Be the Alchemist of Your Life

PRAISE OVER CRITIQUE

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
Oprah Winfrey

I love how praise can turn everything around in an instant. When I decide to turn my focus to appreciating what I have in life, my friends, my family, where I live, my life as it is, I am automatically removed from inner critique and negative emotions. When I find something or someone to praise and appreciate, my inner state is automatically lifted, and in that, so is my experience of the world, like praise being a magical wand that lights everything up.

“The world is built on magic not on rocks”.
Maharishi Sadashiva Isham

Through my meditation practice I have become more aware of the subconscious ideas that can influence my life in a negative way. When letting go of these negative thought patterns and stepping into a state of awareness, it has increased my appreciation of my inner experience and life tremendously. This inner state has made it easier to apply and remember appreciation in all parts of my life and it has made it easier to stay in a mode of awareness and joy. It is as if this state of awareness has a natural tendency to see beauty and appreciate what is presented here and now, as if praise is the natural state of the mind.

In this state I experience a greater appreciation for life, nature, people, beauty, fresh air and clean water. I now notice more things to be grateful for in life, things I previously could take for granted or didn’t even notice. Turning my awareness towards praise, I find that it is always something to appreciate. If I am feeling stuck in any way, emotionally or mentally, focusing on praise and appreciation for what life presents to me now, instantly shifts the focus. It is easy for the mind to go looking for something wrong if life don’t turn out as expected, luckily it is as easy or easier for the mind to turn to silence and praise.

When we actively apply praise in our life and towards the people in our life, the inner critique and our beliefs that there is something wrong will evaporate in the light of praise. Focusing on praise naturally gives us more gratitude for life and more love for the people in our lives. I especially notice this in my closest relationship, where my mind still can have a tendency to judge. Particularly in family relationships we are close up to our own shadow sides and it is not always the easiest places to see when we have stepped back into our old negative programming. When I remember to praise instead of judge, the relationship is instantly lighter, there is more joy, laughter and lightness. You can remember this whenever your mom, your dad or your sister is annoying you, see and acknowledge their beauty and good qualities instead, and notice what happens within you then.

To remain in a state of ongoing appreciation, we need to remain as awareness in this present moment. Most of us have negative thought patterns and subconscious beliefs that will influence our state of mind and what we create as soon as we step back into unconscious thinking. The more we turn inwards to a state of awareness and stillness, the more this negative programming will dissolve. The most effective way to experience stillness and awareness is in meditation, where we can choose to disengage from the negative thinking of the mind on a perpetual basis.

Already in the first few years of our lives, our thinking is already programmed to believe that there is something wrong with our life and our selves. Because of our experiences most of us pick up on a belief that there is something missing. We may have been left crying without getting our needs met as infants or had other experiences that made us feel unsafe and unloved. We are met with parents and family who have their own internal programming and thought patterns, which then again will influence our thought patterns. In addition to this, the society we are born into and the schools we attend, all have the potential to inflict us with thought patterns and negative beliefs. As we grow up most of us go into identifying with limiting beliefs and negative thinking and forget our true nature. We separate ourselves from our eternal and boundless self and identify with something much smaller, and most of us end up believing that we need fixing and improvement to be accepted and loved. When we identify with thoughts and beliefs in this way, we only live a limited part of ourselves. In reality we are already fully conscious and creative beings with unlimited potential, but now most of us only live and experience a fraction of who we really are.

When you let the critical part of the brain dominate and have a say in what you experience, your experience of your self and the world shrinks very quickly. It can be anything from holding people to negative past experiences to criticizing yourself. The thinking part of the mind has a tendency to constantly look for something to fix, to look for what is wrong, like it is not capable of trusting what is, right now. Because of this it is constantly searching for what is wrong, as if to find a reason for being so restless. When this thought pattern is seen clearly it brings a huge relief, you can then easily remember to remind yourself of not believing in the part of the mind that tells you something is wrong.

Most of us identify strongly with this judgmental voice in our head, and the more aware you become, the more you will notice how it is commenting on pretty much everything you experience. Everything you are, everything you do and everything you say. It has an opinion on everything, and has a need to put a label on everything: this is good, this is bad, that is beautiful, this is ugly and so on. To see this only as the bad habit it is, and instead choose to create a distance between you and the inner judge, will make life so much more magical. In this state of non-judgment life is more in flow, it is easier to create, happiness is a natural byproduct and your heart stays more open. To have an open mind like that, without believing any preconceived ideas, will give you the power to receive what life offers in gratitude and wonder. To experience life without having to define experiences, things and people, makes life more interesting and filled with awe. The Universe is constantly changing, so how you experienced something yesterday might be completely different to how you perceive the same experience today.

Realizing this has improved the quality of my life as well as the relationships to people in my life. When you do not believe in the voice that judges, you always have the choice to see people in the perfection of this moment, and not through an idea of what they once were, have been or have done. This gives a new purity, gratitude and love in your relationships, with less disagreements and more joy.

When you get into the habit of appreciating, the mind will get more and more used to this state of being, and it will automatically become more natural to stay in that awareness. Our natural state is to be in awareness and upward spiraling praise. The negative thinking is just a bad habit and it is more straining to get into, then what praising and staying as consciousness itself is. Most people believe it is our natural state to think, to judge and to be in our mind all the time, but it is not. This is very good news! Because it means that it will be easier to step out of the incessant thinking and into a state of conscious awareness, then it was to step out of this state of consciousness.

We don’t have to spend another lifetime learning how to step out of the mind before we do it, we simply step back from it now and in every now we do that it will get easier and easier.