“I am capable confident, intelligent, resilient and in charge. Health and happiness are my birthrights, and I accept with gratitude”

-Kris Carr’s Affirmation for day one

Mood: Happy

Motivation: Good

Productivity level: Medium

The Adventure Cleanse beings, and me route to happiness unfolds. Did you know that when you wake up in the morning your body needs a little time to start the digestive system? Therefore every morning, it’s a good idea to  drink some hot water to get the ball rolling. Your breakfast will digest easier if you allow it time to heat up. Meal preparation is important, as is packing your bag with snacks, drinks, and juice. This way it’s a lot less tempting to stray from your diet when you are hungry. Packing snacks helps me to refrain from resorting to bought food that belongs in the bin instead of my tummy.I awoke bright and early to make sure I had all my meals prepared for work, made my morning juice, took my supplements and headed out for a beautiful day.

BREAKFAST

Started with a cup of hot water, added a dash of lemon, and a pinch of chili pepper (to getmy tummy churning). Second, I drank a cup for jasmine and green tea.I then proceeded onto my morning juice when I felt hungry.

My veggie juice preparation

This consists of:

Spinach

Cucumber

Pear

Celery

Broccoli Stems

I know it looks almost unnatural, my house-mate screwed her face up in disgust. But I think it’s sad we look at a glass full of vitamins, minerals, fiber and natural sustenance as unnatural to eat or digest, testament to the fact this world is insane. It was a little hard to get through the first glass, I’ll admit that I gagged on the first sip, but after that, it went down pretty easy. I was full right up till lunch, and boy, was my belly in a good mood, it was tingling and buzzing most of the day.

SNACK

Can’t beat the classic nuts. I took a handful to work with me. 

LUNCH + DINNER

For lunch and dinner I mixed up my own version of the recipe provided by rawchef.com for Kris Carr’s book called the Woodstock Peace Salad. I made enough for lunch and dinner.The salad was beautiful, a true taste sensation.

SATISFACTION LEVEL

I will admit, I did feel a little hungry, but the pang was a good one (if you know what I 

mean), a sign of my body starting to clean itself out.

EXERCISE

Sure did get around to it today! I enjoyed an hour of yoga. I really focused on my body during the session today and found myself folding deeper than I ever had before. If I could rate my current mastery of yoga out of ten at the moment, I think I would settle for a modest 4/10, I’m getting to the stage where my body is reaping the full benefits of the practice. I walk with more bounce in my step, I feel lighter, my movements are graceful, and most of my movements feel great for my body, as opposed to the old tired muscles I used to battle with every day, dreading to get out of bed.

MEDITATION

I enjoyed a lovely ten minute session after Yoga, and felt the Prana (life force energy) rippling up and down my spine.Content and pleasurable.I spent my evening giving love and receiving love with friends and my beautiful housemate, and overall feel pleased with what I achieved today. I took Chris’s advice and tried to chew my food thoroughly ( this makes it easier for the food to digest, and starts your enzymes flowing, surprisingly, it filled me up faster as well)

CONFESSIONS

I ate an Easter-egg, just one! Just one! I gave the rest to my friends so the temptation would no longer be there, sharing is caring!

Weigh in: 81.1 kg’s 

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Fear of failure, perfection anxiety, social disharmony, and avoidance have ruled your thought patterns long enough.

Let’s try for a week to stop looking at our failures, and instead record our successes, however small they may be.

Setting goals, and recording when you have succeeded, whilst acknowledging and praising yourself is one of the most powerful ways to bring more power back into your life. It gives you time to focus on what you can do, rather than what you can’t. If you are an anxious or depressed person, days and nights can all swirl into a blur, becoming one big meaningless mess. It becomes hard to determine how it ever wasn’t meaningless, why it isn’t meaningless, or if it ever won’t be meaningless. Your mind has pulled you under water, lead you into a trap, and every new day spent trying to swim through all the emotions and thoughts further aid your feeling of hopelessness. Here is where it becomes important to understand that even if everything outside is beyond your control, you can at least take control of yourself and feel something amazing again.

Take it slow to begin with; the best bet is always to make sure you are healthy so you have plenty of energy to tackle the goals that will follow. See, wanting to get fit and add some exercise into your everyday routine is going to be hard if you are they type that finds it hard to get out of bed till after noon. Notice how any of your current habits may be blocking your goal success and try and break them with new ones that make you feel happier, confident, and more powerful. This is to make sure that we do our best to succeed in any goals we may set.

Go ahead and set a goal you know you can do tomorrow to add meaning and positivity to your day. 

If you are going to work, don’t focus on the fact that you hate the job and your day is going to be miserable, instead focus on what you can do to make it better for yourself, or for someone else, because it is true that compassion will help bring you happiness. Even if your goal is as simple as talking to a co-worker and sharing conversation with them, when you achieve it and set out to do what you said you were going to, you will feel more powerful and positive about your day, making you more eager to try again the next day, and the day after that!

Record everything that makes you smile! Go out and buy a note-book so you can decorate it with anything you value, such as your friends, your interests or your goals! Every day write down when someone says something good about you and try and give them a meaningful compliment in return.  

Write down the tiniest and simplest thing you create, like a new recipe, a new song, a new drawing. Make this book a place to read everything you have felt positive about achieving. Also turn it into a place to record progress towards current goals. You will see that the more that you achieve, and remember you have achieved, the more you may learn about yourself and what you want out of your life. 

Remember to shake off your failures, and forget the days you didn’t quite get through everything you intended to and tell yourself that you will do better next time. 

Motivating yourself is a skill to build upon and the less you worry about not being able to achieve the things you want in life, the less you avoid becoming fearful of your desires. Fear of your desires and dreams comes from your rooted belief you will never get them, and therefore should settle with something else, something less, something meaningless to you. 

So don’t be afraid to dream, and encourage yourself every day to dream, even if it’s just a little.

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Before you go ahead and read this article I do hope you take the time to read the previous post I wrote describing how closed off and numb we can be to the world. Although this post will discuss the first step you need to take on your journey, the former gives you an overview of your mind and psyche. If you read the previous post and decide that you are ready to hold responsibility for yourself and your emotions, then you may also be ready to embrace this step in the process. Forgiveness.

Why it’s hard

Because it isn’t always viewed as fair. It isn’t always seen as just. And believe it or not, people like holding grudges, they feel for some reason that it gives them power or control, when this opinion is simply not true. People build up reactions – to protect themselves from dealing with the pain – and merely react to a touchy topic whenever it comes up in conversation. Their reaction is their own form of defense they have learned to avoid the topic all together.

We don’t want to forgive when we don’t have to. 

You might have had an abusive father; you might have been raised by a mother who was a slave to her addictions, why do they deserve your forgiveness? You are absolutely justified in keeping your defenses up when it comes to the people who should have been there to protect you, but ended up hurting you the most. But think of it this way, you aren’t forgiving them for their sake, you are forgiving them for yours! If you have anger towards the two most important people in your life, then how can you really ever trust anyone else? If you are still harboring resentment for them, trust me, you are still harboring resentment for others and yourself!

So many people have resentment piled up within their soul, creating a complex system of defenses that even the tiniest comment or action can trigger. This resentment could have been from childhood, teenage years and early adulthood. If we don’t release it, we simply allow ourselves to become jaded, resentful, angry and stressed. If we harbor it long enough we will certainly see a troubling depression start to form as well. We are then allowing ourselves to become a victim to it.

What is forgiveness?

 

We all know what forgiveness is, but I believe that so many of us, including myself, have looked at, or still do look at forgiveness in a negative way and unhelpful way.Generally we are taught forgiving means forgetting. But this isn’t true at all. Nothing can make you forget how you have been hurt, nor should you deny the responsibility the other party had in hurting you. Instead I would like you to look at it as taking control of your own heart again. To move on in our life we have to take responsibility for it. It’s true that we cannot control how others chose to treat us, but we can control how we choose to look at it, and whether or not we dwell on the positive or negative in our lives. See, this power brings about a beautiful feeling of contentment, clarity, and positive energy. Releasing all the negative allows you to come into touch with your true light, your creativity, and your feelings of self-worth. 

Forgiveness will be the firm foundation blocks when building yourself up to be a person of great worth to the world. You always were a person of great worth, but somewhere along the way, you forgot this. I don’t blame you either. It’s easy to get buried in a sea of resentment, anger, and guilt, stifling your true self, and your true thoughts. However, constantly blaming your past or worrying about your future will certainly make sure you don’t get started off on the right foot now.

 

Let’s also get another thing straight about forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a feeling! I see people struggling all the time because they tend to get mixed up with forgiveness and their feelings.

 “I have forgiven my boyfriend for cheating, but whenever I remember it, I just feel so upset and angry!”

Forgiveness is a doing word. You need to forgive! Release and then move on sister! Otherwise you are saying that you ‘feel forgiveness’ but you can’t feel forgiveness, you can only do it!

Another good point to add is there is NO such thing as getting even. I’m sorry if you are one of those people that harbor so much pain and resentment that you are choosing to put it back out into the world again for someone else to experience, but this is never going to fix your issue. Causing someone else pain because you were hurt, only acts as a temporary distraction. It doesn’t change the fact you were hurt at all, you were still hurt. You will also never be able to hurt someone else the way they hurt you, because you can only feel your own hurt. Choosing to get even only shows to others around you that you are not equipped to handle the issue emotionally, and frankly, it shows that you simply deserve to have it happen to you again, over and over, until you finally get kicked in the head hard enough and wake up to the reality. You have to change.

No-one else can seek the truth for you.

Lastly, it’s good to keep in mind as a vulnerable, emotional woman - that it is perfectly fine to put up boundaries. I’m not talking about defenses here. I am talking about boundaries; you can’t just let a stranger walk into your life, just like you have to be careful about letting someone who truly and deeply hurt you back into your life. After forgiving someone, they are not entitled to your trust. You are responsible for your emotions and feelings and if you are to be open and follow your heart you will know when someone is truly worthy of showing you they can win back your trust. Otherwise ladies, with peace of mind and clarity decide whether or not this person should be allowed to come back in at all (and be willing to stick to what you decide). If you are a caring, loving, and giving soul you cannot allow other people who haven’t found themselves to suck your energy, time and emotions. You must learn who is worthy to allow into your serene castle. To be able to give all you can to others, you must first protect your physical, emotional, and mental well-being, otherwise you are of no use to anyone.

Let go, take control, say goodbye

Benefits you can look forward to

Once all resentment has been ridden of, you will find yourself feeling much lighter, more present, and more receptive to people. A major benefit is that you will see people light up around you and feel free themselves. If you have problems with addictions such as over-eating, under eating, drugs, alcohol, nicotine, and abusive relationships, you will also slowly (with discipline of course) be able to see a decrease in your need to participate these harmful activities. Once you have mastered the art of forgiveness you will become a person who adds real value to people and any situation, a Princess! A feminine dream-boat! 

Please continue to allow yourself to feel once the process is complete. As we talked about in the previous post, hiding your emotions (to appear strong) and to trick yourself into feeling strong is only a lie and will only detriment you in the long run. If someone does something to hurt you, even if it is silly, acknowledge your emotion and decide what action to take. Don’t get angry or mad, remember we are beyond that. Simply breathe if that’s all that you need. Before choosing to feel upset, talk to the other person. So many times actions come across in the wrong way and are miss-understood, if we bring it up with the other party we have saved ourselves a day, a week, or a year of feeling resentful towards them for no reason! Don’t use weapons when you approach them either, such as yelling, passive-aggressiveness, ignoring the issue (acting like they should just get how you are feeling), name calling or guilt tripping either darling sister. 

Don’t lie to yourself anymore about how you feel, instead try to become a woman of love, faith, and self-confidence. Therefore you will be much more stable anyway. True self-confidence and radiance come from the inside. It comes from all that love you are going to feel when you choose to open up, shine, and give your gifts and help other people.

Forgiveness Exercise

Before we can move on to other techniques in bettering ourselves, physically and emotionally, It is very important we take time out to really feel all the anger and hurt people have brought into our life. There are many different exercises and forms of visualization used to release resentment. In a book I own about spiritual development, the writer was made to painstakingly dig up two thousand pebbles from the ground over a period of two days. Each time she dug up a pebble she was to think of a time she felt hurt by someone and cast it away into the river. Although her hands were bloody and raw by the end of the two days, she has a truly happy soul to show for it now. 

I’m not going to make you do that, fortunately for you.

But I am going to ask you to try and find a quiet 30 minutes to an hour in your day to lay, or sit with a notepad and pen. 

First of all draw up two columns, we are going to start with your mother and father. Sit and think of anything they have done to hurt you, write it down, then forgive them for it. Release the control they have over your emotions, and stop allowing yourself to feel negative. The more you write, the more your brain will come up with, as if trying to aid you in releasing anger. Don’t be shocked if times from your childhood that you haven’t thought of in years pop into your head.

If you are finding a particular issue extremely hard to forgive, that’s okay, take it easy on yourself, leave it written on your paper and continue on with what you can. Make it a priority to get to it as soon as you can though, as there is no reason for you to keep it locked up in your heart.

Continue the exercise with as many people you need to. But make sure to do it as thoroughly as you can. 

Then lastly, move onto yourself. 

You didn’t think I was going to allow you to get away with leaving yourself out did you? Your soul deserves to be forgiven for all the past wrongs you have done as well! Tell yourself you are a better person now, someone who chooses to act with love and try and look at your past mistakes and failures as lessons. Forgiving yourself may be the hardest thing you do. But trust me, it will be worth it. 

And remember, to be able to stay clear-minded with no troubling emotions affecting your decisions you need to keep this up. The best way is to be in touch with how people are making you feel so you can find the best way to deal with it.

Thanks for reading and I hope to you will come back for the next post, fresh, revitalized, clear-headed, and ready to immerse yourself in more self-development! 

"Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out" - William F. Buckley, Jr

 

The High Priestess Living

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Do you feel empty? Alone? Are you, for some reason beyond your grasp, unable to truly connect with people? Most of us can relate to these issues. We understand how easy it is to become negative, depressed, and hateful. We may also relate to what it feels like to finally give up on everything, including yourself. It’s a typical reaction to say you have been hurt before, and, it seems much easier to stop trying. It's easier to think everyone else should be putting in all the effort. After all, everyone else should change to try and work out a relationship with you, you’re the one that is absolutely perfect. 

At least with this mindset you are not taking any risks. 

You do however continue to complain about all your previous friends that were horrible, or all the ex-boyfriends that were just jerks. In fact, you may extend this thinking to the whole human-race, blame them, or make excuses. The real issue here is that you are unaware of just how hard it is for any human-being to actually get close to, and know the real you. 

Already angry with the words I have written? Are you already coming up with a million reasons why this isn’t what is actually happening in your situation? Telling yourself you’ve just had a stream of bad luck in the past with everyone that you got involved with? Or have you actually progressed to the next stage where you do acknowledge this is the truth but simply choose to brush it off?

“Yeah, I am defensive; I am hard to get to know. But I have just been hurt before, and therefore everyone is going to have to make effort for me, if they can’t understand that I have been hurt in the past and will need continuous validation, and, the go-ahead to act horrible, snarky, and defensive when I perceive a threat to my ego, then I don't think their worth being friends with”

Are you worth being friends with if you treat other people like that? Stop and think about it for a second.

The truth is if you are unable to acknowledge what I am writing then it’s okay to keep your walls up till a later date when you are ready to bring them down. But if you are happy with that sort of standard in your life then realize your relationships are never really going to fulfill you, nor will others be willing to open up to you either. If you can’t do anything else, at least stop complaining to the people in your life about the fact people are 'shit', or you are just going to push them away as well, and we don’t need you to take any more ill-perceived blows to your fragile ego.

As hard as it may be to take responsibility for yourself and your actions, I have to tell you a bit of shocking news. Everyone has been through some kind of trauma, because the mind naturally creates drama no matter who you are. Ever heard of first world problems? When you complain that your phone is playing up a little bit, or that you don’t have enough clothes, when in reality, other people may not even posses these items at all?

The difference between the person who makes excuses, and someone who takes responsibility for their life, is that they aren’t choosing to act like an entitled child about their problems by insisting that other people are responsible for, or should fix them, instead those people chose to develop a healthier mindset somewhere along the way, or had some help with it. It became clear to their mind, and their ego, that they weren’t a defenseless little child anymore. Therefore it became okay for them to open up to people. If you have a healthy set of boundaries for yourself about who you let into your life you will have an easier time creating mutual-trust. With mutual-trust created between people who are; worthy of your time, or a special place in your heart, no longer will you feel the need to lash out at tiny little things they do that upset you, as you will naturally begin to discern between who has good intentions for you, and who doesn’t with much more ease. And even if a rogue does sometimes slip through the cracks, that’s okay, because your mind will be smart enough to realize that; yes - you may be hurting - but - you are still an amazing person. It accepts the fact you have no control over how someone decides to treat you, or act, and if you consistently feel that hurt in your chest from someone then you actually have the power to walk away. Wow! It seems so simple, but for some reason so many of us are conditioned from a young age to feel powerless.

So, let’s talk about your ego, the place where all these defense-mechanisms began.

Your ego is created by your mind. It is made up of all the little things that your brain associates with being you. Your ego - or your mind’s - first priority is to protect your sense of self – this can be why we are so blind to how we appear to others. Your mind simply just will not let you, it seeks to protect you and when you feel threatened or upset, it decides to put certain boundaries into place, or walls, that protect you from what is  making your heart feel anger, sadness, or grief (a threat). For a healthy person, these boundaries could be walking away. But for someone with low self-esteem (someone who is naturally not in touch with themselves) they may choose to lash out instead and demand to be validated. These people become increasingly adverse to trusting people. They also seem to start all relationships off with  the concept “guilty till you prove your innocence”. The fact that they come to expect this behavior from others, means that they also start to believe they will never get any better anyway, so they repress their need for love and choose to interact on superficial instead. 

Most people grow up with relatively healthy ego’s. However, the problems can start very early on in childhood. I'm going to give you one example, but, there are many  times your mind perceived your emotions as a threat and tried to close off, for every different age and situation. Let’s say as a young child you felt unloved by your parents, lonely, or unworthy. At that young age with no defenses in place those emotions would have been simply overwhelming. When we were children we did not always deal with these emotions in a calm and rational way, nor did we perceive hurts in a rational way either. How could we? We were only children, it was not our fault that our heart told us that we felt lonely or unloved, that was simply the heart doing its job in trying to bring to our attention that one of our most basic needs weren’t being met. This may have made us cry, shout, scream, and act entitled or infuriated when we didn’t get our way, and by acting this way our parents may have not perceived that it was actually more  love and care we were screaming for. As children, we had no way of using a logical adult mind to express why we had all this bitterness and anger, and in an attempt to quiet us down in times our parents were stressed or simply could not muster up the energy to deal with us, they gave-in and gave us what we wanted, such as toys to fuel our insatiable boredom which was actually born from inner turmoil and emptiness. This taught our ego at a young age – before we were cognitively able to understand our emotions – that by closing up, yelling, acting viciously, we were able to attain something that helped us forget about how empty we felt on the inside. The ego was happy therefore you were happy. And please don't go blaming your parents either, they had their own reasons for why they weren't a completely perfect human-being that understood all facets of the human mind.

As we get older we do start to learn that maybe crying and yelling aren’t the best tools to use with some of our friends, but really, we still have ill-equipped methods to deal with conflicts to begin with, so we create new ones that aren't going to be useful for very long. This is because from such a young age we learn not to listen to our heart – we learn to listen to our mind instead. This type of entitled behavior is not coming from a bad place, it’s coming from a defensive place, and although we may develop new strategies to cope as a teenager and young adult, if we don’t get to the root of the dilemma it’s all going to end up coming across as that person we have all known, have all met, or have even been, the defensive witch. This person is angry and empty because they are so out of touch with their emotions and themselves. They continue to justify their negative attitude and anger towards people due to the fact they have been hurt in the past. What they don’t realise is, they have now become the exact person their ego is trying to protect them against, someone who is irrational, lashes out, blames all their friends and the world for their problems, consistently argues, and looks to only the physical to make themselves feel better. They have not learned to forgive.

Ever met someone that was so beautiful – but never satisfied? They may work out hours at the gym, or starve themselves to look better when things just don’t work out because they believe this is the only possible way anyone will ever love them. When everything still goes wrong, and people are still repelled they can only think “what is wrong with me?”. Girls may dull the pain of rejection by trying to get thinner, boys may try to feel big and strong or go out and consistently seek sex from different females, but eventually this person has to realize that there is something missing in their lives. What is missing is their connection to their heart. It’s hard to open up your heart to someone who can’t even open it up to themselves isn’t it? You try to connect with them but find that they are just consistently unhappy with you or their situation, or are never satisfied with the current moment you're in together. They can’t just be. They have to become, always, whether it’s thinner, more intoxicated or more loved. 

If this is you, I am sure your ego is doing a million and one things to protect yourself right now, and protect your sense of self. But please realize that all those thoughts, all these actions, and all the defenses you have put into place are not actually you. You are actually just scared of opening up and being hurt, you have been since you were a child, or that first time your ego  decided it would be easier to deal with your emotions by building defenses, making excuses for yourself, and blaming others. You should also take comfort in this, because even though it may be hard or a long road to take, you can become that amazingly beautiful and radiant person that only creates joy and harmony in relationships with other people. Don’t you want to be that person, finally? Don’t you want to be released from your mind and filled with the beauty of your emotions and the light of your own soul?

Once you take the first steps to removing that barrier, you take the first steps in becoming a person of absolutely high value – you are no longer taking value from other people by being a walking reaction to everything others say and do, you are becoming a genuine and authentic human being in who is in touch with themselves.

What you may believe: I just love to argue

What others believe: That you would rather have a conversation validating yourself instead of truly connecting.

So what if they think that? It’s their perception. You don’t need them as a friend if they choose to look at you that way instead of getting to know you right?

True. But only true from your perspective. If you are currently satisfied with the kind of friends in your life that you can continue to have negative conversations with then I guess you don’t really need to be reading this article. Oh but wait, you are reading this. 

There will be good people entering your life all the time, and they will continue to. Don’t be threatened by them or try to bring them down, be with them, you are worthy enough to be with them. If they are the type of person that only wants to take from you, example; using your conversations to validate themselves, then set boundaries for yourself and choose to hang around those who would rather contribute to their own life and yours. 

I am not saying that walking around with an air of arrogance and negativity won’t bring some people you consider friends into your life, however, they will either be people with extremely low self-esteem that may only drag you down when you begin to progress in your life, or they are people with just as many walls up as you, people who make excuses, people who hate their life, and blame others. 

This type of self-progression is not meant to be used instead of medication if you really need it. You may be someone who has suppressed themselves and their emotions in an attempt to appear perfect, strong willed, or in control for so long that your mind is so confused about who you are that you simply cannot get out of it without some help. Or your brain chemistry (unluckily) has thrown you into this state. But if you really do need medication, there is NO EXCUSE, to walk around a mess and refuse to take it. Medication may also start to change your view point and your state of mind into a place where you can be more in touch with your emotions. It may also make your mind clearer and progress you to a place where you  find it easier to process cognitive-intellect and self-awareness. But please keep in mind, so much of that can be achieved through trying to eliminate your anxiety in other way such as meditating, sleeping well, eating healthily, and exercising. Also by cutting the crap in your life, people, lovers, food and wasteful pastimes.

Learning to open up and take responsibility doesn’t happen overnight. Nor have I become the new Buddha of this planet. But by taking these steps, and first having awareness of what you are doing in your life that is becoming toxic to others, you are ready to take the journey into inner-happiness. Also if you have friends who that might be interested in becoming better people, whom you trust and know have good intentions, perhaps you can both point out to each other when you aren't being your genuine self.

In my following posts I will begin to start off with ways you can become more self-aware and conscious in your every day and relationships with people. The biggest thing I can mention to you now is that confidence is the biggest factor to hauling yourself out of this protective state. With true and radiant confidence, that only comes from inside sources, not outside, you can start to blossom into wonderful person who has high standards for themselves and for the people you choose to get involved with. You hold the key, it's really that simple.

 

The High Priestess Living

Join my new Facebook page for frequent posts and updates 

on my journey towards becoming a healer. 
Enjoy updates on healthy food, positive-living, 
energy medicine, books to read, and style

 

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