Wake Up and Live

By Belinda Wallis

We’ve all heard that the key to personal growth is awareness, but what does that really mean? Author Belinda Wallis explains that awareness refers to your ability to consciously and objectively observe yourself with compassion and understanding—but without judgment. The aim of nurturing awareness is to help you uncover the power of y

• Language: English
• Publisher: STAMPA GLOBAL
• Release date: Sep 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781734074949

Book preview

Copyright ©2018 Belinda Wallis.

Contents

Preface

PART I - BECOMING AWARE

Chapter 1 Introduction

Born with a purpose

What is awareness?

Chapter 2 Unconscious blockages to awareness

Blockages to happiness

Stress can block awareness

Your ego can block your awareness

I cannot stop having unwanted thoughts!

Chapter 3 Thoughtfulness

Sympathy, empathy, and compassion

Pedestrian crossing

When drivers cut you off

Punctuality

Lending and borrowing

Asking for help

Copping abuse from a stranger

An assumption and a judgement

Chapter 4 Mental health

The ability to choose your thoughts

Accepting what is

Feeling vulnerable

Fears and feelings of vulnerability stem from past events

Chapter 5 Children

The damage of false assumptions

Poor communication

Unreasonable expectations

Judging without proof

The importance of honesty

Tell your children you love them

The messages we send to our children

Sending clear messages

The wisdom of children

Chapter 6 Parenting, teaching, coaching children

My learning process

Constructive or destructive?

Keeping your word and following through

Coping with children nagging

Handling emotional manipulation

Loving who you are

Education

Guided democracy

Sure, as soon as you have

Teaching by example

Bedtime

Protecting or preparing?

Giving children a voice

Giving children responsibilities

Chapter 7 Teens

Career paths

Pressure to plan your life at 15

Wasting learning opportunities

Celebrating the awareness and depth of teens

Teens are here to question

Chapter 8 Relationships

A people-pleaser history

Taking what you want

Giving all you’ve got

Tina’s story

Using the Law of Attraction

Witnessing each other’s lives

Chapter 9 People who control

Background

Explaining controlling behaviour

Other causes of emotional disconnection

A compassionate view

A search for the controller within

Controlled giving

Dealing with controlling people

Real encounters with controlling people

Letting go

Chapter 10 Comfort zones

What is my comfort zone?

What happens to me when I am outside my comfort zone?

Expanding your comfort zone

Walking on eggshells

The roundabout or the mountain

Comfort zone expansion exercises

Chapter 11 Spiritual Centres

Evelyn

Timothy

Doreen

Sunnyside Spiritual Education Centre

Awareness

Chapter 12 Coping with the ageing pro

Background

Louisa’s mother

Jenny’s father

Mark’s mother

Simon’s Mother

Awareness

Chapter 13 Lifelong traumas

A lifetime of nightmares

Neglected children

Tapping

PART II – YOUR INWARD JOURNEY

Chapter 14 Belief systems

What is a belief system?

A tale of two brothers

Believing or knowing?

Changes in one life time

Opening up to all possibilities

Chapter 15 Religion and spirituality

Man versus God

The Church reinterpreting gospel

God is Love

Shared spiritual values

Judgements and conditions

Rituals

A perspective on prayer

My Islamic friends

Words of wisdom on love

The gift of discernment

What next?

The story of the loving father

PART III – TOOLS FOR LIFE

Chapter 16 Tools for changing your thoughts

Ego versus your higher self

Monitoring your thoughts

What you resist persists

Different thought, different feeling

Turning your horse purple

Turn your horse purple

Creating your good feelings plan

Using puzzles to break through immobilisation

Breathing

Present moment thinking

Chapter 17 Quality of life tools

Asking for help

Trying on a feeling

Leave your work at work and your home at home

Are you a perfectionist?

Criticism

Are you a victim or are you empowered?

The gratitude journal

The importance of loving you

Approval

You can only give away what you have

Tall poppy syndrome

The joy of giving

Crisis and opportunity

Chapter 18 Forgiveness

The man who would not forgive

What is forgiveness?

Never needing to forgive

Chapter 19 Helping others through loss

PART IV – THE WAY FORWARD

Chapter 20 Living life on purpose

What is my purpose?

Do I need a purpose? Why?

Famous people living on purpose

Awareness

The Final Analysis

Chapter 21 Life coaching

What is life coaching?

The GROW model

After coaching, then what?

Chapter 22 A love letter to yourself

Why?

The letter template

More ideas for your letter

PART V – THE OUTCOME: A LIFE OF JOY

Chapter 23 Model of a self-aware person

Chapter 24 Wake up and start living today!

Desiderata

Promise Yourself

Acknowledgements and references

About the author

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For my mother, my children and the supremely intelligent, unconditionally loving Source of creation

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

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Preface 

G rowing up, I became acutely aware of my ability to feel another’s pain. I also found myself enjoying teaching. The subject matter included such random and seemingly unrelated activities as canoeing, piano, pottery, technical writing, quality systems, project methodology, soccer, and leading fitness classes. I used to see myself as a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ and wondered what I should to do with all of this.

Later in life, I learned I had a knack of listening to people who were struggling and providing them with understanding and different perspectives that would help them feel better and make good choices.

After studying and embracing positive psychology, personal development, and coaching techniques for many years, in 2007 I had a light-bulb moment. I decided that I did not want to just retire and become a pensioner in my mid-sixties as so many people do. I wanted to spread happiness by applying my varied studies and life skills.

Since 2007, I have been planning my future budget-priced happiness retreat. There are so many wonderful and varied retreats available but many seem to be quite expensive and out of the price range of most. It appeared to me that those who would benefit most from this type of experience were unable to afford it.

My plan, which still evolves daily, is to produce and run a budget-priced retreat program, within financial reach of many people, encompassing mental, emotional, physical and spiritual awareness and life improvement.

Within the retreat program, we will:

•   prepare ourselves tasty and nutritious food as a group

•   engage in physical activities that are so much fun we will forget we are exercising

•   perform life coaching sessions for each other

•   watch inspirational and heart-warming DVDs

•   meditate

•   do relaxation and stretch classes to soothing music

•   learn about Emotional Freedom Technique (Tapping)

•   do laughter workshops

•   do thought-changing exercises and visualisation techniques

•   discuss what pushes our buttons and address it with new perspectives

•   focus on gratitude

•   learn about forgiveness and compassion

•   become at peace, accepting things as they are

•   discover the music inside ourselves and what activities give us joy

•   become empowered and independent of the opinion of others

•   follow our hearts and do what we love in the service of others.

This is the music inside of me!

However, if I am going to embark on such a life-changing project, first I must acquire, learn and develop the techniques to provide to my retreat guests.

Before I can pass on such wisdom, mindsets, and practices, I must be able to do them myself and be able to achieve some benefits and describe them. That way, I can teach from the first-hand experience. To complete the learning process, you learn, you practice, you become proficient and then you teach.

After rehearsing, planning, practicing and refining various workshops and talks for the retreat in my head for a few years, I found myself out of a job. My new place of employment required almost three hours per day of train travel.

I find it amazing how the universe gives us little pushes towards our purpose and direction in life! It was the thought of the wasted commuting time that led me to write down the ideas I had accumulated for my retreat in a book. Therefore, armed with a lovely new laptop, I turned my uninterrupted train travel into what became joyful writing time.

It is not my intention to tell you what you should think or do. I hope that this book can provide you with a greater level of awareness of who you are, so you can discover an even greater you.

By then applying the tools that feel right for you, you will be on your way to knowing who you are, discovering your own greatness and living your life from a place of gratitude, love, peace, and joy.

Part I 

Becoming Aware

Chapter 1 

Introduction

Born with a purpose 

I was born feeling driven to do what I can to make the world a better place. I did not know why I felt this way, but I thought that everyone felt the same way. I can remember as a small child, being aware of what people said and did and how it made others feel. Most of the time, I knew what kind of mood people near me were in and how they were feeling. I thought everyone else noticed the same information as me, so I could not understand why people would be mean to each other on purpose. As I grew older, it dawned on me that many people were not being mean to each other on purpose. In most cases, we become so preoccupied with our own issues that we unconsciously behave thoughtlessly and carelessly and needlessly inflicting pain on others.

Cultural conditioning imprints views, opinions, assumptions, prejudices, and judgements on our minds and ways of thinking without us even realising. A clear example of this struck me when I was just starting school. I remember the confusion I felt at learning that my local church minister seemed to be teaching that God would send all of the world’s little brown babies to hell if they did not believe the same things as he did. I wondered why so many grown-ups could not see something particularly unjust about this and why they seemed to believe the same thing. After all, I had a beautiful picture of Jesus with children of all races around him with the caption Suffer little children to come unto me. I wondered if the minister had seen the picture or not and whether I should show it to him.

Growing up in this confused state of mind, I did not understand why people seemed to contradict themselves and say things about each other behind their backs or do hurtful things. It just did not make sense to me. I thought it was obvious that we would all be happier if we were nice to each other. I did not realise that there were so many people so caught up in their own issues, problems and goals that they were simply unaware they were not treating others, as they would like to be treated.

Working with the light

Being born with a passion to serve and growing up feeling confused about why others did not think or feel the same as me was very challenging. I would like to acknowledge the work of Doreen Virtue and offer her my deep gratitude for writing about and explaining what a lightworker is. The light refers to the higher frequencies of unconditional love, kindness, respect, forgiveness and gratitude. Lightworkers feel a strong connection to their higher self, their soul, and their spirituality. They feel they have come to this earth to do what they can to make the world a better place. Some lightworkers are more aware of their spirituality than others are, but they are all working towards a common good for humanity and the planet as a whole.

Doreen’s work explains the lightworker’s way in depth. This has enabled me to understand why I have this drive and has taught me that I am not alone. There are many lightworkers like me and we have come here thinking and feeling the way we do for a reason. We have a job to do.

Working for many years as an IT programmer, business analyst, technical writer and quality systems analyst can appear to have no connection with writing a book on awareness or being remotely spiritual. After all, the jobs I have had predominantly engage left-brain thinking. Writing a book is more creative and right brained.

There is a particular common thread that runs through all of my jobs and that is my own focus on improving things. I have always been aware that there are changes we can make to achieve improved outcomes that benefit everyone.

On the personal side, I have had paranormal experiences all my life and this has enabled me to keep an open mind about things I do not understand. I was also born an empath.

Empathy

Have you noticed that when you walk into a room where someone is feeling very angry that you can feel it too? That is your empathy. Empaths detect and feel other people’s emotional energy. Sometimes this can be at such an intense level that we find ourselves taking those feelings and emotions on board without even realising it. Like many characteristics, empathy has its rewards and its challenges. Tuning into people’s anxieties enables empaths to reach out and offer a helping hand. If someone is troubled and accepts the offer, it is no burden to an empath. Sometimes a troubled person just needs someone to hear them. By listening, the empath is enabling another to feel supported. Talking things through can often be enough for people to lead themselves to ways forward or simply release past problems. It is a wonderful feeling to support fellow human beings in finding their own answers.

On the downside, it can be quite challenging for an empath to be part of large crowds of people. You pick up every emotion under the sun and feel it as if it were your own. Being in workplaces where there is fear surrounding job uncertainty or at parties where people have drunk too much and tempers flare can cause strong feelings of anxiety in an empath. We often carry those emotions with us unconsciously and can feel drained at the end of the day without knowing why.

Many empaths struggle with weight loss. A desire to feel protected from unwanted energies of others can unconsciously lead to comfort eating to create a protective shield. This practice, however, is not successful. The energy still gets through!

Sharing awareness

I have come to accept the benefits and difficulties of empathy and to be grateful for it. This gift has led me to study and practice awareness to a point where I now feel comfortable about sharing what I have learnt, observed and experienced with you. Awareness is a journey with times of great progress as well as forgetfulness and setbacks. I feel I generally have strong awareness of my own thoughts, feelings, and actions, but in times of stress, I will still slip into ego and fear mode. However, I can detect it quite quickly now and if I go down that path without realising, my adult children will spot the change in me. They are not afraid to point out that I may be over-reacting or becoming intolerant. I am now able to make the adjustments I need to put myself back on the track of peace and being happy with who I am.

I have enjoyed studying the work of many great authors and inspirational teachers, for many years. Rather than just read or listen and understand, I have gone the extra mile to put many of their ideas into action. I have also developed quite a few ideas, habits, and techniques of my own.

In this book, I share with you some of these ideas, thought processes, tools, and techniques that have helped me along the way. It is my intention to do so in a way that is simple, clear, logical, and can be related and applied to day-to-day tasks and situations. If just one story, tool, explanation or exercise resonates with you in a way that opens your mind and improves your life, then I am grateful for being your messenger.

Many people have chosen to follow a path of learning and personal growth with the intention of becoming a better person, experiencing a deeper quality of life, overcoming fears, finding peace within, helping others along the way or responding to their inner calling towards service. It is part of our true, higher nature to want to evolve.

There is so much valuable information available out there to help us to grow. Fortunately, there is also an abundance of different writing, learning and teaching styles for us to choose from. So if that is the case, why am I writing this book?

The answer is that I have seen so many people and groups with the intention to evolve, who read, learn and pass on wisdom, without having fully understood it or applied it to themselves.

I give great thanks and credit to the sources of all of the ideas and awareness building blocks I have learnt about from others. Their wisdom enables me to offer you familiar examples and practical ways in which to apply them in your life.

Awareness provides the basic building

blocks to evolve and grow.

What is awareness?

Explanation

In the context, and for the purpose of this book, awareness refers to the ability to observe ourselves consciously and objectively with compassion and understanding but without judgement. The aim of awareness is to discover the truth about how we think and feel, and what our actions are. Awareness helps you to know who you are and build a loving relationship with yourself. Awareness helps us to determine whether our mindset serves us in our lives to get where we want to go.

By having an ego-based, fearful mindset, what we think, feel and do may appear to serve us but in reality, it will not serve us or anyone else.

By embracing a loving mindset, what we choose to think, feel and do for ourselves will not only serve us but will also serve humanity.

Before we can truly make changes and improvements to our lives, we need to get to know who we are and learn about how we think, how we feel, what we do and what is important to us. Then we can determine how this affects our lives and the lives of those around us.

Why is awareness so important?

I have met many people on the spiritual and/or personal growth path. Through empathy and awareness, I can clearly detect the existence of blockages, past traumas, and a general absence of awareness. Becoming aware is a journey that improves with time, characterised by setbacks along the way. However, the journey is well worth taking. It takes you towards an improved quality of life and contentment. Awareness can lead you to self-acceptance, peace, gratitude and connectedness to the true and magnificent self that you are. It will support you in peeling back the layers of defences and protection mechanisms that your ego has created in response to past traumas and false belief systems. The awareness journey takes you to a conscious and mindful life of love, rather than a life of fear.

Becoming self-aware involves effort and practice, and it does take time. However, this is no different from achieving competency in any worthwhile skill or activity. I liken it to playing the piano. It takes time and effort, but the more I practise, the better I get at it. The journey and the learning process is also a joyous experience in itself.

We all bear scars of past trauma and hurt at some level. As a result, we have developed self-protection and defence mechanisms, based on fear. Even though each of us have been victims and possibly undeserving of ill-treatment, becoming aware of and responsible for our defensive layers enables us to take action and make changes.

We can have wonderful, pure and honourable intentions for our lives and how we affect the lives of others, but if there are behaviours and blockages within us that we do not know about, how can we dissolve them?

We can only consciously address

issues that we are aware of

Rather than just talk about awareness at a high or conceptual level, I refer to common, everyday situations throughout the book. I do not intend to be overly prescriptive but I do hope that by becoming aware of your thought patterns and behaviours, you can determine whether what you do is really, what you want to do. You can also decide whether your thoughts, words and actions serve you in following your chosen life path.

Big picture and fine detail thinking

The conceptual thinkers, the strategists, the visionaries and the innovators bring to the world big picture thinking. They offer us visions of new concepts, products, activities and outcomes. They help us consider what is possible and provide overall concepts of direction.

The pilots, the microbiologists, the medical scientists, the engineers and all those involved with work that requires precision, accuracy, measurement and timing bring to the world fine detail thinking.

Big picture thinking enables us to consider how we would like our lives and the lives of others to be. It is the creation of a vision to aim for. Fine detail thinking enables us to home in on how to perform our daily tasks and processes.

Achieving heightened awareness makes good use of both of these thinking skills. You would begin by using your big picture thinking to determine your purpose, life goals and direction. The missing piece we often overlook is the bridge between the two. What tasks and perspectives are required to support and follow my chosen direction? Finally, fine detail thinking enables us to determine how we will perform in the present moment.

By developing the habit of regularly checking in with yourself to observe what you are doing and how you are thinking, you can then ask yourself Does what I am thinking and doing right now support and serve me to get where I want to go? The answer to your own question gives you the opportunity to make changes to better align your present moment thoughts, feelings, words and actions as needed.

If you look after the now, the

future will look after itself.

Chapter 2 

Unconscious blockages to awareness

Blockages to happiness

W hile awaiting my appointment in a doctor’s surgery many years ago, I picked up a Reader’s Digest and found an article that left a big impression on me regarding what the author described as three blockages to happiness.

The Missing Tile syndrome

Imagine admiring an amazing mosaic, featuring thousands of tiny tiles of many colours, carefully and perfectly placed to depict wonderful patterns and pictures. As your eyes scan this masterpiece, you spot a gap where a tile has fallen out. Your perspective changes immediately. You no longer see before you a spectacular work of art. All you seem to be able to focus on is that missing tile. All you see is its flaw.

Waiting for happiness to turn up

Have you often wished that maybe next year will be better, easier