If you stop to think about it, it’s easy to understand that happiness does not come from outside ourselves. Yet few think about what this really means for their own lives. So while we all know the truth of this fact, it’s easy to find yourself not living that way.
And when we do find ourselves living like that, it is as if we have handed over the keys of our own happiness to others.
Instead, we must take responsibility for ourselves first and foremost. For if we don’t, or can’t, because of past trauma and instead look to something or someone outside of ourselves we are heading towards disappointment.
If you cannot be by yourself; you cannot be with others, is to say just that, and someone that understands and learns to live from a place of self-confidence, self-worth, and self-love, is able to give the best of themselves to others in a way that does not harm in the process.
Morning Routine to Prime Your Day
Recently I’ve been geeking out on the work of Dr. Andrew Huberman.
Here are five things we can all do daily to prime our system for the day. This will have a deep and direct impact on your sense of well-being.
Get at least 2 minutes of sunlight into your eyes early in the morning. Preferably at sunrise but if you cannot do this, as soon as you wake look outside and into the sky. This will help regardless of the weather.
Move your body first thing also. I do Tibetan yoga & special breathing exercises. This gets the norepinephrine system and the entire sympathetic nervous system primed for the day.
After this, set at least one goal for the day. It could be anything but it needs to be something you’re working towards. Writing 500 words p/day, cooking, cleaning, anything that is “a project” with an outcome. This will release dopamine and will help give you energy for the rest of the day.
As you move forward towards this goal and things come up to distract you, push these away. If you can do this dopamine will be released as you move towards the completion of the goal.
And this, in turn, increases your ability to focus on the goal thus increasing your chance of completion.
Don’t eat for several hours after you wake. This is something I’ve done for years, and I find I work and think better as a result. This also increases the release of dopamine.
Huberman has a book coming and I will be sure to let you know once it is available.
Meditation Tip – From Beta to Theta
In last week’s tip, I mentioned starting your meditation practice from a state without tension.
This week we will take it a step further.
Lay down on your bed or sit comfortably in a chair, close your eyes, and calm the mind by watching the breath. This will help relax your consciousness and move it from beta to alpha.
To deepen your mind further from alpha to theta you need to go into a deep sleep-like state without actually falling asleep.
Easier said than done but, theta is where the magic happens and many meditation researchers have observed the correlation between theta, deep meditative states, and the subconscious of western psychology. If you can get there many therapeutic insights can be found.
To do this you must learn to go deeper into a sleep-like state while remaining awake. And we do this by moving the object of our attention from the breath to consciousness itself. By moving from a physical object to a purely mental object our body can relax more deeply.
Focusing on consciousness itself can seem difficult because the object is more subtle than course physical objects like the breath. The trick is to become aware of being aware that you are awake and having an experience.
