Yedda Stancil

Rediscovering Relationships in a Post-Pandemic World

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 19:11:05 GMT

Deepening Connections: Nurturing Spiritually Profound Relationships in Today's World

Much has been said about the challenges people faced during the long hiatus of the pandemic. Amidst it all, an inspirational shift was happening, signaling the desire for a richer, more meaningful existence beyond what was known before the pandemic. Among these new perspectives, let's delve into one particularly profound idea: nurturing relationships that resonate on a spiritual level.

We all yearn for love and understanding in our closest relationships, but achieving that consistently has been elusive for many, especially recently. The truth is, every individual has imperfections. These intricacies make sustaining love and mutual acceptance challenging at times.

Attaining a spiritually profound connection with someone seems even more daunting. Historically, qualities like unconditional love, ecstasy, and redemption were seen as blessings granted by the divine. So, how realistic is it to expect such profoundness from our everyday companions?

In today's evolving world, countless souls embark on spiritual journeys. Many hope to walk this path with loved ones—be it partners, friends, or family. It's worth pondering: can two imperfect beings foster such a spiritual bond?

In the daily hustle, relationships often get dictated by the ego's whims and needs—desires, memories, ambitions. This self-centric viewpoint, with its constant hunger for personal gains and gratifications, hardly paves the way for deep, spiritual connections.

Yet, there exists an ego-free kind of relationship. We've all felt it. First, as innocent children, and later, when we connect with our offspring. It's in these moments that we experience pure joy, unadulterated trust, and genuine care, unburdened by self-interest.

So, is it possible for two grown-ups to experience this ego-free connection? While fleeting moments of selflessness do grace loving relationships, they often get overshadowed by the clashing desires of each individual's ego .

The key lies in bridging this gap between the self-driven and the selfless. While mundane connections inevitably possess some ego-driven elements, spiritually profound bonds should ideally exude the same purity as our interactions with young children.

The surprise twist? Achieving this depth in a relationship is less about the other person and more about you. How you perceive and treat yourself sets the tone for your connections. The unconditional love we shower upon a child simply for existing should be the same love we offer ourselves.

This isn't about merely answering whether you love yourself. Instead, it's about recognizing those transient moments of sheer contentment. Interestingly, such purity of mind is experienced during deep sleep. It's a phase where one is devoid of worldly concerns and is in a state of sheer existence.

Skeptical? Think about the calm and freshness after a night of undisturbed sleep. It's proof that we've all tasted this purity countless times. The challenge is accessing this state while awake.

Enter meditation —a practice that fosters self-awareness without falling asleep. It guides us towards a state of mere existence, where there's no room for ego's demands. In meditative depths, external validations lose meaning. If you're content within, the need to seek from others diminishes.

Once you've mastered this self-awareness , connecting with others on a spiritual level becomes second nature. Instead of leaning on them to fill voids, you embrace them with your wholeness. The age-old saying, "You complete me," is redefined. It's not about another person completing you; it's about recognizing that, in essence, existence itself is completion.

Embracing Curiosity: Your Pathway to Cultivating Wisdom

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 15:56:25 GMT

Unlocking the Depths of Understanding: The Transformative Power of Curiosity

Posted on August 17, 2023 by Yedda Stancil

In today’s fast-paced digital age, we often find ourselves overwhelmed with information, jumping from one topic to another. But amid this flood, how often do we stop and delve deep into a subject, allowing our innate curiosity to guide us? Today, we'll explore how embracing curiosity can be a transformative path to cultivating genuine wisdom.

Continuous Learning: Not Just a Buzzword

Curiosity is not merely about wondering how the latest tech gadget works or the newest findings in astrophysics. It’s an intrinsic desire for knowledge, an eagerness to explore the unknown, and an openness to be in a perpetual state of learning. Wisdom isn’t about accumulating tidbits of information; it's about understanding this information and applying it meaningfully.

Curious about the brain science behind learning? Dive into this fascinating [study](#link_to_relevant_study) on the neuroscience of curiosity.

The Power of Asking Questions:

All experts started as beginners, and all beginners began with a question. Encouraging oneself to ask questions is a sign not of ignorance but of a thirst for understanding. This week, I pose a challenge to every reader: before imparting any piece of information, ask at least one question.

Need tips on asking the right questions? Here’s a guide to help you out.

A Curious Tale from My Life:

During a workshop I attended years ago, I stumbled upon a profound realization about the potency of curiosity. Instead of merely introducing myself in the traditional manner, I decided to play the *Question Game*. The result? An enriched atmosphere, deeper conversations, and the opening of myriad perspectives. You can read more about ice breaker experiences and the profound impacts of this simple game here .

Curiosity: Your Compass to Wisdom

The road to wisdom is not a straight path but a winding journey driven by our innate curiosity. By fostering this, not only do we expand our horizons, but we also foster deeper connections with those around us.

For those embarking on a journey of lifelong learning, check out these resources to feed your curious mind.

Wrapping Up:

As we conclude today's reflection, it’s worth reiterating that while knowledge might provide answers, it's curiosity that prompts us to question those very answers.

Eager to kickstart your curiosity journey? Start with these books that have transformed thinkers across the globe.

Stay curious, readers, and embrace the wisdom that comes your way.

Yedda

This Mindset Shift Transformed My Limiting Beliefs, Once and For All

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:28:48 GMT

Where do you get stuck in victim-mindset?

If you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit and want to dive even deeper, our online community-based courses are open NOW! Head over to our Community Course page to choose from three levels of our online “inner MBA,” where you’ll practice integrative and mindful Mastery of your Behaviors and Aspirations. (Psst… there’s even a free version!) If you’re ready for the ultimate support in breaking free from the limiting beliefs holding you back in life, JOIN US NOW .

A couple of years ago, I attended a mindfulness training at a beautiful ashram in the Bahamas—all beach and sand and sun, open-air rooms on the waterfront, vegetarian meals, and a large platform for meditation surrounded by water and palm trees.

Everyone was there to attend the same training; workshops were offered each day, and there was a packed calendar of speakers. A meditation began at five o’clock every morning. Each day had a gentle rhythm to it—exactly what you’d expect of ashram life.

The very first morning, as I prepared a cup of tea and casually observed the people around me, I noticed a crowd forming. A man wearing a yellow robe stood before the group, who immediately created an altar for him. He was clearly their guru. Suddenly, hundreds of students had gathered, all dressed in yellow, and they started chanting. There was palpable worship energy being generated by the people.

It started to feel like I was in the scene of a movie. The mimicry of the moment felt off—as though every worshiper would have boarded a spaceship for that guy right then, without thinking about what they were doing and why. At the same time, it was a testament to the power people can create through belief.

The following day, I woke up and thought I’d actually go check the guru out. That was outside my norm—my childhood patterned belief of exclusion always kept me outside of groups and gatherings. I’m either in the front of the room or sitting out in the hall, but I’m never in the middle.

For years, that patterned belief limited me. I struggled with resentment and anger because I never understood why I was always outside. I believed I was a victim, and I would blame others for not including me—even though the truth was I had spent my whole life learning to adhere to a messy, self-exclusionary pattern.

But at that moment, in that ashram, standing in a crowd before a guru, after doing years of personal development work on myself, I understood why I’d always taken on the role of the outsider.

When I started doing the work of digging into my limiting beliefs and partnering that work with mindfulness, I woke up. There, in that ashram, was my awakening. The moment I walked away from that crowded platform area where the guru had been, the energy felt so much freer. It was like I could breathe again. I realized I belonged outside the crowd that stood in front of the guru rather than in it. I liked the perspective of the outsider, of seeing the whole picture. I didn’t want to be in the middle because I’d lose that overall perspective.

So, I got my morning tea and found a little bench outside the platform area, and I just sat there and watched the rest of the morning unfold. For a moment, I thought, Oh, this is just like when I was a kid. Maybe I should… And then a little voice in my head quietly said, But perhaps this is giving you a different perspective that you need.

So I observed how much better it felt to be on the outside. For the first time, I gave myself permission to sit outside and watch the group from a distance—as an invitation to myself. It was a beautiful wake-up call.

As you’ll discover on your own journey to mindfulness and enlightenment and wholeness, there are people along the way who will tell you that their way to the mountaintop is the only way. They’ll try to teach you that you can’t get there unless you go through them. But that’s just not true. The only way to your mountaintop is your way.

Now, I’ve fully stepped into the awareness that my wounds are my wisdom—that I am only a victim if I choose to be. My suffering has been my most outstanding teacher. I have found value in all the years of stress, trauma, and pain of being an outsider because it’s made me who I am. All along, those experiences were an invitation for me to rise to the highest occasion of my life. They were experiences I had for a purpose. Because there, in that ashram, staring at that guru and the crowd he had generated, I realized: I get to choose. I can stand at the front of the room or remove myself willingly. But I am not a victim. The choice is mine.

What if the very things you feel victimized about were actually given to you as a gift?

In this crazy life, it’s easy to get stuck in chaos, confusion, and unhealthy states of mind. If you have no experience shutting up and sitting when these challenges show up, you are not yet a master of yourself. No matter the situation, agreeable or disagreeable, it is your way of being in it that matters. Only through the continuity of committed practice will you arrive at the marrow of mindfulness and acquire its true gifts and strengths.

At the end of the day, it’s about waking up and remembering who you really are. It’s about finding your most profound truth and bringing it to light. It’s about answering the question, “Who am I to be great?”

Really, who are you not to be?

Did this post make you think about your relationship with victim-mindset? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

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The Science Behind Gratitude Journals

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:25:52 GMT

Turns out there is a clear benefit to all that writing…

Did you know that some polls show that holidays—especially the Thanksgiving through New Year’s— bring people more stress than joy? Between the endless to-do lists, exhausting travel obligations, and annual family drama, holidays can become something most of us need a holiday from.

Several years ago, my family decided to do something a little different.

Now, every Thanksgiving and Christmas, my extended family gathers together around a shared table to celebrate: My mom, her third husband Pop, my dad and his second wife, her children, and his adopted children, myself and my siblings, and all of our children. Although my biological father lost his battle with addiction years ago, if he hadn’t, I believe he’d probably be sitting there with us, too. But the simple fact that we’re all able to sit there—talking and laughing, bickering and telling stories, some of us sober and vegan, others of us decidedly not, broken and rebuilt and blended and whole—to me, that’s a miracle.

It took no small amount of work on the part of each of us to arrive at that table in our own way, in our own time. We approached the waking-up process differently —going through our personal darkness to remove any barriers there before returning to the truth and wholeness of who we are. Some of us withdrew. Some of us went head-on into conflict and wanted to have hard conversations. Some of us got lost in our healing process, finding other guides, gurus, and leaders to help us. But each of us had to go through our personal version of withdrawing and pulling back from each other and the world to heal. It was tough for years. It was rocky; it was wild; it was uncharted territory.

As a family, we’ve all done our work—the same work I’ve dedicated my consulting life to—in different ways to heal and grow. Every single thing we went through: The addiction and the alcoholism, the infidelity and the abuse, the poverty, and the death, the dark nights of the soul—all of it had a purpose. It was not something you’d necessarily choose for yourself or someone you love, but looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.

My current family dynamic is one of the things in my life I’m most grateful for.

What do you do when you experience gratitude? Do you nourish it, or are you too busy running through the to-dos of your daily life to pause and really notice? While there are many ways to practice gratitude, gratitude journals are probably one of the easiest ways to begin if you’re just starting to explore a practice. (There’s a reason why they are always trending, after all. Plus, gratitude journals are fun to buy.)

But there’s a science behind the trend . Neuroscience shows that repetition of an action partnered with a theta brainwave state (what you get when you practice meditation) is the key to changing your neural pathways. In other words, if you want to make a gratitude practice a habit, try waking up 15 minutes earlier each morning to meditate for ten and spend five writing in your gratitude journal. Do that, and you’re literally rewriting your beliefs about yourself and the world—both in your journal and your neural pathways—every single morning.

Ready to dive in? Try this: Purchase a gratitude journal, and for the next week, record five things that you are grateful for in your life each day. (Bonus points if they’re five different things each day—which will work your gratitude muscle even more. At the end of the week, review what you wrote and consider journaling about what the experience was like.

I can practically guarantee you’ll notice a shift in your overall perspective, even if it’s small.

Here’s the thing: If you establish the habit that you’re going to wake up every morning and write down a few things you’re grateful for, then you set the intention for gratitude for the rest of your day. If you want to become happier and more joyful, you start with gratitude.

Did this post inspire you to purchase a gratitude journal—or dig an old one out of the closet? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

3 Steps to Making Gratitude a Habit

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:17:54 GMT

Awareness is key.

Present moment awareness (aka mindfulness) is the most straightforward, natural path to gratitude. The more awake and aware of the present moment you become, the more you’re building your mindfulness muscle. As your perspective on your life and the world around you expands, you’re able to tune into more of what’s present—and that includes more to be grateful for .

In other words, stepping into awareness allows you to see the world for the beauty that it is, not colored by the dirty lens of an old mindset or belief that stopped serving you a long time ago. When you begin to master the skill of being aware, you also begin to master your default to gratitude .

There are three critical steps to nurturing an awareness to gratitude mechanism in your brain.

Paying close attention to the present moment, fostering mental, physical, and spiritual focus.
Being wholly engaged in the present moment—not distracted by the past, the future, or the latest gadget.
Getting comfortable with stillness.

By becoming aware, you allow the present moment to expand on its own. You can welcome gratitude for it—simply by watching, waiting, and sitting with an unattached curiosity and compassion for the world. (Sounds an awful lot like the practice of meditation, doesn’t it?)

By consistently creating space for gratitude in your mindfulness practice, you’re instantly up-leveling its effectiveness. While you can’t rush healing, gratitude can act as a secret trapdoor to accelerating the process of becoming unstuck from your limiting thoughts and freeing yourself from the things that are no longer serving you. The more room you make for gratitude in your mind, the more your inner-critic loses critical mental real estate.

Consider the thinking-feeling-behaving cycle that’s often discussed around mindfulness. Remember, although nearly 95 percent of my clients and students think that feelings ignite the thoughts that inspire actions and behaviors, it’s really your thoughts. When you’re mindful, you’re able to slow down your thoughts, find the gap between your thoughts, and then pause long enough to choose the thought that will best serve you and the greater good.

If you’re choosing your thoughts, you might as well choose gratitude.

Did this post give you some ideas for incorporating gratitude into your mindfulness practice? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

6 Gratitude Practices You’ve Got To Try Right Now

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:13:36 GMT

(And none of them require a journal!)

When I first started practicing stillness and silence, it was like my soul stepped up to the task of sitting with who I really am; not who I am according to my inner critic, but the essence of who I am—who I always had been. The more I worked my mindfulness muscle, the more I could drop into a deeper level of consciousness.

Sure, I’d still mess up. I’d feel “enlightened” for a bit, and then I’d mess up. I’d feel even more “enlightened,” and then I’d mess up again. That’s how my journey went for years—how everyone’s mindfulness journey is, in fact. We’ll always grow and mess up again, forever.

At first, that might seem frustrating. Why bother doing all this intense, demanding, deep work if not to reach a state of constant calm and ultimate enlightenment? There’s a Zen kōan that sums up this feeling well: “ Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water . After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

But when you introduce gratitude into your mindfulness practice , everything changes. For me, that included discovering an appreciation for suffering too. While I’m sorry I hurt people in the healing process, I appreciate the struggles and wounds—even those that started in utero—because they made me who I am. If anybody knows about inclusion, it’s me because I spent a lifetime being excluded. If anybody knows about healing, it’s me because I spent a lifetime being wounded. If anyone knows what it’s like to feel unlovable, unworthy, and not whole, I’ve lived all of that.

Ultimately, if we can just get to a place of gratitude, even when we’re walking through some of our lowest days, we’ll start to heal.

As research into the concepts of happiness and emotional well-being gains traction in many fields, research on the nature of gratitude is increasing and its causes and potential consequences for health and well-being.

Consider this research on people who possess joy, for example. It turns out that the common thread throughout each of their experiences is a mindset of gratitude. I’m not just talking about a general appreciation of “I love my house/car/dog/kids.” It’s learning to access profound gratitude for everything―even for the suffering—and finding gratitude for what you don’t have or what you don’t have yet. Gratitude isn’t something you feel just when things are going right. It appreciates the ups and downs of your journey.

One of the absolute best examples of the power of gratitude is in Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. In his book, he writes that the only way he survived his imprisonment in Auschwitz was to wake up and find gratitude for rotten fish heads in dirty water—because that’s what enabled him to live. He was in the middle of a concentration camp, and his entire family had been ripped apart and killed. Even though everything that defined his life had been stripped from him, he made an effort to find gratitude.

Frankl was a neurologist and psychiatrist, so he knew his stuff. He believed that he and his fellow prisoners were more likely to survive their experience if they could do two things: Find a purpose in life to feel optimistic about and imagine their future. And that’s what he did.

While gratitude journals are all the rage right now, there are many different ways to practice gratitude. Consider starting with some of my favorites:

Build a gratitude board. (Like a mood board, but for gratitude!)
Practice simple thanks for your next meal.
Practice a gratitude breath prayer .
Thank your body with a massage or bathing ritual.
Make a gratitude playlist.
Say thanks by committing a random act of kindness.

The truth is that no matter where you are or what you’re doing in life, when you’re able to tap into gratitude for what you have, what you have is enough. And if all you have is dirty water with rotten fish heads in it, then you might have to dig much, much deeper for that gratitude. But it makes all the difference.

Watch my favorite Ted Talk on Gratitude: https://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_nature_beauty_gratitude?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Did this post inspire you to introduce a new gratitude practice into your life? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

This ONE Mindset Shift Is the Secret to Revamping Your Gratitude Practice

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:04:35 GMT

And it’s not just a fancy new journal…

In my work, I often discuss that many people who could benefit from mindfulness aren’t ever able to commit to a practice in the first place. Not only can mindfulness meditation exacerbate psychological trauma , but the approach also requires you to sit with your pain and walk alone through your trauma to get to the other side. There’s an immense amount of uncertainty, self-judgment, anxiety, discomfort, and grieving to go through.

At the same time, there’s also a tremendous amount of courage, acceptance, release, calm, and healing waiting for you on the other side of that journey.

One of the elements distinguishing a healthy mindfulness practice from one that isn’t sustainable over the long term is gratitude. Often, when folks hear “gratitude practice,” they think of a performative journaling exercise rushed through at the end of each day (i.e., “I’m thankful for my dog/house/car/food/friends/shoes, goodnight.) But that barely scratches the surface of gratitude. By finding gratitude not just for the good in life but also for the challenging, terrifying, exhausting, and woundedness, you can get to a place of true freedom.

That level of gratitude doesn’t just require awareness; it requires learning not to self-judge, not to let the voice of the inner critic take over, and not allowing a lifetime of unhealthy thoughts and beliefs to define the present moment. It’s about embracing yourself and your unique journey—wounds, mistakes, and all. It’s being grateful for the uncertainty of the things that aren’t serving you well and building the belief that all that suffering is there to help you grow and heal.

It’s sitting with discomfort long enough to discover your wounds can become your most incredible wisdom.

Consider one client’s story (in my book, Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It , I call him Robert).

When I first met Robert, I thought he was one of the nicest people I’d ever encountered. We met at a local gym (the kind where you flip tires and swing sledgehammers), and one day, he asked me what I did for work. For weeks we exercised together without asking one another anything—both just focused on performing the commands yelled into our ears by the trainer. I replied vaguely, assuming he was the last person on earth who’d be interested in mindfulness.

I mean, why would he? This guy walked into the gym and was greeted with a chorus of everyone yelling his name. What did he need to know about limiting beliefs or how to rewire the brain in silence and solitude?

As it turned out, everything.

As a young African American man living in the American South, he was born poor and raised by a single mom. He grew from those circumstances into one of the top scientists in his field and is now the Vice President of a global company. But despite his professional success, he struggled with reactivity. In conflict, he was sure the other person needed to change. He felt trapped in an antagonizing, toxic work environment detrimental to his physical and mental wellbeing.

Through our work together, he realized that he contributed to some of the things he took issue with. He awakened to the idea that when you’re not getting along with someone or you dislike something about a person, you need to hold up a mirror because maybe what you dislike in them is something that is also within you. That mindset shift helped him to become more accepting of other people.

He understood the science of beliefs and began to see another way to heal the victimization surrounding him, stepping into his true power—a power he now uses to teach others the value of all backgrounds, races, and ethnicities. He assists young minorities in achieving success simply by being who he is rather than operating from a place of anger.

Finding gratitude for everything requires great courage. It requires extreme patience and taking the risk of showing up in a new way without knowing the results. It requires emotional vulnerability and a willingness to face uncertainty.

You just sit in the present moment, with whatever it is you’re facing, allowing your authentic self to hold space and then inviting gratitude to join you. The minute you discover gratitude, not only does it shift your inner landscape, but it will lift your spirit as well.

At the end of the day, I believe gratitude is just love—love for self and for everyone and everything else in the universe. It’s a readiness to show up with appreciation, receive abundance, and return kindness. It’s a long game of reciprocity, allowing yourself to be moved by the world—because when you allow yourself to be that moved―you cannot help but generate gratitude, create connection, and become fully engaged in life.

In the words of my client, Robert, “If I can’t change the past and I can’t control the future, then I’m going to stay present. I will always be a thoughtful person, but only now am I not as intensely worried about stuff as I was before. It’s so freeing to discover the influence that I have over my own destiny.”

Did this post make you reconsider your own experience of gratitude? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Everyone Has Triggers. Do You React “Hot” or Respond “Cold” To Yours?

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:54:56 GMT

We’re talking about the hot-cold empathy gap.

When I met my client (in my book, Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It , I call him Bruce), he was the CMO of a Fortune 100 company and in the middle of a significant life crisis. He believed that he stood to lose everything that mattered to him, and his anger was all-consuming.

“The Hulk,” as Bruce described his shadow side, was running his life. He didn’t even know how to exist in a world where he didn’t call the shots and lead with anger. Bruce wasn’t ready to admit that his life had become untenable, and he definitely didn’t want to ask for help. Needless to say, he wasn’t entirely sold on the concept of mindfulness, either.

So much so, in fact, that our first session together was full of profanity. (Lucky for Bruce, I’m fine with cussing.)

The work to sit with and contain his anger to dig into what was underneath it changed Bruce profoundly. It turned out “The Hulk” was simply a shield—there to protect a wound that was so old and so deep, Bruce had wholly lost sight of who he really was. Underneath his anger was the pain of a desperate young boy who wanted, more than anything, to just be loved. For years, Bruce had been repressing decades-old trauma, leading to not just anger but anxiety, stress, and negativity that were impacting his life at work and at home. Something had to shift.

Bruce was trapped in what the personal development industry calls the “hot-cold empathy gap.” Think of it like this: Have you ever observed (or been, yourself) a parent trying to calm a toddler in the throes of a temper tantrum? It’s impossible. No matter how gently you ask them to calm down or how many deep breaths you take, hoping they will mirror you, very often, that tantrum just has to run its course. Once a toddler enters that full-blown-fit stage, they’re deep into a neurobiological process that has to take its time returning to a state of calm.

That tantrum, and its subsequent resolution, is the hot-cold empathy gap in action. Once the brain enters a stress response and neurological patterning begins to run its loop, you’re in it. At that point, it’s almost impossible to sit in silence and will yourself out of that loop. Once those neurons are firing, you have to ultimately devolve and deconstruct before you can return to a state of calm and review what happened—and try again.

Once on the “cold” side of the hot-cold empathy gap, you can take an objective look at your triggers and reactions, choosing to be aware of your surroundings, your cues, your triggers, and your responses the next time a similar situation arises. By fostering that awareness, you can even start to consciously create a life in which you surround yourself as much as possible with people, places, and things that support new, healthier behaviors.

In the case of Bruce, one of the first things he and I worked on was the importance of a morning routine. Before he committed to a mindfulness practice, he dreaded going to work. Looking at his phone immediately after he woke up meant he’d often start his day with stressors from work, dwelling on them as he got out of bed and prepared for his day. It set him up for stress before his day even started.

His new morning routine allowed for an earlier wakeup to create time for mindfulness, meditation, journaling, exercise, and sitting in silence. Once his morning routine became a habit, he incorporated a similar nighttime routine, focusing on gratitude journaling his thoughts on the day.

By starting with those two shifts, Bruce found himself pausing in triggering situations rather than reacting, responding in empathetic and engaging ways rather than with immediate anger. He’s become calmer and less agitated, enjoying better outcomes in every area of his life.

That traumatized young boy, desperate for love, eventually transformed into a grown man who found that love within himself.

Did this post make you think about how you respond to triggers? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Try This ONE Practice to Start Your New Year Off Right

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:52:21 GMT

Do this instead of setting a New Year’s resolution

Did you set a New Year’s resolution this year ? If you did, have you already broken it? (Never fear… you’re not alone.)

A story… When I first began to meditate, I was ALL ABOUT IT, if you know what I mean. I was really digging mindfulness. So much, in fact, that I built myself a meditation room and proceeded to fill it with every rock, crystal, bead, candle, and oil you can imagine. It was like some alchemist bookstore vomited into a little corner of my house.

I was totally lost in the aesthetics. If I was going to meditate, I had to have the right music playing, the scented candles burning, and a piece of rose quartz clutched into my palm.

I didn’t yet know that I didn’t need any of that shit. I was in the performance of meditation, rather than meditation itself, with the idea that if I appeared as though I were meditating, I would get the outcomes of meditation as well. But it doesn’t work that way.

But I was committed to my setup—even hanging a sign outside my door, decorated with a lotus flower, that read: Do Not Disturb, Meditating. Even my teenage son knew the deal: He was not to come in when I was meditating with the lotus flower sign on the door.

Then, one afternoon as I was sitting in my meditation room with the music playing and the candles burning and the crystals doing whatever it is they do—just waiting for meditation to happen—my son came through the door and began talking to me.

In an instant, I whipped my head around and yelled, “I’m f*cking meditating!” He just stood there staring at me as I turned back around and sighed heavily, my brain protesting loudly. I cannot believe he did that, I thought to myself. I’ve gotta get back into the Zen moment.

But then, my son quietly walked up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, leaned down to kiss me on the top of my head, and said, “Namaste, Mommy.” Then he walked out of the room and shut the door.

I felt like the biggest jerk in the world.

So what, you might be wondering, does that have to do with New Year’s resolutions and forming healthy habits ?

Many folks believe they have to become a member of some exclusive club to make a fundamental change in their lives—like they have to join the Meditation Club, capital M to meditate. You might think if you don’t dress or speak a certain way or light incense and use crystals, you’re not someone who meditates. (This can apply to anything—joining a gym, asking for a promotion, beginning a new business venture, pursuing a new educational opportunity, starting a new relationship, or becoming a parent. Often, we get preoccupied with performing the thing, rather than just doing it.) But that mentality has got it totally backward. It’s just another manifestation of the ego.

Truly reaping the benefits of meditation started with me making the simple decision to sit every single day, whether I wanted to or not. Sometimes I wake up, and the last thing I want to do is shut up and sit—sometimes I’m tired and feeling out of it, or the weather is cold, and I just want to curl up with a blanket and my coffee. But, through continued repetition within a theta brainwave state, I made sitting a habit—and it changed my life.

I don’t always know what’s going to come of it or if I’ll discover anything on any given day. But by showing up every day, whether I want to or not, I know the rest of my day will show up differently, too.

Healthy habits are formed—and unhealthy ones transformed—when you start showing up for yourself.

But don’t get me wrong—it’s not easy. Every day, habits dictate 40-45 percent of what you do; most of the time, folks are unaware of their habits and where they originated in the first place! This is called a “habit loop,” and by identifying yours, you’ll be able to create new routines that will lead to new, healthier habits. (And you might even stick to your New Year’s resolution.)

A habit loop works like this: You’re just going about your day when you’re struck with a craving. Usually, this craving is for a feeling, but identifying that takes some pretty serious internal excavation. More often than not, cravings present as the desire for a giant cheeseburger or a shopping spree at your favorite shoe store or an extra-large martini at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. You have to dig pretty deep to realize that a Big Mac™ or new Louboutin’s are a stand-in for happiness or fulfillment. Nonetheless, your craving produces a behavior.

That behavior becomes your habit.

When it comes to habits, most people only think of two elements: The craving and the behavior that attempts to satisfy that craving. In fact, the most critical aspect of any habit—and your ability to change it—comes before your craving even begins?

The most fundamental component of any habit loop (your built-in trigger-reward response) is the stimulus that cues your craving in the first place. That cue is the thing that happens before the trigger. But here’s the critical part: You cannot identify that cue from your conscious mind.

That’s where mindfulness comes in—you begin to wake up and, on a consciousness level, become more aware of the stories you tell yourself and the habits they generate. The more aware you are, the more data and information you can identify and process, the more you understand about yourself and your patterns, the more agency you have over changing them.

So, HOW ARE HABITS CHANGED , then? Try the following fill-in-the-blank exercise.

When ______________________, (CUE) I will ______________________ (ROUTINE) because it provides me with ______________________ (REWARD).

First, notice what’s going on with the habit you want to change. For example, your fill-in-the-blank might look something like this:

When John mentioned the “guys trip” he wanted to take over the holidays, I gave him the silent treatment for the rest of the evening because it provided me with feelings of power and control around my insecurities about our marriage.

It can be tough to get that honest with yourself. But the second step is a lot more fun—I promise.

Once you’re clear on what’s driving your unhealthy habit, make a plan for what you’ll do to change it. For example…

The next time I’m feeling insecure about my marriage, I will sign up for my favorite spin class because it will provide me with a healthy space to clear my mind before having a conversation with John.

Arriving at a place where you can be consciously honest and self-aware enough to complete the above exercise requires a practice of shutting up and sitting. Just like going to the gym to work out the muscles in your body, you have to sit every day to learn to work your mindfulness muscle as well.

Once the process starts to take form, you’ll become aware of the behaviors needed to change your habit—and it won’t happen on the first try. Changing a pattern takes a commitment to repetition until you’ve replaced the old habit’s neural pathway with a new one. But as you begin to notice what healthy behaviors need to replace unhealthy ones, you will develop a new working model for your life. You’ll see yourself as a change agent in your new story and discover increased alignment in your life. But it starts with showing up to your life in a different way, rewiring your habits, and enjoying the healing outcomes you create.

Did this post inspire you to tackle your habits in a new way? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

The Health Impacts of Anger Can Be Devastating. Take These 3 Steps the Next Time You’re Triggered

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:47:35 GMT

Everyone gets angry… But mindfulness can help.

This week, I want to introduce you to a client of mine—in my book, Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It, we call him Thomas—and before meeting with me, Thomas knew a thing or two about anger.

Before beginning mindfulness training, Thomas felt trapped in a constant state of mental chaos. He described his life as a horse race where the starting bell had rung, the gates opened, and the horses take off around a track—except Thomas. Thomas was the jockey whose gate was stuck. He was primed to move, but he couldn’t.

As the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Thomas constantly juggled a competing list of demands, whether looking for the next opportunity, growing his business, or dealing with employees. He was frustrated by his desire to grow, but his sense that the people he’d employed and collaborated with to support him were only holding him back. When something didn’t go the way he’d hoped or planned, he got angry. Really angry.

Our first training sessions together were about awareness. Together, Thomas and I talked about how he interacted with other people and how his energy impacted others. When faced with an issue in his company, he responded with anger and aggression—so much so that in one instance, his c-suite team stopped responding to his messages altogether.

Through mindfulness, Thomas realized NOBODY would want to respond to an angry person if they could avoid it. He began to explore how he could show up differently the next time a challenge arose, to get a different response from his team. The next time they had a problem that needed to be addressed, instead of saying, Why aren’t you taking care of this? Thomas simply said: I see this is happening. What can you tell me about this? By simple tweaks to his communication style, Thomas invited his employees into a conversation instead of forcing them to respond to an attack.

He learned that how he showed up determined the outcomes of any given situation—because as a leader, how he showed up significantly impacted the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of those around him. By not showing up as his best self, he wasn’t inviting anyone else to show up as their best selves either. As a self-described “Type A personality,” Thomas had a tendency to launch directly into action the moment a problem arose. Mindfulness showed him a different path—that slowing down enabled him to take more considerate, intentional actions.

He also learned to see what those around him could do better than he could, delegate, and ultimately take better care of himself. He went from leading meetings from the back corner of the conference room to sitting at the head of the table. He started showing up as the best version of himself—someone who didn’t respond to every stimulus with anger.

The health impacts of anger are far-reaching and can often be disastrous. Anger causes high levels of stress that strain your physical health over time. But for as many people who report experiencing high levels of anger, most of us don’t know nearly enough about it. Check out the data below:

More than one in ten people say that they have trouble controlling their anger.
More than one in four people say that they worry about how angry they sometimes feel.
One in five people say they have ended a relationship or friendship with someone because of their behavior when angry.
64 percent of people either strongly agree or agree that people, in general, are getting angrier.
Fewer than one in seven of those people who say they have trouble controlling their anger have sought help for their anger problems.
58 percent of people wouldn’t know where to seek help if they needed help with an anger problem.

Here’s the thing: everyone gets angry sometimes. While you may not be able to avoid anger all the time, you can use mindfulness techniques to better understand your anger triggers and symptoms and how to express your anger in healthy ways . The next time you find yourself overcome with anger, try to pause and ask yourself some of the questions below.

Step 1: Check in with your body.

Do you have any physical pain as a result of your anger? If so, what hurts?
Take a moment to look at your reflection. Do you notice any differences in your face? Are your eyes dilated, and is your face red?
Pay attention to your muscles. Are they tense? Are you clenching your fists? Are your shoulders down and relaxed or raised and stiff? Can you take time to perform a mental body scan, noting every area in your body where you’re holding tension?
Tune into your breathing and your heartbeat. Are you having a hard time catching your breath? Is your heart beating faster than usual?
How’s your adrenaline? Do you feel a sudden burst of energy?
Are you having gastrointestinal problems?

Step 2: Check in with your mind.

What has caused you to be angry?
What are some of the feelings and thoughts you are having because of the situation?
Why does the situation make you angry? Could there be any other reasons besides the obvious? Think about your relationship and past experiences with the person.
What are some ways you can make this situation better and avoid this in the future?

Step 3: Understanding your triggers.

What triggered your anger in this particular situation?
Do you have any idea why this might be a trigger for you?
How do you feel about your triggers?

Being able to spot triggers—recognizing why certain situations trigger you and how they make you think and feel—will help you realize when you should implement your anger management techniques. During times of high stress, when you start to become angry, you can begin to manage your discomfort by taking a pause to assess your situation.

Practice mindfulness around your anger often enough, and you’ll be amazed at how your relationship to anger changes. You might even wind up like Thomas—living your life from the head of the table instead of the corner of the room.

Did this post teach you anything new about your relationship with anger? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

9 Practices for Reducing Stress and Living Your Best Life

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:43:15 GMT

Human evolution includes a long history of stress…

Years ago, my son was born prematurely and spent some time in the NICU. One afternoon, soon after I finally brought him home, I was sitting in a little house on the Texas military base where my husband was stationed at the time, and out-of-the-blue, I was smacked in the face with debilitating fear. I looked at the tiny human in my arms and suddenly had a full-blown freak-out. My mind went from that moment when I was holding him, all the way to the realization that I would die one day, and then my son would die, and everyone we ever knew would die at some point too.

We’re all going to die, I thought to myself. I can’t do this.

At that moment, trying to imagine every aspect of my son’s life and every part of my own, I experienced the worst panic attack of my life. I stood up, set my son down in his crib, and went running to the neighbor’s house. Pounding on the door, I shouted, “I can’t do this! I can’t do this!”

This woman, who barely knew me at all, ended up calling my husband at work, and he came home. My mind was chaos. I was taking on my son’s entire life, my entire life, and all the lives of everyone around us in one single moment.

I believed that if I could only figure out how it would all unfold, we’d all be okay. In doing so, I was making myself crazy.

Now my son is in his twenties, and honestly, thank goodness I didn’t know every aspect of the future—I’m grateful it unfolded one moment at a time.

But we all do this in different ways, right? We think if we only knew the answers to all the questions or could anticipate precisely what will happen when or knew every single thing the future held for us and everyone else, we could protect ourselves from pain. We fill our present with stress and worry about our future to avoid future stress and worry.

Every day you probably face multiple, stressful demands in your life that lead to overwhelm, anxiety, or even anger. Believe it or not, the human body is hardwired to react to stress in these ways.

Evolutionary psychology says that stress reactions helped protect prehistoric humans against threats from predators and other aggressors. But while we might not be running from sabertooth tigers or wooly mammoths anymore (at least, not often), that doesn’t mean our lives have become stress-free. Stress—whether the predator is a four-legged one or your email inbox—is a part of the human experience.

When you perceive a threat—for instance, a large dog barks at you during your morning walk—a tiny region at the base of your brain, called your hypothalamus, sounds an alarm in your body. This alarm system prompts your adrenal glands to release a surge of stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, through a combination of nerve and hormonal signals. Adrenaline increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure, and boosts energy supplies—the kind needed to outrun a prehistoric predator. Cortisol increases sugars in your bloodstream, enhances your brain’s use of glucose, alters your immune system responses, and suppresses your digestive system, reproductive system, and growth processes.

This complex natural alarm system also communicates with regions of your brain that control mood, motivation, and fear. The body’s stress response system was designed to be self-limiting. Once a perceived threat has passed, hormone levels return to normal. You take some breaths, and you move on with your life.

But the human body’s prehistoric stress response hasn’t evolved in correspondence to the pace of modern life. YOU might cognitively understand it’s your ringing cell phone that’s ruining your day, but your brain still operates as though every ping is a deadly predator.

When stressors (like your inbox) are ever-present, you constantly feel under attack, and your fight or flight reaction is always on. The long-term activation of the stress-response system and the subsequent overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can disrupt almost all of your body’s processes. This overexposure puts you at increased risk for numerous health problems, including heart disease, digestive issues, trouble sleeping, weight gain, anxiety, depression, and memory and concentration impairment.

Recent studies show that 77 % of people regularly experience physical symptoms caused by stress, and 73% regularly experience psychological symptoms caused by stress.

33% of people report living with extreme stress, while 48% feel their stress has increased in the last 5 years—and this data was collected BEFORE the global pandemic of 2020!

48% of people report lying awake at night because of stress, while 54% report stress causes them to fight with others. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As humans, most of us are frantic to get away from the feeling of stress. We do everything we can to try to escape it—we hate the feeling, and so many of us think that we’ll feel better if we can just avoid it. But we can’t escape stress. Instead, we have to harness our power to take charge of it.

By identifying your stress triggers, you become more aware of when stress threatens to take control. Then you’re better prepared to take care of yourself physically and emotionally, filing a toolbox with stress-management strategies BEFORE stress responses kick in. For example…

Eat a healthy diet, get regular exercise, and get plenty of sleep.
Practice yoga, relaxation techniques, or learn to meditate.
Foster healthy friendships.
Have a sense of humor and try to laugh often.
Seek professional counseling when needed. If you feel that your stress is out of control, consult with your physician or health coach.
Try meditation. As little as five-to-ten minutes of daily meditation has been proven to help the brain make new and better pathways and connections.
Practice yoga, which combines many necessary activities that reduce stress, including exercise, body movement, and meditation. Take a class at a local studio or gym, or find a free video on YouTube.
Practice deep breathing, an integral part of meditation practice. Taking deep breaths just five to seven times throughout the day delivers benefits. Simply pause, reflect, and take a few deep breaths every few hours or before and after meals to calm your nervous system.
Practice positivity and gratitude by making an effort to think kind thoughts about your life and be grateful throughout the day. Positivity fuels you with natural chemicals that decrease your level of stress. Speak positive messages to yourself and others, or consider keeping a gratitude journal.

Instead of viewing stress as the thing that will destroy your health and ultimately kill you, what if we all started looking at our stress as an invitation to become healthier in body, mind, and spirit. What if your stress responses are an invitation from your body to transform? What if you thought of stress as the survival mechanism evolved to be instead of the fallout of negative stimuli? You might just lessen its power.

Did this post make you reconsider your relationship with stress? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Feeling Frazzled? One of These 15 Daily Awareness Practices Can Help

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:34:00 GMT

Plus, there’s science behind the success of each one…

As a child, did you ever do that science project designed to test the effects of music on plants? In the experiment, each student is assigned two little sprouts to care for. The experiment consists of playing music for one plant but not the other. Typically, the plant that enjoyed Mozart’s greatest hits (or, say, Brittany Spears’ breakout album, on repeat) always grew more than the plant that just received sunlight and water.

Both plants probably grew, but only one flourished.

Why is that?

Let’s dive in by returning to our favorite formula: Intention + Attention = Manifestation . When it came to the plants, the intention was for them to grow and flourish. But things changed when testing the plants’ growth under differing conditions. While both plants received a regular dose of attention to maintenance, the plant for which music was played likely received extra attention that carried a higher energy level. (Whether you knew it as a kid or not, as the music-playing experimenter, you were also holding an intention of loving-kindness for the plant, whereas, with the other plant, you likely just performed basic, routine care.

It wasn’t the musical notes alone that manifested the change. The energy of additional loving-kindness YOU brought to the space with intention and attention had an influence too. (Yes, you are so powerful you can make plants grow with your mind.)

Japanese businessman and author Dr. Masaru Emoto performed a similar study of his own, titled Water, Consciousness, and Intent , which basically expands upon the ideas of that childhood experiment, using water molecules. His research demonstrated that human thought has the power to change the molecular structure of water.

We know that thoughts are mental units of energy. Some studies have shown that emotions can radiate up to five feet from the body . Dr. Emoto took this information and applied it to crystalized water . While in liquid form, he assigned different words to water taken from the same pond specimen. Once frozen, the water that was given positive words crystalized into beautiful designs. The water that received negative words either didn’t crystalize or crystalized into an amorphous mess.

Let’s assume, though controversial, that Dr. Emoto’s research was on to something. Now consider the fact that the human body is made up of 60 percent water. If positive and negative energy can transform plain pond water, imagine what they can do to all the cells and tissues in our body. Consider the power our thoughts and feelings have over our general health and well-being!

Everything we encounter in the world carries energy, and all that energy emits different vibrational frequencies. When we have a thought or set an intention, it physically radiates out into the world around us, impacting people, things, future possibilities, and us—all through the power of thought.

So, how can we all become the flourishing plant or the beautifully crystallized water? Through present-moment mindfulness, of course. Try one of these daily awareness practices the next time you’re feeling a little wilted—you’ll be amazed by the power they hold.

Mentally scan your body, starting with the crown of your head and moving down towards the soles of your feet, noting the sensations in different parts of your body without judgment.
Focus your attention on your breathing, zeroing in on how your body experiences the function of breathing in your nostrils, lungs, or abdomen. How does breath arrive differently in each of these areas?
Tune into bodily sensations or sounds as they arise. What does a hungry body feel and sound like, compared to a sleepy body, compared to a satiated one? Try to be present with each sound and sensation for as long as it occurs.
Imagine yourself as an outside observer of yourself as you consider your thoughts and emotions. Can you watch them arise and then recede? Can you offer yourself compassion for what you’re experiencing?
Tune into the external soundscape around you. Try to identify individual sounds within the noise of your setting. Let one sound come to the forefront of your hearing, then allow it to fade into the background as you invite something different into your consciousness.
Focus your thoughts, noticing any time you think an “I am” thought. Don’t like the inner monologue you have with yourself? Replace it. Try “I am” statements like: I am loving; I am kind; I am strong. Notice how your external experience changes as your inner one does.
Try a compassion mindset. Bring yourself into a sense of kindness for yourself or anyone else who might enter your consciousness in the present moment.
Try a kindness mindset. Set an intention of kindness that you first offer to yourself, then others. Begin sending a kind intention to your loved ones, then consider neutral people to you, and finally, offer kindness to those who are difficult. Engaging with this practice in a meditation setting will support your ability to offer kindness in real-time, off the meditation cushion.
Try forgiveness. Forgive yourself for being human, experiencing things beyond your control, and struggling with factors like genetic makeup, the neurological wiring of your brain, cultural differences, and social norms.
Don’t just think kind thoughts; say them aloud—whether you’re in the presence of others or not. Your words and language have power.
Take a purposeful pause. Try setting an alarm several times a day as a reminder to take a fifteen or thirty-second pause. In those pauses, notice what thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations are present. In your mind, say “yes” to each—letting you know you’re enough as you are, in every present moment.
Have an email strategy. (This might sound silly, but I promise it will change your daily life!) Develop a personal protocol for responding versus reacting to emails or any other media through which others can get in touch with you. For example, a simple post-it stuck to your computer that says: “Give yourself 24 hours to respond.”
Use driving as a time to tune in. The next time you’re in your car, turn off the radio and steady your wandering mind. Pay attention to any physical sensations of being in the car and driving. Notice the particular details of your route—especially if it’s one you travel frequently. What can you pay attention to that usually goes unnoticed by your conscious mind?
Tie mindfulness to mundane daily tasks. Pick one daily task, like washing dishes or brushing your teeth, and stay fully present in the direct experience of the task. Note when your mind wanders and gently bring yourself back to your direct experience.
Pay close attention the next time someone is speaking to you. Whether personal or professional, behave as though paying attention is the most fundamental expression of love or respect in your relationships. Stay fully present in the direct flow of energy and information, pulling yourself back to the other person’s words and expressions whenever your mind might begin to wander.

As you dig deeper into each of these practices, discover how you connect (or don’t) to each one. Don’t just focus on the narrative you tell yourself about the practice, but rather tune into the ways your body, mind, and soul connect to the practice and one another. I believe the space you create on your mat (or wherever you sit in silence with yourself) is the most sacred, holy space that anyone could ever be present and in communion with their most authentic self and others.

In other words, it’s worth the effort.

Which daily awareness practice are you eager to try first? I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Hate Meditating? One of These 5 Common Culprits Might Be the Cause

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 01:21:19 GMT

Shutting up and sitting is so much more than shutting up and sitting…

What I’m about to say might surprise you, but…

I have a problem with meditation .

I know, I KNOW! Me—the person constantly reminding you to shut up and sit has a problem with shutting up and sitting. At least, sort of.

If you’ve ever begun a meditation practice, only to realize that meditation “just isn’t for you,” you’re not alone. Of the countless forms of meditation to choose from, many folks just don’t resonate with the practice. I get it—meditation is hard! It can be scary. And boring. And there’s always something on Netflix you could be watching instead.

In fact, a 2014 study at Oxford researched the five most common reasons people don’t meditate . Believe it or not, I’ve heard them all before and more.

Difficulty learning meditation.
Here’s the scene: you’re wearing your Lululemons and sitting on the cushion. All the lights are off, your Nag Champa incense is dropping ash all over your Berber rug, and the only thought running through your mind is: What the actual f**k am I’m doing here? You feel ridiculous. The idea you have about the “kind of person who meditations” and the image you have of yourself don’t align. That’s the end of that.
Trouble experiencing the “self.”
If you’d rather undergo dental surgery than answer the question: Who am I? you’re not alone. Most people don’t have any idea how to begin to answer that question, let know what it’s like to truly live their lives present with the experience of their most authentic selves. If the idea of sitting in silence with such wildly existential a concept is uncomfortable, overwhelming, or downright panic-inducing, of course, you’re going to quit before you even begin.
Psychological problems can be exacerbated.
So much of mindfulness is about learning to sit with your own suffering—something Western culture and the average human being, in general, will do practically anything to avoid. When you begin to meditate, one of the first things that can happen is all the feelings you’ve been avoiding and repressing suddenly start to bubble up and boil over. And that HURTS.
Your reality is challenged.
Whatever it is you do and whoever it is you believe you are—a business owner, a boss, a spouse, a parent, a son or daughter, a leader—mindfulness asks you to examine who you are when you aren’t any of those things. For many people, that thought can be utterly terrifying.
The problem of subjective happiness.
It’s nearly impossible to quantify joy on any universal level . Many people confuse other feelings—like relief, comfort, happiness, ecstasy, or intoxication—for joy and don’t even know how genuine joy feels. It’s entirely subjective. Every person who touts the success of their sitting practice will be experiencing something different from it because every psyche is unique.

The good news is if you believe meditation will improve your life (if only you could get it to stick!) and you’re committed to nurturing a sitting practice, I’ve got an easy technique for you to try whenever one of the above challenges completely derails your plan—and it’s something you can practice anytime, anywhere, both on and off the meditation cushion.

When faced with one of the struggles above—or any challenge, for that matter—instead of giving up on your practice or resorting to one of your less-than-healthy coping skills, pause and ask yourself this simple question: Can I sit with this discomfort for just one breath? Can I sit with it for five breaths? What about a minute?

At the core of all suffering are lessons and opportunities for growth. By breaking your discomfort down into small, breath-by-breath moments, you’ll protect yourself from taking all your suffering on, all at once, while offering yourself sustainable, incremental ways to grow and evolve your practice. Maybe the first time you try this technique, you’ll only be able to withstand two breaths. Hey, that’s great!

Next time, try three.

Which of the above “problems” with meditation resonates most with you? What would your meditation practice look like if you didn’t struggle with that “problem”? I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

What’s the Big Deal with Mindfulness, Anyway?

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 01:16:57 GMT

Can mindfulness REALLY be the key to total transformation?

If you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit and want to dive even deeper, our online community-based courses are open NOW! Head over to our Community Course page [suascommunity.com] to choose from three levels of our online “inner MBA,” where you’ll practice integrative and mindful Mastery of your Behaviors and Aspirations. (Psst… there’s even a free version!) If you’re ready for the ultimate support in breaking free from the limiting beliefs holding you back in life, JOIN US NOW .

In the work that I do, I’m often asked the question: Why mindfulness?

In other words, of all the things someone might try to heal, grow, rewire their limiting beliefs , transform their relationships, and overhaul their life, why this one practice?

The research on mindfulness —committing to a regular and consistent practice of shutting up and sitting—shows that it allows you to reduce stress, manage anxiety, fight addictions, improve sleep and control. It promotes emotional health and enhances self-awareness, decreases heart rate and blood pressure, reduces memory loss, and can even lengthen your attention span.

Some studies even show mindfulness helps generate kindness , compassion, and equanimity.

But despite any detailed studies or fancy terminology, mindfulness is nothing more than shutting up and sitting down to look within yourself and pay attention to yourself inside a meditative experience. It’s a practice that allows you to cultivate a relationship with yourself in which you connect with your wisdom and learn to live from your most authentic truth.

Let me demonstrate with a story…

At the beginning of 2021, over nine months into a global pandemic and in need of a change of scenery, I traveled to Monticello, Virginia, for a three-day silent, solo meditation retreat. When I arrived at my lemongrass-infused cottage, with a pre-planned retreat schedule provided by my meditation teacher in hand, I was determined to retreat “right.”

In other words, I was determined to prove what a badass I was at wellness.

I have spent my career in health and wellness, first as a personal trainer and currently as a consciousness coach and consultant and the author of Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It. Really, I was only competing against myself.

On the first day of my retreat, from sunup to sundown, my schedule alternated between 30 minutes of sitting and 15 minutes of stretching, with two hour-long yoga practices in the morning and evening, one mid-day walk, and brief meals. I completed everything on the schedule one practice at a time, leaving satisfied little checkmarks next to each as I went: The sitting, the stretching, the yoga, the walk, the meals; repeat.

I am excellent at this, I thought to myself. Look at me go.

But by mid-morning on Day Two, my enthusiasm was starting to wane. Devoid of Wi-Fi, reliable cell service, or another human being to even glance at, I was itching for something—anything—to keep me motivated.

In my luggage, I’d packed a meditation headband that advertised benefits like promoting calm, increasing focus, improving sleep, and boosting the quality and control of your meditation practice—basically everything that meditation is designed to do, but up-leveled by a futuristic gadget and color-coordinated charts courtesy of a cell phone app. Resting the little black halo across my forehead and tucking two of its seven EEG sensors behind each ear, I began yet another 30-minute sit. After all, if meditating is replenishing and reenergizing, meditating while measuring five of my brainwaves in real-time—gamma, beta, alpha, theta, and delta—was bound to be even better.

There is a lot about the impacts of mindfulness and meditation that we still don’t understand—particularly in the global West. From 1970 to 2010, there were only around 200 studies on meditation conducted by Western researchers. Then, in 2019 alone, scientists conducted over 1000. There is evidence that mindfulness impacts human brainwaves, changing how we relate to our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, changing how we relate to the world. Yet, we have learned just enough to know we’ve only scratched the surface.

The terms “mindfulness” and “meditation” are often used interchangeably, but they are hardly the same; mindfulness is a form of meditation, but mindfulness is only one practice, while there are hundreds of different meditation practices. If you are brand new to either, at first glance, the breadth and depth of meditation practices can seem not only overwhelming but downright terrifying.

So, if you have ever begun a meditation practice, only feel that meditation “just isn’t for you,” you’re not alone. Studies on meditation have shown that people do not sit in still silence and learn to connect with themselves because it can be painful. In the beginning, all that awareness can even exacerbate any suffering or trauma. A 2014 study at Oxford researched the most common reasons people do not stick with a meditation practice. In addition to the potential exacerbation of trauma, they include things like difficulty learning meditation, trouble experiencing “the self,” challenged reality and the subjectivity of happiness.

That’s why I recommend mindfulness meditation as a more accessible, relatable, and enjoyable practice than the catch-all, wildly diverse array of techniques that “meditation” encompasses.

Unlike many other forms of meditation, the purpose of mindfulness is not to empty your mind or get one step closer to reaching enlightenment. By paying closer attention to yourself—asking questions like How do I really feel right now? Why did I just say that to that person? or Where did I learn this belief?—you can significantly increase your self-awareness. With that increased awareness, you can see more—and more objectively—more honestly assess what’s going on within and outside of yourself in any given situation and live your life with better clarity, truth, and authenticity. It’s a practice that allows you to cultivate a deeper and more honest relationship with yourself, in which you can connect with your wisdom and learn to live your truth into the world.

Mindfulness isn’t about accomplishing or achieving or reaching anything—it’s simply about noticing. It’s about paying attention, getting to know and understand your true self, so you can be your true self. That’s it.

So, if you’re one of the many who are searching for something—even if you’re not totally sure what that something is yet—and didn’t find it in meditation, you’re not alone. Just consider mindfulness instead.

Now, as it turned out, the meditation headband was pretty cool.

Except if you happen to be utterly alone in the Virginia woods on a silent meditation retreat.

Taking constant measurements, my headband cheerily recorded how many minutes my brain was active, neutral, and calm, rewarding each relaxed state by emitting a gentle bird chirp. After my headband-assisted sit, I could not wait to dive into the data. 179 instances of active brain activity and 63 bird chirps, it read.

That wasn’t going to do it for me.

Shifting directly into a judging mindset, I started to give myself a pep talk. I just have to meditate harder, I thought. I need more birds. I am better than 63. Over and over, I sat for 30-minute meditations, listening intently and practically willing the headband to chirp. Over and over, my results left much to be desired: 72 chirps, then 54, 58, 61, 67. I finally got so frustrated I tossed the headband onto my meditation cushion and, fuming, left the cabin to hit a trail.

As I walked, the voice of my inner critic walked with me. You’ve been doing this work for so long, she said. You should be better than this—better than 63 measly chirps.

Suddenly, trudging along, something caught my attention. I looked up and found myself in a gorgeous little clearing in the woods, deep in the Blue Mountains. Pausing, I stopped to take in my surroundings.

I had never heard so many birds chirping in my life.

They were everywhere, flitting from tree branch to tree branch, hopping along the earth, singing with their entire bodies, and taking little notice of my presence. I sat down right there on the chilly January ground, in the middle of it all.

It was as though the universe were saying: “You don’t need to make the birds chirp. That’s not what you’re here for. I take care of that.”

That is what mindfulness is all about.

*A version of this blog post first appeared as an article in Say AMOMĒ, a site dedicated to holistic wellness, particularly amid a global pandemic. You can find the original article, Which Form Of Meditation Is Right For You? here: https://sayamome.com/blog/struggling-with-meditation-try-mindfulness-instead .

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These 3 Easy Mind Exercises Can Lead to Total Transformation

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 01:11:04 GMT

It’s all about training your brain…

In 2012, my mom and I decided to enroll in a weekend workshop with Deepak Chopra in La Jolla, California.

It was just ninety-eight other people and us in a room with Deepak for four days. At the end of each session, people inundated him with requests for selfies or one-on-one time. He always said no.

On the last day of the workshop, I left a session and went to sit alone in the sunny courtyard behind the building. I was working through some painful feelings and looking for someplace to sit down and collect my thoughts.

At the height of my career, I still drank every day, and my marriage was about to end. I didn’t know it at the time, but my ego was driving everything I did.

I’d spent the last decade standing at the front of rooms, building a career telling other people what to do but never figuring out who I needed to be. That had never been more clear to me than it was sitting in that courtyard.

As I sat in the sun, I found myself sending out a last-ditch prayer out to the universe. I was filled with the knowledge that I needed to commit to transforming my life. I’m going to do it, I said to myself. This is it. I’m moving to the next level.

I had no idea what that promise meant or the amount of work it would require of me.

But the minute I finished my prayer, the back door to the courtyard opened, and out walked Deepak Chopra.

We spent a few minutes talking while he waited for his car to pick him up, and by the end of our conversation, he’d invited me to come study with him. And I said yes.

Still, just weeks after I got home from the workshop, my marriage ended. I had a complete breakdown on the deepest level of my being—filled with the darkest pain that I could ever imagine any human being having to go through. I confronted, head-on, my shadow self and began unpacking a lifetime of trauma, patterned beliefs, and destructive behaviors.

I started going to therapy and then hypnotherapy. I took a year off from work to do nothing but read. In the midst of it all, I kept reminding myself I’d made a commitment. I wasn’t stopping until I got to the other side—wherever that was.

I began learning to integrate the things I had experienced into my entire life in a healthier and nuanced way. I worked through trauma and began to feel more in alignment.

But my whole psyche had to be deconstructed and rebuilt, my limiting beliefs rewired , and my self-talk transformed. It took over six years to begin to step into that space of self-actualization—to finally let go of all the things that were limiting me.

Now, I’m not necessarily advocating for stopping right now, exactly where you are, and dismantling your entire life. (Unless, you know, that speaks to you. You know yourself best.) But if you’re interested in beginning the work of training your mind and transforming your life, there are a few things you can consider.

Commit to one practice that incorporates ten minutes of mindfulness into your life each day.
Start to challenge yourself to be more mindful and aware of how you are thinking. For example, as yourself: Do I generally think more positive thoughts or negative ones?
Identify one new mindfulness resource you would like to implement into your daily or weekly routine.

As you explore the questions and challenges above, remember that repetition is one of the key ways to change a belief. You’ve got to start by picking a routine—however small, to start—and committing. I begin my day with meditation practice and time to journal. I write out affirmations, the things I’m grateful for, even mantras. (Pro tip: Writing is an excellent way to repattern beliefs because the physical act of writing fires neurons in your brain that help to create new pathways. The repetition of writing gets patterned into your brain until you can recall your new thoughts, even in moments of stress or chaos.)

Every morning I also wake up and high-five the universe. (Yep, in my pajamas and everything.) Because today, it feels like a miracle to be where I am. It is a miracle that demanded some of the most challenging work a person can do—but a miracle nonetheless.

Have you identified one step you can take today to incorporate more mindfulness into your life? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

These 3 Mindfulness Strategies Will Redefine Your Definition of ‘Success’

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 01:06:43 GMT

What if you’ve misunderstood what it takes to be successful all along?

When an Eastern philosophy like mindfulness becomes globalized, there’s a tendency—particularly in Western cultures—to feel like we’re doing it “wrong.” This is true of practically everything—the sense that we must live up to an ideal standard in all that we do. But, of all the places to seek success via perfection, mindfulness is the LAST.

While the drive to achieve success can be inspired by feelings like passion, love, and commitment, all too often, folks operate from a belief system limited by perfectionism and “not-enoughness.” On the other hand, mindfulness is all about cultivating a mindset of “enoughness” —precisely as you are, right now. In other words: not perfect.

What I’m about to say might blow your mind, but… You do not need to be perfect to be “successful.”

You just need to be YOU.

That’s where mindfulness can help.

Ask yourself this: What if “success” meant nothing more than your ability to remove all the barriers that prevent you from fully embracing and experiencing the present moment? What if you believed that the forces around you were working together in service to your highest benefit?

How might the way you live your life and how you work to achieve success change?

Once you begin operating from the belief that the definition of success is the ability to remove all barriers preventing you from fully embracing and experiencing the present moment, you’ll discover there are only three critical strategies for achieving success.

Yep. Just three.

Start by awakening to your highest potential.
Most people barely understand the true nature of their highest potential, let alone how to awaken it. Often, standing in the way are lifelong beliefs around fear of rejection and low self-worth. Don’t waste time asking yourself: Who am I to be great? Instead, consider: who are you NOT to be?
Celebrate your life as it is in the present moment.
Most people who cling to their suffering do so out of familiarity and a subconscious sense of identity. So many of us don’t celebrate our lives because we’re too busy putting our pain on a pedestal. But what if everything in your life is happening FOR you, instead of TO you? Celebrate the “is-ness” of that—accepting and embracing what your life is right now.
Prioritize doing what brings you joy.
Far too many folks I know have a hard time grasping what genuine joy feels like, let alone how to achieve it in the first place. Too often, we confuse joy with things like cocktails, some random person on social media telling us all the things we want to hear, or achieving a huge promotion that requires us to sacrifice every other area of our life outside of work. But put simply, joy is—and only ever is—the highest vibration on the Emotional Guidance Scale. It must be generated from INSIDE of you, not outside.

The idea is that awakening to your highest potential, celebrating your life as it is in every moment, and centering what brings you joy lead to being completely and unequivocally present. In that case, let’s take the true definition of success one step further—beyond just removing the barriers that lead to complete and total presence.
What if the definition of success is as simple as experiencing joy?

Did this post make you think differently about your definition of success? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

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These Are The 10 Energetic Shifts of Belief Change

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 01:00:18 GMT

Aka: the physics of changing your mind.

Anytime you’re seeking a shift in your life—be it a pesky habit or a pivotal belief, something minor or seismic—there’s going to be a shift in your energy . I’m not just talking about the power that propels you out of bed in the morning or gets you through that last mile on the treadmill (although your alertness and physical stamina might be impacted too.)

But I’m talking about energy changing on a physics and metaphysics level.

There’s a formula that captures this shift perfectly:

Intention + Attention = Manifestation

In other words, the intention you’re setting (or goal you’re aspiring to, or commitment you’re making) generates the activation energy required to create the change you want to make. When it comes to changing your beliefs, the intention you set and the activity you attend to should correspond to the results you want to see in your life—the belief you want to fall away and the one you want to nurture to replace it. The energy you put into both your intention (the idea you want to change) and the attention (the work you do to rewrite your belief) have to be in alignment, focused on your goal of belief change and what is necessary for you to get you closer to it.

Sound a little too “woo” for you? Think again. These are fundamental energetic shifts you must go through, and they occur on a physics level. Consider all the energy that went into building your beliefs in the first place. Over time, these physical and metaphysical changes took place in your body and mind to imbed a particular idea into your subconsciousness. In a way, you must reverse that process to evoke change, walking yourself back through each belief building block to dismantle it and build something new.

It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible either.

There are ten energetic shift processes to belief change —and like it or not, you can’t skip ’em.

Centration
As you begin to radically change your beliefs, practice centering activities to ground yourself as the center of your reality. Changing your beliefs includes evolving your belief-building process to operate from a grounded center.
Allurement
Once centered in your reality, you’ll attract things that you already are or develop sensitivities to things that exist on new vibrations or different frequencies from what you’ve been used to—and you need these to grow and evolve. Get curious and ask yourself: Is this where I want to be, or do I want a different experience?
Emergence
Understanding and addressing any latent thoughts and ideas within you is required to emerge and expand into a larger universe. When these beliefs start to make themselves known to your conscious mind, begin to ask: What if? I wonder what life could look like if…? Consider: What do I want to do on this Earth?
Homeostasis
It can be all too easy to build a norm around asking yourself questions and forgetting to actually answer them. Homeostasis is the process of organizing and maintaining the new behaviors and values you have acquired with your new beliefs, resulting in a new level of consciousness. Through homeostasis, you can reach a new level of consciousness. If the beliefs you hold here are healthy, you can hang out in the space of homeostasis for a while—maybe for the rest of your life.
Cataclysm
A cataclysm is precisely what it sounds like: the breakdown of old energy and habits necessary to lead to a breakthrough. You must dismantle and dissolve old energy and patterns to change them. Nearly everyone experiences some type of cataclysm, whether in habits or health, family dynamics, friendships and other relationships, in one’s career or finances. Cataclysm is where you arrive at the seat of your suffering—and it’s also where most people return to the old familiar, fighting to maintain their homeostasis. Cataclysm is the place where mindfulness and the willingness to sit in silence―even when it’s filled with suffering—is more crucial than ever. If you’re able to sit in silence for even just one or two minutes, you’ll begin to realize your suffering is a path, not a roadblock.
Synergy
This is when you’ll begin to discover mutually enhancing relationships being created in your life. In other words, the universe will provide the people, teachers, and other resources you need to protect and guide you on the other side of the cataclysm. Once you’re through the breakdown, new particles and energy frequencies come together to guide you into a new level of awareness.
Transmutation
Transmutation requires the significant inner change that leads to real growth and evolution towards a new belief system. The energetic shift of transmutation is how all changes occur over time. Once synergy starts, transmutation occurs. The transmutation of energy allows you to let go of the thoughts that no longer serve you, creating space where you can begin to put new beliefs in place.
Transformation
Transformation is recognizing having changed on an individual level, which ultimately leads to change on a universal level of consciousness. As you personally being to transform, you begin to transform your entire reality too. Your outer world begins to reflect your inner shifts.
Care
It’s essential to participate in activities that nurture and honor your growth and evolution through the energetic shift processes. Allow yourself to tend to and care for the new energy you’ve generated.
Radiance
In physics, when energy shifts, the light released is called radiance. Radiance is light released from inside you, entirely generated by your new beliefs. In radiance, you enter into resonance with the entire universe. Your new belief system creates a radiance that others can sense. (And seriously, who doesn’t want to radiate light and joy?)

Diving into these energetic shifts is where the quantum physics or mindfulness practices really starts to become apparent. Mindfulness says: Come and sit with yourself, in the seat of silence, and I promise you that you can sit with this suffering. If you do, wild transformation emerges.

As a coach and consultant, I don’t just firmly believe that we all can do this; I’ve personally lived it and witnessed it. Many people have spent their lives building armor around their radiant light because somebody, somewhere, told them that they couldn’t shine. But every person possesses the seeds of greatness that allow them to radiate.

Even you.

Do you have an experience of belief change that took you through each of these steps? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Avoid These 3 Barriers to Living in The Moment

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:55:36 GMT

Life happens in the present…

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I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: mindfulness is not for the faint of heart.

If you decide you’re going to wake up and live a life of conscious awareness—working to maintain that awareness with every thought you have and every feeling you feel—you’re going to become exhausted quickly. The human mind just can’t do it.

That’s where mindfulness comes in, offering a shortcut directly through your brain, past your consciousness, and into your subconscious mind. By shutting up and sitting, you begin to achieve a theta brainwave state where you can start to pattern new thoughts over the old ones that are no longer working for you.

But it’s important to understand what obstacles might be preventing present-moment awareness .

There are three ways most people typically prevent themselves from being fully aware in the present moment:

Ingrained emotional responses based on past experiences.
Aka your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. When an experience triggers a response, your brain immediately wants to bypass mindfulness training and kick into survival mode. In a stress state, the subconscious creates thoughts that can generate emotional reactions that may not directly relate to the experience itself.
An inability to accurately hear what someone is saying based on expectations of what’s next.
We’ve all done it before: spent an entire conversation waiting to talk and rehearsing our response, rather than fully listening to the other person. But by immediately making subconscious assumptions about a person or a situation based purely on thoughts and beliefs—rather than what someone is actually saying or doing—you’re cutting yourself off from present reality.
Misinterpreting emotional signals due to an ongoing narrative in your mind.
When emotions kick in, it’s easy to stop listening. But when you filter the facts of a situation through your own beliefs, you’ll miss the actual data presented. Often, confirmation bias kicks in, leaving you to only accept any data that supports what’s already in your mind.

These three barriers to present moment awareness are why so many folks just live their lives in old habits, broken patterns, and rote memory. Presence is accessed when you’re not creating these barriers from the protective mechanism of the ego-driven self.

Awareness can be achieved when you stop being intoxicated by the fears, stories, and limiting beliefs stored in your subconscious.

I believe the world is in the middle of a great awakening—especially in the West. The challenges to grow our consciousness are abundant, but there are also more opportunities than ever to do so. When faced with the challenges, stay in the present nonreactive moment and watch the challenge dissolve.

You don’t need to make everything a long, archeological dig into your psyche and past to be fully present. You just need to practice mindfulness enough to identify where your patterns and present-moment barriers originated to remind yourself they’re not serving you, and you can let them go. You can pull autopilot patterning into consciousness and mindfully, with loving-kindness and compassion, sit with the pattern.

Then present-moment awareness happens.

Then, you live there.

Did this post help you identify one barrier to experiencing the present moment in your own life? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

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12 Questions to Guide You Into Present Moment Awareness

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:52:39 GMT

Which One Will You Try This Week?

There’s this quote that I love…

“One day, you wake up, and you’re able to name the weight you’ve been carrying, and you set it down gently in the long, soft grass on the side of the road, and you walk on, and you are free.”
– Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It summarizes everything right and necessary about letting go—about the power of surrendering .

But people don’t just struggle with letting go of the positive things in their life. Counterintuitive as it may sound, many of us have a hard time letting go of suffering too. Painful as it may be, some people are downright attached to their burdens—attached to living in past wounds or future anxiety.

In other words: the exact opposite of living in the present moment .

When it comes to mindfulness, you cannot grit your teeth trying to live in the present, nor can you will your way into awareness and awakening. Accessing present moment freedom requires two things: flexibility of attention and receptivity of intention, allowing for present moment awareness while not worrying about what’s coming next. You must set the intention to be receptive—to remain open to whatever comes.

It’s letting go of what is while accepting what’s next.

When you’re in that space, you’re present. You’ve surrendered to the universe and opened yourself up to any and every possibility. The good news is, we all can achieve that freedom. But we can’t access it through willpower alone.

One of the ways you can cultivate presence and begin to write a new narrative for your life is by asking yourself the kinds of deep questions you’re probably not going to think of on your own, as you’re just living your daily, pattern-filled life. The 12 questions below are designed to take you off autopilot and put you in the present moment, igniting awareness and giving you the space to experience wonder.

Each of the 12 questions to guide you to the present moment contains a pause to connect with yourself and your thinking and start developing familiarity and comfort with the unknown. They open the door to introducing new thoughts into your mind and creating new beliefs on a conscious level.

Ready to give it a try?

Check out these 12 questions to guide you to the present moment:

Will this choice propel me toward an inspiring future, or will it keep me stuck in the past?
Will this choice bring me long-term fulfillment, or will it bring me short-term gratification?
Am I standing in my power, or am I trying to please another?
Am I looking for what’s right, or am I looking for what’s wrong?
Will this choice add to my life force, or will it rob me of my energy?
Will I use this situation as a catalyst to grow and evolve, or will I use it to beat myself up?
Does this choice empower me, or does it disempower me?
Is this an act of self-love, or is it an act of self-sabotage?
Is this an act of faith or fear?
Am I choosing to act from my higher self, or am I acting from my ego?
What am I forcing to happen here?
What wants to be created through me?

Seems simple enough, right? But for these questions to work effectively, the key is to sit with them in the space of meditation or mindfulness, allowing them to drop deeper into your subconscious. At first, you’ll have to ask yourself the questions deliberately. But soon enough, you’ll find yourself facing a particular situation when suddenly you’ll hear a little voice in your head asking: is this an act of faith or fear? Am I choosing to act from my higher self, or am I acting from my ego?

Just like that, you’ll find yourself returning to the present moment. That’s where your life starts to change.

Did this post inspire you to try the three steps to inner freedom? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

If you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit, then you’ll love receiving weekly love letters from Yedda! Each week you’ll get stories, wisdom tools, and mini doses of mindfulness delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll be the first to know about upcoming events, workshops, new products, and more.

Willpower is NOT the Key to Changing Your Habits

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:48:12 GMT

This is what is…

In my late teens, after dropping out of high school and getting discharged from the military, I answered an ad for a nannying position.

I was feeling defeated. I didn’t think I knew how to do much, but I knew how to take care of babies, practically parenting my younger siblings growing up.

Then I met the man I would marry. He was a contractor and who showed up one day at the home where I nannied, with the most gorgeous blue eyes and brightest smile I’d ever seen in my life. He whisked me away on his motorcycle. Then, ironically, he joined the military just weeks after we got married.

Talk about deep patterning.

At the time, I was convinced my past was behind me. I was married, then I was pregnant, and then I had my son. It looked like a normal life to me. For a while, I even felt like I’d won the lottery.

But patterning doesn’t just disappear if you don’t deal with it .

Things began to unravel. Cracks started to show. My past began showing up, and I didn’t want to deal with it. I thought that I’d married the wrong person—because, with the right person, my past would just dissolve, right?

Wrong.

But, that was the same pattern I’d observed in my own family.

What followed were some very tough, unhealthy, intense years. We fought viciously. We separated and got back together. We moved around the United States, but our dysfunction followed us because it always does. But I was willing myself to make it work.

I thought if I just had enough determination and enough willpower, I could force things to work out.

Many people think if they just possess the “willpower” to be disciplined , control their unresolved trauma and dysfunction, and deny themselves what they desire, they can change their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. But that’s just not how it works.

My marriage was never going to work because I hadn’t done my work. I just spent years burying our issues and repeating the unhealthy behaviors that had been patterned into me.

Here’s the secret: you’re never going to feel like it.

That career change you want to make? That fitness routine you want to start? That 5:00 a.m. meditation practice you know your day needs? That hall closet you’ve meant to clean out since 2014?

Guess what?

You’re NEVER GOING TO FEEL LIKE DOING IT.

They’re things you know in your heart would be good for you; they’re all things you even want to do—at least, theoretically. But if you’re waiting to act until you feel like getting started , chances are you never will.

You’re never going to feel like doing all the healthy, habit-forming, life-changing things you know you need to do because you don’t yet hold the belief that drives the thought that creates the feeling of wanting to do something, which then inspires the behavior and makes a habit. And how do you wind up forming the belief that drives the thought that creates the feeling of wanting to do something, which then inspires the behavior of actually doing it?

By actually DOING IT.

When you’re operating from old patterns and belief systems, you’re just like an animal that won’t leave its cage even after the door has been opened—more comfortable to stay within the circle of the familiar than to take a risk.

Whether you’re changing your career or setting your alarm clock an hour earlier each morning, taking the leap only feels good once you’ve taken it. But you’re never going to feel good standing on the precipice of change because that’s where all the fear, doubt, and risk is. Once you take action, all of the forces of the universe come together on a metaphysical level to support you because you’ve committed to the energy of creating something new.

That’s how your life begins to change.

Did this post inspire you to try the three steps to inner freedom? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

If you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit, then you’ll love receiving weekly love letters from Yedda! Each week you’ll get stories, wisdom tools, and mini doses of mindfulness delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll be the first to know about upcoming events, workshops, new products, and more.

Consider These 3 Steps Your Guide to Inner-Freedom

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:44:12 GMT

1, 2, 3… Om…

I was sixteen years old when I dropped out of high school—a rebellious, angry kid who smoked, drank, and was always partying a lot. I didn’t have the dreams I thought other young people had for their futures.

I didn’t even know how to dream.

So, I wound up getting in a lot of trouble. Arrested at seventeen, I had the option to go to jail or join the military, and I chose the military. But it was a nightmare. From the minute I arrived at basic training, I was ready to call my mom and get out of there. Of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

Then the U.S. invaded Iraq, starting the Iraq War. Terrified, I asked anyone who would listen to me what I had to do to get out of there. I didn’t care how they talked to me; I didn’t care what they threatened me with—I was going to do anything to get out.

After Basic Training, an Army chaplain mentioned that an Article 15 would get me discharged. The list of things a soldier can do to get an Article 15 include getting arrested, getting pregnant, getting a tattoo, refusing to show up to formation, even getting severely sunburnt.

I did practically all of them.

Nothing worked.

Then I decided to shoplift from the PX—the on-base military retail store—to get arrested. One afternoon I walked in, looked directly at the security guard, grabbed a ring from a case, put it in my pocket, and walked out the door. Of course, they stopped me and called the military police. All of a sudden, I started thinking that maybe I’d gone too far.

What if they put me in Fort Leavenworth?

Unbelievably, after some creative thinking, I got out of it. They realized I wasn’t going to give up—I was going to do anything to get discharged. I met with my commander, and ultimately, they discharged me and sent me home.

As relieved as I was, I also remember getting home and feeling worthless. Between leaving the military and my dad dying, something in me clicked.

I realized if I kept living the way I was living, it was going to kill me.

I needed to free myself.

Mindfulness is all about learning to sit with our “is-ness”—that essence of whomever we are, whatever we’re doing, and whoever it is we want to be. If we can learn to sit with our own is-ness, we can learn to sit with the is-ness of others, too. That’s the equanimity of mindfulness that ultimately frees us all. It’s the idea that: I’m just sitting here, containing where I’m at and what I’m experiencing, which allows me to let you do the same thing.

My story is a perfect example—I teach people how to free themselves because I learned to free myself.

When you’re ready to free yourself, consider these three steps to inner freedom :

Flow with whatever comes.
Use what comes to your advantage.
Learn to be completely self-sufficient: “Create your own earthquake.” Then your mental process feeds itself inspiration without the need for outside stimuli.

If you practice mindfulness long enough, at some point, you finally realize you’re grateful for everything that’s happened to you because it’s taught you to be different, or better, or more.

That’s true freedom.

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Struggling with Decision Fatigue? Good News: There are Only 4 Choices That Really Matter

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:41:34 GMT

Number 4 might surprise you…

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When was the last time you said yes?

I’m not talking about saying yes when your boss assigns you yet another project that ignites no passion in you whatsoever or RSVP-ing to your second cousin’s Game of Thrones-themed wedding in Duluth. Most people have no trouble saying yes to those things, even when they really, REALLY don’t want to.

I’m talking about saying yes to yourself .

A yes that feels freeing, expansive in your body, and awakening in your soul. A yes that you know in your gut will result in the best possible outcome for everyone involved—especially you.
Rarely do we say yes with such open awareness. Instead, we’re closed off with a constricted or suppressed level of awareness. This is a “false yes”—one that occurs when you feel pressured not to speak up, decline an offer, or say what you really think.

You’ll know you’ve encountered a false yes if your body constricts, your gut twists, your energy starts to fade the moment you say it, or you begin to enter a stress response state . Whether you’re consciously aware of it or not, your basic needs are not being met by this yes. If yes doesn’t feel good, that’s a wake-up call: it’s time for some mindfulness.

Mindfulness aims at getting you to arrive at an authentic yes for yourself and for others.

When two people arrive at a genuine yes, one or more basic human needs are met on both sides. When we can come into communion with one another—whether it’s through friendship, family dynamics, personal relationships, professional collaborations, or romantic partnerships—our essential human needs are being met. That’s what allows each of us to arrive at an authentic, joyful yes.

We can build a better, fairer world by operating from an unlimited level of awareness in which everyone can pause and say: this is what I need. The art of mindfulness is learning how to make decisions from a belief system that says:

My needs are met.
I am whole.
I am lovable.
I am worthy.
I am safe.

If we all lived our lives rooted in those beliefs, the entire world would change. Mindfulness is the journey of getting people to start to wake up to that awareness.

As you start to consider how you say yes—and how you might like to say yes differently, moving forward, it can help to evaluate the four choices that really matter in life . Making decisions from this framework can help to tune out the world’s noise, guide you more deeply into your authenticity, and support you in considering what really matters.

The decision to live a life of integrity.

Walk the way you talk.
Do not betray or compromise yourself.
Do not force another person to please you.
Do not hold others captive for your pleasure.
Do not lie―speak and tell the truth.

The decision to pass wisdom on, NOT suffering.

Identify the lessons you have learned from suffering.
Harvest the wisdom from your story.
Lose victim mentality, language, and energy.
Don’t let a circumstance defeat you.

The decision to take risks.

Don’t wait for proof.
Regret is just part of the change process.
Ignore doubt, fear, regret, and confusion.
Ask yourself: How many of your greatest fears happened?
Most of the best things that happen have nothing to do with you.
Don’t look back for guidance – don’t take the safe path.
Be in “newness”—you are where you are because that other part of your life is over.

The decision to choose a new vocabulary.

Words create your reality.
What words do you need to remove forever from your narrative?
Consider quantum energy and energy medicine: the vibration of certain words can be so toxic that it prevents healing when you use them to talk negatively.
Make a list of words that are banned from your vocabulary forever, like shame, blame, deserve, entitled, should, etc.

The next time you’re presented with an invitation that feels more like an obligation, or an opportunity that feels constricting instead of expansive, consider the four choices that matter and decide to say yes to you instead.

How might you say yes differently after reading this post? I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

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Trying to Change a Belief? There Are Only 4 Ways to Do It

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 23:36:42 GMT

It’s time to take an active role in your beliefs.

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As an older man, Albert Einstein recalled that he often imagined what it would be like to think like God when he was a child. As he grew into the theoretical physicist he ultimately became, those childhood imaginings evolved into the intention he set for his life: think like God. That was how Einstein was able to ask the questions that he did, tap into a connection with something greater than himself, and produce the theory of relativity.

But guess what? You can think like Einstein too.

While there’s no record of Einstein meditating, he played the violin as a meditative practice. Whenever he couldn’t solve a problem, he deliberately decided to let go of conscious thought and let his mind rest on the music. By allowing the preconceived thoughts and beliefs of his conscious mind to fade into background noise while drawing his subconscious mind forward, he could access information and ideas that might not have ever broken through the noise of his conscious mind.

By doing so, Einstein wasn’t only able to change his own beliefs—he transformed the ideas of the entire world.

Approximately eleven million bits of information bombard the human brain each second . But, only about fifty bits of that information get processed by the conscious mind. The brain is designed to filter out all the other millions of bits of information; otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to function as humans. And those fifty bits you do take in are processed through your beliefs.

In other words, you see what you believe.

If you want to better understand your true beliefs, just consider how they’ve formed the circumstances of your life. A belief is just a thought you keep thinking for so long it’s become subconscious, whether there’s concrete evidence for it or not—and, often, it informs your actions and decisions.

If you’ve identified a belief that is no longer serving you, or you want to open your mind to more expanded consciousness, Einstein-style, you can take active steps to begin to change your beliefs. Here are four ways how:

Repetition.
After the age of seven, the primary way humans acquire subconscious patterning and create habits is through repetition—by experiencing the pattern you’re trying to build. In the beginning, habit-forming can be difficult, especially if the habit you’re trying to develop is novel, uncomfortable, or in conflict with your temporary desires. But habits are only formed by repeating a behavior, so practicing and repeating is vital.
Theta brainwave introduction.
Theta brainwaves are most active during a hypnotic state. In essence, this is how you formed your beliefs and behaviors during the first seven years of life, before increased brainwave activity and conscious thought kicked in. The mind operates in a low vibrational frequency during theta brainwave state—just like hypnosis or a near-sleep. The theta brain wave state is very receptive. By introducing new programming (aka thoughts and beliefs) during this state—just before falling asleep or immediately upon waking up in the morning—a new pattern is more likely to be formed. Consider checking out theta brainwave music to get started.
Energy psychology.
There are many energy psychology modalities, each with varying degrees of scientific, psychological, and anecdotal evidence supporting them. “Energy medicine” has been practiced around the world for millennia. But, in recent years—particularly in the West—new energy psychology-inspired belief modification programs are being used to engage the processing powers of the brain, creating “super-learning” opportunities for altering subconscious programming.
A traumatic or “high-impact” life event or change.
If you or anyone you know struggles with PTS, C-PTSD, or even been diagnosed with a terminal illness, you’re probably familiar with the ways trauma can transform someone’s belief system—sometimes, practically overnight. After a psychologically traumatic or high-impact life event, a person often rapidly rewrites the subconscious programs from which they were operating. While this change may not necessarily be bad, nobody wants to experience a traumatic life event to change a belief system or form a new habit.

Other than number 4, each of these methods of belief change has roots in the principles and practices of mindfulness. Shutting up and sitting requires repetition—ideally every day, for at least a few minutes. Meditation activates a theta brainwave state, allowing you to drop deeper into the seat of yourself and find the pause between your thoughts. Mindfulness is an invitation to access higher-vibrational energy, transforming the way your thoughts and beliefs impact your body.

No matter how uncomfortable silent stillness might be at first, especially if you’re just starting to form the habit, by sitting often enough, you will discover the freedom to release harmful thoughts and choose different ones, changing your beliefs in the process.

You can absolutely rewrite any destructive programs that occupy your subconscious field and limit your beliefs. But you must be fully engaged with the practice and fully present to your harmful programs to successfully transform them.

You are not a victim of anything other than your subconscious programming: change the programs, change your beliefs and behaviors, change your life.

If you do the work, your subconscious programs will evolve to match the dreams and desires of your conscious mind, and your life will move into greater alignment.

Did this post inspire you to start changing one of your beliefs this week? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

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One of These Top 20 Limiting Beliefs Might Be Keeping You Stuck

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 23:34:06 GMT

But which one is it?

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Have you ever traveled to an elephant sanctuary? While these sites can serve as peaceful refuges for elderly, orphaned, or previously captive pachyderms, they can also be rife with metaphors for human psychology.

Let me explain.

When a baby elephant is born in captivity, a trainer ties one end of a rope around one of their ankles and the other end to a stake in the ground, giving the elephant a radius the length of the rope. Until a captive elephant is rescued, her entire life exists within the small circle she can walk around her stake.

As the elephant grows, she becomes patterned to believe that her entire world exists within that radius. After a while, even if the rope is untied from the stake, the elephant will continue to pace inside her original radius.

She never ventures outside that circle. She doesn’t even know she can.

What does this horribly sad anecdote have to do with you? Think about it: how many people wake up every morning and metaphorically tying a rope around their ankle―every single day?

We do this to ourselves with our limiting beliefs.

Here’s how it works: your conscious mind informs approximately 5 percent of your day . Throughout the other 95 percent of your day, you’re running on the subconscious patterns of autopilot. Just like the captive elephant, when it comes to the cycle of believing-feeling-behaving, you’re stuck circling all you’ve ever known.

Your beliefs—including your limiting ones—inform how you show up in the world by guiding your perceptions and leading you to select data that only reinforces those beliefs . Nearly everyone has at least one core limiting belief or has struggled with one in the past. Some people hold many. No matter the belief, you bring it with you every single time you show up, anywhere. Whatever you believe about yourself is how you hold space and communicate with others.

Research has distilled the most common, core limiting beliefs down to twenty. As you consider the list below, notice if any resonate strongly or incite a particular reaction in you.

20 Common Limiting Beliefs:

I’m alone
I’m bad
I don’t belong
I’m a burden
I’m crazy
I’m different
I’m not enough
I’m a failure
I don’t have
I’m not important
I’m inferior
I’m invisible
I’m not loved
I don’t matter
I’m powerless
I’m not safe
I’m too much
I’m unworthy
I’m not wanted
I’m worthless
I’m wrong
I’m not smart

While it can be enlightening to uncover your core limiting belief, it can also be enormously frustrating. Once you’re aware of your limiting belief, the first thing you probably feel like doing is getting rid of it as quickly as you can. The good news is you can transform your limiting beliefs into healthy beliefs—just not overnight.

This work takes time. It can help to have a toolkit of healthy beliefs to select from as you begin. Below are some examples of a few healthy beliefs that have worked in my life and the lives of my clients:

I am aware.
I am loved.
I am supported.
I can do anything I put my mind to.
Life always works out for me.
The universe will catch me.
Change is an exciting and necessary step to growing and evolving.
Every day unfolds the next step in my journey.
I deserve a life without limitations.
My life is dynamic because I welcome change.
Awareness opens the door to new possibilities.
I rest with comfort and ease in the present moment.
I trust myself and others.
The present moment always offers me a chance to begin again.
I participate to the fullest in creating my reality.
I create a reality that betters the world.
I am enough, exactly as I am in precisely this moment.

This is where mindfulness comes in: once you begin to introduce the language of healthy, affirming beliefs to yourself from a sacred, safe space of silence and stillness, you’ll find it increasingly easier to recall them when you’re off the meditation cushion and out in the world. It requires practice and repetition—a neurological repatterning that will eventually require less conscious thought and effort. But it takes time and self-awareness to get there.

By engaging with the inner work of mindfulness, you get to see yourself through objective awareness—digging into what you believe, why you believe it, and what thoughts come from those beliefs. Then, you can start to discard any thoughts and beliefs that aren’t serving you and replace them with new ones.

This work asks you to dig deep and go within to uncover what negative messages you’ve received and absorbed throughout your life. But you are not broken, and you do not need to be “fixed.” You are already whole—all of us are. We’re worthy. We’re loving. We belong here. We just don’t know it yet.

Did this post help you identify one of your critical limiting beliefs? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

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Are You Avoiding Your Own Suffering?

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 23:30:48 GMT

Check Out These Four Ways You Might Be Burying Your Head in the Sand

If you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit and want to dive even deeper, enrollment for our online community-based course opens this month! Head over to our Community Course page to learn more about our online “inner MBA”, where you’ll practice integrative and mindful Mastery of your Behaviors and Aspirations. If you’re ready for the ultimate support in breaking free from the limiting beliefs holding you back in life, JOIN US NOW .

When I was younger, I did just about anything I could to avoid bearing witness to my own suffering: Hiding my pain under anger and acting out, Numbing my suffering through reckless partying. If you’ve been managing your own suffering with anything other than conscious awareness, lovingkindness, and self-compassion then you’re probably suppressing it, repressing it, acting out, numbing it, or avoiding it. And, you don’t have to take your avoidant behaviors to the extreme for them to be destructive to your personal growth, development, and ultimate happiness.

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking you “need” a glass of wine after work, convincing yourself you “deserve” three servings of takeout after an argument with your partner, telling yourself you “must” go to the gym even though you’ve been feeling sick, or clicking the purchase button on one too many online shopping carts when you’re feeling lonely, these—and countless others—are all methods of avoiding suffering that you need to deal with.

There are four common ways that most people utilize to avoid experiencing their own suffering. (Although it seems like there are many more sometimes, doesn’t it?) The important part is that none of them work long-term, and all of them block you from the growth opportunity that suffering provides.

1. You seek excess pleasure.
Think: Overeating; over-imbibing; compulsive shopping; over-exercising; excess substance use, abuse, and addiction; a dysfunctional sex life—the list is endless. Anything you do outside the realm of moderation and compulsively can fall into this category, even if it’s a behavior that’s healthy in moderation! (Yes, you can even over-meditate.) I’d guess that you know better than to overindulge in anything that isn’t good for you. So, if you’re choosing to, there’s a high likelihood that you’re trying to numb something.

2. You repeatedly recreate yourself.
While there’s nothing wrong with measured growth, personal development, and evolution, if you have the entire self-help section of Barnes & Noble shelved in your bedroom or have been through the entire Crayola spectrum of hair colors in the last six months, you might want to pause and consider what it is you’re really looking for. (Because honey, electric lime hair probably ain’t it.) From dramatic haircuts and fad diets to endless conferences and therapy sessions, if you find yourself compulsively reinventing who you are, ask yourself what suffering you’re trying to alleviate instead.

3. You tell yourself a story that only exacerbates your suffering.
If you’ve ever caught yourself “making a mountain out of a molehill” consciously or not, you’re actively exacerbating your own suffering. Thoughts feed your emotions, which flood your brain and body with stress hormones, generating more thoughts, which evolve into beliefs. Herein is the cycle that, when directed by stress and suffering, viciously dictates the patterns of behavior that are neither serving you nor relieving you of your suffering. Instead of accepting your feelings of discomfort or pain, you’re constructing entire narratives around them that only increase your suffering. A terrific way to key in on this is if you’re using absolutes in your self-talk. For example: You made an error in a PowerPoint you just sent your boss. Instead of recognizing the error and correcting it, you spend the day telling yourself you “always” mess up, your boss “hates you” and you’re “totally going to get fired.”

4. You destroy the possibility of positive experiences by trying to control them from the outset.
Do you find yourself solving for problems in situations where no problem exists? Do you live your life from a worst-case-scenario mindset? If so, you’re trying to mitigate your suffering before it even arises—and life is a system you simply cannot beat. If, rather than letting events and experiences unfold as they will—good or bad—you’re attempt to control every aspect of them, you’re exhausting yourself trying to avoid suffering.

So, how can you avoid suffering? Well, like the adage says: “Pain in life is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

Too often, individuals transform an instance of pain into a lifetime of suffering, by engaging in one of the avoidance behaviors above. It is only by accepting pain as an inevitable—and even acceptable, at times—part of life that you can truly avoid a life weighted down by suffering.

Mindfulness is all about learning to sit with what is and who you are—accepting the essence of you and whatever you’re experiencing. If you practice shutting up and sitting often enough, at some point you will fully awaken to your life and realize you’re actually grateful for everything that’s happened to you, because it’s taught you how to be different, or truer, or more authentically you.

Much of the self-help teaching in our western society says you’ve got to bury yourself to relieve your suffering, but it’s simply not true. The deeply wounded part of yourself deserves to be nurtured and welcomed into your experience—honored, loved, and assured that it’s all okay.

My story is a perfect example of all of this. Plus, it’s what inspired me to begin to teach people how to connect to the most precious part of themselves in the first place.

Did this post make you consider any way you might be avoiding suffering in your own life? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

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Trying To Change a Behavior? Don’t Get Stuck in These 3 Myths

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 23:27:47 GMT

They Might Surprise You…

Did you know that researchers at Harvard University are studying happiness? Harvard University, one of the most globally recognized educational establishments on the planet has dedicated an entire departmental division to researching whether or not happiness is good for you.

(FYI: It is.)

Those same researchers also studied the outcomes of filling your life with healthy behaviors and compiled a list of the results. While the cause/effect of living a more health-filled life might seem obvious, some of their discoveries may surprise you. For example:

Thirty-nine percent of people were more likely to live to age ninety-four
Healthy individuals proved to be up to three times more creative
Thirty-one percent of research subjects were more productive
Twenty-five percent experienced less fatigue
Research subjects exhibited evidence of being ten times more engaged in activities
Forty percent of those researched showed an increase in achieving success

All of that, and more, simply from operating from a place of healthy behaviors and happiness—both of which come from healthy beliefs.

If you’re ready to change a behavior, chances are you’ve already done a lot of work to get there. After all, it’s difficult to admit when we need to change something that has become habitual in our lives—and often, even more difficult to become aware we need a change in the first place. Once you’ve awakened to the behaviors that aren’t serving you, you certainly don’t want to waste precious time stuck in the myths of what it really takes to change a behavior .

But they’re more common than you think.

Behavior Change Myth #1: All it Takes is a Little Education
In other words, if you educate yourself on why a behavior is unhealthy, you will change it. While it sounds like it should be true, this myth is totally false. If all someone needed to change some of their unhealthiest habits was the knowledge of why something is unhealthy, everyone on earth would be walking to work, eating seven to nine servings of fruit and vegetables every day, waking up before the sun each morning to meditate, and recycling. Practically everybody, on some level, knows how to differentiate the “good” choices from the “bad” choices—we just choose the bad choices. Sometimes more often than others.

Behavior Change Myth #2: You Just Need an Attitude Adjustment
The idea is, if you change your attitude, you can change your behavior. But ask yourself: The last time you were spiraling down the Emotional Guidance Scale or reaching for that third glass of wine after a long day at work, would you have felt better if someone had simply told you to cheer up, stop being such a Debbie Downer, and get up off the sofa? Probably not. Often referred to as “toxic positivity,” the idea that all you need to feel better is to FEEL BETTER can be a destructive one, leaving you feeling like there’s something inherently wrong with you and potentially causing you to suppress your feelings rather than addressing them.

Behavior Change Myth #3: More Motivation Will Get You There
In other words, if rewards are offered as a motivation to change, you will change. Have you ever tried to motivate yourself to write a term paper with a piece of chocolate every time you finish a page, or filled an online shopping cart with new clothes that you’ll buy just as soon as you reach your ideal body shape? If so, you’re not alone—but chances are, it hasn’t worked for you either. Research shows that when promised a financial reward for behavior change, people still won’t change their behavior—even when they think they will! External motivation might inspire you to make a small change, initially, but it also has a short shelf-life. With external motivation as your only driving force, you’ll always return to an old, patterned behavior because you haven’t yet dealt with that behavior on a subconscious level. Plus, once the reward has been given, you have nothing to sustain the change long-term.

If you’ve fallen for any of these behavior change myths before, now is not the time to beat yourself up or raise the volume on your inner-critic. Instead, congratulate yourself for your newfound awareness—you’re not a total failure at behavior change, you’ve just been believing a myth that you now know is false!

But if these are all myths, what does change a behavior?

In my experience: Mindfulness.

The practice of mindfulness invites you to become a more conscious, deliberate creator of your life. It helps you dig up the unconscious beliefs that have been informing your actions for years, or even decades, pulling you out of ego and autopilot and making space for the still pause between your thoughts. Only then can you get to the root of whatever isn’t working for you, in your life.

Rather than letting your beliefs continue to direct you towards unsuccessful methods of behavior change, mindfulness teaches you to observing your unhealthy habits with loving-kindness and compassion, making space for the suffering that led you to form those unhealthy habits in the first place. Then, with all the love in the world for your authentic self and the journey you’ve been on, can you start to change the behaviors that no longer serve you.

Did this post awaken you to a behavior change myth you’ve been falling for? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

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This Brainwave Will Totally Blow Your Mind

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 23:25:14 GMT

I’m Talkin’ All About Neuroplasticity

Have you ever heard the expression “we’re on the same wavelength”—usually in reference to being in total agreement with someone? As it turns out, when it comes to neurobiology, it might literally be true.

The neurons in your brain operate in conjunction with all your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors—communicating with one another constantly, whether your thoughts, behaviors, and emotions are conscious or not. You even have neurons firing when you’re sleeping. That’s how busy your mind is, all the time.

Phew, right?

While there are six measurable brainwaves , today we’re going to dive deep into two of my faves: Delta and theta. (The other four are infra-low, alpha, beta, and gamma, respectively. Google at will.)

From about birth to age two, the human brain only utilizes the delta brainwave—a deep, unconscious brainwave state. (This is why most babies sleep all the time.)

Then, between the ages of two and seven, the human brain begins to develop the theta brainwave . That is the subconscious, “twilight-zone,” transient brainwave state—the same brainwave introduced in hypnotherapy, if you’re into that kind of thing.

According to Neurohealth, a therapeutic organization that analyzes neurofeedback—a type of biofeedback that measures real-time brain activity:

“Theta activity has a frequency of 3.5 to 7.5 Hz and is classed as ‘slow’ activity. It is seen in connection with creativity, intuition, daydreaming, and fantasizing and is a repository for memories, emotions, sensations. Theta waves are strong during internal focus , meditation, prayer, and spiritual awareness.”

Consider everything that happens in a child’s life between the ages of two and seven. Not only does this time include some of the most rapid biological, emotional, and social development in a human’s lifetime, it’s also when most of us are being completely programmed for life by our elders and influences.

If you happened to grow up in a family system where lovingkindness, compassion, and equanimity were the norm, chances are your “programming” has served you pretty well. But if you’re anything like the rest of us, your programming might need a little work.

Easier said than done, you might be thinking. And you wouldn’t be alone.

Until recently, doctors and scientists believed that the human brain was stagnant, assuming the brain developed in childhood, and whatever neuropathways were paved during that time were there for life. But, over the last few decades, evidence for neuroplasticity—your brain’s ability to change continuously throughout your life—has been overwhelming. Today, the science shows that anyone can rewire the neuropathways in their brain, reconditioning the biological processes of thoughts and neurons and thus creating new emotions that drive new (hopefully better!) behaviors.

But here’s the key: the brainwave (aka: Theta) that enabled to programming to carve neuropathways into your mind is the same brainwave necessary for removing that programming and replacing it with an upgraded version. By accessing your theta brainwave, you can start to become aware of your thoughts, access their origins, and align your conscious and subconscious mind to retrieve the information that is no longer serving you and bring it to conscious awareness.

The good news? Theta brainwave is produced during practices like mindfulness, meditation, yoga, t’ai chi, and chi gong.

This is why shutting up and sitting—mindfulness—is integral to the behavioral change process. It’s an invitation to find stillness in which you can as yourself questions like:

Where did I hear these first messages?
Who is the voice of my inner-critic, really?
Do I REALLY believe this thought?
What part of me needs to heal?

Neuroscience, thus far, strongly supports the benefits of mindfulness and meditation in changing your internal narrative and enabling you to produce the behavioral results you want in your life. There are neurobiological responses to the thoughts that you have and the beliefs that you build—and you hold the power to decide what those responses are going to be.

In other words, through your chosen beliefs, you can transform your biology.

It’s easy to become so engrossed in your monkey mind, lost in thought and patterned beliefs, that sometimes you’re barely aware of what you’re thinking in the first place. But a commitment to a sitting practice of mindfulness invites you into a theta brainwave state, repeatedly, until it becomes routine.

The art of shutting up and sitting allows you to slow your thoughts enough to find a slight pause between each of them, wherein the freedom to choose a different thought lies. Mindfulness-induced theta brainwave state creates space for you to pull your unconscious mind into your conscious awareness, enabling a clarity of thought and an awareness of the pause between your thoughts.

The outcome is utterly free and present awareness, the ability to make decisions with honesty and clarity, and to direct and dictate your thoughts from a centered state of self—from the authenticity of your soul.

Did this post inspire you to try some theta brainwave work, or explore any of the other brainwaves? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Can Your Beliefs Impact Your Biology? Some Researchers Say Yes.

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 19:38:25 GMT

So, You Should Definitely Wake Up Every Morning and High-Five the Universe

At 19-months-old, I developed a rare and sometimes fatal condition called intussusception, which is caused by one intestine enveloping another, creating an intestinal blockage. I underwent emergency surgery and, from the time I was a toddler, I’ve had a scar running the entire length of my stomach.

Years later, when my son was only 6-months-old, my husband was in the military and deployed to Korea, and I was living with my mother-in-law in upstate New York in the dead of winter. My then-husband and I struggled with co-dependency so separating was a nightmare, and I was a new mother dealing with postpartum depression and anxiety.

It was the single hardest thing I’d ever gone through.

All at once, all the old issues from my childhood started to creep back into my thoughts and feelings. I knew I didn’t want to parent like my parents had, but I also didn’t know what kind of parent to be, or even how to figure that out in the first place.

Honestly, I wanted to die.

One night, before I went to sleep, I got down on my knees and asked God for a sign. I know couldn’t keep living with the thoughts and feelings I was experiencing. I was right back in that old, familiar feeling of total despair—and I never wanted to be there again. I said my prayers and crawled into bed.

A few hours later, I woke up in the worst pain of my life.

I was rushed to the emergency room, where an ambulance quickly transported me to a nearby hospital. Twenty-four hours of tests, X-rays, and a CAT scan later and I was wheeled into emergency surgery.

Doctors had discovered the scar tissue from the surgery I’d undergone as an infant had torn when I was pregnant, wrapped around my intestines, and slowly strangled them. Eventually gangrene set in, my intestine ruptured, and peritonitis began infecting my entire body.

I’d experienced almost the exact same rare, potentially fatal condition and subsequent surgery―a second time.

The moral of the story? Beliefs can influence biology.

I believe in the power of integrative medicine because I’ve seen the force of mind-body connection in my own life. Back then, I think that I was in so much pain, with so much of my past being triggered, that I became so desperate to escape my life that my body just shut down. My ability to digest life stopped (literally.) Every past trauma and negative emotion manifested in my physical body and strangled me, from the inside out.

It could have killed me and almost did. But after I woke up from surgery, I committed to take whatever purpose or calling had my name on and use it to help others.

Now, obviously, I made it.

And here’s the cool thing: You can too.

Our beliefs dictate everything we say and do—and they can inform what our biology does as well. Studies done by cellular biologist Bruce Lipton have shown that human cells can grow or die solely based on the hormones secreted when you’re engaged with the various beliefs you hold.

In other words, you could be the most physically fit person in the world, but through a negative mindset or hopeless attitude about life, you could be creating cellular death in your body through the chemical reactions ignited by your belief-informed thoughts.

Let’s break it down:

A feeling like love positively feeds cells by excreting growth hormone, dopamine, oxytocin, or vasopressin.

A feeling like fear can stop cells from growing, by excreting hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine, cytokines, and histamine.

In Lipton’s research he put human cells into Petri dishes and then added growth hormone, oxytocin, dopamine, and vasopressin. The cells grew prolifically. He then took those same cells and added cortisol, norepinephrine, cytokines, and histamine and the cells died.

Lipton’s point was that our beliefs can influence our biology. We think it’s the other way around: That our biology controls our beliefs, that all our fears and anxieties are imprinted into our DNA. We think our biology is dependent on genetics, and if something is amiss, it’s the cause of our heredity. But chances are what is generational isn’t your chronic stress.

It’s the patterned beliefs and behaviors that your family has been passing on instead.

By examining this function of our emotional well-being as it relates to our growth and evolution as individuals, it can be kind of beautiful. Except, for too many of us, our beliefs and emotions are killing us instead.

We are that powerful, and we don’t even realize it.

This is where mindfulness comes in. We have to wake up and start asking ourselves questions like: Do I have to choose this particular thought? Is this belief serving me? Chances are that whatever behaviors you’re participating in aren’t originating from a DNA level: You’ve learned them. You learned them from your parents, who learned them from their parents, who learned them from theirs, forever.

If you want a different life outcome than your predecessors, you must change your behavior—and to do that, you start with the beliefs that inform that behavior in the first place.

You might be asking yourself: But why can’t I just cut corners and start with the behavior itself?

Have you ever tried to hold a beachball underwater?

Trying to change your behaviors by merely doing different things is about as enjoyable and effective as trying to hold a beachball underwater, all day, every day, for the rest of your life.

Any behavioral change must go back to the sponsoring belief—because otherwise, you’re not getting to the root of the problem, are you? You have to excavate your current beliefs, figure out what is serving you and what can be tossed out, and then replace those discarded beliefs with newer—healthier!—ones.

Only then will your behavior start to change. (Which will probably make you feel pretty good, thus transforming a destructive cycle into a constructive one.)

This is why I wake up every morning and high-five the universe. Maybe you want to get up every morning and dance the tango with the universe before you’ve even put on your underpants.

Your version of the wake-up high-five doesn’t have to look like mine. You just have to do it.

Did this post inspire you to consider some of your beliefs differently? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

9 Stellar Impacts Your Mindful Presence Can Have on the World

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 19:33:56 GMT

Seriously, Be the Brightest Light in the Room

How many times have you walked into a room and thought: Hello, I’m here! and nobody takes notice? You’ve brought all your light to brighten a room, only to discover it’s not received.

That’s exactly what I experienced, often, growing up. And, if you’re anything like me, in moments like that you might have learned: Don’t be the brightest light in the room. You don’t deserve to be seen.

Seriously, forget anyone who’s not interested in seeing you. That’s their right and their business.

Just like it’s YOUR right and YOUR business to be the brightest light in the room if that’s who you authentically are.

For everyone else—aka: the folks who see your light and love that you shine it so brightly—there are nine tremendous affects your mindful presence with others can have. When you consciously decide to hold yourself in a space of positive emotions, others will feel good being around you, too. You’re humming along at the top of the Emotional Guidance Scale when you bring your purest essence, your light, and the truth of who you are into every room and situation, and anyone paying attention won’t help but feel drawn to your vibes.

Sounds like a dream, right? Being seen and celebrated exactly as you are?

But here’s the thing: You can’t offer any of your fullest presence to someone else unless you’re offering it to yourself first. That starts with sitting with yourself and discovering a more loving, kind, and aware truth within. It is in doing the work of cultivating an inner calm (aka: shutting up and sitting) that you are then able to offer the world a fully present outer calm—one that comes from a place of integrity, self-love, and healthy belief systems. Any one of us can shine our brightest light into any room, but that first requires going within and discovering the essence yourself, before you can shine it out into the world.

When you’re ready, consider these nine impacts your mindful presence can have on the world.

Your presence instills calmness. People who feel empowered by your presence will become kindred spirits. That can only happen if they feel safe rather than attacked, secure rather than judged, heard rather than harassed.
Your presence leaves others feeling energized. Your frequency automatically transfers to others. When you are at a positive frequency, it energizes others without you even speaking a word. They desire that energy to continue to flow and, as such, they are motivated to seek higher frequencies for themselves.
Your presence allows others to feel better about themselves. Your compassionate, egoless energy will have a noticeably pleasant impact and cause others to feel good about themselves.
Your presence allows others to feel unified. As you raise your frequency, others feel called to be on the same team. You are a unifying force.
Your presence instills a sense of purpose. When you are at a positive frequency, you bring something to others that feels inexplicable. Your presence and behavior from a place of love, acceptance, non-judgment, and kindness become a catalyst for others to feel purpose in their lives.
Your presence allows others to trust in authentic personal relationships. In an atmosphere of higher frequencies, trust is naturally enhanced. You’ll notice willingness from others to open up and confide in you.
Your presence inspires others to greatness. When you make others aware of their magnificence and potential, the service offered by that positive energy transmission is immeasurable. They will reciprocate in ways that astound and delight you.
Your presence aligns others with others. Bonding synergy is inherent in higher frequencies. As you bond with another, you inspire them to connect and bond with others, thus improving the connectivity of the universe.
Your presence instills health rather than sickness. The higher the resonance of your energy field, the more you’re able to impact others with a healing energy.

This sounds all well and good, right? Who wouldn’t want to feel these impacts within themselves and share them with the rest of the world?

But remember: The point of shutting up and sitting isn’t to get the world to love you. (That’s just your ego talking, again.) The point of cultivating mindful presence is to arrive at a space of acceptance, compassion, and loving-kindness for YOURSELF first; to discover the thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that are no longer serving you, and then to walk through them to discover the grand truth that lies on the other side of all the stuff that’s been holding you back.

After all, the whole world might not be waiting for you, but YOU’VE been waiting for you.

Did this post inspire you to cultivate a more mindful presence? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Do You Struggle to Express Yourself?

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 19:25:58 GMT

Try These 8 Tools for Healthy Self Expression

If you have been following my work since the beginning, you know that I used to be pretty angry. (Remember all those Easter eggs I broke in grade school ?) I spent years trying to party my way to wellness—aka: trying to do the impossible—drinking, using drugs, doing figurative back flips out of windows, throwing emotional hand grenades, and flipping off the world in general.

But when it comes expressing myself through anger and numbing pain with destructive behaviors, I’m hardly alone.

In fact, adults in the United States today are the most in-debt, obese, addicted, and medicated in history . This isn’t a coincidence. A combination of socially conditioned thoughts like: I am not good enough combined with a complete lack of education in emotional intelligence got us here.

But it’s up to us—to you—to fix it.

At some point, the idea that thoughts and emotions are things that just happen to each of us became a pervasive one. So many people believe that their emotions are out of their control—to either muscle through them or to medicate them, one way or another. But just like you can learn to choose your thoughts and harness the power of your emotions, you can choose how you express your emotions [https://positivepsychology.com/self-expression/] as well. (And breaking a third grades’ class-worth of Easter eggs need not be it.)

As a culture, we have stigmatized pain and struggle to such a degree in our culture that few people feel safe enough or learn the skills to express their experience in healthy ways. We are taught that pain is horrible, embarrassing, and shameful and that we should do everything in our power to avoid it. We have been so conditioned to believe that pain is unacceptable that instead of staring it in the face, we act out, living in a place of repressed rage and running off to the mall or the bar—entirely avoidant and asleep.

But the truth is, by learning to lean into our discomfort and suffering, we begin to connect with ourselves on a deeper level and start to heal.

Once you begin to understand how your thought-led emotions inform and guide your behavior, you can start to examine how you want to express them.

While self-expression might be a common way of dealing with human emotions, healthy and healing self-expression is far less common. If you don’t know how to express yourself in healthy and productive ways, chances are it wasn’t taught or modeled to you.

For many of us, healthy self-expression is something that we must teach ourselves.

Check out these eight tools for healthy self-expression, to try the next time you find yourself feeling all the feels.

1. Turn off the noises in your head. Mute the negative self-talk, fear, doubt, and confusion. Ask: Would I speak to someone I love the way I talk to myself?

2. Set boundaries for your emotions and needs. Stand for your “yes” and stand in your “no.”

3. Realize when the story you’re telling is not your story. Claim ownership and authorship of your own life story, not someone else’s or what that has simply been taught to you but isn’t true for you.

4. Do what brings you joy. Discover what will help you get your happy back. It’s okay to start small! Don’t forget, it’s okay to have a sense of humor and everyone needs a little fun in their life!

5. Remember that your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are always choices. No one is to blame for your circumstances. You can choose how to create your reality. Say goodbye to being a victim.

6. Understand “commas” vs. “periods”. Commas represent a pause, a breath, the unknown, or the uncertain, where all things new are created. A period denotes the end. Never place a period where a comma should be.

7. Express yourself in a way that feels healing. Self-expression is not just for impressing your point of view on others, or to convince people to do/think/believe what you want them to. Imposing your thoughts and beliefs on others is your ego trying to get what it wants—and your ego never considers what is in the best and highest good for everyone involved.

8. Get creative! Write, paint, dance, scrapbook, journal, knit, cook, throw pots, crochet—whatever it is that raises your consciousness and allows you to express yourself in a productive, healing way! Creativity is the result of having already raised your consciousness—it involves participation and appreciation, which creates connections. Connection, after all, is the highest outcome of self-expression.

Remember: This work has ebbs and flows, highs and lows. You won’t necessarily express yourself in the healthiest and most productive way the first (or the hundredth) time—especially if healthy self-expression isn’t your habit. But you always have the present moment to return to, in which to begin again. Through mindfulness, you will discover the present moment continuously renews itself over and over until eternity—giving you endless opportunities to self-express in new, innovative, creative, and healing ways.

Did this post help you consider how you might be expressing yourself? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love and personal transformation.

Try These 5 Steps to Free Yourself from Limiting Beliefs

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 19:22:43 GMT

What stories or beliefs are you holding on to?

f you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit and want to dive even deeper, enrollment for our online community-based course opens this month! Head over to our Community Course page to learn more about our online “inner MBA”, where you’ll practice integrative and mindful Mastery of your Behaviors and Aspirations. If you’re ready for the ultimate support in breaking free from the limiting beliefs holding you back in life, JOIN US NOW .

Raise your hand if any of this sounds familiar:
I must be “good” to be loved.
Pain and suffering are unacceptable and mean I have failed at something.
If I am not in control, everything will fall apart.
If I do not stay in this relationship, I will be alone forever.
My physical appearance is a direct reflection of my worth.

That, dear one, is the all-too-familiar voice of your inner-critic , and she is a direct product of social, cultural, and familial conditioning.

But no matter how pervasive her perspective might be now, she doesn’t have to run the show forever.

In fact, one of the most magical components of the life-changing magic of shutting up and sitting is transforming that externally defined voice of your inner-critic into your biggest fan.

Did you know studies have shown that the people who have a strong capacity for love and belonging are the people who think that they deserve it? I mean, how cool is that? Just by thinking you deserve something, you increase your capacity to obtain it—in this case, to experience love. (It also works with shoes… I’ve tried.)

At some point, if you have been doing the work of mindfulness long enough, you will start to awaken to the realization that you are not the person your past conditioning has created . In fact, you never were! The pure, unconditioned essence of you that was birthed into this world is the real you—and she is the person you deserve to bring forth in all her glorious fullness.

That old narrative that says you’re not “XYZ” enough?

You’re done with that.

But conditioned narratives and limiting beliefs can be sticky. There is a reason they can have so much power over how you live your life—and why it can take a whole lot of work and practice to free yourself from their grip, release yourself from their limitations, and rewrite your truth once and for all.

You cannot just “self-help book” your way there, without implementing the teachings you learn. That will just make you a smart person with dysfunctional thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You also cannot feel your way there through the “ power of positive thinking ”. (Aka: Pollyanna mind.) By doing that, you’re just tricking yourself into ignoring the undercurrent of emotion that is roiling beneath the surface of your life—and eventually, it will rise up. And you cannot just behave your way there—firstly because that’s exhausting and secondly, because the conscious mind is only in control of so much. Instead, you must learn something new entirely, replacing the conditioned narratives that inform your thinking, feeling, and behaving with new, more authentic ones.

Next time you find the voice of your inner-critic taking over, or your past conditioning directing you towards a misaligned or inauthentic decision, try these five steps to free yourself from outdated narratives and limiting beliefs:

1. Say to yourself: “I am not that person now.”
Remember: Chances are you were not that person EVER. You’re just holding on to old conditioning that was never a reflection of your deepest authenticity in the first place.

2. Begin the cognitive work of understanding your default attitudes about particular people, things, situations, and even yourself.
In other words, you must become your own existential detective. What beliefs, attitudes, and perspective do you hold about the world that are not rooted in your own experience, inner-wisdom, or love-based vision? If you find yourself repeating a belief or engaging in a repeated behavior without knowing why, chances are it was merely conditioned into you.

3. Listen to people whom you normally would not listen to.
Try opening yourself up to stories, narratives, and perspectives that don’t necessarily align with yours. You do not have to jump on every bandwagon that crosses your path, of course. But by listening to a vast array of diverse perspectives and beliefs, you will start to uncover what authentically resonates with you on a soul-level, and what is merely noise you have been over-exposed to throughout your life.

4. Favor the expanded awareness you get from engaging with new narratives.
Once you uncover what has been conditioned within you, versus what is truly the authentic voice of your soul, you must start uploading new—more self-aligned, authentic—programming into your mind. If you listen to political radio on the way to work every morning and arrive to the office angry and defeated, that is not serving anybody (lease of all, YOU!) Consider playing a peaceful soundscape, a meditation, or your favorite dance music instead. Prioritize a higher-level awareness for yourself, no matter what is going on around you.

5. Take the path of least resistance.
Identifying and rewriting lifelong conditioning—much of which probably began in childhood—is one of the most challenging things you can ask of yourself and your mind. After all, there are literal neural pathways paved into your brain that have been conditioned over years, and maybe even decades. There is no reason to make this work any harder on yourself than it already is. Start small, with a belief or behavior that isn’t necessarily rooted in trauma or shame, for example, and be kind with yourself (and those around you, who might still be holding on to limiting, conditioned beliefs and are uncomfortable with the changes you are making.) Judging yourself for what was merely taught to you when you were too young or inexperienced to know better doesn’t serve you or your authentic unfolding.

While it’s not easy to sit and connect with silence and stillness, finding the gaps between all the thoughts bouncing around in your mind, it can be done, and it will serve your highest and greatest expression of self. Identifying old narratives and replacing them with new ones to create new habits of thinking, feeling, and behaving is not as complicated as we make it out to be.

The key is to begin with mindfulness.

Did this post inspire you to consider your limiting beliefs in a new light? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love and personal transformation.

Shut Up & Sit Featured in Global Wellness Blog Amomē

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 19:19:25 GMT

Self-love Wellness Blog by Yedda

Recently, Shut Up & Sit had the opportunity to connect with global wellness blog Amomē (named after a Latin declaration of self-love!) As a wellness website focused on mental health, Amomē believes self-care and mental wellness have never been more important than they are now. I shared my thoughts on meditation and mindfulness—including a recent retreat experience that you won’t want to miss! You can read all about it on Amomē, here: https://sayamome.com/blog/struggling-with-meditation-try-mindfulness-instead

Next Time You Are Feeling Stuck, Try These 9 Steps to Letting Go

stancilyedda@gmail.com (Yedda Stancil) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 19:13:49 GMT

There is power in acknowledging negative thoughts and emotions…

Have you ever had a hard time letting go of a habit , thought pattern, or destructive emotional spiral? I know I have. Here is the thing about our habits—especially when it comes to what we think, feel, or believe—they are really, really hard to break.

Even when they hurt us.

If you are like myself or any of the clients, students, or other wisdom practitioners I have worked with, releasing negative emotions and finding freedom from sticky thought patterns has been the work of a lifetime. It takes practice. But it’s the whole point of learning mindfulness in the first place: To let that shit go.

When you find yourself trapped in a negative emotion or a place of resistance, try the following practice, in part developed by David Hawkins, author of The Map of Consciousness Explained: A Proven Energy Scale to Actualize Your Ultimate Potential to learn how to allow your negative emotion to exist and then let it go.

1. STOP* whatever you are doing.
Everybody loves a good acronym. In this case, STOP means:
S: Stand up
T: Take a deep breath
O: Open your mind to another possibility
P: Pause before taking the next step

(*If this step looks familiar, we covered it last week!)

2. Notice and accept your feelings about the situation you are in.
Give a name to your feelings and accept that you are feeling them. Journaling can be a great space for notice, naming, and accepting. Or consider asking a close friend or family member if you can voice your experience to them—without projecting your feelings all over them—to help you start to accept your feelings. (Remember, what we resist persists; and if we name it, we can tame it!)

3. Set an intention to clear the negative emotion rather than feeding the emotion.
To get unstuck from your emotions, you must make a conscious choice to let them go. It is all too easy to feed a negative emotion—with persisting thoughts, amplified feelings, or destructive behaviors. Negative emotions are not going to clear all on their own: You must invite them to leave and then make decisions that will release them.

4. Close your eyes and go within yourself, acknowledging the negative feelings as they arise.
In other words, once you have set the intention to clear yourself of negativity, you’re going to have to let that negativity flow through you and out of you. Allow your feelings to make the journey, invite them to be present with you and move through you, without reacting to them or analyzing them. Treat your feelings with the same loving-kindness and compassion that you would like to receive from them. Soften into your struggle—for now, let it be.

5. Give yourself permission to let all feelings arise without suppressing, repressing, expressing, or escaping them.
You can literally say to your anger, your fear, your pain, or your suffering: “You belong.” You might even consider personifying your feeling: What is the character of your anger? What does fear look like? Who is pain? Sit down and talk to them. Ask yourself: What if I sat with this for just one minute? Can I sit with this for two minutes? Can I invite my feelings to gather around a big dinner table and just be with them?

6. Shift your attention to something healthy that brings you happiness and joy.
This is called “the pivot”. (And yes, it is just as fancy and graceful as it sounds.) If you’re working through this nine-step process, by now you’ve changed your physical posture, gotten quiet, welcomed an understanding of how you feel, and asked yourself: Can I sit with this discomfort and understand where it comes from and what it’s trying to tell me? Now ask yourself: What is WORKING in my life? (Believe it or not, there are things in your life that are working.) Start to turn your attention away from your pain.

7. As waves of feeling continue to cross your mind and flow through your body, verbally give them permission to leave.
As the negative emotions start to leave you experience, replace them with the feelings about what is working in your life, what brings you joy, where you find beauty. Treat the retreating feeling with loving-kindness and compassion but maintain the clarity that the feeling has done its job and it’s time for it to leave.

8. No matter how long negative feelings take to leave your consciousness, acknowledge and accept them as part of your humanness.
The broad, wild spectrum of emotions is part of the human experience. It is normal and natural for negative thoughts to arise throughout the course of your day and your life. Regard yourself with compassion, even as you catch yourself overthinking or reengaging with the negative spiral. This work takes practice, and it ebbs and flows! Self-criticism not only fails to serve you, but it also holds you to a standard that is impossible to achieve. Be gentle with yourself and embrace your humanness.

9. As your feelings leave, remind yourself that you want to let them go because you desire higher feelings like peace, harmony, or love to enter your experience.
Regard your pain or struggle as a pathway that is leading you toward love. (If you need a refresher of how the Emotional Guidance Scale works , we’ve already covered it on the blog!)

No matter what, remember that whatever you are experiencing in any given moment is just the next hurdle you must jump to get to a higher state of being where you can bring your most authentic, joyous, soulful self forward, into the world. The world is ready for you.

Did any of these nine steps resonate with you or teach you something new? Are you looking forward to trying any the next time you find yourself in a spiral of negative emotion? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love and personal transformation.

This ONE Technique is the Gateway to Freedom from Negative Emotions

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Learn to STOP in your tracks and let go…

Throughout the course of doing the work of shutting up and sitting—and then sharing it with the world—I have been open about my own story. I’ve shared some of the details of my parents’ staggering levels of dysfunction: Like alcoholism, drug addiction, and domestic violence.

When I was an infant, my dad would leave for days at a time, chasing a party or on a bender, and I often spent those days with my grandparents—honest-to-goodness, falling-down-drunks in their own rights. They owned little more than the mattress that they slept on and the clothes on their backs, and for as long as I knew they drank from sunup to sundown.

In fact, my baby book notes the very first time I drank a beer: At nine-months-old.

It also documents the first time I got drunk : Eleven-months-old.

That’s just how my life began. That is my origin story—one of chaos and raw emotion, alcoholism and drug addiction, survival and lack and despair.

I believe that building the life I have for myself, today, was practically a miracle: A miracle that started with waking up and turning to mindfulness. Mindfulness isn’t just something I teach; it’s been my personal journey. A journey of sitting down and shutting up—and discovering through silence all the life-changing magic that comes with it.

But, throughout all those years of drinking and drugging, violence and dysfunction, suffering and despair, I wonder if anyone ever thought to themselves: We should STOP.

I doubt they even knew they could.

If you didn’t catch last week’s post, on the three ways human beings handle emotions be sure to check it out, because it lays the foundation for what the STOP Technique is all about: Stopping in your tracks (or in the middle of a negative thought spiral, as the case may be) and letting go of negative emotions or destructive thought patterns.

This four-step technique is literally the gateway to freedom from negative emotions . (And its step number one of a totally transformational 9-step process I’ll be sharing on the blog next week!)
Here is the thing: The whole point of learning to harness the power that your emotions have is so you can let them go. When you find yourself trapped in a negative emotion or a place of resistance, the STOP Technique will guide you towards allowing the emotion to exist and then to letting it go.

Everybody loves a good acronym. In this case, STOP means:
      S: Stand up
      T: Take a deep breath
      O: Open your mind to another possibility
      P: Pause before taking the next step

In other words, whenever you become aware of the fact that you’ve launched yourself into a downward spiral, physically and mentally STOP whatever you are doing, pulling yourself out of unconscious patterns and behaviors, and connect with the present moment—the seat of all freedom. (You can even say it out loud to yourself if you must: “Stop!” If you’re spiraling out of control anyway, who cares what anyone around you thinks?)

Let’s say you’re in the throes of becoming really angry, for example. Notice that. Then, just stop.

Stand up, root your feet into the ground, take a deep breath through your nose.

Open yourself up to the possibility of choosing a different reaction.

Then pause.

Suddenly, you find yourself noticing how cool the air is, or the young family playing happily in the park outside your window. Maybe you start to realize that you are surrounded by beauty, joy, and abundance. Maybe you just take a couple seconds to really tune into your body and realize you don’t totally hate your co-worker (or whoever or whatever sparked your anger) but that actually, you just didn’t have time for breakfast and could use a sandwich.

The point is you choose another feeling. You recognize that anger (or whatever it is you are feeling) does not have to be your reality.

And, just like that, you free yourself.

If you want to learn even more about the STOP Technique, check out Power Vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior by David Hawkins .

Did this post make you consider how you might start to pivot out of negative emotions in your own daily life? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook to share any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love and personal transformation.

The 3 Ways Human Beings Handle Emotions

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 04:01:00 GMT

Which one are you?

If you enjoy reading my blog, then you’ll LOVE my book, Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It . It’s a comprehensive, integrative, and innovative guide to personal development, designed to help you radically transform your mind and become the master of your thoughts, behaviors, and aspirations.

The first thing that tends to happen after you sit down and begin to wake up to your life is that you stir up a whole lot of pain for yourself. (And often, as was my case, a whole lot of pain for anyone who happened to be around me at the time.)

Once the practice of mindfulness really began to sink in, I started walking down hallways in my mind that I’d been avoiding for years, opening doors that were locked a long time ago.

It made me pretty angry.

Like, doing figurative back flips out of windows and throwing emotional hand grenades, all while texting a steady stream of “F”-you to practically anyone I could think of.

In fact, studies on mindfulness show that one reason people don’t sit in silence and learn to connect with themselves is because it’s too painful.

In the beginning, mindfulness can even exacerbate your suffering.

Your thoughts have power . They are mental units of energy that lay the foundation on which your whole existence is practically built. The more you choose a particular thought, the more that thought begins to store feelings within your psyche.

Your beliefs become patterned into your actual brain waves.

But once you begin to understand how your thought-led emotions inform your behavior , you can examine how you want to handle them.

It’s easy to get into the habit of believing that other people and situations make us feel a certain way—but they don’t. Only we get to choose what thoughts and emotions we put our energy behind.

But, most of us have to go through a dark night of the soul to get to the light on the other side. Culturally, we’ve shamed struggle and stigmatized pain to such a degree that nobody wants to go through it—but if you want to change your life, it’s unavoidable.

The truth is, by allowing your discomfort and suffering into your consciousness, you can begin to connect with yourself on a deeper level.

Only then will you start to heal.

If you’re ready to harness the power of your emotions, let’s explore the three ways human beings typically handle emotions in the first place.

1. Suppression/Repression

Suppression manifests as irritability, mood swings, muscle tension, and various other physical ailments and illnesses. Remember, your feelings create hormones and chemicals that flow throughout your body. If you suppress those emotions, the compounds are stuck there, eating away at you, causing everything from panic attacks to ulcers.

Repression includes denial and projection, which tend to work together and reinforce one another. Denial results in major emotional and maturational blocks. Projection is the primary mechanism used by the world today and accounts for war, civil disorder, inequality, racism, and more.

2. Expression

Expression includes verbalizing or using body language to act out your feelings in front of others— otherwise known as our blow-ups, breakdowns, and toddler-scale temper tantrums. The expression of negative feelings releases just enough inner pressure that the remainder can then be suppressed.

Unfortunately, when you unload all your negative feelings onto someone else—particularly someone who hasn’t yet done their own work of mindfulness—they wind up suppressing, repressing, expressing, or escaping everything you’ve just unloaded onto them. This can create a cycle of negativity that just brings everyone down.

We often think we need to “vent” to others to feel better, but we do not. Expressing a feeling just gives it more energy. Instead, taking responsibility for neutralizing your negative feelings allows for positive emotions to be expressed, instead.

3. Escape

Escape is the avoidance of feelings through diversion. When you avoid what’s going on inside you by engaging in an endless variety of pursuits, dependency and addiction (to shopping, sex, food, drugs and alcohol, and more) often manifest.

This explains the constant, frantic activities modern humans immerse ourselves in: Endless socializing, talking, texting, reading, music-playing, working, traveling, sightseeing, shopping, overeating, gambling, movie-going, pill-taking, drug-using, cocktail-partying, and more.

We’ve all engaged in each one of these, and some more than others. But through mindfulness, what you can learn to do instead is sit down and shut up. Then you’re free to ask yourself what you’re suppressing, repressing, expressing, or escaping.

Once you’re aware, you can begin to free yourself from your emotions—with healthy activities like somatic exercises, rest, reconnecting with hobbies you love, supportive relationships, a walk in nature, volunteering in your community, and more.

The first step is simply becoming aware of how YOU handle YOUR emotions at any given time.

That is the essential wakeup call.

Your Step-By-Step Guide to Joy

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 04:01:00 GMT

It’s called the Emotional Guidance Scale.

When I was born, my parents and I lived in government-subsidized housing. My dad was hardly ever around, and my mom had no car and very little money—certainly nothing to spend on entertainment. With nowhere to go and no one but a brand-new baby (aka: me) to talk to, my mom spent her days doing two things:

When I was asleep, she cleaned the house, and when I was awake, she cleaned me.

Every day, she gave me baths and changed my clothes repeatedly, just to have something to do. Day after day, once she cleaned the house, she would wash me, and dry me, and rub lotion on me, and dress me, and play with me, and then when she finished, she would start all over again―sometimes multiple times a day. (For a baby, I smelled really good.)

What the work of mindfulness taught me is that this became a deep patterning for me.

I’m a total spa baby. I love to be pampered. I love physical touch; I love physical connection.

They’re deep, visceral needs.

Now, I know it’s because the ways my mom used to care for me as a baby. And, it’s kind of amazing that in such staggering poverty, my mom was able to create such luxury out the love of a mother for her child.

Even as babies, we’re aware of what is going on around us. Before doing the work of mindfulness, I might not have been able to consciously draw the connection between my childhood baths and my love of pampering now, but that whole experience is still wired into my neural pathways.

On an emotional level, everything we experience is a part of who we are.

There’s a science to it, too.

Did you know that every human emotion has a measurable frequency?

Every one of your feelings creates a measurable vibration that transmits beyond your body. The visual representations of those frequencies is called the Emotional Guidance Scale —and not only does it illustrate that positive emotions create higher frequencies, it can guide you through the mental and emotional steps to achieve the feeling (and frequency) that you want.

The highest frequency emotions are feelings like joy, empowerment, freedom, and love.

The lowest frequencies include fear, grief, depression, and powerlessness.

A feeing like hopefulness—where you consciously begin to deliberately create your life—falls solidly in the middle.

Most of us live our lives near the bottom of the Emotional Guidance Scale—weighted down by lower frequencies.

You can think of your feelings like food for your cells —different feelings (like different foods) produce different results. Love is like the kale of feelings: Chock full of vitamins and minerals and all sorts of ruffage that will keep your insides happy and help you grow. Fear is kind of like the aspartame of “food.” (FYI, aspartame is technically a “chemical compound.”)

When you’re working your way towards the bottom of that Emotional Guidance Scale, plagued by negative thoughts that you can’t seem to shake, neuropeptides communicate those feelings to the cells in your body. This cellular process initiates the production of stress hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine, cytokines, and histamine. Some studies have even likened cortisol to metal-searing acid―that’s how crummy it is for our human tissue.

Metal-searing acid on your cells? All because of a set of patterned belief-informed thoughts that aren’t serving you?

I’ll pass.

The flip side is that when you move up the Emotional Guidance Scale your positive feelings ignite cellular processes that generate growth hormone, dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin—all of which promote healthy cellular growth.

When you think about the state of our culture, particularly in the west—the abuse and addiction, the debt, and the obesity—everything we do to try to keep ourselves from facing the pain we feel is simply our way of trying to liberate ourselves from lower-frequency emotions.

But what if you believed you aren’t a victim of your feelings?

What if you believed pain was nothing more than your launch pad for moving up the Emotional Guidance Scale?

Every one of us has the capacity believe that our pain is simply trying to teach us something.

Fighting against your pain is never the answer. The answer is to sit down (and shut up) and allow your pain. Recognize it as a part of you and trust that if it is showing up, that means you’re ready and willing to learn what it is trying to teach you.

This ONE Formula Will Change Your Life

Sun, 13 Jun 2021 04:01:00 GMT

Do you know the math equation for personal transformation?

If you enjoy reading my blog, then you’ll LOVE my book, Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It. It’s a comprehensive, integrative, and innovative guide to personal development, designed to help you radically transform your mind and become the master of your thoughts, behaviors, and aspirations.

Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It.

A key part of being human is our capacity to feel and express emotions. What can totally trip us up is identifying our emotions, recognizing how we handle emotions , and mindfully exploring how they guide our behaviors.

After that, the hard work really begins.

Because once we become more aware of our emotions and our responses to them, then begins the work of not only letting go of negative emotions but learning healthy self-expression and the maintenance of mental well-being, too.

Take my client Karrie, for example.

When I started coaching Karrie, she had no idea what she had gotten herself into. She became my client at the request of her CEO, who was preparing her to be the next CEO of their company.

Karrie works in an industry dominated by male leaders. She first started her career as a clerk, working her way up the corporate ladder, year after year. Still, she doubted that she could be a CEO in her industry.

But Karrie did the work—not just to become the next CEO but also to become her best and highest self.

Today, she is a leader of compassion and intelligence.

With mindfulness as her secret weapon, the title of CEO will be one of many stepping-stones to-come in her career.

“It’s kind of magical to be able to sit in silence and bring myself back into alignment with who I am and what I’m about. Sometimes I wonder what it would take to go back to those previous feelings of anxiety and fear, as if this has all been a dream. But it’s been important for me to make drastic changes in my life, so that I don’t. Meditation is one of those drastic changes,” Karrie says.

As Karrie learned, mindfulness is an invitation to wake up and become aware of the intentions you’re setting for yourself: For your day, for your health, for your career, for your life. It’s in that intention-setting that you get to decide if you want your emotions to dictate you, or if you want to dictate your emotions. (Hint: You want to dictate your emotions.)

The good news is, there’s an equation for that:

Intention + Attention = Manifestation

In other words…

The intention is: What is the thought that I’m creating?

The attention is: What emotion am I putting my focus on?

The manifestation is: What energy and behavior am I putting out into the world?

It’s a pretty simple equation, but it can totally change your life.

What is the intention that you’re setting? Are you setting the intention for love? For inclusion? For vulnerability and connection? Or are you setting the intention for rejection? For exclusion? You might even be setting intentions subconsciously, due to patterning you’re not consciously aware of.

To what are you giving your attention? Where are you directing your energy, your emotions, your words, your activities? What do you watch and read; what media do you consume? How often are you scrolling?

All of those things make up your life.

Whatever it is you’re manifesting, it’s coming from the intentions you’re setting and the attention you’re giving those intentions. Once you’re are conscious of that, it’s your responsibility to choose intentions that serve you, and give your attention to those.

Remember: You are not a victim of your emotions.

I’ll leave you with some final words of wisdom from Karrie:

“Change takes time. Just like diet and exercise, mindfulness is like working a muscle. It’s a slow, steady, and continuous process. You have to keep doing it, you have to do it little by little, and you have to commit the time. It’s just a matter of believing in yourself and who you are, and if there’s any doubt in your mind that you can’t do it, just remember that you can.”

“You’ve made it this far, and you can make it further.”

Did this post make you think about what you give your attention to? Maybe you’re even considering starting an intention setting practice? When you’re ready to learn more, there’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love and personal transformation.

This Chart Could Change Your Life

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 00:01:00 GMT

It’s called the Ladder of Inference…

Years ago, when I was working in health and fitness, I had a client who always stopped by a fast-food restaurant on her way to work.

I mean, ALWAYS.

She simply could not stop herself from eating two cheeseburgers and a couple of hash browns in route to the office, every day, five days a week.

She was totally stuck in a habit of struggle , unable to see her way out of it.

“Maybe drive a different route to work each morning,” I suggested, when her calorie-filled commute came up in one of our sessions.

The lightbulb came on.

The route that my client was driving to work—the one that took her past that fast-food restaurant every single morning—was the quickest way to her office. The thought of driving a new route, a route that would take her five or even ten (gasp!) minutes out of her way, didn’t even occur to her. Her route was her pattern.

But once she made the simple change of driving a new route to work, she discovered that when she was faced with a new setting, when her brain encountered new data and stimuli, she could get to work without triggering herself.

She made a small, but conscious choice to do something differently .

One that offered mega results.

My suggestion to her sounded so simple—as solutions to habits often do once we’re aware they exist. But when you’re caught in the habit of struggle: unconscious, trapped in an all-or-nothing mindset, and stuck in black-or-white thinking, the obvious isn’t always so clear.

This story is just one example of the function of something called the Ladder of Inference .

The Ladder of Inference describes the process that the human brain moves through as it takes in objective stimuli (fact) and sorts it, sifts it, interprets it, ascribes meaning to it, and ultimately acts upon it.

In short, the Ladder of Inference explains how different people can approach the same situation but come away with completely different understandings, interpretations, and responses—we all select different data from the millions and millions of bits of data available at any given time. Then, we interpret that date based on our experiences, beliefs, and perspectives.

Our beliefs inform how we encounter data.

This means we can set ourselves up for positivity or negativity long before we ever encounter any data at all.

Until you build a new belief system, the data you select from any given situation and what you do with it will only support the belief system that you hold—even if it is an unhealthy one that is making you miserable.

Whatever belief you hold, you are going to show up to any given situation prepared to see only the data that supports that belief—whether you’re conscious of it or not. That is where mindfulness comes in: It wakes you up, makes you aware of what you are really thinking, and teaches you to tune into of all the other data that is available to you also.

Every single situation is an opportunity to make a choice: You can make the choice to believe that you are no good and destined for disappointment, or you can believe totally that things are going to work out for you.

If you feel your life is lacking the health, happiness, connection, success, abundance, or anything else you want, then learning to select different data in any given situation can help.

Start climbing the ladder .

Did this post teach you something new about how YOU interpret data? Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love and personal transformation.

Thinking, Feeling, Behaving: Do You Know Which Comes First?

Mon, 31 May 2021 00:01:00 GMT

You can’t think your way into everything…

If you enjoy reading my blog, then you’ll LOVE my book, Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It. It’s a comprehensive, integrative, and innovative guide to personal development, designed to help you radically transform your mind and become the master of your thoughts, behaviors, and aspirations.

In the cycle of behavior if you guessed “feeling” comes first—before thinking or behaving—you’re not alone. Nearly 95 percent of my clients and students think that feelings ignite the thoughts that inspire actions and behaviors.

But really, it’s our thoughts.

Here’s the rub: Human beings may be smart, but we’re also negative thinkers .

Let me explain.

Every day, all day long, your brain and body are busy taking in information and stimuli—working hard to sort it, sift it, interpret it, and categorize it. But studies show that the first way the human brain interprets information is through a framework of loss: In other words, negatively.

If that’s not enough, research also shows that not only is it human instinct to frame information through a loss-mindset, but it is also harder for the brain to release a negative thought than it is to create a positive one.

Studies have even shown that for every negative critique, it takes five positive affirmations to return to baseline!

It turns out, we are hardwired for negativity .

For example, someone who regularly receives positive feedback at work may still think that they are horrible at their job after receiving one criticism. Negative thoughts about their job performance will dictate how they feel about themselves—and those feelings could lead to less-than-healthy behaviors.

While thinking-feeling-behaving is a non-linear cycle, if you want to uncover the root cause of your behaviors and heal your feelings, you’ve got to start by changing your thoughts.

If you want to figure out why you do what you do, you cannot feel your way there.

In the practice of mindfulness, there is something called a “sponsoring thought”—in other words, the original thought you had, conscious or not, that generated a feeling within you, that led to a particular behavior. When said behaviors are unhealthy and compulsive—like over-working, over-eating, excessive drinking, over-spending, scrolling social media all night, or anything that ultimately hinders your quality of life—recognizing your sponsoring thought is the first step to real change.

Digging all the way back to the sponsoring thought is what mindfulness allows you to do. It’s an invitation to think about your thinking, to interrupt your thinking-feeling-behaving loop to change your sponsoring thought and replace it with a new one—hopefully, one that will lead to healthier and more productive feelings and behaviors.

Mindfulness is an opportunity to wake up, become aware, and transform the narratives that inform your life until you begin to get the outcomes you want.

It is no secret that in the U.S. and around the world, people are unwell both physically and mentally. Things like depression, poor self-esteem, addiction, and anxiety are often the result of chronic negative thinking.

Consider this: When was the last time you were going through your day, feeling fine, when suddenly, the most mundane unpleasant experience suddenly knocks the wind right out of you and wrecks your entire day? No matter what else happens next, that single experience of negativity replays in your mind, repeatedly, for the rest of the day.

Sound familiar? We’ve all done this—we give power to negativity and it overtakes us.

Now imagine: In that moment, instead of getting stuck in a pattern of negative thinking, you could tap into a mindfulness practice instead—stopping, pausing your thoughts, and taking the time to offer yourself compassion and reestablish your wellbeing. That could include acknowledging you had a negative experience, reminding yourself that you have the power to choose to think an alternative thought, and moving on with the rest of your day in a better mindset.

Take my client Chase, for example…

Chase is aware of what it means to challenge negative thoughts.

Chase and I began our journey together when he worked as a health coach for a concierge medical company. That might sound like the ultimate well-being gig, but he was deeply entrenched in a system of negativity that existed all around him.

Chase was playing by the standard rules set forth by society, doing the things he was “supposed to do” to achieve “success”—the kind of success that had been defined for him by others, as well. Once he paused and considered his own definition of success, he realized he wanted to drastically transform the trajectory of his life.

Through our work together, Chase learned to challenge his negative patterns of thinking. (Fun fact: Chase’s version of shutting up and sitting is shutting up and walking.) When he did, he found his life opened to opportunities he never thought possible. Chase discovered he had something so much bigger than himself inside of him.

The world needed and deserved what he had to offer.

Chase had the idea to take the mantra that his father had instilled him throughout his life: “Ever forward” and share it with the world in a way that empowered others. He wanted to support people in living their own “ever forward” life.

That idea led him to a cross-country move, a complete career overhaul, and, within just a few years, the career he had always dreamed of. (Including a thriving business and wildly successful 400+ episode podcast !)

“Once I [made a change, my life] got easier in many ways and challenging in a lot of others. But it was conscious challenge, because I knew if I had to navigate a different road [and] different social environments, it would force change. In my journey, I knew when I introduced change, growth happened. When I just thought about change differently—even before anything happened—I changed,” Chase says.

What negative thought patterns do you get stuck in, every day?

We all want to be able to brush off negative experiences and thoughts, to go about the rest of our lives happy, healthy, and with relative ease. But changing our thought patterns is not easy. We must learn how to become acutely aware of our thinking and then consciously interrupt ourselves, discovering the slight pause between each of our thoughts.

It’s in that pause we can all make a choice to think differently, unsticking ourselves from the cycle of negative thoughts.

Next time you find yourself in a pattern of negative thinking, try these three steps to challenging your negative thoughts :

Step 1: Get out of the habit of struggle.

Now that you know a bit about how the human brain frames negative and positive thinking, you probably have an idea of how important it is to get out of the struggle between positive and the negative. Positive affirmations are a small, easy, instantly accessible way to start. Try starting each day by saying something to yourself like: I’m happy and grateful that I am alive , first thing in the morning—before you even open your eyes. Start by beginning each day with an energy of positivity.

Step 2: Get out of the habit of low expectations.

Here is the thing: If you’re having negative thoughts and are stuck in the habit of struggle, then you may develop a habit of low expectations, too—and that can be a dangerously self-fulfilling prophecy. It might seem like setting low expectations prepares you to handle disappointment better when it arises, but it can have the reverse effect. Try arriving to every situation with positive intentions, while simultaneously setting the expectation that everything will unfold as the universe intends it to.

Step 3: Learn to favor hope over doubt.

If you feel as though you spend far too much of your life in a place of doubt and fear, chances are you’re in a pattern of old (negative) thoughts, behaviors, and experiences. It is easy to get lost in doubt—until you learn to favor hope, that is. You can favor hope by consciously choosing to frame the positive over the negative, the possible over the impossible.

Anytime you discover you are stuck in an uncomfortable or painful feeling, check-in with yourself and assess your thoughts, rather than your feelings or behaviors. It’s easy to think that the way you are feeling in any given moment is the way you’re going to feel forever—especially if you’re rooted in the negative, expecting failure, and filled with doubt. But it’s simply not true. All real change starts with your thoughts.

The good news is you hold all the power you need to change them.

Did anything in this post surprise you or teach you something new about the thinking-feeling-behaving cycle? Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love and personal transformation.

How Often Do You “Should”-Shame Yourself in A Day?

Sun, 23 May 2021 00:01:00 GMT

It’s time to stop “should-ing” all over…

If you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit, then you’ll love receiving weekly love letters from Yedda! Each week you’ll get stories, wisdom tools, and mini doses of mindfulness delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll be the first to know about upcoming events, workshops, new products, and more.

How cool would it be if we lived in this world where everyone understood the power of thoughts ?

If we did, you would probably hear the word “should” a whole lot less often.

One time, a little over a decade ago, I was giving a lecture on mindfulness and the power of our thoughts . My son, who was just ten-years-old at the time, had already spent nearly his whole life listening to me give these lectures. That day was no different. But as he sat there in the audience, something must have clicked in his mind in a new way.

When we climbed into the car at the end of the lecture, my son looked at me and said, “So, Mommy, what you’re really saying is that you shouldn’t ‘should’ all over yourself, right?”

I nearly burst out laughing, thinking to myself, Oh, out of the mouth of babes.

“If you should all over yourself, it’s a messy mess,” he continued, in his ten-year-old logic.

But the mental image my son had conjured was exactly what I had been speaking about all along. When I’m “should-ing” all over myself and other people, it really is just as productive as throwing shit—covering myself and everyone around me with all kinds of negativity.

Ask yourself: How often do you use the word “should” in a day? About yourself, about others, about the world at large? How often do you think or say things like:

“I should have performed better.”

“He should have been nicer.”

“She should have done that differently.”

“They should have…” X, Y, or Z.

If you’re anything like most people, you probably criticize yourself and other people with the word “should” all day long—maybe without even realizing it. But “should” is nothing more than a subtle way to pass judgement on yourself and those around you, AND it serves nothing and no one.

But, as usual, I have a great bio-hack for you: swapping the negative framing of “should” for a positive framing instead.

Next time you hear yourself thinking the word “should”, try this:

Instead of… “I should have spoken up in the meeting today.”

Try… “I really would have liked to speak up in today’s meeting.”

Instead of… “You should take your shoes off when you come into the house.”

Try… “It would feel really great if you removed your shoes before stepping on the carpet.”

Instead of… “She should have spoken to me kindlier.”

Try… “It would have felt good if she had spoken kindlier.”

In other words, rather than the shame, blame, and judgement of “should” you’re not only taking responsibility for your own emotional well-being, you’re also expressing your feelings and offering a positive solution for getting your needs met. Win-win!

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to “should” all over myself and I don’t want to “should” all over anyone else, either.

“Should-ing” is just one cognitive distortion that leads to negative thinking . In fact, there are ten! And we’re going to dive into them right here, with the goal of de-stigmatizing and de-mystifying them, once and for all.

So why is all this important to know, anyway?

Understanding common cognitive distortions enables us to lean into softness for and acceptance of ourselves and others. Once we realize we are all experiencing similar types of thinking, we tend not to judge ourselves or others as harshly.

Recognizing when you are in a cognitive distortion is key to what is called “creating the pause” in mindfulness. When you sit still long enough to access the pause between your thoughts—rather than letting them devolve into chaos, taking you along for the ride—you create enough silence to uncover what it is you’re actually thinking.

It is in that slight pause between one thought and the next that you can recognize the cognitive distortions you’re giving into and choose to think differently.

Rather than allowing the sifting, sorting, categorizing, and labeling instincts of the brain to take over, you can allow for a multitude of things to be true, simultaneously. Rather than thinking in black-and-white, one extreme or the other, you can allow many things to be true all at once.

The mind is always busy, distracted by the chaos of thought. The brain is like a massive CPU, programmed by the busy mind. Together, the brain and the mind work day and night, trying to make sense and order out of your reality—but in the absence of information, the brain and the mind start to write their own stories. They don’t want to rest in a place of unknowing, but the product of all that story-writing is often cognitive distortions.

The good news is that through it all, your soul (or spirit, essence, authentic self, deepest truth—whatever you want to call it!) is just hanging back and observing everything. Your authentic self is that ever-present part of you who is always there, observing exactly what is going on but never imposing its will.

By learning to shut up and sit, you invite that deepest, most authentic, most loving part of yourself forward. Hopefully, with practice and intention, over time you can live your life from that place of authenticity and self-love more often.

Did this post introduce you to some ways you’ve been living your life from cognitive distortion? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook and let me know any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

You can also bring you questions to Wind Down Wednesdays, Yedda’s weekly mindful mental break! Join her in her home (virtually!) to ask questions, learn mini-mindfulness techniques, support one another in community and self-love, and take some space JUST BE. Register to shut up and sit with Yedda, here .

These 5 Common Habits Are Keeping You From Getting Your Needs Met

Sun, 16 May 2021 00:01:00 GMT

Don’t worry, I’ve got a life hack to change that.

If you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit, then you’ll love receiving weekly love letters from Yedda! Each week you’ll get stories, wisdom tools, and mini doses of mindfulness delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll be the first to know about upcoming events, workshops, new products, and more.

A few years ago, I found myself wandering through an ancient marketplace in the center of Rabat, Morocco.

I was teaching leadership development internationally through Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business, which afforded me the opportunity to teach entrepreneurship in North Africa—guiding Moroccan students through the skills needed to take an idea and manifest it into the world as a business.

On Friday night, still jet lagged and sleepless, I stepped out onto the rooftop of the centuries-old home I was staying in and looked out onto a bustling marketplace below. At midnight, the medina was as busy as it had been mid-day: Packed full of people, walking shoulder-to-shoulder, eating, drinking tea, talking, debating, bantering, bartering.

I decided I wanted an adventure.

Old town Rabat is a vibrant, red brick walled city, built four or five stories high, in a series of concentric circles. The entire life of the city is contained within those circles: Shops, homes, restaurants, and grocery stores all leading out into narrow corridors. Everyone’s home has a different door on it—intricate iron doors, wooden doors of every color, doors decorated with tile and glass, each one more unique than the last.

So, I quietly left my accommodations and decided to walk the corridors.

The moment I stepped outside and into the bustle of midnight Morocco, I felt the most profound sense of aliveness. I didn’t speak the language, but I didn’t need to. The sense of community, of shared humanity, was so palpable that I felt deeply connected, even though I did not understand practically one word of what was being said around me.

Walking down one corridor, I noticed an elderly man standing still to the right side of the corridor ahead of me. His tanned, leathered skin was draped in a faded, linen djellaba. He wore worn slippers on his feet and held a cane in one hand.

As I walked closer, I noticed that he didn’t have any eyes.

If I didn’t know any better, I would have assumed this elderly man was homeless, a beggar with no one to care for him. But when I arrived, I learned that the homeless in Morocco are often taken in by locals: Put to work for a wage, given food and shelter.

As I approached, a teenage boy walked past the old man and gently placed a few coins into his hand. How nice, I thought to myself, walking past.

But then, turning the corner, I had an awakening. There I was, in Morocco, carrying a bag full of money over my shoulder. I had the means to help this man, too.

So, I turned around and walked back to the old man, gently opening his palm and placing a handful of coins inside of it. He said something to me in Arabic, the words and syllables lost to the language barrier. When I didn’t understand, he repeated himself.

“He says he sees you,” said another gentleman, standing nearby. “He sees you and he says thank you.”

And believe it or not, in that moment, face-to-face with a man with no eyes, I had never felt more seen in my life.

Being seen—like what this elderly man in Morocco had given me—is a basic human need. Being safe and secure—like how I was able to help him—is another. Everyone has these basic needs, whether we are consciously aware of them or not. But by becoming aware of your basic needs, you are better equipped to dig deeper into your thoughts, emotions, motivations, and behaviors. This awareness also supports your ability to treat yourself with understanding, kindness, and compassion when you unearth a pattern of thought or a behavior that you want to change.

While, as humans, we can have any number of wants and desires, genuine human needs can be distilled down into five basic ones:

They might sound simple but meeting your basic needs is hardly an easy undertaking. Really, it’s the trying to get these needs met that trips most people up, leading to five crippling habits that can prevent you from getting your needs met.

Do any of these sound familiar?

Throughout my years of personal study and professional coaching, I have noticed that one or more of these five crippling habits are at the root of almost any struggle. These habits allow you to stay confused, have no accountability to yourself or others, expect little of yourself and less of others, remain trapped in a loop of never-ending planning with no action, and fear evolution and transformation.

But you can change that.

Here’s a great life-hack for you: Awareness is a key step to transformation. So, once you are aware of your unhealthy habits, you can reframe them— turning a bad habit into a positive directive . For example:

Rather than an absence of clear directions, it’s time to formulate a crystal-clear vision of where you are going.

Rather than a lack of accountability, take a moment to recognize and establish some firm consequences for neglecting to meet the standards you have in place for yourself.

Instead of rationalizing inferior performance, focus on what superior performance looks like for you.

Stop planning and take one clear action step—TODAY.

Confront your aversion to risk and change with a wiliness to lean into that discomfort and see where it takes you.

The only question now is: Which one will you choose?

Did this post make you think differently about how you relate to your own thoughts? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook and let me know any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Do You Know the 4 Components of Being Human?

Sun, 09 May 2021 00:01:00 GMT

There’s a science to being human…

If you enjoy reading Shut Up & Sit, then you’ll love receiving weekly love letters from Yedda! Each week you’ll get stories, wisdom tools, and mini doses of mindfulness delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll be the first to know about upcoming events, workshops, new products, and more.

Family legend says that my dad had a presence—you would know he walked into the room, because the air would just shift. People could feel his presence before they even saw him.

My mom compares it to the way people used to say, “Elvis is in the building.” My dad had that same kind of energy and magnetism. He walked into a room and consumed the entire space.

Everyone was drawn to him.

But he had a destructive side too. My dad rode a motorcycle and hung out with a lot of the bikers in town. They partied all the time, drank and used drugs. He often disappeared for days, and my mom didn’t know where he was or when he was coming back. My dad lived life full-throttle: Captivating, magnetic, wild—and totally out-of-control.

But here’s the thing: I have biker blood running through my veins, too. My father’s DNA is encoded into my own. It’s a fact of my existence that I cannot change. (Not that I would want to.)

By understanding the parts of myself that are innate, biological, and nature driven, I’m able to offer myself greater compassion while making decisions from a place of awareness and wisdom. Rather than fighting against my nature, I can work with it.

My dad never discovered the fullest expression of his truest, most authentic, most soulful self. He simply did not have the tools.

But that does not have to be my reality. And it doesn’t have to be yours, either.

There is a distinct science to being human; one we’re always learning more about. The components of being human —the things we cannot change about ourselves, no matter how hard we try—are key to understanding that science and the intricate majesty of how our brains develop and work, how we think and act, how we live our lives.

These four components are what make us all incredibly unique, but also precisely the same.

The Neurological Aspects of the Brain

The brain and nervous system are intensely complex systems that inform practically every aspect of your being: And the limbic system is of particular importance when we are talking about mindfulness and its impact on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

As far as we know, humans are the only beings on Earth with brains that give us the ability to process information in the way that we do—our brains enable us to function at advanced levels of thought. At the same time, everyone’s brain operates differently, based on individual life experiences. You will certainly perceive certain stimuli differently than I will. Events will have a different emotional resonance for you than they will for me. We are all beautifully and neurologically wired very differently from one another.

2. Genetics

In a way, genetics are precursors to the neurobiology of the brain. Your genetic makeup is central to who you are as a human being—and we each have genes that we absolutely cannot change. (That doesn’t mean we can use them as a blanket excuse for any dysfunction in our lives—but it can garner more self-love and compassion. That is another way mindfulness can be supportive.)

3. Experiential Conditioning (aka: Family of Origin)

This encompasses your family of origin, the relationships you formed with those people and others, your caretakers, and any other peers or influences. Any conditioning you experienced growing up is unique to you—and we’ve all experienced some. We cannot change those experiences—they are paved directly into the brain—and, in many ways, they can shape us for a lifetime.

4. Social and Cultural Norms

There are countless behaviors, beliefs, and expectations that you learned from the larger world around you. These are the things that society expects you to conform to, whether they are authentic to you or not. But nature or nurture, these things are central to who you are and inform why you do so much of what you do.

The good news is studies have shown practicing meditation can rewire the brain and form new neural pathways—helping to transform the beliefs and behaviors that were taught to you with ones that are natural to you. Still, there are some things that cannot be changed. Every experience weaves a thread, however small, in the fabric of your being.

While we can’t change these things, we can develop compassion for them—both in ourselves and others—and learn to work with them.

Through mindfulness, each of us can develop the acceptance we all need to live from a place of authenticity and wellbeing. If we begin to see ourselves and each other through the framework of these four components, we can start to approach the world from a place of understanding and love.

Isn’t that something we could all use a little more of in our lives?

These four components of being human are beyond our individual control, but that does not mean we can blame our decisions on our conditions. Each of these four components manifest in entirely unique ways within everyone, and what we each decide to do with them is unique to us as well.

What we do with our lives beyond these four components is totally up to us.

What happens next is up to YOU.

Learn what happens next, here .

Did this post make you think differently about how you relate to your own thoughts? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook and let me know any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

The Goal of Mindfulness Isn’t to Stop Your Thoughts

Sun, 02 May 2021 00:01:00 GMT

Mindfulness Transforms Your Thoughts

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When I was a child, I talked all the time—and it usually got me into trouble. At home, at school, it seemed like someone was always telling me to sit down and be quiet . Once, one of my grade school teachers stood me in front of my class with masking tape over my mouth, telling my peers that’s what happens when you don’t shut up. (This was back in the days when corporal punishment and community shaming were standard practice in school.)

If I wasn’t being disciplined, I was being excluded .

I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, so we didn’t celebrate birthdays or holidays or say the Pledge of Allegiance. Attending public school, this meant I sat out in the hall a lot—unable to participate in class activities that didn’t align with the faith I was brought up in. I didn’t have a Christmas morning experience. Halloween and Easter were things other people did. Every morning when the class said the Pledge of Allegiance, I was sent out into the hall. I spent every class holiday party sitting outside the classroom. While my classmates dyed Easter eggs, I sat out in the hall. While they glued cotton ball beards on construction paper Santas and sang carols, I sat out in the hall.

One year, I was sent to a child psychologist because I broke all the eggs my classmates brought to school to dye for Easter. The psychologist asked me why I would do such an awful thing. But I didn’t have the vocabulary to understand it—let alone explain it to someone else. I was suffering under layers of hatred: Of myself, of others. I’d formed the belief that I was no good, that nobody wanted me, and nobody needed to see me or hear me. I often lay in bed at night thinking: I can’t do anything right. Nobody wants me. That belief was programmed—and, at times, beaten—into me.

My entire childhood was a lesson in shutting up and shutting down.

I believe we can all relate to this experience, in one way or another. We are each born with a vibrancy, a desire to be magnificent, great, dynamic, charming—to sing our songs loudly in the middle of the room. But instead of being encouraged to thrive, most of us receive the message that to be liked we must be small and quiet. The world tells us to shut up and sit.

But those words—once wounds—became my wisdom.

They can become yours too.

As a consciousness coach and consultant, I spend a lot of time thinking about thinking. (There is even a term for it: Metacognition.) As humans, we think thousands of thoughts every day. Studies have shown that humans can have anywhere from 10,000 to over 50,000 thoughts a day. That’s as much as one thought every 0.02 seconds! The stimuli the human brain absorbs each second number in the millions, yet our brains can only consciously process a fraction of them in any given moment.

Still, I don’t think many people understand the power of their thoughts . Beginning to think about what you are thinking—the stories you tell yourself, the voice of your inner critic, the beliefs you reinforce with your mental chatter—is the key to negotiating your suffering and arriving at a space of awareness.

But most of us don’t do it. Many do not even know how.

In some ways, we have come to believe that our thoughts are universally true, that who we are is defined by what we think—that the voice of the inner critic is us. But that voice, no matter how familiar it may become, is NOT YOU.

Not even close.

It might surprise you to learn that the goal of mindfulness is not to stop your thinking but to become aware of it. Through mindfulness, you learn to become actively aware of what you are thinking so, at the deepest level, you can listen to your inner wisdom. By discovering how your thoughts are generated, where they come from, and their power to create any reality you choose, you can begin to understand how they inform your feelings and behaviors—and, subsequently, your life!

Through mindfulness, we don’t just become conscious of our thoughts, but learn how to exercise our ability to choose them as well. We can ask ourselves if we really want to feed a thought or choose something different.

And how do we do all that, exactly?

We shut up and sit.

Get started, here .

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.

Did this post make you think differently about how you relate to your own thoughts? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook and let me know any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Is It Time You Got Real With Yourself?

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 01:00:00 GMT

Check out these 10 ways to tell if it’s time to wake up.

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I went off the rails for a few years, as a teenager: partying too much, drinking too much. I have biker blood running through my veins, after all.

But then, between the ages of 17 and 20, I lost three of the most important men in my life. That changed everything.

My grandfather died when he was just 54 years old, and I was 17. As a child, I spent summers on his farm in West Virginia. During the day, I worked with him on the farm, and at night he told me the most beautiful stories as I fell asleep. There was an innocence and timelessness to the days I spent with him. As the only man who was ever really a loving, nurturing father figure to me, losing him was like losing a father.

Soon after my grandfather’s death, my older brother Christopher died of a brain tumor. Just a year older than me and my half-brother on my father’s side, when I visited my father Christopher often spent the weekend, too. It was the first time I lost somebody my own age.

Christopher’s death destroyed my father. He became homeless and lost in addiction, calling me if he needed money or, sometimes, a ride somewhere. The last time I saw my father, he asked me to pick him up from the hospital. He’d crashed his motorcycle into a brick wall on a bet and asked if I could take him to check out a rehab center.

I had other plans that day and so, mad at my dad for making me late, the moment he stepped out of the car at the rehab center I rolled down the window, threw out his bag, and took off.

That was the last time I saw him.

A month later he died of a drug overdose, on what would have been my brother’s twenty-first birthday. He was 43 years old.

That was it: I stopped partying, stopped using drugs, even stopped smoking, certain it was all going to kill me. I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t what other people did with their time, or how they coped with their lives, but I knew I needed a new plan.

I needed to get real with myself.

How do we get real with ourselves? It starts by waking up—by looking at the things we do and understanding why we do them.

Here are 10 ways to tell if it’s time for YOU to wake up:

Your efforts (of time, energy, resources, etc.) constantly exceed your returns.

If this sounds familiar, you probably don’t have a clear vision for your life . Plan your life like you’d plan your dream vacation. If you do not have a clear sense of who you are and a vision for where you want to go, you’re like a hamster on a wheel: Using up all your energy to go nowhere.

2. You spend all your time working, yet none of it on your health.

If your life feels unbalanced , filled with unhealthy patterns, and stifled by the weight of your suffering, chances are you not spending nearly enough time (or any time at all!) on your health and well-being. Rather than going through the motions of work and life like a cog in a wheel, take a holistic, wellness-centered approach to your life—physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually, and financially.

3. You’re winging it, rather than living in an intentional way that promotes your health and well-being.

In my own mindfulness practice, I sit for twenty minutes, twice a day. That is my system. I have a set intention, and that intention keeps me vibrant, healthy, and well. Everyone needs a system that is unique to them. If you don’t have a system, you’re living your life in a state of reactivity instead of proactivity—and that state is a mindless one.

4. You resist being held accountable.

Statistics show that most people find changing a health behavior more difficult than changing their religion. You’re going to need some accountability—and, ideally, someone to hold you to it. As human beings, we love to talk ourselves into and out of anything, but when the going gets tough, the tough get accountable.

5. You resist holding yourself and others accountable.

Sometimes, the only thing harder than being held accountable is holding others accountable—and that includes yourself. But if the point of mindfulness is to get you out of your lower-level consciousness, where problems live, and move you into a higher level of consciousness, where freedom lives, you’ve got to hold yourself and those around you accountable to the solutions that will improve your health and change your life.

6. You want to change your health, but you’re not willing to change your habits.

Newsflash: to change your health, you must change yourself. It doesn’t get more straightforward than that. Your health, generally speaking, is a direct consequence of your choices. Your health will not change until you do.

7. You’re stuck in a mindset of shame, blame, and powerlessness.

Listen up: A victim mindset doesn’t serve you. It is up to you to take the events of your life and the quality of your health, be they whatever they are, and transform them into something powerful and liberating. Nobody can do that for you—you have got to do it for yourself. If you want to see a change in your life, begin by looking deep within yourself and start making change there: Inside.

8. You ‘go with the flow’ instead of responding with intention.

Hey, sometimes we all have to just go with the flow. There’s beauty and joy in surrendering to what is. But the habit of just doing whatever comes up won’t cut it if you want to build a successful health behavior. Surrendering doesn’t mean you give up and going with the flow doesn’t mean you get to phone in. What ‘surrender’ really means is that you become radically present to your life: You accept what is, as it is, in this very moment, so you can respond with intention rather than react with emotion.

9. You overwork as an excuse to avoid dealing with what you don’t want to see about yourself.

This one is a classic. The stuff that keeps you busy, distracted, and feeling competent—overworking, over-exercising, even over-cleaning—is the very same stuff that keeps you from seeing what you don’t want to see about yourself. We’ve all cleaned out the refrigerator instead of making that uncomfortable phone call or booking that appointment with the doctor. It’s human nature. We do the things we’re good at in order to feel good about ourselves, rather than leaning into the suffering that will make us feel free.

10. You don’t believe you can actually change your life.

This one is all ego. This insecurity hides in all the parts of ourselves where we safe harbor our wounds. But this very need is a limiting belief—the ultimate limiting belief, in fact. And limiting beliefs hold you back.

The truth is that most of us are creating and co-creating the very things we don’t want in our lives, every single day. But, if we can create and co-create the things we don’t want, that means we are just as powerful to manifest the things we DO want. This should be no surprise by now, but that starts by shutting up and sitting.

To learn more about the Shut Up & Sit movement, and to dive even deeper into these ten ways to tell if its time to wake up—and so much more—check out my book, Shut Up and Sit: Finding Silence and All the Life-Changing Magic that Comes with It .

Did this post wake you up? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook and let me know any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, and personal transformation.

You Are A Magnificent, Once-In-Human-History Phenomenon

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 01:00:00 GMT

So why aren’t you treating yourself that way?

Did you know that one million new cells are created every second in the early stages of fetal development? The entire magic of you—who you are, what you will become—starts with just two single cells and expands exponentially.

In other words, you formed with the energy to create and continually recreate. It’s a magnificent magic you can’t even see, one that is in all of us.

How mind-blowing is that?

You are the most valuable possession you have. Without your body, your mind, and your energy NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. Yet, most of us live our lives asleep, on autopilot, and totally disconnected from the sacred magic of who we are as human beings. If we’re disconnected from that sacred magic, how can we possibly protect it?

How often do you get lost in the mundane stuff of lower-level consciousness? How much of your life is spent worried about what other people are saying and doing, thinking about what they have that you don’t, comparing your life to theirs and theirs to yours? How much time do you spend chasing things the world has taught you to want, without assessing whether or not you actually do?

When was the last time you treated yourself with the holy sacredness that you deserve?

You make choices each day that either move you towards health or hold you back from it, that either move you into a space of mindfulness or deny you access to that higher-level consciousness. In those moments, which choices do you make?

Each of those choices has consequences, and there are immense consequences to making poor choices for your health: physiological and psychological consequences, social and emotional consequences, financial and professional consequences. There are consequences that could hinder, harm, or even end your life.

The good news (and there’s always good news) is that you will reap massive returns if you invest in your health and well-being—if, as you go about your life engaging in behaviors and making choices, you remember the magnificence of what went into making you a human being.

Not convinced? Let’s look at what humans are currently doing to ourselves:

Before covid-19, many of the leading causes of death in the United States were largely preventable, and predominantly due to behavior: Heart disease, cancer, accidents or unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, diabetes, nephritis, and intentional self-harm or suicide. I’m not saying everyone who has tragically suffered any of the above made poor choices that led them there, but chronic diseases and conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and arthritis are among the most common, costly, and preventable of all health problems .

Health risk behaviors are unhealthy behaviors you can change: Right here, right now.

Four of the most common health risk behaviors —lack of exercise or physical activity, poor nutrition, tobacco use, and drinking too much alcohol—cause much of the illness, suffering, and early death related to chronic diseases and conditions.

Plus, chronic disease and health risk behaviors cost us more than just our lives—there are dollar amounts behind each of these illnesses and the individual patients they kill every year. Those numbers are staggering.

For example,

As of 2019, 90% of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in annual health care expenditures were for people with chronic and mental health conditions.
Heart disease and stroke cost our health care system $199 billion per year and an additional $131 billion in lost job productivity.
As of 2019, diabetes cost the US health care system and American employers $237 billion every year.
In 2010, excessive alcohol use cost the US economy $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink. About 40% of these costs were paid by federal, state, and local governments.

This is real. This is what is happening right now in the United States, every single day.

But why?

Would it surprise you to learn that the health risk behaviors causing such costly health conditions and chronic disease are directly linked to our inability to address our suffering in healthy, healing, compassionate ways? Whenever we attempt to address suffering from a place of ego—to alleviate suffering with anything outside of ourselves—we only do ourselves greater harm.

In other words, we don’t offer ourselves the presence and mindfulness we deserve.

We’re uncomfortable in the silence our bodies and minds so desperately need.

We deal with our emotions by breaking down our bodies, destroying our health, and dismantling the awesomeness of our divine creation.

Rather than face suffering by doing things to build ourselves up, we tear ourselves down and feed the financial burden of our poor self-care—all in the name of suffering we don’t know how to handle.

We don’t shut up and sit.

Take a moment to let that settle.

Then, remind yourself that you matter.

You, right now, just as you are— you matter.

Once you become mindful of the choices you make, the behaviors you invest in, and which choices and behaviors you need to let go of, unlimited freedom opens itself up to you. This doesn’t mean that life can’t be interesting and fun—have that extra glass of wine, buy those designer shoes, think that less-than-charitable thought about your coworker (just don’t tell them.) But do so mindfully, with your own wellbeing in mind.

You were created with the same magic and mystery as every other human being on the planet. You come from the exact same divine intelligence of the universe as everyone else. You are intrinsically connected to those you share this planet with. We’re all linked, the same, and yet uniquely different.

You deserve to show up for yourself.

You deserve to shut up and sit.

The only question now is: When will you begin?

Did this post inspire you to take a closer look at your own health and health risk behaviors? (No judgement – we’ve all got ‘em!) If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook and let me know any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, and personal transformation.

What’s Your Ideal Vision for Your Life… And Are You Living It?

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 01:00:00 GMT

For a long time, I wasn’t living mine.

I was well into my late-thirties before I made my first visit to a therapist’s office . That afternoon, I pulled up in a Range Rover, dressed from head-to-toe in a slick, black suit that had been tailored to perfection. I didn’t walk into his office so much as I strutted, sitting myself down in his overstuffed armchair and looking him straight in the eyers.

“I just need to know what love is,” I said, hoping we could wrap this up in under the 50 minutes I’d booked. “I’ve been told I don’t know what love is, but if you can tell me what book to read or what schematic to study so I can learn it, I’m happy to do that. Oh, and what form of payment do you accept?” I asked, reaching for my wallet.

Matching me gaze for gaze, he said, “I can’t help you.”

There was a slight pause.

“But I have money,” I said.

The hint of a grin formed around his mouth. “I can’t help you,” he repeated. But, he said, he knew a woman who could.

Catherine was a little old lady who ran a counseling practice out of her upstairs spare bedroom. For two years we met in that upstairs spare bedroom, once a week, studying the past and patterns of my life like it was going to be on the final. She taught me things about myself that I never knew. Sometimes she’d spend the entire session holding me while I sobbed. It was deeply intense work—the kind of work I never even knew existed.

That was my waking-up process .

Then, practically the moment I was finally awake and aware, Catherine retired. Fuck, I thought. What now?

That’s when I met Gena.

“I sit with people,” she said the first time I met her. An Episcopal priest with expertise in contemplative prayer and mindfulness , that’s literally what she did. Twice a month, for an hour a-piece, you could make an appointment to sit in Gena’s small, seafoam-walled office that was entirely empty except for two chairs, facing each other, right in the center of the room. One chair was for her clients, the other for Gena. You sat. She sat. Then… nothing. Just silence.

“Well, that sounds awful,” I thought.

But I sat with her.

In the beginning of my work with Gena, all I wanted to do was retell all my old stories: my life, my childhood, my suffering, my questions about everything I wanted to know, but didn’t.

“All totally irrelevant and unnecessary,” Gena would gently say. I can’t count all the times she had to tell me that before it finally started to sink in.

But it was there—in that sitting, in that silence, in that little empty room with the seafoam walls—that I learned to create. I learned to tell myself a different kind of story: One about who I am, and where I really come from, and the deepest truth of myself. I remember thinking, You just shut up and sit. That’s it. If you do that, slowly but surely, the answers you’re looking for start to reveal themselves to you.

Have you ever taken the time to really sit down and create a vision for your life?

If you have, are you showing up for that vision, every single day?

Is your vision one that supports you in embodying loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity?

How might your life change, if it was?

Did this post spark any ideas about your ideal vision? If so, I want to know! Head over to Facebook and let me know any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, and personal transformation.

Changing Your Life Can Be as Simple as Shutting Up and Sitting

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 01:00:00 GMT

I know… I’ve done it.

When you think about the term “ mindfulness mediation ” you’re probably thinking mala beads, not diamond rings; Birkenstocks, not Tieks. But if I’ve learned anything throughout my journey as a consciousness coach and consultant, narrative coach, and meditation practitioner it’s that no matter who you are, where you come from, what you do for a living, or where you shop, we could all benefit from more silent stillness in our lives. Sure, my alter-ego might be Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly now—but as much as I love luxury, pampering, and posh, I come from somewhere else altogether.

Let’s take a trip—or, rather, a motorcycle ride—down memory lane, shall we?

My story began on the back of a Triumph motorcycle. My mom was seventeen years old, seven months pregnant, and barefoot on the back of that motorcycle, on her way to marry my dad. He was just twenty: dark and gorgeous. They had practically nothing; they’d both grown up in one of the poorest neighborhoods on the Southside of Richmond, Virginia.

My mom loved my dad more than anything.

In spite of that love, life was full-throttle from the moment I was conceived. Both of my parents grew up surrounded by staggering levels of dysfunction, including alcoholism, drug addiction, and domestic violence. They were dirt poor and lived in government-subsidized housing with no car and no money. Neither of my parents learned to aspire to or dream of a life that could be any different or better than the one they had.

Somehow, though, I did. And that journey: from lack to abundance, from darkness to light, began with mindfulness.

Mindfulness isn’t just something I teach; it’s my personal story. It’s a story of sitting down, and shutting up, and discovering silence and all the life-changing magic that comes with it. I want that journey, that discovery, that life-changing magic for you, too.

Don’t you want it for yourself?

Just shut up and sit. I say that to myself a lot: Just shut up and sit. It’s not all that difficult. (Except, it totally is. If you’ve ever bolted out of a yoga class just as savasana is beginning, you know what I’m talking about.)

Here’s the thing: as humans, our brains want to know things . We want to know who, and what, and where, and when, and why, and how, and for how long, and what will it feel like, and what will be the outcome, and what if we don’t like it, and what if people don’t like us, and what if we lose, and what if we fail? What if we do this when we were supposed to do that? What if we go here when we were supposed to go there? What if we aren’t enough, exactly as we are? Phew.

I often live in that place of unknowing, with a mind filled with the same “I don’t knows” that probably fill your own mind. There is so much I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing, why I’m going where I’m going, why the universe selected me for one task, and not another. Chances are, you’ve felt the exact same way. But here’s what I do know: the journey I’ve been on can help me help others. It can help me help you.

Can I let you in on a little secret? I have read so many books, attended so many workshops, sat at the feet of so many gurus, and through it all, I thought: Does this really have to be so fucking hard? Does it have to be so damn arduous to unravel why we do what we do, why our behaviors are what they are, why we were created the way we were? Here’s the secret: it doesn’t.

If you’re looking for the fast track, Cliff Notes®-style low-down on how to achieve real, lasting behavior change, you’ve come to the right place.

If you’re ready to learn to systematically identify, isolate, and eliminate your negatives while amplifying your positives and taking a quantum leap toward greater health, vitality, and success, then welcome, friend. Take a seat. Stay awhile. This is going to be FUN. (I swear.)

Here’s my invitation to you: It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you do, or where you come from—you can shut up and sit. You can upgrade your thoughts and feelings , change your actions, and totally transform your life. You deserve to arrive at your innate sense of wisdom; to uncover your truth; and to return to the whole, unbroken parts of yourself that the world desperately wants and needs. You can learn valuable lessons on how beliefs and behaviors are created and how to let go of what is no longer serving you. You can grow, evolve, and bring your highest, brightest, most successful self fully into the world

So, let’s shut up and sit. Let’s discover how to be present, awake, and aware―and let’s do it together.

What Do Llamas Have to Do with Mindfulness?

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 01:00:00 GMT

Well, you’d be surprised…

This year, soon after New Year’s Day, I traveled to Monticello, Virginia for a three-day silent meditation retreat. Before the ‘silent’ portion of my weekend began, I found myself on a well-worn dirt path—the original trail down the mountain from Monticello to Scottsville. I was leading a llama named Thomas (after Thomas Jefferson, naturally) on a leash.

Or, rather, Thomas was leading me.

All things considered, Thomas was a remarkably sweet, docile creature. But as we prepared to cross a January-chilled creek, the guide accompanying me shared a few pointers.

“You need to leap with your llama,” she said.

“You can’t leap first and expect your llama to follow. You also can’t let your llama leap first, because he’ll wind up dragging you behind.”

Huh. This wasn’t something I had considered when I agreed to an afternoon stroll with a large, wooly livestock. I glanced nervously at Thomas. Hey, Thomas…? I tried to signal, telepathically. We have to become one.

Here’s the thing: I am not an animal person. Didn’t grow up with ‘em, don’t care to keep ‘em now. But there was just something about Thomas. From the moment I reached out to pet him, I felt an energy flow between us. He felt safe. Solid. Like talking this walk with me, side-by-side, was second nature to him.

Plus, leash in hand and already well on our journey, I didn’t have much of a choice.

Leaping with Thomas was a mindful practice. When we leaped, we leaped as one.

Next week, the Shut Up & Sit movement is taking a leap—and while we won’t have Thomas the Llama on a leash with us (although, wouldn’t that be great?) it’s going to be BIG.

We want you leaping with us.

Join the movement, here .

How about you? When was the last time you took a leap of faith? What did you learn? I want to know! Head over to Facebook and let me know any new insights, ideas, or questions you have!

Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, and personal transformation.

Yedda Stancil

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