree. We all know that I love doing fraud prevention, but doing it for something I have incorporated in my personal life for more than ten years seemed to be a dream come true. Anyone who knows me is aware that I always “wanted to change the world.” And hello, my blog is the Psychic Donut for a reason! If you know me well, you know why it is called that!

So, before I received a job offer from any of the companies, I felt it was the right thing to do to quit. I had no other job lined up, my husband had just returned from his project, but that didn’t stop me. I had never felt stronger in my gut that I had found my purpose and it was NOT working for the giant, making a gazillion dollars and having a whole boat load of prestige attached. My calling was out there and I didn’t quite know what that would be, but I did know that I was close to finding it.

My last day with the gaming company was Friday, February 19. I had marched into my bosses office three weeks prior and told him that it was time for me to move on. At that point, the Psychics weren’t even in the picture yet. I felt in my gut that I was about to get my chance, and the feeling was so overwhelmingly strong that I walked out without having a back up.

I visualized. I decided that I wanted to align all my efforts and energy from now on with strengthening my higher self. I had signed up for Reiki I about a month earlier (and taking my intro class on Sunday), I signed up to work with Stand Up for Kids again, an organization who helps homeless children to get off the streets and asked to be their director of volunteers.  I had decided that I wanted to fight fraudsters, but in an environment where it would aid other people. I had painted my picture of the life I wanted from following point, approx. 15 months ago:

1. Laid off by the company I had been with for almost 8 years
2. Dumped by the guy I was with for almost 2 years
3. Feeling utterly useless and worthless, thinking that no one in the world wants me, sees me or understands me

I got tired of my own BS and martyr story in February of 2009. I visualized a life in which I was married to my soul-mate, the man who’d love me more than anything else in the whole world and thought me all the things others did not.

I visualized working in a company that made a difference, fighting crime and having fun, whilst living in my own home.

I visualized myself getting in shape, working out, losing weight and becoming healthy. I gained a bunch of healthy muscle mass, lost 15 lbs and five inches on my waist alone. And what did my trainer teach me “I CAN’T IS NOT IN OUR VOCABULARY!”

In other words, I visualized that turning 40 would be the beginning of the life I always wanted and the death of the life I had lived, which was a lie.

I believed it so strongly that I created EXACTLY that. Top that ye of little faith, doubting Thomases and nay-saying pessimists. I have found my bliss, and I created it out of a pile of rubbish, and so can everyone else out there!

The only person that is stopping you, is you!

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