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.

It is universally accepted that the state of your mind affects the state of your body. If you feel stressed out and overwhelmed you are likely to experience fatigue and muscle tension. Equally, if you feel happy and calm you are likely to have more energy and physical vitality. The mind and body exist within a dynamic relationship whereby every cell contains the essence of your thoughts and emotions. The implications of this are profound when you consider that you are having a 24/7 conversation with yourself.

Glass Half Full

What is the quality of your conversation? Do you tend to see the glass half full? If you answered yes, you can expect to have higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction and improved health. If you answered no, research shows that pessimism and high stress compromise well-being and lead to significant loss in confidence, motivation and productivity. In our work as a team for the past 15 years, we feel fortunate to have spent 10 of these years working in alternative medicine witnessing firsthand the mind, body and spirit connection to health and well-being.

Stress

An interesting fact you may not be aware of is that stress actually makes people less intelligent. When you don’t deal with stress effectively your thought process becomes rigid and simplistic and your ability to perform mental tasks and solve problems is diminished. Stress literally decreases oxygen flow to your brain thereby decreasing your mental clarity and creativity. It excites your nervous system causing you to feel edgy and less emotionally resilient and flexible with yourself and others. This is hardly the optimal mind-set for your health and success.

The Happiness Habit to Change Your Brain

Brain plasticity is an area of study that has received significant attention in the last 5 years. It refers to the ability of the brain to “re-wire” itself in response to conditions. What this means to you is that if you want to be happier you can change your brain by practicing new habits of mind. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t BREAK habits you simply REPLACE them. When you practice new habits you naturally weaken old ones. In doing so, you change your brain. Increasing happiness takes practice and conditioning much like building muscle mass through weight training. Comparing happiness to muscle development is a paradigm shift for many people. If you want to learn a new language, improve your tennis serve or build bigger biceps it is universally accepted that you must practice these new skills. The same is true for emotional well-being training.

Happiness Training

What are the specific areas of training that have been shown to increase happiness? First consider that happiness is not just an emotion. Happy people have identifiable happiness characteristics that lead to seeing the glass half full, which anyone can develop with focus, practice and conditioning.

Top Four Happiness Characteristics

1. Purpose in life—Do you feel your life has meaning and that you make a positive contribution?
1. Self acceptance – Do you appreciate who you are?
2. Strong social relationships–Do you have a core group of people who you connect with regularly?
3. Feeling of control—Do you feel empowered to make desired changes in your life?

Happiness is a universally aspired state of being and more than available to every one of us through practice and training!

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.

The Law of Exposure states, what you expose yourself to dramatically shapes how you think, feel and act. Applying the Law of Exposure proactively takes deliberate action daily. It is a moment to moment conscious choice. If what you expose yourself to is not a reflection of that which you want to create more of in your life than you are going to be working against yourself.
Do the television programs you watch represent how you want to think, feel and act?
Do you watch programs or movies that reflect your values, goals and highest good?

Success = Your Values, Goals and Highest Good

Everything is programming your mind. Your mind records everything you experience, whether you consciously remember it or not. This includes all sensory and perceptive exposure to people, your environment, music, the computer, television etc… What you take in from your environment influences how you think, feel and act. Is your environment programming your mind for success or failure? If it represents your values, goals and highest good then you are programming your mind for success. If it does not reflect these elements than it is time to evaluate what you expose yourself to.

Programming Your Mind For Success

Make a list of what you expose yourself to on a daily or weekly basis. This list includes television programs, music, movies, internet, people, environments, social scenes, etc.
Do you feel uplifted or drained after watching television or being around certain people?
How often do you read or watch the news?
How can you make your environment reflect health, vitality, well-being and success?

Consider watching more comedies, choose to read a good book or spend time in nature, post inspiring quotes or touching pictures at your workspace, and choose to be around positive people.

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.

Every thought and emotion has its own energetic signature or wave frequency. Quantum mechanics has demonstrated how a wave frequency can be altered. The shape of a wave has peaks and valleys. Energy waves are encoders and carriers of information with an infinite capacity for storage. When you overlay an opposite shaped wave on to an original wave, the original wave is straightened. Essentially you cancel out the characteristics of the original wave by overlaying a new exact opposite set of peaks and valleys on top of it. You change the energetic signature.

Sound Waves

This has been demonstrated with sound waves where researchers are attempting to create a quiet environment. You can use sound to literally cancel and silence unwanted noises. This technology is used for corporate offices adjacent to noisy businesses or in doctors and counseling offices where voices can be heard between treatment rooms or in the car industry to make engines quieter.

Mechanics of Changing Thoughts

Let’s extend this now to understanding the mechanics of changing thoughts or emotional patterns. Comprehending this is taking into consideration the subatomic causal level of thinking and feeling. If you identify an exact opposite positive thought to counter a negative thought you are using this principle. Take a moment and think about the word stress. Now take a moment and think about the word relax. Think about the word fear and now the word safe. It sounds simple and it is. The trick is you have over 60, 000 thoughts per day to work with. In any case, this is the basic idea and where the positive thinking movement has made a powerful impact in changing lives.

Health Awareness

You can apply this awareness to your health. The body has 60 trillion cells. Each cell has its own energetic signature or wave frequency that is highly sensitive to your thoughts and emotions.

Goals and Dreams

You can apply this to creating your goals and dreams. Like energy attracts like energy. Focus on what you want and get what you want. Begin to live from the place of already having what it is that you desire and notice how events, circumstances and people begin to show up in your life to help you create exactly what you want.

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.

How the Brain Works

According to Nobel Prize-winner neuroscientist Eric Kandel advances in research are leading to a completely new understanding of how the brain works. In addition to the discovery that emotions play an executive role in decision making, the term neural plasticity resulted from the finding that the brain changes itself. There are two primary discoveries that have reversed previously held viewpoints on how the brain works. These breakthroughs are tremendously important to the future treatment of psychological and physical health. Prior to this shift in scientific thinking, even as late as the year 2000, these outdated viewpoints were the basis for most psychological and medical approaches to brain functioning.

Neurogenesis

In the past it was believed that brain cells did not have the capacity to rejuvenate. Any brain cells lost in the 60’s were thought to be lost for good. The discovery of neurogenesis however reveals new brains cells are being born well into your 70’s. Obviously, neurogenesis has significant implications for new approaches related to brain and emotional wellbeing such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Rewire Your Brain

Previously it was believed that the functions that make up brain structures cannot change. Thus the wiring of your brain was thought to be permanent or hardwired. The neuroscience breakthrough that you can in fact rewire your brain means new neural pathways can be created to form new habits of thinking, feeling and acting. Neural plasticity studies with individuals dealing with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Depression, Anxiety Disorders, memory and lifestyle habits have been bringing much needed hope and empowerment.

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.

Neural Plasticity is a revolutionary breakthrough with huge implications for people seeking better brain health and those looking to change stubborn patterns. Given that you have the capacity to change your brain, why do you keep doing the same thing over and over expecting different results? Why do you like most people make the same New Years resolutions year after year? The answer is simple, you are recycling the same neural pathways. Neural pathways are the biological result of your habits of thinking, feeling and acting. If you want to change your brain you have to train new habits of mind. You don’t BREAK habits you REPLACE habits. When you practice new habits you naturally weaken old ones. Similar to strengthening new muscle groups by going to the gym and working out, new neural pathways can be formed and strengthened into new habits of thinking, feeling and acting. This is a foundational part of neural plasticity.

Solving Problems vs. Finding Solutions

It was Einstein who said ‘You can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking you were at when you created it.’ Said in another way, you  can’t expect to get what you want by focusing on what you don’t want. Most people focus on what they don’t want most often. By focusing on what you don’t want such as ‘I will to stop eating chocolate’ you inadvertently ask your brain to engage the neural pathway of eating chocolate. Your brain is that literal. In order not to think about something you have to think about it. Additionally most people focus on solving problems vs. finding solutions. You can only expect to get more problems this way. SOLUTION: Identify what you want and spell it out specifically and clearly. For example, ‘I choose healthy foods.’

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.

The field of Positive Psychology offers insight and hope into changing for good thereby enabling you to achieve your goals. In brief, Positive Psychology focuses on the solution more than the problem. It supports you to use what is working in your life to create more of what you want and less of what you don’t want. Here are a few essentials to get you started.

Personal Strengths

First and probably the most foundational ingredient to success is to learn your personal strengths. Your Personal Strengths include your values and your character. Positive Psychology outlines 24 personal strengths. Each of us has six signature strengths we are using at any given period of our life. Go to www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu and take the Brief Strengths Test. Once you discover your personal strengths write them down and post them where you can see them daily. In any given moment identify which personal strengths you are using to allow you to achieve your goals and intentions at that time.

Emotional Self Regulation

The second essential ingredient to achieve your goals is to monitor and manage your emotions. In Positive Psychology this falls under the guise of self regulation or the ability to use your emotions to manage your behavioral tendencies, multitask and make reliable decisions. Emotions drive behavior. Self regulation reflects your ability to be flexible and act in a consistent and positive manner. Lack of self regulation is viewed as the reason for many psychological and social issues. Meditation is a great tool for developing self regulation and ultimately changing for good. Review the posts on Centering Meditation for guidance on how to practice this powerful change tool.

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.

You have heard it said before, NOW is all there is. When you truly understand this, it will transform your experience of how you use time to create results. There is no past or future happening now. You only have power in this present moment; the past and future are merely projections you are creating right now.

Remembering the Past and Preparing for the Future

Your ability to create your goals and dreams lives in the present moment. Most people spend most of their time remembering the past and preparing for the future. This lowers your vibration and inhibits true happiness. Think of how much time you spend wondering what you are going to do next, planning and preparing or thinking about what already occurred. The one true thing we know about the past is that it is no longer here. If you really think about it, isn’t it true that nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen only in the Now. Now is all there is. The present moment holds the key to liberation. Always say yes to the power of the present moment.

People avoid the present because they aren’t happy in the present and they believe once they get what they think they want or what they think will make them happy then they will finally be happy.

Transport Your Mind

Think about something that happened yesterday.
Now shift your attention to your plans for tomorrow.
Now shift your attention to the next minute from now.
Now bring your attention to this moment.  Are you focused on what is happening right here and now?
Rest your mind in the present for a few seconds.

Creative Power of the Present

This simple exercise demonstrates how easy it is to transport your mind to the past or the future. When you are remembering the past or preparing for the future, you miss the creative power of the present. In the same way you focused your attention out of the present you can bring it back in.

Presence Practice
Breathe
Notice your surroundings
Notice how you feel
Notice what is happening in the moment

Being present is a daily, moment to moment practice. It takes intention and energy to be present but it is the most important work there is.

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.

The purpose of the Centering Meditation is to help you quiet your mind and experience your center. In reality it will only point you to who you already are an essence already centered, already at peace. It will also help you to recognize the natural state of a centered mind throughout the day allowing you to focus and feel vital. This is one of the most common types of meditation. You are developing your ability to quiet your mind, an essential resource for healing, transformation, and manifesting.

Centering Meditation Guidelines

1) Posture – make sure your posture is comfortable. You may sit on a cushion, in a chair or lie on the floor. What is most important is that your spine is comfortably aligned.

2) Diaphragmatic breathing, also known as belly breathing, is one of the fastest ways to instill relaxation. It fills your body with healing oxygen, stimulates the body’s natural relaxation response and soothes muscle tension. Breathe so that your abdomen expands as you inhale and gently contracts as you exhale.

3) Centered mind When you are calm on the inside your life tends to be calm on the outside. Combining good posture with relaxed breathing and a centered mind allows for the opportunity of feeling calm on the inside. As you quiet your mind throughout the centering meditation you strengthen your ability to access a sense of peace and tranquility in many life circumstances.

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.