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Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom

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Are we ready to be happy?
This podcast is a treasure trove of goodies about happiness - about how we think, where our attention is placed, how it frames our experience. If we are wired to look for the negative, the danger, the threats, we'll find it (and we'll feel it in our system, our relationships, our world around us). And this makes so much sense, this negativity bias; we can compassionately understand its intention to care for us, to prevent harm by alerting us to danger. By paying attention to this negativity bias, we aren't covering up difficult emotions either; it's a "both/and" quality - learning to be with the difficult *and* also building the capacity for joy.
"We have all these misguided notions of what's going to bring us happiness, what's going to make us happy, what will stop us from being happy. And then we have habits, ways of paying attention that lock us into a certain range of moods. True happiness is a natural expression of our being when we're open and present...when we're happiest we're free from our self-narrative...What we most need is the resilience, the inner refuge of presence, of inner well-being, that can allow us to respond in an intelligent, compassionate way to what's going on."
-Tara Brach, Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom

Mindful Witnessing: Our Superpower for Emotional Health

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Mindful Witnessing
Often thoughts are not here or now. They are ruminations of the past, or looking to the future, and very well may be influencing how we perceive and interact with the present moment (and with ourselves and those around us).
So then, sadly, the present moment may be constricted; it isn't able to be fully revealed or experienced.
We become a mindful witness, first, by compassionately recognizing that thoughts are a way to care for us, fueled by a desire to problem solve, assuage fear, avoid pain, achieve a want.
We invite the acknowledgement that thoughts are just that – thoughts.
Thinking of the thoughts as waves, and our awareness the ocean.
We can zoom out, and instead of being the waves, we witness the waves.
And in this mindful witnessing there is a largening and deepening of presence:
“I am not the story, I am not the thoughts; what I am is larger.”
And we arrive, to land fully, to here and now.
So that the present moment may fully unfold in all its beauty and depth.
From this space, we can live more intentionally, without the distorted lens of past trauma or anxiety about what may come, and when triggered we're more likely to consciously respond rather than react.
And we dwell in our big wise heart. ❤️