You've Got Questions. This Book Has Answers

“Become the Person You Were Meant to Be - The Choice-Cube Method” 

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Why do I often feel as if I’m hiding the real me?................. Chapter 18

 What are the signs of a functional family?....................................................Chapter 17

Why am I my own worst enemy?....Chapterer 10, page.83ff.

 Why is forgiving so hard for me?.....Pages 141, 106, 161

How can I be a good parent?............Chapter 17

·      Why do I often feel like a victim?......................................Page 83ff.

·      Why is change sometimes so hard? ...............................Chapter 6

·      Why do I always do what other people want?.............. Chapter 18

 

·      I want to change my husband, but I don’t know how………....….Page 104ff.

·      What are some ways I may try to avoid issues?……………….......…Chapter 1

·      What are some ways I may try to control issues?.........................Chapter 1

·      Can I really be my own best friend or loving parent?..................Chapter 19

 

·      How does my subconscious affect my life?..................................Page 79

·      How can I get more joy and peace in my life?..............................Chapter 2

·      How does someone become addicted and why?........................Chapter 20

·      Can I really break an addiction?  How?..........................................Page 172

 

·      What’s the best way to handle anger?...........................................Chapters 4 & 9

·       What does it mean to be mature?....................................................Chapter 21

·      What is one way to handle internal conflict?...................................Page 100.

·      What can I do when I’m between a “rock and a hard place?”…...Page 100

·       How do I build self-confidence?.......................................................Chapter 9

 

·      Why do I pick partners who make me miserable?.........................Pages 176-178

·      Are there really only three ways to deal with difficulties?............Chapter 1

·      Why do I feel so much shame?...........................................................Pages 160-167

·      Who is responsible for who I am today? My parents?....................Pages 179ff.

·      Do I have a false self?...............................................................................................Chapter 18

·      What happens in my brain when I create a habit? ……………………………… .....…Pages 31-32

·      Why do we create negative habits? …………………………………………………………….Chapter 14

·      Why do I keep repeating thoughts and actions that hurt me and others?......Chapter 6

·      Why am I so afraid of some things that my friends and family love?..............Pages 28ff.

·      Why do I swing between running away from issues and blowing up?.............Chapter 1

 

     If I missed one of your questions, I invite you to email me at: bethcuje@choicecube.com.

     I will do my best answer your question.    Warmly,  Dr. Beth

Catch Someone's Stress Like You Catch A Cold?

• Avoid
• Change
• Choice
• Control
• Subconscious

Emotions are energy and like a cold they can be “caught.” The more intimately connected you are to a person, the more vulnerable you are to being affected by his or her e-motions (energy in motion). There's always the danger that you may subconsciously take on feelings they deny, stuff them into your subconscious, and then unwittingly express them as if they were your own. 

Luis's Story..    Luise and his wife Tina are a case in point. Luis, a handsome 45- year-old, was an angry person who denied his anger. He was known as a “nice guy.” His wife, Tina, seemed to be the angry one. 

Eventually, Tina went into therapy for help with “her” anger. She worked hard in therapy and learned that she could choose whether or not to be angry. When she started to manage her anger, a strange thing happened: Luis started acting like one angry guy.  

All those years, Tina had subconsciously carried and expressed Luis’s stuffed anger. Now that her feelings of anger were under control, she no longer expressed his rage for him. This forced him to express it himself, and Mr. Nice Guy, to everyone’s surprise, started having unexplained temper flare-ups.

Are you struggling with a carried feeling reality? When you work with your emotions, stay open to the possibility that you, too may be struggling with a carried feeling reality (also called limbic resonance or “tanking”) You may have made someone’s denied feelings your own and now find yourself expressing them. 

Brad's Story.   Brad had an unreasonable terror of drowning from early childhood. He learned in therapy that his fear was a “carried feeling reality” that he had taken on from his mother. His mother, as a child, saw her own baby sister drown and couldn’t save her. To deal with the tragedy, his mom stuffed her feelings of grief, and guilt over her little sister’s death. She never resolved that issue and unconsciously, had passed those emotions on to her son who now had an unexplained fear of drowning. 

What about you? Are you possibly carrying someone’s emotionally energy for them? Do you want to make some changes? It is always possible to do something different. You can retrain yourself, change and grow, and engage life more fully. 

If you want to understand yourself better as well as seeing the research behind iwhat you learn, take a look at Become the Person You Were Meant to Be – The Choice-Cube Method: Step by Step to Choice and Change.  The book can increase your self-understanding  and also provide 4 Key Steps and simple Tools or techniques to help you get unstuck, change, move toward becoming the person you were meant to be.

This Video: Cousin To The Choice-Cube Method?

"My thinking was in a rut." laments our hero bike rider Destin in the video below. Ah, how true that can be!                                              

Destin had become used to riding his bike (thinking, feeling, acting) one way.                                                                                                It took him eight months of repeating the different way of bike riding before he saw a real change. 

Are there areas of your life where your "rutted thinking" causes you to think, feel, and act certain ways? Does change seem almost impossible?

You may have found that simply wanting to change, or even trying to change doesn't always work.

It's not so simple. As Destin says, " If you have a rigid way of thinking in your head, sometimes, you can't change that, even if you want to." 

So, like me, you may get impatient and want to stop trying. Perhaps you even beat yourself up, telling yourself what a failure you are because you don't change.

Well, here's good news and bad news. The good news first: You can change! And... if you change one part of the problem, you make changes to the whole system.

The bad news? When a way of thinking, feeling, and acting becomes a habit, it has become a "biological chain reaction." 

Hum, biological chain reaction? What's that? It's is a set of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that have become like connecting cross-country ski trails in your nervous system. Once you start on that trail, if you don't know how to interrupt it, you will follow it to the very end. The habit like a CD and you are the CD player

A habit or biological chain reaction is both physical and psychological. It's psychological because it affects your mind, will, and emotions, causing you to think, feel, and act the same ways over and over. It's physical because of the trails embedded in your nervous system.                                    

Once a set of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is firmly established in your nervous system, you can no longer analyze or will yourself out of that habit.

You have acted yourself into a set of reactions and now, you will have to act yourself out of it, step by step, choice by choice.

To change, instead of repeating the same old reactions you will have to train yourself to do something different each time something triggers those old thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.. 

If you want to understand this better, take a look at Become the Person You Were Meant to Be, especially Chapter 6 on changing behaviors. The book also offers the Choice-Cube Method as a way to actually make changes, get unstuck, and move toward  becoming the person you were meant to be.

The 4 Best Emotions You Can Feel... And Should Strive To Achieve→

Do you think you are a positive and happy person?      

Gratitude is the hallmark of a positive, happy person and the PACS emotions--the 4 positive types of emotions that change lives--are the essence of gratitude.

When you are in PACS, you are "in the light," Can you imagine being fully in the light? When you are, you will experience one or all of the positive PACS emotions. All four are available when you are in the light.

Here's a list of the PACS emotions with many of their expressions. Remember to look for gratitude. All forms of PACS are linked to gratitude.

Without further ado, I present to you PACS/Grateful & Curious:

1. PEACE:  This is a deep, mindful sense of peace. Something we all desire. When we enter into this kind of peace, we are filled with  gratitude.  

Expressions: accord, agape, balanced, boundless, calm, composed, content, at ease, faith-filled, flexible, free, fulfilled, harmonious, order, oneness, quiet, serene, still, trusting, whole

2. ACCEPTANCE/LOVE:    This is the feeling that accompanies understanding, compassion, forgiving others and accepting forgiveness for ourselves.  

Expressions: appreciative, approving, belonging, beloved, compassionate, considerate, connected, delighted, empathic, identifying with, loving, merciful, open, receptive, secure, sufficiency, trusting, understanding, warm

3. CONFIDENCE/ZEST:    This allows us to experience life with keen enjoyment. We take on challenges that make us stretch and grow. We live in the present with confidence and hope for the future.

Expressions: assured, adventuresome, courageous, challenged, cheerful, committed, creative, curious, daring, eager, enduring, enjoying, enthusiastic, faith-filled, hopeful, integrity, interested, joyful, natural, optimistic, playful, positive, resourceful, responsive, righteous, safe, spontaneous, secure, thrilled, trusting, willing, wonder-filled

4. SATISFACTION:  Also known as positive pride, this is a healthy sense of worthiness and integrity. Satisfaction can be the emotional reward for a job well done. Filled with gratitude, satisfaction comes from being content with who we are and with our best efforts.  

Expressions: accomplished, balanced, comfortable, dignified, excellence, flexible, fulfilled, honorable, in-order, overcoming, personal best, playful, positive pride, righteous, truthful, tuned in, worthy

Three interesting facts about these positive emotions are: first, you will always feel gratitude; second, if you feel any of them you will discover that you feel all four; and third, being in PACS is as much physical as it is emotional, because these emotions affect your whole body.         

But “Where does this concept of PACS come from!?” you ask.

Well… from the Choice-Cube Method.

And the good news is that this method is now available for you!

Here's a chance to download the first chapter for FREE of my book, Become the Person You Were Meant to Be. Click here and get an idea of what the Choice-Cube Method can do for you.

Copyright Dr. Beth Blevins Cujé 2015

Stuck And Feeling Helpless? Try These Three Steps

Who hasn’t felt stuck and helpless? The question is what to do about it.

I would like to offer three steps for getting moving again. Interested? Take a look.

Step 1 - Define the Problem:  You are feeling stuck because you seem to be between a “rock and a hard place.” This is where you must choose between two options that are both unacceptable to you. So, you go back and forth, back and forth, in conflict, stuck, feeling helpless because it seems that whatever choice you make will cause you loss or pain. Ever been there? [1]

Alice, who has a critical and emotionally abusive husband, is between a “rock and a hard place.” She’s in a terrible doublebind. Back and forth she goes between, If I leave him I won’t be able to support myself and the family will be reject me. But, if I stay here with him, I know, all the stress is really hurting me physically and emotionally. It takes courage and honesty to clearly define a double bind.

Step 2 – Focus on Your Negative Emotions about this Situation and Let Go of Them.[2]

Alice has a variety pack of emotions. She is enraged! But, at the same time, she is broken-hearted. She hates the way her husband of many years treats her and sometimes she hates him, too. But she still loves him and wants what’s best for him. She’s afraid that if she leaves him, she will never find a way to get him to love her and that she will have to live without him the rest of her life.

 Step 3 -  Shift Your Focus to Father God. Draw on His Life-Power-Energy as You Trust and Obey.

Alice has to shift her focus away from her husband and her problem to focus on God[3] and draw on his life-power-energy. When you do this, you stop pouring your life into the negative of the double-bind and start moving toward some acceptable resolution of the problem[4]

[1] James 1: 7, 8 For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord.

[2] This is not a one-shot deal. You will have to release those negative emotions again, and again, and again. That, however, will be good for your body and mind, and certainly much better than swinging back   and forth, helpless, between the two painful options of your double-bind.

[3] Proverbs 3:4-6   Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

4  Matthew 6: 22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single (focused on God), thy whole body shall be full of light.

If you need some help defining your negative emotions and some tools to let go of them, you may want to look in my book Become the Person You Were Meant to Be, Chapter 9 on emotions. Also, Chapter 10 in the book focuses on the mind. In this Chapter, this blog’s three-step process called “Challenge the Conflict,” is described in greater detail. I pray the best for you.  Let me hear from you. You can contact me on my website www.choicecube.com.     Warmly, Dr. Beth