As human beings we are born freer than we become in adulthood. The essence of being human is calm, we are natural beings: as children, when we are happy we laugh, when we are sad we cry… we express ourselves. As we grow up we move with labels (taller, shorter, uglier, prettier, smarter, smarter, dumber, better, worse, etc.), something that children hear and, in this way, they form an image of themselves and the idea of “I am better than, I am worse than”.
When we are born we are labeled and we end up believing the character that others attribute to us. We are automatically reduced and we believe ourselves to be a very poor version of ourselves. We believe we are free but we are manipulated. We are so much more than any label, than any news, we have an unfathomable potential within us that it would be a shame to give up.
Being aware of all this, we can choose to continue living “asleep” or cultivate the freedom of being. Imagine a world in which we wake up and go to bed with the circadian rhythms of the sun and the moon, connected to nature, that we decide to practice meditation and/or yoga, incorporate them into our daily routine and, with it, introspection (from the inside out and not the other way around). Follow the day with healthy food, cultivating harmonizing values such as kindness, compassion and respect, both towards ourselves and towards others. A world where hugs prevail over aggressiveness, where our vulnerabilities (which we all have) could be exposed with absolute transparency so that the other, instead of criticizing you, could help. A world where the other also matters. This would project us into higher vibrational beings, more compassionate, wiser and, of course, happier because we would be connected to our true essence. Everything proposed could match our lifestyle. The limitation is within us, it is our responsibility and it is only up to us to make small changes that mean so much. Utopian? Not at all.
Within this way of approaching our new life paradigm is also accepting that pain is part of life. However, because we are disconnected from ourselves and don’t know ourselves, we don’t stop, always looking outward and asking others, “What would you do in my place?” When what is actually what is good for the other doesn’t have to be good for you. If we connect with our feeling we will soon realize that the answers to what happens in our lives are within. Our inner self is alive, it pulsates, it speaks to us but we do not look inside and so we miss the opportunity to attend to our needs, to listen to ourselves and take ourselves seriously.
We are continually choosing to be abducted by stimuli, which causes us to be with our mind in the form of a washing machine and, when not, spinning. Sometimes the choice is to accept that I cannot change what is happening outside and that we have to accept it, even if it hurts. The mere fact of accepting the pain activates automatic healing pathways. Without leaning on it, we will then have to look for healthy ways to transform it.
The answer to “why do we think negatively” is endless. It is a question that is also intrinsically linked to the social model, not always healthy, in which we live. To evolve socially we could ask ourselves: what can we do to love ourselves more, to feel at peace and at ease, what can we do to nurture and enhance our happiness? Because if we feel good inside, empowered and loving ourselves, then we will be truly prepared to love others well. To constructive questions, answers and constructive action plan.
What can we do for ourselves to enhance this state of inner well-being?
The first thing that is recommended in psychology is to stop. We cannot become aware of all this if we do not learn to listen to ourselves. The “automatic thoughts” do not stop in our mind, whether in wash or spin mode, and we do not take the trouble to question ourselves if what we are thinking is true or not. Thoughts have a direct impact on emotions and, if they are negative and we do not learn to manage them, it is a matter of time before we suffer from the “evil of the 21st century”: stress, anxiety, sadness… Furthermore, I would like to add that it has been scientifically proven that we spend 80% of our time thinking negatively. If we could open the brain of a person and break down the amount of things that have gone through his mind that day we would be surprised, difficult not to suffer disturbing emotions that nothing good will bring us.
How can we awaken this inner potential to learn to love and empower ourselves, so that pleasant emotions begin to flow?
By training our brain. We must first analyze what is happening, how each of us reads what is happening because depending on the reading we make we will feel one way or another. The exercise starts when you begin to connect with each moment in which you are not feeling well, and so we begin to find out what is happening, what internal circuits are being set in motion.
Once we become aware of this we can teach the brain to use other, more constructive, kind and compassionate models of relating to oneself. By taking yourself seriously and establishing this new model of relationship with yourself, new neurological circuits are set in motion that enhance well-being. In the same way that to develop muscle you have to train it, the same happens with emotions: when we learn the method to manage them, we could say that we develop emotional “muscle”. Our internal dialogue will become more equanimous and, with it, the emotions that follow. Once the person learns the method of empowerment and self-esteem, he/she will be able to experience that, without anything changing, from the situation that worried him/her externally, inside his/her emotions will be transformed until he/she feels peace. It is a matter of wanting to take loving responsibility for our inner self and thus awaken our inner treasures.