SGM May 2013 Weekly Message Three: “Building Inner Strength”
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Welcome back to the May 2013 Edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM!
Do events and forces in the world sometimes seem so big and overwhelming that you wonder how your little efforts can really make a difference? Maybe you’ve found yourself up against personal habits of thinking, feeling, and behaving that keep sabotaging your own best intentions. Or maybe, you feel stuck in a situation that is suffocating you and draining your vitality—a relationship, a job, chronic pain, or illness.
While I am optimistic about our chances of healing, overcoming, and thriving, there is no doubt that being alive in the twenty-first century requires a good deal of inner strength. So, this week on SGM, we’ll explore four ways you can tap into that strength and build it on a daily basis.
As Dr. Rick Hanson tells us in his book, “Just One Thing,” it all begins with knowing how to monitor your attention and work with your mind and body. So, that’s where we’ll begin as well. If you give any one of the following practices some attention daily, you’ll move beyond feeling small and disempowered and connect with a universal reservoir of strength that you may not have known possible.
1. Embody Strength:
Feeling empowered begins right where you live—in your body—and it starts with your posture. Did you know that just by adopting new postural habits you can change how you think, feel, and behave? This is one of the powerful lessons that I’ve learned in my years of studying T’ai Chi and Qigong: mental-emotional states are embodied in physical postures.
For example, if you are grinding life out, pushing through what you “should do” and “have to do,” your shoulders are going to slump forward, your jaw is going to set with your mouth turned down at the corners, and you’ll feel as if the weight of the world is on your shoulders.
For every feeling state there is a corresponding posture that embodies that state. You can learn to recognize your dominant mental-emotional outlook by noting your postural habits. And, without needing to do any complex analysis, you can adopt some simple cues that will put you into a more empowered posture, which will translate into thinking, feeling, and behaving in more empowered ways.
You build empowered posture from the ground up:
Begin by feeling the entire surface of both feet flat on the ground and parallel to each other about hip-width apart. Align your knees with your feet and your hips.
Take a few deep breaths and allow the bottom of your ribs to raise upward, expanding the space between your ribs and your hips. This will naturally set your shoulders back, putting your ears in alignment with your shoulders, and hips.
Imagine strings attached to the front of your collarbones and the top of your head, gently drawing you a bit more upright, extending the vertical space inside your body.
Tuck your chin slightly, relax your hands, and smile.
How do you feel? I would love to hear your experience in the Discussion below.
2. Focus Your Attention On What You Want More Of In Your Life.
Hanson tells us that, “the movements of information through your nervous system. . .most of which are unconscious—can create lasting changes in brain structure. . .In particular, this rewiring is accelerated for what’s in the field of focused attention. In effect, attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner: it illuminates what it rests upon and then sucks it into your brain.” (p.93, JOT)
So, what you pay attention to matters—a lot. What you strongly focus your attention on gets strongly programmed into your brain. It becomes a part of your dominant focus, the way you look at the world, and determines the possibilities that you welcome into your life.
The moral of this insight is—pay attention to what you’re paying attention to—and then focus on what you want to have more of in your life. If you want more love, pay attention to being more loving, watch movies that express love, read books about the kind of love you desire, and look for evidence of love in the world around you. Whatever you focus on increases.
A great way to start your day is to focus on visualizing and feeling the experiences you desire. A great time to do this is at the end of your meditation practice, when you are in a relaxed, yet focused state. Experiencing what you desire in your imagination primes you to notice and have similar experiences in your real life.
3. Pause, Be Patient, and Wait for Insight.
It’s easy to get wound up in non-stop thinking, checking off things on our To Do lists, and riding the rollercoaster of our emotions. If that’s your experience—and especially if you’re getting overwhelmed by your thoughts, tasks, and feelings—one of the most powerful things you can do is insert a mental pause, take a deep breath, and exercise patience.
By pausing for even a minute, you can interrupt the momentum of negative thoughts, feelings, and experiences. You can disentangle yourself from co-dependent interactions and exercise compassion for yourself and others. You can check in with what’s really going on inside and give yourself space to make authentic choices that align with who you are and what you are here to do now.
When you arrest the momentum of thinking, doing, and feeling, you allow space for inspired action that is best for you and those around you. If you can exercise a little patience and just wait for that inspiration coming from you or from those around you—you’ll open the door to a whole new world of possibility. You’ll open the door to the Infinite Intelligence and Grace that is always available and is the Source of insight. Trusting “that” is the basis of inner strength. Whenever you feel stressed or overwhelmed, make it a habit to pause, be patient, and wait for inner guidance.
4. Take Small Steps Out of your Comfort Zone.
If you are in a habit of feeling small and disempowered in a certain area of your life, the proven method to break free is to take small, very doable steps in the direction you desire. We build inner strength one small, very manageable step at a time. We do it by trying new things, learning new skills, taking little risks, and achieving small “wins.”
Big achievements are made from countless small steps. If you just start taking action—any action at all—you begin to build confidence in how things work, and soon you are riding a wave of momentum that takes you beyond your former self-image.
So, if you want to do something new and bold in your life and it feels like too much, break that big step into small ones.
For example, if you want to get in shape but you feel so far from there, start by walking around the block. If you want to lose weight, start by making one small substitution in your diet, say green tea instead of that latte, or a salad instead of a sandwich. If you want to build your tech skills, start your own web design business, or become a computer programmer, go to Lynda.com and take a video course free for 7 days. Follow your interest and take one small step, then another, and another. Pretty soon you’ll feel empowered with the inner strength you’ve been missing and you’ll be on a journey toward what you truly desire.
I would love to hear about what you want to create in your life and the practices that empower you most. Please join our Discussion below and share with me and your fellow members. Stating your intention to others is a great way to get the ball rolling. It’s a great step of self-expression, empowerment, and building inner strength. We all need what you have to offer and we’d love to hear about it!
Until next time,
Enjoy your practice!
Kevin