3472: Life is a Paradox by Kristena Eden of Core Living Essentials on Self Improvement and Finding Happiness

[00:00:00] Überlass deine gesunde Ernährung und die Gains nicht nur deinem Bauchgefühl. Denn bei der Ernährung gaukelt uns unser innerer Schweinehund manchmal ganz schön was vor. Sag stattdessen Hallo zu deinem neuen Coach, Yasio. Yasio ist die meistgenutzte Ernährungs-App Europas, made in Germany. Egal ob Massephase oder ein bisschen Abnehmen, tracke Kalorien, Proteine, Carbs, Fette, Bewegung und Intervallfasten. Und mit den Tasty-Rezepten bist du ready für deine Ziele. Let's go! Lade die Yasio-App jetzt herunter.

[00:00:30] Intro this is Optimal Living Daily Life is a Paradox by Kristena Eden of CoreLivingEssentals.com and I'm Justin Malik your very own personal narrator. I read to you every single day of the year so that you don't have to go find blogs and articles yourself. I find the best authors online, get their permission, and simply read them to you for free. So with that let's get right to it and and continue optimizing your life.

[00:00:59] Life is a Paradox, by Christina Eden of CoreLivingEssentials.com. Question, it seems that no matter how hard I try, I keep failing. Is there such a thing as getting ahead or even finding some peace in life? In every part of my life, I continually fall short. Where's the joy and the love? Answer, life is a paradox. It's good and bad.

[00:01:27] It's fun and hard. It's filled with joy and sadness. It's incredibly overwhelming and sacred. We don't wanna live it, yet we don't wanna leave. Our duty in this paradox is to learn and understand our path, accept the bumps, laugh at the struggles, and keep moving forward. The very Paradox of Life gives us the strength to do what we were meant to do. There have been many studies done on that very paradox,

[00:01:56] studies such as how to be happy, or how to make choices that will lift our life and its situations, and even studies on how to be successful, and how to have a perfect love life. The only problem with these studies is that we're human, and for us to fit into that perfect how-to-be-happy profile, we would have to be very consistent, be very unhuman. There isn't such a paradigm that makes us the same day after day.

[00:02:25] These studies are helpful and have useful info, but it is up to us to make them apply to our lives. So maybe our goal should be to see the paradox, appreciate it, and learn to have peace in it. According to Professor Jason M. Satterfield, we can find our place and our peace and cognitive behavioral therapy. In simpler terms, we can retrain our brain to be more productive and happier in our lives and our relationships.

[00:02:54] Have you ever taken the time to monitor your thoughts? Scientists have estimated that your brain will produce around 70,000 thoughts per day. It works whether we're aware of it or not. Our thoughts go from one subject matter to another in a split second, and our human brain habitually travels to the negative thoughts without much prompting. We have a tendency to gravitate to the lowest common denominator of our negative thoughts. It's when we choose to stay in these negative thoughts

[00:03:24] that we find ourselves stuck or lacking motivation or even lacking the ability to see that there could be a way out. Is there a way out? When we stay stuck, we find ourselves depressed, anxious, tired, frustrated, and angry, or maybe we just no longer care. It is possible to train our brain to think differently and to see or perceive things differently. If that is the case, and we can train our brains

[00:03:54] to be more of what we want to be, then why do we choose to not train that brain? Well, that's a good question. The following are some tips on how to train your brain. Now it's up to you to choose to do it. Number one, observe your thoughts. Take a few minutes to just think about your thoughts. If you're having a hard time getting past all the negative thoughts, then start there. Write down the thoughts when they come. If you're having some very detrimental thoughts,

[00:04:22] you may need someone to help or to just listen. Write down as many as you can. You'll come back to this list later. Our brains tend to drive us to seek the short-lived comfort of satisfaction in the here and now. Our brains follow habitual patterns. Our subconscious mind is automatic and it's fast. Yet it's not as strong as our conscious mind. Number two, make a gratitude list. This may be a short list to begin with and that's okay.

[00:04:51] Keep adding to it as time goes on. It could be just the fact that there's a nice cool breeze or that you have a donut you do not have to share. This list is a good starting point to change the automatic responses that are not serving us. It focuses our brain on the thoughts that will project us out of being stuck into a more successful arena. The more we practice our gratitude list, the more comfortable our subconscious thoughts become to this new pattern.

[00:05:19] With this repetition, the brain will eventually believe the behavior and thought patterns and start integrating them into our lives automatically. Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Number three, decide specifically what do you want. If you know that you are stuck, then deep inside you know what keeps you there or you must know where you would rather be.

[00:05:45] If your job feels pointless, then maybe you want a job that is more exciting. Write down exactly what that would look like. Number four, rewrite the stories you tell. If we have a belief that everything in life is a tragedy, then most likely that is the way it would be. If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. And if we can't take responsibility for it, we do not have the power to improve it. In this space, you feel sorry for yourself

[00:06:15] and feel that everything and everyone is against you. Think about this scenario. It does feel comfortable or pleasurable for a time, especially if you have played the victim for most of life. There will be more pain in trying to change that feeling at first. Break away and you'll find that being in control of your choices feels even better. We all have our own classroom and our own stories. Write yours the way you want it written.

[00:06:43] And number five, live your new stories one day at a time, one moment at a time. When we know what we want and we have our new stories written, we can now break them down into doable goals, one goal at a time. And when we do make a mistake, just remember that it's just another opportunity to learn. We can start again, refine, and rework. We have spent a lifetime of believing our automatic thoughts,

[00:07:09] when in reality, they are no more than just thoughts that may not serve us. Thoughts lead to feelings, which lead to actions. Build a new pattern and a new life. It is the very thing that we have felt is keeping us stuck that will help us to become strong if we choose to take the responsibility for that change within ourselves. You just listened to the post titled,

[00:07:36] Life is a Paradox by Christina Eden of CoreLivingEssentials.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to Christina. I have a good amount of experience with her first suggestion that's observing your own thoughts. I journaled for many, many years and meditated for many, many years. And different kinds of meditation and journaling too. And I can say with 100% certainty that these practices do help you become more aware of your thoughts

[00:08:06] and catch them when they're happening. The struggle though is continuing to journal or continuing to meditate. We can try a short-term retreat, like a week-long meditation retreat. There will be insight, most likely. But like everything else, it will fade after some time if we don't continue the practice. And that might be okay. Maybe we just need to get out of the funk and get a new perspective for a bit. Let it go.

[00:08:35] Then maybe come back to meditation or journaling later in life when we feel we need it again. I think that's okay too. But knowing this ahead of time can help. Or trying some kind of thought-observing practice one time can let us see what's going on in the moment. All this is tricky though. And gurus might seem like they have all the answers and have it all together. But that would make them inhuman. Which they're not. It's tricky for them too. And that's something to remember.

[00:09:05] With that, have a great weekend. Thank you for being here. And I'll see you tomorrow as usual. Where your optimal life awaits.