Self Perception – Self Evolvement Series

Self Perception – Self Evolvement Series

By Anna Elena Berlin

Certified Professional Coach, Experience of Life Researcher

 

SELF-PERCEPTIONWhether you know it or not, stress from self judging, blaming, and condemning activates your sympathetic nervous system. It initiates your fight or flight response by producing stress hormones, shifting blood flow, and redirecting energy from your digestive system. Your parasympathetic nervous system is prevented from doing its rest, digest, and repair job. Without this vital function your health declines without your knowledge.  

With your parasympathetic nervous system suppressed developing leaky gut is likely. This weakens your immune system, 80% of which is in your gut. Toxin overload adds more stress making leaky gut worse. And, you feel awful because it makes you feel good hormones decline.  

The research literature indicates that leaky gut is a rampant modern health problem. Many researchers believe it’s the source of Autoimmune Disease and most other human ailments. They found that leaky gut stifles nutrient absorption, causing deficiency, and lets toxins escape into the bloodstream. Deficiency and toxicity are the two main sources of most diseases and disorders that plague us today. Your subconscious mind doesn’t differentiate between stress from a life threatening situation and stress from self imposed anxiety. Developing personal protocols to protect yourself from your own unconscious tendencies will improve your experience of life.

So, how do you transform your subconscious reaction habit into a conscious response habit. Well, as I learned from my wise daughter, Lacy, you have to replace a bad habit with a good habit or you leave an empty space that the bad habit can slide back into.  

The good habit of self compassion provides more benefits than are immediately apparent. It reduces anxiety, increases courage, and makes you less judgmental and more accepting.  These reset your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Compassionately perceiving your thoughts, feelings, and emotions enables you to:

keep from playing the shame / blame game with yourself

be okay with being human and all it entails

respond consciously instead of react unconsciously

enjoy calm and peace instead of struggling with angst and agitation

promote the health of your body, mind, emotions, and spirit

improve your experience of life

Your self-perceptions have incredible power to affect your experience of life. By focusing your attention to this one personal change you can save yourself mental and emotional turmoil, and physical suffering. Self compassion improves your relationship with others, because the way you see, relate to, and feel about them is a reflection of how you see, relate to, and feel about yourself. Making peace with yourself enables you to make peace with others, benefiting your family, friends, and co workers.  

Using a trigger recognition strategy when self judging, blaming, or condemning first appear brings the unconscious reaction into your awareness where you can replace it with a self compassion response. Remind yourself that, “This reaction makes you feel bad and ruins your health.”

This phrase gives you a bit of time to apply self compassion and self acceptance. Self-acceptance meaning that you are okay with being human, and even though you are not perfect you can still develop a life that’s perfect for you. Keep in mind that you are proactively improving your experience of life. Talk to yourself as you would talk to a friend to help them feel better.  Tell yourself things like: “give yourself a break, we all make mistakes”; “it’s okay that it didn’t turn out the way you wanted, it isn’t stealing your life away and you are fine”; “you’re doing your best and that’s all any of us can do”.  

Most importantly ask, “What are you supposed to be learning about yourself from this experience?”  Then gently remind yourself to be patient, especially with you. Don’t push for understanding; the wisdom of your learning will filter up into your conscious mind, as Albert Einstein says, in between your thoughts. Lifelong brain plasticity makes this transformation possible. A new neural pathway is forged by consciously repeating your new good habit at the first sign of your old bad habit. Each time you repeat it the new neural pathway gets more established. After a while no conscious response is needed. The old habit’s neural pathway will fade away leaving the new habit in charge.

Improving self-perception is ultimately about having your best experience of life. There are many books available to help you overcome your specific self limiting emotional and mental challenges. Self-knowledge is the best knowledge and self help is the best help. Both lead to self- evolvement.

 

 


For more information about Lake Chapala visit: chapala.com


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