Dow do your judgements trap you?

Judgement, something we all do, yet we all hate at the same time. Judging another does not feel good and being judged by another feels even worse. I am going to give you some insightful perspectives on judgment and what you can learn from what you judge.

Your judgements are actually a reflection of what you judge in yourself.

What we judge in others is actually what we are struggling with ourselves. So if you judge others as being messy it is because it is something you are very critical of in yourself. Either you are not very tidy or you are but it takes a lot of effort and deep down you are afraid of losing control to the mess. Judgment is often only an opinion and as such it is not reality. It is simply your way of looking at the world through the programming and beliefs built up from parents, schools, society and experiences you have had in your life. You can feel that your opinion is so important that it is almost law, and the frustration and anger you can feel when someone else does not value your opinion can be intense.

Your judgements imprison you

Just recently I realised that our judgments actually keep us imprisoned in our life. For instance if you believe that being a bad person is detrimental ,you will most likely have judged other people for being bad in whatever way you think fits your interpretation of bad. It could be adultery, excessive drinking,  and rudeness and so on. However, life has a way of challenging us and we can be thrown into the very situations we have judged others on. If you have these judgements they will affect the choices you make and when these choices come from a fear of your own judgments they will entrap you. For example let’s say you disagree with divorce, maybe you have criticised others for getting divorced so when your relationship starts to deteriorate you will think ‘but I am not one of those people’ and then hold onto the  bad relationship ,hurting yourself and others in the process -just so you don’t have to be one of “those people.” Imagine that there was no judgment; you would then be free to act in a way that felt good for you or that felt light for you. Suddenly the options you have in a certain situation expand and your life opens up.

What you think others are judging in you is the truth.

I love this one as your ego will start to get very agitated when you can see this clearly!
I have found that we live in a cage of what we think others are judging in us. I have seen women who in their youth were stunning but as age crept up and changed their bodies have struggled to go out and socialise due to how they think other women will judge them. What we think others are thinking of us imprisons us. It limits us and it enforces boundaries on our lives. Ironically we are actually the ones imprisoning ourselves as it is the things we think others are thinking of us and not what they actually are that limits us.

No one is ever judging you except yourself. Well, they might be but you will only care about it when it relates to your own judgments. When you believe that someone is judging you, you will then display the very thing you fear being judged about. Let me explain. Let us say you fear that people think you are not clever enough. You will react in one of two ways. You will either go all out to prove that you are clever or you will retreat into defence. To prove that you are indeed clever enough and prove them wrong you might leap into the conversation speaking forcefully on the topic being discussed, however, knowing little about it, you will say things that don’t make sense or aren’t true therefore proving yourself to not be very clever. If you go into defence mode you will withdraw yourself from the conversation adding nothing and leaving people thinking that you are stupid and you will feel even more stupid. Once you can see that what you believe others are thinking about you is actually what you fear they are thinking of you, you can deal with the fear.  In the example above if you are afraid of not being clever, ask yourself: where are you clever? It might not be in the area under discussion but I am positive there will be an area in your life where you are definitely an expert. So let this one go no one is ever an expert in every area. I know a lot about consciousness but know little about technology. I know I would look very stupid if I tried to pretend I knew what I was talking about in such a conversation. Sometimes we do better to keep quiet and ask questions to learn, the people you are with will also feel appreciated if ask them about their field of expertise. I know I love to be asked about consciousness.

The way out of judgment

The way out of judgment is just to be aware that judgments are not coming from outside in, they start on the inside and are reflected back at you. I love using this example with clients -if you call a thin person fat they will look at you like there is something wrong with you. However if you call a fat person fat then they will be deeply hurt by it. This is because they believe it to be true. So it is never about what others say or do it is about what you believe to be true and how that affects you. 

​With love Britt 

How to stop the struggle 
There have been times in my life that I have wondered at this thing called life. Why does it have to be so hard!? No sooner have I conquered one mountain than another one looms over me! I barely have time to celebrate my victory before I have to be off again to the next climb.
Does this sound familiar? Have you been struggling from one challenge to the next? I have been giving this much thought as this is not the life that I signed up for. What I have discovered is what I am going to share with you now.
You know how when you are growing up, some idealists tell you that you should really do what you love to do? I know I got told this. Unfortunately I didn’t really know what I would love to do, so I became indoctrinated with what others thought I should be doing. And not just what I should be doing, but what I needed to be doing in order to be successful and survive at what I should be doing. Finally I found something that I did want to be doing but then I still had all of the vestiges of other people’s opinions on how I should be doing it and it seems that only now, am I really stepping out and doing what I love in the way that I love it.
At different points in my life it has all been about surviving. Doing whatever I could to make ends meet and not sink in the process. What I have learnt recently though is that what those idealists told me all those years ago is the truth. It does not matter which strategies you use or how clever you appear, if you are not happy doing what you do -you are not going to be happy. Life will be one challenge after another because you are not on solid footing or in line with yourself.
There are a number of components to doing what you love

• Keep looking
  • I only found what I wanted to do when I was 30, not that it needs to take a long time, (some people know from the word go what they want to do). At first I stumbled on a book that I enjoyed and this grew into a passion to learn more about consciousness. But when I tried Raki and Body Talk I knew that I didn’t want to do this full time. Only when I was 35 did I stumble onto Coaching and Consciousness Coaching and finally find my space. Even after this my life is not a fixed thing but an ever changing and developing process. Don’t ever give up if you haven’t found what you love just keep looking, but you do actually have to look and not just hide in your room expecting it to find you.
• Trust your self
  • No one will ever be able to tell you what makes your heart sing. Only you can know that so trust how things make you feel. These feelings are feedback from your soul to your conscious self to say YES!!! Or NO!!! You will also need to trust that you can make it in what you love and this is an even harder step as you might need to go against everything with which you have been programed. When I started coaching I was told by a couple of family members to get a ‘proper’ job and stop playing around. Just remember that this is their reality and not yours. If you truly love doing something, you will give it something special and because of this it will be worth so much more than what other people are offering who are not doing it from their hearts. You can’t expect other people or the universe to trust you if you are not prepared to trust yourself.
• Follow your bliss
  • Again this is about tuning into your feelings. When you do things that line up with your soul you will feel excited and inspired. These are the bread crumbs you need to follow to find your path. No one else can find them but you. No one else can advise you on which is the right path as only you are tuned into these particular bread crumbs. And why should you line up with your soul? Quite simply because if you don’t you will be climbing that mountain all of your life. The struggle I spoke about at the start of this blog is a struggle in yourself that is projected out onto the stage of the world. You do not need to line up with your soul but if you don’t you will be fighting yourself for the rest of your life.
• Recognize your ego and let go
  • Your ego is designed to keep you safe, and this means keeping exactly where you have always been because it knows how to deal with life here. This is often why people have to hit rock bottom before they will change. Only when life really becomes unbearable where they are do they allow themselves to move. How you will know if your ego has come out to play is that you will doubt yourself, you will feel fearful and you what once seemed like a great idea will seem the silliest thing in the world. Your ego uses your thoughts and feelings to get you back in line. However when you are ready and waiting for it then it does not work so effectively and you can choose to act independently of it.
• Give up any the need for approval
  • One of the biggest stumbling blocks for most people in this process is that they start out on this new inspired path only to bump into someone who thinks that what they are doing is ‘mad’! Most often these comments come from those closest to you and what these comments really are is your fears being expressed by others. When you are prepared for them they are not nearly as terrifying and what I am going to do is give you a tool to move past them. When someone says something that triggers you in relation to your new direction, take some time and ask yourself. What do you fear will happen if what this person said is true? Let’s look at an example – When I started I was told to get a proper job. When I look at this statement and ask myself what was I afraid would happen if I didn’t get a proper job, I was afraid I would fail, be destitute, not be able to support myself and my children. I was focused on surviving. I feared that I would disappear and be irradiated in life if I didn’t do what I was told to do. But when you look at it I would be more likely to disappear and be irradiated by life if I was just to conform and live a non-life. And in hindsight it has been because I have had to make my chosen career work (otherwise I would not have survived) that has meant I did make it work. Sometimes when the circumstances are too comfortable it is easier to give up, there is no reason to succeed.

I love the space I am in at the moment. I love having time to write about, research, talk about and support others and do the things I love. I have realized that I don’t need anyone to approve of what I do; I do it because it pleases me and that is the most wonderful thing. I get to do things that please me all day and now the challenges that I used to have are the most wonderful meander through the most stunning scenery and it gives me joy to walk this path every day.
I hope you find your path and wish you happy traveling
With love Britt
 

How to overcome stress
I decided to write this article because I have recently made the huge decision to move from Botswana to England. As far as life stresses go moving is right up there as one of the most stressful life changes. What I have found interesting, is that by using these techniques below I am able to keep my stress levels right down, even though the plans keep changing for reasons totally out of my control. I know many people struggle with stresses of one kind or another and I hope that my insights might be able to help you.
 Stress is one of the biggest most damaging emotions in society. Anyone who doesn’t believe that our thoughts and emotions create illness in our bodies should just look at stress. It is common knowledge that stress causes ulcers, high blood pressure and heart attacks. But what is stress and how do you overcome it?
Stress is the result of your belief that your environment is threatening and your body’s conditioned response to threat which is fight, flight or freeze. To prepare your body for the perceived attack or threat adrenalin and cortisol are released into the blood stream, which causes the heart to beat faster, blood to be directed away from digestion and into the muscles amongst other reactions. The sensations you might experience are breathlessness, increased body temperature, sweating, and single minded focus, (or obsessive thoughts), on the issue.
It is the oldest part of your brain that reacts to stress, the reptilian part, and it does not discern between real or imagined threats. What this means for us in our modern world is that the threats are more often than not imagined ones and not ones that will literally kill you. For instance being late for a meeting, being stuck in traffic, moving house, relationship challenges, your team winning at sport, or getting your kids into a good school and so on. If you look even more closely at this it is not the event that actually cause’s you stress it is your thoughts about the event that cause you stress. So thoughts about how disastrous something might be = stress!! No thoughts about something = no stress. There are many ways to destress some of which I have found helpful and some of which I have not. For instance have you ever tried to meditate when you are seriously stressed? I have and to be honest it makes me even more stressed, because as I try to calm down and let go of things, more stressful thoughts reappear. And then not only am I stressing about whatever scary thing is going on in my life, I am also stressing about not being able to destress! That is not to say mediation is not helpful I love mediating just that it might not be the first step in destressing.
I have faced a number of stressful situations in my life and this is what I have found works

1. Get out of your head and your thoughts
2. Look at what needs to be done and what might go wrong
3. Taking action
4. Let go
5. Do a clearing statement

1. Getting out of your head, I have noticed that when you think about something a lot, and stress about it your energy and focus is in your head. If you bring your energy and focus into your heart or lower down in your body or to your breathing you tend to calm down. At the beginning of my coaching sessions I take my clients through a check in. As part of this each client shuts their eyes and focuses on how their body feels. I have seen nearly every one of them take a deep breath and relax as they do this. It is involuntary and just happens. As soon as you take your focus out of your head and your thoughts and bring in down into your body you will find you relax. So if you find you are stressed make time to get out of your head. Other ways to get out of your head are focusing on breathing, fishing, golf, walking, running, being in nature or whatever does it for you.   
2. What needs to be done and what could go wrong, when you find you are stressing about something look at the reality of it. Not how you feel about the situation but what is the situation and what can you do about it? I know many people wake up in the middle of the night worrying about all sorts of things. When things are in your head there is a fear you might forget them. The best thing to do is write them down. Make a list and put timelines on what you need to do by when. Once you have this list you will feel so much more peaceful. I know it seems simple but it works! Also ask yourself is there anything that could potentially go wrong and what can you do about it? In relation to my decision having this list has brought me peace of mind. Even though it is a very long list I feel comfort that I know what I am doing and am getting it done. I also listen to my inspiration. If a thought pops into my head such as a personas name I phone them then and there. I know if a follow these inspirations I find solutions that I would never have come to on my own. It is a bit like a delicious treasure hunt.
3. Taking action, it is not enough to have your list. Once you have this list you then need to take action. Action is very important. If you do not take action you will not be moving and you will be stagnating or resisting. I like to think of life a bit like a river. I can swim with the current by taking actions that will keep me moving with it and take me past the obstacles. I can stop swimming and let the river take me where ever it wants which might be into some rocks or onto the sore. Or I can swim against the river which is hard work and doesn’t get me anywhere very fast. I find that when I am in action of the things I know I need to be in action of life can move very quickly.
4. Let go, once you have decided on your actions there is no point stressing over and over about what might or might not happen. You need to let go and let God (or whatever you believe in). Trying to control every eventuality only causes serious stress. And I haven’t yet found anyone who has ever been able to control every eventuality. Sometimes you just need a little faith that if you do whatever you know you need to do that whatever is meant to be will be. With this move I have found my plans have changed many times. If I had been fixed on making what I believed to be the right result happen I would have been very unhappy. However I choose to believe that a greater force is guiding me and that if I flow with it rather than tell it, it got it all wrong I will end up exactly where I am meant to be. So far I am excited about the new possibilities and know that I will be far happier than had I insisted the first idea was the right one.
5. Clearing statements, this is something that not everyone will know about. Your stress is normally due in part to programs and beliefs in your unconscious mind. And as the name suggests they are unconscious and you are unaware of them. There are ways to find out what they are but these are very involved and take time. What I have found works too are clearing statements. There are two that I know of and you might find there are more. One is from Dr Ihaleakala Hew Len and is called - ho'oponopono. He is a Hawaiian healer and there is a wonderful story about how he cured a mentally ill asylum using this clearing statement you can read more about this in Zero Limits by Joe Vitale. What he teaches is that we are all 100% responsible for our experience of reality. This does not mean we are to blame. But by taking responsibility and using the clearing statement to clean yourself of negative beliefs you can change our perception and experiences. The statement is; I love you, I am sorry, please forgive me, and thank you. You say this to whatever you believe in be it God, Allah, and so on. I say this to life force as I feel most connected when I do it. I also find that when I really feel each step of the statement it has the greatest effect. What I mean by this is; feeling love when I say I love you, feeling the emotion of whatever area I am stuck in when I say I am sorry, feeling as if this is being lifted off of me or some greater force is taking care of it when I say please forgive me and feeling joy and gratitude when I say thank you. I know I am complete when I feel like something has shifted and I feel lighter. Sometimes I have to stay in one section for longer and I just focus on it and breath. I try not to question the process but rather feel my way through it and trust my intuition for when it is right to move on. As I do not know all of the programs that are causing me resistance on a certain issue I sometimes have to do the statement a number of times. Do it until you no longer feel anxiety, fear or stress in relation to what you are doing.

Another clearing statement that I have used is from Access Consciousness the link to the clearing statement is - http://www.theclearingstatement.com/ I am not going to go into too much more detail as they explain it perfectly on the website.
I have used both of these and find I favor one or other depending on how I feel. Use both and see which feel right for you. At present I am using the ho'oponoponoone but it shifts and changes.

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Wishing you all of the very best
 
With love
 
Britt