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 thoughtslooks 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.

Mainstream thought has traditionally believed that happiness is hardwired. Consequently, throughout one’s life whether gaining a job or losing one, getting married or divorced, there are those who will view these circumstances more optimistically while others will take a more glass half empty view. This is known as your happiness set point. This perspective may appear to work well for those who land in the glass half full category but what about the glass half empties? Can they change their happiness set point? Are they destined to always see the less than optimal side of things?

Neural Plasticity Leads to Happiness

Recent breakthroughs in neural plasticity reverse the long standing certainty in a happiness set point. Consequently, your levels of happiness and optimism are not based solely on your genes. Happiness is a muscle you can develop with practice and conditioning in fundamental areas of life. Comparing happiness levels 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 have to practice these new skills. Emotional well-being training however is one area that seems to have been left out of this universal understanding. The primary factor in raising your happiness level is taking action through daily training and conditioning of specific characteristics.

Happiness is More Than an Emotion

What are the specific areas of training that have been shown to increase happiness levels? Something important to consider is that happiness is not just an emotion. People who are happy have identifiable life characteristics that lead to seeing the glass half full. On this level, happiness is more of an effect or a result of identifiable elements. These characteristics are aspects of life and personal development that anyone can develop with focus, practice and conditioning. Here are the top four life characteristics that lead to happiness.

1. Purpose in life

2. Self acceptance

3. Strong social relationships

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.

According to Michael Merzenich from the book The Brain that Changes Itself, practicing a new habit under the right conditions, can change hundreds of millions and possibly billions of the connections between the nerve cells in our neural pathways. The human brain is made up of an estimated 100 billion neurons making a total of 100 trillion neural connections. In our counseling practice we help clients utilize the top four conditions for supporting neural plasticity.

1. Positive Emotion

PRACTICE: Do something everyday that you enjoy. While you are engaged in this good feeling activity, focus on the feelings of achieving your goals and intentions.

2. Repetition and Practice

Neural pathways are strengthened into habits through the repetition and practice of thinking, feeling and acting.

PRACTICE: Start your morning passionately declaring aloud your goals for the day. Declarations send the power of your subconscious mind on a mission to find solutions to fulfill your goals.

3. Visualization

Visualization is almost as powerful as the real thing given your brain cannot tell the difference between something real or imagined. Research shows that anytime you are thinking you are engaging and thus conditioning neural pathways. Consequently, whether you are reminiscing about the past, thinking about the present or anticipating the future you are strengthening the neural networks associated with whatever you are thinking about. The most important part of using visualization to strengthen healthy habits is to engage your emotion. Emotion provides the fuel to enlist more neural power for creating powerful neural networks.

PRACTICE: Spend 10-15 minutes per day visualizing yourself achieving your goals. This should be so vivid, dynamic and pleasing that it easily engages positive emotion.

4. Meditation

The true masters of manifesting meditate daily. When you meditate you slow down the nonsense, ungrounded chatter of the busy mind and access the calm abiding wisdom of your inner awareness and the skill of laser focus. Meditation is the process of relaxing the body and quieting the mind. In order to tap into the benefits of neural plasticity you have to disengage the stress response and stimulate the relaxation response. When you are stressed your brain rigidly defers to the strongest neural pathways out of survival and the path of least resistance. Consequently, during stress you do not have access to newly formed neural networks because they have not been tried and proven yet. Most people live in a perpetual state of stress believing feeling tense, time pressured or overwhelmed is the norm. This is simply not true and is the result of an undisciplined mind and body.

PRACTICE: Spend 10 minutes each day sitting still while focusing on your in-breath and out-breath. Retrieve your mind anytime it wanders onto anything but your breath. Meditation is the highest form of mental training that disciplines the mind to focus on what you want and allows the nervous system to bring about homeostasis.

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 ‘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.

In a previous post titled, Emotional Presence we covered the first step to master your emotions; Presence. Emotional Awareness is your second step to master your emotions. Emotional awareness and emotional presence go hand in hand. The more present you are, the more aware you are of your moment-to-moment mental, emotional and physical state. This subtle awareness allows you to make quality decisions that are based on your emotional intelligence and creative reasoning. Emotional awareness reflects not only your ability to recognize and understand your emotions in the moment but also your ability to understand your patterns of responding emotionally across situations. Emotional awareness is the window into transforming your skills of healthy emotional expression. Most people will do just about anything to avoid looking at their emotions. Suppression, denial and projection are common ways to avoid dealing with emotions and consequently represent low emotional intelligence.

Healthy Emotional Expression

In order to master your emotions you have to be willing to dive into the abyss and explore your emotional terrain. Healthy emotional expression calls on you to take an objective look at a situation and how you are feeling about it.

1. Make a commitment to develop your emotional awareness everyday.

2. At least three times per day practice the Presence Exercise (outlined in the Emotional Presence post)

3. Then ask yourself, ‘How am I feeling?’ If you are unsure consider if you are mad, sad, glad, happy, afraid or some  variation of these primary emotions.

3. Notice where you feel this feeling in your physical body.

4. Identify any thoughts you are having regarding these feelings.

5. Identify the current situation you are experiencing related to these feelings.

Now that you are present and aware you are ready for the next step; develop your emotional expression skills by releasing and letting go of your feelings.

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.

Victor Frankl is known for losing his entire family during the holocaust and his remarkable journey of survival in the concentration camps. He invented Logo-Therapy from these experiences rooted in the power of your attitude to determine your experiences in life. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”. This is not unlike the heroic stories from Nelson Mandela, Desumd Tutu and countless others. An attitude rooted in love vs. fear powerfully enables you to transform challenges into opportunities.

Love vs. Fear

Love is said to be the ultimate healer and the most powerful results generator. In its very nature, love is an expanding energy. It connects you with others, draws you closer and helps you see the big picture. Love causes muscles to relax, vitality to increase and blood pressure to decrease. When you are aligned with love, your life experiences are viewed from the filter of possibility, change, opportunity, trust and hope. Love leads to acceptance vs. resistance and enables you to move forward vs. feeling stuck in the past. Many great teachers have suggested that love is the opposite of fear. It is said that one person aligned with love and appreciation is more powerful than thousands who are in fear. Perhaps this is why Martin Luther King Jr., Victor Frankl, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi and Mother Teresa are our most revered icons of social justice and change. They exemplified the motto ‘Lead with Your Heart.’

Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself

It is your inner light that will outshine the darkness and conquer fear. When you enter a room there is no dark switch. There is only a light switch….said in another way, ‘there is nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Responding to fear with fear only perpetuates resistance. Fear constricts your energy flow thereby causing muscle tension, fatigue, shallow breathing and sleeplessness. Fear often stems from feeling a sense of not being in control or feeling powerless. When you align with fear, your life experiences are viewed through the filter of worry, doubt, overwhelm, protection and narrow mindedness. Fear leads to pulling in the reigns of control through criticism and defensiveness propagating the very energy you may judge in others.

Lead with Your Heart

When you realize that there are really only two responses in any given moment, love vs. fear, you can’t help but realize there is an obvious choice to aspire towards. One offers freedom and the other bondage. If you want to transform challenges into opportunities we suggest choosing to lead with your heart.

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.

Change requires hope, faith and determination. You have got to give it all you’ve got if you really want to make a difference in your personal and professional goals. There is a great saying that illuminates this further, ‘You can’t afford the luxury of a negative thought’. Maybe this is taking it a bit too far, but there is definite truth in the fact that chronic pessimism is a real downer to achieving your goals.

Presence of Change Saboteurs

We support our clients to take the following steps;

1. Eaves drop on the conversation you are having with yourself paying special attention to the common change    saboteurs: unrealistic expectations, complaints, judgments, criticisms, projection and pessimism.

2. Increase your awareness of the presence of change saboteurs and the types of situations they arise in.

3. When you notice the presence of change saboteurs, ask yourself how you can use one of your personal strengths to help you achieve your goals in that moment. Make a conscious effort to use your personal strengths to stop self-sabotage.

Rule of Change

You can only change yourself. If you want to change someone else…you can’t. This is at the heart of the change saboteur, projection.If someone else changes because of something you said or did, then they chose to change vs. you ‘making’ them change. The same rule of change applies in reverse. No one can ‘make’ you change. You have to choose to change. People often give their power over to others in this area. They blame others for ‘making’ them feel a certain way or ‘making’ them do certain things. This leads to a pervasive sense of powerlessness in feeling capable to achieve your goals. Your mind understands this as others made you change vs. you having the ability to choose to change. This fundamental rule of change invites your presence to acknowledge your conscious choices. Whether you do something you like or don’t like say to yourself, ‘I did that. I chose that.’ In the moment this may not make you feel very good if you have abandoned your goals for a healthy lifestyle program, however it will send a message to your mind that in the future you can choose differently. This is not about blame or self criticism. It is simply an acknowledgement of your freedom to choose to change.

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.