Catharsis: 1. the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music. 2. Medicine/Medical. purgation. 3. Psychiatry.  a. psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects. b. discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

Constipation: 1. a condition of the bowels in which the feces are dry and hardened and evacuation is difficult and infrequent. 2. Informal. a state of slowing down, sluggishness, or inactivity. 3.  Obsolete. the act of crowding anything into a smaller compass; condensation.

Having these definitions in mind when we are overcome by E-motion or familiar painful feelings is a good idea. Language patterns and word meaning is very relevant in healing and wellness. A negative state can overtake us if we have no tools to deal with how we feel - and since how we feel is a result of thoughts we have, often our greatest tools come in the words we use to try to cope with or understand what we are experiencing. The thoughts we have about our experiences will dictate our responses.

At times in my life, I have felt emotionally constipated – paralyzed by an overabundance, or lack of energy, and in need of catharsis. I knew that energetically, it meant my energy-in-motion (E-motion) was being blocked. In a tough economy when everything I knew had changed, after a serious relationship had ended, and through the loss of everything I had worked to achieve for two decades – I was faced with serious E-motional blocks. I realized that they were linked to a story I was telling myself, which created expectations of myself that I may not be in the position to achieve at the moment. This is where redefining my expectations had to be done. In doing so, I experienced a great catharsis after a period of intense emotional constipation.

State control is a vital element in navigating life because it is the best way to create the conditions and support for yourself to go in the direction you want. We want to be sure that we are having a catharsis and not experiencing constipation when dealing with our E-motional blocks. There can be a fine line between denial and state control - denial would create constipation and state control will produce catharsis. I assure you – usually we know at some level when we are just denying what is true. The “state” is in how you respond, not the feeling itself. This is how you can know that you are acting with integrity and from a place of wellness rather than denial. This doesn’t mean that you won’t feel bad or that things won’t be challenging. It means that you will respond with integrity in spite of how you feel. Catharsis will allow you to burn through or move past feelings that block you, rather than keep you wallowing in the morasmus of the ‘old’ story.

The process of state control begins with clarity of intent – in other words – you’ve gotta KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO FEEL LIKE! If you think you are not sure about how you want to feel – take a minute and ask yourself. It’s no mystery - YOU have EVERYTHING to do with how you feel! So decide and if you don’t like it, change it again. So don’t simply allow circumstances to dictate your state. If you allow circumstances to control your state, you are supporting a potentially RANDOM state, which can often be a negative one simply designed by your brain to protect you from further pain because it just doesnt know any better.

There may be some times when it is more difficult than others to exercise state control, such as when you are overcome by intense E-motion, or faced with confusing or multiple options, but it is also in those times that you will experience the greatest progress and develop the most E-motional muscle or personal integrity.  Once you have achieved some level mastery over your state and can begin to access it at will, you will almost automatically begin to create circumstances that support what you desire – a better life, a new relationship, more freedom of thought and feeling – or any number of other things. This is where your Manifest Destiny begins.

Be sure to check in soon for the kindle version, as well as the audio version which will be available as an mp3 download.

http://www.createspace.com/3541265

What’s your story? How does it determine your place in life? Do you have control over what you believe? The stories we tell ourselves shape our lives in sometimes subtle but often in overt ways. There is no escaping the stories, we have to live by them! Can you make your story the story you desire? In this book you will explore the power of your story and learn some powerful concepts and practical information that will help you become the author of your life! You can learn ideas to help you free yourself from the bonds of limiting belief that keep you in places in your life that no longer serve you or your loved ones. I wrote the book as a compliment to my seminars and as a basis for my trainings and one on one life strategy/coaching work. I do this work with the intent to help people make real, lasting and significant changes and breakthroughs in their lives for their greater good in the most harmonious way possible.

I have already started my next book. Maybe as no surprise to many of you – it is about relationships – personal, professional and romantic. Over the course of this year, I plan to be more visible and to “show up,” as I like to say, in the world as I am – and I hope that it will inspire you to do the same. Thank you for taking the time to read this – and remember – As you think, so shall you be.

What’s your story? How does it determine your place in life? Do you have control over what you believe? The stories we tell ourselves shape our lives in sometimes subtle but often in overt ways. There is no escaping the stories, we have to live by them! Can you make your story the story you desire? In this book you will explore the power of your story and learn some powerful concepts and practical information that will help you become the author of your life! You can learn ideas to help you free yourself from the bonds of limiting belief that keep you in places in your life that no longer serve you or your loved ones. I wrote the book as a compliment to my seminars and as a basis for my trainings and one on one life strategy/coaching work. I do this work with the intent to help people make real, lasting and significant changes and breakthroughs in their lives for their greater good in the most harmonious way possible.

I have already started my next book. Maybe as no surprise to many of you – it is about relationships – personal, professional and romantic. Over the course of this year, I plan to be more visible and to “show up,” as I like to say, in the world as I am – and I hope that it will inspire you to do the same. Thank you for taking the time to read this – and remember – As you think, so shall you be.

I assure you – intention is ALWAYS a key player in achieving a goal or desire that you may have, but more often then not, it is just the beginning of your achievement. Intent is the first order of a successful plan. In fact, when something doesn’t turn out as planned, it is often because the original intent was lost or changed.

So if you think about intent as the key that opens the door to your desires, remember then that if you want what is behind the door, you still have to go into the room and get it. That’s where action comes in. Create situations in your life that will allow for what you want to come to you easily by putting yourself in their path. This way, you have to go OUT of your way to NOT get what you want!

If you want more information on this topic, send me an email and I will help you further.

You might ask yourself, “why is this important?” The reason is because this works the same way for small things in your life as it does for the BIG things. Its very important to gauge your passion before making massive life changes. You want to be sure it’s really something that you want to do. The way you can do this is by getting clear about your feelings in the matter. How do you know if something is right for you? If you are in your head, you can be sure that you will begin to weigh and criticize every dream or idea you have, and this can cause confusion when it comes to tough decisions. Sometimes you have to just sit with an idea and let it “simmer” for a while.

You can have a fantastic relationship between the parts of you that are commonly called ‘head’ and ‘heart’. In it’s capacity, your head can serve you well. It can provide you with ways and means to achieve your dreams, and in the case of more mundane desires, it can direct you to satisfaction. But if it denies the wisdom of your heart, the messages may become less clear and confusion will soon follow. This is what happens in mid-life when people suddenly leave their former life and begin a new one, often in a completely different direction! You know what I mean, don’t you.

Can you think of a time when you wanted something and then killed it with your critical thinking? I bet you can. This is where the head and heart can work together – the heart can show the head the direction, and the head can find the way to get there! Working together is a powerful combination.

Wanting something that you have no emotional connection with is sometimes the source of real problems. In fact, by it’s very own meaning, WANTING implies – YOU DONT HAVE IT! When you have an E-motional connection to something, it is as if it exists within you already. There is a lot of buzz about feeling that you already have what you want, and that you are on your way to getting it -see?

What do you want in your life? What will having it get for you, at a deep level? How will you know when you have it or, in what context will you have it? The answer to these questions should be the center of your focus – try it.

Every time I have been in a long term relationship that has ended, and that’s A LOT, I notice that there are lingering states of mind (feelings), some negative and some positive, which create responses in me, that keep those states of mind (feelings) alive and fed. It is as if we do a behavior out of habit, imagine that! If these states of mind are positive and affect your life in a way that is to your benefit, I call it growth. If they are negative, they create disease. I dont mean disease in the medical sense, (although that may actually be the case), but rather in the ACTUAL sense, which is dis-ease = the state of NOT being at ease or “dis”-associated with ease. This is what I now I lovingly refer to as Ex-Partner Disease!

What is really happening here is that these are the after-effects of the Emotional DNA we create while in our relationships. This is the emotional and meta-emotional “state” we now incorporate in our lives and bring into our next relationship, sometimes unknowingly. There is nothing “wrong” with this, but the fact is that it re-shapes our core beliefs, giving us permission for new behaviors in order to retain familiar feelings. Sometimes, we LIKE the feelings we had, so its natural to want to repeat them in our new relationships, often without even being aware of it, and sometimes we DON’T LIKE the feelings we had but we want to repeat them anyway! Have any of you who are in a new relationship ever thought, “Hmm, I really liked the way _______(fill in your own ex-partner name) used to do that”. That is a sign or SYMPTOM (haha) of having Ex-Partner Disease!

Take a minute right now and imagine a few things that you learned and that you do differently now as a result of a relationship you have been in. In this case it doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship either because it still applies to any relationship. If you are being honest with yourself, I bet you can find some growth things and some disease things. Once you are able to identify both types of behaviors, you will begin to realize that the beliefs you have create your responses to life and life’s experiences, and HOW you remember your experiences generates your responses NEXT time.

Eventually it seems that Ex-Partner Disease fades away and we return to our “normal selves, right? WRONG! Once we are with someone and adapt our behaviors according to theirs, we have created a new strand of Emotional DNA – or a new rung in our relationship helix. You can change your emotional DNA, but ONLY through new experiences that layer over old ones. Depending on how deeply linked the experiences are with you beliefs, it may take more or less new experiences to alter your Emotional DNA. You can read more about this in my upcoming book which will be out later this year.

Love, Gratitude and a Happy New Year to you all!

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I love the saying “where the focus goes – the energy flows”. What a perfect representation of fact! Let’s take a moment and MEMORIZE THIS! Say it with me –

Where the focus goes, the energy flows!

This is why that nagging feeling is so troublesome. It wants your FOCUS! It’s kind of like someone constantly tugging at your shirt as you are going along with your day. It wants your ATTENTION (focus) and will not stop until it is satisfied.

How can you stop it? Don’t you HAVE to attend to it? Is it wrong to just IGNORE it? Well, certainly I would not say ignoring it is the WRONG answer ALL of the time, but most often it IS what we will do automatically – try to ignore it - we just stop feeling (thinking about) it! A therapist would probably call this denial, right?

Feelings can direct your focus and what you focus on, can create how you feel! It works both ways. Here is where we run into problems and why ignoring feelings can create ‘Chronic Problematic Uncertainty’ in your life. (CPU – This sounds like something pharmaceutical companies would have you take one of their pills to cure, doesn’t it?!?!) If you ignore your feelings too often, you will be really confused on a regular basis. You will be feeling (thinking) all sorts of things and not really knowing why – This is what then becomes THAT NAGGING FEELING…

So to recap – ‘that nagging feeling’ is likely the result of unaddressed (denied) feelings, which now nag you for your attention, or shall I say focus! Everyone does it. We cannot possibly deal with ALL of our feelings ALL of the time. At one point I was an EXPERT in denial, and even now, I still have to keep my eye out for when I may be. I’m not sure it ever goes away for good! In fact in my opinion we must simply get good at using the faculty of being our own ‘Gatekeeper’ of our thoughts. The main reason why denial is such a common response to that nagging feeling is that our thoughts just happen when no one is guarding the gate! We don’t get to think what we want to think until we have achieved some mental discipline. We must be vigilant guardians at the gateways of our minds to keep out the unwanted thoughts (feelings) that will open the E-motional Pathways that lead in the wrong direction. WE must be THE GATEKEEPER! WE must steer our focus in the right direction to create the feelings we want to have and therefore the E-motions we want to experience.

I like to use metaphors when describing this kind of thing. When this happens to me, I try to dance with the feeling first, not resist it. That is to say, I will recognize it and take hold of it and move with it, but in a direction of MY choosing. If it continues to resist my direction and this doesn’t work to dispel it, then I can be certain that it is a place I need to visit to address some unexamined story or E-motion. This means I have some work to do here. It is a VERY CLEAR indicator and probably means that nagging feeling is due to having NOT ACTED upon something I believe I SHOULD have. In this case, clearly, I MUST ACT!

More later!

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Thrive Audio part 2