Holly Hildreth
  • Welcome
  • Blog
  • Savor the Sweetness
  • Be of Service
  • Know Thyself
  • Follow Your Bliss
  • Play
  • Be Content
  • Trust God
  • Faster Emotional Freedom Technique-V

Be Content

The door opens onto NOW. What you experience is always right now. Here you stay fully focused on what you are doing in this moment. You choose to feel good by thinking thoughts that support you. Being is at the top of your to-do list. You are fully present and there is always enough time. Your Universe reflects all this right back to you. Isn’t this a place you’d like to BE?

Give Yourself the Power to Choose

6/7/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
“…happiness is the result of love coming out of you…”
Don Miguel Ruiz, Mastery of Love, A Toltec Wisdom Book

​A forty-something, tired-looking woman (who looks nothing like a younger version of me) stares at her daughter with dismay.
 “You are not going out of this house dressed like that!”

Her daughter slams the front door she had just opened, turns and looks at her mother, eyes narrowed, and disgust distorting the outline of her mouth. She runs upstairs to her room, screaming,    
“I hate you!”

If you were me, uh .. I mean this mother, how might you choose to feel in this situation?

For the sake of argument let’s pretend that you have forgotten you have a choice about how you want to feel and that you respond with a knee-jerk reaction. Your feelings are hurt. You feel anger and fear. You are trying to protect your daughter. Who knows what teen-aged boys might assume if they saw her parading around in that 6 inch skirt and tight, low cut, cropped t-shirt?

When your daughter comes back downstairs wearing an 8 inch skirt and a tight, low-cut, uncropped t-shirt, and looking at you as if you were condemning her to death, your hurt, anger and fear for her causes you to overreact.

“Get back up to your room, young lady! You are grounded! No phone, no mall, nothing, till you can learn how to dress properly!”

And so, it repeats, in many homes, in many variations, with many different teenaged daughters and sons.

This is an old road, traveled by many an irate parent of a teenager.

You may not have teenagers. You may not be a parent. Your life may not look anything like this. The learned behavior patterns of this scene may not be one of your patterns, but most likely you will have others.

We all have our individual behavior patterns, based on fear and built in response to family patterns as we were growing up.

Our hypothetical mother had a choice of how to respond to her daughter, though she may not have been aware of it at the time. (In fact, I can say for sure that she wasn’t. She knee-jerked much of her way through motherhood, sigh…)

We are constantly confronted with situations in which we choose how we will respond. The choice is not always conscious, but it is always a choice. Many of us forget this.

We are trained from infancy to perceive the world around us as our parents, family and society perceived the world, a process known as acculturation. It is the way we learn how to be in the world.

During the process of acculturation, we learn about how our world works and where we fit into it. As infants and children, we swallow whole the view of our world from those around us. Later, as adults we may question this view, but the foundation is laid.

We learn to make the choices about how we feel without conscious thought, based upon what those around us have taught us. We learn knee-jerk responses to certain kinds of experiences. 

We learn that we need certain things or events to happen in order for us to respond lovingly and feel happy. If those things do not happen, or other things happen instead, we respond with fear and we feel unhappy.

It doesn’t feel like a choice for us. It feels like our happiness depends on events outside of ourselves.

This is an unhappy way to live, because we give up our power to choose. We forget that we have the power to choose a loving response, to choose to feel happy. We believe that our happiness lives outside ourselves, when in fact just the opposite is true.

How do we choose to feel happy? We have these learned patterns that tell us when we can feel happy and when we have to feel unhappy. How do we unlearn these patterns and start over?

How do we give ourselves back the power to choose? We retrain our automatic responses through attention, time and practice.

Learning anything new requires attention, time and practice. My granddaughter will repeat a new skill over and over, day after day, until she has mastered it. Whether it is riding her bike without training wheels, drawing a human figure, or hanging upside down on the monkey bars, she is driven to practice again and again, until one day she has it. Then she will lose interest and move on to something new.

Our brains are hard-wired to learn this way. When mastering a desired new skill, we feel a driving need to practice. We are creating new pathways in our brains that allow us to master new skills.

In time, the pathways in the brain associated with any particular bit of learning become like well-traveled roads.

What happens when we want to relearn these responses? We have to stop using the old roads and build new roads in their place.

Relearning requires the repeated practice that any new learning requires. It also requires paying attention and catching ourselves before we start down an old response road, then reorienting ourselves to the new response road we are building.

When you choose to relearn old behavior patterns be patient with yourself.

You are rebuilding the learned pathways in your brain. You are learning to choose a love-based response over a fear-based response.

Relearning takes attention, time and practice.

Chances are there will be times when you suddenly find yourself on the old roads, responding in a knee-jerk negative fashion to familiar stimuli. You will have by-passed all the detour signs and gone barreling down the old road. That’s OK. Wherever you find yourself you can choose to reorient and keep rebuilding.

It’s worth it, because our choice of response, whether we respond from fear or from love, determines how we feel about any situation.

When we choose to respond from love we choose to feel happy.

Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book Mastery of Love, explains that we are only happy when we are expressing love.

A feeling of happiness is a side effect, a beneficial result of expressing love into the world. When we choose the loving response, we feel happy.

Give yourself the power to choose love.
Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

​Imagine that you are the parent of the teenager we met earlier.

Your beloved child has just screamed, “I hate you!”

You find yourself at the entranceway to the fear-filled road of hurt, anger and overreaction.

But with your new understanding, instead of traveling its well-worn path you stop. You remember that you have a choice.

Take a deep breath and ask yourself, what is positive about this situation?

Well, your daughter stopped. She didn’t go out that front door. She accepted the structure you imposed and went back upstairs to change. She did what you asked of her.

You could go on, thinking of how blessed you are to be the mother of such a high-spirited young woman. How lucky you are that she has good health, and that you are able to give her enough food to eat and a comfortable place to live.

Of course, you may not be feeling blessed by these things at the moment.

You have to choose to think of those things which feel positive to you.

Counting your blessings is an excellent tool for short-circuiting knee-jerk reactions.

Remember too to lighten up; it is not all so serious. Can you imagine what a cartoon of this situation would look like?

Remember what Erma Bombeck says, “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.”

Now think about this - today is exactly perfect just as it is. Every annoying detail is exactly as it should be.

We put so much of our energy into annoyance with small details of everyday life that are as they are. See the  perfection. You can trust that your daughter is learning how to make her own choices. This is a good thing, even if it requires you to occasionally butt heads.

You have the ability to choose love. Love would give your daughter a calm choice with full knowledge of appropriate consequences.
​
The next time you find yourself reacting in a fearful or angry, knee-jerk reaction, take a deep breath, count your blessings, lighten up, see the perfection, and ask yourself, “What would love do here?”
0 Comments

Live Your Dream Today

3/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
“You are so lucky to have every day.”
-Shoshona Ortalia Aurora Rogers
 
I’ve been reading a romance novel (my not so secret pleasure) set in rural Ireland about a woman whose heart’s desire was to be a writer. She gave up her city life and moved to a small village in Ireland to pursue her dream.  The description of her walks over emerald green hills in the mornings, then the delight she felt as she sat at her table, steaming cup of tea at hand, and wrote in the afternoons, all touched a chord deep within me. The more I brought up that feeling within me, the more I realized that she described my dream, and despite the difference in location I was stunned to realize I am living my dream.

The author of the trilogy writes so poignantly of her character’s life because she writes with love of what she loves. Why is it that we forget to see with the eyes of love in our every day lives? My dream is all around me and yet all I saw was the mundane and the repetition of every day. I guess even the bright shine of a dream dims from daily familiarity. Or perhaps I changed into it so gradually I took it all for granted, writing, woods walks with my dog, a loving marriage, my family who are my friends and my friends who are my family, my spiritual community. I am living my dream, how did I lose track of that?

Living your dream isn’t really about the physical aspects despite what we may think, it is about the feeling, paying attention to and expressing love in your every day life. The physical aspects of whatever it is you dream of may provide a vehicle for moving into that love, but it is the love and the expressing of love that creates happiness.

“A happy life is just a string of happy moments. But most people don’t get the happy moments because they’re so busy trying to get a happy life.”
-Abraham-Hicks
​

Appreciating each thing about every day that you can is an expression of love in your life. It creates happiness and it creates the energy for you to attract more of what you want, more of what you love into your daily experience.

You don’t have to wait until you’ve achieved your dream, whatever that may look like on the outside. For dreams change and shift even as we do. You can focus your attention upon appreciating the elements of today that are your dream, those bits and pieces of your day that you love. As you do so you open up to allow more and more of your dream into your every day.

photo by elijah-hiett - unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

​Appreciation of your every day life is the fast track to living your dream.

When you wake in the morning align yourself with the attitude of appreciation by saying a short prayer of gratitude for the new day ahead. Use whichever prayer feels right to you or make up one of your own. Here is one possibility -

“My God, Goddess, my Angels and Guides, thank you for today. May I be constantly grateful for the love which fills this day and every day.  Amen.”

During the day take the time to appreciate and give thanks for those bits of today which please, support and nurture you. Just noticing what you love and saying a quiet, “Thank you,” is enough.

​Do this as often as you think of it throughout the day, for you are living today’s dream. And as you do so with love, you build your dream of tomorrow.  

0 Comments

The Universe Will Support You

1/22/2019

4 Comments

 
Picture
“Everything is always working out for me.”
- Abraham-Hicks 
   
 
Awhile back my husband left early in the morning to drive to a convention several states away.  I knew he’d be gone for six days. In the past when I’ve said goodbye to him and found myself alone in the early morning dark, I’ve sunk into feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Not because it was true but because old childhood tapes would play in my head.

This time I chose to experience it differently.

I put my thoughts and feelings on hold as I tidied up the kitchen from breakfast focusing my attention on what was immediately in front of me. I put in a load of laundry and made myself a cup of tea. The sun came up and I took my tea outside to sit on the patio and watch the backyard awaken.

Negative thoughts arose and I chose to focus my attention on my immediate environment. I paid attention to my breath moving in and out. I watched the light in the leaves and felt the fresh, cool morning air. I noticed the birds at the feeder and heard their morning songs.  

Even as I did so I could feel the old anxieties and fears just beneath the surface. I knew what was there. I’d experienced it all before and now it lurked, a darkness pressing against the door of my awareness. This time I chose not to give it any attention, nor did I allow it to come to the fore. I didn’t even try to fix it as I’ve done before. Instead I paid attention to what I sensed all around me.

It felt like I was faking it, and any minute the reality of negativity would take over, but it didn’t. In fact, just the opposite happened. In a little while my thoughts turned to what I’d like to do during the day, what would feel good to do.
I made a mental plan and decided to start by making myself a delicious soup to eat throughout the day. It felt nourishing and supportive.

I then took the dog for a long walk and thoroughly enjoyed the cool woods and sunshine. When I felt worry thoughts start I reminded myself of my favorite Abraham-Hicks quote and thought, I don’t have to worry about this because, “Everything is always working out for me.”

As I walked on I heard a repeated bird call from the trees. Over and over it sounded like the bird was saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thanks!” It became my mantra as I walked.

Afterward, I got home and ate nurturing soup and took a nap.
​
When I awoke, once again I felt the aloneness pressing at the door of my thoughts and again I chose to focus elsewhere. Instead, I returned to the kitchen and tried out a new recipe, a healthy version of blondies made with white beans. They were surprisingly good. Then I replaced our broken mailbox which had been waiting for repair, and ordered a planter to go around the base of the mailbox post.

Throughout the day several friends called with invitations and connection. My daughter called for support with something that was bothering her, and my husband called just checking in, letting me know he was thinking of me. The calls felt connecting and supportive.

I realized that as I chose to support myself with where I focused my attention, and in the thoughts I chose to think, the Universe responded and supported me. I chose to feel connection. I chose to feel support. I chose to nurture myself.  The Universe reflected that right back to me. 

You will have your own ways of loving and nurturing yourself. You know what feels good to you. Begin with your inner home, your thoughts.
​

​Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

Be Content isn’t just about feeling good, though that is the result. It is about choosing to feel good because by doing so your daily life will reflect that back to you with more and more things to feel good about.

Always remember that just because you think a thought doesn’t make it true. Just because you think a thought doesn’t mean you have to pay attention to it or fix it.

Love and nurture yourself with the thoughts you allow into the sacred home of your mind.

Choose to be on the wavelength of love and nurture within, then you can perceive it around you and receive it from your outer world.

It is as if our daily life is a giant 3-D mirror surrounding us with what we are creating for ourselves from within, with our thoughts and what we pay attention to.

Be content today because it feels good now, from the inside out.  Very soon it will feel good from the outside in.

Choose to be content now because in each moment of contentment you are creating many more to come. 
4 Comments

    “There is nothing else than now."

    -Ernest Hemingway

    Archives

    May 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018

    Categories

    All
    3-D Mirror
    Abandonment
    Abraham Hicks
    Abraham-Hicks
    Acceptance
    Acculturation
    Affirmations
    Aligning
    Allowing
    Aloneness
    Amma
    Angels
    Anger
    Anxiety
    Appreciation
    Attention
    Awareness
    Be
    Beaches
    Behavior Patterns
    Being
    Blessings
    Bliss
    Blossom
    Brain Pathways
    Brazil
    Breath
    Buddhism
    Change
    Charles Dickens
    Child
    Choice
    Confusion
    Connection
    Contentment
    Creator
    Darkness
    Daughter
    Daydream
    Density
    Devotees
    Do
    Don Miguel Ruiz
    Eckhart Tolle
    Ego
    Ego's Role
    Elizabeth Loftus
    Empathy
    Energetic Cord
    Energizing
    Enjoyment
    Erma Bombeck
    Expectation
    Faking It
    Fall
    Faster EFT-V
    Fear
    Feel Good
    Feeling
    Feeling Alone
    Feeling Driven
    Feeling Left Out
    Flow
    Focus
    Forgiveness
    George Harrison
    Glaciers
    God
    Goddess
    God Self
    Golden Funnel Breath
    Granchildren
    Grandchildren
    Grandmother
    Gratitude
    Growth
    Guides
    Happiness
    Happy
    Hate
    Have
    Healing
    Heart
    Higher Self
    Holidays
    Horses
    Hurt
    Ice Cave
    Iceland
    Illusion
    Inner Home
    Inner Peace
    Inner Self
    Inspiration
    Inspired Action
    Intention
    In The Moment
    Jealousy
    Journey
    Joy
    Knee-Jerk Reaction
    Learning
    Limbo
    Love
    Magic
    Malleable
    Mastery Of Love
    Mata Amritanandamayi
    Meditation
    Memory
    Mental Re-Creation
    Mind
    Minfulness
    Mooji Baba
    Mother
    Motivation
    Negative Thoughts
    Negativity
    New Beginning
    Not Enough
    Now
    Nurture
    Old Roads
    Organize
    Overreaction
    Overwhelm
    Parable
    Parenting
    Patience
    Peac
    Peace
    Pendulum
    Perception
    Perfection
    Practice
    Prayer
    Present Moment
    Procrastination
    Quiet
    Red Feather
    Redirect Negative Thoughts
    Reflection
    Refocus
    Relax
    Release
    Resistance
    Rest
    Rewrite
    Rhythm
    Roots
    Rushing
    Sacred
    Sacred Journeys
    Schedule
    Seasons
    Seed
    Seeker
    Self-Love
    Shine
    Shoshona Ortalia Aurora Rogers
    Silence
    Skill
    Slipping Back
    Social Anxiety
    Source
    Spirit
    Spiritual Development
    Spirituality
    Spiritual Support Team
    Spiritual Tool
    Spiritual Toolbox
    State Of Mind
    Steps
    Story
    Struggle
    Stuck
    Summer
    Sun
    Supportive
    Taken Care Of
    Teen-agers
    Temple Of Silence
    Thanks
    The Beatles
    Thought Loops
    Thoughts
    To-Do List
    Trust
    Truth
    Unhappiness
    Universe
    Visualization
    Volcanos
    Waterfalls
    Wavelength
    Wayne Dyer
    What Is
    White Light
    Worry

    RSS Feed

    Join My Mailing List

     And never miss a blog post! Your personal information will not be shared. 
Submit


​All materials provided on www.hollyhildreth.com are provided for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only and are not intended to be, or serve as a substitute for, professional medical/psychological advice, examination, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or psychological condition.
​

© Holly Hildreth
  • Welcome
  • Blog
  • Savor the Sweetness
  • Be of Service
  • Know Thyself
  • Follow Your Bliss
  • Play
  • Be Content
  • Trust God
  • Faster Emotional Freedom Technique-V