Month: April 2024

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Stick FAST to Your CORE

Substack Stick FAST to Your CORE living in the now

Stick FAST to your CORE is a way to set boundaries and to be aware of your own True Self. This awareness allows you to make decisions about compromise issues vs. core issues. A core issue is one in which, if you compromised on it, you’d have to give up a bit of who you are. A core issue has been violated if you are asked to compromise on an issue that crosses your personal boundaries.

Another way to look at core issues is to see them as issues regarding your own True Self. The True Self could be seen as the sum total of all your core values and beliefs. If you are able to consistently live in a way that honors your core values, you are living in True Self.

The worksheet below will give you the skills to find your core values. Once you have listed them, you can refer to the worksheet as needed in order to help you to live consistently in True Self.

Stick FAST to Your CORE

Stick FAST to Your CORE – Acronyms

The acronym below will help you to determine your CORE values. After reading over these CORE skills, go on to complete the Finding your CORE Worksheet.

CORE is:

Connection

Connection means finding ways to connect to others and to yourself by choosing to remain positive and engaged

Openness

Openness means remaining open to hearing what others are saying, and remaining open to what your own inner voice is telling you

Reflective

To be reflective is to use the skills of observing and describing to examine your own inner emotional states

Empathy

To be empathetic is to express sincere concern for the feelings of others and yourself

FAST is:

Flexible

In what ways might being Flexible help you to maintain your CORE values and beliefs?

Adaptable

In what ways might being Adaptable help you to maintain your CORE values and beliefs?

Stable

In what ways might being Stable help you to maintain your CORE values and beliefs?

Truthful

In what ways might being Truthful help you to maintain your CORE values and beliefs?
 

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Consistency & Happiness

Consistency and happiness

Consistency is nothing more or less than learning the art of being happy. Unfortunately, society has conditioned us to believe that happiness comes from something outside of ourselves: The right house, or the right car, or the right clothes, or the right spouse, or the right job. But what if happiness came from somewhere else?

What if we could learn to create our own happiness from within ourselves? If happiness comes from the things we own, or from other people, or from our life circumstances, then it can be taken away. But if happiness comes from within, nobody can ever take it away from us unless we choose to let them.

Happiness is a choice, not a thing. Happiness is a decision, not a destination. It is internally driven. It is not something that happens to us. It is something we make happen. We make happiness happen by looking at every situation in our lives and finding something good in it.

Remember Tom Sawyer and the picket fence? He eventually chose to see painting the fence as a fun adventure instead of a chore. We can turn most of the chores in our lives into happy experiences merely by changing the way we think about these events, because we’re in control of our own emotional states.
The way to choose to be happy, no matter what the circumstances, is to turn within instead of looking without. True happiness is internally motivated and not externally motivated. This means that opportunities for happiness come from deep within ourselves and not from the events that happen in our lives.

A secondary emotion is the ‘feeling after the feeling,’ in that it is the emotional reaction we have to our feelings. For example, if I am feeling sad, and I then respond to this sadness by feeling guilty for feeling sad, the sadness is the primary emotion and the guilt is the secondary emotion.

What if, instead of responding to the sadness with guilt, I consciously chose to respond to it with happiness? This may sound difficult, but with practice it is possible. The more we practice this skill, the easier it gets.

It helps to remember that happiness doesn’t come from our circumstances. It comes from within us. The more we practice changing our secondary emotions by choosing to focus on happiness, the more consistent we will become in managing our moods.

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Memories: Making the Pieces Fit

memories

There are many types of memory. Let’s talk about two of them: Implicit Memory and Narrative Memory. Implicit memories are memories about specific events. What did you have for breakfast this morning? What outfit did you wear yesterday? Which people did you talk to today? The answers to these questions are implicit memories.

Narrative memories are memories that try to make sense of our various experiences on a day-to-day basis. Narrative memories integrate our implicit memories into a coherent whole. While implicit memories are the ‘what,’ narrative memories are the ‘why.’ Suppose I don’t usually eat eggs for breakfast, but today I decided to have scrambled eggs. The memory of having scrambled eggs is an implicit memory that answers the question, “What did I have for breakfast?” Further suppose that I was having breakfast with a friend who knew my eating habits, and my friend commented that I don’t usually eat eggs. If I search my own mind for a reason why I chose eggs for breakfast on this particular day, the reason I come up with will be the ‘why’ of narrative memory.

Our lives are made up of implicit memories of our daily events. In order to make sense of our lives, we link these events together in a narrative that gives our lives meaning. These stories that we create about our life experiences are our narrative memories. We all write our own autobiographies every day of our lives. This process of autobiography writing is our narrative memory fitting the pieces of our implicit memories together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Integrating Memories

For most of us, most of the time, our stories make sense and everything runs smoothly. But sometimes we get a bunch of implicit memories that we just can’t seem to fit into our own narratives. It’s as if, while working this jigsaw puzzle, we somehow grabbed a handful of pieces from another box. When this happens, we have to ‘change the picture’ of our life stories to incorporate these new puzzle pieces. This process of fitting the new pieces into the puzzle is called integration.

If we are able to successfully integrate all of these implicit memories, then there’s no problem. If we have difficulty making some of the pieces fit, it usually means that we’d have to change our worldview and re-write our own narrative in order to fit those pieces into the puzzle. This can be a frustrating experience. Sometimes that frustration manifests in emotional aggression.

Living a life of consistency means finding a way to make all of the pieces fit without getting frustrated or without having to act out in emotionally aggressive ways. By learning to integrate our True Selves into the story of our lives, we fit all of our implicit memories into a new narrative memory that creates this new paradigm. When all of these pieces have fit together, we are living at the core of our True Selves.

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Sacred Space Meditation

Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Facilitator Certification Program MBE sacred space meditation

About Sacred Space

Since one of the core elements of mindfulness is the ability to focus on the present moment, sacred spaces naturally facilitate mindful states. From a psychological perspective, setting aside a sacred space allows you to enter that space, step outside of time, and do your own work of contemplating the essence of being. If you have a special place set aside for this activity, and only for this activity, then entering it more readily puts you in a special state of mind.
Psychologists call this situation-specific learning. If your sacred space becomes associated in your mind with relaxation, meditation, and contemplation, then after a while simply entering your sacred space will put you into a meditative state (Nadel, 2019).

If you are fortunate enough to have access to a natural place that calls to you, you may make it your own by placing symbols and signs there that mean something to you. My own sacred space is marked by statuary and wind chimes. The gentle music of the chimes lends itself well to contemplation. When I am at home with the windows open, sometimes the wind blows through the trees, stirring the chimes. When this happens, I am reminded of my sacred space and the peace found there. Even if I am busy working at the computer, the music of the chimes reminds me for a moment of the happy times I have spent in my sacred space in meditation.

If you don’t have access to an outdoor place to create your own sacred space, you can create one indoors. Set up a small table somewhere in a corner of your home. Cover it with things that help you to achieve a meditative state. You may use candles, incense, house plants, or pictures of nature scenes or loved ones. You can use anything that might help you to connect with your True Self.

If you’re out walking in the woods, you may come upon a place that attracts you. Stop there and meditate for a while. If this place is particularly meaningful for you, you may mark it for others by making a small pile of stones. This has been a tradition of mine for decades now, and when we do ecospirituality workshops, students often do this. Coming upon a small pile of stones left by another can be a powerful way to connect yourself to others who have walked the path. It also allows you the opportunity to be in a sacred space that others have enjoyed before you.

Whether your sacred space is indoors or outdoors, it can be a useful place for finding your center and connecting with your True Self.

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Sacred Space Meditation

Prior to performing this sacred space meditation, you must first have your own sacred space. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to find your own sacred space for the purposes of this activity. This should be a place that is fairly easy to access for you. It should be as free of man-made artifice as possible. This means that it should not be a place with manicured lawns and trimmed hedges if at all possible. It should be a pristine place, undisturbed by modifications due to humankind.

Of course, this is the ideal, and you may not have such a space readily available to you. If not, that’s okay. Just try to get as close to a wild, untamed environment as you can. If that’s also not a possibility for you, then you can include as many natural elements as possible in this meditation by playing recorded sounds of nature or filling a room in your home with houseplants, or just visualizing an outdoor scene that fills you with a sense of peace and harmony.

For the purposes of this meditation, the fewer reminders you have of the modern human-built world, the more successful your meditation will be. Once you have found your sacred space, make sure that you will be undisturbed here for the duration of the exercise. When you are ready to begin, watch Sacred Space Meditation video. This exercise is part of the Ecospirituality Group Program by the Mindful Ecotherapy Center, LLC. Learn more at mindfulecotherapy.org.