One of the big enigmas in the way we perceive things when it concerns personal development, may well be the difference between the way we think we perceive ourselves in our own inner world as opposed to the way we think the outside world perceives us.

When we are  happy we literally beam happiness, with the feelings of bliss affecting the people in our environment. It makes the people around us more open, more approachable, which in turn makes it easier to connect.

In general it can be said happiness attracts happiness. Happy environments make people feel good and attracts them like bears to honey.
This however also goes the other way around. Someone who is constantly moping and muttering, who without obvious reason claims to be maltreated and has something to say about all and everything, will attract only few people willing to listen.

What is interesting about both phenomena, is that in both cases the person creating the good or bad vibes, most of the time has no awareness of the effect they resort.  This while it could literally make a world of difference in the way we perceive or are perceived.

The key to this enigma is the degree to which we experience ‘our moments’, the ones we all have, as that is the frequency with which we send our messages into the world.

Ask yourself this:

How many times a day do you feel content about something?
How many times are you discontent about something?

It’s worth while to keep track of these two different facets on paper
On the left side, write down the moments of discontentment, with a number of evaluation between 1 and 10, with 1 being simply discontent and 10 being highly unhappy.
On the right you register the moments of contentment, with the same numeral evaluation between 1-10 , with 1 being simply content and 10 being unconditionally happy.
At the end of the day you add up both columns and evaluate which one has the highest score, the column of contentment/happiness or the column of discontentment/unhappiness.

An evaluation like this shows how many times we seem to draw negativity into our lives or …it makes us aware of the number of good moments or how we at times take good moments for granted.
It brings awareness, just like honestly writing down the number of calories one eats per day will be more surprising than one  would have thought.
Registering the moments of content/discontentment gives insight in how moments of discontentment come to exist and how moments of contentment are at times undervalued.

There’s one condition to doing this self evaluation: you have to want it. Nobody can be forced to evaluate themselves, but that shouldn’t stop anyone else from climbing the ladder of awareness.

Ingrid Schippers, 22-03-2016

This blog is recorded as weekly end-note of Dutchbuzz.nl, the radio program for internationals, every Tuesday on The Hague FM from 10 to 11 pm. All programs are archived at Dutchbuzz.nl.

The post The Key to Happiness. appeared first on EN Energycounseling.nl.

There are those moments where suddenly the light bulb goes on.
Things I’ve seen happening right under my very eyes for very long, yet as I’m so used to seeing them happen the way they do, I hardly ever question their validity.

Recently I came to notice certain patterns about myself, that I had never even recognized as such and by that I mean I had not even recognized them as a patterns, but simply as something I was used to doing a certain way. Something I was used to doing the way I was brought up to believe was the right way to do.

Obviously everyone needs certain convictions to go by, a springboard from which to start and base decisions on, but convictions can be very binding and blinding and close off doors to new opportunity if we don not question them every now and again.

While some convictions can be there to protect us from doing things rashly, they also have the ability to ground someone in the negative sense of the word, preventing that person from evolving.

A recognizable pattern, familiar with many is arachnophobia: Fear of Spiders.
Regardless of where, when or how it developed, many shy away from spiders and are unable to touch them. Spiders instill a certain fear.
Yet even though these fears consume precious moments and situations, only few people will actually do something about it. Instead ‘they learn to live with it’, as such creating a reality that includes a pattern that accepts fear of spiders as a fact of life.

This while it is relatively easy to get rid of fears. Hypnosis, Tapping, Behavioral therapy, self-reflection, a wide range of methods live out there next to spiders; some only taking little time and effort. Even simply holding a spider just for once can be effective and make way for other things in life, provided of course the fear is unfounded and you’re not squeezing a black widow or other poisonous spider between thumb and index finger.

‘But why should I get rid of my fear of spiders?’ one may wonder. ‘As long as I avoid them I’m perfectly all right.’

But see here’s the point. Avoiding things, avoiding confrontation, takes time and space and consumes a certain percentage of an every day allotment of energy. Just imagine you would have an certain quota of energy of 100% that equals 10 hours of a day and even as little as 2% goes to looking out for spiders on a daily basis, meaning 12 minutes per 10 hour day. On a yearly basis that is 12 minutes times 365 is 4380 minutes is 73 hours, is more than 3 full days and 7.3 10 hour energy days that are spent on looking out for spiders. Just think how you could spend that time differently and what you could spend it on.

Next to being liberating and therewith rewarding, getting rid of a fear opens windows of opportunity, that we do not sense or foresee as long as we stay in the old pattern of fear. Energy invested into one fear, cannot be used for something else, so my point is that even though I fool myself at times by saying I’m perfectly fine with the way things are; getting over my fears and changing these things can give me space I could not even have dreamed of. That is the reward for initiating change.

In their book ‘Energy Medicine’, Donna Eden and David Feinstein present a surprisingly easy exercise called the temporal tap, involving tapping the left and right temple area above the ears while using an affirmation.
I’ve found a little video for you to watch where Donna explains the principle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6yH0gdyu8Q

The post Fear of Spiders and Other Obstacles appeared first on EN Energycounseling.nl.