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“How Do We Become Strong & Confident From Within?”

by: Pragito Dove

First, be one with yourself. Accept yourself. Love yourself.

Society conditions, educates, and “civilizes” each of us in such a way that we begin to condemn ourselves. For example, society states that you should not be sad. You should be happy. If your truth is that you are sad, you repress the truth, and become something you are not; you become phony. This phony side of you is what society accepts. A division is created within yourself. 

Psychological pain exists because you are divided, at war within yourself. As a result, life becomes complicated. When you lose touch with your inner truth, and are living from a divided self, pulled this way and that, by your desire to please and be accepted by others, you find yourself lost, isolated, and deeply unhappy. You create challenges, adversity, and difficulties to keep yourself distracted and to prove to yourself that you are worthy.

 

If, however, you are able to live your sadness with total authenticity, the division disappears. For example: you are sad: that is the truth of this moment. But your conditioned mind says: “You have to be happy. Smile! What will people think of you?” 

Here is the problem: you pretend, you act, you repress the truth. The phony becomes the ideal.

How can you know, and love yourself, if you don’t accept yourself?

Live your sadness in total authenticity, and you will be surprised. A miraculous door opens in your being, because the division disappears. Sadness is there and there is no question of any ideal to be anything else. There is no effort, no conflict, no war. “I am simply this” and there is relaxation. And in that relaxation is grace, and joy.

Psychological pain exists because you are divided. Pain means division, and joy means no-division. You might be thinking: how can feeling my sadness bring joy? It looks paradoxical, but it is true. Try it. However, please note: accepting your sadness with an agenda to feel joy, is not going to work. Joy arises through your authentic expression of sadness. 

Joy is a by-product of being authentic.

 

Joy is a natural consequence of being united with your sadness, because it is your truth, in this moment. In the next moment you may be angry: accept that too. And the next moment you may be something else: accept that too.

Live moment to moment, with acceptance, without any division, and self-love, self-worth, self-confidence arise within you, naturally, and automatically.

Drop all ideals of how you should be, and accept who you are, in each moment.

 

The journey of self-acceptance starts with becoming aware of your feelings, and allowing yourself to feel your feelings. We are human. Feeling is a part of the human experience. Get used to feeling because feeling is to LIVE, feeling is to be ALIVE. When  uncomfortable feelings arise: allow, experience and accept.

On the other side of your sadness, hurt, and despair is your magnificent, brilliant, luminous spirit, which is not damaged. Your spirit is love, and when aligned with your authenticity, guides your life with grace, and ease.

Accepting yourself, warts an’ all,  helps you become strong and confident from within, so that no matter what other people think or say, you are deeply rooted in your own self-worth. Your feelings are the key. Love is always waiting on the other side. The only thing blocking you from receiving more love is your resistance to feeling your feelings.

Are you thinking: I don’t want to feel because I don’t want to be hurt any more?

I understand. I went through this very same experience.  As I allowed myself to start feeling, something wonderful happened. I began to feel more love,  to laugh, and enjoy my life more. I was  liberated  from a prison of pain and opened up to more self-love, self-worth, and self-confidence, AND  to receiving more love from others.

Inner strength and confidence are an inside job. When you get to the point where you can accept yourself, the need for challenges, adversity, and complications, just falls away, because you don’t need to prove your worth any more to yourself.

Meditation: Accept Yourself– 4 minutes

Benefits: In the very experiencing of your feelings, a spaciousness is created, and miracles can occur. Trust that, even when you feel miserable, on the other side of the misery, is love. Our natural state is love. All we have to do is accept who we are, in any given moment, and love is there.

 

Start gently, with compassion for yourself.

Sit, or lie down, whichever is most comfortable for your body.  Breathe, relax your body, open your palms upwards, in a receptive posture. Allow your feelings, whatever they are, without judging, condemning or criticizing yourself. Accept what is happening, in each moment, without wanting it to be different. When you fight what is, you make it worse. You are the way you are: accept yourself with joy, with gratitude.

 

Reproduced with permission from Pragito Dove www.discovermeditation.com

“Are You Afraid of Failure?”

By Judi Moreo

People can be so afraid of failure that they do unimaginable things to avoid it. They avoid taking any chances because if they try something and it doesn’t work out, they think will be looked upon as a failure. To make matters worse, we often see successful people’s profiles in the media and think they must either be geniuses or they were naturals at what they did. And yet, if you look closely at the lives of these people, you will discover a much different picture. What is not shown is all the hundreds of times these people have failed, prior to being successful.

Failure is a great tool to figure out what not to do the next time around. If something you tried didn’t work, that is no reason to give up on your project. It should be used as a road map to reevaluate what went wrong and adjust to make it work.

Sometimes, you may need some help as you won’t know why what you tried was a failure. In this case, it may be worth it to find a mentor who can evaluate what you are doing and help you to get back on track. This may cost you some money upfront, but good mentors are certainly worth the money when they help you produce results.

Even if you decide to try everything on your own, seek out influential people who can help you. Read about what they have done and how they handled their failures. There are many biographies of famous people and what it took them to get where they are.

There is a side benefit to failure and that is showing others your tenacity. By continuing to evaluate what went wrong and never letting it get you too far down, it is hard to imagine that you won’t succeed. There will always be setbacks, and sometimes it may be necessary to take alternative measures like side jobs, etc. By keeping focused on what you are trying to accomplish and continuing to implement what works and discard what doesn’t, you are well on your way to succeeding in whatever it is you are attempting.

One aspect that you will see common among people that have used failure as a learning tool is they never stop learning. They are constantly making themselves better at everything they do. They read and follow other successful people and try to emulate what those people have done. It is truly a case of success begets success.

Judi Moreo is one of the most recognized personal growth trainers and coaches in the world. She is the author of 24 books including 2 international bestsellers, “You Are More Than Enough” and “Ignite the Spark.”  As a personal achievement coach, hypnotherapist, and NLP practitioner, Judi will help you discover that you really are More Than Enough to achieve the success you desire.  She has informed, inspired, challenged, motivated and entertained audiences in twenty-nine countries around the globe.   Judi has received many awards including the Woman of Achievement, Entrepreneur; the Nevada Business Person of the Year; has been inducted into the Business Hall of Fame; and in 2020, received a HerStory Award from the Women’s Federation for World Peace. To contact Judi Moreo, judi@judimoreo.com or 702-283-4567.

“Music and the Brain”

By: Stephanie Thompson

As I mentioned in a previous article, neurologists have found that music activates the brain in unique ways. According to Kathleen M. Howland, a Speech and Music Therapist, babies and newborns can detect the beats in music and sea chanties were used to bring sailors together to complete a universal task. People with Parkinson’s Disease can walk normally to music and children with autism respond well to it. In his book, “This is Your Brain on Music,” Dr. Daniel J. Levitin tells how he had patients who were unable to read a newspaper, but were able to read music. People who have had strokes may not be able to speak, but they can communicate through song and people who stutter, do not do so when they sing.

In the book, “Music and Autism, Speaking for Ourselves” Michael B. Bakan explains that ‘the strong identification with music that many autistic people have, sometimes in tandem with exceptional musical abilities, has been observed frequently since the advent of autism studies in the 1940’s.’ Autistic people are able to express themselves through music or the playing of music when they can’t talk to communicate.

Dr. Daniel J. Levitin goes on to say in his book, “This is Your Brain on Music,” ‘that musical activity involves nearly every region of the brain that we know about and nearly every neural subsystem.’ In other words, nearly all five parts of the brain; the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and cerebellum are all affected by music in some way.

Let’s review what the different areas of the brain do. ‘The frontal lobe is associated with planning and self-control.’ For purposes of music, ‘trying to follow along with music that you know… recruits additional regions of the brain, including the hippocampus-our memory center-and subsections of the frontal lobe.’ ‘The temporal lobe is associated with hearing and memory. Listening to or recalling lyrics involves language centers… in the temporal and frontal lobes. The posterior part of the frontal lobe is associated with motor movements and spatial skill. The occipital lobe with vision.’

‘The cerebellum is involved in emotion and the planning of movements. Tapping along with music involves the cerebellum’s timing circuits. And ‘the emotions we experience in response to music involve structures deep in the primitive, reptilian regions of the cerebellar vermis, and the amygdala-the heart of emotional processing in the cortex.’

If you would like a more in-depth look at the brain, and how it functions, I highly recommend Dr. Levitin’s book. He goes into intricate detail which I found fascinating but for the purpose of this article, was not necessary.

Stephanie Thompson is a classically trained inspirational pop singer-songwriter, vocal coach, actress voice-over artist, and member of SAG/AFTRA and Actor’s Equity. She is the Entertainment Director and the main performer for EmpoweringHumanityTV.com, and the networking events. Currently, Stephanie is impacting many lives with her healing through music online educational programs.