Time to Bloom…



By Rachel Branch CTRLPrac
https://new-you.co.uk/


How many of us take and make time to look after ourselves physically, from going to the gym, hairdressers, barbers, spa, lash salon and nail salon, buying a new dress, buying a new car or the latest gadget. Taking care of ourselves in this way is a beautiful gift we give to ourselves on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and that’s great because we look good then we feel good right? Not always, for many people that is not the case.

Many people distract themselves from the work that needs doing on the inside by the things we do on the outside because that’s where the praise comes from. "Don’t you look good!", "I love your hair!", "Your nails look amazing", "I want my lashes done like that", "I love your dress, where did you get it?", "nice car!!", "Cool gadget!!!" All this praise and acknowledgement is wonderful and feels so great... at the time.

However, there are so many people that when they are alone, they look in the mirror and all they see is doubt, all they see is ugly, too fat, too thin, not attractive, not enough!
All those kind and beautiful compliments are forgotten because it’s just them now, in that room in front of that mirror, not really liking what they see, not loving who they see. I think at some point in all our lives we have experienced those moments and know the empty feeling it gives. Imagine though, living every single day like that.

Thing is, we are all born with perfect souls and perfect personalities. We are all born completely confident, when we are born, we do not know what is to doubt the way we look, question if we’re good enough, wonder if someone likes or loves us. As toddlers we’d rock up into a room completely naked, not giving two hoots about the size of our bums or how flat our bellies are! Why on earth would we?!?  Are we here to impress the people in that room? Are we waiting on their approval? No!! We know then, that we are enough, we may not know anything else at that point but self-doubt is definitely not on our map of reality, our belief in ourselves is perfect, it’s our confidence and It’s in all of us already!

And then it happens... life!! The beautiful, kind, scary, cruel, interesting, sad, joyful and most importantly, teaching life, happens. That then, is when the moulding begins.  Now isn’t it wonderful and perfect when nothing negative ever crosses our path? We receive or witness nothing but kindness, respect, regard, love, understanding and beauty.  No one says anything that can make you stop and look at yourself in a negative way? This usually only ever happens when someone is directing negativity towards you or around you, otherwise you’d take it as positive feedback and experiences and that would simply reinforce your confidence from such a young age.

Someone or something can plant a seed in your mind, both conscious and subconscious and then we spend the rest of our lives watering it, now if that seed is full of goodness then we’re winning! But if it’s not, our mind will still do its job, it will water that seed until it grows fully. 
Imagine believing everything for truth? Because that’s what we do up to age of 8 or 9, and we lock it in, we write it on the pages of our mind and that becomes our knowledge.

Let's go back to the beginning of this blog, the things we do on the outside, how we make ourselves look or what we do to make ourselves feel good, all quick and temporary fixes. Some that I didn’t mention are the harmful things, like drinking alcohol to excess, taking drugs, gambling and pornography. Yes pornography!! (Don’t giggle)  You see what happens when we feel down and bad about ourselves is that we want to look good and feel good about ourselves (makes sense right?)

Now this all happens in our ‘Reward Circuitry’, the region of our brain that holds onto the emotions and memory, in there is our Amygdala (nerd alert!!) Now this is part of the limbic system of the brain, which is involved with emotions and other reactions to stimuli. The amygdala is a processing centre that is hooked up to receive incoming messages from our senses and our internal organs. It is highly involved with different emotional responses. These are triggers, which in turn activate our Dopamine Levels and boom!! We have happy! There’s our reward! Now our subconscious can register things that our conscious mind hasn’t had chance to notice, and these things can be anything from a smell, a song, an act, a substance, something we hear or taste. So, all our senses cause emotions and emotions are what drives us.

Now if we use a negative act to stimulate this process then that’s when our brain becomes more use to that triggering it than anything natural, it’s basically what we get our mind use to, so like taking drugs or drinking alcohol, those reward emotions are being triggered by that on regular occurrence and eventually it’ll start to accept that this as is its only supply. It will stop doing it naturally, forgetting about all the harmless, lovely and pure ways your emotions would be triggered. So now it’s just lazy! At this point we will do anything to take us away from the pain we are in, now for some people, they can draw a line but for others, it’s not so easy. That’s when we turn to drugs, alcohol, gambling and many other detrimental behaviours which are triggering the dopamine. And relax! That’s the science bit over.

Now back to those little seeds and we have been watering. You see we can point the finger but let’s be honest, we’d need thousands of fingers if we were going to point to everyone or everything that ever brought negativity, fear, self-doubt, sadness or pain our way and I can tell you now, we won’t always remember or be aware of every single seed that was or is being planted in our mind, yet it’s in there and we water it.  If you are watering more negative seeds than positive, then your life is without a doubt being affected in a negative way. Like everything that is planted, it can be dug up. The roots may grow deep and that’s ok, with time and care we can unearth all of them giving room for the positive seeds to grow. That ‘time and care’ are the steps we take to dig up all the bad roots, some people do it with ease and with no great effort but for others the task can be too much to tackle alone.


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