Joyful Minds, Open HeartsOvercoming Negativity Addiction

I had a dream the other night where I was speaking to a Spiritual Master and I was asking him how to Love myself more and his reply was to “Love Others.”

And I then asked, “How is that loving myself?”

He then said, “Because your body extends out further than you realize. It includes everybody else. When you are loving others, you are loving your own body because others are a part of your body.”

When I awoke, I had this image of everyone and everything being a part of my “extended body” and that how I treated others is no different than how I treat my own arms or legs. This put me deeply into a sense of oneness with all of life.

When I love myself, I love others. When I love others, I love myself, because, in truth…there is no “other”.

So, when you get “triggered” by others, as we discuss in the Overcoming Negativity Addiction Program, it’s important to remember that you have a choice in that moment to love yourself more.

If that person isn’t loving to you, it’s only because they are caught in their negativity addiction and can’t see the truth. That you are them. Therefore, it means they’re not treating themselves very kindly by mistreating you.

Hopefully, this will inspire in you a wonderful vibeswitch of having compassion for them for treating you (a part of them) so unkindly. It’s like watching someone who has lung cancer chain smoke. They are addicted to something that hurts them. When anyone is unkind to you at any time, it is only because they too are addicted to negativity which hurts them.

Send them your love.

When you do, your self esteem will increase dramatically, because you have just given yourself the greatest kindness in the form of loving yourself in another.

Love and Happy Biochemicals,
Denise

Boy, did I ever have an eye opener today as far as my negativity addiction is concerned!

For the last few days, I had been “noticing” that my husband seemed to be kind of “negative” and, because it felt “uncomfortable to be around him” when he was “negative”, I had asked him to try to be more positive so as not to “mess up” my “happy vibrations”.

I put a lot of those words in quotes because what I was really doing was looking for an excuse to indulge my own negativity addiction by pointing fingers at how people around me are negative.

What a JOKE!

This “noticing others’ negativity” is a sometimes subtle (to others not so subtle) form of negativity addiction. The trigger is when our own minds are trained to look at how negative everyone around us is so we can indulge our own addictions rather than focusing on other peoples’ good qualities, which we could just as easily do if we weren’t indulging our addiction!

My poor husband, who was in a really good mood until I told him that he was being negative!

So I went on a run and said a little prayer to my Spirit Guide and I asked what I could do to “help” my husband to not be so “negative” and then received the cosmic kick in the a** I needed, which was:

Spirit Guide’s response:

“Love your husband.”

I thought, “No, what can I do?”

I received:

“Accept your husband as he is and love him.”

Surely, the Universe wasn’t understanding. HE was being negative.

Then I received this download (that I promptly updated on my facebook account so as not to forget):

Ever notice how the most negative people seem to be the ones who constantly complain that everyone around them is negative? That’s because we can just as easily choose to focus on one good quality in another person rather than dwelling on their “issues” and when we don’t, it’s because we’re in our own addiction to negativity.

There it was. My negativity addiction BUSTED again by my nonphysical friends!

So if you are someone who seems to be constantly surrounded by “negative people”, maybe take a second look and see how those people may be mirroring your own choice to focus on what’s wrong in another human being. Each human is both light and dark/positive-negative. There are no purely “negative people”. It is how we choose to look at them that creates our reality of them in our own body chemistry.

The antidote for me to judging someone else for being “negative” is threefold. Try one and see if works for you:

1. LOVE and SERVE them. When I get into love and service, most of the time they “miraculously” get more positive!
2. Hold the compassion note for them. If they are in their addiction to negativity, the last thing they need is for some chump to keep pointing it out to them in a judgemental way. Instead, I can just feel compassion for them.
3. NOTICE the ways that they are positive and how they lift you up. Make lists on post-it notes, or out loud during the day, of all the ways that person does lift your moods. I bet you will find you will be surprised by the positive/light aspects of that person when you start focusing on those aspects.

Remember, everybody is doing the best they can, including you. Don’t judge yourself for judging others. Instead, vibeswitch back into a happy feeling and move on until the next time you’re triggered!

Love and Happy Biochemicals,
Denise

Well, I have been riding high for two days now with my Overcoming Negativity Addiction Program, really having a good time with my favorite vibe switch of “Holding the Compassion Note” when anyone does anything I perceive as rude, defensive, indifferent, or unkind, instead of indulging the “hurt feeling” chemicals that used to enter my bloodstream as a result of their behavior, I now do two things.

1. I notice I am triggered by their behavior by saying to myself “Just got triggered”.

2. I shift into seeing it all from their perspective and realizing that they are probably experiencing uncomfortable chemicals in their system if they’re feeling anything but loving. I immediately decide that they deserve my compassion, not my anger/hurt/whatever and I shift gracefully into feeling compassion because they, whether they know it or not, are also dealing with negative emotions in the body that don’t feel good.

When I do what I call this “ONA two-step”, I feel like I can happily be around anyone because I feel I can gracefully manage my emotional states around them without letting their behavior trigger me indulging my addiction to those not fun chemicals of anger/hurt/etc. in my system.

Macha said it the best on our radio show the other night. She said that with ONA, she feels like she’s “surfing her own emotions”.

That’s exactly how it starts to feel. Like you’re able to stay happy no matter what anyone around you is doing or not doing. It’s the most empowering feeling of all, being able to stay in love with everybody, no matter how they are treating me.

I find that holding the compassion note for others works best when I realize that we are all wired the same physiologically and that none of our systems actually enjoy those negative stress chemicals and that, since these emotions are physically addictive, I can cut these people a break for being in the addiction.

It’s interesting that we do seem to have compassion for people who are chain smokers, because we know what they are doing to their lungs from smoking but they can’t seem to stop.  We see that it’s difficult to quit doing because their body is craving the nicotine. It would behoove  us to have that same kind of compassion for the person in our life who is chronically angry, depressed, insensitive, or anxious as well, because their body is just as addicted to those chemicals as the smoker is to the cigarette.

So, this week, let’s all try holding the compassion note for the difficult people we encounter. Compassion does our body good.

Hey. Maybe I’ll make a tee-shirt. “Compassion. It does a body good.”

Love and Happy Bio-Chemicals,
Denise

Today, I am coming out of a two day script rewriting marathon. I feel a little fuzzy because my mind has been focused only on the world of my screenplay and movie. It’s so much fun creating another universe, but it can take me out of the present moment which is what I’m craving now. To ground myself in this here and now moment.

So today I am going to exercise, and meditate, and get off my computer and vibe switch back into “this” reality.

Also, I am noticing something very interesting and helpful. My Negativity Addiction likes to make everything complicated, complex, muddled, muddy, thinking thinking thinking. But when I am vibe switching and overcoming the addiction, everything gets more simple. I just become loving, more body centered, more present, more gentle, softer, and my mind gets very simple and just loving and compassionate.

So today I plan to be very simple with my thinking. The heart is always loving. It’s the mind and the Negativity Addiction that gets in the way. So by making our mind more loving, the natural state of our Hearts is able to come out.

Whenever I try to complicate things today, I am going to vibe switch simply into Holding the Love Note.

I’m also really glad we stopped doing the weekly ONA class, because it looks like I’m taking a bigger role in making this movie. I am also SO glad we created the 8 week Overcoming Negativity Program for those who can’t do the class.

I am so glad I am noticing when I need to take things off of my plate in order to hold the Self Compassion note. But I have to practice my ONA every single minute of every single day and so keeping my journal keeps me accountable.

Doing the ONA radio show with Macha keeps me accountable. For me, ONA is very much about staying accountable and noticing what my mind is doing.

Love and Happy Bio-Chemicals,
Denise

Today was a good day with vibe switching as soon as I noticed I was triggered with negative thoughts. I noticed so much more quickly when my vibration was triggered than I have over the last two weeks.

I am on day two of my recommitting and it is going well. I noticed that before I used to make everything in the world “out there” more important than my vibeswitch when triggered and had very little awareness of what I was feeling throughout the day. This was after thirteen weeks of total BLISS from doing the ONA program!

I am loving that keeping a journal every day is making me more aware and committed to overcoming negativity addiction and taking note of when I need to rewire my neural pathways and switch out of my negative chemicals. It makes me so much more accountable and I am loving the results.

Also, I am starting to get the raw food high back! Yay! I am on day two of 100% raw foods and I am buzzing with that sense of well being that is hard to put into words, but “body buzz” is really the best description and a sense of well being. I may save Japanese foods for the weekends so I can keep this buzz going!

I did have to vibe switch a few times today so I thought I would share what they were and how they went.

First of all, I was sad that the weekly ONA class hasn’t had more participants, especially because I know that for me, the ONA program is what made my biggest dream come true these last couple of months (my film was financed and stars attached, etc.) I felt sad because I want to share what I learned and what is working for me, but I am happy that so many people are buying the ONA program even if they aren’t on the weekly class.

What vibe switched me on this was gentle self talk saying that it’s probably a good thing because my life is getting so hectic preparing to make the movie. I’m working out a lot, working with acting coach, doing a rewrite, and working my OWN ONA program, that it’s probably best to take a little bit off my plate in that way.

Also, I had to vibe switch a couple of times with my husband, because he was just doing what husbands do, sometimes saying insensitive things, etc.,  and I found myself getting hurt a few times and then my vibe switch was holding the compassion note, finding the place in him who is having a difficult time being in touch with “the right thing to say” and giving him a break. Holding the compassion note REALLY works with me when I am triggered with hurt feelings. It’s like my ace in the hole. Then I can move into holding the love note, and gratitude for the person, etc. Compassion bridges the gap between feeling hurt and feeling loved, because we’re all (most of us anyway) doing the best we can.

Another vibe switch I had was about being in the court of public opinion. I put myself out there so much with so many different things and so many people have so many opinions about me and I realized that is probably why many people don’t put themselves out there, because they are afraid of public opinion.

I am learning to vibe switch out of that, knowing you can’t please everybody all of the time, so why not do your best and those who resonate with you will connect and those who don’t you can send love to as well. Anyone who has a negative opinion of others is more than likely caught in their addiction because we’re all Souls, even when we don’t agree with peoples’ personalities, at the end of the day, we’re all Souls and we’re all perfect just as we are.

Overall, I felt so much more even keeled today on this day two of my ONA program recommitment. I love and live for that even-keeled feeling, especially because I have this big movie coming up. I love feeling so happy and so grounded at the same time and not like I’m on a roller coaster. That’s what the ONA Program has given me.  Those two weeks I wasn’t vibe switching were night and day different from how I feel when I’m practicing my ONA. It truly is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Also, if you are in the ONA program, it’s a very cool feeling to do a daily blog to take your accountability up a notch. It’s really so helpful to write down my daily experience so that the Negativity Addiction doesn’t make things all blurry and my vibe all sloppy. Noticing, noticing, noticing. As I always say, at least 70% of recovery is awareness of when we’re triggered and changing vibes quickly.

Oh, one more thing, I really noticed this tendency to want to muscle through a negative vibe with some action, thinking the action is “more important” than my moment to moment vibe. I had to stop myself a few times today and say, “NO. This action isn’t more important than your vibe. Stop what you’re doing, even for a minute, flip your vibe, and then you can get back to what you’re doing.” This awareness is working wonders for my overall vibe as no action is more important than feeling good!

Love and Happy Bio-Chemicals!

Denise