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← CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Welcome to a New Chapter in the CREATRIX School
Dear Creatrix,
In the CREATRIX School, we look at the thirteen key areas of our lives, to bring clarity, confidence and connection to them.
And one area is not more important than any other, if you level up in one area of your life, you will always see the benefits in all other areas as well. So you can start anywhere, any time – as long as you start.
Consciously choosing to create change is so important because we were raised to struggle, fight, push and use force to get where we want to go, and we were told that life was hard, yet we have the power to change all that and to decide when it’s time to attract, enjoy, love and explore instead.
We can all live life with ease, and we already have all we need for that – but we will have to do is unlearn all the harmful things, we’ve learned in this lifetime, and those that are genetic memories from our ancestors and past lifetimes. And in the next four weeks we will do this very consciously in the CREATRIX School.
We will be training our mind to become more mindful, and through that, more open, more loving, more kind and more joyful. Each of these chapters is special, and this one is as well.
Yet, this one is extra special, as it will be structured in a slightly different way, than the other chapters.
Usually, we spend the first week getting clear on what we would like to change, and then, in the second and third week, I share tools, stories and exercises that help us to allow for the change we wish to create, and to practice new ways of being, to then integrate and reflect, in the fourth week.
But we kind of already know what we are dealing with in this Mindfulness chapter. We all have what we can call a monkey mind, a mind that when left unattended can take us to places we don’t want to go and that are harmful for our lives, actually.
So, we will learn how to become the gentle stewards of our minds, so that our minds won’t continue to take us where we were primed to go, but can instead support us to get to where we want to go. And for that, we will learn and practice how to consciously decide where we want for our minds to go instead.
To do that, we have to unlearn a few ideas, that harm us in our everyday lives.
I’ve selected ten perspective shifts, which, I think, are the most groundbreaking ones when it comes to learning how to be free to decide what you really want in life, and how to make it happen, and that allow for harmonious relationships as well, and I will share these with you in this chapter.
Because, I’m not just going to discuss the benefits of mindfulness, or tell you why it is so important to create a daily mindfulness practice, I want to help you to easily integrate a mindfulness practice into every aspect of your life, by understanding what has been keeping you from consciously choosing your thoughts so far.
But first things first.
What exactly do we mean when we talk about mindfulness?
This is what the Mayo Clinic says about mindfulness:
Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.
In this chapter, we won’t be using the term mindfulness to describe a type of meditation, though, something that appears to be separate or a break from everyday life, but we will see what we can do to let mindfulness become an integral part of our lives.
Which means that our mindfulness practice, from now on, can be a part of everything that we do. And for that, we will work with triggers.
One of these triggers can be judgement.
Because every time we find ourselves (negatively) judging ourselves or someone else, we are harming ourselves, and that’s one thing that we can begin to stop in this chapter.
We will get into this in more detail in the next lessons, but in short, judging always blocks the flow of life and keeps us from gracefully handling a situation, and it keeps us from being in the moment by bringing up opinions or memories of past situations.
Yet, if we mindfully observe a situation without judging it, we can actually find out what the best way to proceed is, and then take it.
But to become a mindful observer of our actions and thoughts, though, I believe, is impossible without a regular meditation practice. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Countless studies prove that meditation helps us to be more focused and present, happier, healthier and more relaxed.
If you don’t yet have a regular meditation practice, let today be the day you start because it will change your life for the better, like nothing else will.
And if you’d like to know how, here’s how to create a regular meditation practice.
One element that is key here, is, that it is easier to implement a rule 100% than to do it 99%.
Because if you don’t commit to doing it every day, you have to ask yourself and argue with yourself every day, if today is the right day to skip or not and that takes the energy and attention away from the actual task. 😉
Studies have shown, that even 1 minute of meditation has significant effects on our well-being, so there’s really no excuse – anyone can find one minute to meditate every day.
You could even do that in the bathroom during your break at work, before you go to bed, or right after you get up.
I would recommend meditating for at least five to ten minutes because the effects will be even more noticeable, but to start, just do what seems doable for you.
Focusing on actually doing it every day is much more important than the amount of time you spend meditating.
The positive effects you will have from your daily meditation practice, will also most definitely buy you back the time you spend meditating, as you become more focused, more aware, quicker to react and gain more clarity about the direction of your life in general.
And we will use this same strategy, with the rest of the mindset shifts as well. A 100% is always easier than 99%, in everything that we do – until it becomes our new normal, and then we don’t have to stick to any rules any more as we’ve successfully reprogrammed ourselves to be kind and loving and joyful and to know that we can indeed have everything we wish for.
But to start, we have to put in the work and make changing our thoughts our priority.
A Quick note
People often ask me about the best apps to use for meditation, and so I really want to let you know here, that you don’t need an app to meditate.
All you need is to sit still and close your eyes and try to think of nothing. It’s the simplest and, simultaneously, probably also the hardest thing.
But that’s what makes it fun.
And if you think you can’t do that because you have all these thoughts coming up, it just means you will have to first let out all your thoughts and do that for ten minutes or an hour a day. Once you’ve heard it all, your mind will eventually start to calm.
Why do we practice mindfulness?
Apart from the formal practice of mediation, for me, mindfulness starts with the way we talk to ourselves, so that will also be the first thing we look at in the next lesson.
As long as we spend our time judging or criticizing, blaming or shaming ourselves, we’re not going anywhere good.
So, we will start by noticing how we speak to ourselves. And you can start with this today. How do you speak with yourself? How often do you judge yourself?
The goal of establishing a mindfulness practice is to reduce stress, anxiety and to become more aware and, with that, more able to enjoy and fully participate in life.
It helps us to see things more clearly, and most of all, it helps us find more love for ourselves and all life around us, which inevitably leads to a more joyful and fulfilled life.
Many of us, me included, have grown up surrounded by voices of fear, insecurity and criticism.
These voices, however well intended they might have been, are now in our heads, and they can literally ruin our lives or at least make life pretty miserable.
But most people can’t just switch to a new language, without actually hearing somebody speak to us in different ways first.
This is why I’ve opened the CREATRIX School, so we can basically re-parent ourselves by learning how to look at ourselves and our lives in more loving ways. And guided meditations can help a lot here, as well.
One guided meditation that I remember especially well is a morning meditation from Abiola Abrams, which starts with her saying something like: “This is a wonderful day, simply because you opened your eyes.”
I cried every time I heard her say that in the beginning because nobody had ever said something so nice to me before.
I needed to hear other people say nice things to me, before I could really start to say them to myself, and I’m sharing this with you, because it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it might be true for you too.
Most people don’t know how much better their lives can get, because they’ve never personally known or interacted with someone who does live a better life.
So if you’ve dealt with a lot of criticism growing up, you might be in for a big surprise, and might not even be able to believe just yet, how much better your life will get, once you stop constantly criticizing yourself.
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