Balance Mind Coaching is committed to supporting clients to align their actions with their values by learning to work more effectively with their mind and their body.
What are values?
Values are the elements of our life that are most important to us. Values indicate how we want to behave – how we want to treat ourselves, others, and the world around us. Values are often related to our feelings, to our goals and achievements, our relationships and our possessions, but they are more foundational than any of these. As such, they guide us in determining what is right and important in our lives, and they also help us to make choices.
What does it mean to align our actions and our values?
When our actions are in alignment with our values, we are engaged in the activities that allow us to be the person we desire to be. We feel clear, focused and engaged, and even if we are doing things that are challenging, we feel a sense of satisfaction and purpose.
​
When we are avoidant, distracted or lose sight of who we want to be, then our actions will drift out of alignment with our values. The challenge for all of us is to be aware of this lack of alignment and then take steps to move our actions back into alignment with our values. Making these shifts can be challenging. Our thoughts and beliefs can undermine our will and our motivation, and our addictive, avoidant behaviors blind us to who we want to be and how we want to show up, leaving many to believe that it is impossible to shift these patterns, but this is absolutely not true.
We can change, grow, and realign our actions and our values. The 5 Essential Practices give us the tools to more effectively navigate the negative beliefs and mental noise, and the unhelpful patterns of addiction, distraction and forgetfulness, so that we can do the important stuff in our life.
Shift your Attention - Balance the Mind
When I review my own life and the lives of so many of my clients, I can see how an overutilization of the mind creates so many problems.
We worry about things.
We get ahead of ourselves and try to predict and control future events.
We get stuck in the past.
We obsess on how perfect everything needs to be.
We second guess.
We struggle to make decisions.
We run through countless scenarios in our minds…most of which
never happen.
We live in an illusionary space that is so “noisy” and confusing with of
all the thinking.
…and because of all of this we are less confident, less productive, and less happy.
To make things even more challenging, it is often difficult to discern when we are stuck in this mental space filled with unhelpful and unhealthy thinking. We are so used to living this way, and most everyone around is doing the same that it feels “normal” to us, and we can barely conceive of functioning differently.
​
​
It is rare in my experience for the mind to solve a problem that has been created by the mind. More thinking just adds to the problem. Instead, we need to be able to recognize when we are in this pattern, and when we recognize this, we need to move our focus away from the mind and our thoughts, and instead focus our attention on what we perceive with our senses. Only when we set aside the mind and come back to our senses can we begin to find the clarity that we are seeking.
Even though the mind can give us trouble, the mind is not a bad thing. When utilized properly and in balance with awareness of the body and the present moment, the mind can be a wonderful tool that helps us align our values, our goals, and our actions.
The key is to know when to use the mind and when to focus our attention away from the mind. Learning to engage and disengage from the mind is a crucial skill.​
Here are a few questions to help you determine where to best direct your attention and focus…
Is your thinking helping you to do important stuff? – The mind can be a really useful tool for helping us align our values and our actions. Examples include researching, learning, strategizing, planning, organizing, visioning, creating, and problem solving. When not using the mind as a tool to do the important stuff, it is helpful to move your attention to your body, your senses, your surroundings and the present moment.
Do you enjoy the way you are engaging with your mind? – If the way you are using your mind is enjoyable, then no problem. If your mind is making you miserable and unhappy, then it is time to stop engaging with your mind, and instead focus your attention elsewhere by engaging your body, your breath, and your senses.
The main challenge most of us face is how to effectively work with the body and the mind to create the life we want for ourselves.
How do we learn skills to regulate our experience in our body so that we can cultivate greater acceptance and present moment awareness?