Here are five solutions to support you in rewiring your brain for your New Year’s Resolution success.

• Given that change is natural to my brain chemistry, why do I set the same goals each year to lose weight, eat healthier, exercise more or choose better relationships?
• How is it that I keep repeating the same patterns?

To answer this we first need to look at how your brain circuitry causes your habits. Every moment of every day your brain is recording all subtle and significant experiences. It takes this data and uses it to build what we call your neural architecture of experience. This results in the culmination of who you know yourself to be, why you think and feel the way you do, why you react the way you do and why you choose to do what you do. Your neural architecture is comprised of billions of neurons that connect to form networks or what are known as ‘brain maps’. Your brain maps correspond to all categories of your life experience. This is essentially the biological process of learning (or unlearning) and the resulting development of your habits of thought, emotion and action.

Similar to a road map, your brain maps serve as a reference for the roads you have travelled and guide you along your current life journey. They tell you where you have been, where you are and where you could go if you choose the same path. Similar to driving on auto-pilot to familiar destinations, the more you activate a brain map the stronger it becomes.

If you want to change your relationship with food, your body or your fitness level you will to need to identify a new road to travel down that is related to how you think, feel, perceive, imagine and act. Therefore, it is not enough to simply embark on the latest nutrition program or fitness routine and expect this to change your brain map! This is one of the pitfalls most people make that leads to a cycle of disappointment and frustration. You have to change your brain structure and function through the same biological means that creates your habits.

Let’s return to the most common question our clients ask, ‘Why do I keep repeating the same patterns over and over?’  Our answers:

• Every time you repeat a pattern you recycle the past, strengthen existing brain maps and make future change more challenging.
• You are only applying one element needed for change – action. You can’t rewire by action alone.
• You have to be willing to identify and rewire your existing brain maps on all levels of change; thoughts, emotions, perceptions, images and actions.

Perhaps you’ve heard it said before, ‘The only constant in life is change.’ Breakthroughs in neuroscience have led to a clearer understanding of how your brain holds the answer to changing your habits. The term neural plasticity has emerged to represent the brain’s capacity to change. One such discovery is that we are constantly developing new brain cells through a process called neurogenesis. Not too long ago it was believed that the brain cells you were born with were the only brain cells you were going to get.  As you can imagine neurogenesis has significant implications for people with brain conditions as well as anyone seeking to have good brain health into their Golden Years.

According to Norman Doidge, author of The Brain that Changes Itself, a second major finding is that your brain responds plastically to change by reorganizing or rewiring itself. He discovered the specific factors that cause your brain to rewire itself; how you perceive, think about, feel about, act towards and imagine a desired change.  Doidge’s findings challenge the dominantly held view that the functions that make up brain structures are hardwired and thus cannot change.

The discovery that you can rewire your brain is exciting in two ways:

1. It provides confidence that change is possible
2. It offers direct solutions to capitalize on the plastic nature of the brain to make desired changes last 
   You have the power to change & thus to be, do and have what you want.

   
   

Lasting Happiness

Did you know that the holidays offer an opportunity for you to strengthen one of the top predictors of lasting happiness? Here are a few hints about what we are referring to. Lasting happiness is not found in…

• Buying presents or opening presents.
• Eating festive foods or drinking holiday spirits.
• Holiday rituals, work bonuses or vacation time. 

 Socialize to Increase Your Health & Happiness

The magic of the holidays can be found in your human encounters. Lasting happiness is cultivated through your relationships with others. Research shows spending time with others causes your brain to release oxytocin and opioid peptides. These are powerful healing hormones that increase relaxation, calm the mind and reduce stress. To help demonstrate the importance of social connections, let’s consider what happens when you don’t engage in regular socializing. Not spending time with friends has been shown to be as detrimental to your health as smoking or being overweight according to Harvard Medical School.  That is a bold discovery and offers a strong incentive to allow your holiday socializing to be a source of health and happiness.

 Be a Leader of Connection vs. Disconnection

If you are like many people during this time of year your social calendar is full. Although social busyness can be a source of stress, if you are conscious about the benefits you can use it as a powerful strategy to replenish and rebalance your energy levels. Allow the holidays to serve as a resource of social support and meaningful connections. To assist you with making your holiday socializing meaningful we invite you to become a leader of connection vs. disconnection. Here are basic guidelines to foster connection in your communications; 

Coaching and Counseling

 Kim Ward Ph.D. and Hilary Stokes Ph.D., founders of Authenticity Associates Coaching and Counseling, have worked as a team for over 15 years. Their mission is to empower people to achieve their authentic potential. They specialize in bringing the synergistic power of mind, body and spirit to individuals and couples. They are passionate about combining the best of holistic and traditional approaches to realize whole body wellness. If you are looking for a holistic approach to improving your life please contact Hilary Stokes Ph.D. & Kimberly Ward Ph.D. at Authenticity Associates.

It is common to get caught in a cycle of being so busy working hard, that you don’t have time to work smart. This might look like pushing yourself harder and harder trying to increase your output without taking the time to improve the process and replenish your reserves. Work takes priority over everything else from time spent nurturing relationships, engaging in a healthy lifestyle or adequately restoring your energy. Working hard can be likened to using 80% of your effort to produce 20% of your results.

Work Smart Surplus

Most people think there is a limited amount of time and energy. They are operating under the premise that they better use it before they lose it. Do the work now while they have the time and energy because eventually it is going to run out. However, the scientific truth is there is more than enough, in fact according to quantum physics there is a surplus.

Zero Point Field – Everything Is Energy

Let’s break this down for you. According to the Zero Point Field, everything is energy. In fact the Zero Point Field demonstrates that we are comprised of 1 billion parts energy compared to 1 part physical matter. Your action is found in the 1 part physical, while your thoughts and emotions (or your mindset) are part of the 1 billion.

Mindset Leverage

Tapping into the power of your mindset gives you huge leverage. When you focus on your mindset first you are working smart. Mindset leverage allows you to use 20% of your effort to produce 80% of your results. Your thoughts and emotions are your largest energy generators according to the Zero Point Field. They are 1000’s of times more powerful than your actions.

Work Smart Practice

1. Align your thoughts and emotions with your actions. Identify 5 reasons why your current actions and goals are important to you. Make sure you can easily tap into your feelings about this.
2. Visualize so that you can materialize. Spend time imagining yourself accomplishing your goals and dreams. Be sure to engage your five senses and feelings of inspiration connected to your goal.
3. Take Inspired Action. After visualizing your success, clear your workspace and spend the first 90 minutes of your day engaged in your most important action.

Coaching and Counseling

Kim Ward Ph.D. and Hilary Stokes Ph.D., founders of Authenticity Associates Coaching and Counseling, have worked as a team for over 15 years. Their mission is to empower people to achieve their authentic potential. They specialize in bringing the synergistic power of mind, body and spirit to individuals and couples. They are passionate about combining the best of holistic and traditional approaches to realize whole body wellness. If you are looking for a holistic approach to improving your life please contact Hilary Stokes Ph.D. & Kimberly Ward Ph.D. at Authenticity Associates.

An ancient proverb reminds us that only brave souls walk the human path, for the earthly existence is enshrouded in a veil of illusion. Choosing to walk a spiritual path provides an opportunity to live life with an open heart. Living open heartedly means we must fearlessly face our old patterns, transform self sabotage and bring the light of conscious awareness to our shadow. This is a lifelong excursion. There is a common misconception that living spiritually means everything gets easier yet this is often quite far from the truth. Speaking from personal experience the road can at times get quite bumpy regardless of how many years or hours of spiritual practice. It is true that the solutions for dealing with challenges tend to become simpler however the journey is not necessarily easier. As teachers of the principles we are humbled by how often we feel like beginning students. It is however this variety and diversity that electrify and intensify the ride of evolution.

Spiritual path

The spiritual pathis not a linear path on a horizontal surface. This would be too boring and quite unfulfilling. It is rather a dynamic journey filled with many twists and turns and ups and downs. The inherent complexity and dynamism provide the thrill and momentum on the ride and are in fact the necessary ingredients for the evolution of the human soul. The more you experience yourself going up after being down or balancing yourself around a steep curve the more you gain mastery of your emotions, thoughts and behaviors.

Spiritual Bypass

An interesting phenomena known as spiritual bypasscan deter one from the path of true transformation. According to John Weldwood, spiritual bypass is a term used to describe what happens when spiritual practice and principles are used to avoid dealing with the emotional complexity of being human. In this sense spiritual bypass looks like seeking an enlightened state while denying the fact that you haven’t completely dealt with an issue or resolved a hurt. It is prematurely attempting to put an issue to rest while claiming an awakened state of mind regarding it. As such emotional challenges, patterns of self sabotageand past hurts are minimized and avoided in an effort to appear spiritually enlightened and nonattached.

Spiritual Being, Human Being

In an interview with John Weldwood titled Human Nature, Buddha Nature, Weldwood discusses common pitfalls due to spiritual bypass. Specifically, attempting to be more spiritual than human creates a natural disconnect. It has been said that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but rather we are spiritual beings having a human experience. This statement does not deny or supersede the relevance of the human experience but rather includes it fully. When we attempt to rise above our humanness we create separation and dissonance between mind, body and spirit. This is the opposite of Universal Oneness that is so often highly regarded as spiritual truth. After all, as long as we exist in the human realm to deny this basic reality is to disallow our full spiritual potential in the present moment. Perhaps the statement, ‘Be here now’ sums this up.

Face Your Feelings

Spiritual bypass can occur when the desire to be a star student of spiritual principles surpasses authentically dealing with the messiness of human emotions. ‘The only way out is through.’ This statement has certainly applied to our personal experiences as students on the journey. It is the understanding that the only way out of suffering and into enlightenment is to stop avoiding feelings and instead courageously face them by going through the emotional process. For example maybe your spiritual practice includes living in gratitude, acting from love or spreading peace wherever you go. Yet let’s say you are feeling stressed or upset and not authentically aligned with peace or love. Perhaps you are not dealing with issues you are experiencing in a relationship or you are repeating an old pattern that is causing you to feel regretful. You could go through your day believing you should write a gratitude list or meditate on love or repeat positive affirmationsor only wish peace for yourself or others. Understandably by doing these practices you may actually feel better yet more than likely this is temporary. This can be likened to spreading a layer of asphalt over a pothole in the road without fixing the underlying structure. It may temporarily resolve the issue and make the road smooth but eventually the pothole will emerge again. Said another way, this is like attempting to experience a happy ending from an unhappy journey. This doesn’t work. Given you have feelings to be felt, if you pretend you don’t have feelings by avoiding them you will simply add to the size and weight of the pothole of emotions under the surface. These feelings will continue to reemerge until they are addressed.

Spiritual Authenticity

Many people would agree that being authentic is a spiritual principle whereas being in-authentic or pretending to be something you are not is not being very spiritual. So how does one believe they are spiritual when authentically feeling negative feelings or thinking unloving thoughts? We agree it can be challenging to honestly acknowledge unloving, unkind or even inappropriate thoughts, feelings or behaviors. It was Sai Baba who said the only difference between himself and others is that he has transcended guilt. Perhaps there is a vital lesson here. What if you did not feel bad or guilty for any personal shortcomings? What if you offered yourself the compassion and forgiveness you so willingly give to others? What if you courageously faced any shortcomings until transforming them?

Move Your Emotional Energy

To help with this we would like to offer our approach to working with emotion. Let’s consider a new definition of emotion. Emotion is simply energy in motion. As such, if you feel uncomfortable feelings notice how they are experienced in your body and allow this energy to move. In order to do this effectively, it is essential to stay out of your head, your story or your reasons for what you are feeling and why you are feeling it and instead just allow the feelings to move through your body. This can be likened to a form of mindfulness meditation regarding your emotional experience. Given this definition or perspective, you are actually working with the natural rhythm of emotion. This may be experienced as sensations of contraction and expansion. At first you will feel contracted and then as you allow your emotional energy to move it will release itself and you will feel relief or expansion. It is possible to experience an internal shift from contraction into expansion swiftly and simply when you move your emotional energy from your body vs. your head. This idea takes into consideration the importance of actually feeling your feelings vs. just talking about your feelings or avoiding feeling. After tending to your emotions you are now authentically ready for connecting with more loving states. Moving through contraction into expanded states of emotional relief offers fertile ground for applying spiritual practices such as gratitude, positive affirmations, peace or purpose.

Spiritual and Human Experience

To fully embrace both the spiritual and human experience is courageous, dynamic, at times messy and deeply enriching. There are highs and lows on your spiritual path but rest assured this too shall pass. Courage and fearlessness are called into being to live both the spiritual and human experience fully. Tools on the journey include a still mind, embracing change, living on purpose and residing in the present moment.

Coaching and Counseling

Kim Ward Ph.D. and Hilary Stokes Ph.D., founders of Authenticity Associates Coaching and Counseling, have worked as a team for over 15 years. Their mission is to empower people to achieve their authentic potential. They specialize in bringing the synergistic power of mind, body and spirit to individuals and couples. They are passionate about combining the best of holistic and traditional approaches to realize whole body wellness. If you are looking for a holistic approach to improving your life please contact Hilary Stokes Ph.D. & Kimberly Ward Ph.D. at Authenticity Associates.

If you are not getting the results you want from your New Years Resolutions than it may be time to apply the Law of Exposure. Simply stated, what you expose yourself to dramatically shapes your thinking, feeling and acting. In other words, you are a product of your environment. Consider that watching the news can be hazardous to your health. Research reveals just minutes of watching the news can increase your heart rate, blood pressure and irritability while decreasing your immune response. The Law of Exposure applies not only to those elements of your environment that directly tempt you but also to those indirect elements that cause high stress.

High Stress & Relapse

High stress is the number reason people relapse, fall off the wagon or get sidetracked from following through on their New Years Resolutions. Direct temptations include; hanging out at your local dessert shop or purposely walking by the open box of donuts at the office if you are trying to lose weight. They also include going to a smoky bar if you are attempting to quit smoking or cut back on your alcohol intake. Indirect factors include anything that causes high stress levels such as watching the news, hanging out with people who complain or focus on the negative side of things, procrastinating, overfilling your schedule or whatever you perceive to be stress producing.

Consciously choosing what you take in, what you allow to influence you in the form of people, all forms of media and technology, your environment etc… is one of the most important choices you make on a practical level each day to create results with your New Years Resolutions.

Coaching and Counseling

Kim Ward Ph.D. and Hilary Stokes Ph.D., founders of Authenticity Associates Coaching and Counseling, have worked as a team for over 15 years. Their mission is to empower people to achieve their authentic potential. They specialize in bringing the synergistic power of mind, body and spirit to individuals and couples. They are passionate about combining the best of holistic and traditional approaches to realize whole body wellness. If you are looking for a holistic approach to improving your life please contact Hilary Stokes Ph.D. & Kimberly Ward Ph.D. at Authenticity Associates.

We exist in a matrix of interwoven causal relationships between waves, particles and quarks of light energy. Everything is interconnected in this sea of energy. Every part of the universe is thus connected to every other part. It has been said that the most important part of understanding energy is not the source of the energy but the space around it and how each influences the other.
What does this mean to you?

• What is the quality of the space around you?
• How do you feel in your environment?
• How do you feel around the people you generally come into contact with each week?

Observer

Taken a step further, in quantum theory the observer plays a more central role than that which is being observed. Studies have shown that an item to be observed only appears when the observer begins to focus on it.
What does this mean to you?

• Are you looking for what you want in your relationships and life circumstances?
• Or are you looking for what you don’t want?

Waves of Positive Energy and Positive Thoughts

One form in which energy is measured is through wave fluctuations. Just consider the waves that are emitted when you place two tuning forks of the same vibrational frequency next to each other. Once one is activated the other begins to vibrate at that same frequency. However, if you have a third tuning fork set at a different vibrational frequency it will not vibrate accordingly.

What does this mean to you?
Similar frequencies attract. Thus positive energy and positive thoughts beget more positive energy and positive thoughts. Conversely negative energy and negative thoughts attract more negative energy and negative thoughts. This also applies to what and who you are attracting into your life. People of like mind attract to each other. If you want to surround yourself with supportive, optimistic and kind-hearted people you have to be supportive, optimistic and kind-hearted!

Matrix of Energy

We are all connected through the matrix of energy. We are all influencing each other. We are all carriers of information in a constant energy exchange with others and the space around us. It was Gandhi who said, Be the Change that you want to see in the world. Given what we know about the matrix of energy connecting everything and everyone;

• What impact are you having on the space around you?
• How are you influencing others and the world at large?

Coaching and Counseling

Kim Ward Ph.D. and Hilary Stokes Ph.D., founders of Authenticity Associates Coaching and Counseling, have worked as a team for over 15 years. Their mission is to empower people to achieve their authentic potential. They specialize in bringing the synergistic power of mind, body and spirit to individuals and couples. They are passionate about combining the best of holistic and traditional approaches to realize whole body wellness. If you are looking for a holistic approach to improving your life please contact Hilary Stokes Ph.D. & Kimberly Ward Ph.D. at Authenticity Associates.

Everything is energy. When you look through the lens of a quantum microscope you see beyond the physical and into the world of the subatomic, the Zero Point Field. From molecules to atoms to subatomic particles, science demonstrates the causal field of life. What happens in here (Zero Point Field) leads to what happens out there. In the world of the subatomic everything is literally vibrating with life energy. From this viewpoint there really is no matter as we know it. There is only energy. In fact when broken down into finite components it is said that energy exceeds matter by a factor of 10 to the 40th degree. This is 1 followed by 40 zeros. This is an incredible amount of energy. What does this mean to you? Ultimately this is a massive amount of untapped potential that could be making a difference in your life.

Patterns of Thinking, Feeling & Imagining

How do you tap into this reservoir of authentic potential? Given your actions are the result of your decision making process, your mind is your real power center. Consequently, your largest energy generating opportunities exist at the level of thoughts and emotions. Your actions are far less powerful than the patterns of thinking, feeling and imagining that fuel them.

• Are your patterns of thinking, feeling and imagining helping you create purpose, passion and life satisfaction?

Power of the Mind

Dr. Masuro Emoto conducted breakthrough research demonstrating the power of the mind. His research centers around the ability of thought (intention) to effect water. Water is an ideal substance to test the power of positive and negative energy given it is highly sensitive to absorbing energy. In brief his research involves bottles of water labeled with words and phrases such as love, gratitude, illness and worry. After a designated time period, the water is then frozen and its molecular structure is observed under a microscope. The results are astonishing. The molecular structure of water labeled with positive thoughts looks significantly different than the water labeled with negative thoughts. The positive thoughts led to shapes that are light crystalline like perfect snowflakes while the negative thoughts led to unformed, dark shapes. One obvious conclusion of this research is that given that your body is primarily comprised of water, your mind has incredible power to influence your physical and emotional well-being.

Coaching and Counseling

Kim Ward Ph.D. and Hilary Stokes Ph.D., founders of Authenticity Associates Coaching and Counseling, have worked as a team for over 15 years. Their mission is to empower people to achieve their authentic potential. They specialize in bringing the synergistic power of mind, body and spirit to individuals and couples. They are passionate about combining the best of holistic and traditional approaches to realize whole body wellness. If you are looking for a holistic approach to improving your life please contact Hilary Stokes Ph.D. & Kimberly Ward Ph.D. at Authenticity Associates.

NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) is known as the study of human excellence. It asserts that we can’t know the world directly but rather we can only experience it through the representations we build from our sensory experience. This includes what we see, hear, feel/touch, taste and smell. Consequently, NLP strategies work directly with the way in which our sensory experiences produce the building blocks of our experiences. This results in our patterns of belief, emotion and action. In other words NLP explains why we do what we do and offers methods to change it.

Transform Your Sensory Experience for Healthy Lifestyle Habits

When you voluntarily rearrange the combination of your sensory experience regarding any issue or aspect of your life, you then change the way in which your brain stores and recalls that issue. As a result, you naturally change your future beliefs, emotions and actions. Consider the implications of this approach in helping you transform your relationship with food, exercise or past hurts. NLP is a powerful change agent for developing healthy lifestyle habits, decreasing stress and reaching your authentic potential. Let’s demonstrate this.

Visual Sensory Experience Exercise: Your Minds Eye

Think of a pleasant experience. In your minds eye bring the image closer, make it richer, make it more colorful, clarify the details and turn up the brightness. Notice how you feel?

Now take that same experience and send it get farther away in your minds eye. Make the image smaller, less clear, dim and black and white. Notice how you feel again?

Now put the experience back where it was originally.

You probably had stronger feelings when it was closer to you and weaker feelings when it was farther away.

Achieve Your Goals

If you want to increase your happiness and achieve your goals then move these experiences close to you in your minds eye with clarity and bright colors.

If you want to transform challenging experiences, move them farther away and visualize them in black and white.

Coaching and Counseling

Kim Ward Ph.D. and Hilary Stokes Ph.D., founders of Authenticity Associates Coaching and Counseling, have worked as a team for over 15 years. Their mission is to empower people to achieve their authentic potential. They specialize in bringing the synergistic power of mind, body and spirit to individuals and couples. They are passionate about combining the best of holistic and traditional approaches to realize whole body wellness. If you are looking for a holistic approach to improving your life please contact Hilary Stokes Ph.D. & Kimberly Ward Ph.D. at Authenticity Associates.