I just read a piece about the difference between positive and negative emotions. You thought you knew the difference right?
Positive emotions make you feel good and negative ones make you feel bad. Well it has a little more depth than that. This study said that positive emotions broaden your perceptions, thoughts and behaviors, while negative ones narrow them.
Hum, with that type of definition it sounds like there are times when negative emotions are helpful. The negative emotions can help you focus in a crisis. They are the ones that alert you to danger. But the positive ones help you be creative and see all sides to a situation.
What I believe happens is that we get stuck in the negative emotions. Our jobs require our focus and the stress in life often makes us focus and live in crisis mode. But it is the positive that makes life enjoyable and meaningful. What we need is to get unstuck. The negative emotions should only be used sparingly and only when they are truly needed.
How do you unstick yourself? Meridian Tapping or EFT is great at unsticking negative emotions. I publish a monthly tapping routine that is geared to moving you out of the negative and into the positive. Go to www.naturallyresilient.com and sign up to receive this free monthly self-help routine. Sometimes I will send out information that I think may be helpful but I will never sell or give you e-mail address to any one else.
I have talked about EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) before. But I cannot emphasize enough that every one should know how to use it. It should be in every mom’s medicine cabinet.
One Sunday afternoon, I went with a bunch of kids from our church to a fancy out-of-town playscape for their enjoyment. We had not been there more than 10 minutes when one of the little girls came running out of the playscape saying she was having an asthma attack and had not brought her inhalers.
I have had asthma in my past and realized how scary it can be. I imagined having to load all the kids back on the bus and driving back home. But I decided to try something.
I called her over to me and told her “let’s see if this does anything” and told her I was going to tap on her face and showed her where. Then I started tapping and talking about how scary not being able to breath can be. When I tapped the 3rd point, I saw her face change and knew she was ok. I asked her how she felt, and she said “Oh, better” and ran back into the playscape to continue playing. So with less than one round of tapping her attack cleared. Her mom was there and was amazed at the results.
If you want to learn more, check out www.naturallyresilient.com.
A number of years ago, I was lactose intolerant and was using soymilk on my cereal. However, I really wanted to drink milk with my cookies, that being one of the simple pleasures in life. I just was not sure about drinking the soymilk. It was fine with the cereal camouflaging the taste and texture, but to actually drink it?
I decided to give it the cat test. We had 7 cats living with us at the time (that is what happens when you have a cat door so anyone can move in). One of the cats, Hobbs, was young and all stomach. If Hobbs were around the food bowl, none of the others would have a chance. This is a cat that if you left a large loaf of bread on the counter over night, in the morning it would be ripped open and half of the loaf would be eaten. So for this experiment I made sure that Hobbs was outside. The other six cats got curious and followed me to the kitchen. I poured some of the soymilk into a bowl and put it on the ground. The other cats came up to it, sniffed, and then looked up at me. I could imagine them asking, “What are you trying to do? Poison us?” About that time, Hobbs got wind that something was in the kitchen. He came tearing through the cat door, around the corner and into the kitchen. He did not stop to ask the other cats why they were not drinking the milk. He plunked he head down and started lapping it up. About the 5th lap, it hit him. His head shot up and he started spitting, trying to get the taste out of his mouth.
It took him 2 weeks before he would forgive me. The whole incident scared one of the other cats, Barney, so bad that he never trusted me with an offer of milk again. And needless to say, I never tried the soymilk with my cookies.
Yesterday I talked about what I see as a worldwide change going on. But worldwide change is based on many individuals making changes.
Look at your life. Do you see a pattern to the changes that go on? I have noticed a 7-year pattern in mine. About every 7 years or so, I see a change in some aspect of my life. It may be a job change or a physical move or even a major shift in my thinking but each change starts me in a new direction.
So when life starts to get difficult, I just remember that change is just around the corner. This is something we need to be teaching our teenagers. One of the reasons for so many suicides is that the person does not see a way out of a situation and they never realize that change is coming. If you don’t like the situation right now, just wait and it will change.
I remember reading a story of a man who had grown up in a family that moved every year due to the dad’s job. What this man had learned from his mobile life was that he could put up with anything for 6 months to a year. He knew that change was coming and if he did not get along with a teacher he did not stress out about it because he realized he would be out of there in a few months. This made his hardships bearable all through life.
I think that is a major life lesson that all of us could benefit from. Don’t get too stuck in the now as change is a given and it will come.
Are You In The Middle Of Major Changes?
Posted by: Ann
January 11th, 2010 >> Energy, Life, Uncategorized
Did you ever have an idea come to you and then you start seeing it pop up in other ways?
I had an idea Saturday and wrote it on the cover of my TV Guide. Today I received a newsletter from Jen Blackert that really highlighted it. Since I am seeing it pop up I must write about it.
What popped into my mind on Saturday was a feeling of everyone jockeying for a new position. I know so many people who are in the process of changing their careers. Some people are changing their whole lives in the process. (I know 4 people in seminary or in the process for going to seminary). I am talking about major life changes.
It just reminded me of a horse race. Seeing the jockeys moving the horses around, trying to get in a better position. But I don’t see the object as winning the race but to just reposition themselves.
Jen Blackert wrote “I’m sure you sense that there is a monumental shift taking place in the world.” She goes on to say that even though this shift may have you concerned “The Truth is this shift is poised for major light” (meaning it is for the good).
So even if the world around you is in turmoil there is hope and I do believe things will work themselves out.
I just finished reading Captain Robert L. Snow’s book “Looking For Carroll Beckwith: The True Story of a Detective’s Search for His Past Life”
What really surprised me about the book was his fear of being thought an odd ball for possibly believing that the regressions were actually showing past lives. He goes through a moral dilemma about this.
This book made me question my belief that there is a large population out there in our protestant world who also believe in reincarnation. I have believed in reincarnation since I was a child. I was not taught this as I was raised Southern Baptist but it just made sense to me. Am I just an odd ball myself? Or are there others out there reading this whom believe in reincarnation?
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
—– Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist & poet (1803 – 1882)
Sometimes it is hard to trust God. We often think we know better and are unwilling to wait for God’s answer. There were many times in the past when I was forced to trust God, often it was a tentative trust, sometimes it was born of desperation. But God always came through, often in unexpected ways. You would think that the repeated events in my life where God has come through for me would strengthen my trust in the Creator. But I still struggle with letting go and letting God take control of the situation. I have even hung out the fleece, so to speak and had the answer that God was there and handling things.
So why is it so difficult to let go? Maybe that is just part of what I need to learn this time around.
Fruits of the Spirit
Posted by: Ann
January 8th, 2010 >> EFT, God, Life, Meridian Tapping, Relationship, Spirituality
I often say that EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and MTT (Meridian Tapping Techniques) only remove the negative in our lives and leaves the positive because we are born with the fruits of the spirit and as we live our lives we collect negative baggage in the form of negative emotions. Often this negativity occurs from the day we are born and I think some would say from before that.
What exactly do I mean by the fruits of the spirit? According to Galatians 5:22-23, the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Let me take this apart and compare it to what emotions a newborn baby may come into this world with. I can see a baby being born with love and joy, but peace and patience or self-control? I just don’t see it. Let’s dig deeper.
Have you ever known a peaceful baby? I have. So the ones who are not peaceful may have had some contributing baggage already in their young life. It could have been as harsh as a drug abusing mother, or a physically abused mother or maybe something along the lines of a medical problem that cropped up for the baby or the mother while in the womb. I can see any of these leading to a restless, unhappy baby.
Some of these positive emotions are automatically compromised because we start out as helpless babies. Who would not lose patience and self-control when they can’t communicate what they need to those around them. So these positive emotions go out the door real fast.
This leaves goodness, faithfulness and gentleness. These qualities would be hard to see in a young baby. By the time the child is of an age to actually express these qualities in their life, family, friends, society and even TV have already influenced them. The child has had plenty of opportunity to learn the negative traits
What are your thoughts on this?
www.naturallyresilient.com
I am having a great time doing the surrogate EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) tapping study. Some issues I have worked on have shown great improvement while one in particular has been a real hard one to get any change to occur (if you are reading this, you know who you are). Most people have reported a general improvement.
I am closing the study on January 31. If you want to be included and get a free EFT session where you don’t even have to attend, fill out a comment for this blog and I will get back with you. All I ask from you is to fill out a questionnaire before the session and then another one after the session.
Thursday I am doing a session for a friend’s dog. I am not just limited to people.
In February, I will compile my data and have it available. Sign up for my Monthly Tapping Routine on my website at www.naturallyresilient.com and don’t be left out on other great opportunities that come along.
I am devoting Wednesdays to stories of animals and in my case most of them will be cat stories as cats have been a staple in my life for a number of years. I love dogs, had a great one when I was growing up, but cats are easier to keep. You can leave them with plenty of food and water and litter and go off for the weekend. A dog would eat all the food, knock over the water bowl and cry because their pack has left and all that within the first 2 hours of you leaving.
The hard part is deciding what story to tell first. Well here goes.
I had a very large black and white cat named Barney. This cat was an 18 pounder in his own right. He was not fat, just big. Barney loved people. He was a dog in cat clothing. He had to go greet all that came to the door.
At one point we were living at the back of 68 acres we had purchased. In the process of subdividing this property we were having a road put in. One day one of the workers came to the house to use our phone. This phone was located on a desk right next to the four-foot tall cat scratch post. As the worker sat down to make his call, Barney came in to see who was here. As this contractor was talking, Barney jumped to the top of the cat scratch post right in this man’s face. There was a loud scream. I could just imagine the person on the other end asking, “what’s wrong, what happened”. Then this worker haltingly said “They have a cat as big as a bobcat”. Barney was unperturbed with the screaming man and followed him to the door when he left.