At some tipping point, this becomes the new trajectory of your life. Life’s challenges continue to come at all of us. As life becomes easier to navigate, your body is exposed to less threat (stress) physiology and more to safety. Safety is where fuel moves into cells, and your body regenerates and heals.

The metaphor for this navigated course is the ski slope. No matter what your skill level, you must get down the hill. If the ski run is above your skill level, you may not be only stressed, it can be terrifying. The goal is become an expert at life skills and learn to feel safe a higher percent of the time. Here are the prerequisites.

• Have a working knowledge of The DOC Journey course.
• Understand the natural resistance to change.
• Review the “circle of life” with the “ring of fire.”
• Begin to connect to your vision of what is possible.
• Your healing emanates from feeling safe and creative.
• Constructing your new home (life) is the final focus of the journey. Enjoy!!

Overview

First of all, congratulations for reaching this level. The key to healing is persistence and you have already shown a willingness to fully engage in learning to create and live the life you want. Before you began this journey, that may not have seemed possible. But to be clear, your journey is not about completing a course or believing in David Hanscom. It is about connecting your own capacity to heal. Healing of any part of the body is nothing short of miraculous, but so is the gift of life.

Many people arrive at this point of their journey and they feel better. So, being back to their baseline, they quit. “I am good enough,” and they move on with their life. I think that it is tragic to stop now. Your creative brain is coming alive and the potential for future learning and growth is unlimited. Why would you want to stop?

There are actually a few reasons why this happens so often.

• Humans are programmed by every second of their lives. Our brains unconsciously memorize everything. Familiar patterns are not noticed since not only are they embedded in our brains, but they are our version of reality. Any new or unusual data catches our attention and stimulates some level of threat physiology. We feel anxious and instinctively resist change. So, maybe you are back to a comfortable baseline state. Why would you wish to continue?
• There is a lot of anxiety with success, if you are used to simply trying to survive. When is the shoe going to drop? A classic example is golf. It is remarkably predictable that when you have shot well for three or four holes that your anxiety levels rise. Of course your muscle tension increases, and suddenly it seems like you don’t which end of the club to hold. The same scenario holds true in any performance arena at home, work, or even relaxing.
• Examples are present in every kind of performance. Maybe you have been promoted and have a higher profile in your sphere of influence. More eyes are on you, and many people might jealous of your success. They may look for any opportunity to cut you down. There is a term for this phenomenon called “Tall Poppy Syndrome.” It is easier to just blend in with the crowd.
• Understand that the shoe will always drop. That is life. If your goal is to be in an endless state of bliss, you’ll fail. Life presents an endless number of daily challenges and at some level of stress, your body will respond with threat physiology. Maybe it will last for an hour or even days. It is what your body is supposed to do – protect you. But you now have choices regarding how long you wish to remain there.
• A different problem arises in that now you have tasted what it is like to be in the green center, and you don’t want to leave. Additionally, when you are triggered and in the red, the contrast is sharp and you may get more frustrated about what is possible compared what you are experiencing in the moment. I call this, “the curse of awareness.” What you want to do is nuture emotional flexibilty, be present with whatever state you are in, and move in the direction of your choice.
• I experienced a common scenario in that I had no idea that there were other possibilities about the way I negotiated my life. All I ever knew was anger and chaos. Although, I attended workshops, read self-help books, and underwent extensive counseling. I did not connect with how angry I was until I was 50 years old. It was an incredibly unpleasant experience and I did not have the tools to deal with it. Healing happens with connection – to yourself and then to those around you. Not wanting to experience unpleasant emotions may be a major reason why people don’t engage in this process or pull up short of really moving forward. One of my friends has often quoted the phrase, “you have to feel to heal.”

The ”circle of life” containing the “ring of fire” is the signature tool of this journey. A version of it was created by Dr. Paul Gilbert, who was the founder of compassion-based therapy. Compassion (love) as defined by Anthony DeMello in his book, The Way to Love, is awareness. Anxiety blocks awareness. But as you nurture awareness, you’ll actually feel more anxiety, and it requires tools to tolerate it. This is a bidirectional interaction. So, this final level is focused on not only learning to nurture joy, but also to better tolerate anxiety.

The metaphor is building and decorating a new house. Each room represents an aspect of your life that must be addressed. Use it daily as a quick mental checklist as you go from room to room in your own home. The “lot” is the green center of the circle of life. With repetition, you’ll create the life you want. “To have a good life, you must live a good life.”

Books to read

Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was born on the eastern edges of the Roman Empire in A.D. 55, but The Art of Living is still perfectly suited for any contemporary self-help or recovery program.

The healing journey progresses from “reaCtive to Creative”. You must first see where you are at before you can change direction. You can’t heal by focusing on problems. Healing occurs with creativity and moving away from unpleasant neurological circuits. The wisdom of the Stoics is remarkable in that it is as, or more, relevant as it was 2000 years ago. Regaining a healthy life perspective is the definitive solution to decreasing your suffering.

On the slopes

A world class skier can ski anything humanly possible if the conditions are reasonable. I used to think I was a double black diamond skier until I was exposed to US Ski Team skiers who were far above a level than I ever imagined. They not only possess a high level of skill, but they are supremely confident as a result of putting in thousands of hours of practice.

Many years ago a group of us where on the back side of mountain at Alta Utah. It was a gorgeus day with a lot of new soft powder. We were all “expert” skiers. We were standing in a narrow line waiting to head down the hill and my son, who is a US Ski team level mogul skier was on another transverse about 30 feet above us. We wondered what he wanted us to do. What he wanted was fresh untracked powder and he took off and jumped over all of us. It must have been a 40-foot drop and he landed about 50 feet down the hill. There was no hesitation. He kept going until the bottom skiing at a high speed. I realized that his was a reality I was not familiar with.

But consider any performance from art, music, dance, athletics, mechanics, business, and work. Every endeavor can be manifested at the highest level. You might be thinking, “I could never accomplish this level of expertise, and in a given field, you probably won’t. Or maybe you already have. However, life skills are accessible to everyone and anyone who wants to commit the living an excellent life. All that is required is a willingness to continue to learn and practice. The DOC Journey presents a foundational set of concepts and tools and there are endless additonal ways to enhance your journey.

The only “goal” of this course is to allow you to connect to the moment you are in and with awareness can be in any color of the “circle of life” on your terms. You have the choice to remain there or move in any direction.

Why not attain the highest level of expertise in living your life? The focus is on attaining skills and not reaching for perfect, where you beat yourself up for “failing.” It is about just learning to execute what you know regardless of the circumstances. Outcomes are usually beyond our control, but you can up the odds of success.

This level is a jumping off point for living the rest of your life. Let yourself think big and enjoy your day.

The post Be an Expert at Living life first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Be an Expert at Living life appeared first on Back in Control.

• Awareness is at the center of life. You cannot make good decisions without understanding the relevant variables.
• It is also an important tool in and of itself. By understanding the different types of awareness and knowing where you are in given moment, you can navigate life’s challenges more easily.
• The “circle of life” represents three states of the human experience and reflects the state of your body’s physiological state.
• Combining awareness skills with the “circle of life” allows you to selectively use tools to regulate your body’s chemistry.
• You can navigate life on your terms.

Awareness is both at the core of survival and also thriving. These are learned and separate skills. Survival is instinctual and whatever tools you have become embedded over your lifetime. However, many of our actions are not only ineffective but can make situations worse. Acquiring effective stress processing skills is important.

Thriving is not as instinctual and it must be cultivated and nurtured. If you are trying to use pleasant experiences, power, and material possessions to compensate for unpleasant survival emotions, it can’t and doesn’t work. You cannot outrun your mind. They key to thriving is developing a “working relationship” with anxiety and anger, and then you are able to create the life you want. Solving problems doesn’t yield a good life. You have to live a good life to have a good life.

Additionally, awareness is critical to processing life. You can’t solve problems in any domain without understanding details from both your perspective and also that of other involved parties. If you are projecting your views onto a given situation, you are not going to come up with consistently viable solutions. For example, you may have repeated troubles with relationships at home and work and can’t figure out why.

Putting awareness to work

The first necessary step in using awareness is looking at clues that you are not as aware as you think you are. BTW, if you think you are “aware” or “enlightened”, then you have already demonstrated that you are not aware. Any labels, positive or negative, block awareness.

Then seeing your unawareness will allow to deepen your awareness and start you down the pathway of using awareness as a tool.

Second, understanding and nurturing the different types of awareness enables you to learn skills in each of these arenas. Here are four suggested types to use as a baseline.

• Environmental
• Emotional
• Judgment/ “The stories”
• Ingrained patterns

Environment awareness a tool to be used daily and as you train your brain to connect to specific sensory inputs, it takes your attention away from disruptive thought patterns. As you continue to practice, it becomes more automatic, and your mind can calm down.

Emotional awareness is difficult in that you are training your brain to experience pain that you have been suppressing and repressing. Remember, emotions are what you are feeling in various physiological states – safety versus threat. They drive your behavior in order to avoid danger and seek safety. Since mental and physical pain are processed in a similar manner, emotional pain actually hurts. So, why would you want to feel it? Because suppressed/ repressed emotions fire up your body’s nervous system and chemistry even more.

Awareness of the stories you create about your life to make sense out where you fit into the world is particularly deadly. Many of these stories have been programmed in by your family, friends, and society. A high percent of them are actually cognitive distortions that continue to keep you ramped up even when your circumstances are good. The good news is that you don’t have to do anything about them because they are not based on reality. You can just become aware, separate, and move forward. If you choose to prove them wrong or ignore them, you have inadvertently reinforced them.

The ingrained patterns are the essence of who you are, make up your life view, and evolve to become the lens through which all new information is processed. Since the human brain is programmed by interacting with others, each individual is incredibly unique. The early input is critical as it sets the trajectory for the rest of your life. By definition, you cannot see these patterns without outside help as they are your frame of reference. Creating a clear awareness of your past programming is a necessary powerful way of switching your life from a reactive to a creative mode. It is also a much more interesting way of interacting with others, as opposed to constantly projecting your views onto them.

Third, once you become more familiar and skilled in developing these levels of awareness, you can actively use them as tools to calm down and re-direct your nervous system. Some people make the strong argument that awareness is the only tool you need to heal. We know that you can’t “fix” yourself. Your attention is focused on the problem and from a neuroplasticity perspective, you are reinforcing it. With awareness, you can watch yourself respond, somehow you are getting out of your own way and allowing yourself to heal. You have become an observer of your own healing. Remember, the steps required to create neuroplastic changes in your brain are: 1) awareness 2) separation (create some “space”), and 3) redirecting your attention.

Finally, the “circle of ife”, which contains the “ring of fire,” can be used as a foundational template for implementing awareness into your daily life. On a given day or moment, you can quickly assess your relationship with any of the four kinds of awareness and see which part of the “circle of life” you are in. You then have a choice of using your tools to move in the direction of your choice. But you can’t redirect unless you know where you are starting from. You will notice that moving easily between all aspects of your life on your terms is the goal of The DOC Journey. Then you are beginning your real journey of life.

The” circle of life” is the signature tool of The DOC Journey. The challenging aspect of this tool is that you must allow yourself to feel everything – but only as you can tolerate it. Allowing yourself to feel anxious is difficult because no living creature is programmed allow vulnerability. The consequences are harsh. Yet with language, we have the capacity to develop complex relationships, which requires vulnerability. It is a frustrating aspect of the human condition.

The good news is that once you are aware of where you are at in the circle, you do have choices. You can remain where you are – even if you are in the red, take a “refueling break by entering the green center, or move on by engaging in blue activities.

Freedom is being fully immersed in every element of your circle of life – on your own terms. It begins with awareness.

Recap

The essence of chronic mental and physical disease is being exposed to sustained levels of threat physiology. Your body is consuming resources for survival, and you cannot heal in this scenario. Healing can only occur when you feel safe enough to replenish your reserves. But a major block to seeking safety is not recognizing your body’s cues that you are in flight or fight. There are many ways of it covering it up, but your body is still in high gear.

You must learn to become aware of your physiological state and choose where and when you want to go or stay . Whatever set of tools you decide to implement begins with awareness. Where in the “circle of life” are you at this minute?

Questions and considerations

1. There is a tendency to look for a definitive cure for pain, which doesn’t make any sense. Your body’s interaction with the world is dynamic and your physiology changes by the millisecond. Life keeps coming at us.
2. When you are in fight or flight, you simply aren’t going to feel good. You are not supposed to, as the sensations evolved by creatures paying attention and taking action to survive. The species who were not aware enough did not survive. So, anxiety is intended to be so unpleasant, we’ll do almost anything to avoid it.
3. That is what makes awareness so challenging. You must feel and acknowledge your threat physiology before you can change directions.
4. Your tools will allow you to process stress more efficiently so as to minimize your time in threat physiology. Healing occurs as you learn how to feel safe.

The post Awareness as a Tool – The “Circle of Life” first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Awareness as a Tool – The “Circle of Life” appeared first on Back in Control.

• A guided course of seven legs and rest stops
• Video tutuorials
• Webinars
• Weekly group Q&A sessions
• Weekly blogs and podcasts
• Access to having questions answered
• An app based on our workshops – awareness, hope, forgiveness, and play

This post is the introduction to the final rest stop of the guided journey. We are excited in that it represents a much clearer sequence of concepts and there is more clarity as to what are next steps. One of the most powerful aspects of The DOC Journey is the sequencing. You are dealing with deep patterns in the unconscious brain and it takes awareness and repetition to access and redirect them. But the core of it all is much clearer and has been easier to present and explain to people. With engagement, the outcomes have been consistent with the main variable being how much time it takes.

Introduction to rest stop seven

Your Journey has not ended but it has just begun. You began from a place that was dark and you are working your way into the light or maybe you are already there. People often get frustrated because they don’t feel they are healing quickly enough or wonder why others seem to be doing so much better than they are. There is no time frame or rush. Everyone is different and each of us has experienced more than our share of suffering. There are no exceptions. It is important to keep learning and using your tools that allow your brain/body to heal. The key words are patience and persistence.

Remember the deep paradox of this journey. You are letting go to move forward in contrast to our strong inclination to keep fixing ourselves and those close to us.

Thrive

Many people feel better after a few months. They are no longer in a crisis, their pain has improved, and they stop. They usually continue to stick with some basic strategies and do fine. But my observation is that they are missing a huge opportunity to thrive. Once you break free of The Abyss, your potential to move forward is unlimited. The more you nurture this opportunity to grow, the farther you’ll be away from your pain circuits. The concepts of play, giving back, and the spiritual journey are not tools to combat anxiety and pain. That turns into obsessive behavior and little is accomplished. They are more about expanding your life and horizon into the life you always wanted. There are several aspects to creating this capacity to navigate and fully experience every aspect of your circle of life.

• The foundation is awareness combined with the circle of life, which includes “the ring of fire.” Being aware of which part of the circle you are in is a powerful approach. You now have a choice of using your tools to change direction or stay where you are.
• The goal of using the ring of fire model is not to attempt to be in one particular part of it. It is a common perception to feel that most of your life should be spent in the center. That is not life or realistic. Being aware of when you are in the center is the key and knowing when you need to enter it to “re-fuel.” It is the foundation for passing through the ring of fire and engaging in your life activities in the blue ring.
• There are several important concepts to consider.
  • You should nurture and expand the center. The more time you can realistically spend there, the better. It is where your body regenerates.
  • As you learn to develop a “working relationship” with the ring of fire, it will paradoxically be less daunting and easier to navigate.
  • The blue periphery is life and there never was a limit to it. We create our own limitations.

 Your new home

This final rest stop is a framework for settling into your new life and continue to practice the tools that will help you indefinitely. We will conceptualize this stop as where you are building your new home.

• The green center is your lot and it is round. It provides the foundation for your house and you can landscape it to your heart’s content. This is done by using tools that engender self-compassion and you are expanding the center.
• It is important to protect your home and the red ring will do that for you. Anxiety and anger necessary danger signals. You will also be personally arming yourself to defend yourself and your safe haven.
• Each room of your house represents an aspect of your life that you will furnish and decorate.

The phases of the construction include:

• Dreaming of what you want and defining it
• Drawing up final plans
• The rooms
  • Entry – Awareness
  • Family room – Social connections
  • Kitchen – Diet/ Nutrition
  • Bathroom – Processing anxiety/ frustration
  • Master bedroom – Sleep/ Nurturing your closest relationships
  • Other bedrooms – Your family/ guests
  • Den/ office – headquarters
  • Garage – Transportation to the outside world/ your reserves
  • Landscaping – Nurturing and growing the center
  • Protection
    • Alarm system
    • Dog
    • Self-defense
  • Basement–workout room/ exercise

The essence of life is avoiding threat and seeking safety. It is necessary to actively seek both in that you need safety to create the reserves you need to deal with life’s challenges. Otherwise, you’ll be overwhelmed a good percent of the time, with a limited capacity to enjoy your life or even worse, continue to suffer.

You have only just begun

We all equate home with safety, but all too often it is not, especially when chronic pain is in the middle of it. Family members are also our most powerful triggers and it is bidirectional. Creating a “safe house” or haven takes a focused effort but none of the steps are difficult with the right tools. You have heard the saying, “A carpenter is only as good as his/ her tools. You now have the opportunity to create whatever life you want and even though this is the end of this course, you have just begun your journey.

The post Navigating the Entire Circle of Your Life first appeared on Back in Control.

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