A Beautiful Mind

My father recently passed away. It was unexpected and like any other family that suffers such a devastating loss, we are grieving beyond words can say.


My nature is and has always been to strive to see, look and feel beautiful in all situations. Sometimes I fall short. This was one of those times. The day after my father died, I sat down determined to write a posting about seeing the beauty in death. I failed. Not that there isn’t beauty in death—it’s just that I wasn’t and I’m not ready to gather my thoughts and put them out there to the world yet. I’m also still working through all of the normal emotions that come with the death of a parent.

Believe it or not—I found myself feeling guilty that I could not muster up a blog entry about beauty and death. I found myself thinking thoughts like—“What’s wrong with you—you can’t even write a blog entry?” and “Wow what a disappointment you’ve turned out to be” and perhaps the cruelest one of all “What would Daddy think of you now”

Needless to say I certainly wasn’t feeling compassion towards myself. That’s the funny thing about what I call Mind Chatter (that relentless voice in your mind). It’s always going on—and most of the time it’s not very compassionate or realistic. Take some time out today to stop and listen to that chatter. I think you will be amazed at how critical and sometimes downright mean that chatter can be.

This mind chatter can sabotage more than we know. The Funny thing about this voice is that it’s not even our own! Let me explain. As babies and small children—we think we are great! We scribble on walls and marvel at our masterpieces, we make funny noises and laugh at our comical abilities, we get into our moms make-up scribble all over faces with red lipstick and blue eye shadow and think “Aren’t I beautiful!” we steal a cookie from our brother and delight in the sweetness without feeling an ounce of guilt. I bet if we listened into the mind chatter of a 2 year old pretending to be Buzz Light Year we would hear thoughts such as “To infinite and Beyond!” The point is a 2 year old doesn’t think “Who am I to pretend to be a super hero?” He or she thinks “Who am I NOT to be a Super Hero!”

So why do we struggle so much with this mind chatter and how is it possible to go from Hero to Zero? While the answer is multi-faceted and can get complex—I will offer what I believe to be the most prevalent way. We unconsciously absorb others limiting beliefs and then use our imagination to intensify them. Our subconscious mind is ALWAYS listening, absorbing and trying to protect us. This part of our mind controls all our involuntary responses such as breathing, respiration and also things like our auto pilot responses when doing things such as driving, riding a bike or even typing. In contrast to our conscious mind—we are not aware of this behind the scene power house even though it is controlling 95% of our decisions. We think we are in control with our conscious mind and why shouldn’t we? If I were to ask you what your dreams, goals or even what you want to wear today—your conscious mind would answer. Yet when you try to achieve the very things you said—your subconscious mind would be calling the shots based on previous programs. That explains the duality that can sometimes occur in our words and actions. We may consciously really want to stay on our diet or write that thesis but our subconscious mind has a different idea. As a result of this and in combination with our imagination we exaggerate our perceived shortcomings.

The majority of these negative programs are “downloaded before the age of 7 (when our brain waves are in a constant state of THETA) but we continue to download beliefs our whole life. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to the words we use, be compassionate with ourselves when we fall short of our expectations and to look for ways to change our subconscious negative beliefs. A few of my favorite ways are; Hypnosis, Subliminal Tapes, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and NLP (Nuero Linguistic Programming).

If you ask me what’s the most important part of looking, feeling and experiencing beauty in your life, I would have to say or rather scream---YOUR MENTAL ATMOSPHERE. It’s really hard to experience beauty when you’re feeling despair and sadness because you are already experiencing a negative state of being. Similarly, when your thinking sad, anxiety ridden and self defeating thoughts it’s extremely hard to physically feel good. It’s just not practical considering the interconnectedness of your mind and body. Your body actually takes on the physiology of your state of mind and vice versa. For example when you’re feeling depressed , angry and so on--your facial muscles reflect that (your facial muscles are actually uniquely connected to the emotional part of your brain) your posture becomes slumped, your immune system is compromised, and of course the stress response is set off. As far as looking beautiful--in a previous blog I wrote of the skin and stress. Your skin is your body’s largest organ and immediately shows your physical and mental state. That’s why it is really easy to see the changes in someone when they are under stress or sick, hence the expression, “Written all over their face”.

While I certainly recommend changing your subconscious beliefs—I also know there is great value in simple awareness and encourage you be more compassionate with yourself. Please take a moment to listen to your mind chatter. Unless it is saying that you are the Most Beautiful and Amazing person-- know that it is wrong and for now simply tell it so!