4 Signs That You’re Being Bullied By Your Mind
Have you ever had experience with bullying, whether you were the bully, or the one being bullied, or you’ve witnessed someone being bullied or bully someone else? If so, you know that the aim of the bully is to make the life of his or her victim miserable. This includes taunting you, insulting you, intimidating […] The post 4 Signs That You’re Being Bullied By Your Mind first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
Have you ever had experience with bullying, whether you were the bully, or the one being bullied, or you’ve witnessed someone being bullied or bully someone else? If so, you know that the aim of the bully is to make the life of his or her victim miserable. This includes taunting you, insulting you, intimidating you and abusing you emotionally and/or physically. Well, have you ever stopped to consider that you may be being bullied by your mind? If you’re looking at me funny, wondering what the hell I’m talking about, consider these 4 signs: 1) You believe all the awful thoughts that your mind throws at you. Basically, whatever awful thought that comes up in your head, you don’t even question it, you simply just believe it and react accordingly. 2) When you get hit by a barrage of negative thoughts, you simply just get carried away by them. In essence, when you’re mind gets caught up in one of its negative thought storms, you’re completely helpless to them. You have no idea what to do but to simply put up with them and let them do what they want with you until the storm ends on its own. This storm can last hours, days or even weeks. 3) You think according to how you feel. To explain, you allow your feelings to determine how you think. So when you’re feeling crappy, you start to, in a knee jerk way, think crappy thoughts which in turn leads you to behave crappy. 4) Your circumstances determine how you think Simply put, just like in point #3, when your circumstances look less than favourable, it negatively affects the way you think which in turn affects your outlook on life. ——————- Now, although we can say that these 4 points apply to 99% of people on this planet, meaning that it’s quite a normal thing, it shouldn’t be this way. The problem is that most of us think that this is just the way things are. However, there’s a Bible verse that says, “Do not be conformed by the conditions of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Another verse says, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Lastly, another says, “Walk by faith, not by sight.” In essence, the Creator created us with the intention and the ability of us having control over our minds. The mind is a great servant but a terrible master, and we were created to have dominion on this earthly plane. How can we have dominion the way we were created if we’re letting our minds bully us? This The Viable Alternative. Hope this helps, Ike Love <a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share_save addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theviablealternative.com%2F4-signs-that-youre-being-bullied-by-your-mind%2F&title=4%20Signs%20That%20You%E2%80%99re%20Being%20Bullied%20By%20Your%20Mind" data-a2a-url="http://www.theviablealternative.com/4-signs-that-youre-being-bullied-by-your-mind/" data-a2a-title="4 Signs That You’re Being Bullied By Your Mind"> The post 4 Signs That You’re Being Bullied By Your Mind first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
What ACTUALLY Is Masculine Presence and Grounding?
For years, when I would hear coaches, teachers and influencers talk about “masculine grounding” or “masculine presence”, although I had an intellectual understanding of what it was and would’ve been able to explain it to you from that understanding, on a deeper, more experiential level, I will admit that I was still clueless. Up until […] The post What ACTUALLY Is Masculine Presence and Grounding? first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
For years, when I would hear coaches, teachers and influencers talk about “masculine grounding” or “masculine presence”, although I had an intellectual understanding of what it was and would’ve been able to explain it to you from that understanding, on a deeper, more experiential level, I will admit that I was still clueless. Up until recently, if you asked me what masculine grounding was, I would’ve told you that it is the state of being calm, centered, nonreactive, present and rooted in your body in the face of various situations. I think that most people who are interested in this subject would’ve agreed with me if I shared this with them. However, on a deeper level, what does that actually look like? It was during the trials and tribulations I had faced this past spring along with going deeper into my daily Dr. Joe Dispenza meditations that I started to experience what that actually looked like. At the root of masculine grounding and presence is being able to deal proactively with your thoughts and emotions. It’s the understanding that you are an intangible, indefinable essence beyond your thoughts and emotions so you don’t need to identify with them. When you’re not identified with your emotions, there’s no need to judge them as “good” or “bad.”. Because you’re no longer judging the emotions that come up in your body as good or bad, there’s no longer an attachment or aversion to them and thus you’re no longer freaking out when the so called bad ones come up, nor are you chasing the so called good ones like a hit from a drug or clinging to them. Freaking out over the “bad ones” includes going up into your head to create dramatic stories about them which in turn intensify the emotions in your body which in turn leads you to behave in ways that’s not beneficial for you, the situation you’re in and the people around you. Freaking out over them also includes finding them so overwhelming, your nervous system shuts down and you go into freeze mode in order for your body to protect you from these feelings since you can’t handle them. Since you know you’re separate from these emotions, you’re able to fully feel their sensations and let them wash over you the way lightning may hit a lightning rod and flow right through it while the rod remains solid. This is where some people, especially men, go wrong. In the face of an intense emotion, many men think you handle them by stiffening yourself so that you don’t have to feel them. Now, while it can be argued that that may be a better way to react than just freaking out over them, when you behave in this way, you’re still admitting to yourself that you can’t handle these emotions and are identified with them because you see a need to cut them off or suppress them. This will cause repercussions down the line because emotions have to find a way to make it out of our bodies, and they can’t when they’re being suppressed. Since they don’t magically disappear, they remain stuck in our bodies causing problems down the line. In regards to all the negative thoughts that your mind may throw at you, you remain completely unresponsive to them and don’t take them personally because you know that they have nothing to do with you. You know that if you don’t react to them they’ll just fly by. You’re able to be this way because you’ve been able to build an embodiment within you that gives you an energetic, visceral internal sense of safety that you’re able to handle a wide range of internal storms that may arise. With this firm inner connection, you have grounding, and with this grounding, you have the capacity to be fully present to what’s going on internally and externally. And, you know what? Because you’re able to do this for yourself, you can now be that presence for women. They’ll be able to sense it and feel it off of you thus gaining their trust. This is The Viable Alternative. Hope this helps, Ike Love <a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share_save addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theviablealternative.com%2Fwhat-actually-is-masculine-presence-and-grounding%2F&title=What%20ACTUALLY%20Is%20Masculine%20Presence%20and%20Grounding%3F" data-a2a-url="http://www.theviablealternative.com/what-actually-is-masculine-presence-and-grounding/" data-a2a-title="What ACTUALLY Is Masculine Presence and Grounding?"> The post What ACTUALLY Is Masculine Presence and Grounding? first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
The REAL Reason Why Things in Your Life Get Worse Before They Get Better
Have you ever had that experience when you make a firm resolution and sincere resolution to finally deal with and improve a dysfunctional area in your life and everything just falls apart??? You expect that because of this resolution, things will start to fall into place but it does the exact opposite, almost in a […] The post The REAL Reason Why Things in Your Life Get Worse Before They Get Better first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
Have you ever had that experience when you make a firm resolution and sincere resolution to finally deal with and improve a dysfunctional area in your life and everything just falls apart??? You expect that because of this resolution, things will start to fall into place but it does the exact opposite, almost in a cruel, mocking way. I mean what the hell?? I remember back in the mid 2000s, when I was in the middle of a mental hell that lasted from 2001-2009 and was trying every and anything to get out of it, I decided in the beginning of 2005 that I wasn’t going to hang out with certain friends of mine that I was used to hanging out with for an entire year as a an “offering” or fast to God for Him to fix my life. It wasn’t anything personal towards my friends, they’re all great people and I love them dearly. Rather, I figured that by not hanging out with people I spent a lot of my time with, there was a possibility that hidden parts of me would start to emerge due to the removal of external distractions that I would lean on because I didn’t feel comfortable being by myself. As I think back, I’m astounded by how insightful that was because I was a bit of a mess. Anyway, after the year ended, I was brimming with excitement at the beginning of 2006 anticipating all the wonderful things God was now going to do in my life and all the amazing breakthroughs that I was going to receive that I had been praying for. The first occurrence I took as a sign that things were going to change was when I was changing in the locker room at the gym and my watch fell on the ground. When I picked it up, I saw that it was no longer working and decided to discard it, thinking to myself, ” Wow, this is a sign that new things are coming!” Then, little by little, the rest of the jewelry I used to wear – my rings, bracelet, chain and earing – would either get lost or broken so I couldn’t wear them anymore. No big deal right? After all it’s only jewelry. I didn’t think of it as a big deal, but after that, my career as a real estate began to flop. Before, then, I had been on a streak of closing deals and I thought I was soon going to the next level, but it got to the point where I couldn’t close a deal to save my life. Eventually, seeing the writing on the wall, I was felt forced to leave the industry towards the end of the year, broke and penniless and having to look for other work. I would return a little over 6 years later but that’s a whole other story. It was totally humiliating and demoralizing. Then, a little after leaving real estate, I found out my hair was thinning noticeably at the back of my head which was devastating to me because at that time, I was VERY looks conscious and still wanted to make it as a model. I thought my whole value as a human being was based on my looks. Nonetheless, when I discovered my hair was thinning, I still had a hairline and my hair still grew very fast, so I figured I had another 5 years before I needed to shave it. Nope. A few months later my hairline had receded so badly I had to shave my head completely bald. The barber was shocked because he always knew my hair to grow fast and was in fact making fun of me about that two months earlier. As a guy who put his whole value on his looks, I was depressed for three months and several times contemplated jumping out of a window. No joke. So, within 15 months, I was stripped figuratively naked – no hair, no job, no jewelry and little to no money all on top of already being in a mental prison. My whole sense of self was taken from me. Shortly after this, I would meet a woman who became a mentor to me. She gave me the advice to not look in the mirror or at my reflection for a week. When I did this exercise, it began to dawn on my how much I based my ENTIRE self esteem and self worth on my looks because I noticed how I was always looking at my reflection in one form or another. I realized that I needed to extend this exercise from a week to several months. Upon going back to my mentor and sharing with her what I discovered, she was pleased and told me that this was going to put me on the Path of connecting to the REAL me instead of the false sense of self I had based on my looks. Because of this experience, I don’t care about my looks nearly as much as I used to. Now, it gets weird from here so suspend your disbelief. Shortly after, I would meet this “deliverance minister” who had his own church. I would have these private prayer sessions with him where he’d pull these dark energies from within me and induce in me an emotional catharsis that began to free me of the mental prison that I had lived in for 8 years. Then, after meeting this guy, I was introduced to another one of these type of men. I eventually wound up going on a 6 week retreat with him and it was at this retreat where my mind was finally cleared and I felt mentally free for the first time in YEARS. I consider this time my rebirth. What the hell was the point of my entire story? My point is that things may seem to get worse before they get better because in order to build something new in your life, God, the Divine, the Universe, Source or whatever Higher Power you believe in has to tear down the old structure before building something new, and to build something new, He has to start with the foundation. You can’t build a solid building on a faulty foundation nor can you add something solid to an already faulty structure. Sugar on shyte is still shyte. As you’re very well aware, the tearing down process is almost never pleasant, but it’s key to becoming a more sold, whole person. This is The Viable Alternative. Hope this helps, Ike Love <a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share_save addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theviablealternative.com%2Fthe-real-reason-why-things-in-your-life-get-worse-before-they-get-better%2F&title=The%20REAL%20Reason%20Why%20%C2%A0Things%20in%20Your%20Life%20Get%20Worse%20Before%20They%20Get%20Better" data-a2a-url="http://www.theviablealternative.com/the-real-reason-why-things-in-your-life-get-worse-before-they-get-better/" data-a2a-title="The REAL Reason Why Things in Your Life Get Worse Before They Get Better"> The post The REAL Reason Why Things in Your Life Get Worse Before They Get Better first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
How Cooking Can Transform Your Sense of Masculinity
Summer has officially arrived in my part of the world and I couldn’t be more thrilled and happy because this is my favourite season! Woohoo!! Anyhoo, some time back, I wrote a blog titled, “9 Ways You Can Find Your Strength As a Sheltered, Emasculated Man,” and one of the things I suggested in this […] The post How Cooking Can Transform Your Sense of Masculinity first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
Summer has officially arrived in my part of the world and I couldn’t be more thrilled and happy because this is my favourite season! Woohoo!! Anyhoo, some time back, I wrote a blog titled, “9 Ways You Can Find Your Strength As a Sheltered, Emasculated Man,” and one of the things I suggested in this blog was to learn how to cook for yourself. As first glance, it seems like an odd suggestion because cooking can be considered feminine. Many men, when it comes to looking for “wifey material,” have a requirement that the girl knows how to cook. Also, when men want to compliment a meal that they had, we often say, “It’s just like Mom’s cooking.” Along with clothing and shelter, food is considered as one of our basic needs, but not only because we need it to survive, but also because on an emotional level, it makes us feel loved, nurtured and cared for. To highlight this, consider the phrase, “A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Food not only involves the emotions of being loved, nurtured and cared for, it also engages our other senses of taste, smell, touch and sight and when you’re truly connected to your body, you’re able to really appreciate and enjoy food on a visceral level. In my honest opinion, food is feminine because it involves the sensual. The problem however is that in this day and age in this society, we’ve grown to have a dysfunctional relationship with food because there’s so much unhealthy food out there that’s promoted and consumed that’s causing a huge health crisis. Then, because many men don’t know how to cook for themselves, if they’re single and living alone, they’re forced to go to outside places to get their food where they have little to no control over the ingredients that go into this food. Food is the building block of health, and many of these holistic, integrated or functional medicine doctors who help cure a lot of these “incurable” chronic ailments often tout that “food is medicine.” Overcoming emasculation involves taking responsibility over your life. This includes learning about and choosing to consume foods that give you health and vitality, and then taking back your power by learning to cook for yourself the foods that you personally enjoy instead of giving that power over to an establishment or business that may not have your best interest at heart. And even if that business or person has your best interest at heart, how much more empowered would you feel if you learned to cook that for yourself in a way that you enjoyed instead of depending on that person or business? To overcome a feeling of emasculation, you have to learn to build a healthy relationship with the feminine part of you as well as the masculine. Learning how to cook for yourself will teach you how to provide that nurturing, care and love to your own self rather than depend on it from a woman like your Mom or a woman you’re dating. This will give you more balance as a masculine man and help fuel and support the masculine part of you. In my personal experience, since I learned how to cook for myself, I’ve found it to be an amazing, empowering feeling to be able to cook healthy food for myself that tastes good. On one end, it leaves me with a sense of sovereignty and independence, and on the other end, it’s a way that I show love to myself. This is The Viable Alternative. Hope this helps, Ike Love <a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share_save addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theviablealternative.com%2Fhow-cooking-can-transform-your-sense-of-masculinity%2F&title=How%20Cooking%20Can%20Transform%20Your%20Sense%20of%20Masculinity" data-a2a-url="http://www.theviablealternative.com/how-cooking-can-transform-your-sense-of-masculinity/" data-a2a-title="How Cooking Can Transform Your Sense of Masculinity"> The post How Cooking Can Transform Your Sense of Masculinity first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
I thought I was the only one who dealt with morning anxiety where as soon as you wake up, you get a flood of negative thoughts and anxious feelings about life which get your day off to a bad start. However, after encountering a number of other people with similar experiences, I’m finding that it’s […] The post Do You Deal with Morning Anxiety? first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
I thought I was the only one who dealt with morning anxiety where as soon as you wake up, you get a flood of negative thoughts and anxious feelings about life which get your day off to a bad start. However, after encountering a number of other people with similar experiences, I’m finding that it’s quite a common occurrence. The problem is that most people feel completely helpless to it. My educated guess is it occurs because since the conscious mind is inactive when we’re sleeping and still less active when we’re waking up, it leaves room for the subconscious mind to bring up memories, thoughts and feelings from our past that are usually buried in our subconscious mind. Then the other part is the fact that we think anxiously because of habit. As I’ve been on this journey of breaking the habit of being my old self, the morning anxiety I’ve encountered has become a lot easier to deal with. This is because I’m learning to become more aware of my habitual thought patterns and not reacting to them, feeling the sensations of the emotions in my body without reacting negatively to them, and listening to my body as to what it feels like doing. For instance, this morning when I first opened my eyes after my alarm went off, I could feel my mind literally looking for thoughts that would cause me to feel fearful, gloomy, discouraged and anxious. I could also feel my body trying to assume the physiology of an anxious person and behave anxiously. It’s literally like a program that was running me. In the past, I would normally get swept away by this program where I would go off into a loop of thinking negative thoughts that would trigger anxious feelings which would cause me to think more negative thoughts and on and on, but because I’ve been a lot more self aware in the past several months and have more tools at my disposal, this wasn’t the case this morning. When I noticed that my brain was throbbing to think negative thoughts, I just simply felt the throbbing without letting myself think the subsequent or accompanying negative thought. At times, I would feel into my heart to feel a “higher” emotion of my choice and direct my mind towards a positive thought or affirmation. After awhile, the energy behind the throbbing dissipated and my body heaved a noticeable sigh. When I felt the uncomfortable sensations in my body that I had been conditioned to think negatively about and judge, I simply just felt the sensations in whatever part of my body they showed up, and stayed with them without going up into my head to dramatize, judge or make a story about them. After awhile, my body just let go of it through a deep exhale and my body relaxing. When I would feel my body wanting to hunch or slump over in a defeated, discouraged posture which would send a message to my brain to be anxious, I kept my energy up to disrupt that message. After doing this for some time, my body released the energy behind the impulse to behave this way via another deep exhale. Also, what I learned recently was that some of the anxiety was due to an unexpressed emotion that I had suppressed in my past because at that time it was “unsafe” to express it. The anxiety I felt was due to my nervous system wanting to express something but me unconsciously holding it back. When I noticed this coming up, I surrendered to my nervous system and allowed it to express what it wanted to express. This means that when I felt waves of anger came up, after surrendering to the sensations of it, I was led to grab a towel and twist it until all the anger expressed itself and released. Other times, I would feel the impulse to flail my right arm in the air and after doing that for a few minutes, felt this release of more “anxious” energy. Another time I was led to bounce up and down on my bed while sitting up, and after some time of doing that, I felt more anxious energy release from my body. There were times when I felt led to say, “I hate everybody” or “Screw this world,” or at another point, “I can do whatever the f*** I want.” I would repeat these phrases out loud quietly but aggressively until I felt all the energy behind that dissipate as well. It may sound all odd, but it worked. After about an hour doing all of this in the process of doing my morning routine while I was getting ready for work, that whole wave of impulses to think, feel and act anxiously left me and I felt I was back as the driver of my life. Now, some mornings, in fact more and more as of recent, I don’t have to go through all this because my mind, on its own, due to my intentional conditioning, shuts down any impulse to think negatively, but this morning wasn’t one of those times because the impulses were a lot stronger. What I’m learning is that it’s not about eradicating anxiety as much as it is about properly building the capacity within our bodies to properly stay grounded in it and contain it so it doesn’t sweep us away. Subsequently, when the body knows it has the capacity to deal with anxiety, it feels more safe thus reducing the anxiety. What also helps is the conditioning of the mind to stop thinking the thoughts that trigger the feelings associated with anxiety. This is The Viable Alternative. Hope this helps. Ike Love The post Do You Deal with Morning Anxiety? first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 3)
Hey, I’m back again with this being inhibited and stifled stuff. Dealing with that is a bitch ain’t it? In my last two blogs, I shared how you may be inhibited and stifled due to the fact that you’re disconnected from your body, or due to past instances where you chose to suppress certain parts […] The post Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 3) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
Hey, I’m back again with this being inhibited and stifled stuff. Dealing with that is a bitch ain’t it? In my last two blogs, I shared how you may be inhibited and stifled due to the fact that you’re disconnected from your body, or due to past instances where you chose to suppress certain parts of you to survive in the environment you were in (I don’t only mean physical survival, but also emotional survival). But I’m writing this because there’s more. Look at your life and ask yourself, was there ever a time where you went through something so emotionally painful that you decided that you never wanted to experience such an emotion again so you decided to suppress your ability to feel or numb your feelings altogether? You may have also decided to avoid situations that you see as a potential to trigger those feelings. One particular area where such things are common is love and relationships. Maybe you were once head over heels in love with a girl and she dumped you or betrayed you by getting knocked down by a group of dudes who you thought were your friends and as icing on the cake, left you with an STD. Or you were at one time one of those clueless guys who dealt with a ton of rejection with women whose love and affection you tried to buy with gifts and favours, only to find out there was a snowball’s chance in hell of them ever being with you. When you finally found that one girl who you thought was “it” and made up this whole relationship fantasy with her in your head, after chasing her for months she winds up shutting you down HARD. It could also be that you lost several people close to you in a short span of time or ONE person really close to you and the grief was just unbearable. Whatever the case may be, the situation was so painful that with little emotional intelligence you had at your disposal, you decided that in order to protect yourself, you were going to suppress your emotions. The problem is, when you decide to suppress your ability to feel one type of emotion, it suppresses your ability to feel ALL emotions across the board, including the so called “good” emotions like joy, happiness, freedom, awe, fulfillment, worthiness, etc. Oh, you may be able to “feel” them at some level, but you won’t be able to enjoy them to their fullest extent. The flow that comes with you being fully self expressed requires that your being able to fully accept and feel all the emotions across the spectrum – the “good” ones and the “bad” ones or, to put more accurately, the pleasant ones and the unpleasant ones. I remember the story a childhood friend and former podcasting co-host told me about the wife of social media personality and performance coach, Preston Smiles, named Alexi Planos. Apparently, she was the victim of sexual assault before she met her husband, and, as a coping mechanism, she decided to suppress all the pain from that experience. Some time later she had decided to put together some event. My memory is foggy as to what it was. I believe it was some charity or fundraiser for some less fortunate group. Or it may have been that she had gone to present said group with some gift that was truly helpful. Nonetheless, at the event, while everyone was feeling joy and gratefulness, she said that she couldn’t share in the joy of others or enjoy the fulfillment of putting on such a successful event because by suppressing the pain of her trauma, it also muted her ability to feel joy and happiness. This was when she decided that it was time to go on a healing journey to heal from her trauma. If you want to fully be free, you have to be willing to feel everything on the spectrum fully. This doesn’t mean you let these emotions control you and you become wildly emotional and reactive. It means that you can experience these emotions on a visceral level and allow them to go through you. After all, they are just sensations in our bodies. What makes them “bad” is the story we attach to them in our heads. In order to fully enjoy the highs of life, you also have to be able to fully feel its lows. In essence, to really appreciate heaven, you have to first go through hell. This is why you see a lot of millionaires and billionaires who live in abundance talk glowingly about their journeys to success. Although it wasn’t fun at the time going through the struggle and hardship they met along the way, the contrast of what they experienced then helped them to appreciate what they have now. You can’t fully open yourself to the freedom life has to offer if you’re not willing to expose yourself to the risks as well that come along the way of attaining that freedom. You can’t enjoy the full delicacies, riches, blessings and healing of being in a loving relationship with a women if you’re not willing to open yourself up to the potential dejection, heartbreak, abandonment, and inner turmoil that may come with it. Ironically, it’s what you suppress out of a fear of feeling is what is keeping you from fully living and BEING. This The Viable Alternative. I got one more for you. Stay tuned. Hope this helps. Ike Love The post Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 3) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 2)
In my previous message, I shared with you that a reason why you may be inhibited and stifled is because you’re disconnected from your body which is what you feel with, and if you can’t feel, you can’t flow. Well, I will share with you another reason by illustrating a story. A friend of mine […] The post Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 2) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
In my previous message, I shared with you that a reason why you may be inhibited and stifled is because you’re disconnected from your body which is what you feel with, and if you can’t feel, you can’t flow. Well, I will share with you another reason by illustrating a story. A friend of mine has a daughter who liked to sing, but one day he noticed that she hadn’t sung in awhile so he asked her why. She explained to him that a girl in her class told her to stop singing because she couldn’t sing, so, out of likely shame, embarrassment, and fear of not being accepted, she stopped singing. Fortunately, her father intervened, told her that the girl who told her that didn’t know what she was talking about because she had a great voice, and encouraged her to sing as much as she liked. Had her father not intervened, she would’ve grown up with a deep desire to sing that was suppressed and concealed due to shame and fear. Although she may have forgotten about the incident which caused her to stop singing and though she may not be aware of the emotions associated with the event, her behaviour of holding herself back would’ve persisted. The result would be every time she had that natural urge to express herself, “something” would be holding her back and she would acquiesce to it every time. This would undoubtedly result in her feeling inhibited and stifled but clueless as to why. Imagine a similar experience happening MULTIPLE times to you over the course of your life and especially during your childhood when you were more vulnerable and impressionable WITHOUT the edifying intervention of an adult or someone you respected and you will see that it is a foregone conclusion as to why you feel so inhibited and stifled. Think about your life and mindset as a child. Your mind was undeveloped and immature, so you were bound to misinterpret things that happened to or around you based on your limited understanding about life. Your parents or primary caretakers had the power of life and death over you. You knew that and they knew that. They were the source of your food, clothing , shelter, sense of security, sense of self, and love. You had to believe they were infallible to maintain this sense of security, this included believing in all the hurtful things they may have said to or about you. You also had to do what you felt was necessary to feel loved, safe, secure and validated. This included hiding and suppressing certain parts of you that were criticized, punished or scolded by your primary caretakers (or even other family members like older siblings or cousins) for expressing. On top of your household being your whole world, so was school. Any type of ridicule, ostracization, humiliation, threat of physical violence or rejection meant your whole world was over as far as you understood it. As a result, you had may have had to suppress certain aspects of yourself to mitigate these factors. This self suppression may have especially been the case if you were unpopular, chronically bullied or had difficulties making friends. So, as an adult, with all this history of having to suppress different aspects of yourself out of shame, fear, guilt, immature thinking, rejection, abandonment, abuse or neglect that you may not even remember, you’re feeling stifled and inhibited. When you have this inclination to be free and fully self expressed, your body, which is part of your subconscious, holds you back. This is why many people choose to drink or take drugs to “loosen up.” They help numb these feelings that hold them back so they can get some semblance of freedom. But depending on an external substance for your sense of freedom is not a healthy option. and can cause problems down the line. You will also notice that saying 300 million affirmations about how you’re free and fully self expressed doesn’t help either. Believe me, I’ve tried. The most effective way is to get in touch with your body so you can connect with those feelings that are associated with you holding yourself back. You have to connect with them so you can feel them, and, when this happens associative memories come up, you have to use the images from those memories to establish a deeper connection with the feelings associated with those events. When this happens, your body will start to process these buried emotions so it can let go of them. This will result in the unfreezing of your nervous system that kept you stuck in the first place. This process can also involve you giving the YOU in that memory the feelings that you needed but didn’t get to help release the emotion which will also help unfreeze your nervous system. This will help give you your freedom back. This is The Viable Alternative. Stay tuned. There’s more to share about this but I don’t want to turn this into a book so I’ll share this in another piece. Hope this helps, Ike Love The post Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 2) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 1)
Do you ever feel stuck, stifled, or inhibited where you feel that there is charismatic, charming, confident person locked away inside of you and you can’t seem to access him? You participate in a conversation, or you approach that woman you like, but when you want to fully express who you are, it feels like […] The post Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 1) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
Do you ever feel stuck, stifled, or inhibited where you feel that there is charismatic, charming, confident person locked away inside of you and you can’t seem to access him? You participate in a conversation, or you approach that woman you like, but when you want to fully express who you are, it feels like something is holding you back and instead, all you’re able to do is muster is some robotic, stifled, self conscious response. It feels like you’re trapped in a mental prison and locked in some haze. I know what it’s like because I lived it for a number of years, namely from 2001-2009. At times, it was so bad that I wanted to end my life. As such, at times I can see and feel when others are going through the same thing. There are quite a few reasons why this happens, but one of them is that you’re trapped in your head. Now I know you may be thinking, “No sh*t Sherlock, I know that’s the issue.” Well here’s the thing. In terms of understanding human beings, modern society, namely Western society is very segmented. It separates the mind and the body. This is why when you have an issue with your stomach, you go to the gastroenterologist. If you have a problem with your heart, you go to the cardiologist. If you have a hormonal issue, you go to the endocrinologist, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, it teaches that the mind is in your brain and all thinking and being comes from your brain whereas your body is a bunch of bones, flesh and tissue that holds up your head and supports the brain. But let me ask you something: When you see athletes play sports, or dancers dance, or musicians play instruments, do you really think they’re thinking logically with their brains? No, far from it. They’re just being, and by them just being, they’re flowing. Thinking in the way we think of thinking would just get in the way of what they’re doing. There’s a cute little story a friend of mine once told me at the gym. A grasshopper once approached a centipede and asked it how it was able to walk effectively with all those legs. The centipede thought about it and fell down. What I’m trying to say is that the mind and body are not separate, rather they’re one and intrinsically interwoven. This is why a person engaging in repeated negative thinking can cause disease in the body. It’s also why you can hear stories of people who, when they let go of deep emotional resentment, they wind up healing from some chronic ailment. There are new sciences that have emerged such as psychoneuroimmunology and psyneuroendocrinology that address the mind-body connection. In addition, our brain is not our only intelligence. Our body has an intelligence of its own. There are different nervous systems in separate areas of our body like our heart, our gut and our pubic area. They make their own decisions and send messages to the brain just as the brain sends messages to different parts of the body. Your heart intelligence has to do with your ability to connect with someone, your curiosity and your compassion. Your gut, which has a nervous system the size of a cat’s brain, has to do with your instincts, intuition and self esteem, and your pubic area has to do with your creativity and passion. When you connect your consciousness to different clusters of neurons, that’s when you get mind, i.e. a different type of “thinking.” But when you center your consciousness solely in your head, you’re cutting yourself from all the different intelligences of the body. In terms of thinking, the brain’s main job is to collect and analyze data and make decisions based on that. Indeed that is an important part in our day to day activity but it’s not all that we are. When you’re focused solely on that part of you, that’s when you become imbalanced. People like this are what you call “heady.” They’re very analytical and intelligent but they also come across as stiff, stifled, and robotic. Because they’re stuck in their heads, they’re disconnected from their bodies, and because they’re disconnected from their bodies, they can’t feel. Yes, thoughts are the language of the brain, feelings are the language of the body. While the brain can analyze or interpret a feeling, it can only think. It can’t feel the sensations of a feeling. So because a person who’s stuck in his head can’t feel, he can’t be present, and therefore he can’t flow. He has to constantly make calculations in his head for what he should do. This is fine when you’re solving a math problem, but weird when you’re in a social setting. Flow comes with feeling, and to feel, you have to connect to your body. If you find yourself stuck in your head, it could be due to some emotional trauma where your body is has stored some emotion from one or more past situations and you being in your head is a way to avoid experiencing these feelings. Or you could’ve been brought up in an environment where people were very heady and detached from their bodies, and you picked up those habits. Or you could’ve been raised in an environment where feeling and personal expression were frowned upon and being heady and intelligent were exalted. Whatever the cause, to free yourself and become fully self expressed, you have to learn how to reconnect to your body. This may involve somatic therapy, psychedelics, breathwork, yoga, meditation or some other embodiment practice that will help you heal the emotions in your past while teaching and helping you to become more comfortable being in your body. This is The Viable Alternative. Hope this helps. Ike Love The post Why You’re Inhibited and Stifled (Part 1) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
What to Do When You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances (pt. 2)
In my last message, I shared with you what to do when you feel trapped by your circumstances. The moral or the “takeaway” of that message was that if you want to see change in your life, you can’t wait for your circumstances to change in order for you to feel you have the permission […] The post What to Do When You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances (pt. 2) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
In my last message, I shared with you what to do when you feel trapped by your circumstances. The moral or the “takeaway” of that message was that if you want to see change in your life, you can’t wait for your circumstances to change in order for you to feel you have the permission to change. Instead, YOU have to change first for change to occur on the outside. You do this by adopting the feelings ahead of time that associated with the life that you want to have. But wait just a cotton picking minute…. There are other instances in your life where you feel trapped not because you’re waiting things to change around you to give you the permission to feel a certain way and they’re not changing, but instead because you actually FEEL trapped. Yes, sometimes in life, you feel trapped, because you’re feeling trapped. This may be due to the fact that you’re caught in a miserable marriage or relationship that you feel you can’t leave for various reasons (kids, finances, fear of being alone, separation too expensive, etc.), or you’re at a job that you despise but you feel you can’t quit because you need the money, or it may be an unsatisfactory living situation. In a situation like this, you have to realize that your body is communicating to you that something is wrong and just because you feel you can’t or won’t leave your current situation, doesn’t mean you ignore your body and its needs. This is a time when you feel and connect with yourself and find out what you really need on a emotional level and find ways to meet those needs. If you ignore your body, that “alarm” will start to get louder and louder and may soon take the form of depression, anxiety or some type of chronic illness or condition. Also, no matter your excuse for staying in your undesirable situation, there is some type of attachment you have to the situation in the form of an emotion. In other words, there is a feeling you’re harbouring that is keeping you in the situation. It could be fear, pride, anger, a need for approval or love, etc. What would be of benefit to you is to connect to this emotion and fully feel it in your body no matter how unpleasant or scary it may feel. As you do this, your body will start to process it and let go of it, revealing to you more clarity about your situation that will enable you to make a more proactive decision that’ll help alleviate your situation. Now, you may also feel trapped and have absolutely NO idea as to why you’re feeling this way. All you know is that you feel caged in, which builds frustration within you and either makes you want to or actually lash out. If you’re experiencing this, chances are that you’re in some situation that you’re settling for, or doesn’t serve you or that you’re unhappy about that you’re LYING to yourself about by saying everything is okay even though your body is telling you otherwise. It could be that you’re in a profession that society deems prestigious and also pays well, and because of this, even though you loathe being in it, you try to convince yourself that you’re happy. OR, if you’re not lying to yourself, you’re so disconnected from your core self that you’re not even aware of how dissatisfied you are. It could be that you’re living a life that is based on what others like your parents, teachers and society as a whole told you was “right” but you never once looked within to find out what type of life resonates with you at your core, and now your body is trying to tell you what’s REALLY up. Cue in my first job out of college after receiving a Computer Engineering degree. I had ticked all the boxes of society’s definition of success at my age but still wanted to throw myself through the window almost everyday at work. I didn’t realize at the time that I was living in misalignment. Nonetheless, because society is so broken, we’re not taught how to deal with our feelings in a healthy way so we wind up trying to outrun the feeling by trying to outthink it, or numb it through food, weed, alcohol, porn, entertainment, prescription meds and a multitude of other distractions. Psssst……NONE OF THAT WORKS. Once again, you have to welcome and connect to these feelings associated with feeling trapped and fully feel them through. It’s by feeling your emotions that your body is able to let go of them and you free yourself from their grip. It’ll also enable you to gain the clarity and resources needed to resolve your situation. This is The Viable Alternative. Hope this helps. Ike Love <a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share_save addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theviablealternative.com%2Fwhat-to-do-when-you-feel-trapped-by-your-circumstances-pt-2%2F&title=What%20to%20Do%20When%20You%20Feel%20Trapped%20by%20Your%20Circumstances%20%28pt.%202%29" data-a2a-url="http://www.theviablealternative.com/what-to-do-when-you-feel-trapped-by-your-circumstances-pt-2/" data-a2a-title="What to Do When You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances (pt. 2)"> The post What to Do When You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances (pt. 2) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
What to Do When You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances (pt. 1)
2013 was truly a crappy, difficult year that I was truly happy about when it ended. First off, a woman who was a close family friend (she was friends with my parents and I was friends with her kids) and gave me my first summer job after my Freshman year in college was killed in […] The post What to Do When You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances (pt. 1) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.
2013 was truly a crappy, difficult year that I was truly happy about when it ended. First off, a woman who was a close family friend (she was friends with my parents and I was friends with her kids) and gave me my first summer job after my Freshman year in college was killed in a gruesome accident. Three months later, I lost a childhood friend and then 6 weeks later, his father died, and then three weeks after that, another childhood friend of mine within the same crew got diagnosed with testicular cancer, which he thankfully beat. Fun times. While these instances certainly sucked, the persistent pain the entire year was the frustration I dealt with regarding my finances. I had decided to go back into real estate as an agent and from the beginning of the year, I couldn’t close a deal to save my life. It took me 6 months to close my first deal and I think I only did two or three after that. Day in and day out, I would come early to my office, grind it out by viewing apartments, posting ads, responding to inquiries from clients and taking them out only to leave the office late in the evening with no results. As a job that was full commission, no results meant no money. In the meantime, it seemed that everybody was closing deals around me and receiving these nice commission checks. “If only I could close a deal,” I thought to myself, “I could make some money and not feel like I was merely taking up space in the office.” This sense of embarrassment and feeling like a failure made me more attached to the outcome of closing a deal which made me push harder which gave me an air of desperation which, in turn, if you know anything about being too desperate for something, guarantees that you push that thing further away from you. There were so many things that I planned to do with the money I earned to live the life I had envisioned for myself but with me not being able to have the success I wanted at this gig, I had to put my plans on hold which gave me this feeling that my life was on hold. I felt trapped, like a caged animal, because there was a world out there that I wanted to live and a type of person I wanted to be, but circumstances were blocking me from living them and I being that type of person. I wanted my circumstances to change so badly so I can be free but nothing was moving. There are few things more emasculating than feeling imprisoned by the circumstances around you that refuse to budge no matter how much of a concerted effort you put into changing them. You want to either lash out at the world, beat yourself up for being an inept fool, or, ahem…jump out of a window. The thing is that even though things sucked and it would’ve been nice if things were “better,” the issue wasn’t the circumstances, the issue was ME. I felt trapped but it didn’t have to be that way. If you’ve been feeling trapped due to some situation going on in your life – relationship, finances, career, health, living situation, etc. – because you’ve thrown everything and the kitchen sink at it and things stubbornly won’t budge, and now you’re left waiting for things to change in order for you to feel better, that’s the issue right there: you’re waiting for things to change in order for you to feel better. Why not just feel better now? Why do these undesirable circumstances have to be an excuse for you to not embody the feelings associated with the circumstances that you do want to see? The only reason that you don’t do this is because you’ve been conditioned to behave a certain way by parents, peers, friends, family, adults when growing up, the media and society as a whole that involves you looking for permission from the outer world to allow you to feel a certain way and allowing circumstances to dictate how you think and feel. It seems so normal because you’ve been doing it your entire damn life. This is The Illusion that we’ve all been programmed into where we’re taught to give our power away to our circumstances and the environment around us. Now if you’re cursing me out as you read this and saying all sorts of unkind things about my mother because I couldn’t possibly know how hard you’ve had it, let me ask you this: can you imagine a the sight of a green pig flying through the air and you being amused by it? Can you imagine a very sad moment in your life? Can you imagine someone that you’re very attracted to? If the answer is “yes,” (which I hope it is), then you can certainly escape the prison you’ve been living in by creating an intention for the circumstances you desire for yourself and combining it with the feelings associated with it, and then consistently live in that feeling in the midst of your sucky circumstances. When you do this, you will lower the stress levels in your body which will put you in a more resourceful state which will enable you to start seeing opportunities that you previously couldn’t see that will enable you to change your situation. You will also vibrate at a higher energy, which will cause you to attract ideas, circumstances and people that will help create a new reality for you. Yes, I said it. You attract what you vibrate. If there is any question about that, I invite you to walk around with a heavy scowl on your face for the next few days and see the “goodies” that come to you. When you experience a strong feeling in your body, it doesn’t know the difference of whether it’s an actual event or an imagined event, so you can “trick” you body into believing that you’re living different circumstances, and it’ll respond accordingly. We’re made up of atoms, and atoms are 99.9% energy, so we’re made up of energy. Emotions are energy. An emotion is also a vibration. The frequency at which we vibrate determines what we attract in our lives, so if we want to change our situation, we have to change our frequency. Now, one of my gripes among many about the self help industry and Churches is that they have all these nice platitudes regarding this subject such as “Your attitude determines your altitude,” or “Walk by Faith not by sight” but at the end of the day, we have little to NO idea of how to implement these fluffy, sometimes annoying platitudes in our lives. The truth of the matter is, learning to think and feel above your circumstances involves the breaking of an old habit and adopting a new habit, so I promise you, IT WILL TAKE SOME CONCERTED EFFORT BEFORE THE NEW HABIT TAKES HOLD. It will involve you first figuring out the emotions associated with the circumstances you want to feel in your life and then setting some time aside to feel these feelings with your heart on a regular basis so you become familiar with them. Then, you have to become conscious of ALL the times when you slip into your old programming of thinking and feeling in accordance to your undesirable circumstances and when that happens, interrupt this pattern and replace it with choosing to feel the emotion(s) that you’ve been practicing. Note that this doesn’t mean suppressing your emotions (I will explain about that in part 2 of this post). As with the breaking of any habit, I promise you it’s not going to be easy, but what’s the alternative? Feeling trapped by your circumstances where you’re just a passive spectator in your life? By engaging in this process, you will feel more powerful in your life because you will be giving your own self the permission to be, do and have what you want in your life rather than your circumstances. Your relationship with your circumstances will become more empowering because rather than being seen as something that traps you, you will see it as an opportunity to help you shed your own skin and grow into someone stronger and wiser. This is The Viable Alternative. Hope this helps. Ike Love <a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share_save addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theviablealternative.com%2Fwhat-to-do-when-you-feel-trapped-by-your-circumstances-pt-1%2F&title=What%20to%20Do%20When%20You%20Feel%20Trapped%20by%20Your%20Circumstances%20%28pt.%201%29" data-a2a-url="http://www.theviablealternative.com/what-to-do-when-you-feel-trapped-by-your-circumstances-pt-1/" data-a2a-title="What to Do When You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances (pt. 1)"> The post What to Do When You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances (pt. 1) first appeared on The Viable Alternative.