"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it"

Yesterday I had a breakdown day. I was really tired, and spent my day sleeping, watching films, crying and thinking about this whole Empath thing. Of course, being me, I realized that it would only last for a day, or maximum two days. And I started to feel better last evening, already. Naturally, because that is how I function now a days.

"No problem can be solved from the same level
of consciousness that created it"
Albert Einstein

During last night I had a dream about a house. It was a big, white, wooden house of two or three floors. It had a lot of big open windows everywhere, and the feeling inside the house was that of love and harmony. Peace. But then came the winds. Hard and strong, and they swept in from all different directions, through all the windows and whirled around in the house. The house tried to close the windows, but they were all stuck. And then the winds died out again. Leaving the house in chaos, with leafs, broken branches, dirt, rubbish and wall papers coming off the walls. The love and harmony could still be slightly felt, but it was hidden underneath all the chaos. It took a few days for the house to get back to what it was. And the winds came back again.

Houses in dreams are said to represent the dreamer, so the house was obviously me. The winds I am sure represents the energies around me, that I take in, being an Empath. The windows that were not able to close felt significant after the dream had ended, but I wasn't sure in what way.

In the morning I usually meditate, and so I did this morning as well, and during this mornings meditation the thought came to me that instead of thinking of the winds, aka the energies, as intruders and enemies, I should see them as friends that come bearing gifts.

Being an Empath is a part of who I am. I owe it to myself to love all parts of that I can't change. I am not supposed to hide within a shell, or close those windows. I am supposed to build my house so the winds can sweep easily through it, taking what needs to be cleared out with them, leaving the good stuff that belongs in there.

This is a very nice realisation, because fighting against who you are never leads to anything good in the end. Now, I can walk into these situations with curiosity and love, and a will to learn from these energies.

Becoming aware of something that has causing you problems is a huge step towards solving it, but as Albert Einstein so wisely said: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it". 

10 Things You Should Do Every Day ("If you want to be happy, be." - Leo Tolstoy)

Most of us wake up in the morning, follow the same little routine without thinking about what we are doing, we go to work and then home, we cook because we have to, we eat because we need to and eventually we go to bed without having done, thought or felt anything special. The next day is the same, the next week is the same, the next month is the same, even the next year is the same. And so life goes on without leaving any marks on you, and you go on without leaving any marks on life.

If you want to be happy you have to think happy! Today!

Here is a list of 10 things you can, and should do every day to change your feelings about your life without changing your life (much):

Be happy and grateful for all the good things you've got in your life. We all have a lot of things to be happy and grateful for. That we are alive, that we have a bed to sleep in, our partner, kids, family, friends and pets, that we have food on our table every day, that we can read and hear, that we have a house to live in, that we have a table in our house, that we woke up in the morning, that we have a heart to love with.. Nothing is too big or too small to recognise and be grateful for. 

Plan your day, fill it with happy thoughts and happy feelings. When you go to sleep at night make sure you plan the next day, not so much in actions as in feelings. Tell yourself that tomorrow will be a good day no matter what comes your way. Nothing will disturb your peace of mind. You will smile and be grateful and happy for everything all day long. When you wake up in the morning remember those thoughts and the feeling you had when you thought them. 

Smile and laugh as much as you possibly can. Even if there is nothing obvious to smile or laugh about do it anyway. Sing a happy little song, take some silly dance steps, think of something funny, try to make up a joke to tell your friends at work. Think of all the things you are grateful and happy for. Remember the first love you felt for your partner, or child. Find something to think about that will make you smile everytime you think about it, or do something that will make you smile everytime you do it, if you find yourself being a bit down.

Tell someone you love them. When you tell someone you love them it will make you feel good. It's as simple as that.

Make someone feel good about themselves. Say something nice to someone who's not expecting it. Tell a stranger they look very nice, Smile at someone you meet on the street. Tell your boss you enjoy working with him or her. Tell a friend about a good quality you think they have. Tell your partner or your child that you are proud of them. It will make their day, lift them up and that will make your day and lift you up.

Enjoy everything you eat and drink. Food and beverages are so much more than just something we need. It is tasty, and nice, and it helps your body and you to feel good. Make sure to learn what foods and drinks you feel good eating and drinking. Everybody is different and feel good from eating and drinking different things. Avoid what makes you feel physically and mentally bad, stay with the good stuff. And enjoy!

Do something creative; write,draw, cook or move your furniture around. What makes you drift away for a while, what connects you to your inner self? Most people have some kind of a creative pet peeve within them. Whether it is writing, drawing, painting, jig saw puzzling, cooking, working out doesn't matter, just do it! Half an hour every day is enough to calm yourself down and get in touch with yourself.

Relax and enjoy it. This is very important! Most people do not realise how important relaxing is for you. When you relax you load your batteries, not only the bodily batteries but also your brain and emotions. Take your time to just sit there without doing anything whatsoever for at least 10 minutes a day, and learn how to enjoy it. Again, you can think of all the good things in your life, or the feeling of being completely relaxed.

Love yourself. The root to everything is to love yourself. Find the good things about you, do you like your eyes think of them. Do you like how you always try to improve as a human being, focus on that. Do you like your hair today, love it. Are you a caring person, embrace and notice that. Make a mental list of all the things you like about you, and remember to remember them every day.

Do at least one thing that will bring you closer to a dream. Every person alive has dreams, things they would love to do, have or be. Find out what your dreams are (and yes it is probably that thing you are telling yourself that it's not because you can't fulfill it anyway) and do at least one thing every day to bring you closer to that dream. Do you want to be fit, find out what foods are good for you and what kind of work out you enjoy and then eat that food (while enjoying it) and do that work out. Is your dream to travel, start making plans, saving money, looking at flights and hotells. Is it to write a book, start writing, anything. Whatever your dream is you can achieve it, but you have to take steps in that direction. It will not happen all on it's own. First thing is to allow yourself to recognise your dreams.

If you do these things every day I promise you it will make you feel better, you will start to enjoy your life more and your dreams will begin to come true! Enjoy and good luck!

Read about Leo Tolstoy! 

Love
Carina

"The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins." – Bob Moawad

The day you start taking responsibility for your own life is the day your life begins.

I take complete responsibility of my life, and everything in it. From the things I have, or don't have, to the people that are in it, or that are not, all the way down to the different situations that occur, or don't occur. I don't believe in coincidences and I don't believe in faith. I make my life; I get what I want and what I believe I should have and nothing less.

Being born and brought up in Sweden, I've always been surrounded by safety nets and I was forced in a young age to start using them. After a while I knew how to take advantage of them, which in some ways led me to not having to take total responsibility of myself and my life. If I f***ed up I would always land on something, if not soft, than semi-soft. That led me to a special kind of laziness. I mean, why work for what I really wanted when I could just, more or less, sit back and have a comfortable enough life without any real effort. It never made me feel good, or worthy of a good life.

And then I moved abroad, and all of a sudden things were different. All of a sudden I needed to be responsible for everything in my life. Now, you would think that it would be difficult and hard, but on the contrary; I loved it! For the first time in my adult life I was in control of how my life was and would be and it was a freeing feeling. If something went wrong it was all my fault, or my responsibility to make it right. If something went right it was all my doing!
I did something right! And I can honestly say that it was a new beginning. Sweden is great because they have all those safety nets, but too many people never learn that they themselves are responsible for their lives and nobody else. I think it's sad and I think it is one of the reasons why Swedish people are so unhappy, because a lot of them are. People need to be in charge of their own lives to be happy.

Today I am a very happy person, who likes to be in control of my life. I've chosen every single part of it, for myself because I wanted it. The feeling is liberating. I wish every person in the world will get to feel it some day, because once they've felt it they want to remain in it.

So I've got a question for you; are you responsible for your own life? Are you taking responsibilty for your own happiness and for your dreams? If not, try to answer this question; why? And what can you do to change it?

Love Carina

The Optimist Creed (part 7,8 and 9)

Smile to people you meet, and the world will be a nicer place.

Here are the next three parts of "the Optimist Creed" by Christian D. Larson. You can read all of it, and my first breakdowns of it here. I first came in contact with the Optimist Creed via "the Secret". A very powerful book and film, by Rhonda Byrne, that I recommend people interested in self growth to read.

* Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

Are you living in the moment, or are you holding on to the past? I wrote about this in an earlier post (you can find it here), and I think it is a very important point. The past is something you can learn from, how to do and how to not do. Whatever mistakes you made before (or good things for that matter) is in the past, and you can never change it or go back to it, so you might as well forget them and let it go. Live today and move towards tomorrow. You got great things to achieve in the future, but to be able to see them when they show up you need to be in the present and not the past.

* Promise yourself to wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.

Most people like kids and animals and they have no problem smiling at them, but do you smile at adults you meet? Smile at friends and family, but also, smile at strangers on the street. Who knows, you might cheer someone up that is having a terrible day otherwise? When I do that I can see people hesitate at first, but then they break out in a big smile. A smile is more than just an expression; it is energy, a vibration that brings out good feelings in you, and the one you smile at. Smile at the girl behind the till, even if you're stressed and annoyed (which you shouldn't be, but that's a different day's lesson). Smile at yourself in the mirror, everybody looks better when they smile and who doesn't want to look better when they look at themselves in the mirror. So bring out that big, nice smile of yours and put it to use.

* Promise yourself to give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

Are you in a habit of criticizing other people? Do you laugh at peoples clothes, or think bad thoughts about fat people? Well, if you do, you need to stop doing it immediately! They are not your business, only YOU are your business. Whatever you say, or think about others you will bring upon yourself. And let's face it, who are you to judge other people? It's not like you're flawless, right?! Spend your time improving yourself and you will not have time to criticize others. Let people be who they are, and you will be allowed to be who you are. (So you better start finding out who that is)

"I think the thing to do is to enjoy the ride while you're on it." - Johnny Depp

Make sure you enjoy the joyride while you're on it!

As I've mentioned before there a lot of great things going on, happening or about to happen in my life right now, and the other day I found myself a bit lost in all of them. Imagine you are on a joy ride that spins faster and faster, and even though you think, after it's all over, how much fun it was and how much you enjoyed it; all you could think of during the actual ride was how much it was spinning and how fast the world around you passed by. This is what happened to me the other day. I'm in this amazing part of my life, on this really enjoyable ride, and all I could think of was practical stuff and how many things that fell into place and how fast it all happened/happens and what to do next, and other things like that. What I should have been doing was to enjoy it all.

This is the reason why I didn't post anything new for a few days, I had to stop myself from spinning without control and I had to retake the control and make sure I actually enjoy it all when I'm in the middle of it. Not just after it all happened. If I don't enjoy it when it happens then it will be a waste of time, and I don’t like wasting time. Even when I don't really do anything at all, even when I spend a whole day watching television in bed, I don't feel like I'm wasting ithe time or the day, as long as I enjoy it. Life is supposed to be enjoyable and I believe, like Johnny Depp said in the quote, that you need to enjoy the ride while you're on it.

I am never bored because of that, even when I don't do anything or have anything to do I try to enjoy the moment. Who knows when I'll have the chance to not do anything the next time? When I am really busy and have a lot of things to do at the same time, I still try to enjoy myself because tomorrow I might not have anything to do. However, I do prefer the middle way. Being lazy is much more fun when you can't be lazy all the time. Being busy is only enjoyable when you can be be lazy sometimes.

I try to do things I know I enjoy doing, but it's hard to get away with that all the time (and I would probably be bored it I did), but when I have to do something I don't really like I still do my best to enjoy it. I used to hate doing the dishes and one time, many, many years ago I said that to my grandmother when she was doing the dishes after dinner. She told me that she liked doing the dishes because it gave her time to think about life. That stuck in my head and now I really enjoy doing the dishes and I often think of my grandmother. She taught me a lot about life, without me realising it at the time. I wish I had known back then how to enjoy the ride while I was on it.

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." - Carl Jung

Get aware and make your unconscious conscious.

Yesterday's post was about expectations and that you get what you expect, the problem with that is that most people don't know what they expect. Most people are led by their unconscious and not their conscious minds. And the unconscious mind is not a very obvious place, it isn't all  that easy to find it and to get to it. But it's not impossible! You can train yourself to be aware of the thoughts that go on in your unconscious mind. And to get what you want out of life it is a necessity to make the unconscious conscious. I think what Carl Jung ment was that there is no fate, there is only you. I agree! Do you?

Let's say you're carrying a tray of glasses, and somewhere in the back of your head you start to think that you will drop it. Sure thing you will! Or you overslept in the morning and the rest of the day you are trying to catch up and one after another things go wrong. You've been there, right?! This is not because you can't carry a tray and it is not because you are having a bad day. It is because in the back of your head, in your unconscious mind, you expect it to be that way. You can turn it around though, because you know that you are thinking something "bad", somewhere in your unconscious mind, by the way that you feel. If you're feeling stressed, insecure, angry, annoyed or any other negative feeling, you are thinking something negative. If that negative thought is not in your conscious mind it will be in your unconscious mind. Easy right? If you feel bad you're thinking something bad. And once you've established how you feel, you can start searching your unconscious for the bad thought. When you find it you're automatically making it a conscious thought and you can change it.

The first thing you need to do is to make a conscious decision to make your unconscious conscious . That is, if you want to be aware of where you're are leading yourself in life. After you've made that decision you need to start being aware of your feelings, at all times, small or big. If you wake up in the morning feeling grumpy, take a moment to figure out why, make the thought come up to the surface and turn it around. One thing you need be careful with, though, is that your brain can't understand negative words like no, never, not and so on. It will read your thought as an opposite one if it contains a negation. Think "This day will be a good day", rather than "This day will not be a bad day". If you take out  the word "not" in the latter it will read "This day will be a bad day" and that is the opposite of what you intended.

My day will be great! Will your day be great?