How the Mind Works

The mind is both my speciality and my curiosity. Nothing is more fascinating nor more powerful than the mind and how we use it to direct our lives and experiences. I continue to learn about it and share what I am learning in concepts and strategies that provide a more conscious and effective way of using the mind to make changes, improve performances, or heal our bodies. Currently, I am studying the newest research the effects of thought on cellular activity and especially the elasticity or capacity of the brain to change. More on that later. For now, I wanted to share my final Mind Tips newsletter message about how the mind works.

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After years of research, teaching and conversations, I have concluded there are three basics the mind always uses. Knowing how your mind works provides clues to why and how you are having your current experiences and how you can change your experiences in the future. Consider any challenge or problem you are facing, find what your mind is doing below and you will know how to use your mind to get a solution or resolution by either reversing what the mind is doing or using the same concept in a more effective way.

• A thought is a possibility with a repeated thought a probability, and a continuously felt and focused thought an inevitability. Thoughts matter. Think about what is wanted or not wanted and you will get.

• The mind cannot be controlled nor ignored. It is the center of operation for our feelings, behaviors, and choices. It can be taught, changed, and made a partner but only if you know what it is doing and what you want it to do.

• The mind relies on perception and the interpretations that follow to affirm or defend the mind’s reality and truth. Change the interpretations (beliefs, meanings, fears) and change automatically follows.

These are the three mind basics that are constant and consistent each day for each of us. How are they directing your experiences and how can you use them to expand or redirect those experiences?

Thank You From the Desert

I wanted to thank the many of you that have e-mailed me about the final issues of my four newsletters. All of you have been kind and appreciative of the messages and the efforts to share information for your personal solutions. I have been writing the newsletters for ten years which has helped me be a better writer and a more succinct thinker. For that I am grateful and so appreciative of the support of the thousands who have invited me to share with them. However, the newsletters have also required a lot of time to write, design, and deliver; time that I now need for new directions. The efficiency of this blog though will allow me to provide more information and strategies in less time and make it more timely. Plus, you will be able to comment, ask questions and provide feedback, which is a big bonus.

If you are new to my blog, welcome. If you are a trusted friend from my newsletters, also welcome and thank you. Please share the web address of the blog with your friends, colleagues and family members. I would appreciate it as together we can make the blog come alive while providing a unique and very personal resource. This was and is my intention.

Finally, I as I look out the window of my office/library, I am watching two hummingbirds spar for the territory of the hummingbird feeder which is placed less than three feet from the window. I love hummingbirds because they are so capable and their potential so awesome relative to their small bodies. For example, did you know they are the only bird that can fly backwards? They remind me that all of us have unlimited potential and relative to our physical capacity our potential is even more awesome and endless. If you are not experiencing your full potential maybe you have been flying backwards too much.:))

I will also be sharing my experiences in the desert and what this amazing and very much alive place on the planet continues to teach me. I hope to include pictures so you can join me there as well. So from the hot desert (109 today) I thank you and look forward to our connection in the future. Jane

Handling Distractions

Distractions are always the biggest threat to our success in situations, performances, and interactions. Distractions get in the way of what we are doing by taking us out of being present, blocking information, and keeping us from making appropriate responses. How we handle distractions determines what happens next and eventually how successful we can be in every experience.

The most disruptive distractions can be assigned to three categories: people, thoughts, or things. People become distractions when we focus on what they are doing or not doing rather than what we are doing. Our thoughts become distractions when we look for meanings, hold expectations, or are fearful. Distracting things include objects in a meeting room, crowds at an athletic competition, or a room that is too hot or cold.

To handle distractions quickly and effectively gently redirect focus to what is in front of you and can be done right now. Fighting with or trying to ignore distractions only guarantees the mind’s focus on them. Since the mind follows focus, redirecting focus automatically changes focus. For example, if your thoughts are on what you fear, you need only redirect focus to what you desire. When an object captures your focus, shift your view to the task before you and how you can do the task, which eliminates the distracting object from your focus.

By redirecting focus you handle distractions by instantaneously changing focus to what is informational and useful in an experience. When that new focus is on the people, thoughts, and things that lead to success, you are well on your way to effectively doing what you intended and making appropriate responses that will lead to success.

Air It Out - Use Your Breathing

Many people read books or attend seminars to learn how to manage their stress and reduce the negative stress responses. I use a simple technique with athletes that can be useful to anyone to get started in reducing anxiety and refocusing for an effective response. I use this technique daily and a starting place and always found it useful. Try it out and see how it works for you.

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No matter how frustrated, confused, or angry you are, you can change your mental state by airing it out! The more you focus on your feelings the more time and energy they consume, usually intensifying. A simple shift in focus can stop the momentum of feelings, allowing you to refocus on what you can do and doing it. This simple shift is accomplished using your breathing. Try this:

Take three deep breaths (diaphragm) and slowly exhale the air you have inhaled. As you exhale, listen to the air crossing your lips and feel the warmth it contains. By the third exhalation you will feel yourself calming and relaxing.

The combination of the focus on the breathing and the sound and temperature of the air will interrupt the fears, thoughts, and feelings coming from your mind. This simple interruption diverts your mind, giving you a moment to refocus and to better assess the current situation.

If after the three breaths the frustration, confusion, and anger continue to build something more may be needed. Remove yourself, take a time-out or take a walk, to interrupt your mental state. Find a quiet place and air it out again but longer, up to five minutes if needed. Take relaxed and comfortable breaths as you continue to keep your mind’s focus on the exhalations.

Continuing in a mental state of frustration, confusion and anger will not yield positive or sensible responses. Use the “airing it out” technique to create a state where you can regroup mentally and make choices and responses that will get a better result or resolution. With practice the technique gets easier and eventually becomes automatic. It is a simple and effective technique with a powerful effect.

Avoiding Failure is Avoiding Success

I am currently writing material and strategies for what I call the New Success Paradigm. This positive approach to success is effective and makes experiencing personal potential so much easier. I will be sharing the concepts and strategies here in different ways as I finish up the complete presentation. To get started here is an introduction to the difference between failure and success that I believe gives an idea of where I am going with this new paradigm.

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When we look at success and failure as opposites, we usually end up seeking success and avoiding failure. The result is we experience neither, as the powerful avoidance of failure can prevent taking risks and even paralyze our efforts to increase success. If we weren’t avoiding failure, success would be easier and more attainable.

Imagine a line with two end points and a number of points in between the end points. On one end is failure or what would I call limited success. On the other end is absolute success or the maximum use of capabilities. The points in between are all the possible results you can obtain from practicing and using skills, executing strategies, or taking risks. All experiences, performances, and applied efforts are also points along this line. These points represent different levels of success - none are failures.

The truth about failure is that the only way you can fail is not to participate or learn. The only way you cannot experience more success is to avoid effort and experiences leading to success. Technically then, you cannot fail. Doing something is not failure, only more or less successful than what you did before.

When the meaning of your actions and efforts are viewed as points along a continuum of success, you can take chances. Learn what does not work, and focus on what will work. Then your success increases with every action, effort, and improvement. Evaluate each experience with a question,”What will move me to the next point of success?” By answering this question and taking another action, failure will not be a possibility so avoiding it unnecessary as success and more success awaits you.

It is an Act of Courage to Live the Plan for Your Life

What path are you on in your life, work and relationships?When you are on the path intended for you and provided to you by your unique life plan, certain experiences become inherent along that path. Knowing these experiences helps you to know how to navigate them and to maximize their possibilities. In The Guide: Knowing the Plan for Your Life, the first experiences of following your plan and living on the path it directs will be “an act of courage.” This is especially important in a world that wants you to be who the world says you and everyone else should be. It is an egoic world that is easy to get sucked into and make your reality.

Knowing your life plan and following it creates a “new reality;” the reality of the true you and who you were intended to be. To stay in your “new reality” when the “egoic reality” tugs and pushes takes a focused courage and a continuing courage.

This is not the traditional type of courage defined as bravely confronting difficulty or danger and making sacrifices in the face of opposition. Rather, this is the “courage of your convictions,” where your convictions are grounded in love and joy. This is the courage to be the real you, not the egoic you.

The real you knows the meaning of living your purpose in the service of the world. You have the courage of knowing your gifts and how to use them to share your vision in your work and interactions. The courage to be you is all you can be, no matter how many people question, doubt, or dismiss the real you.

Whether alone or in a group, your choices and behavior are congruent with who you are, even when it may seem to disadvantage you. In the long run you know that the best and right choices are the only ones you can make, and the results of those choices confirm your courage.

This act of courage, of being true to yourself and your purpose, in time ceases being an act and becomes a part of who you are and how others know your vision and purpose through your courage. They will wonder and even ask how you remain so true, especially in light of the push and pull to be what the world wants you to be. It will be easy and you will tell them it is easy when you know the truth about yourself and how you were intended to be. You will become courage itself and being the courage will give you confidence and a powerful knowing reassurance to handle everything with ease and love.

Is it time to know and follow your plan? Is it time to experience and become the courage your plan provides?

The process for exploring and discovering your personal life plan is provided in The Guide: Knowing the Plan for Your Life. To purchase your copy please e-mail me at jane@janeminer.com. ©2009 Dr. Jane Miner - PERSONAL Solutions. For more information or support for your personal solutions contact me at jane@janeminer.com. May be reprinted with this attribution fully intact.

Afraid of What? Common Unrealistic Fears

A popular book I read some years ago titled Who Moved My Cheese, asked a provocative question: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” I have often asked this question of my clients and myself when we were looking to move forward in life. Being afraid is the biggest barrier we have to change, happiness, trust, success and most importantly experiencing our potential. What are we afraid of?Being afraid is a self-protecting response we use mentally to warn us of potential threats or danger. However, most of the time our fear does little more than provide evidence for false perceptions and confirmation for negativity in previous experiences or thoughts. As such it becomes the gatekeeper of our comfort zone. In our comfort zone is that which is familiar: dramatic relationships, routines or habits, assumptions, expectations, and limiting beliefs. Comfortably stuck in the same place we were yesterday, we want to believe today is new, yet we continue to be stuck repeating yesterday. Our comfort zone has a high cost: little forward movement, indifference to change, and distancing from our true self and the life we were intended to live.

What would you do if you were no longer afraid? Who would you be if your limitations were no longer self-imposed? What could you achieve if your actions came from who you really are rather than the person others want you to be? The answers to these questions and the secret to reducing or eliminating fear is always the same - action.
The first action is to embrace and accept your fears rather than avoid them. Accept that you are afraid for a reason; what is the reason? Ask yourself these questions:

• What would happen if I …?

• What do I want to happen next?

• What actions will get me what I want?

The second action is to change your language. Instead of describing the situation in terms of the past or the future, describe it to yourself and others in the present. For example, instead of “if I stand up for myself, I could lose my job, ” think of it instead as, “I deserve to be treated respectfully, I can find another job,”

The third action is to say it all out loud. When you hear yourself saying what you fear, it is much easier to see what you want and what to do. Saying it takes it out of unconscious feeling and into conscious awareness. A fear named and seen is a fear that can be acted upon.

The fourth action is to visualize yourself doing what you want. Most often you have visualized yourself being fearful or in the feared situation. That was the evidence that gave your fear legitimacy and power. Now by visualizing what you want and can do, the evidence shifts to supporting your desires that can motivate you into action. If you can visualize it, you can do it.

While it is the first reaction of the mind to be afraid to avoid taking risks, taking action to challenge and move past your fears gives you the freedom to be who you are and live your life based on possibilities and your potential. It is to live a life of love not fear

Common Unrealistic Fears

Being afraid is fed by some common unrealistic fears. Whatever your thoughts, perceptions, and interpretations of the day’s experiences, these unrealistic fears provide an uneasiness even when we are being successful and enjoying experiences. Are you afraid of…?

1. Not Being Good Enough - This is the number one fear for most people and requires a comparison to others to form a false standard of achievement we believe we have to reach. The reality is that you can only be your best, not someone else’s.

2. Being Weak – This one feeds our self-doubt by having us believe we are not strong enough to face challenges and conquer them. The reality is that you are strong and you can do anything if you give yourself permission to take risks.

3. Being Vulnerable – You have to trust other people’s opinions and judgments more than you know about yourself to have this fear. The reality is that no one can hurt you without this fear that they can and will.

4. Being Unlovable - Love is in the eye of the beholder. The reality is that if you find the people who appreciate you and love themselves, they will love you too. Oh, and that part about being lovable, you have love yourself first.

5. Failing – No action is the only way you can fail. Besides it is another comparison of what you should be able to do that is beyond your control. The reality is that if you act you will succeed at some level.

What makes these fears unrealistic? They are rarely based on facts and most often come from conditioning and perception. Keep your focus on what is real as indicated above and these fears will lose their grip on you.

Nine Ways to Enhance a Relationship and Three Ways to Destroy It

Our enjoyment and satisfaction with life and work is almost always grounded in the quality of our relationships with other people. Quality relationships are not easy to establish, maintain, or especially enhance. There are ways that are almost always effective for doing any of these and specific ways that can be very destructive. The best ten ways to improve quality of your relationship and the four ways to damage them follow. Try more than one and see how much your relationships go.1. Participate and give without expecting something in return. Expectations and assumptions gum up our interactions by blocking others and us from being authentic.

2. Be honest yet tactful. Respect what the other person needs to know and what they probably don’t want to know about you. Always tell the truth, but don’t offer what isn’t requested or permission given to provide. Consider that some things, especially quick judgments are often best left unsaid or until another time.

3. When communicating, listen to understand. What are they really saying in words, tone, and body language? It is easy to anticipate what someone means so we can formulate our response, but often we miss what is really being said and especially not said.

4. Know if you are motivated by need or love. Most romantic relationships begin with egoic needs and never progress past that. Loving someone is not about what they can do for us, it is about giving and sharing because you love them (see #1).

5. Lose the judgments. Judging creates a wedge in communications and poisons most relationships over time. It is another way to determine whether you need or love someone. Most judgment is needs based, yours, not theirs.

6. Give up the belief that you own another person’s attention, energy, or time. Relationships are not entitlements and if they become that, one or both people start to feel suffocated and eventually resentful. Relationships enhance and support by choice, not demand.

7. Respect the other person’s perspectives. Each person is a culmination of experiences, knowledge, and meanings that determine how they view themselves and their relationship with you. Neither of you are the same, nor will you ever be. Honor the differences and learn from their perspectives.

8. Let other people have their experiences. Don’t attempt to change, fix, or save another person. The most powerful relationships are based on mutually respecting each other and letting a person be who they are.

9. Stop taking everything so personally. Find out before you react. The Second Agreement in Toltec Wisdom explains that no matter what another person does or says, it is about them, not you. You only get to choose how to respond or not respond. Gather information and determine if you need to respond, do nothing, or offer support. (See #8 above)

… And Three Ways to Destroy It

Relationships become difficult and even impossible when you:

1. Judge and compare yourself to others. When we judge ourselves, we judge others to inform our comparisons and most of the time we come out on the short end of the stick. Often what we judge in others as unlikable or negative is just a reflection of what we see in ourselves. You can’t love someone you are judging because judgment and love are incompatible. Of course, that includes loving yourself.

2. Blame other people, especially those in your closest relationships, for your unhappiness or experiences. While others are clearly part of our relationships and we share experiences, the rest is up to us. No one is ever nor can they be responsible for your happiness; it is a fool’s errand, so to speak. Blame keeps us from choosing and especially changing. If you don’t like what is happening, you have the power to change your experience in the relationship, but not their experience.

3. Complain about efforts, actions, and choices of other people. It is an illusion that complaining about something or someone leads to change. Discomfort is the number one stimulus for change, but only if action is taken; complaining blocks action. Most importantly, complaining about another person brings in judging, blaming, and expectations that will only make both of you miserable and certainly won’t bring about change in them.

Developing, maintaining, and enhancing relationships is an ongoing process. Some of the ways listed above may be just what you need to move your relationships forward or even transform them. Best of all, your relationships could become more enjoyable, enriching, and complementary and isn’t that the point of having a relationship?

Should You Try Harder?

Trying harder is your natural response when skills, strategies, or situations are not working as you want or expect. Other people, wanting to help, may tell you to increase your intensity, give more effort, or try harder and it will get better. All of these imply that you need to do more; you just need to try harder to get success. Unfortunately, that is the opposite of what you need to do!

Trying harder increases your stress responses, raises your anxiety, and hurries your mind. You get caught up in the emotions, especially fear and anger, as you become distracted by what isn’t working. As a result, you make more errors, focus on what won’t work and raise your frustration. Continue trying harder and you will find yourself in a spiral of increasing negative results, as your mind and body get totally out of sync, interfering with what you want to do.

When a skill, strategy or situation is difficult or not happening as you expected, slow down and divert your focus elsewhere. Take a couple of deep breaths, retie your shoes, or move on to a different skill or situation; all can shift your focus quickly and immediately. By interrupting the emotional and physical states that were interfering with your performance, you allow your mind and body to find the appropriate speed and intensity or different approach needed for success.

The key to success in any situation is to provide the appropriate energy and intensity needed to get the job done efficiently. Pushing and increasing your intensity or trying harder will not change the nature of the task, only your responses to it – for the worst. By approaching the task or situation in a different state, you give yourself a chance to comfortably and confidently respond. The more you apply this approach, the more you will learn the best effort and intensity for you to succeed at anything, especially the most frustrating things

Excuses Begone by Wayne Dyer - Review

This book represents in many ways a return to Wayne Dyer’s beginning works. Trained in counseling with Abraham Maslow as his mentor during his doctoral studies, the mind as creator of experiences is critical in his writings. In this book he addresses thinking that is self-defeating or what he calls the “habit mind.” In our habitual thinking are the excuses or self-limiting thoughts and beliefs we repeat to choose our actions and behaviors now. They keep us from living our fullest life by trapping us in our past life in the form of programming. Until we challenge these “excuses” they persist and continue to create (or recreate) automatically. The good news is that we can actually “create” something new and different, make new choices, and have different experiences. This is done through “creative consciousness” by using seven principles and a paradigm shift process to address the eighteen common and most limiting excuses in the “subconscious” mind. These excuses include familiar ones such as: “I don’t deserve it,” “I can’t afford it,” “I’m too busy,” and “It will be difficult.” These and the other fourteen are the barriers to everything we want and don’t have.

The first part of the book explains how the mind works uses excuses to dominate our experiences and create lives we don’t want and don’t enjoy. The second part of the book thoughtfully presents his seven principles that include: awareness, alignment, now, contemplation, willingness, passion and compassion. Each principle is clearly explained with the creative consciousness power demonstrated as applied to some of the most common excuses.

The paradigm shift is the third part of the book. Building on Byron Katie’s “The Work” he has designed a series of seven questions that can be used to challenge thoughts and especially excuses. When thoughtfully asked these questions dissolve beliefs and fears while empowering choices. I think this series of questions may be even more powerful than those of The Work, because they allow the questioner to find a source of and identify choices for change.

Each part of this book is useful and together they provide a compelling process for clearing excuses and making permanent changes in the brain and mind. All the concepts and strategies are clearly illustrated and applied. This is a book to read, study, and use.

What I Liked in Excuses Begone

I liked this approach to behavior changes, as it is similar to what I use in life coaching. I am convinced that the mind is the key to everything from change to joy and that each of us has the power to use our mind to create anything and everything. I found much in this book to add to the ideas and strategies I share with other people and can use myself. Here are three examples of the principles I found most useful and applicable.

• Alignment. This principle says that life is an indication of our alignment with our “essential nature” and the source of our creation. Excuses and faulty thinking are indications of our misalignment. Realign and many of our problems and issues are gone. He says alignment is “awareness in action.” When we are aligned our focus is on what we want to create.

• Contemplation. All creation, positive or negative, begins with contemplation. What is in our experience and what surrounds us is due to our previous contemplation or thoughts and feelings. Fortunately contemplation now is the key to our future experiences through creative consciousness.

• Willingness. This word was an unusual way of describing what is often called commitment. Willingness is stronger and more powerful when followed. He provides four questions that support willingness zeroing in on taking full responsibility for the conditions of life, surrendering, holding our vision, and shedding all unwillingness. Answer the questions and the direction for willingness is found.

I also found the paradigm questions in the third part of the book to be very powerful as a process. Each question contains clear areas for consideration and the process is fast and effective. He encourages the reader to let the changes “fall into place” with a “mind that’s open to everything and attached to nothing.” Read the questions and the suggested areas of consideration and the application begins without plans, lists, and rules of instructions. Pretty nifty and pretty effective.

Notes for Application

• Nothing is permanent or inevitable. Even our genetics can be changed through our thoughts and creative consciousness.

• Excuses don’t move us forward they keep us from fully living in the now and the joy and love found there. The reliance on excuses is self-defeating and must be addressed if something different is wanted.

• “Always keep in mind that no single person, place, or thing can force you to believe or disbelieve anything. … Now you have the independence to choose what you believe. Your knowing is yours.”

Should You Read This Book?

Whether you are a Wayne Dyer fan or not, everyone can benefit from this book. If you need a direction, a different strategy, or the guidance to move forward, this book will definitely benefit you. For those who have read many of his books, this one maintains his philosophy but with updated and new applications, especially in terms of the process of change. I found the ideas and especially applications to be consistent with what I have learned in working with people in every area of life. I would highly recommend this book to my clients and to anyone who is ready to live the life they want, fully and joyfully.

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