The Will to Renew

Rise above negative thinking regardless of attitudes floating around. Surge idealistic and positive beyond beliefs and strongly held ideas to evolve into renewed ways of thinking. 

The creative choice is yours.

Here are ideas to jump start your will to renew:

1. Write about what you've learned at this stage of your life. See how far you can go with this for fifteen minutes.

2.  When you catch yourself thinking about what's broken, the government, ill health and adversity, consider what you want to happen and how you can make it happen on your scale. Keep writing.

3. Live in the moment. Don't dwell on negativity. Write beyond it.

4. Write about what you truly need to be content. Delve into why you think,“I'll be happy when I have this or that,” or “when I live over there,” or “when this happens.” 

5. Write your successes. Examine mistakes and if you have failed to meet objectives. You have choices. Examine your priorities. 

Additional Points to Ponder:

6.  Choose wisely what you read, listen to and the people with whom you associate. Avoid letting negative individuals populate your world.  You cannot change them.  Move on.

7.  Learn to listen with both ears. Evaluate before disrespecting another's opinion.

8.  Examine how you take responsibility for yourself with healthy choices of diet, exercise and mind push ups. Nurture a spiritual force that supports your efforts.

9.   Take pride in the natural world and explore it daily with all your senses. 

10. Work on the power of You.

Do You Know the Worry Bug?

All human beings contend with bouts of frustration and negativity. Even those of us with a positive outlook on life, get taunted by the worry bug. Daily we experience about 50,000 thoughts, images and ideas. They slip into our awareness in positive or negative ways. The negative teasers turn into worry bugs that capture our awareness too easily.

Our amygdala and limbic systems focus on threats to protect our survival. During prehistoric times, when stalked by a predator, the systems kicked in. We picked up that danger signal. 

Today our threats involve cognitive thinking: the job, the finances, or what's going on with family and friends. Our heart rates increase just thinking.  When you say, “The older I get, the more I worry,” it’s because of all the practice.

Why do we practice worrying? Psychologists indicate that worry gains its hold on us by ritualized reassurance. All negative scenarios that can possibly occur, race through the mind. We search for ways to survive them, to calm ourselves down. Situations we worry about 94 percent of the time never happen. What results is usually something never worried about. 

Next time the worry bug bites, try new approaches.

Take a break from dancing or jousting with the worry bug. Rather than change the way you think, change your relationship to your thoughts. 

Learn to watch your thoughts, rather than engage with them.

When a negative thought distracts, stop the runaway train. Notice sights, sounds, scents, a taste of air. Engage with a feeling.

Notice what’s going on in the moment. Find words of admiration to discover the rightness of things. 

Create your own metaphor for struggle.  Consider your greatest accomplishment and how you achieved it. Bring in all the senses to recall it in detail.

Avoid always thinking in fix-it mode.

Sing La La La and launch into a favorite melody.

Keep a journal for positive ideas and gratitude comments and write in it just before bed.

Use humor to design a defense against your bug.

Take a look at a video about Wince and the Worry Bug. You'll learn how not to feed him.  
http://www.worrywoos.com/wince.html

Turn worry into Wonder!

Into the Silence

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom - Francis Bacon

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep - Edward Hoagland

Leaf blowers, trucks with back up beeps, screeching tires, honking horns accost us daily. How can we find ways to participate in silence to nurture the brain?

During a 2013 study, Imke Kirste, a biologist at Duke University, studied the effects of noise on mice. She discovered the absence of sound prompted a higher level of sensitivity and alertness in the test group. Kirste is pursing potential applications for the therapeutic use of silence. 

Findings published in the journal, Brain, Structure, and Function, found that rats experiencing two hours of silence daily developed new cells in the hippocampus, a key brain region associated with learning, memory and emotion. 

Rachel and Stephen Kaplan explained their ideas of "developed attention restoration" theory. They found the brain can restore its resources when individuals spend time in environments with low levels of sensory input. 

This includes the stillness found when walking alone in nature and during times of silence. The brain can let down its sensory guard.

They published their findings in the 1980 book, The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. 

While noise can cause stress and tension, silence releases tension in the brain and the body. 

In 2011, the Finish tourism board ran a campaign promoting the “silence” received by visiting their scenic country. Along with photos of awe-inspiring landscapes, they used the slogan “Silence, Please.”

Two minutes of silence can prove to be even more relaxing than listening to easy music.

The brain's default mode activates when individuals engage in what scientists refer to as “self-generated cognition,” such as daydreaming, meditating, fantasizing about the future, or just letting the mind wander.

When the brain finds release from external stimuli, we can tap into our inner flow of thoughts, emotions, memories, and ideas. Engaging this default network helps us to discover the meaning of our experiences. We find our creativity and empathize with others as we reflect on our mental and emotional states. 

Chaim Potok felt silence could be the ultimate time to learn. He said, “I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.”

Find ways to break away from the noise and distractions that stagnate in the mind. 

Take a stroll into the silence.