“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” Abraham Lincoln

How well do you know yourself? The more you know yourself the better and faster you can change your life and relationships.

Develop self knowledge, self awareness, and a clear road map to create your ideal life. Do you know what is important to you? Do you know your core values? Do you know your limits?

Are you bored? Are you feeling lonely even though you have wonderful people in your life? Are you feeling helpless about changing your life path?

Develop inner resources to create new experiences.

1. Balance and Grounding
Grounding… feel your body with the sand.
An opportunity to Study yourself and Enjoy your relationship.
Choose something positive within to focus on.

One Beach Activity with someone you trust.
This is what I came up with… I went with my life partner to the beach to chill, I asked him to build a sand blanket all around me and keep topping me up with the sand when I move and the blanket cracks.

I felt cool from the mid-day sun, warm from the cool sea breeze, cocooned with no pressure over any part of my body in a weightless way, supported in every tiny part of my body and skin, my head covered and protected comfortably with a sarong from the glaring sunlight and heat. Perfectly balanced, timeless, content…

I felt amazingly grounded, relaxed and merged as one with the earth. Although it felt only moments later, I stayed in the sand blanket for about 90 minutes and felt healed by nature. I experienced oneness with the sand and beach, there was no separation between my skin and the sand.

I recommend you trying it with someone you trust at least once this summer!

2. Creativity
Develop a Source of endless pleasure with ideas to support you in your relationships and daily activities. Connect with your emotions and feelings.

As an example: Jill has a stable and reliable career and income for the last 26 years. In the last two years she has become anxious, is losing weight even though she eats three meals a day and snacks in-between. Her doctors and specialists found nothing wrong clinically. She sleeps well enough and does moderate daily exercise. When she first comes to see me, she felt under-nourished and at a loss about what to do. She was emotionally deprived, had not taken time to do anything to nurture herself emotionally. She has since paid more attention to her feelings, become optimistic, not anxious any more and taking steps to take charge of her reality.

3. Physical Strength and Drive
Develop your experiencing self. Generate curiosity. What gives you meaning in your day and life?

Get to know your short-term and long-term purpose and it will help generate drive and curiosity in you each morning.

For example: Stephanie has retired recently, she is a healthy and a young 60. A year into her retirement, after she has recovered from the “having no self-time” syndrome, she started to feel anxious and depressed for no particular reason when she wakes up in the mornings. She has no roles to fulfill any more, she does not know herself without the busy and routine demanded from her roles as a manager, a mother or a daughter. She needed help to take this as an opportunity to create a new purpose, instead of falling into an abyss of depression or unknown anxiety.

4. Kindness and Unconditional Love
Most of my clients are natural givers. The find it very easy to be kind to others and more of a challenge to be kind to themselves. They don’t know what it is like to love themselves, let alone love themselves unconditionally. They don’t know what they need… or if they do, they don’t find it easy to ask for their needs to be met. Fortunately, this can be readily developed by making a priority of regular mindful practices like self reflection, meditation, yoga, Hakomi Therapy, Therapeutic counselling and Tai Chi… to name a few.

5. Sounds and Words
Sounds and words carry energy which impact our physiology, biology, psychology, chemistry and hence our physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Be aware of how you speak to yourself and others, particularly those that we think we have power over, like our children and spouses. Our words can inspire or expire others. This can be a fun resource to develop and cultivate through different musical instruments or your interest of music, story telling or singing.

6. Imagination and Vision
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein

Tara said, ‘I am angry a lot in the last six months, I think about what he did and I feel angry. I am not ready to feel good yet and I don’t know why!” In a Hakomi session, I helped Tara to study the way she organizes around her emotions and feelings, based on one or many past events. She become aware of how she habitually reacts based on her belief. She does not believe she can get what she asks for from her life partner, so she does not ask. It makes her angry when he does not do what she expected, so the cycle repeats. Science has shown that constant angry emotions have negative effects on our physical health. In the Hakomi way, I help Tara become aware of her limited belief and study her habitual reactions around this belief that have been making her miserable with her life partner. She learnt to feel, think and behave differently. She developed new ideas of herself which serve her today.

7. Peace, Beauty and Bliss
Mindful practices allow for awakenings in our being, develop our whole self and allow us to understand our humanness.

Every one is different and unique in finding meaning and purpose in daily living. It is important to feel empowered, to know there are natural resources within to cultivate… like calm, happiness, peace, beauty, space, bliss. It is worth making it a priority to know yourself, to learn skills and practices that develop your resources to fuel happiness in your relationships.

Chew-Nyet Lee offers one-on-one Hakomi and Therapeutic Counselling sessions at Connect Health to help you with your unique situation. Please Call Client Services 604.733.4400 to book your appointment.

Upcoming Autumn Course: “Know Thyself – A Journey of Self Discovery” Wednesdays, 6:30-8:00pm, Oct 24–Dec 12, 2018 (8 weeks)

Join Chew-Nyet Lee and Keet Neville, Master Therapeutic Counsellors at Connect Health in mind-body medicine, as they assist you in your self-discovery process. They will teach you to practice mindfulness, meditation and apply some of the latest research on neuroplasticity in a supportive group setting. View out Events Page to learn more.