How To Be Invulnerable to Affronts

Being "different" often means taking flak. How to deal properly with insults, verbal attacks, demeaning comments, or simply with non-constructive critics? And how not to get hurt by it? Here are a few tips on how to become invulnerable in such situations.

Never Take Anything Personally

That's one of my mottoes. Never take anything personally. When other people criticize, dislike, or attack you, that is an expression of their state of being, a manifestation of what is going on inside them. Others tend to dislike in you what they dislike about themselves. They see their beliefs either mirrored or challenged by you, that is what they criticize. They resist their own reality. They attack you because of the fear and insecurity inside of them. If they had no fear and no self-rejection whatsoever in their heart, if they felt completely safe and at peace with themselves, they would be at peace with you, too, and would not feel the need to belittle you.

It is interesting to observe how others react, it says so much about them! You can learn a lot about someone by just listening to what they say about you or about the world. So, when someone treats you in a way that you find hurtful or offensive, don't take it personally. It's not about you, it's about them.

Just switch perspectives and see where they are coming from. What must their world look like? What kind of values do they have? What pain, insecurity or fear can you perceive in the way they treat you? What is going on inside of them, that leads to such a behavior?

Over-analyzing other people's behavior is futile and irrelevant. What counts is how you respond, not why they do what they do. However, it can be really helpful to remember that what is happening is always primarily about them, not about you. Having a look at their perspective enables you to gain some distance and understanding.

Btw, this also applies the other way around, when you dislike or attack others, and it also applies for positive feedback, which also says a lot about the one giving it and is more about them than about you. Never take compliments personally either. ;)

See Everything as Feedback

Now when I say it is about them, not about you, that's not entirely correct. It does say a lot about you, too. Just not literally. When someone calls you lazy, it does not mean in the slightest that you are lazy. But it definitely means that you have some negative beliefs around being lazy, or this person, or this situation, etc.

Everything going on in your life is a reflection of your current energetic state of being and of your belief system. You get to see what you believe in. You also attract experiences that match your vibration. If something totally does not resonate with you at all, it cannot show up in your reality.

So, when you are confronted with critics, attacks, animosity etc.,

ask yourself what kinds of beliefs you have about yourself, other people, this person, the situation you are in, etc., that manifest this way. Where is the fear in you, where is the insecurity? Where are the negative thoughts about yourself?
Ask yourself why you attract such people and situations into your life, to begin with. Maybe you believe that this situation/project/goal would be very difficult - and that is how it manifests. Maybe you believe that the world is a harsh place to live in, or that other people are mean. And so on. There must be something in you that calls such experiences.
Also ask yourself what kind of vibrations you are currently sending out. Are you dwelling on negative thoughts, or in a bad place emotionally? Is there any aggressiveness or violence inside of you that the world mirrors back to you this way? Do you feel any contempt for others?

In short, what in you is a good match for what is happening to you? We reap what we sow. Everything is feedback, your whole life is a giant mirror. Look into the mirror. By becoming aware of what you reap, you learn about what you sow - and then you can choose different seeds. :-)

Heal your Belief System

The very best way I have found to become invulnerable is to change my beliefs, be it about others, about life and the world in general, and about myself.

Only the truth hurts. Or, to be more precise, only what you believe to be true can hurt you. If someone told you that you are ugly for having green hair, and you have no green hair, you would probably just think they are weird. Only what you think is true can touch you. If you have green hair but you think it's great to have green hair, someone telling you that you are ugly for having green hair would not hurt you either. Only what resonates with some painful judgment about yourself inside of you can cause you any damage.

For example, I have a problem with my being overweight. I'm currently working on that, so in a few months it won't be true anymore - but for now, it still is a huge issue for me. Incidentally, I have been repeatedly criticized in the past for being overweight, and it hurt like hell. That is NO coincidence! It is also no coincidence that I never get criticized for being, say, short. I am very short. The "perfect women"in the media are tall. Yet nobody ever tells me that I am too short. But too fat, yeah, even though I'm certainly not obese. Why? Because fat is exactly what I have a problem with, whereas I have no problem at all with being short. It would feel so weird to me to believe that being short is unattractive that this just never shows up in my reality.

When you heal your beliefs, especially your beliefs about yourself, what other people say to you or about you cannot hurt you anymore. They will even probably stop saying negative things anyway.

Not taking the affronts personally, seeing them as feedback about your belief system and vibrational state, and working on shifting both, that is the basis if you want to become invulnerable. I have worked so much on myself in the past that now, my overweight is the only weakness left that you can really hurt me with. (But not for long anymore! So if you want to insult me effectively, you better hurry up. :D )

Here are a few more things that help, additionally:

Approve of Yourself

Loving ourselves and approving of ourselves are two different things. I can love someone dearly, yet disapprove of their actions. Recently I have discovered how much it helps to approve of ourselves unconditionally. For example, it didn't help me with my overweight to love my body. I totally love my body! But I was still disapproving of its annoying fat storing habits. I feel so much better now that I approve of them! Yes, I approve of my body storing fat. :-)

Just try it out. Choose to approve of yourself, no matter what you do, no matter what mistakes you make, no matter how <insert negative judgment about yourself here> you are. Look at yourself in a mirror and say out loud "I approve of myself! <Your first name>, I approve of you!". It feels great. :-)

Approving of yourself does not mean that you can never change anymore. It simply means acknowledging that you are always doing the very best you can with what you are given. That IS the case. So, approve of it. It will make you even more invulnerable. The more you approve of yourself, the less other people will feel the need to disapprove of you. :-)

Raise your Vibration

To not resonate anymore with bad stuff, raise your vibration! Do things that make you happy. Deliberately think thoughts that make you feel good. Focus on the positive, always on the positive, and always on what you like or want, never on what you dislike or don't want. Put some clean food into your body. Dance, sing and rejoice! Fall in love! Randomly tell someone something nice! Smile! Laugh! Send love to others! Hug!

Love and joy are the best shields there are. :-)

Respond with Love

At the beginning of this post, I wrote that when people criticize, insult, attack or offend you, that is because of some crappy stuff going on inside of them. Knowing this, you could send some love to them. Love heals everything, especially fear. You won't completely heal them by sending some love once, but it can only help. They might not notice, but they receive it. Aggressiveness is disharmony. Disharmony can be healed with lots of love. When you love them, you make them more loving and harmonious, and as a pleasant side-effect they will go around attacking others (including you) less.

Be loving to yourself and others, and your world will be loving too. :-)

Your Feelings are Self-Made

Imagine it's early in the morning, and you are standing in the bakery, waiting for your turn to buy a baguette. (There's no baguette where you live? Never mind, just imagine you're French.) Suddenly some guy rushes in, ignores you and loudly asks for two croissants right under your nose. How do you react?

You could feel humiliated, remember that other people always walk all over you, but be too timid to claim your breadly rights (and feel bad about that too).
You could think “Wow, this guy must really be in a hurry today!”, smile and admire the beautiful cake in front of you.
You could be outraged at such rudeness, step forward and politely but firmly ask for your baguette, dammit.
You could feel sorry for the poor devil, because you imagine he gets whipped around by his wife and has to bring her croissants asap or else she'll nag at him for a month.

There is not only one single way to react to a given situation.

The way you feel, what you think and how you behave in any situation is never caused directly by the situation itself. It's only the consequence of the way you perceive this situation.

This is linked to whether you judge what happens as good, bad, neutral, or don't judge it at all. It depends on what the situation means to you. You will see it through the filter of your beliefs and interpret it accordingly. You will be influenced in that by your general attitude and way of being. More generally, your reaction is a manifestation of your mental, emotional and energetic state of being.

The feelings of someone who is usually in a state of fear and insecurity will be completely different from the feelings of someone who is in a confident state of power and peace, even if the situation is the same.

Fortunately, we are not the victims of our beliefs and state of being! We can pick our beliefs. We can choose to engage with certain energies, or not. Therefore, we are free to choose how we react. We are the creators of our own feelings.

Which also means that we are 100% responsible for them. If we are the ones creating and choosing them, then logically they are entirely our own responsibility and nobody else's. Full power and full responsibility go hand in hand.

As I learned in my Soul Realignment training, sometimes we have some blocks at soul-level that create negative thoughts and/or emotions in us. These thoughts and emotions are not truly ours, even though we identify them as such. In such a case, it can be difficult to choose how we feel. No matter how much we work on it, we will just have this negative stuff pop into our mind and make us feel bad.

However, we only have these soul-level blocks because at some point we made a choice that allowed them to be there. We didn't do it intentionally or consciously, but it still was our doing. So, indirectly, our feelings still are the consequence of our own choice. The only difference is that if we are affected by such a soul-level block, we might need some Soul Realignment to get rid of it, whereas if we don't have such a block, we have the full power to change our feelings right now. In the end it still boils down to the fact that we are 100% responsible for them.

I once lost my best friend over the 100% responsibility principle. When I discovered it, I was in a very close friendship with a girl I liked a lot. Realizing that I was responsible for my own feelings was one of the biggest breakthroughs in my life! It was several years ago. Back then, I was emotionally unstable and struggling with negative feelings. The idea of being able to choose the way I felt was like paradise to me. It opened completely unexpected doors.

Of course she was the first one I told about it. To my great surprise, she got very angry. She perceived it as meaning that her feelings would be her fault and that she would not be entitled to feel bad anymore. I tried to explain to her that it has nothing to do with fault. I was so enthusiastic. All I saw was the awesome power such an attitude gives us. But she maintained that others cause her feelings, and that for any normal person, feeling bad is a logical and necessary consequence of crappy life circumstances.

I remember her defending her powerlessness as if it were a right. Or even a duty. Like, if someone is mean to you and you don't feel bad, then you must be some kind of heartless bitch. We had a big heated argument about this and from that day on I never saw her again. She just stopped calling. I didn't call her either. I just knew we were not compatible with each other anymore. So I let her go.

It is true that when we accept full responsibility for our feelings, we cannot blame anybody else for them anymore. Damn. But on the other hand, it gives us so much power! It makes us invulnerable and safe no matter what our life circumstances are. Even when we don't succeed in feeling good all the time, at least we know that when we feel bad, we are the one actually choosing to feel bad. We are the one doing this to ourselves. Nobody else can hurt us as long as we don't accept to hurt ourselves.

Then we don't need to be afraid of things such as rejection, abandonment or judgment anymore. We can let go of control and protections. Bye bye, walls and weapons. What a freedom! :-)

What is Fear?

Have you ever asked yourself what fear is exactly? Tonight, a wonderful person wrote on Facebook that "Fear is cancer of the mind". Got me thinking!

I believe that fear is not something that exists. It's only the absence of something that exists: love. Every time I experience fear, when I look deep inside, I can spot some lack of love somewhere. We get these anxious feelings and suffer when we are being disconnected from love. We call this state fear, but actually there is nothing to give a name to.

Fear is an impostor. Have you ever heard of these defenseless, harmless animals in the jungle who are able to mimic other, dangerous or poisonous species to impress their predators and avoid getting eaten? That's how I see fear too. It shows up wearing its disguise, like "Ho-ho-ho, I am the big bad wolf!!" and wants you to be scared. But the thing is, when you pull its beard instead of running away, it bursts like a bubble and dissolves! Poof!

Fear is an illusion. For a long time, I thought if I didn't listen to my fear, it would become reality. It was something like a superstition: "Oh my God, if I don't take it seriously, it will happen!". But I was wrong! When I tried it out, nothing happened at all.

Fear is a choice. Fear does a great job at trying to convince you that you'd better listen to it. It wants your attention and energy. However, you don't have to dwell on fearful thoughts. When they arise, you're free to say "No thanks!" and let go of them in peace. Fear would be delighted if you forgot this.

Even though fear feels ugly and repulsive, it just wants to be loved. Just like those masters of camouflage and mimicry in the jungle, behind its scary disguise fear is a cute, lovable creature. That's not surprising, since you are a cute, lovable creature, and fear is you.

Fear is just a particular state of being that we are in sometimes. It's an energy that we can create within ourselves and radiate, but also stop resonating with in a heartbeat - just like any other energy. We call it a negative energy because when we allow ourselves to engage with it, we block the flow of love through us and create disharmony in ourselves as well as in the world.

So, at this time I see fear as an energetic state of being, a choice, an illusion, an aspect of myself and ultimately a lack of love. What is fear according to you? :-)

Five Years Smoke Free!

Yay! Yesterday, June 23, was my non-smoker five years anniversary. I smoked my last cigarette on June 22, 2004, at 23:51. :-)

Quitting smoking is one of the most difficult things I ever did. I was extremely addicted to cigarettes. I remember that I had to smoke three of them first thing in the morning before I was able to do anything else. Sometimes I even smoked them while still lying in bed. I avoided places where smoking was forbidden, and even a bus ride made me anxious, because I couldn't smoke on the bus.

It took me 320 days to be over it. The two first months were uninterrupted torture. I thought it'd never stop. After that, it went up and down. I remember once sitting in a bar and crying my eyes out, because the cravings were so unbearable. At other times I was perfectly fine and barely thought of it. On day 275, I almost smoked again! On day 320 I had my last significant craving. After that, I sure got the occasional "I could smoke..." thought, but nothing serious. Now, I never think about smoking anymore.

Except on June 23, of course. :-D

What really helped me is that my friend Tom quit smoking together with me. That's how we became friends in the first place. During the first year, we checked in on each other regularly, talked about how we were doing, and congratulated each other. It helped me a lot to know that I had a partner who counted on me and that smoking again would pull him down as well. Thank you Tom. :-)

The other helping factor was rfo. Rfo is a German website called rauchfrei-online.de dedicated to helping people quit smoking ("rauchfrei" means "smoke free"). The site is great. If you happen to speak German and want to quit smoking, check it out!

On rfo there was such a nice community of people supporting each other that I felt I just had to succeed. They were so encouraging and believed in my success so much, how could I prove them wrong? Some there also admired my persistence, especially beginners and some of those who slipped up often. I knew they were looking up at me and that it would be very helpful for them to see it IS doable. Being a shining example gave me a lot of strength.

There also were a few people there who clearly did not like me. Those were even more helpful. The one time when I was sitting in the bar crying, the only reason I did not smoke was that those people would be happy if I did! :þ

I want to create something similar to rfo, but in English, for people all around the world. This site helped me so much. I believe that without rfo I would never have quit smoking. What a pity it's not available in more languages! I asked Dietmar, the creator of rfo, if he allows me to copy his site's idea and structure and to create my own version of it in English. Not only did he agree, he was even happy about it.

I already have the entire website in my head, I know exactly what I want to do. It will be a closed community. Each user will be able to write a public diary. There will be a forum and a chat, and a hall of fame, where every ten days or so, the happy non-smoker gets a loving cup. Every day, the members will get tasks to complete to keep them motivated and help them on their journey into freedom.

All this is just like rfo. The big difference between rfo and my project is the content of the tasks. Rfo is based mostly on traditional psychology, whereas my website will be an intensive personal development coaching program. Of course it will be targeted specifically at breaking the nicotine addiction, but I hope it'll be of some more general value as well.

I'm very excited about this project. As soon as I can afford to hire a programmer, I'll implement it! :-)

EDIT: Oohhhh!!! >:-( I just wanted to visit rfo to proudly claim that I am still smoke free... and saw it doesn't exist anymore! :'(

Well, now I REALLY have to implement my idea.

Ending the War with my Body

I want peace in the world - but the world cannot be at peace as long as I am at war. Including at war with myself. What we are inside we also generate outside. There can be no peace in my reality as long as there is war in my consciousness.

For many years I've been at war with myself. I'm ending this war now.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." (Mahatma Gandhi)

I have several conflicts with myself. For example, sometimes I still have a hard time accepting that I am a scanner. I also have difficulties coping with my high sensitivity. It annoys me that I'm thirty and still don't know what I want to do when I am grown up. There are quite a lot of things that I reproach myself for.

One of my goals for 2009 is to resolve all of those conflicts, starting with the biggest one. The biggest conflict I have with myself is about my body. There are (were) so many things about my body that I don't (didn't) like! Most of all that I am "too fat".

So I have decided to end this war now, and to accept and love myself exactly the way I am and am not. I think the lesson for me in being overweight is to learn unconditional self-love. I'll be able to let go of that fat when I have grown to truly love what is, now.

Approach one: The Work

Loving what is is the title of a wonderful book by Byron Katie. I'm applying her approach to my body problem now: I'm doing The Work on it.

The Work is a very powerful process that you can use to address all kinds of negative emotions, no matter whether they are about people, situations or other issues like finding yourself too fat. I highly recommend The Work! It will set you free. How to do it is explained here.

I'm not done with it yet, there is so much to work on! But since I started to do The Work to befriend my body, I'm already feeling much better.

I had an interesting dream. In my dream I was going around completely naked, and I was feeling perfectly comfortable this way. I didn't have an ideal body or anything like that, it was my real body, with fat and all. I was not even shaved! Yet it felt great and natural to be naked. At first the people I was talking to were a little embarrassed, but soon they too got comfortable with seeing me this way and talked with me as if everything were normal. In the end, everybody was fine with my being naked!

I think this was a very cool dream.

I can feel that I am slowly falling in love with my body at the moment. For example when I look at the stretchmarks on my hips, instead of resenting them for being there, like I did before, now I look at them with love and I'm damn proud of my great battle scars.

I especially love my legs! Actually I can't stop looking at them anymore. I've always disliked my legs, because they are not only covered with a layer of fat, they're also quite muscular. I like to say that I have legs like a soccer player. And I used to beat myself up for that. "This looks awful with a short skirt and high-heels! It's not feminine!" Blah blah blah. While doing The Work I suddenly realized: "Hey! Wait a minute! I never wear short skirts and high-heels in the first place! I dream of being a muscle beast. And I resent my legs for being muscular? How illogical is that!!"

"You will always suffer when your mind wants two opposing things at once." (Byron Katie)

I cannot be a muscle beast and have legs like a petite girlie. That's just not possible, I need to make a choice. This choice is a no-brainer for me! I don't care about being feminine, but I do care a lot about being strong.

So now I totally love my soccer player legs. And everything else as well. I just love my body! I can't touch it and look at it enough, I'm amazed at how fantastic it is!

You have no idea how wonderful a feeling it is to be allowed to love my body at last. What a relief.

Approach two: taking action


I'm asking myself "How would I feel, and how would I behave, if I were perfectly fine with my body as it is now?". That's actually a part of The Work ("How would you feel and behave if you didn't have this  thought?"), but I extended it a bit for myself. The Work is meditation. But I'm going to actually do those things.

I made a list of things I would do if my body were a non-issue for me, and now I'm going to do them regardless! Ha! Good way to overcome my fears and to build courage.

One of those things is to post pictures on my blog. I found out that if I didn't have any problem with my body, I would post way more pictures on my blog. Oddly enough, not only pictures of myself. I would also post other pictures unrelated to me. I don't know why feeling bad about my body prevented me from posting pictures of landscapes and stuff, but that's the case. So, expect to see more pictures on here from now on.

I'm also considering learning how to strip-tease. Just for fun, as a way of getting more comfortable with my body, with being seen naked, and with feeling sexually attractive.

I tend to feel anxious when a man finds me attractive. I'm confident about my sexual skills, so once in bed everything's fine. The problem is the fear of being sexually attractive when I'm not having sex, if this makes sense.

I don't know exactly why I feel this way, but asking why is not an empowering question anyway. I'd rather ask myself what I can do about it. Maybe learning to strip-tease could be one possible solution. It would be a fun thing to try out anyway.

What about you?

Do you love your body unconditionally, as it is right now?
What are you being at war with yourself about?
What can you do right now to make peace with yourself?
What are you generating in your reality? Peace, or War?

Much Love to you. I wish you a wonderful day!

How To Learn Meditation

I am in no way a meditation expert, and that's exactly why I'm writing this article. Because you don't need to be a meditation expert to talk about meditation, or to do it. It's the easiest and the most natural thing in the world. Everybody can do it, and everybody can learn it in five minutes.

You'll need to practice to get good at it, and that will take more than five minutes, that's true - but the goal isn't to be good, it's to practice. And you can learn how to practice in five minutes, right now.

If you would like to meditate, you don't need to be a particularly spiritual person. You need no special clothes or incense sticks or sitting in lotus position or anything like that. You can do it everywhere, any time, and three to fifteen minutes a day are enough as a time investment.

What is meditation about?

I sometimes read that meditation is about "disciplining" or "controlling" our mind, but I don't like this way of putting it. Words like "discipline" and "control" have a hard, rigid connotation that doesn't consider the great Love and Freedom there is in meditating.

Meditation for me is simply about practicing deliberately choosing what we focus on, in a very gentle and soft way.

Deliberately choosing what we focus on is very important in regards to creating our reality ("We attract what we focus on") and to reaching our goals ("Always focus on what you want"). Therefore, meditation is a great tool that will help you create the life you want. If you practice deliberately choosing what you focus on regularly while meditating, it will be easier for you to do so in all other situations too.

Why meditate?

Aside from training your ability to choose what you focus on, meditating also has other great benefits. I love it. It raises my vibration. It calms me down. It makes me feel happy and relaxed. It allows me to re-center myself and to re-connect with my Soul when I feel a little disconnected or lost. It makes me feel peaceful. It's a pleasant way to take a short break when I'm working. It clarifies my mind and makes me more creative. I don't know what effect it has or would have on you, but I'm sure it's positive too.

Meditating regularly is even better. It has all of the above benefits, but when I meditate regularly those are permanent, not only present when I meditate. It globally raises my consciousness. It also improves my overall awareness for my emotional state. Experiencing a higher vibrational state on a regular basis helps me notice much faster that I'm feeling bad when I do.

I once meditated three times a day for three to five minutes each, every day, for an entire month. It was great! During that month I felt much better, much more centered and peaceful than I normally do, even though the external conditions were more challenging than usually. During that month I also had a few spiritual experiences, including an impressive out of body experience, and I'm sure that's no coincidence.

That's why my first One New Habit A Month Challenge will be "Meditating for at least five minutes every day".

How to meditate?

Meditating is very easy. You don't need any particular ritual, but if you like rituals, then of course you can invent one for yourself. You can light a candle or incense sticks and sit in lotus position if you think that's cool, but you don't need to. No need for contorsions or tiring positions either.

You can meditate while walking, sitting on the couch or lying on your bed. It doesn't matter. What's important is that you feel comfortable. I usually meditate sitting on my office chair with my feet on the desk. I also love meditating while I'm walking or doing the dishes. Meditation is not something highly spiritual, out of this world. Integrate it into your daily life!

Just feel comfortable. Also wear comfortable clothes that you feel good in. If you're a beginner, make sure you won't be disturbed. To feel safe and free to relax it's better at the beginning to know that nobody will come in or disturb you in any way.

I also recommend using a timer. It allows you to immerse yourself in your meditation completely without keeping track of the elapsed time in the background of your mind. You can use a kitchen timer (provided it's silent when it doesn't beep), or your watch, an alarm clock, your cell phone, whatever.

How long and how often should I meditate?

As I already said, meditating regularly is particularly beneficial. So, every day would be optimal, or even two or three times a day. But you don't have to. If you just do it when you feel like doing it, that's perfectly okay too.

If you're a beginner, start with two minutes. That's enough. Then, when you like those two minutes, you can progressively increase your meditation time.

I know some people meditate for half an hour in a row, or even more. This happens to me too sometimes. But I think it's not necessary to meditate that long in order to feel the benefits of it. Three to fifteen minutes are enough, especially if you do it every day.

Whenever you meditate you raise your consciousness. I'm convinced it brings more to do so for three minutes ten times a day than for thirty minutes only once a day.

Different meditation techniques

Here I'm sharing my favorite ways of meditating:

Counting Meditation

I guess counting meditation is the easiest way to meditate. If you're an absolute beginner or a very intellectual person, start with this one.

This is how it works: breathe in. When you breathe out, think "One". Breathe in again, and when you breathe out, think "Two". Breathe in, breathe out, think "Three". In, out, "Four". Then you start anew: breathe in, breathe out, think "One". And so on. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four...

If you start thinking of something else, don't beat yourself up. Don't try to control your thoughts in any way. When you notice you were thinking about something else, simply go back to breathing and counting, starting with "One" again. If at some point you suddenly don't know anymore what number comes next, start with "One" again too.

In the beginning it might be like "One, two, three, one, two, one, one, two, three, four, one...". That's perfectly okay. The goal is not not to think at all. The goal is to gently bring your attention back again and again to what you chose to focus on, in this case the counting.

Don't try to control your breathing in any way either. It's perfectly okay to breathe irregularly or fast or any way you feel like breathing.

I love counting meditation while I'm walking. Sometimes I count my steps, and sometimes I just think "Left, right, left, right, left, right...".

Breathing Meditation

Breathing meditation is the same, except that you don't count. Instead, you focus on observing your breath. You can focus on how the air enters and leaves your nose. Or you can focus on how the air wanders through your entire body.

It's a bit more difficult because it's all about feeling and the mind has nothing to say. Again, don't try to control your breathing or your thoughts. When you notice you're thinking, don't resist it. Acknowledge the thought, let it go in peace, and bring your attention gently back to your breathing.

Presence Meditation

I totally love this one. Presence meditation is about focusing on being in the here and now. The goal is to be fully present and aware of what's happening inside of and around you.

First, feel your inner body. This means, feel your body from the inside. Feel the energy in your feet. Then in your legs. When you're able to feel them, go up, though all your body, till you feel the inside of each part of your body. Then you can feel your whole body as one single energetic field. Concentrate on this feeling for a while, going deeper and deeper inside your body. (I learned this in Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now, you can read more about the inner body in this fabulous book if you're interested).

Now that you have built your inner awareness, turn your attention outwards and observe what's going on around you. You're hearing the sounds, smelling the smells, feeling your body touch the chair you're sitting on, etc. Maybe some emotions will surface too.

The point is to not react to any of this. You simply perceive it. Observe it, but don't react to it in any way. Accept it peacefully. And always keep a part of your attention on your inner body.

As usual, no control, and when you drift, bring yourself backvery gently.

I love the Presence Meditation when I'm doing simple things, such as washing the dishes, doing the laundry or cleansing the windows. It would be perfect if I could be in such a state all the time!

Love Meditation

Love meditation is especially good when you feel unloved, lonely or disconnected. But you can also practice it every day for no particular reason. I use it very often to send Love to others.

Take a little bit more time for this one. Sit or lay down, breathe slowly and deeply through your nose into your belly, close your eyes, and focus on loving yourself. Don't do it with your mind, don't think about reasons for loving yourself. Depending on your dominant sense, find a way to express your love for yourself without thinking.

For example you could imagine how you are smiling at yourself and gently hugging yourself. Or you could visualize yourself surrounded with a bulb of shining green light. (Green is traditionally associated with the heart chakra. I always use it as a symbol for Love because it's my favorite color. If you don't like it, it doesn't matter. Just pick any other color that you like and are able to associate with unconditional Love.) Alternatively, you could remember a song with a loving vibe that you like and imagine humming it for yourself. Or recite some kind of loving ritual prayer, like "May I feel safe. May I feel loved. May I be happy. etc.".  Dunno, get creative. You need to find something that you really resonate with.

Same as with the other meditations: if you have unwelcome thoughts, let them go in peace and gently go back to concentrating on loving yourself. Do this till you feel deeply accepted and loved by yourself.

After you're comfortable with loving yourself, extend this feeling of Love to others. Focus on some person that you have no issues with, and send Love to him or her in the same way you were sending Love to yourself. Hug them or visualize them in loving green bulbs or recite your love prayer for them. Feel how you love them, how your heart is connected to theirs and your Love flows from you to them. Love is infinite, you can never run out of it. Share your Love.

Start with people you are close to and have no problem with, then gradually expand your love to friends, acquaintances, colleagues, to people you don't know at all, to people you have conflicts with, and to people you hate. You can include animals, trees, plants and inanimated objects as well.

I have noticed that when I regularly send Love to someone I have some problems with, those problems tend to disappear!

In case you don't feel comfortable with loving yourself to begin with, practice only the first part of the meditation till it feels natural to you to express loving and nurturing feelings towards yourself. If you don't truly love yourself, you cannot truly love others.

Mirroring Meditation

I particularly enjoy this one, it's a lot of fun! But you need a partner to do it. Here is how it works:

The passive partner does nothing at all except for breathing. That's a perfect opportunity for him or her to practice one of the other meditations.

The active partner mirrors his or her partner's breathing. Let's say you are the active one. Then you try to follow exactly your partner's way of breathing. This means you have to focus on your partner and copy him or her. He or she should not help you in any way, for example by breathing particularly slowly or regularly! It's your job to follow the other person no matter what she or he does. That's the fun of it.

Of course you can pick an unknowing passive partner too. I totally love doing this with Minnie. Minnie is the cat I share my home with. She loves to sleep on my desk (especially exactly on the most important papers I'm just reading). When she's lying around like this, I often do the mirroring meditation with her. But sometimes I also pick random innocent victims on the bus, in a shop or at the library and follow their breathing, when they happen to be close enough for me to hear and see them breathe.

In case you lack empathy and would like to have more of it, you could start with practicing this meditation as a fun way of aligning yourself with others.

More meditations

There are countless other meditations. You can focus on observing and labeling your thoughts, or on focusing on some object (like a candle). You can use music to meditate, either as a relaxing background while you practice some other meditation, or as the object of your focus. There is plenty of meditation music on youtube. You can find many guided meditations out there too. Another idea is to google Vipassana meditation.

If you're interested in a book about meditation, I recommend The Three-Minute Meditator by David Harp & Nina Feldman. It is simple, unpretentious and down-to-earth. It explains how to integrate meditation into your daily life, and contains many interesting meditations, visualizations and much more. I discovered the mirroring meditation in this book, although it has another name there. I really like this book.

So. You can start right now. I wish you a lot of fun, O Great Meditator! :-)

Dealing with Emotions

Do you feel overwhelmed by your feelings sometimes? Is it difficult for you to react to strong emotions in an appropriate manner? Don't you know how to stop feeling bad? That's a problem I've had for a long, long time. I found a few useful ways to handle it and thought it could be of some value for you to hear about them.

Taking 100% responsibility

First of all, what helped me most is to understand that it's never the other person or the situation itself that creates my emotion: it's my thoughts about this person or situation. We don't all have the same reaction when in the same situation. It's the thoughts and judgments we have about this situation that lead us to have the feelings we have.

This means that no situation and no other person has any power over how I feel. Everything I feel is 100% my own responsibility. The downside is that I can't blame anyone else for what I feel anymore, 'cause what I feel is caused by nothing else than my own thoughts. It's all me. The upside is that I'm in control: by changing my thoughts, I can change my feelings. And another upside is that I'm not forced to react to a given situation in a certain way. I'm free to react just like I want to. It's my choice.

(Edit: more details about this here: Your Feelings are Self-Made)

The old stinky sneaker

One very simple way to apply this elementar wisdom is the old stinky sneaker image. I can't remember if I invented that image myself or read about it somewhere. It doesn't matter. Imagine you're in a given situation and you feel a strong emotion you'd rather not have. For example, someone is insulting you, and you feel angry. Now imagine that this person insulting you is throwing an old, stinky sneaker at your feet. You're free to put that old shoe on, or not. You can put it on, and feel stinky (angry). Or you can let it lie where it is. And feel good. You're not forced to react to the insults. It's your choice.

Visualizing this old sneaker in every unpleasant situation helps me a lot! I just imagine myself saying "No, thanks!" to the person or situation throwing this old shoe at my feet, and then just going away. I'm not forced to put the old shoe on and feel bad. It makes me feel very free to choose consciously if I want to be perturbed at their shoe or not!

What about positive emotions?

Sometimes positive emotions overwhelm me too, and make me feel bad because it's just too much. It's more than I can express or bear inside of me without exploding. I had to find a better reaction than to dance around crying and laughing hysterically altogether. The old stinky sneaker trick helps me in that case too.

I wouldn't call beautiful, moving and happy situations an old stinky sneaker, so I found another image: imagine that the person or situation is smiling at you and handing you a big, gorgeous chocolate cake with whipped cream and cherries on the top of it (or some other cake you like). Eating the entire cake would be too much, obviously. So tell this person or situation "Oh, thank you so much, that's very nice of you! I'll have a piece of it!" And then take only a small piece of the cake. You're not forced to swallow the whole cake. A small piece of this delicious cake is enough to make you happy.

When I use this cake image, I'm able to stay in control of myself and to allow strong positive emotions without being immediately overwhelmed by them.

What if "no thanks" doesn't work?

Sometimes a situation or statement bugs me so much that the old stinky sneaker doesn't work so really well. Just saying "No thanks" somehow is not a solution in that moment. Then I need to take a look at another aspect of feelings and emotions: they're but signals. They show you whether what you think about this person/statement/situation is currently positive or negative. In this respect, they're very useful. A positive feeling is the result of a positive thought. A negative feeling points to a negative thought. Here's a method to get rid of nasty emotions by getting rid of the negative thoughts that are producing them:

Identify the emotion //"oh, I'm feeling angry"
Try to be as precise as possible. Observe the emotion: is it anger, or hate, or are you upset?
Allow the emotion to be //"It's perfectly ok to be angry now. That's all right."
Accept your emotion and welcome it warmly.
Thank the emotion //"Thank you anger for being here and showing me that I'm having negative thoughts that are not profitable to me"
Aknowledge that your emotions are just a signal pointing to your thoughts.
Identify the thoughts //"ok, which thoughts are making me feel angry?"
This part can be difficult for you if you're not used to such exercises. Be patient, you'll get better with time. Maybe it can help you to write your thoughts down. Allow any thought to pop into your mind, even if it sounds ridiculous or childish.
Let the emotion go //"Thanks anger, I don't need you anymore now, go in peace"
Now that you're aware of your underlying thought, you don't need the signal anymore.
Change the thoughts //"Which thought would feel better than that?"
Now look for a thought that would feel a bit better right now. It doesn't have to be realistic, or true. It can be complete nonsense, imaginary or a lie, that's not important. Important is only that when you think this thought, you feel a bit better. Concentrate on the new thought for about twenty seconds. You'll feel better. Then look for another thought that feels even better and concentrate on it for twenty seconds again. And so on.
If you practice this method a bit, you'll notice that you're always able to choose how you feel by deliberately thinking thoughts that make you feel this way. It doesn't just happen to you. You have full control over how you feel, because you have full control over what you think.

What if I can't identify any thoughts?

This happens to me when confronted to very strong emotions. In such a case the physical symptoms are so overwhelming that there are just no thoughts. At least no thoughts I could be aware of. Recently I was looking for nice tibetan songs on youtube and by mistake saw a horrible video where some animals were being killed. I felt so bad that I almost vomited. My chest was burning, I was crying and sweating. The emotion was so strong that the intellectual approach above would not have helped me. More precisely, I wouldn't have been able to apply it.

In such cases I use EFT. EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, is a very powerful way to deal with emotions. It's easy and fast to learn, it works quickly and it's highly efficient. EFT is a more physical approach of the problem. It can be used to cure physical pain too, btw.

The principle is that a negative emotion is a blockade in your energy system. By tapping some energetic points on your body while focusing on your problem, you remove the blockade and teach your body to let the energy flow even when you think of this problem. It won't solve the problem itself. But you'll feel good even when confronted to that problem again. After this youtube accident, these images were pursueing me. I tapped it every time it came up. I had to do it 3-4 times a day for a few days. But now I can think of that video without having any bad emotions.

I highly recommend EFT to everyone. If you're interested, look at eft-therapy.com. There are infos about the theory behind EFT, a nice free tutorial for beginners, and a lot more.