Saturday 23 April 2016

Empowering Self: Why Bother with Discipline?



Because it could be a positive power or be a destructive power! Because it’s something that can feel uplifting or depressing… And I discovered it’s got to do with the energy you choose when you are disciplining yourself or others. What’s the texture and spirit to your discipline related actions?

Struggling to discipline myself to focus on the task at hand or to do the exercises, I realized the feeling of deprivation looming up – feeling like one had to do the compulsory thing and miss the greener stuff! Why when discipline is about doing the right things to get the right results would such feelings overcome one to create the quick escape into meaningless activities? The illogical answer I got was it felt safer and stress free, it felt like I escaped the dreaded task, though the task at hand, my conscious mind told me was actually not so aversive to me.

How our mind works can explain this. The nature of our experiences, particularly childhood ones, stimulates feelings that get associated to activities and things. This makes us want to do something when it has a positive feeling going with it and escape it when it’s a negative feeling that goes with it. A feeling further is not just a feeling but a vibration, an energy and it makes our energy system flow or be blocked, blocking us from being able to do what we need to do! Discipline for many brings to the mind feelings of being forced, punished or pushed. This means that this is how they experienced discipline in their lives. The sounds and images associated would have been those of being shouted at, put down and not having a chance to say anything. The activity seems burdensome and has some threat attached to it. This is discipline governed by the energy of fear. Everytime then you think of “I have to get this done.” it gets associated with all these heavy feelings!

With the energy of fear, you either escape discipline and procrastinate or you work with the whip on yourself and others in a regime of strictness and fear, with strenuous will power experiencing “life as tough” and no time for feelings or nurturance!

What if, instead we could create beautiful images of discipline as moving towards success, as ‘happy challenges’ as caring for oneself and believing in one’s talent? Whether you succeeded or not you could feel excited to give yourself the possibility you deserve. You see it as building yourself and as growth and having the goodness of health and vitality, of clean spaces, of an easier time with everything neat, clean and handy. It could be the path to creating more of the good for yourself. This is the energy of love guiding your discipline related actions.

That is exactly what it is, when your emotional state when you discipline yourself to exercise, do your accounts, put away your things or prepare for the meeting or the exam would be – a state of positive expectation and caring.

Discipline is a way of making things work, getting results and therefore happiness and success.
It is the way to emotional stability when you relate to discipline with the energy of love.
You see it as a way of loving oneself, keeping self respect and respect of others. It is a way of doing good team work, doing your part. It is the way you are fair, honest and a lovable person.

You bring for yourself effectiveness and you contribute to others, with the motto “Make life easy for others!” You follow through on your commitments. People trust you and understand you. As the ’yes’ for life gets bigger in this way, saying ‘no’ to T.V. and all the time wasters becomes almost automatic.

So shake off the energy of fear, step into the energy of love and feel the true joy with discipline. It means you make conscious caring choices with these four areas to do what’s aligned with your values and outcomes and make your life, relationships and happiness expand for you and your loved ones around you –
  • Your lifestyle, chores & daily routine
  • Managing your emotions 
  • Doing the tasks related to your role and work 
  • Strengthening and expressing your talents & purpose 

Enjoy and wishing you happy disciplining with your work and your habits leading you into your higher potentials and the radiant vitality that is you!

The Power of Positive Power

Power is the energy we use to live our lives and get our work done from ourselves or others.
Both the uncertainties of life and pressures of performance create in us fears.
Fears of the possible risks, and of failures and success.
These get activated when things don’t happen the way we want.
Someone does not listen, a trip we planned does not go the way it should have, the project we took up meets some roadblocks. We get reminded of the uncertainty or of performance stresses. We may get strangely more fearful than relaxed with every success as there is now more to lose if failure were to confront us. That’s when the energy to get the work done shifts from that of love to that of fear. 




What is the problem with using the energy of fear?
…Because how we get work done from ourselves or others will be coloured with fear. This will create disharmony and imbalance.When using fear, the gain we may somehow get in one area will result in a loss in another area of life. For example you succeed in the work area and lose out in the health area. Fear changes our actions or sometimes it is more subtle. It can change our intentions though the action has remained exactly the same. Colours of fear show up in various tones and hues. Intentions become about ego, domination, violence, borrowing authority from status or possessions, trying to impress rather than act in truth, jealousy, feeling left out, competing, getting angry, shouting, getting stuck, procrastinating, falling sick, giving up… in short some sort of disharmony. Even if we continue and eventually succeed we are exhausted as it’s like going uphill without respite. Being in harsh clime or territory, the winds too forceful and the sun almost cruel on our backs or the night too dark and cold. 

Instead positive power is like walking in a light shower of sunshine, feeling the breeze or experiencing the luminescent moon and bright stars.
You take action, meet the roadblocks and consistently turn your fear into faith, faith most of all in your vision whether the current reality supports it or not.
 Faith is the energy of love in your purpose in your potential and sometimes in other’s potentials.
 To recover the energy of love shine your spotlight on what is working and consistently keep using these to take your life forward
. You treat the situation as a place for learning matters of the heart for yourself and a challenge to get creative. 

Many people have converted their trouble spot into a creative challenge and built their wealth and purpose from it! You have Helen Keller, Lance Armstrong, and yoga guru Iyengar exactly turned his childhood asthma problems into the pursuit of health that has landed him on the world map!
Colours of love appear as faith, purposefulness, acceptance not approval of limitations, a focus on where to put one’s energy, choices, calmness, gratitude, forgiving, setting limits, problem-solving and staying on course
. You do things not from fear but from understanding and choice.

Easier said than done…
 

Positive power needs our ‘caring to make careful choices’! Choices that recognize consequences in an imperfect world and then being ready to take on the consequences or better still doing that something more to reduce negative consequences.
 What are ways to reduce negative consequences – either a creative step or a negotiation, persuasion or even a healthy detach from specific things or behaviours, not from all of life or the entire person. 


Most of all positive power will need you to center yourself and return to your first intention of creating something better for the world or your loved ones or yourself in harmonious ways. Your intention remains a loving one.
 This way your inner thought and inner feeling can stay positive with the outer action you are undertaking. Therefore truly positive power is an inner to outer journey at every step of the way.
 Why is this important? Love is unifying consistent and abundant and with the law of attraction you will with your success have unity, peace, stability and abundance!
 Many dynamic therapies heal the fears and transform fear into power and help you in your inner journey to your sub-conscious and super-conscious mind enabling you to live more joyfully rather than fearfully.

Awareness with Choices

Today we are flooded with having to make decisions, decisions and decisions! There is a scary feeling about making the ‘right’ decision or being trapped forever… 

Whilst discussing their decision stress regarding activities or people in their lives with clients I enquired “What would you look at, to know it’s a right or successful decision for you?” A common answer is “I look to see if it feels ‘good’!” That can mean seductive and tempting choices can get your nod only to later discover “Oh my god how did I get into this soup!” Instead you may need to also check on what would truly makes you feel good – what your priority areas are and whether they are met in the choice that has come up. 




When we are checking only to see if it feels good we are like the child who wants to dart across the road for the attractive glittering object on the other side. Our adult self will know there is more complexity than meets the eyes in the first instance. So you look with adult eyes that notice more with the learnings from all the experiences. You see the traffic you will manoeuvre before crossing and you check out if the glittering object is worth it and what it’s shape is… Now you figure if it all adds up – does all the information you are gathering match and align for consistency. Does your ‘feel good’ go beyond the glittering words or the few flattering or ‘helpful’ behaviours someone is showing you to something more robust and consistent in other areas and over time. You notice what happens before or after, you notice what else is happening. 

What is the colour or texture that’s added to the activity? Does that colour match with the priority area of the outcome you are seeking? Watching T.V. feels ‘fun’ and then the texture added to the ‘fun’ can be either ‘inspiring fun’ or ‘meaningless fun’ or ‘purposeless fun’ or passive fun’. This texture could tell you how much to do this activity or not. Someone takes interest in you or is helpful. Should you go along with this friendship that gives you ‘feel good’ moments. But what else is happening. You check out your feelings at other times for the choice you have to make – whether you also sometimes feel confused, pressured or guilty. Then you might be able to identify other actions and non-verbal behaviours of the person that are not aligned with the main actions of the person. It tells you whether the person can walk the talk or be consistent with what they do. A person’s helpfulness or interest in you can have colours that you may need to observe before you get involved. If there is a colour of ‘sincerity’ it becomes ‘sincerely helpful/ sincerely taking interest’ and that can confirm your choice. 

However it can have colours which can be disturbing to you. Arti found that an older co-member of her prayer group who was most helpful. This woman kept telling her “I care for you, I’m like your mother, come and tell me any worries. We are part of the same group.” She even talked comfortingly. Arti went for this friendship. What she did not see is how this woman asked her for so many favours and goodies when they met that were costly things. Only after considerable expense did she realize that this woman was helpful but she was exploiting her with her ‘demanding helpfulness’. Vinita’s boyfriend demonstrated lot of love and affection but he was also always secretive and talking to other women and always giving mixed messages “I can’t live without you” and “I cannot commit to you as I’ll have to see what my parents want me to do.” So there was this was ‘irresponsible and uncommitted affection and interest’ being shown. Name the colours you experience. These can be… ‘domination’ so it becomes ‘dominatingly helpful or dominatingly taking interest’ or it can have the colour of ‘ulterior motives with the helpfulness or interest shown’ or it can be ‘demandingly helpful’ or ‘inconsistently helpful or inconsistently and confusingly taking interest’ or it can be ‘irresponsibly helpful’. You can think of the many colours that could become warning bells to stop you then reciprocating with that person. 

Colours, such as ‘putting down or sarcastic helpfulness’ or ‘uncommitted interest’, when they are very strong and rigid, they can make the helpfulness or interest destructive to you. If they are mild you can set limits to those colours. Then you know if that choice is truly positive or not and whether it is worth what it appears to be! You would know that all that glitters may not be gold.

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