by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 27, 2020 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Gratitude and appreciation are two powerful weapons we can use against depression and anxiety.
In fact, Dan Baker writes in his book, What Happy People Know, that it is impossible to be in a state of appreciation and fear at the same time.
Here, then, are some ways we can cultivate gratitude.
1. Keep a gratitude journal.
According to psychologists such as Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California-Riverside, keeping a gratitude journal —where you record once a week all the things you have to be grateful for — and other gratitude exercises can increase your energy, and relieve pain and fatigue. In my daily mood journal, I make a list of each day’s “little joys,” moments that I would fail to appreciate if I didn’t make myself record them, such as: “holding my daughter’s hand on the way to the car,” “a hot shower,” “helping my son with his homework.” This exercise reminds me of all the blessings in my life I take for granted and encourages me to appreciate those mundane moments that can be sources of joy.
2. Use the right words.
According to Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman, words literally can change your brain. In their book, Words Can Change Your Brain, they write: “a single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.” Positive words, such as “peace” and “love,” can alter the expression of genes, strengthening areas in our frontal lobes and promoting the brain’s cognitive functioning. According to the authors, they propel the motivational centers of the brain into action and build resiliency.
3. Remember.
“Gratitude is the heart’s memory,” says the French proverb. Therefore, one of the first steps to thankfulness is to remember those in our lives who have walked with us and shown kindness for deeds big and small. I have been extremely fortunate to have so many positive mentors in my life. At every scary crossroad, there was a guardian or messenger there to help me find my way. The mere exercise of remembering such people can cultivate gratitude in your life.
4. Write thank-you letters.
According to psychologist Robert Emmons at the University of California at Davis, author of Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, a powerful exercise to cultivate gratitude is to compose a “gratitude letter” to a person who has made a positive and lasting influence in your life.
Emmons says the letter is especially powerful when you have not properly thanked the person in the past, and when you read the letter aloud to the person face to face. I do this as part of my holiday cards, especially to former professors or teachers who helped shape my future and inspired me in ways they might not know.
5. Hang with the winners.
Peer pressure never really goes away, you know. Studies show that married folks hanging out with happy couples are more likely to stay married themselves; that if your friends eat well, their willpower will rub off on you; and that if you surround yourself with optimists, you will end up more positive than if you keep company with a bunch of whiners. By merely sitting next to a person who likes the words “thank you,” there is a high probability that you will start using those words as well.
6. Give back.
A while back I wanted to repay a former professor of mine for all his encouragement and support to me throughout the years. However, nothing I could do would match his kindness. No letter of appreciation. No visit to his classrooms. So I decided I would help some young girl who fell into my path in the same way that he helped me. I would try to help and inspire this lost person just as he had done for me.
Giving back doesn’t mean reciprocating favors so that everything is fair and the tally is even. That’s the beauty of giving. If someone does an act of kindness for you, one way to say thanks is to do the same for another.
Originally posted on Everyday Health.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jul 1, 2019 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
To live is to embrace a paradox that affects many areas of our lives, including our relationships with ourselves; we are at once ourselves and unaware of our true nature
Being who we are is quite straightforward in one way and yet so multi-faceted and complex that we spend our whole lives figuring it out.
Rediscovering who we truly are requires watching ourselves in action: what are we drawn to, what lights us up, and what leaves us feeling flat. Our emotions and interests are the best guides to our essential nature.
The process of self-discovery (or rediscovery, depending on how you want to look at it) can be a beautiful and at times challenging process during which we learn both to honor our deeper nature and to accept ALL of who we are. This includes our limited, broken, confused, and less inspired parts.
Self-acceptance is loving it all.
Reclaiming the self can’t happen without self-acceptance. We cannot have a real connection with our essence while disowning parts of who we are. We are again in paradox. Our deeper nature is not riddled with human flaws, but to truly live it, we need to embrace those flaws that do exist.
Self-acceptance does not come easy to most of us. It is not like we go to a workshop and walk out the door with self-acceptance. Instead, it seems to grow steadily and slowly, building imperceptibly under the surface at first and then showing us its strong roots.
We can work at accepting ourselves in a similar way to how we might learn to be more accepting of others. We can try to understand what they are thinking & feeling; walk a mile in their shoes. We can empathize with their challenges & see beauty in the complexity of their way of being. We can strengthen our self-acceptance by choosing ourselves in the present moment and removing the need to fix ourselves or become something else.
We can enjoy the quirks and the challenges instead of seeing them as obstacles. Self-acceptance allows us to see who we are clearly —to look ourselves straight in the face and own it—all of it.
Self-acceptance means that we do not push to the side those aspects of ourselves that we don’t like, marginalizing them to such a degree that even while we see so much we do like in ourselves, we have this heavy feeling that we are still unlovable.
Slowly, we love ourselves when and where we feel most unlovable; step by step we heal.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 12, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Uncategorized
Empaths have the innate ability to affect a profound impact on the world around them. Early on in their development, it might seem as if the world is just too much to handle and that they’re more likely to be the ones changed (in not so great ways) by the world, rather than being world changers. However, with some skills and awareness, empaths can be powerful change agents.
Here are some of the abilities that help empaths be world changers…
Highly Intuitive: Strong intuition can help in your work with others, in your creative projects, and in sensing your best direction, allowing you to have a greater impact in all that you do.
In Tune: Whether at work, home, or in any other area of your life, being in tune with others helps you understand what’s needed in any given moment and how to best communicate with others.
Hypersensitivity: Being sensitive means you can feel even the minor shifts in a person or situation. This can help you take action before things become larger problems. The trick might be in the timing or in the company—just because you’re aware doesn’t mean others are. Pay attention to what type of delivery and timing gets best results.
Problem Avoidance: Your exceptional sensitivity helps you recognize problems before others do. This can be helpful for course correction in any area of life. You might know someone is just not the right person to hire or that a situation is worth avoiding altogether.
Voicing the Shadow: Many sensitive people are tapped into what is being avoided or unacknowledged and will—consciously or unconsciously—bring this information forward. This ability is a powerful tool of transformation.
Cultural Light Bearer: Your sensitivity allows you to make contact with the positive as well as negative undercurrents. Because of this, you’re able to help people connect with their potential or the potential of a situation.
Advocate for the Underserved: Similarly to Voicing the Shadow, you’re more likely to be able to understand the thoughts and feelings of those who live and act more on the fringes of our society and culture. You can become a powerful advocate for these people helping them—and us—to get things back on track.
If you’re curious about how you can better use your empathy skills to create positive change in the world, check out my Healers Training starting Spring of 2018. http://projectspace.in/work/project/katelive/train-with-me/integrative-healing-training/
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 23, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
It\’s ok if you haven\’t always known how to change your life story, or even what your life story is. At 15 years old, I was a mess. I was exceptionally miserable, smoking, drinking, and dabbling in drugs. Perhaps, some of you can relate? For me, on any particular day I could be sobbing in the bathroom, cutting myself, contemplating suicide, or just being plain reckless. I wish I could say that the despair started at 15, or ended then, but if I go back in my mind I can find it starting in my early childhood, and it lasted years later.
There are many ways that pain like this gets categorized: The histrionics of an adolescence, an uncommon experience of an unfortunate individual, growing pains (*rolls eyes*)… However you define it, my 15 year old self could not cope. For me, my pain became the story that guided the first part of my life. Learning how to change your life story is a skill that takes practice and it\’s something you need to truly want. Here’s what I learned from my own experience of channeling my awareness to wake up and change my story to one of happiness, abundance, and purpose.
How to recognize the problem
The first question is how did it happen in the first place?
What happened to me happens to many people. Repeatedly and systematically, I was told that my instincts were wrong, that my emotional responses were bad, that my way of being was unacceptable. I was told I needed to think a certain way to be smart. I needed to feel a certain way to be good. I needed to talk a certain way to be accepted. My life became a series of acts, transactions, and obligations. I was disconnected from my own truth.
My experience is not unique and this was not done to me out of cruelty. In fact, sometimes it was done by people who were trying their best to be loving and supportive. Collectively, we lack the broad knowledge of essential tools that help people create a personal experience that truly serves them. Instead, we default to a misguided status quo as if every individual would be fulfilled by meeting cookie cutter expectations and norms. It is very rare that anyone tell you, in the midst of your formation, that you can learn how to change your life story.
Unfortunately, by the time most people have reached the end of their childhood they have little idea of who they are, negligible emotional intelligence, and a profoundly deep belief that they need to be another person to be loved. We feel this way at the culmination of our “formative years.” We learn to compensate for what we have come to believe are our shortcomings and weaknesses – we act the part to get by. Most of us forget that there is an alternative.
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How to change your life story
Our limiting story has to be put into place.
Our first step in using awareness to change our life story is to begin to wake up to what is meaningful and enjoyable to us. It starts by pursuing a life where details large and small are things that are meaningful to us. We define what is “meaningful” through a process of personal inquiry into who we truly are. Giving ourselves this approach to life is a sign of love and respect.
As we begin to live in a way that feels right to us, we begin to uncover our own gifts. Often, these gifts have been covered over by the conditioning of our earlier lives. Many times, when we unpack what we thought was our fatal flaw we discover a powerful gift and a major part of our contribution to the world.
Our actions help us become more aware, they shift what we believe about ourselves and what we think is possible.
It is in this way that so much of who we are goes unrealized and our potential power to create our own wellbeing and positive change gets lost. Some of our seemingly meaningless quirks have a productive and positive application, we just need to wake up enough to begin looking for it. When we do, we feel better about ourselves and we begin to make a more positive contribution to the world.
ACCEPTANCE AND FORGIVENESS
Practicing forgiveness and acceptance is the key to changing our story. Acceptance and forgiveness are for both for ourselves and for others. It only takes a few trips to a therapist or an in depth writing exercise to become aware of our story. It takes a little more time to see how we keep ourselves on the hook and to begin the process of giving self-acceptance and self-forgiveness. Many people never develop this foundational respect for themselves and instead mask it with things like accolades, egoism, or bitterness.
Likewise, we cannot truly move forward until we have accepted the events of our lives and forgiven the people who we believe have hurt us. If we can become more aware of where we are holding onto past hurts, we can release them and liberate ourselves to create an entirely different narrative.
SELF-LOVE
The third awareness tool for changing our story is self love. As we become aware of what true self-love looks and feels like and learn to live it more in each moment, we begin to see our story differently and to envision an alternative story that better suits us.
When our self-love is strong enough, we are able to face the painful challenges of life. We are able to learn from what is happening and apply it to our life in a way that makes us stronger and more ourselves. As a result, we change the narrative.
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Next Steps
Apply the wisdom that gets developed when living life from a place of self love and acceptance.
This wisdom can be applied to every moment of our lives. Our developed ability to hold ourselves in a place of love and take affirming action in the face of opposition has the power to transform our world. If we no longer negate ourselves or feel the need to justify and rationalize our pain, if we are able to act constructively when faced with the obstacles of life, if we are able to remember that we are the critical change agent of each moment, then what we can accomplish individually and collectively is without parallel.
Each day holds countless moments in which we can shift things in the direction of the positive, in which we have the opportunity to leave the past and create something powerful and new moving forward. I did it and I can help you if you want to learn how to change your life story. To learn more click here to sign up for my newsletter.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jul 11, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Life is continually showing you how to raise your awareness, but do you see it’s instructions?
From my perspective, each and every moment of life is offering us an opportunity to become more aware. We are in a constant state of choice, in all of these moments, to either expand or contract. Expansion brings a richer experience of love, truth, gratitude, forgiveness, and service. Contraction brings limitation. The payoff of learning how to raise your awareness, even if it’s just in a few of these life moments, is exceptional.
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Sometimes we may overlook the choice we have to raise our awareness, and other times we may feel we don’t have the power, in that moment, to make it. The risk here is that, when we do not choose to expand our awareness, we get pulled in the opposite direction. The limitations of whatever we are experiencing start to become the structure of a myopic viewpoint, which makes it that much more difficult to choose something more than we currently have.
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Learning how to raise your awareness does not mean you will get it right every time. It does mean that you will have the toolkit to keep yourself better on track in your personal growth and that you’ll be more aware of your choice in each of life’s moments. If we are vigilant about our intention and willingness to become more aware, we can experience all that life truly has to offer.
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There are many ways to expand our awareness. The following are some tools that we can use to keep ourselves on track, regardless of circumstances. To do so, we only need to focus on the wisdom associated with the following words.
Love: A simple tool for liberating ourselves and returning to our heart. Finding our way back to love. Whether it is a busy morning and bad traffic or a fight with someone that you love, finding a way to return to a place of love provides us with a feeling of wellbeing and a springboard off of which we can launch into new levels of awareness. After all, is it more important to be angry at the other driver on the road or to feel a sense that we are all in it together?
Truth: It is very easy to get caught up in the “he said, she said” situations of the world. We begin arguing about the minutia that really make no difference and we quickly lose touch with our core and with the truth of our situation. When we start looking for the greater truth or speaking our personal truth we begin to open up to new awareness that creates real solutions to our situations.
Gratitude: Sometimes life is just one hard experience after another. There are stretches in time when it seems as if there is no relief. This can begin to wear us down and we can get stuck focusing on what we don’t have or what we have lost. Whether we are in hard times or not, remembering to see what we have, and be truly appreciative of it, is helpful in expanding our awareness. Where intention goes, energy flows – so when we pay attention to what we do have, we feel better and feel like we have more of it.
Forgiveness: Whatever grievances have been done to us, the only person who hurts because of our lack of forgiveness is us. When we hold onto the hurts of the past we pick up a heavy weight that restricts us from moving toward what would really serve us. When we learn this, and we remember to forgive others, we set ourselves free from the pains of the past and welcome in a brighter future.
Service: Our awareness is continually expanded by our willingness to see what we can do to change a situation for the better. This is an act of service. The question is, how can I contribute in a way that creates a better now? And if I can’t make a better now, then how about a better future? Being of service raises the bar on our own empowerment and helps us craft what we truly want.
When you work to expand your awareness, your cares and concerns shift and you feel a greater sense of freedom. Focusing on any of these practices helps us see that our experience of life is the result of our willingness to expand into new and better ways of doing things –to cultivate our awareness.
Are you looking for a way to let go of heavy emotional baggage and breakthrough to the next level of your personal development?
The Group Healing Intensive is designed to help you accomplish, in one weekend, the amount of personal transformational work that would take years of traditional therapy to accomplish.
To learn more about this opportunity and how it might be right for you, CLICK HERE.
