You’re reading Eight Amazing Books to Help Write Your Best Life, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Looking for a Wastebasket to Empty Out Your Head?
Tired of those same thoughts over and over again? Tired of how FULL your head feels?
Sure, it would be great if you could take off your head, scrape it like the inside of a pumpkin, and start fresh, carving out a new face in the process.
But you can’t.
Yep, those thoughts don’t seem fertile, they seem like weeds in your head’s struggling garden.
Good News: Weeds Can Be Great Fertilizer!
Here’s the trick. If you let those weeds overgrow your garden, that garden won’t nourish you.
If you pay attention to those weeds, you can not only fertilize your garden, you can actually harvest those repetitive, initially troublesome thoughts.
How? Keep a diary, write those thoughts down.
And nothing helps you keep an effective diary than great books that help you change negative thoughts to positive ones.
Here are eight of the best ones that have saved my mental and emotional life again and again. They’re like guides who carry torches in the scary darkness of your head so you can turn on the lights, keep them on, and transform your inner house.
Joan Borysenko, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind. This book combines physiological insights concerning the “relaxation response” with perspective on the components of your personality, especially the ego and its role.
Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness. This book is an outstanding bridge to the healing insights of Buddhism, brought home to the reader through terrific composites.
John Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are. In a series of short pieces, the author provides the healthiest way to position your mind to avoid, withstand, and manage the stress of everyday life.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. This inspiring testament by a survivor of a death camp is a shows the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable horror.
Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. Miller’s account of the effects of poor parenting and the insights around the child’s coping mechanisms, sadness, and healing is a terrific addition to any self-help library.
David E. Burns, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy: This book brings the art of the internal “Talk Back” to new heights.
Tara Bennett-Goldman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart. Goleman’s work on the unhealthy “schema” that emotionally damaged individuals put together is a valuable contribution to the field.
Eckart Tolle: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Toll’s work’s insistence on acceptance of the immediate present provides a useful perspective.
These Books Provide Medicine, but You’re Still the Doctor.
If you read these books, and while these are the most meaningful to me, certainly you can find other outstanding ones, that’s just the start. Read books like this, then do the following:
• Accept the Fact that You CAN Take Charge of Your Thoughts
• Become an Observer Rather than a Critic of Your Thoughts
• NOTE the Thoughts That Recur the Most
• Open a Dialogue with YOURSELF
A diary is a tool that helps you do all these things. Each of these books provides a multitude of insights that you can put to use right away as you write down what you see, what you feel, what thoughts you have, and what connections your heart, your mind, your spirit, and the various voices inside you can make.
Each of your internal voices represents a narrative, a story inside you about yourself and your place as human being as well as human doing.
If you observe rather than criticize your thoughts, no matter what they are, you transform useless weeds into something of information, self-awareness, nourishment, and future fertilization.
The Mind Is Your Garden-Tend It Well!
So, next time you want to simply throw your head away, because it’s negative, so negative that you feel you just can’t find something good to hold on to, STOP.
Sit down, take a deep breath, and simply WATCH YOUR MIND and what’s in it.
That’s the beginning.
The, get some of these books, note what you’re thinking, and write the story of your life, every day.
Don’t rip up the weeds, use them to make the garden of your inner world something that will feed you all the days of your life.
Lars Nielsen is a free-lance copywriter whose unique and image-rich selling voice combines the narrative power of his poetry, playwriting, fiction, radio, liturgy, and comedy. Go to http://ift.tt/2aI2xgg and see how Ultimate Influence Copywriting can reframe the narrative of your business, speeches, ideas, and your life for success.
You’ve read Eight Amazing Books to Help Write Your Best Life, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
You’re reading 8 Steps to Conquering Your Fear, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Fear is a killer of hopes, dreams, souls, and lives wanting to be lived.
Once upon a time I was a very fearful person. I was afraid of my own shadow and if anyone said anything to me I would cower off into a corner, paralyzed. I was afraid to even acknowledge I existed for fear of ridicule or criticism.
I attribute my being a fearful person to my childhood, where I grew up in a house with a father who was a violent alcoholic, and a mother who was emotionally unavailable. We were made fun of, criticized, told to shut up and made to feel stupid almost every day of our lives.
I carried the impact of my childhood into my adult life. My childhood fears became the adult fear of not showing my true self for fear of being unloved because of who I really was.
It wasn’t until I turned 50 that I met my fears head on. I had done a few fearless things before that, but they were usually what others wanted me to do. The real movement with facing my fears was when my fear of forever being lost overcame my fear of moving forward.
What is the impact of fear on your life? Fear keeps you from living your life. Period. New experiences, new adventures, new people are all aspects of life that keep us moving forward and creating a life we love.
What are you afraid of? There are many reasons you may be afraid to pursue something. Fear of rejection, ridicule, criticism, failure, and even success. Getting the root of this issue will help you develop techniques to work through these fears.
Figuring out what is at the root of your fear may take some time. Look back to your past to see what incidents might have caused this fear. Were you shamed or rejected as a child or adolescent? Have you failed at something once before and just can’t face failing again?
Visualize the absolute worst that can happen. My absolute worst is always ending up as a homeless bag lady. However, that has never happened.
Also, what is the absolute best that can happen? This is a way to reframe the conversation and be positive. I always look at the positive outcomes of a new experience now, before considering the negative. (If I do at all.)
Start small. When you succeed at one thing, you can confidence and are more likely to move forward.
See “failure” as the path to success. When you take a look at the reasons for failure you can make better decisions on moving forward. Also, it keeps you from tossing all plans out the window because you failed once.
However, the only way to really conquer the fear is to face it. Get off the couch and do that thing you are afraid of. I have found when I do face the fear, it’s not as scary on the other side. You can plan, surmise what may or may not happen, and write a book on why you are fearful, but none of it is worth anything, until you actually face that fear.
Shelly is a personal development strategist and founder of The Rescue Yourself Project helping women over 40 step into their unique selves so they can create a life they love! A few years ago, she found herself living a life that wasn’t of her making. Deciding that wasn’t what she wanted she ran away from home and spent eight months “re-branding” herself. Today Shelly helps women find their unique selves by becoming experts about their values, strengths, passions, goals and purpose so they can design a life they love.
You’ve read 8 Steps to Conquering Your Fear, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Sig Nordal 