If you want to live a more fulfilling and vibrant life, you must use your unique gifts and talents in a meaningful way.
The truth is, we’re all sparks of creation and possibility. We all have unlimited potential, but each of us expresses it in unique ways.
The thing is that most of us are using our skills, our knowledge and our attention in ways that are not aligned with our dreams, desires and wellbeing.
Think about all the ideas, conversations and content we consume in the direction of drama, hopelessness and division.
Think of some of the companies we work for, the jobs we do and the circles we mix in.
Think of some of the choices we make on a daily basis, from what we buy, to what we eat, how we spend our time and everything in-between.
Are these a match to a life of love, joy, wellbeing and contribution, or are they serving a different, darker vision?
Are they an expression of your power, the love in your heart and the highest vision for your self and the world around you? Or are they a version of fear and self-sabotage?
Your gifts and talents are already being used to create something. If it’s not what you want, then it’s time to change direction.
Part of the reason why the world is in such disarray is because the majority of people on earth are living trapped in fear and limitation.
Yes, there’s an entire system seducing us collectively into (and profiting from) hopelessness and complacency. But we have the power to change it.
We just need to hold and be of service to a healthier vision for our personal and collective lives. Then, do the inner work it takes to get us out of the slump.
What we need to contend with are the limiting beliefs we inherited about ourselves, others, the world, our worth and what’s possible. In many cases the result of trauma we endured at different points of life.
Thank goodness these can be changed.
I want to share this passage from the book “The Biology of Belief”, by Dr Bruce Lipton, which speaks to the importance of addressing our disempowering beliefs to change the course of our lives (and the planet):
“(…) We think we are running our lives with the wishes, desires, and aspirations created by our conscious mind.
When we struggle or fail to obtain our goals, we are generally led to conclude that we are victims of outside forces preventing us from reaching our destination.
However, neuroscience has now established that the conscious mind runs the show, at best, only about 5 percent of the time.
It turns out that the programs acquired by the subconscious mind shape 95 percent or more of our life experiences. (…) We are completely unaware that our subconscious minds are making our everyday decisions.
Our lives are essentially a printout of our subconscious programs, behaviours that are fundamentally acquired from others (our parents, family and community) before we were six years old.
As psychologists recognize, a majority of these developmental programs are limiting and disempowering.
(…) The profoundly important fact is that disempowering programs in the subconscious mind can be quickly rewritten using techniques such as hypnotherapy, affirmations, body-centred therapies, and a large number of new modalities collectively referred to as “energy psychology.”
While our life stories are unique, with many of us having faced unspeakable trauma and hardship, there are many scientifically proven, accessible ways to get us back into our power.
Our job is to commit fully to our healing and expansion and keep showing up.
To finish today’s post, here’s a short reflection I’d love you to do with me. Answering these questions will give you valuable insights you can put into practice.
Ask yourself…
What’s the most beautiful vision I hold for myself and my life?
If I believed I were worthy and good enough, what work would I do?
If I believed anything was possible for me, what changes would I make in my life right now?
What’s the healthiest, most beautiful vision I hold for the world around me?
How can I help and how can I serve myself and others with my unique gifts and talents?
I’d love you to share your answers in the comments below.
Love,
Chopra Meditation Instructor™ Theta Healing Practitioner® & Author of the children’s book “The Magic of Who You Are”
P.S. ThetaHealing® is a powerful technique that helps you shift limiting beliefs quickly and in a nourishing way. Learn more here.
If you’ve struggled with meditation in the past, or if you’re new to it and you’d like to know more about it, this is for you.
Equally, if you’re looking for a simple, accessible way to boost your resilience, you will want to consider meditation.
I could spend at least three days detailing all the benefits of a regular meditation practice, but today I’d like to highlight 3 aspects that have made a huge difference in my life and my students’.
Before we dive into it, I’ll say this. We live in a world where the majority operate in fight or flight most of the time.
The chaos we see around us is a result of a collective overwhelmed by stress, trauma and an unsustainable pace of life. This means that we have billions of people making decisions every day from a place of fear, scarcity, limitation and insecurity.
Reclaiming our collective and personal power, resilience and balance is imperative, in order to transform the madness into harmony.
Meditation is a powerful tool that can help us achieve this.
Now onto the three benefits I wanted to share with you.
1. Reverse Fight or Flight / Access a calm, expansive state
By releasing stress, fatigue and toxins every day with a regular meditation practice, you’re able to settle into a calmer state of mind and melt away the sources of reactivity (which often show up as negative patterns).
Meditation is a powerful way to release deep-rooted stress, which is made up of unprocessed past experiences, past conditioning and lifestyle-related.
During the process of meditation, the mind-body system gets a signal that it’s safe to relax and turn on our repair and restore response.
You can achieve a very deep level of relaxation, which allows you to go well beyond the superficial level of the mind and start tapping into a different state. Which is more expansive, wiser, creative, resourceful and intelligent.
You can gain access to more of your inner resources and creative potential, which gives you a new level of resilience and capacity to respond to life and fulfil your desires more easily.
The more you practice, the more you start being established in this more productive and healthy state and, naturally, the better you’re able to make decisions that serve you.
2. Access and realise your full potential
Meditation is a journey through different layers of consciousness, until we eventually sink into the field of pure potentiality.
We start at the surface level of mind and body and journey inwards into deeper and deeper states, accessing the silence and stillness that exists within each of us.
In our meditation practice, we make this journey back and forth several times. We expand our awareness a little more each time. And we’re able to experience our true essence and start becoming more established in it.
This allows you to start living life more aligned with who you truly are and find new, creative ways to respond to life. More importantly, you start unlocking your joy, wellbeing and potential.
3. Develop witnessing awareness
A regular Meditation practice helps you develop witnessing awareness. Which is the opportunity to become the observer of your life.
This witnessing awareness allows you to create some distance between your automated ways of thinking and acting, to recognise when you’re not in the present and bring yourself back.
You create some space between what happens in your life and how you act as a result. And, from a balanced state of mind, take action, or postpone taking action where appropriate.
This gives you the opportunity to make decisions and act in ways that are life affirming.
It increases the chances of interrupting self-sabotaging behaviours and acting in ways that support what’s important to you.
Bonus way: a regular meditation practice harmonises the mind, body and spirit
Your true self is naturally healthy, wealthy, abundant, loving, compassionate, connected, creative and powerful.
Stress, past conditioning, limiting beliefs and the life circumstances we create as a result can keep us from experiencing this essence.
A regular meditation practice strips away the ego, the false stories we’ve told ourselves about who we are and who others are that keeps us disconnected and stuck.
We stop identifying with what happened to us and the coping mechanisms and ways of being we’ve adopted in response.
We start experiencing what truly makes us tick, who we are at our core and we start living life from that perspective.
We start doing the things we love, treating ourselves and others with honour, love and respect and we harmonise our lives. Wellbeing flows through every aspect of our mind-body system and we experience a sense of purpose, alignment and meaning.
Perhaps more importantly, you start realising that this essence is in everyone and release ideas of separation and fear of the other, allowing you to experience the world as a safe, friendly and beautiful place.
This last sentence will be the subject of a separate blog post, as this is not how we collectively see the world. We get fed plenty of evidence of the contrary, but is it ultimately true? I’ll write to you about this soon.
For now, I’d love to know… What’s been your experience with meditation? Out of these benefits, which one speaks to you the most?
Let me know in the comments below! 🧘🏻♀️😀
I’d also love to invite you to give meditation a try (or a second chance). Try these free meditations and share with me what opened up as a result.
To your wellbeing.
With love,
Chopra Meditation Instructor™ Theta Healing Practitioner® & Author of the children’s book “The Magic of Who You Are”
As I type these words, it’s hard not to feel startled with the state of the world, where we stand as a society.
It’s even harder to try and reconcile it with the contrasting sense of vibrance I feel every day in my own skin.
My sense of perspective means that I do see an invisible order in the chaos, but my sanity pulls me towards calling out the profound level of dysfunction of the times we live in.
You can be peaceful, vibrant, fully alive AND still recognise insanity when you see it.
But simply recognising it isn’t enough. I believe it’s our purpose and duty to take action towards steering the ship in a healthier direction. Starting with ourselves first.
Today’s post is not a philosophical ramble, but an attempt to make the case for personal healing and carving out a vibrant way of existing in the world, no matter how broken it seems.
Not just as the only sane way to live our lives but as a vehicle to bring about much needed harmony to our communities.
So today I pose this question:
Is a vibrant existence possible inside our toxic culture?
The answer is a definite yes.
In fact, it’s the only way to shape our culture away from pathology, into the supportive, healthy, nurturing and empowering structure it needs to be for us to thrive.
But here’s why it seems out of reach for the majority of us…
We’re being collectively sucked into a hollow way of existence, at head spinning velocity.
Every day life is being stripped out of meaning, integrity, purpose and connection. It’s hard to be alive today without feeling exploited and unprotected in some way.
Materialism is taking hold at uncontrollable speed and almost every aspect of our lives is being commoditised.
Mostly as a byproduct of an economic system that relies on and pushes a deep disconnection with our own humanity and our true essence.
We’re being reduced to data points, zombified with superficial thrills. Our very consciousness exploited for profit and highjacked to keep us addicted, alienated, lonely, stressed, unhealthy, disconnected from one another and asleep.
I can’t think of a bigger assault on our humanity than what’s happening before our very eyes; what’s worse, with our willing participation.
We’ve bought into ideas about ourselves and each other that completely contradict who we truly are as human beings.
It’s as if we’ve collectively forgotten the power of the human spirit, imagination, ingenuity and what we’re truly capable of.
As Deepak Chopra says, “we’ve traded the true self for the selfie.” What an accurate description…
The only way forward is to learn, realise or perhaps simply remember, that we have the power to change this paradigm.
Our frazzled, depleted state is not normal
Running around like headless chickens, doing things we don’t love, chasing the next external pursuit, uninspired and out of energy. Racing mind, broken heart, trying to keep our heads above water, longing for something better.
Entrenched in our positions. Divided, fearful and anxious. Feeling average at best; hopeless and in despair at worst.
This state is not how we’re meant to operate but it has been completely normalised. And because there are millions (perhaps billions) of us living like this, we’ve been tricked into believing this is just the way modern life is. And the best we can do.
This is such a harmful, pervasive perspective, not only because it’s not true, but because it’s making many of us ignorant and complacent when it comes to our own wellbeing and that of those around us.
I’ve recently finished reading Dr Gabor Maté’s latest book “The Myth of Normal” and, while it’s hard to single out any particular parts (because of how brilliant and deep this book is), I’ll share this passage with you:
“Lacking, we might say, by design: qualities like love, trust, caring, social conscience, and engagement are inevitable casualties – “sunk costs,” in capitalist argot – of a culture that prizes acquisition above all else. A society that fails to value communality – our need to belong, to care for one another, and to feel caring energy flowing toward us – is a society facing away from the essence of what it means to be human. Pathology cannot but ensue. To say so is not a moral assertion but an objective assessment. “When people start to lose a sense of meaning and get disconnected, that’s where disease comes from, that’s where breakdown in our health – mental, physical, social health – occurs,” the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Bruce Perry told me. If a gene or virus were found that caused the same impacts on the population’s well-being as disconnection does, news of it would bellow from front-page headlines. Because it transpires on so many levels and so pervasively, we almost take it for granted; it is the water we swim in. We are steeped in the normalized myth that we are, each of us, mere individuals striving to attain private goals. The more we define ourselves that way, the more estranged we become from vital aspects of who we are and what we need to be healthy.”
There’s so much to unpack here, more than a humble blog post affords. But there are a few key points I want to bring to you here.
Just because there is a strong pull from our culture in this direction, it doesn’t mean we can’t counter it. In fact, it’s urgent that we do so.
And we must remember that we have the power to do so, no matter how hard our circumstances are.
We must start by acknowledging that the way we feel is not normal; it’s rooted in unprocessed pain and trauma we carry from childhood and compounded stress from life experiences.
Add to it every day stressors due to the way we live, the way we work, our culture’s programming and you have a recipe for how we experience life as a result.
All of this has a huge impact on our wellbeing. The heavier the load, the less we experience joy, connection, passion, inspiration, love and everything that makes life worth living.
Does it really have to be that way? Definitely not! Yet we’ve collectively bought into disempowering ideas that are keeping us stuck in our suffering.
It’s time we wake up.
Reclaiming your wellbeing
It’s tempting to look away from our pain. In some ways, it’s almost easier to cope with it in the many unhealthy ways we do. Including our hiding behind labels, diagnosis and beliefs that we’re so broken that we’re beyond healing.
But we’re fooling ourselves. On giving up on ourselves and the quest for a beautiful life experience, we pay the ultimate price of wasting our lives to drama, negative patterns and suffering. And what’s worse, we help perpetuate our collective status quo.
The truth is, no matter how awful, harsh and unspeakable our life experiences might have been, we CAN recover, heal and go on to create a whole and beautiful experience.
We just have to seek the support that’s right for us and go on to do the work required.
And this includes sometimes trying things that don’t work. This is where a lot of us can lose faith in the process and mistakenly believe that things will never get better.
But if we keep asking questions and doing the work, we will eventually find the tools and support that will bring us back to wholeness.
This work requires confronting the disempowering (often debilitating) meaning we assigned to difficult experiences, process them fully and assign a new meaning that will free us up and allow us to create a new future.
It also requires liberating the body from the impact of these experiences (the work of Dr Bessel Van der Kolk and his brilliant book “The body keeps the score”is an excellent reference if you want to understand this better).
But here’s the good news. We come equipped with everything we need to heal as science is starting to demonstrate.
Taking a step further: transcending stressful thoughts and embodying a new state
On our quest to create a more peaceful, joyful and vibrant internal state, we must go beyond managing difficult emotions.
Yes, these tools can be useful, even life saving, but we must go beyond them.
Whatever work we do, must be in service of our personal liberation from a stressful, fearful mind and the weight and influence of our past conditioning.
When the goal is total freedom from our pain (instead of managing or soothing it), we encounter a different set of practices and answers to get us there.
Some of them can be so simple, within reach and will create, over time, a completely different internal landscape.
Your wellbeing is in your hands
If you’ve felt unwell, stressed, anxious or depressed for an extended period of time, it would be easy to fall into a state of hopelessness. In fact, many people do, looking at the sobering mental health statistics around the world.
Equally, if certain destructive, unproductive patterns in your life keep repeating themselves over and over, you might just believe that that’s all life will ever be for you.
But the truth is you have the choice and the power to start reclaiming your wellbeing today.
It starts with the decision, commitment and conviction that you will do and find what it takes to get better.
Are you ready to draw a line in the sand?
Start today: 4 gentle, yet powerful ways to reclaim your wellbeing
There are so many gentle, yet powerful and effective ways you can start transforming your internal state.
Start meditating – I can’t emphasise this enough. Meditation is a powerful tool that can have a profound impact on your wellbeing. It has countless, scientifically proven benefits.
For example, it turns off fight or flight, calms your nervous system and floods your brain with neurotransmitters associated with happiness. Start with 5 minutes a day and build on from that.
Create an intention for your day, every day – As soon as you wake up, create an intention for your day. State it in the present tense, for example; today I am joyful, today I am compassionate with myself and others, today I make choices that empower me.
This gives your brain the task of creating matching experiences and uses the power of your attention and imagination, which in turns influences the actions you take. It also gives a more productive direction to the mind, even for brief moments.
Take 5 to 10 minutes a day to reflect – Sit quietly for a few minutes and quietly ask yourself these four questions: Who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? This will start connecting you with your awareness and start stripping away your identification with the issues you’re facing.
It’s like a meeting with your wiser self, where the only aim is to notice what arises in the body and your experience as a result of asking the questions.
Use your screen time to watch/listen to experts in wellbeing – We’re all on our devices these days, that’s a given. So take time to listen, read or watch at least one in-depth piece of content by experts in the fields of mental wellbeing, spirituality, neuroscience or personal empowerment (preferably bridged with science).
Some suggestions: Dr Deepak Chopra, Dr Gabor Maté, Dr Joe Dispenza, Eckhart Tolle, Esther Perel, Dr Shefali Tsabary, Dr Bruce Lipton, Byron Katie (add your favourites to the list).
Curating the content we consume can drastically improve our outlook on life. Add to this reducing the amount of time we spend on social media.
Your life is so precious. Are you living your days well? Are you experiencing joy often, are you doing things you love, are you enjoying fulfilling relationships?
If not, and if the tape of life is playing repeated negative scenarios, it’s time to use your power, creativity and imagination in a different direction.
If you start with intention and some of these practices, the how will be shown to you along the way.
And if we all start living in a more wholesome way, our communities and the world will start to look different too. This is the way our toxic culture can heal.
For most of my life, I believed that truly being and living well was a combination of fait, good/bad genes, determination, a lot of hard work, a level of sacrifice and perseverance.
The world around me seemed to affirm this – everyone seemed to be on the same pursuit, chasing something while trying to maintain some sort of sanity along the way.
Struggle was expected and something to be overcome. Stress, disconnection and suffering were simply par for the course.
And it always seemed like a choice between success (especially financial) OR health, joy and wellbeing. One came at the expense of the other.
This view is at the root of a collapsing society and we‘re starting to realise that there needs to be a better way, where the majority choose a more rewarding way to live.
Modern day life is rife with addictions of all kinds, poor mental health and levels of depression are at an all-time high.
But it doesn‘t have to be this way.
More and more people are waking up to the reality that being well and creating a beautiful life is how things were meant to be all along.
And that all success and abundance we could ever wish for come from living a balanced life and favouring flow over stress.
My take is that, if you‘re here reading this, you‘re either ready to embrace ease and grace in your life, or you‘re well on your way to doing so.
I want to share with you this powerful quote by Deepak Chopra, so we can reflect on it together.
“In physics, the law of least action holds that nature favours the shortest path to achieve a result. A tennis ball falls to earth in a simple curve, not a curlicue. An arrow flies straight to the target. Water boils at 212 degrees F. If nature is always this efficient, using the least effort and energy as possible, why do we complicate our lives? The combination of stress, struggle, and needless suffering is the result of a mindset that sees no other way to live. But there has always been another way, as pointed out by the world’s wisdom traditions. Look into them, and you will find some astonishing propositions, including the following: Life was never meant to be a struggle. When you encounter the silent depth of your mind, some problems dissolve automatically while others present new solutions. Your higher self is real and wants only the best for you. A life aligned with the laws of nature is not only easier; it brings love, creativity, and bliss as our birthright.“ – Deepak Chopra
When we live life at the surface level of the mind, always reacting to what happens in our lives throughout the day and what‘s going on around us, it feels chaotic and stressful.
It feels like life is happening to us, and we‘re at the effect of external pressures, day in, day out.
We flood our mind-body system with the chemistry of survival (think adrenaline, cortisol) on a daily basis which contributes to a frazzled state.
This way of living starts planting the seeds of disease and undermines our capacity to access our potential and feel vibrant.
Reacting vs Responding to Life
When we‘re in a calm, relaxed and expansive state, we have the capacity to respond to life in a more powerful way.
When we‘re frazzled, stressed out and burn out, it limits the quality of our thinking which has negative consequences for our overall wellbeing.
So it‘s crucial that you have daily practices in place to access and create a state of flow and serenity that nourishes body and soul.
Obviously, being a Chopra Meditation™ Instructor, I‘m going to unapologetically endorse a daily meditation practice once again – seriously, it brings some serious magic into your life.
But there are 4 tools I‘d like to share with you, to take you away from reactivity and into your power.
Each of these tools is designed for you to access a deeper state of mind, which allows you to think with clarity and access qualities such as love, compassion and creativity.
I created this checklist to explain each one in detail, but here‘s a brief overview:
Cultivate expanded awareness – Practices such as meditation and yoga help you achieve this. The checklist explains how to do it on a moment-by-moment basis.
Pause – Introducing a pause when we notice something counter-productive is about to happen is very powerful.
Breathe – We can use the breath to signal to the body that it‘s ok to relax.
Ask silent questions – this is one of my favourite tools and when you practice using them often, they will become embedded in your mind, which helps you troubleshoot situations on the go.
I imagine a world where the majority of people live by the proposition that we have full power over our wellbeing.
That, at any moment of any given day, we can choose love over fear and possibility over suffering.
Where people get to know the truth of who they are and access the full power of their mind on a daily basis.
This is not to say that life won‘t present its challenges. We‘re not using these tools to bypass or burry our heads in the sand.
This is a matter of transcendence.
When we‘re firmly planted in this perspective, we can go out into the world and interact with each other from a place of wholeness.
Where our suffering is held by our wisdom, found in silence and stillness.
And ease and grace permeate every aspect of our lives.
Gorgeous one, you are powerful beyond measure.
May these tools be useful in getting you closer to the beauty that lives within you.
Love,
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, I’d love to invite you to sign up to my mailing list here. Every week I share loving insights & tips on how to reignite your inner spark and I’d love you to join our community!
Every day I talk to people in my community and I notice how many of us are struggling with overwhelm and burn out.
As a society, we bought into the idea that the natural progress of adult life is a slow decline in joy levels, peppered with struggle and loss of vitality.
We make things more palatable with all sorts of stimulation, distractions and quick fixes.
The best we can expect is to do well inside the limitations, responsibilities and burdens that adulthood has on the menu.
Have you noticed how many people around us have subscribed to that idea and live exactly like that?
With little room for joy, wild dreams, excitement and fun…
The world is organised around the energy of survival. And it’s easy to get sucked in.
But you and I (and every person on earth) are meant for radiance, love and beauty. We’re powerful creators, so full of potential, capable of so much.
We’re meant to be in love with life and radiate out our beautiful gifts, quirks and unique expression of our true essence.
Deep inside we all know this, that’s why the world around us feels SO OFF!
But the radiance we try to get from external sources lives right inside of us. And it can be so easily accessed.
This seems so counter-intuitive because our model for collective mental health convinced us that it’s hard to feel well on a daily basis. The western way of life is also constantly steering us in the opposite direction.
Day in and day out we activate the chemistry of survival (think cortisol, adrenaline, elevated heart rate), but this can be reversed through a simple daily practice.
The (not so) secret to experiencing bliss and turning on your radiance is a harmonised mind-body system. Daily meditation is a powerful way to achieve this.
By activating the right chemistry and priming your state of mind for expansion and creativity, life will feel like it’s meant to; a gift that keeps getting better and better.
One of the most powerful things you can do for yourself today is start a daily meditation practice.
The benefits are simply astounding and they explain why I became a certified meditation instructor.
6 [science-backed] benefits of meditation
1. It’s a powerful antidote to stress
One of the many benefits of meditation is its stress-fighting superpowers. Our body responds to stress with fight or flight response. The fight or flight response pulls us into a state of constricted awareness—it limits our capacity for thinking creatively, for broadening our perspective, or accessing our purpose.
This state is useful to react to actual threats, but when it becomes chronic, it causes physiological changes:
heart rate increases
blood pressure goes up
stress hormones increase
we breathe faster and heavier; anti-aging hormone production goes down
the clotting of blood platelets increases
our immune system weakens.
undermines the areas of the brain that feel gratitude, compassion, and connection.
suppresses the flow of energy and information through our mind-body system. The more stress we accumulate over time, the more constricted and less efficient the system becomes.
Releasing this stress is something very important we should all consider and meditation is a great tool for doing this.
Meditation induces a state of deep rest and in this state the body heals itself by eliminating stress, fatigue, and toxins in an easy, effortless and natural way.
As we meditate, our heart rate decreases, breathing slows down, immune function improves, anti-aging hormones increase, inflammation reduces; blood pressure normalises. All the other factors that were leading to ill health start to be reversed.
Also, our prefrontal cortex—the more evolved part of the brain—becomes more active, awakening a sense of gratitude, compassion, and connection.
The deep rest gained through meditation releases us from our constricted state into a state of expanded awareness. Where we can experience more creativity, equanimity, vitality, joy, and purpose. And this opens the doorway to a healthier, happier life.
2. Feel more bliss
Deep states of rest prompt the brain to release dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. These neurotransmitters are linked to different aspects of happiness, and meditation choreographs their simultaneous release. Meditation has also been linked to significant decreases in rumination, a cognitive process which plays a role in depression and other mood disorders.
Studies have linked mindfulness training to greater neural activity in areas of the brain associated with self-awareness and emotional regulation.
3. Meditation and mindful awareness heal the body
What happens in the mind affects the body (for better or worse).
Chronic stress can cause disease, deteriorate mental health and accelerate ageing. Meditation helps your body release stress, reverse fight-or-flight damage and improve healing processes.
Research suggests that meditation can increase parasympathetic nervous system activity and decrease stress-induced inflammation levels. Studies have even shown that mindfulness training can change the brain and immune system in a way that may strengthen resistance to disease.
4.Awaken your creativity
Meditation is a powerful practice for going beyond conditioned thought patterns into a state of expanded awareness. We connect to the field of infinite possibilities and open to new insights, intuition, and ideas.
Meditation helps you achieve a flow state: you do less and accomplish more. You aren’t burdened by the past or worried about the future—you’re flowing with the present moment.
5.Rewire your brain
Meditation is a powerful tool for creating new neural connections in the brain. By meditating, you can tap into your brain’s deepest potential to focus, learn and adapt.
Researchers have documented meditation-induced changes in the brain’s gray matter, noting marked alterations to brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. Mindfulness training is also linked to gray matter concentration changes in brain regions related to learning, emotional regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.
6. Enjoy healthier relationships
A regular meditation practice helps you develop witnessing awareness. It gives you the ability to calmly observe yourself in a situation and creating the space to respond, instead of react.
It also helps you let go of counterproductive beliefs and past experiences that might be getting in the way of enjoying love and connection with others.
It also dissolves a sense of separation from others and awakens a sense of love and compassion.
There are so many other amazing benefits of having a daily meditation practice, but these alone show how much of our wellbeing and quality of life is in our hands.
So today, I challenge you to meditate (even if for just a few minutes) and notice how you feel. Do this for the next few days and notice what shows up.
Your radiance awaits you. And it’s so needed in the world right now.
With love,
P.S. If meditation feels challenging to you, I created this guided meditation to make it easy for you. After you try it, let me know how it felt 💛
Self-hatred is the number one killer of your joy – and quality of life. It sucks away your dreams, keeps you unhappy and on a treadmill of seeking external validation.
It’s exhausting, debilitating and, frankly, a complete waste of the limited time we have on this planet.
Now imagine this. Imagine trusting yourself so deeply and loving yourself so much, that nothing you (or others) do could shake it.
Imagine being able to make decisions easily, feel great in your own skin, have immediate compassion for your shortcomings and love and honour every inch of your body and soul.
Even more wildly, imagine the voice in your head becoming a cheerleader, instead of your most vicious critic.
Imagine giving yourself permission to do what’s dear to your heart and live the way you’ve always secretly desired…. That’s what I want for you.
There was a time when I thought this was impossible and that self-doubt was just something I’d have to learn to manage – I’m so glad I was wrong!
The truth is I’ve struggled with my self-worth for most of my life. And I know I’m not alone.
I see so many people (especially women) who don’t know their value and suffer at the hands of their crippling low self-esteem. Are you one of them?
I certainly was. And believing that I wasn’t good enough was killing my soul and sabotaging my desires.
Deciding to start loving yourself is not for the faint of heart and requires inner work and commitment.
But, let me tell you, it’s 1000 times easier than carrying the heavy and bitter burden of the past that got you to believe the lie that you’re not good enough as you are.
I feel like it’s taken me a lifetime, but I’m finally at a place where I trust, love and know who I am. And I can tell you that my experience of life has completely transformed as a result of it.
Four Ways to Love Yourself Unconditionally & Stop Self-sabotaging
My quest for self-love started when I became a mum. I couldn’t bear the thought of my daughters learning their self-doubt from me (like some of us have learnt from our mothers).
The thought of them being tortured by a harsh inner critic daily at the expense of their happy, vibrant souls was a wake-up call for me to do something about my own.
My heart also knew I didn’t want to waste any more of my life settling for any kind of suffering or misery.
So I rolled up my sleeves and went on a mission to heal myself and rediscover what I’m truly made of.
I decided to create this self-love guide because it’s something I wish I had when I started.
To make it extremely easy for you and fast-track your results, I compiled the key tools and practices that reignited my soul and turned me into the goddess I am today – so you can do the same.
To really get the results you’re after, you’ll really want to do all the exercises in the guide and follow each step. But I’ll highlight what’s covered for you here:
Practice #1: Releasing negative beliefs and adopting a new perspective. Uncover the disempowering ways you view and treat yourself, create a new, loving way to look at yourself and your life and learn how to make it stick.
Practice #2: Gratitude. Harness the full (scientifically-proven) power of this practice and expand your self-esteem and wellbeing.
Practice #3: Affirmations. Learn how to use this practice to cultivate unconditional self-love and complete the challenge designed for you.
Practice #4: Meditation. If you decide to skip the entire guide and only do one section, make it this one! Learn how to meditate effectively, guided by a Chopra Meditation™ Instructor (yours truly) and access + reclaim your spark, your joy and the wellbeing that’s already inside you.
The guide is easy to follow/action and you’ll feel better and notice changes pretty much instantly.
The End Goal = Your Power, Freedom & Spark Back, Fast
I believe that there’s no end to the journey towards self-love. Your/my personal expansion is limitless and is a life-long journey and commitment. In my experience, the better it gets, the better it gets.
This is not to say there will be no setbacks and growing pains.
When I chose the title of this guide, I added the words “for good”. Here’s what I mean. You will still experience moments of self-doubt. But they will be fewer and far between. They won’t last as long either. And your baseline of self-love will be so much higher that you’ll never go as low as you have before.
Healing takes courage, for sure. And, on the surface, it may seem much harder to tend to our wounds than to carry on tiptoeing around them. But the toll this takes on our spark is brutal.
So healing is the way, and this guide will take you through it gently, but powerfully.
Grab your free guide here and start reclaiming your spark and confidence.
The presence of uncertainty and sudden, extreme change challenges our very existence and has the potential to compromise our wellbeing if we don’t keep our minds in check.
Are we grounded and present or are we stuck in the dream of disempowering perspectives and catastrophic visualisations?
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