Positive Thinking or Positive Belief

Positive Thinking or Positive Belief

Claire Aslangul - Thursday, June 26, 2014

The past eight months have been some of the most transformative of my adult life. I have grown in a myriad of ways. Can you guess which self help book I read to make that happen?

Actually, I didn’t read a single one. It has been a journey of growth through painful experience and awareness of my own negative belief systems that have been holding me back from happiness for years. For a very long time I have had a positive attitude and viewed the world with optimism, but when that positive thinking clashed with some deep dark core beliefs, suffering ensued. I couldn’t “think” my way out of the pain of my marriage break up, nor could I visualise a happy ending to a miscarriage. I had to stop, be vulnerable and feel the anger and grief and recognise the core wounds and attachments that were behind all this suffering. It was not enough to just think positively, I needed more. I needed to go deeper.

Self help and is like every other industry, it has its good points and it's not so good points. It has its gurus, its success stories, its charlatans and its clueless imitators, but above all it has some major logic gaps.

On average, a person who walks into a bookstore and buys a self help book will be back in 18 months time to do it all again. Now things aren't moving that fast in the evolution of an individual's psyche that the information from the first book is no longer relevant, it is that the desired outcome hasn't happened; to be rich, healthy, happy and/or in a passionate relationship. Chances are very little has changed in that 18 month period. The reader has probably not only read the book, but implemented some or all of the strategies and yet still those goals have not been attained. So back to the bookstore to pick up the newest self help book (which is probably yet another rehash of "Think and Grow Rich") in the hope that this one will have the missing ingredient. And the cycle begins again...

The irony is most of the time the only people getting rich out of the self help industry are those selling books or expensive seminars to people looking for answers. It is not a case of swindling the public though, more a case of not realising that they are confusing "casual relationship" with "causal relationship". Here you have a whole group of self made people trying hard to share the secret of their success with others, but being oblivious that their message lacks an essential piece to the puzzle. Their positive thinking, visualisation and goal setting only has a casual relationship to their achievements.

But why is it some people can walk out of an Anthony Robbins seminar and blitz their goals within months and most others try like crazy, but find themselves with exactly the same problem, just different a expression. The answer is not that they weren't disciplined enough, nor is it that they didn't listen. It all comes down to this little thing called belief.

Our belief systems are much more complicated than we once thought. Unfortunately, we can't think our way out of a belief, no matter how hard we try. Actually, when you look at the research, the opposite is true; the harder you try to think your way out of a core belief, the more reasons your brain comes up with as to why the belief is true. So in many situations when your core beliefs and thoughts are incongruent, thinking positively actually makes things worse. It cements further into your mind the underlying negative belief that got you into the unhappy position you are in the first place.  Every self help book, every seminar you go to gives you a short term energy boost and inspires you to work harder, but your amazing brain always comes back to create a reality that lines up with your core beliefs. So, if you are one of these people who truly believe you are going to be successful in a field that gives you complete joy, every book you read on success and every event you attend cements the idea further that you have unlimited potential. Unfortunately, people like that are by far the minority.

So what are our core beliefs? Where do they come from? And importantly, how do we fix them?

Our beliefs can be slippery little suckers, sometimes we think we know what they are, but we don't. Identifying what beliefs you have is the first step to fixing them and this is often the case of being unable to see the forest for the trees. For myself, there have been two ways in which I have recognised belief systems that are holding me back from my true potential. The first is quiet contemplation, this could be in the form of meditation, going for a walk/run/swim/bike ride on your own without earphones. In this time of quiet contemplation, bring a stressful situation into your mind and look not at what is going on, but the feelings you have about it. Anger? Injustice? Deep sadness? Unworthiness? Ignored? Unlovable? Stupid? Judged? Shame? Fear? Out of control? Sick? Pick out all the feelings that come up with this situation and sit with them for a moment. From here think about the why behind the feeling, what is the reasoning behind feeling this way?

For an example, you walk into the kitchen to find your 5 year old has just thrown all their dinner on the floor because they didn't want it. You feel angry, but beneath that anger is a feeling of rejection. You spent an hour cooking a nice meal for the family, it was an act of love and that love has been thrown back at you, rejected by someone you adore. The rejection is really a feeling of being unlovable. Why you are angry is you believe you are unlovable. You try so hard to be an attachment parent, but in situations like these you lose it and send your child to their room. Then you spend the next few days berating yourself for not being like Suzie who would have calmly asked her kid to get down on the floor and help her clean it up and probably made a fun game of it too. This self flagellation helps you to believe that you are unlovable.

Little situations like this are huge clues into our belief systems, but sometimes it is really hard to make the connections on our own. The second way I have been able to recognise my negative beliefs has been through talking with someone else, in my case Myra. There is a tool used in psychology called a Johari window which describes the 4 selves we each have:

•   The open self which is the me I know and the me you know,

•   The blind self which is the me you know but I don't,

•   The secret self the one I know but you don't,

•   The closed self which none of us know. 

Talking through a situation like this with someone who is going to be more than just sympathetic can be incredibly enlightening, because it can open up the blind self to you. Asking the right questions and pointing out connections to the same reaction in other situations works a bit like an emotional GPS. You can pin point the exact root feeling and core belief.

Now that you have recognised the belief, the next step is to work out where it comes from. This can sometimes be a difficult thing to discover because our beliefs can come from a number of places, they may be something we have picked up as adults, as teenagers, as children, as babies or they might not even belong to us. Some beliefs are passed down through our DNA*.  To work out where this belief comes from you need to think about when else you have felt this way.

This can be done by going back to your very first memory of that root feeling. It might be really easy, it could be a case of thinking, "Oh yes, I will never forget the time when I left my shoes at the park and my dad yelled at me and made me walk all the way back there in the dark, telling me I wasn't allowed home until I found them. I spent hours looking for them, but they weren't there. I sat on the letterbox and I cried until my brother came out to get me. Dad didn't talk to me for a week. I felt like he could never love me again". When it is something so obviously traumatic it can be a simple task to recognise where the feeling came from, but sometimes it is much more subtle. It could be that your belief comes from more than one event, but a number of small incidences that you have tied together to create a picture. A hurtful word here and there, being ignored by a busy, stressed parent or even modelling your parent’s negative belief systems. This is where hypnosis can really help put the pieces together.

Finally, once you have recognised the belief and found the source you can begin the healing process. As I mentioned before you can't just think your way out of it. If you try to just stick a positive thought over the top it is like sticking a bandaid over a festering wound. You won't be able to see it anymore, but you sure will be able to feel it and it will just get worse. Healing the belief requires healing that initial wound and you are most likely going to need help with that. Again, hypnosis is a brilliant tool for this. It allows you you to be guided back to the time of the injury and give yourself what you needed at that time to be ok rather than what you got. Kinesiology can also be an amazing medium for this sort of healing, especially in conjunction with some more active forms of emotional healing.

So before you go and buy your next self help book, have a look at which core beliefs have been stopping you from achieving success and move into that group of people guaranteed to win out of it.

* http://themindunleashed.org/2014/01/scientists-found-memories-may-passed-generations-dna.html

n=1 Experimentation

n=1 Experimentation

Claire - June 12, 2014 

In science, we talk about evidence-based research and often the studies involving the most number of subjects “n”, get the greatest kudos. But it’s not always that easy! As an individual, we need to determine what works for us and sometimes we don’t fit the “norm”. In every study, there are always the ‘outliers’, the one’s who just don’t fit the mould (and effectively get discarded from the study). Perhaps you are an outlier? Perhaps more like the ‘norm’? But you’ll never know if you don’t give something a go! Health, diet and wellbeing is one of the biggest minefields in this regard. We are not machines, robots or computers – we are far more complex than those things. You have to become your own greatest and most important experiment.

I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about health and wellbeing is the idea that there is one perfect way to eat that will cure all that ails you and put you into the “superhuman” health category. It is an idea that is often touted by raw foodists, paleo gurus, juice fasters, diet experts and weight loss companies. The selling of the next miracle diet is worth billions of dollars in Australia alone and yet as a nation, we are continuing to get unhealthier and fatter every year. So why is it that every one of these lifestyles and diets have poster children that they hold up as proof to being the shining light in our obesity epidemic, yet all are so different?

There is no “one size fits all” diet. There is no ultimate way to eat that trumps all the rest. We are more than what we eat. We can talk up macronutrient content, OCRAA scores, inflammatory index, calorie count and countless other ways to quantify the value of food, but it is almost all based speculative and often dubious science. That is not to say that all food advice is wrong, but the fact is it only gives us some of the picture. The human being is an incredibly complex creature and no two of us are the same. Why we are so different is more than what foods pass our lips.

The guts of the problem.

One of the reasons we respond differently to different foods is that we are not a single organism, but a complex ecosystem and the number of cells that are “us” is only about 10% of that ecosystem. The rest are bacteria and fungus as well as some viruses (which aren’t even cells). These inhabit our skin, mouth, GI tract and genitals and in most cases are imperative to our healthy existence.

The make up of this flora can be vastly different even among super-healthy people. Actually, we see much less variance of “flora” among the seriously unhealthy sectors of our community. It’s a delicate balance. Even high levels one single “healthy” strain will cause health issues, as will very low numbers of “bad” bacteria (E.coli is a perfect example – we actually need some E.coli in our bowels to be healthy). Each strain has different nutrition needs and alters the absorption of different nutrients form our food and into our bodies. As all of us tend to have gut populations as unique as our finger prints and as such our nutritional requirements vary wildly.

You are what you … believe.

The fact that there is such a thing as the placebo effect shows you how powerful our brains are when it comes to altering our body chemistry. This works not only for medications, but for diet, lifestyle, ethical and even spiritual choices. A good example of this is prescribing a full paleo or Western A. Price-type diet to an ethical vegetarian, someone who vehemently believes in animal rights and their right to live is as valid as ours. Even though chemically it might be the perfect diet for them and their gut flora, they would not get any healthier but rather, probably get sicker as a result. The stress hormones released every time they sat down to a meal would be sky high. This can alter both absorption into the blood stream and the way the cells themselves use the nutrients in the food and not in a good way. If you don’t believe that you are doing good to yourself with your diet, you probably aren’t.

How you eat and with whom can mean more that what you eat.

Do you sit down with the family of a night time, share a meal and discuss your day? Or do you plant yourself in front of the TV or computer with a bowl and a fork and tune out? Like our belief systems, what we are doing while we are eating has an effect on how we use that food. When eating is a pleasant bonding experience we produce amazing feel good hormones, like oxytocin and seretonin. These aid in the process of using the nutrients to build and repair rather than just being stored as excess fat. It even directs stores of ready-energy to be made in structural muscles rather than around our vital organs as life-endangering fat. Eating the most nutrient dense meal in the world while playing World of Warcraft or watching the news on TV maybe more detrimental to your health than eating takeaway with a couple of your best friends down at the park while you chat and laugh.

 Tips for trying a new way of eating:

There are a number of other factors that can influence how well your chosen way of eating works for you. The best way to find out what your body needs and responds to is to experiment with yourself. (n=1)

1.  Look at various lifestyle plans, read the philosophy/biochemistry behind them, ask yourself if any concepts sit congruently with your beliefs.

2.  Ask yourself if your beliefs around food, diet and eating are truly serving you.

3.  Be aware that not all initial symptoms are a sign of it being “not for you”, but could be a part of the healing process. (reducing Candia growth, for example, can leave you feeling like you have gastro for a few days as those little yeasty buggers die off!)

4.  Give your body time to adapt, very few people feel amazing straight away, it can take days, weeks and even months in some cases for changes to begin.

5.  Don’t be dogmatic, feel free to mix things up a bit, there is no diet that you need to stick to by the letter.

6.  Remember it is not always about what you eat, be mindful of how you feel and what you are doing when you eat.

7.  Finally, whichever eating plan you chose, make sure it is one high in actual food, not something that has been created in a lab.

Have fun experimenting.

Other People's Belief Systems

Other People's Belief Systems

Claire Aslangul - Friday, June 06, 2014

Other people's Belief Systems; Why Internet Arguments Rarely Result in Changing Minds.

We have all fallen for the trap of wanting to prove someone wrong on the Internet.  We read some absurd comment and we can't help but be inspired to respond at the wrongness of it all. It is oh so wrong, you wonder which planet the author is living on because it sure can't be the same one you inhabit. They need to be set straight because they are just spreading ignorance and stupidity and we know that those "diseases" are already in epidemic proportions in our modern society.

I ask you, how many hours have you spent formulating the perfect logical response only to find they reply with an even more outrageous statement?  Back and forth, back and forth. In the end all you can type is #headdesk and wonder how they could not get it.

The fact is, you might not be right and if you are does your right and wrong translate perfectly into someone else's life?

The very fabric of what makes you, you is a weave of your life experiences, your belief systems and even your ancestry. It is a complicated mesh that is ever changing but often holds tightly onto the threads that make up your identity and belief systems are an integral part of that.  Your brain understands the need for identity, it is essential for your self esteem, your sense of purpose and even for your physical health. 

Without identity you would quickly deteriorate into a mailable, sick, sad shell of a person.  This is a tactic that has been used for centuries in prisoner of war camps, concentration camps, prisons and even schools. To truly break a person, you need to get them to lose their sense of self. To protect you, your brain will fight tooth and nail to make sure what you believe, is true for you. We see this manifest in so many ways, confirmation bias is one of them.

For an example, Carla thinks her husband, Barry, is a lazy bastard that never does anything around the house and if he does, he does a half-arsed job of it. Over the years, this belief system has become more and more ingrained in Carla's identity. Her belief system becomes, "I can't trust anyone to do anything properly, I have to do everything myself." Who she is changes in her own mind and her identity suddenly becomes tied to what she does and no longer who she is. In sheer frustration of her plight, she posts on Facebook, "Seriously, men are useless. All we need is a decent sperm bank and we can ship all those with a Y-chromosome off to another galaxy. That way all of us women can get on with fixing the environment, stopping all the wars and we will never have to worry about being raped again. All the worlds problems will be solved."

For her rant she gets the usual "sing it sister" comments, most of the guys ignore it. One pipes in with a prescription for chocolate, naprogesic and a packet of pads. Another suggests that Barry is not performing his bedroom duties properly. A voice of reason pops up in the thread, Sonya comes back with, "Not all men are useless, my hubby did 3 loads of washing today, cooked dinner, bathed the cat, packed the kids school lunches for tomorrow and worked a full day in the office. He was even able to refrain from starting a war or raping someone."

Of course, this is refuted as being the exception rather than the rule and a back and forth begins.  No matter how "good" Sonya's husband is Carla will not change her mind and will argue using every crime that men have committed against women (that is a LOT of ammo there). It is not that Carla hates men, even if it looks like that, it is that Carla's essence and identity is tied up in the belief that she can not trust anyone else to do all the things that need doing. Her brain will seek out and focus on all the evidence to confirm that she is important because she does it all. Sometimes the evidence is a stretch to another's logical brain, but the connection is still there. Without that connection, she loses part of her sense of self, she is broken. Where Sonya is wrong, is she is painting herself, with her identity, into Carla's reality.

There are plenty of other examples of where identity and belief systems create disharmony in life. From things like sickness patterns, poverty patterns, being accident prone, drama patterns (people that always seem to be fighting with others), even things like fitness obsessions are signs where a belief system has written itself into our identity. Changing these things require understanding of where the belief systems come from and working from within rather than being told by someone else why you are wrong. There is no evidence in the world that will allow a person to willingly destroy their sense of self unless they feel safe enough to rebuild themselves.

What do you do when someone is wrong?

Think about what may have lead them to believe what they believe and how this ties in with their identity. Use empathetic statements to shine a light on a core wound that has lead them to this place. Ask questions that might lead to them looking at things from a different perspective. But finally, let go of the outcome. You are not responsible for trying to fix someone else's negative belief systems and if you think you are maybe that is something you need to look at within yourself...

The Origins of Your Gut Flora

The Origins of Your Gut Flora

Claire Aslangul - Friday, June 06, 2014

Gut health is one of the most researched areas of nutritional health being explored today. The old adage was, “You are what you eat” but,  we are learning it is more like “You are what you absorb.” At the heart of absorption is our gut and micro biome.

Our gut has been described as our “second brain”, it has as many neurons as your brain does, it releases hormones that alter our behaviour and has been associated with immunity and psychological health. Without a healthy bowel our entire system becomes sick, stressed and can even give us the propensity to be dramatically under weight or overweight regardless of diet.  We become chronically inflamed, depressed and susceptible to everything going around.

Once we used to think that babies grew in completely sterile environments and became colonised with the bacteria that would inhabit the mouth, nose, gut, skin and genitals at birth.  Under normal circumstances a baby would be exposed to a myriad of bacteria, viruses and fungus as they move through the vagina and past the perineum while facing mums anus. This was then enhanced by skin to skin contact and breastfeeding which both have complicated feedback systems to support the immune system and gut flora. But what is coming to light is that by this stage babies have already been exposed to the make up of mum’s micro biome before birth.

Before you were born you had probably the most fascinating yet least understood organ, a placenta.  While you were in your warm, watery internal environment your placenta did all the work for your lungs, stomach, small intestine, skin and your bowel. It fed you, it removed your waste, it gave you oxygen and removed excess carbon dioxide. It also communicated between you and your mum hormonally and we have now discovered it began the process of turning you from a single organism to an entire ecosystem. It set the scene for that ecosystem to be like that of virgin forest or one more likely to be found around the dumpster behind your local takeaway joint.  This was completely dependent on what mums ecosystem looked like and what choices she made just prior to and during pregnancy.

During pregnancy small amounts of mum’s flora enter the blood stream and collect in concentration in the babies placenta. By the time baby reaches term, about 10% of the placenta is made up of these bacteria, viruses and funguses. They float around in the amniotic fluid and live on bubs skin, in bubs mouth, nose and GI tract. This sets bub up for life on the outside and shapes not only their gut and immune system, but even their psychology and hormonal system.

Antibiotics are often prescribed to pregnant women for various reasons, some highly valid and others are more dubious. But this is under the false premise that babies grow in a completely sterile environment and therefore are completely unaffected by them. This latest research is now questioning the safety of prophylactic or non-vital antibiotic use during gestation as it has the ability to completely mess with the babies micro biome, setting them up for ill-health.

What can you do when you are growing a person?

There are a number of things that will influence the health of your babies gut and therefore their future health. It is always best to start before you fall pregnant to get your own gut health into an optimal state. Firstly because it will give your system enough time to have healthy strains of bacteria to be the dominant flora, secondly if you are overwhelmed by fatigue and nausea doing anything differently can seem way too hard. Set the habits first then do what you can in the early stages of pregnancy. Here are my 4 tips to growing a healthy ecosystem.

1.  Have a look in your mouth.  

            Your oral health has an incredible effect on your overall health, the periodontal spaces between your teeth and gums are an easy entrance way for pathogenic bacteria to enter your blood stream. This not only will affect your baby, but causes chronic inflammation throughout your body and has been associated with preeclampsia and choleostasis. Have a check-up and clean with your dentist, learn to floss daily/use an aquapick/oil pulling or use a probiotic mouthwash.

2.  Add some fermented foods to your diet. 

            We all know about yoghurt, but there are a number of probiotic fermented foods that can keep your gut in tip top shape. These include sauerkraut, kimchi, milk or water kefir, real sourdough breads (not commercial), kombucha tea and unwashed sprouts and organic fruit and vegetables, traditionally made wines and beers.

3.  Limit products that kill good bacteria.

            These include antibacterial soaps, dishwashing liquids, bleach, conventional mouth wash, highly processed foods particularly take away foods and transfats.

4.  Get adjusted. 

            Having the nervous system communicating with your second brain gives it a much better chance of setting the environment to encourage optimal gut flora to flourish.

All of these tips can also be applied to you if you were born with a less than optimal micro biome.  It is much easier to grow a healthy child than repair an unhealthy adult. The earlier we can start on making that ecosystem, the easier it is.