Whenever we engage in meditation or any other activity that promotes greater self awareness, we automatically begin to activate two innate capacities within our mind: Its capacity for self-healing and its capacity for self-evolving.

The minds capacity for self-healing is basically means that, whenever we move into a meditative state, the process of being aware of our mind, whether it I in a state of bliss or pain (or somewhere in between) has a beneficial healing effect upon our mind. Awareness heals.

The minds capacity for self-evolving means that the process of sitting and being alert and aware in meditation brings to the surface of our mind all the latent higher qualities and talents that we might not be aware of or, may even be afraid of.

Meditation makes you more aware of your creative gifts and talents and will over time create an energy in you that actually DEMANDS that you start expressing these talents in your life.

From this we can see that, as well as bringing you greater peace of mind, meditation can also be quite challenging in the sense that:

• You become more aware of all that is damaged and that needs healing within you
• You start having a lot of creative urges that start to PULL you toward higher and greater achievement in your life.

If you are not prepared for these side effects they can actually be a bit shocking, and you might even feel that you may be doing something wrong. Actually as often as not it is just your minds capacity for auto-healing and auto-evolving kicking in!

So, although the minds capacity for self-healing and self-evolving  are good things they also challenge us, bringing us face to face with the two aspects of our shadow self:

• The DARK part of our shadow self; the damaged part of self which we have disowned and rejected, and
• The LIGHT part of our shadow self; that latent greatness and talent within us that is as yet unknown and unexpressed.

With this in mind here are six tips for starting to get friendly with your shadow self. They are the basic elements of what I call a “Six point shadow reclamation process” that I use with coaching clients, and will be teaching in an in depth manner in the upcoming “Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back” shadow classes:

Step 1:

See it – Pay close attention to both strong positive and negative emotions that get triggered in you by people, events, places  or things. Be alert to the meaning that there is in the fact that your mind has been triggered in this way.

Step 2:

Feel it – Rather than immediately repressing or pushing away the strong emotions, thoughts or images that get triggered in your mind, get used to feeling into them, holding them within your conscious awareness

Step 3:

Communicate with it – Once you have some experience of steps 1&2, you can then try inwardly communicating with the person or thing that is triggering the shadow emotion. For example if a person fills you with revulsion, try visualizing them in front of you and asking “what is it about you that is creating such strong feelings of dislike?” – see what answer comes back. (Please note you are not actually communicating with the physical person, but trying to connect to that part of yourself that has been triggered!)

Step 4:

BE it – Practice mentally imagining that you have become the person that you fear or admire. Become that angry person that you run away from all the time, imagine yourself AS that great public speaker that fills you with so much admiration.

Step 5:

Own it – Practice taking responsibility for your shadow self and emotions, the light and the dark:

-“Yes I really am angry and hurt deep down, it is not always the other person that is angry”

- “It’s my job to make the most of this talent, no one else is going to do it for me!”

Step 6:

Transcend and transform it – This is the final step, and needs to be done at the END of the other 5 steps. A BIG mistake people make is to try and transcend their shadow self too soon, before they have properly seen it, felt it, communicated with it, been it and owned it.

To transcend and transform the shadow self simply means to recognize it is NOT your true or ultimate self, but nevertheless it has a potential place and function within your everyday personality of ego self. For example:

• Your previous fear of anger and projection of it onto others can be transformed into the ability to be powerful and polite with difficult people
• Your previous admiration of another person’s public speaking skills is transformed into your ownership of that talent within yourself, and the development of your own talent as a passionate and persuasive speaker.

So, I hope that some of you are inspired to join us in the upcoming shadow classes, but if you simply think about the above six points, and start to try them out in your daily life, I think you will find that you can start to get a feel for this process on your own.

Here’s to the maximization of our minds capacity for self-healing and self-evolving!

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Why does it take work to feel good about yourself and who you are in a non-egoic way and generally have a positive,healthy self image? Here are a few reasons:

• Because if you live in a consumer society the people and corporations who want you to buy things know that you will be more inclined to do so if you believe that you are incomplete, unworthy and worthless. A lot of adverts that we see each day are basically saying “Feeling bad, feel like a nobody, don’t worry, just get this product and you can be someone just by owning it!”
• Because our biological brain is trained to see fear, negativity and threats in a fraction of a second, whereas it takes our brain at least 10-30 seconds of focusing on a positive object for its impact to register in the same way. This is why you have to focus for definite periods each day on the good and the positive in your life, because otherwise your survival based brain will tend to kick in and keep you locked in fear and vulnerability mode.
• We have inherited psychological programming’s from our education, parents and family ( often no fault of their own, they inherited it from their parents and so on…), TV and the internet that cause us to re-enforce the negatives; You need this type of job to be accepted, you need to look like this to be lovable, if you are not part of this societal group you are a looser…the list goes on.
• Because in order to develop a healthy self image we need to continually fight against the laziness and “path of least resistance” approach in our mind that would really rather just remain stuck in dysfunction and negativity rather than haul its ass out of the mire and start building a genuinely happy and positive relationship to ourself and our life.

What to do about this?

Well, you need to do SOMETHING to improve your self-image, and do something each day without fail! The main thing to realize is that it is not going to happen by itself, so you need to take responsibility for it!

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@mentalfitnessnow.com

CATCH TOBY’S WORKSHOP ON “HOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR STRESS” NOVEMBER 14^TH AT SANCTUARY ON THE HILL!

When trying to develop and appropriately thick skin to deal with the challenges and attacks that life and our relationships throws at us we can fall into two extremes:

•  We can be too sensitive to what others say or do to us, making us emotionally vulnerable and negative at the slightest hint of criticism
•  We can become too sensitive, blocking not just the attacks that other people direct at us, but also the love, complements and positivity. This starves us of the positive emotion and feeling that we need to be emotionally healthy and inwardly whole 

To avoid either of the two extremes we need to develop what could be thought of as a “semi-permeable thick skin”.

This semi-permeable psychological skin protects from:

• Verbal attacks and negative energy from others
•  Negativity coming from our own “inner-critic” the voice in our head that always sees the mistakes that we make
•  Enables us to strain out the negativity and take on the positive lessons when we or our work are critiqued by others
• Protects us from negative ambient energy, for example in an office where there is a lot of anger, competitiveness of jealousy

However it allows the following to penetrate our energy field and mind, allowing us to appreciate them fully:

• When someone complements us, we take it in and appreciate it in a non-egotistical manner
• We are able to receive emotional support and kind words from others. Loving in relationships is about REVIEVING as well as giving
• When we are offered something of beauty in a now-moment. For example seeing a sunset as we ride on the bus, receiving healing energy from trees as we walk through the park
• When it is appropriate to feel grateful and appreciative of something good that is happening in our life 

Exercise for developing your semi-permeable thick skin

See yourself surrounded by a semi-permeable bubble of protective golden light. In crowded environments you can shrink it to the contours of your body, so it becomes like a body glove.

During the day practise learning when to consciously open up your golden bubble and allow positive energy into your energy-field (as in the examples above), and when to consciously close it down and make it an impermeable wall of protection (as in the examples of attacks above).

The idea with this exercise is to be able to consciously oscillate between being appropriately open and vulnerable (able to take positive energy in) and appropriately closed and protected, blocking negative attacks and energy, preventing it from damaging or crippling us.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@mentalfitnessnow.com 

CATCH TOBY’S WORKSHOP ON “HOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR STRESS” NOVEMBER 14^TH AT SANCTUARY ON THE HILL!

The quickest way to realize that you need a certain degree of uncertainty in your life is to imagine what would happen if everything was totally pre-planned, predictable and with no chance of surprises. What would your life be like? It would be:

• Boring
• Robotic
• Uninspiring
• Lifeless
• Unchallenging
• Actually, it would be pointless because there would be nothing for you to learn and no opportunity for you to develop as a person

So, if we start to think like this we begin to realize quite rapidly that uncertainty, unpredictability and chance are   a necessary, desirable and integral part of our human experience. Without them life might just about be worth living, but not at all in the same way as it is now.

The good news is that your life is always going to be full to a greater or lesser degree with uncertainty, unpredictability and chance, so no need to worry!

Yes the uncertainty may make you anxious at times. Sometimes things will not work out the way in which you want them to. There is always (until you get to a certain level of your inner development) some pain and suffering experienced with genuine change.

However, wherever there is uncertainty, there is also

• The opportunity to be creative, and participate (in however small a way) in the ongoing creative dance of the universe
• To develop qualities and aspects of yourself that you previously were not aware
• To do things that you would not have thought yourself capable of (in a good way!)
•  To embrace the new rather than clinging to old patterns and beliefs
• To learn how to manage your attachments appropriately (it is primarily our attachment to past beliefs and patterns, and to future outcomes that causes us pain in situations of unpredictability)  
• To experience excitement, anticipation and challenge in a positive way
• To learn to go with the flow of the Universe, rather than fighting against it

 So what I am saying is, the next time you feel the fear and anxiety kicking in as you face a situation of uncertainty in your life:

• Take a few deep breaths
• Recognize the fear without being intimidated by it
• Mentally step forward into the uncertainty that stretches out before you thinking to yourself “Stay on your toes, this is going to be fun!”

 © Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@mentalfitnessnow.com

Planning is what you do when you have a challenge and you deliberately contemplate it in order to come up with an effective plan of action that will help resolve the issues that the problem is causing. Effective planning is a necessary part of a successful life, problem management and dealing with stress.

Worrying (as defined in this article) is what you do when there is something that concerns you, and yet you are not sure how to resolve it. Worrying can be useful if it leads to effective planning. However, as often as not we worry without doing anything effective about the issue.

• Worrying that lasts a short time and leads to us sitting down and making an effective battle plan regarding how to deal with a problem is useful
• Worrying that leads to anxiety, inability to see a problem clearly and fear of acting to resolve the issue is undesirable and serves only to give rise to stress
• Quite often we find ourself worrying about things that WE HAVE ALREADY MADE A BATTLE PLAN TO RESOLVE! This is just plain silly. If you have identified a challenge and made an effective battle plan to resolve it, then one of the whole points of making that battle plan is that you now know what you are going to do to try and resolve the situation. So by definition you should stop worrying about it!

If you are worried about something, then sit down and make a battle plan about how to deal with the situation. Having made your battle plan, then simply follow the plan of action that you have made and stop worrying!

If you have made an effective plan to deal with a problem, then there is no need to worry, as there is already a plan in place!

The key practice here is to be more mindful. When you are thinking of a challenge in your life ask yourself the question “Am I worrying about this, or am I planning a way to deal with it?”

-          If you discover you are worrying, then stop worrying and start planning.

-          If you have already made a plan, then you can stop worrying anyway, because you have a plan.

Know the difference between planning and worrying; Plan more worry less!

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@tobyouvry.com

One of the basic skills for dealing with stressful situations and becoming more mentally balanced (and therefore more mentally resilient) is to know how to balance positive thinking with a healthy sense of realism. In order to do this one of the keys is to understand that both positive thinking and realism have a higher expression and an extreme or imbalanced expression.

Positive thinking

The higher expression of positive thinking involves:

• Seeing the positive side of every situation
• Thinking and envisioning the best possible outcomes
• Thinking from a senses of fullness rather than lack
• Taking responsibility for the situation and our role in it (see previous article on personal power)
• Ensuring that what you think and say about a situation are framing it in a helpful and constructive light, and not a negative one that will sabotage a potentially fruitful outcome.

 The lower, imbalanced or negative expression of “positive thinking” involves what is commonly called the Pollyanna complex the characteristics of which are:

• Turning a blind eye to the very real drawbacks, risks and dangers of a situation due to naiveté, underlying fear or just because we believe we can just think our way to a positive result
• Choosing to trust people, groups or aspects of ourself who are really not reliable. Sometimes this is naiveté, sometimes we have become attached to an outcome that causes us to not want to see what is really there
• Confusing realistic risk assessment (necessary) with negative thinking that will sabotage our positive thoughts and visualizations (unnecessary and dangerous).

Healthy realism

The higher or positive expression of realism involves:

• Being able to take a good hard look at a situation and make an objective or scientific assessment of the real risks or drawbacks of the different courses of action that we might choose to engage with. If you doubt the objectivity of your own perspective, get someone else’s
• Not being attached to outcomes. Attachment to outcomes blinds us to risks and drawbacks
•  Without being cynical, knowing when others are not revealing the truth about a situation, or when we may be hiding the truth from ourself.

 The lower, unhealthy extreme or imbalanced expression of realism involves:

• Undue cynicism
• Being a victim of circumstance
• Thinking the worst due to fear or anger
• Any time where there is undue or unhealthy emphasis on the worst case scenario 

So, in conclusion Mastery of this aspect of transforming stress involves

• Combining the higher expression of positive thinking and healthy realism together
• Avoiding imbalanced extremes of either. 

© Toby Ouvry 2010. You are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@mentalfitnessnow.com

What is personal power?

Personal power means making  a habit of taking responsibility for the situations that you find yourself in, and for the direction that your life is taking.  You may not be able to control everything that happens in your life, but you can take control of your RESPONSE to all of the things that happen to you.

In this sense you could say that owning personal power gives you a type of liberation. It is a form of liberation because it liberates you from all the sufferings, anxieties and problems that you experience when you:

• Forfeit your ability to choose your response to what is happening to you in any given situation
• Allow your emotional reactions to slide out of control and cause your thoughts to get locked in a negative spiral
• Blame things that you are experiencing inwardly on something that someone else has done externally
• Give up on a goal too early saying “If only this had not happened then I might have made it”
• Cannot appreciate all the good that is going on in your life because all you see is the bad. This  deprives us of an abundance of both happiness and pleasure that would otherwise be readily available
• Feel like a victim of circumstance  

On being a victim in life

The opposite of owning our personal power is being a victim in life. Nothing saps our energy in life more than having a victim mentality. Many people allow themselves to feel like a victim in life because it is an obvious and manifest truth that we cannot control everything that happens to us. However, as I mention above, this is to miss the point. Being a master in our life and owning our personal power means taking control of our inner response to what happens in our life and thinking, acting and speaking in a way that reflects that.

Two, two minute methods for beginning find liberation in your life through personal power:

 1)      Spend a couple of minutes reflecting on the last time you gave up control of your response to life and became a victim. For those two minutes re-live all the pain, suffering and anxiety that you experienced. End the exercise with a firm mental determination “No more will I give away my personal power and become a victim!”

The point is to use past experiences to make you totally determined to mould a new positive future, free from victim consciousness.

2)      The next time you can feel your personal power being challenged by an inner or outer event say to yourself “I may do many things in response to this situation, but the one thing that I will not do is relinquish my personal power and become a victim”. Focus on this determination mentally for a minute or two.  As you then progress to deal with the issue, stay mindful of your determination and act accordingly.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@mentalfitnessnow.com

There is a saying in Qi Gong circles that ” an anxious mind cannot live in a relaxed body”. This is a statement worth taking seriously as it is 100% true. If we can keep our body relaxed and comfortable, then this in turn will help our mind not to over think, over worry an generally exhaust itself needlessly.

In todays society one of the main problems that we face is that our minds, bodies and nervous systems are overstimulated, resulting in a continuous state of tension. It feels as if we are almost permanently trapped in survival or “fight or flight” mode.

In this article I want to look at two simple ways of countering this problem through body relaxation:

1. Learn to breathe properly
2. Get enough sleep

1. Learn to breathe properly

One of the simplest ways that I explain in my seminars, talks and workshops to relax the body is to take one minute, four times a day (Eg: Once upon rising from bed, once before lunch, once mid-afternoon and once before bed) to do some breathing exercises. Here is a simple example:

• For one minute, consciously focus on making your inhalation and exhalation equal in duration. Breathe deeply, to about 70% of your lung capacity. Make the duration of the inhalation and exhalation WITHIN your comfort zone, you should not feel out of breath at any time. As you breathe in mentally do a slow count “1,2, 3″ reaching the top of your breath on 3. As you breathe out, inwardly count “1,2,3″ reaching the bottom of your exhalation on 3.

Once you are used to this basic pattern of focused, even breathing, you can elaborate it in the following manner:

• As you breathe in to your slow count of 3, feel yourself breathing light into your body, energizing and refershing it. As you breathe out to your slow count of 3 feel your mind and body releasing tension as the air leaves your lungs.

If you do this consistently on a regular basis each day I promise you will find that your body’s energy will become more relaxed and balanced, and that this in turn will help your mind to be more mentally balanced, relaxed and resilient.

For some more basic tips on healthy breathing please refer to my article on “Basic facets of healthy Qi gong breathing” .

2. Get enough sleep!

This is at the same time one of the simplest and most difficult for busy humans to learn. It is very simple because if you feel well rested, then everything else in your life, both your physical, mental and emotional challenges will seem 30-50% easier! When you are not able to get enough sleep your body feels tired, your mind irritable.

The subjective experience of regularly not getting enough sleep is like you have a rope around your waist attached to a rubber tyre that you  are having to drag behind you all the time. Life just feels harder and tougher.

So, very simply you can make it MUCH EASIER to be mentally tough and resilient by organizing your time and life in such a way that you get enough sleep! This is a lesson that I myself have had to learn the hard way, as in the past I have made my life more difficult that I needed to just by trying to continually “tough it” through fatigue, and not listen to my body’s needs for rest.

In terms of the science of sleep, here is a short quote gleaned from an article by Naturopathic Doctor Dr Sunderdas entitled “The dangers of sleep deprivation” I would encourage you to read the full article as it really makes clear the importance of appropriate sleep for many different reasons:

“In brief, sleep is composed of two stages: REM ( Rapid Eye Movement ) and non-REM. The former helps in mental consolidation while the latter helps in physical repair and rebuilding. During the night, you alternate between REM and non-REM stages 4-5 times.

The earlier part of sleep is mostly non-REM. During that period, your pituitary gland releases growth hormones that repair your body. This part of sleep is when HGH or Human Growth Hormone is naturally generated. If you are not asleep, what happens is that you generate cortisol which is a stress hormone that has the long term effects of accelerating ageing and leading the production of toxic substances like IL-6, TNF-alpha and cRP.

The latter part of sleep is more and more REM type. For you to be mentally alert during the day, the latter part of sleep is more important. No wonder when you wake up with an alarm clock after 5-6 hours of sleep, you are mentally irritable throughout the day (lack of REM sleep). And if you have slept for less than 5 hours, your body is in a complete physical mess ( lack of non-REM sleep ), you are tired throughout the day, moving like a zombie and your immunity is way down ( I’ve been there, done that ).”

In conclusion, in order to support and develop your mental resilience:

-          Regularly relax your body through breathing exercises

-          Schedule in enough sleep to keep your body and mind well rested and healthy!   

For more articles on mental resilence please go the the mental resilience catgory.

© Toby Ouvry 2010.  You are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@mentalfitnessnow.com

In my previous article on “The eight factors for developing your mental resilience” I list the second factor as:

“Developing  equanimity – The ability to remain centered in the face of the four extremes of pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, good reputation and bad reputation.”

Equanimity is essential for developing our mental resilience as it gives us a strong psychological core that is not easily pulled off balance by the changing circumstances of our life.

Implicit in equanimity is non-attachment the ability to maintain a certain level of distance in our mind between ourselves and objects, situations and people that we care about. Non-attachment enables us to maintain perspective when under stress, so that we do not find ourself living on an emotional roller coaster, at the mercy of the people, places and things that we are attached to.

For many people the idea of equanimity and non-attachment is difficult to commit to because:

- they confuse genuine equanimity with indifference

- and non-attachment with detachment.

What I want to do in this article is overcome this confusion by showing how these terms are different from each other.

Distinguishing equanimity and indifference

When you have equanimity it does not mean that you do not care deeply about a person or situation. It just means that your mind is big enough and stable enough to contain both a deep caring for life and an ability to respond rather than react to the situation at hand.

For example if my child is upset and acting up on me, if I have equanimity, this enables me to care and love my child whilst at the same time making sure I treat him/her appropriately, not being emotionally blackmailed or getting angry and flustered.

Equanimity deepens and broadens our appreciation of life and inner strength.

Indifference on the other hand is simply not caring about life or the situation at hand. Sometimes people purposefully develop indifference because the other option, caring, would be too painful for them to deal with (because they lack equanimity). Indifference is what happens when we close our heart to life and refuse to acknowledge our inter-relationship to it.  

Equanimity makes us strong enough to care about things and avoid the temptation of falling into indifference. Although superficially they may look similar, in reality they are very different mindsets!

Distinguishing non-attachment from detachment

Non-attachment like equanimity does not imply that you do not care about the situation or person at hand. It simply means that you are not totally controlled by your attachment.

Attachment to people close to us, life goals etc… is totally natural and unavoidable. Non-attachment enables us to feel and experience that natural attachment and yet not become a slave to it. If you are a slave to your attachments you will lack mental resilience, strength and stamina. Non-attachment facilitates that strength and stamina. It provides a stable foundation for the other factors necessary for mental resilience to emerge and grow.

Detachment (in the way we are using it here), like indifference implies that we have cut ourself off from the life situation that we find ourself in. It indicates that we have “checked out” of the situation, we no longer feel anything.

If we have a life goal such as a Masters degree that we are aiming to achieve, non-attachment will enable us to navigate  the attachments and challenges that we face in getting that degree without getting discouraged or underperforming due to over-attachment.

Detachment has no such power to help us in such a situation, as it robs us of the motivation that we need in order to pursue our goal (the Masters degree) until it has been accomplished.

Concluding thoughts: 

In conclusion, if you can understand the difference between equanimity and indifference, and non-attachment and detachment, then you will be able to fully commit to practising equanimity and non-attachment. You will have no fear that you are cutting yourself off from your life, or losing your motivation to be successful.

On the contrary, if you build these two qualities solidly in your mind, you will have the foundation for true mental resilience and all the success that it has to offer you!

For related articles on Mental resilence, please go to the Mental resilience category

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@mentalfitnessnow.com

Below is a basic eight point template for developing your mental resilence. I use it as a handout for corporate talks that I give on this subject, enjoy!

Mental resilience defined – The ability to remain strong, directed and creative in the face of stressors induced by the contrasting experiences of  pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, good reputation and bad reputation

Eight  factors  for developing mental resilience:

1. Keep your body relaxed – It is impossible to have a stressed out mind in a relaxed, well postured body!

2. Develop equanimity – The ability to remain centered in the face of the four above mentioned extremes of pleasure and pain, loss and gain etc…

3. Personal power – Make a habit of taking responsibility for the situations that you find yourself in and for the direction that your life is taking. Nothing saps our energy in life more than having a victim mentality.

4. Balance positive thinking with healthy realism – Always look for the best in any situation, whilst at the same time facing the real problems that have arisen, or the potential problems that may arise.

5. Plan, don’t worry – If you have something that is concerning you, plan a course of action to tackle the concern effectively. If you have made a plan and there is nothing further you can do about the situation (at the present time), them be mindful not to worry about it. Worry is a futile activity that by definition has no purpose other than to sap our mental and physical resilience.

6. See uncertainty as a creative opportunity – If everything in life was certain, then our experiences would be robotic and dead. Uncertainty is what makes room for our opportunities to grow and express ourselves. Thriving in uncertain spaces is essential for developing our mental resilience and for our overall personal growth.

7. Develop a healthy self-image and a thick skin- Learn not to rely on outside forces to feel good about who you are and what you are capable of.

8. Find role models – Seek out people who can help you develop your mental resilience.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com