Bored With Your Life? How To Find Your Passion Part 3

“The most beautiful emotion we can experience
is the mystical. It is the sower of all true art and
science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger…
is a good as dead.”

-Albert Einstein

Most people move from crisis to crisis
without making significant changes in the way
they're being as a whole. They are unable to use
the emotions they are experiencing to transform
their life and manifest their greater purpose.

Why?

Their biology is in survival mode, where access
is denied to the parts of their brain (the cortex and
prefrontal cortex) that must be active to experience
a more global view of their life situation, observe from
a more expanded perspective, and access transcendent
consciousness (or soul).

Powerful emotions will help you evolve unless you've
lost the connection with your essence; the unique gifts
that you contribute to the world -- your purpose.

When you're connected, the frustration of living under
who you realize you really are can drive you to say
"Enough of this! I'm done playing small!" Or, the pleasure
of feeling grace, bliss or joy can get you
to change your behavior and stop sabotaging yourself in
areas of your life where you've been suffering.

Consider these questions:

What emotions do you express the most often right now?
What emotions would you like to feel more often?
What emotions would you like others to feel in your presence?

I'll explore the relationship between your passion and how
you answered these questions in upcoming posts.

Dr. John

Bored With Your Life? How To Find Your Passion Part 2

So, What do your emotions have to do with passion?
Where exactly are your emotions? Are they in your body?
Are they in your mind?

Dr. Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion,
explains:

"For a long time, neuroscientists agreed that emotions are
controlled by certain parts of the brain -- the amygdala,
hippocampus, and hypothalamus. This is a big, "neurocentric"
assumption that I now think is either wrong or incomplete."

According to Dr. Pert, emotions are happening
throughout your entire body all of the time. On a
cellular level you are having an emotional experience
right now, whether you're aware of it or not!

According to evolutionary biologist Donald
Symmons:

“We have powerful feelings precisely because
the goals our emotions are propelling us toward
are difficult to achieve. The more difficult the
objective, the more powerful the feeling"

If all your actions are an attempt to either move
away from a painful emotion or move
toward a desirable one, then whether you’re
conscious of it or not, the drive to avoid a feeling
that you don’t like or to experience a
feeling that you like is what is motivating you
in virtually every situation in your life!

The stronger the feeling or emotion, in other
words, the more passionate you are about
something, the faster you will take positive
action to transform your behavior and your life.
The faster you will evolve, unless...

(to be continued)

Dr. John

Bored With Your Life? How To Find Your Passion! Part 1

Do you find yourself rolling out of bed with a groan many mornings, feeling overwhelmed by the mundane tasks that lie ahead of you as you prepare to navigate another day of "busy-ness"?

Do you ever feel stuck in a sort of flat-land where everything is "fine" but deep down you know that something is painfully missing. Where the bright spark and vibrant energy of your life has cooled down to more of an ember?

If so, then you're not alone! In a culture where we rush around meeting deadlines, checking cell phone messages, deleting emails in full inboxes and catching up on shows we don't have time for on TiVo, it can be all too easy to lose lose our zest for life, get in a rut, feel stuck, frustrated or bored. It can be all too easy to lose touch with our passion!

So in the midst of all these demands, how do you
find your passion?

The secret to finding and sustaining passion lies in
first understanding your body's formula for creating
a passionate experience and what gets in the way
of that.

When you're overwhelmed and stressed, your body
mobilizes itself for survival by initiating a fight or flight
response that consists of over 1,400 biological changes.
These changes include a contraction of the muscle system,
shallow rapid breathing, and a decrease in blood flow to
the part of the brain (the frontal cortex) that helps you observe
yourself from a "higher" perspective and make responsive
rather than reactive choices.

In this state you're not accessing the part of your brain that
helps you be creative, find new and useful meaning during
interactions and experience transcendent states of consciousness.
In this state, you're operating off of learned and inherited habitual
survival patterns -- you're just getting through the day -- hardly
a recipe for passion!

To move from survival to passion, you've got to do more than just
understand what's happening within your body. You've actually
got to do something about it!

Join me for a multi-part series of posts on How To Find
Your Passion in the upcoming weeks! Until the next time,
consider this:

Brain researcher Dr. Candace Pert in her book Molecules
of Emotion, wrote that:

"emotions are the nexus between
mind and matter, going back and
forth between the two and influencing
both."

Do you think emotions have something to do with passion?

Dr. John

When Your "Former Self" Is No Longer Enough: What Symptoms Are Really All About

"The truth is that there is nothing noble about being superior to someone else. The only real nobility is being superior to your former self.”

-Whitney Young

I've had the unique privilege of working with thousands of people from over 50 countries over the past decade, and there's one thing I know for sure...

Symptoms are your body's way of letting you know that who you are "being" needs to be reassessed and reorganized.

So, what do I mean by that?

I mean that symptoms are your body's way of getting your
attention when how you're going about your life
needs changing...but you've been ignoring the more subtle
cues and signals.

Unfortunately, what most people do when they are
experiencing symptoms is try to eradicate them rather
than change either their behavior, their perception
or the structure of their life.

When you've outgrown your former self, in other words,
when your identification with a certain role ("I am" a....)
is stunting your growth rather than enabling it, you should
have symptoms!

Your body needs to let you know that you're playing too
small and it is time to exchange your old story, your old
behaviors or even your old body posture for a new one
that is congruent with your current level of awareness.

Your body is letting you know that your former self is no
longer enough and it is time to evolve.

Find out how to better gain the wisdom from your symptoms
by visiting our website today.

Dr. John

Oprah And Eckharte Tolle On Awakening

We’ve been participating in Oprah and Eckhart Tolle’s free web class on his new book, A New Earth; Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

As many spiritual teachers do, Tolle talks about
being in the NOW, the Present moment as a way to awaken. He suggests stopping for a moment to sense the “Aliveness” in your body, to sense your hand without moving it, to tune into your essence and become aware of where in your body you have a sense of well-being.

Tolle suggests that tuning into your body and
nature, and feeling their essence — unattached
from past preconceived notions or future desires
about these “things” — is a way to enlightenment.
A way to feel more alive, less dense and bogged
down by heavy thoughts, feelings, demands etc.

We see the awakening process happening at
different levels and speeds everyday in our office.
Everything you are doing here leads you to your
true authentic essence — an awakened state
of consciousness.

What does it mean to you to be "awake"?

Dr. John

Your Brain Is Always On "Vibrate"

According to brain researcher Karl Pribram your brain
actually talks to itself not in the language of words or
images, or just electrical or chemical impulses, but in the
language of oscillation, wave-interference, phase, amplitude
and frequency. In other words, vibration.

Pribram says that when you place your attention on
something in the world "out there" a certain resonant
frequency is created in your brain that is then picked
up by electrochemical circuits and vibrated throughout
your body's 75-100 trillion cells.

Pribram says that you perceive all things by literally
resonating or getting in synch with them.

This is very powerful to understand because
depending on the frequency your brain and body
are "vibrating" or resonating at, you either
attract or interfere with certain experiences of reality.

When everything is going the way you like
it, when you're in the "zone", life is effortless
because you're resonating with experiences
you enjoy and you feel well.

When everything seems like a struggle, when
you're out of synch with the experiences you
enjoy, you feel ill.

This resonance is a biological process, not just
some New Age woomeister's story!

I'll be writing more about how your body and mind
attract or interfere with the experience of wellness
in upcoming posts.

Dr. John

The Wellness Formula: Simplify. Support. Sustain.

As a culture we're information overloaded.
We have a million things to deal with and
everybody wants everything NOW!
However, there's never enough time.

We're busier and busier but so many people
don't feel fulfilled by doing what they're doing.
Life seems very complex.

“Wellness", is more than just feeling good
physically. It is the subjective experience
that life is working and the millions of things
you have to do aren't closing in and suffocating
you. The world seems easier to navigate.
When your body is in "fight-or-flight" or survival
mode nothing seems simple.

People turn to drugs, alcohol, TV and other
addictions to tune out and temporarily "simplify"
things. However, they just get numb for a
while and then have to deal with an even more
complex situation when they focus back on their
life circumstances.

The body, mind and spirit need ongoing
support so that the stress of life doesn't take
hold and keep one in such reaction and
defensiveness that creativity, joy, spontaneity,
playfulness, and passion are squelched.

A quick-fix isn't enough. People are realizing
that it isn’t enough to achieve "success" according
to the old cultural paradigm where you practically
kill yourself to get to the top, or be the perfect
parent, or family or community member.

It's also not enough to just exercise your body
and have good physical fitness or try to transcend
the whole material world by meditating to awaken
to one's spiritual nature without "showing up" to
take part in making a difference in the world.

To be truly well, in other words sustain an optimal
level of well being, we have to have to acknowledge
that we're physical beings, we're emotional beings,
we're mental beings and we're spiritual beings and
we need strategies to sustain balance for the
long-term in every area. Only then do we really
feel whole and connected.

Join me in the discussion about how to
simplify, support and sustain true wellness.
I look forward to your questions and comments.

Dr. John

Mindset Isn't Enough To Overcome Stress!

Since there are so many factors involved in what

you do that are "out of your control", what are the
biggest challenges, frustrations, headaches or
nightmares that you have to deal with on a regular
basis, that you want help with?

Are you adapting to the challenges in front of you?
How rapidly are you able to unhook from the
catastrophe of some screw-up this morning and
re-set to an optimistic and opportunistic mindset?
What does it really take to do this? More than just
"positive thinking"?

My colleague Robert Dilts and I were training the
CEO and top management of a multi-billion dollar
hedge-fund in Switzerland on how to stay resourceful
during high stress situations. The team told us that some
days they would sit in front of their computers and watch
as they were losing millions of dollars a minute! They
couldn't control it. All they could do was learn to adapt
to the circumstances and stay creative and proactive.

Positive thinking and mindset alone won't work in
most stressful situations because it's not sustainable.
When you're stressed, you're stressed and telling
yourself you're not just leads to emotional overload
and eventually breakdown in creativity, passion and
productivity.

The key to remaining optimistic, resourceful and vital --
in other words "well" -- is learning how to understand
and work with your BODY!

Tell me about the biggest stressors for you, and I can
help you create a number of powerful strategies to deal
with those stressors in ways that let you actually work
through the stress, so you don't carry it in your body and
carry it home with you to your family.

Dr. John