Ericksonian Principles

Celebration Leads To Reflection

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Happy Holidays

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Today is a time for celebrating, meeting loved-ones, friends, and gathering at the table for a feast, then afterwards exchanging gifts. All the preparation has ended yesterday for this moment. Now we can relax and be with the people we love. Today is also a time to reflect on the year 2014 and how next year will be. There have been some good times as well as some bad times. Not everyday should be good and not everyday should be bad, but we can hope for our days to be somewhere in the middle.  After a reflection, it is all right for us to say goodbye to the year 2014, but continue to learn from the past and leave past grieves in the past.

Peace and Understanding

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Inner Peace

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“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”— Albert Einstein

A lack of peace is a lack of understanding. Understanding is about making sense out of our internal conflicts. Understanding is about being at peace with ourselves. We are better people when we are at peace with ourselves. A new understanding is in order when we need peace in our lives. Since we can’t force peace on others, we can be models of peace for others. Peace is about accepting and embracing our inner conflicts. Our experiences are the key to understanding something about being at peace with the self.

 

 

 

Accepting Our Weaknesses

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Forest

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“Growth begins when we begin to accept our weaknesses.”— Jean Vanier

Accepting our weaknesses means that we’re first admitting to ourselves that we have imperfections and/or limitations. For us to grow, we must confront the reality that we have limitations. We don’t have to always yield to them but we can work around them. They don’t have to directly affect our lives in a negative way. We can use them to our advantage and being a role model to others whose having a hard time accepting their weaknesses. Growing is having the understanding that we can find other ways to better ourselves without finding a reason to not push ourselves. It is very easy to find a reason not to improve our situation when we’re only looking at our weaknesses and not looking at the possibility for growth. If we see possibility in ourselves, then our blinds are open to see opportunities.

 

What We Enjoy

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Enjoyment

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“Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance.”— John Petit-Senn

When we look at what we don’t have, we lose our joy in what we already have. Those things we have were not free. It took us time and energy to get to what we already have. Those things that we worked for are our skills, our relationships and our possessions. Nothing we do is free. So we can cherish, enjoy and be thankful for what we have right now. It is enough to satisfy us. So let us enjoy the fruit of our labor since we don’t have to look to any other place. What we enjoy is more important than what we have or don’t have.

 

The Joy In Our Potential

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Joy

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“Joy comes from using your potential.”— Will Schultz

Our treasure lies in our potential. Our potential is like a coal in transformation to become a diamond. Our potential is just below the surface ready to be resurfaced to move mountains in our life. If only we get ourselves a chance to develop our potential into something useful. Milton H. Erickson once said, “I always enjoy discovery what I can do.” In other words, we don’t know how far our potential can take us but it will be nice to find out. It is up to us to develop our potential into something that will bring joy into our lives. The power within is our latent potential ready to express itself. So we ought not to be unafraid to use what is ours.

 

Think less, Feel More

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Grounded

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“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.”— Osho

For some of us, it is so easy to stay in our heads than to experience the feeling of life. We get so preoccupied with the thoughts in our heads that we can’t hear what our heart is telling us. If we let our heart lead us, then maybe we will find our passion and our purpose.  The quote above didn’t say not to think at all but to think less and feel more. Feelings bring color to our world when we allow ourselves to experience them. The more we feel the more we’re connected with our surroundings. We just don’t feel with our hearts, but feel with our hands, feel the chair we’re sitting on, feel the grounds we’re standing. Feeling also includes experiencing our life internally like paying attention to our body rhythms.

 

Happiness Is A Direction

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Directions...

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“Happiness is a direction, not a place.”— Sydney J. Harris

So if we’re seeking happiness, then we must change direction. Changing direction implies to change the way we look at things. Moving from one location to a new location isn’t going to make the grass greener, or solve a problem necessarily. It all comes down to how we think about the situation. Happiness is accepting what we can’t change and but having an understanding that we can pull through things like we have done before. A change in direction helps us to create a new perspective on things; we see things with new fresh eyes. Happiness is a state of being. For us to appreciate being happy, we needed to go through difficult times. Happiness is a time to freely be who we are and to be in charge of our own life.

 

Look At Both Sides

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Nobody's on Nobody's Side

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“Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and focus on what could go right.” — Unknown

When we anticipate what could go wrong, it is our clue to ourselves that we’re afraid to put ourselves out there. We’re afraid to be and feel vulnerable because this creates discomfort. It is all right to see what could go wrong, but it is also all right to see what could go right. It would be good to our advantage to see both sides and not only be looking at only positive or only the negative side of things. When we look at what could go wrong, we can come up with a plan and be prepared to deal with it just as we can create a plan to build on what could go right in the situation.

 

Cherish Today

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The Aggressive Black Drongo!

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“Before someone’s tomorrow has been taken away, cherish those you love, appreciate them today.” — Michelle C. Ustaszeski

We don’t really know how long we have on this earth. Instead of wishing that we spent more quality time with our friends and family, today is our opportunity to make that phone call or visit those we cherish and appreciate. We can be thankful that we still have family while others especially during the holidays have no family to spend time with. Family brings support, closeness and connectedness that we all need. We want to feel belonged and not be alone. We need each other because we’re a community of people. Tomorrow is not guaranteed but certainly, we have today.

 

What You Can Do Today

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sky colors today from my window

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“Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow.”— James A. Michener

Not only does procrastination steals our time, but it also takes away our opportunity to enjoy the time doing it. We procrastinate because sometimes we think our time and efforts will be wasted. But the irony is that as we procrastinate we’re deliberately wasting time by constantly looking at how much time we have left before we ever start. Procrastination is form of control; it is our way of rebelling against authority. But the main people we’re hurting is ourselves, because we lose the opportunity to find out if we enjoy doing it or not.  We get our freedom from making the initiative not feeling compel to do something because we were told to do it.

 

Relax and Wait For The Answer

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'look inside yourself, for all the answers are within.' plaque on a bench, stanley park, vancouver

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“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”— William S. Burroughs

It is difficult to find a solution or answer when our minds are detracted or preoccupied with something that’s irrelevant. Even if we were to quiet our minds, we still have to wait for the answer because our unconscious mind is searching even while we do other things. Whatever questions we want to know about ourselves is all within us. Our unconscious mind gives us telltale signs as to what’s going on with us. One of telltale signs is our emotion. We feel different emotions that let us know how we’re feeling at the moment. Sigmund Freud once said that our dreams are a secret letter to ourselves.  So our dreams give us some clues to help us to sort things out better.

 

Are We Willing To Learn?

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learning

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“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”— Mary Catherine Bateson

It is through our learnings that we experience life in our own unique way. It is through our learnings that we will have a greater understanding about life. It is through our learnings that will discover something about ourselves. It is through our learnings that we will create new meaningful experiences in everything we do.  Our willingness to learn opens up our mind to new horizons. When we get a better understanding about things and about ourselves, we can make better decisions to where we want to go in our lives. We understand that life is full of challenges and obstacles that we will face daily. The challenges and obstacles are in our lives only for us to grow beyond what we were yesterday.

 

Compassion Includes Yourself

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helping hand

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“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” — Jack Kornfield

In other words, we don’t give to others for us to receive back from others. We want to help others because we’ve been helped or have helped ourselves. Therefore, we don’t expect a return. The only return we want to see is that the other person’s needs have been met and that his or her spirits have been lifted and that he or she can help someone else in return. It is just as important to be compassionate with one’s self as it is towards another for us to be complete. We all can afford to spread compassion around to others and to each other. It is nice to be in the receiving end of compassion just as it nice to be in the giving end.

 

Thinks He Is Able

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think.IT 2011

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“He is able who thinks he is able.”— Buddha

The secret of success and achievement is to believe in one’s self. If we think that we’re able, then we will act as though we’re able. We already have many abilities that we take for granted because we forget that it has taken us some time to acquire through experiences. Everyday we have an opportunity to use our abilities and we do. If we’re able to speak to one person, then we’re able to speak in front of an audience.  When we think we are able, there is no doubt in our minds, and we just do based on our background of experiences. The possibilities are endless to what we can do with our abilities only if we think we’re able.  The mind is a very powerful organ because we can think it and then execute that thought.

 

Discovery a Mindset

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lake pukaki and mt cook

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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”— Marcel Proust

Mindset is very important when it comes to facing our challenges. Anxiety increases when we’re confronted with a challenge. Anxiety is created because we see no alternatives in a situation. It is time to change our mindset when our options are narrowing. It is time to change our old belief system and learn a new way of thinking. Learning a new mindset can bring us out of an old belief system into a new belief system. If we continue to use old beliefs, we will continue to see roadblocks in our path. We can remove those roadblocks so we can see clearly our path.

 
 

 

Completion Is Better

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Finish Line

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“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Now is the most important time to start. Thinking about it is very different from starting it. When starting something, it is our goal to finish it sometime in the future. Some of us have many  start-up projects to only become unfinished projects. Although it takes courage to start something new, it also takes determination to finish it. If we only break big projects into smaller ones, then we don’t have to feel overwhelmed or burdened by the vast size of the project. It is possible to finish a project as long as we start with small pieces.  Finishing a piece at a time reinforces our confidence in completing all the pieces.

 

 

Begin With Courage

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Take Courage

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“More powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin.”— Unknown

The things we’re doing today once had a new beginning. The skills we’ve acquired over the years had a new beginning. So how come we sometimes fear doing something new when we’ve been through this before? This is a good question to ask ourselves when we’re confronted to doing new things. When we’re confronted with new things to do, we feel out of control and out of our comfort zone. Yes, we’ve gotten so use to doing the same old things that we became too comfortable and familiar with doing them without a fear of losing control. We felt comfortable in ourselves because we’ve rehearsed and performed the tasks over and over. Knowing this understanding can help us approach new projects with the courage to begin without hesitation.

 

Tomorrow’s Dreams

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Dream weaver

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“Don’t let today’s disappointments cast a shadow on tomorrow’s dreams.”— Unknown

Today will be in the past tomorrow. We can look at our disappointments as a learning experience. We can find a positive side if we look for one. We don’t have to be influenced by yesterday’s disappointments. A good question we can ask ourselves is why was our response a disappointment? The disappointments were based on a certain expectation we had on an event. For example, we probably wanted to get something accomplish that day, or we didn’t come up with idea on a project. As long as we make an effort and not give in because in due time, things will turn around. Our unconscious mind continues to search for ideas way long after we call it a day. Our unconscious mind is always preparing us for the next day.

 

Making Our Days Better

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Machu Pichu, the trails end.
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“I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.”— Henry David Thoreau

One of the hallmarks of procrastinating is when we tried to make our days longer. We tried to fool ourselves into believing that we have more time to do something so we continue to delay until we feel the pressure of a deadline to start a project. We don’t have to spend most our time doing nothing but thinking about how much time we have left to do something.  We can instead plan where we want our time spent on what projects. It is really up to us because we’re in charge of what ever we do in life. We can make our days a little better each time we initiate.

 

Better To Do

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Imperfectly yours

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‘Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.’— Robert H. Schuller

Sometimes we hesitate to do something because we want to do something the first time flawlessly. Everything we do for the first time will not be done perfectly. It is a process of trial and error of what works and what doesn’t work. Once we do new things over and over, the behaviors become automatic.  When the behaviors become automatic or second nature, there is no need to think about them unless we add a new element to the process. As we add a new element to the process, we are making readjustments, and after a course of time, the new element also becomes automatic.  These new learnings become automatic which means that they are transferred to our unconscious mind. Our unconscious mind has a storehouse of experiences.