Module 1
According to Daniel Siegel in The Developing Mind the first few years of our life our minds are an open book. These first few years set the foundation for how we will observe and approach the rest of our lives. The brain accepts all experiences as being valid and true, and does not judge them as good or bad. Everyone responds to these years differently, so they are not predictive. This means that you can’t say because an event happens the outcome is always the same. As individuals we have different ways of responding to those years and those stimuli. The way we know how we processed those early years is by how we behave today and our belief system today.
New research has validated that having a vision for your future is much more effective than having a goal for your future. This first week we will focus on creating a vision about what you would like to be like and how you would like to live your life in the near future. Victor Franco, the psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, defines vision as seeing ourselves as better than we really are. Kierkegaard, a Christian philosopher, believed that unless we walked in the faith of Abraham we were really not walking in our Christian faith.
Homework Assignment # 1 :
Family tree as far as three generations
Facts like:
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drugs
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alcohol
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marriages
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divorces
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jail
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crimes
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career – occupation
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other important info
Minimum details with highlights only – more for seeing diversity and patterns in families. Use the space below for a brief family tree.
Homework Assignment # 2:
Thinking about what a future self would look like
Answer these three questions:
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Write a vision for who you would like to become.
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Pick a future goal that would be way out of your reach but you would dream about attaining someday.
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What emotions would you live from if you attained this goal, and how would you behave?
downloadable homework assignment
Home work assignment Module # 1
Module 2
This week will practice specifically on being body aware. In his book breaking the habit of being yourself Dr. Joe dispenser specifically talks about how our body stores emotions. Our homework and meditation will include specific focus on what’s happening in our body and how to experience our body in a new way. Dr. Judith and Bob Wright discuss the importance of play and learning to connect with our body. Specifically will be using Chapter 3 in Dr. Dispenza in his book and chapter 5 in the Wrights Book.
Assignment: Play
Meditation: My most radiant self
Module 3
This week we will continue body awareness. In his book the biology of beliefs Dr. Lipton specifically focuses on how what we believe to be true comes true. Bob and Judith Wright call this self fufilling prophecy. The way we feel about our environment turns on the genes and their interaction in our bodies. Our focus this week will be learning how our bodies react to our emotions and our environment.
Assignment: Behaving the opposite of how we feel
Mediation: My most radiant self
Homework Lesson : Module # 3
Module # 4
In this fourth week we will focus on body awareness. According to Dr. Dispenza , having anxiety validates that our emotions are stored in our body. Thinking about this from a scientific perspective, when our bodies are not doing well it could be based on stored emotions. I believe that unexpressed emotions never go away. This week the assignment will be expressing emotions when we notice them showing up in our body. Tension, stress, lethargy, minor aches and pains, and just general tiredness can be related to stored unexpressed emotion. Being body aware, or noticing how our body is feeling, will give us great information about how we are not aware of the emotions but our bodies are.
Assignment: Body Awarenes
Meditation: My Most Radiant Self
Homework Lesson : Module # 4
Module # 5
Learning the power of being fully present is transformational. This week and the balance of this class will be focused on presence. Dr. Dispenza reminds us that enumerating about our current or stressful past is not living in the present. Allowing ourselves to live in that potential new future now we begin to accept or believe that we truly can have and experience elevated emotions that come from our most magnificent future self. The current environment, with our current emotions and the fact that we have not yet achieved our future self are three major factors in holding us back from change. 1. Our self talk 2. The feelings associated with those words, and 3. Projecting onto others what we think they many think of us.
Assignment: Practicing Living our Future Self
Meditation: Being Fully Present
Home work : Module # 5
Homework Assignment – Being fully present
This week is about being present as our future self. Noticing how we feel, and speaking out our truth in the moment can be challenging. This work is about knowing who we are going to be, not who are have been in the past.
This week the challenge is to be aware of who you are becoming. No matter who we are, we all experience the world the same. We all choose to react or live in the world from our past. We are now aware of our current self and how it is influenced by the old self and we are choosing, with awareness, to be different. This is not a game of perfection it is a game of experimenting. The experimenting is being ok with what didn’t work in the experiment. Since we don’t know how we are really going to be, we are seeing what might work.
Taking the risk of being different.
The ROLE or how you see yourself (what you believe about you) is your natural response to the world around you. Let’s choose a new you for one day. You are the most radiant kind self – filled with compassion for self and others. You see your anger, and express it – not in rage or outbursts but in knowing you are angry, and letting the world know. You are filled with JOY and express it, with kind caring words. You feel hurt and sad, and our face gives way to truth, with tears, or sadness, with deep emotions of love for self.
How will you choose to be – as often as you can this week – to live in your most radiant self. Write their name here, and write the characteristics they have you would like to emulate.
Name: _________________________________
Module # 6
Deciding who we want to be, how we want to live, and what we like to have in the future, are easy things to think about. Dreaming about our future self is filled with infinity in fantasy. Dr. Judith Wright, and her book The One Decision, specifically talks about the power of presence. We are either foggy or have clarity about our future, we can either pretend or we can be present. We either excuse ourselves or we can admit what’s truly true for us. The discussion that life is in the present moment is a powerful one. This week we will learn about how to be more present.
Assignment: Practicing Presence
Meditation: Being Fully Present
Homework: Module # 6
Post by Sunday noon at the transformedlife.ning.com site
These questions here are for reference – only answer the POST questions.
There are many ways to be fully present, and there are many reasons why we are not fully present. Being fully present is not a hyper-focused presence. It is more like a flowing allowing presence, similar to the idea of surrendering to the moment. When we are hijacked by the potential of harm, scanning for threats as you might say, we are often pre calculating the danger, even if there are not dangers.
You are not present:
- When you are remunerating about the past.
- If we are thinking about a future event.
- When we are distracted like evaluating the current situation.
You can be – but not always – when
- You feel the emotions fully in your body
- You can name the emotion when it shows up
- You flow with the conversation not interjecting your thoughts.
These are beginning ideas of being present and there are others.
Module 7 –
Breaking Old Habits
Practicing being fully present can be as easy as brushing your teeth and being aware that you’re brushing you teeth. However according to Dr. Dispenza unless we actually change the routine we will be in the same old pattern of brushing our teeth. Presence isn’t only focused presence is also total awareness of what’s happening around us. He uses the example of brushing our teeth with our opposite hand. The whole time you’re brushing your teeth your mind is working hard to notice what you’re doing so you get the same effect of quality teeth brushing with the opposite hand. Your mind slows down and you are more present because it’s not routine. This week we’ll practice breaking routines to make ourselves more aware of being fully present.
Assignment: Playing with old habits and creating new ones
Meditation: Being Fully Present
Homework: Module # 7
Post by Sunday noon at the transformedlife.ning.com site
These questions here are for reference – only answer the POST questions.
Breaking old routines can be a challenge. This includes being aware we are in a schema routine (learned early on) and not aware of how it relates to not being present. Mindless tv watching, driving to work and lost in thoughts, being so hurt or angry that you are not hearing what the other person is saying.
This week break a few routines: Here are a few ideas
Do everything with your non-dominate hand
Brush teeth
Comb Hair
Eat – Drink – Hold the cup, fork, spoon, or knife
Zip up the Zipper
Write or draw
Drive:
A different way to where ever you are going.
Shoes: wear them backwards
Clothes: wear them inside out (even under clothing)
Walk backwards: be careful and have a plan
Sleep on the opposite of the bed
Sit in a different place at the table
Wake up ½ hour earlier and do NOTHING for 30 mins
Arrive at work 30 min early and stay 30 min later and do NOTHING during that 30 mins
Be creative – breaking routines
The purpose of breaking routines is it draws your mind to be more aware of what is happening and you are more present.
Homework Assignment – Being fully present
Module 8 –
Harmony and Flexibility
Integrating presence into our current lifestyle includes the challenge of understanding chaos versus rigidity or harmony and flexibility. Daniel Siegel’s book Mindsight, he talks about how presence is awareness and allowing things that show up to flow. Our minds are quite complex and have established all kinds of patterns and routines and when those patterns and routines are broken we often have an emotional reaction. We become rigid and/or act as if things are chaotic. Part of learning to be present is learning to have harmony and flexibility as things show up.
Assignment: Practicing harmony and flexibility
Meditation: Being Fully Present
Post by Sunday noon at the transformedlife.ning.com site
These questions here are for reference – only answer the POST questions.
check out these websites about mindfullness
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2016/01/mindfulness/
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/05/why-are-both-exercise-and-religion-so-good-at/
There are no audio for this lesson
Module 9
Three Close Friends
Where do belief systems come from? Understanding our own biases and judgments can make life flow a lot easier for us. This week we will focus specifically on biases and judgments that we have about others, the world and ourselves. All belief systems are learned and subsequently can be unlearned. Interviewing others about what they believe and being open to how they think about the world without judging them is a powerful exercise. This week we will focus on discovering differences in others and allowing those differences to influence how we feel about them and ourselves.
Assignment: Interviewing three close friends about their biases and judgments
Meditation: Being Fully Present.
Meditaionis here :
Post by Sunday noon at the transformedlife.ning.com site
These questions here are for reference – only answer the POST questions.
Here are the PDFS For the assigment : Module # 9
Johri Window Questions johariwindowmodeldiagram
Others Aware
Becoming aware of the things that we don’t know about us or what others may think about us is very beneficial in our personal transformation. This week were going to use the Johari window to focus on gathering information about how we are viewed by others.
This really isn’t that scary. It takes your willingness to trust someone to pick five words out of a set of 30 that are most like you. Take a picture of the words and send them to me, so I can put them into a form to talk about next week in class.
I have also included a list of questions that, if you’re brave enough, I would also like you to ask those that are close to you. The difficulty in asking others to evaluate you is it sometimes comes with a bias. That bias includes them not wanting to harm you, or stating they think you are just fine.
Two things are important. YOU will not discuss with them their answers and you will not be offended by anything they say.
There are no audio for this lesson
Module 10
Curiosity
Integration. In her book Mindset Carol Dweck states that a fixed mindset is often the result of fear of curiosity and exploring the unknown. My experiences in life are different than your experiences in life. I define the world based on my historical experiences. You define your world based on your historical experiences. With a fixed mindset, a person is unwilling to accept someone else’s definition of the world based on their historical experiences that are different than their own historical experiences. Being fully present includes allowing a difference of opinion without feeling threatened or challenged. Curiosity is a huge asset in being fully present.
Assignment: Curiosity about your own beliefs and expressing them in the moment and practicing being fully present.
Meditation: Being Fully Present
Post by Sunday noon at the transformedlife.ning.com site
These questions here are for reference – only answer the POST questions.
Curiosity – do you have a growth mindset!
The homework this week is to notice how you are seen in the world. Are you present and why or why not. What is the distraction and how are others observing you. Take time this week to ask others how they are doing and then ask yourself how you are doing. Venture out and risk by sharing how you are feeling: fear, hurt anger, sad or joy.
Do a check up by asking them to take a pic of you, or take one yourself. Journal how present you are, and notice the things that are distracting you from being present.