THE BEST WAY TO BE HONEST

Being Truthful Can Be Cruel      Being truthful can be cruel if the truth you are telling is not communicated with compassion. 

There is a saying that goes something like this: “If something is the truth, is necessary, but is mean… don’t say it”. 

Honesty and Compassion    Even though you feel you’ve got to let it rip, remember the best way to be honest is with compassion. Both flourish when there is balance, but one without the other can be destructive, even dangerous. 

This blend of honesty and compassion doesn’t come cheap. The price is self awareness and a certain self-transparency. Of course, no one can demand this of you. You alone decide just how much you want, and are able, to share about yourself or what you think of others. 

Transparency     You won’t achieve transparency in your relationships by leaving the other person “naked”. You have to risk getting “naked” yourself. Can you get out of defense mode and stop protecting yourself at all costs? Do you know and can you show both your strengths and weaknesses? 

You become transparent when you find your healthy real self, and this takes courage. Your false selves, “people pleaser,” “tough guy,” “martyr” to name a few, may have run your life for years. Exposing these false selves and leaving them behind is not for sissies, but necessary in order to find the best of who you are. 

Hope But No Expectations     However, even if you have courage and can risk being transparent, do not expect the same in return; not everyone is ready to be real. If you are reading this, you probably are one of the blessed ones who are ready to change their lives. 

So act from the best of who you are. Demand nothing but hope for the best. Your gift of honesty, compassion, and transparency may influence your friend, partner, sister, brother, mom, or dad… it may “hit” them in the right spot, and encourage them on their journey to their healthy real self. 

And we all do have a healthy real self. It may be underdeveloped or hidden, but that’s part of the challenge. When we learn to be honest with compassion for ourselves and others, we invest in that healthy part of us--the best of who we are and step by step we uncover our the person we were meant to be. 

Dr. Beth Cujé, therapist and author of the book, Become the Person You Were Meant to Be, gives you the chance to explore some of these ideas. Look inside the book at www.amazon.com or download its first chapter for FREE. Just click hereand get an idea of what the Choice-Cube Method can do for you.

Are You Conscious Of Your Subconscious?

PERCEPTION FILTERS – THE MEANINGS WE ATTACH
Cells within your body respond to your thoughts, specifically interpretive thoughts, i.e. the kind that explain to your subconscious mind how you see the world at a given point in time.

Let’s say you encounter a lion… when this happens you automatically go into survival mode…unless you are a lion tamer. In this case, unlike most people, you will have completely different beliefs about how to relate to a lion.

Based on your past experiences and the meanings you attach to the lion, you will be able to interact with the animal without activating your survival mode. Your beliefs will let your body and mind remain calm–in the brain’s “learning mode.”

Interpretive thoughts are beliefs. These thoughts or beliefs act as perception filters in your subconscious mind. They influence activation of certain processes within you as well as management of all your body’s systems. Your perceptions offer all the information your subconscious needs to operate and do the following:

- Guarantee your basic survival.

- Remind you of the emotional drives that connect you in a meaningful way to life.

THE JUDGE AND THE ROBOT

 Now, here are two key points. First, your conscious mind is like a judge and your subconscious mind is like a robot. The judge can rule over your subconscious mind…that is as long as you stay aware and mindful.

Your subconscious, a genius at multi-tasking, is designed to process huge amounts of information every second, while your conscious mind processes a much smaller amount at any given time. Therefore unless you know how to stay conscious of your subconscious, whenever you are distracted or overwhelmed, your subconscious will override your conscious mind and run your life.

Jack can stay out of bars as long as he makes a conscious effort to do so. But let him get too tired or angry, he automatically heads for the bar where he feels comfortable and happy.

Second, believe it or not, your subconscious cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not real. So what you believe to be true becomes the truth for you. And you will express it in your body, emotions, mind, and behavior.

Annie is a beautiful girl, but she grew up thinking she was a “plain Jane,” She automatically dismisses complements and slouches around feeling ugly and unwanted.

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS

• You have an experience.
•  You automatically attach meanings-perception filters-to the people, things, or problems related to that experience.
•  These filters produce mind images that trigger emotions and physical sensations in your body.

Experience  >   Meaning Attached   >   Emotion(s)

It’s a tidy little package in which what you focus on causes your subconscious mind to bring up meanings that you attach to a person, thing, or problem. These meanings then set off emotions and physical sensations within your body that release hormones into your blood, affecting the chemical firing of neurons in your brain that lead to the same thoughts, emotions, and behavior and reinforce the whole cycle.

IT MAKES SENSE TO STAY CONSCIOUS OF YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS
Since your brain is always set to either a negative way of perceiving---a negative perception filter---or to a positive way of perceiving, it’s a good idea to become conscious of your subconscious. Awareness gives you some choice.

Dr. Beth Cuje, therapist and author of the book, Become the Person You Were Meant to Be, gives you the chance to explore some of these ideas. Look inside the book at

Amazon.com

or download its first chapter for FREE. Just

click here

and get an idea of what the Choice-Cube Method can do for you.

OVERWHELM: WHY GET RID OF IT RIGHT AWAY

In today’s world, you can’t waste a minute. Being efficient and fast are decisive factors in success. However, the stress of our drive to be successful, to thrive, to accomplish goals can accumulate in our bodies and minds until one day, “out of nowhere”, we start feeling overwhelmed. Slowly, but steadily, life’s demands can render us incapable of controlling its stressful consequences on our bodies and quality of life.

SOME SIDE-EFFECTS OF OVERWHELM Email, the phone, the news, advertisements, our jobs, politics, environmental issues, religion, and the Internet, among many others, overload our minds with information. This constant flow of information can confuse us, make us lose focus, and put us out of control.
A few side-effects of overwhelm are:

- “Over-care,” which is the feeling that it is your duty
to take care of everyone because no one else will or can.

- “Blind Ambition” to the point of wearing yourself out.

- “Performance anxiety”; you are afraid that if you don’t
do more you will be fired.

Millions of people today live at the mercy of overwhelm: day after day they worry about how they can juggle everything they have to do. They just keep going because they “have to”, because there is no way out. They finally reach a point where they are incapable of seeing that life can be different.

Then one day… your mind fills up with everything you have to deal with, crashing your nervous, immune, and hormonal systems. Chronic overwhelm settles within, and along come the anxiety disorders. If you do not take care of this, you will start experiencing phases of anxiety, fatigue, and anguish. This will make you more vulnerable to disease and, you will not only look older, but your organism will actually age much faster.

PROJECT ANXIETY A trap many fall into nowadays is “project anxiety”, i.e. when you put in a lot of mental energy into a project and, without being aware of it, lots of emotional energy too.

This great amount of energy can cause tunnel vision, blocking your ability to see and appreciate other important aspects of your life. When anything or anyone gets in the way of such a vision, you can get highly irritated, anxious, and frustrated; you may push people away, disregard everything else in your life, and keep on going until overwhelm invades you, creating an emotional chaos.

Such overwhelm will acutely damage your relationships, quality of life, and of course, the project that made you reject everything and everyone else.

STIMULATION OVERLOAD But there’s more! There’s also what is called “stimulation overload”. We see this in people of all ages who incessantly look for different kinds of stimulation like: food, sodas, coffee, the Internet, shopping, movies, TV, and video games. The “devil” out there knows exactly what buttons to push to keep you addicted.

So, how can you identify if you are falling into this overwhelm inferno?

Well… here are some hints:

- If you are always in a rush, have too much to do, or
not enough time.

- If your mind is scattered and you feel out of control.

- If you feel irritated when anyone or anything breaks
into your focus.

- If you regularly feel knots in your stomach, something
that bothers you.

- If you feel impatient, lack compassion for yourself
and others, and are judgmental.

- If you feel a constant slow burn inside.

- If you feel low-grade shock and strain.

- If you don’t feel anything, positive or negative;
if you are paralyzed mentally or emotionally.

- If you feel disconnected from life.

- If you don’t enjoy projects, relationships, or
life in general.

REFUSE TO ABANDON YOURSELF Your insides can tell you, if you let them, when enough is enough. If you refuse to abandon yourself and you pay attention to your body, emotions, and thoughts, you will get signals that it is time to stop and re-focus. If you don’t listen, there’s the danger of ending up in an “overwhelm” nightmare.

Dr. Beth Cujé, therapist and author discusses these issues and more in her book, Become the Person You Were Meant to Be. She’s offering you the chance to download its first chapter for FREE. Just click here and get an idea of what the Choice-Cube Method can do for you.

11 IMPORTANT THINGS YOU MUST KNOW ABOUT EMOTIONS

Whether you are new to learning about and acknowledging your emotions or are a master on the topic, it is always good to remember these 11 facts about your emotions… Remember, you must know your “enemy” to be able to conquer it: 

1. Emotions reflect what we believe about something—the meaning we attach to it. 


2. Emotions give meaning to life. Without emotions, life would be a chore. 


3. Once our emotions are sufficiently stirred up, they can drive our thinking, will, and behaviors. 


4. All emotions have physical sensations that we can recognize if we check our body. 


5. Numbness, an aspect of overwhelm, is just as much a feeling as anger and fear. 


6. Simply admitting to ourselves that we have a PACS-FOGD feeling—I hate that. or I’m afraid or ashamed. or I feel numb.—and labeling that emotion, anger, fear, shame, overwhelm, quiets the amygdala in the emotional center of our brain. 


7. We can acknowledge and accept a negative emotion without acting on it. 


8. Each emotion has a limited amount of emotional “charge.” Once we identify an emotion and use the tools to interrupt and release it, we weaken it and can manage it better. 


9. For Christians, honestly admitting we have a PACS-FOGD feeling can be like repenting. When we are honest and compassionate with ourselves, we can accept God’s forgiveness and trust his power to help us overcome negative emotions. 


10. Emotions that we mindfully and appropriately release do not return! When we mindfully and appropriately let go of an emotion, what we let out does not return. It sometimes seems as if the emotion has come back, but this is not the case. What we are experiencing in such cases is more unreleased feelings pushing up to the surface, now ready to be released. 


11. Remember—if we fail to release negative emotions and mindlessly repeat them, we strengthen them and give them power to control us. We must be careful here and not shut down our feelings. Rather we can learn how to let go of them safely and appropriately (without hurting ourselves or others).

Copyright Dr. Beth Blevins Cujé 2009

Very wise and easy to understand but, where is all this coming from? What’s PACS-FOGD? What do I do with this?

It all comes from the Choice-Cube Method, and is now available for you!

Dr. Beth Cujé, therapist and author of the self-help book, Become the Person You Were Meant to Be, gives you the chance to download its first chapter for FREE and discover the best way to live.

Just click here and confirm what the Choice-Cube Method can do for you.

A Look Inside the Minds of a Victim and a Victimizer

The Victim-Victimizer Swing

The victim and the victimizer are actually the same person. Both live inside of us,

because we are both.

Depending on where we are in life, we can become one or the other. In a negative state of mind--in the shadows--we swing between being victims and victimizers. We respond to people and situations either as a victim or a victimizer.

Are You A Victim?

As a victim, we are in the “one down, less than, underdog” position. We give up our healthy self and try to find an identity and safety in submission and weakness. The message is: “I am at someone’s mercy because of my needs and desires. I feel trapped.”

Are You A Victimizer?

As victimizers, we go against others. We take the “one up, better than, top-dog” position, trying to find an identity and safety in domination and control. The message is: “I stay in control and fix, criticize, or dominate others because of my needs and desires, or because I feel threatened.”

Some  Facts About The Victim-Victimizer Swing: 

-      As far as we go one way, say as a victim, we will go equally far the other way, as a victimizer.

-      We send out signals, with or without our awareness, to let others know our position, and others will respond to our signals.

-      Victims seek out victimizers and vice versa. For example, women whose default position is victim usually end up with abusive partners.

What Is Your Default Position?

Though we swing between being both victim and victimizer, one position will be our default, the position where we start and end. Following is a look inside the minds of each:



If you wish to get to the bottom of your Self to find your true identity, the Choice-Cube Method can help…and help you now!

Dr. Beth Cujé, therapist and author of the self-help book, Become the Person You Were Meant to Be, gives you the chance to download its first chapter for FREE.

Just click here and confirm what the Choice-Cube Method can do for you.