Have you ever had something happen only to say to yourself, “I knew this would happen”? When you set yourself up to expect a certain outcome you become more sensitive and aligned with that outcome. Whether we are looking for a reason to be offended, angry, happy or sad, given enough time – we will find one. There are steps that you can take if you want to change the way you feel about the circumstances in your life.
What we focus on has a way of showing up in our lives. Have you ever noticed that when you learn a new word all of a sudden you start hearing it more often? It is not that it is being used more, it is that you have become sensitized to hearing this word. Every day we are exposed to billions of possible stimuli but manage to only respond to a fraction of what we are faced with. This is thanks to the Reticular Activating System (RAS) in our brain. The Reticular Activating System is like a google search engine; it filters out unnecessary information and presents only the information that we were looking for. Whether we realize it or not, our brain is constantly shaping the way we perceive our reality by filtering in what it is programmed to “look for” and not sensitized to.
Those things that we focus on will have a huge impact on the way that we feel, both emotionally and physically. When we focus on the negative, what is missing or why we are unhappy, we program our brain to find more of what we are focused on. The way that we feel emotionally will have a physical impact on us as well. When we are feeling angry, we may notice the tension building in between the shoulders. When we are depressed, our posture may be drooped and slumped over. The physical way that you hold tension and restriction in parts of your body relate to the type of emotion that you are tuned into.
Interestingly, the reverse is also true. The way that you hold yourself also predisposes us to feel or not to feel certain emotions. It’s really hard to be depressed while standing tall with your chest puffed out. When tension is released it frees the body from a pattern that was holding you in a particular emotional focus. At BodyMind Wellness Studio we focus on clearing the nervous system so the brain and body can communicate and function optimally.
If we want to change the way we perceive our reality we can do two things. We can redirect our focus and we can use our body to support and predispose us to the things we wish to see more of. We can choose to focus on the things that we already have and appreciate them. Regardless of where we are, or what we may be doing, there is always something in our life worthy of our gratitude and appreciation. When you find the good in a less than ideal circumstance, it allows you to gain a new appreciation for your life. Appreciating life exactly as it is brings us into the energy of gratitude, allowing us to see and feel the blessings in our lives. We can start to train our brain to filter and find more things to be appreciative of. Every time you appreciate something and you feel good about it, you begin to open yourself to receive more of the things that you are grateful for.
Practicing gratitude in even the most troublesome of situations can open you to the energy to find your way to a better feeling. When you are in a state of gratitude your resistance to all that would make you feel good melts away. Even when the external conditions are less than ideal, you can put yourself in the position to find your way to a better feeling by appreciating what is working in your life.
“Stop LOOKING for what’s missing and start SEEING what is already here.” – Dr. Julie Doobay
Copyright 2020 Dr. Julie Doobay
