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Practicing Generosity

8/26/2019

What do you think of when you think of acts of generosity? Things that cross my mind include the generosity of sharing time, money, love, attention, presence, resources, knowledge, gifts, and possessions.

Dr. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and founder and chair of the Center for Healthy Minds, shares that research demonstrates that well-being (which he partly defines as happiness) is a skill that can be learned. He details four constituents of well-being that have been extensively investigated neuroscientifically. One of these is generosity. Acts of generosity activates circuits in the brain that promote well-being.

Dr. Davidson believes that having a meditation/mindfulness practice is an act of generosity. Why is this? What is the connection between generosity and meditation/mindfulness?

People often perceive that meditation/mindfulness is something that you do just for yourself. While it is definitely something that benefits the individual, mindfulness also benefits the community and the whole world. Research has shown that meditation/mindfulness has a spillover effect. By meditating I am able to not only having a positive effect on my own physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being, but also on the overall well-being of my community. In this way, my meditation/mindfulness practice is an act of generosity to my community.

Meditation/mindfulness helps me to be less reactive, to stay centered, to be calmer, act wiser with intention and this doesn’t just help me, but it helps everyone I come into contact with. When we work on creating inner peace through meditation, we are giving a gift out to the world...change your mind, change the world. It sends out high vibrational energy into the community and world. This is an act of generosity.

Meditation/mindfulness helps me to practice being present, living in the present moment, giving my attention and focus to this moment. Being able to give your presence to another person is one of the greatest, most generous, gifts you can give. Especially in a day and age where our attention is being pulled in many different directions by the constant pull of electronic devices.

The act of giving creates a spacious world. A world where your belief is that there is enough. A person who has more than enough to share. An abundance of time, money, love and attention to share with others versus the fear of scarcity. These are also things that I work on in my meditation practice.

Meditation helps to cultivate loving kindness, compassion and detachment from negative thoughts, beliefs, feelings.

We can be more generous with others when we are generous with ourselves first. Begin by being generous with yourself, so your cup overflows, that way you are better able to practice generosity with others.

Acts of generosity open our heart and bring joy to our mind. The feelings that arise while planning a generous act, persist during the act, and perpetuate long after the act itself, especially when we practice savoring it. Practicing generosity cultivates a positive mindset and an open, loving heart leading to more well-being and more happiness.

The practice of generosity is an intentional practice and a spiritual practice. Having a meditation/mindfulness practice cultivates generosity and is an act of generosity. It does my heart good to know that something that feels selfish is actually generous and selfless...selfishly selfless is awesome!

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Tips For Shifting If You're Negative Or Complain A Lot

8/19/2019

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At times we can all find ourselves feeling negative, complaining about life, things or people that are frustrating us. Some of us are just naturally more pessimistic, more negative and resort to complaining on a regular basis.

It can be easy to get sucked into negative thoughts and stories, complaining to ourselves or to anyone who'll listen. At these moments, it's useful to have some go to shifters, some practices that will help retrain your brain toward being more optimistic and recognizing the good things, the positive things happening in your life. Here are some tips for retraining your brain:

Be grateful: Each day identify 3 things you are grateful for and the include as much detail as you can as to why you are grateful. I love to do this before I fall asleep each night. Every time we practice gratitude, our brain is being re-wired to notice more things to be grateful for. When we practice gratitude, our body releases chemicals into our body that cause us to feel good.

In my opinion, gratitude is the most powerful tool to shift and to retrain the brain toward positivity.

Savor a good experience: Take a moment to pause and bring to mind a good experience that you've had. Replay all of the details surrounding the experience...what happened, who was there, what was said, how did you respond, what were you wearing, etc. Our brain doesn't really know if an event is really happening or if we are envisioning it happening. We get a download of feel good chemicals released into our body and our brain is being trained to see more goodness.

Catch yourself: Don’t wait for your friends or family to tell you you’re complaining, pay attention to your thoughts and words.
If you’re complaining, work to shift your energy toward finding solutions and/or lessons to be learned. It can be easy to get trapped into the cycle of complaining, especially in a group setting focused on a common "enemy" or "problem". Work to gear your thoughts and words to productive solutions versus unproductive complaining, blaming, judging, gossip, or negative stories that quickly spiral out of control.

Shift your mood: If you feel overwhelmed or challenged in some way, remove yourself from whatever you’re doing and work to shift your mood. This can be as easy as practicing gratitude or savoring a good experience. You can also practice a other mindfulness techniques like the S.T.O.P. technique. S...Stop, T...Take 3 deep breaths, O...Observe what you are thinking, what you are feeling and what's going on around you, P...Practice gratitude. Another one of my go to techniques is to put my hand over my heart and inhale to the count of 5 and exhale to the count of 5 for a series of at least 3 more more breaths.

Shifting a mood, a state of mind, and retraining our brain takes intentional practice. Having awareness is a key step. Being aware of your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, moods, stories, etc. and then intentionally and consciously engaging in practices to assist in moving to a different path. This takes effort and discipline, but the rewards are huge.

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Stop Yourself Before The "But"

8/13/2019

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Do you have dreams and passions that you are ignoring? Maybe you're convincing yourself that you can't possibly do it. Does that little voice in your head give you all kinds of "buts", all kinds of reasons for why you can't possibly do what you are dreaming of doing? Things like:

-but, I'm too old.
-but, I'm too young.
-but, I don't know enough.
-but, I'm not smart enough.
-but, It's already been done.
-but, I don't know the right people.
-but, there are people who do it better than me.
-but, I'm not talented enough.
-but, no one will listen to me.

In an interview by Marie Forleo with Amanda Lacount, a professional hip hop dancer, choreographer, model and body positive activist, Amanda suggests in striving for your dreams that you, "Never let yourself get to the 'but'...". Amanda was told at the age of 10 that she didn't have the right body type to be a dancer. She didn't listen to her critics. Instead she kept dancing and pursuing her dream until now, at the age of 18, she has scored several prestigious dance gigs.

Most times, it doesn't even take an outside critic to dissuade us from accomplishing our dreams, usually we take care of it ourselves with the critic inside our head. Our own fears, self-doubt and negative self-talk keep us paralyzed from living out our dreams. Flipping the switch and stopping ourselves from engaging in unproductive self-talk is important. Flip the switch to an affirmation like, "I am enough", "I am courageous", "I am brave", "I am strong", "I am confident", etc. will help to curb your fears.

Our belief system is also super important to whether or not we choose to go after our dreams, it either helps us to believe that our dream is possible, or it help us to believe that it's impossible. Our belief system is mostly derived from what we have experienced to be true based on the examples in our own life. If you've seen, heard, or read examples of people who have done something the same, or similar to what you are hoping to accomplish, then you will typically believe that it's possible for you to accomplish it as well. This is a huge hurdle in overcoming our fears and self-doubt.

So what can we do to help ourselves believe it to be possible? One key step is to surround yourself with as many examples as possible of others who have accomplished something similar. Read books, watch videos, talk to people, interview people, find out as much as you can about how they did what they did.

Next, write down your dream, or your goal, and then the next small step to making it happen. Don't get overwhelmed, just write down what the next small step would be in the direction of achieving the goal. There is so much power in writing it down and breaking it down into manageable steps. Small baby steps that will move you in the direction of achieving the dream. We more easily convince ourselves to take small baby steps. Once you obtain some movement, you get off square one, it'll be a little easier to keep taking the next small step and the next small step.

Don't wait until you've achieved what you think is the perfect amount of knowledge, or skill, or experience to begin going after your dream, if you do chances are that you'll never feel good enough or "perfect "enough. Experts did not start out being experts, they started out as beginners, as apprentices and they became experts. What if we just get started and learn more as we go, become experts along the way? What if we just started where we are and go from there? At a certain point, let good enough be your rule.

Steve Harvey said in an interview, "Surround yourself with dreamers. Surround yourself with like-minded people. Stop telling your dreams to small-minded people." Keep around you people who love and support you and your dreams. People who challenge you to be all that you can be and more. People who will encourage you even when you may fail. People who are also dreamers and who are aspiring to lead an extraordinary life. Live BIG, live interesting, live extraordinary, create magic. Why not? The world needs ordinary people leading extraordinary lives.

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Soul Searching

8/4/2019

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Amidst the mass shootings of this past week, I encourage each of us to do some deep soul searching. Stop and ask yourself, why is this happening? Let's challenge ourselves to go deep and consider all of the many issues that might be causing this situation, not just scratching the surface, but working our way down deeper to the root cause.

We need to dig deeper than just gun reform and mental health. These are definitely key issues that we need to address immediately in my opinion, but I believe the root cause is deeper. Until we get to the root cause we are just putting a bandaid on the wound.

I believe that the deeper cause, the root cause, is that we have let fear control us. We have bought into the perception that we need to fear instead of love and this is the deeper rooted issue. We've been conditioned to believe in scarcity and the survival of the fittest. These conditioned beliefs are based in fear and create a whole host of responses centered in fear, in protection, in separation, in us against them, etc.

Fear-based thinking is how our mind works when we’re in a state of fear. Fear-based thinking creates a state in our brain that narrows our focus, restricts learning, blocks compassion and creativity. This ultimately causes us to be more self-centered and judgmental. Fear-based thinking makes us vulnerable to manipulation and interferes with problem solving, leading us to form rigid, emotionally based opinions that neglect input and logic.

Fear-based thinking stops us from asking questions and questions are the key to understanding. When we are in a fear-based mode we don't listen or attempt to understand, to be curious by asking ourselves and others hard questions.

Psychologist and social worker, Bob Van Oosterhout, explains that, "Fear-Based Thinking develops and deepens when we receive repeated messages that stimulate fear. Since fear gets and keeps our attention, it’s a useful tool for the media and entertainment industries. Fear is also a highly effective political tactic. It is easy to manipulate voters when fear keeps us from taking time to understand issues, question assumptions, or look beyond talking points and spin. When we’re in the grip of Fear-Based Thinking we tend to look for a strong leader to keep us safe without questioning whether he or she has our best interests at heart. Fear-Based Thinking leads us to process information in Dead End Categories of either/or, right/wrong, and good/evil. We reject all immigrants, all liberals, all republicans, all people who are different or disagree with us. This creates dependable voting patterns but leads to a break-down of communication and cooperation."

Fear-based thinking leads to separation, to hate and ultimately to violence. It disconnects us from others and leads to isolation and exclusion. Fear is the opposite of love. Where there is lovelessness there will inevitably be chaos and suffering. Fear causes us to lead with our head versus with our heart. Our heart contains the wisdom. Our heart contains the empathy, compassion, kindness, love...and solutions.

I encourage each of us to challenge our thinking, to dig deep, to consider the question...Is what we are currently doing working? Let's open our minds to consider a different path.

Let's use this as a wake up call, a challenge to wake up and be more conscious. A call to stop skimming through life. A call to live with more awareness and intention. A call to set aside fear and lead with love.

Let's recognize our commonality, our connectedness and our interdependence. Let's recognize that when one suffers, we all suffer, and honor that we are all one. Let's choose to ramp up our muscles of empathy, compassion, love, kindness, generosity, service, forgiveness, gratitude and grace.

Don't allow yourself to get desensitized to the occurrence of these events, or to get overwhelmed to the point where we throw our hands up and say the problem is too big for me to impact, or let someone else do it. We each can do our part, no matter how small and inconsequential it may seem to help heal this wound.

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Practicing Generosity

Tips For Shifting If You're Negative Or Complain A Lot

Stop Yourself Before The "But"

Soul Searching

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