How to Respond rather than React.

How many times have you found yourself agreeing to do something or turning something down, only to find yourself a short time later, saying to yourself ‘Why did I do that? That’s not what I want at all?’

It can feel like you responded in a kind of automatic, knee-jerk kind of a way, that once you’ve had time to think it through, seems to be conflicting with what you really want or seems not to make sense? Similarly are there certain situations, behavior’s or language in other people that are ‘guaranteed’ to induce or trigger a predictable reaction or feeling in you, and even though you recognise this, you seem unable to stop it or change it?

It can feel that there’s someone else or that some part of you is inside and running the show, pulling the strings despite your best intentions – this can contribute to us feeling out of control, that nothing we do makes a difference and ‘Life just happens, what can we do?’

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Receiving without Giving?

Recently I was given an extremely generous gift from someone very dear to me. The gift was totally unexpected, extremely generous & made me cry! The timing of it at a moment when it lifted me out of a dark hole meant that its worth was magnified beyond it’s ‘face value’ and to say that I was, and am immeasurably grateful is an under statement! So What’s the problem, you may ask? Not so much of a problem as a small revelation – I found it more difficult to accept this gift than I would have imagined. I struggled with it because I immediately went into thoughts of ‘I will be in debt’, ‘ I can never re-pay this’ & ‘I haven’t earned this & therefore don’t deserve it’.

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Making space for your new life.

We are now in February and many of us have already abandoned our ‘New Year Resolution/s’! Alternatively, if you’ve been following my road-map to creating your best year yet, you have a good template in place for creating positive, lasting changes! (If you would like access to this free video series just email me rebecca@rebecca-atkinson.com).

You will of course already have an idea of what steps you need to put in place to support the action you want to take to achieve your best life, and have you made room for it to happen? De-cluttering has become such a ‘thing’ in recent years and like everything can be misunderstood and used as a generalised ‘cure-all’ by some! However, if used in a bespoke way to suit your personal needs, it can be useful.

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Golden Rule 5 – Everything we need to create change is already within us!

Most of the time –  particularly when we are overwhelmed with ‘stuff’ that Life has thrown at us – we forget how far we’ve come, how many obstacles we have negotiated and survived! We almost never stop, look back and appreciate how many achievements we’ve accumulated, how we have managed to overcome numerous challenges and […]

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Golden Rule 4 – There is a positive intention behind all behavior.

As I’ve said before, the majority of our behaviors are driven by our sub-conscious mind and the beliefs we’ve chosen over the years. The overriding intention of any behaviors stemming from our beliefs, is to protect us in what ever way it can, given the circumstances.

This can be very hard for us to understand and remember, when dealing with particularly anti-social or hurtful actions, but it is always true, however unpalatable it may be. Please do not think that we need to agree with that chosen behavior or condone it in any way, however we must identify it as serving a positive purpose for the person who is doing it albeit on a sub-conscious level. Think of unhappy children who crave attention, any attention being better than none. They quickly work out that being good and quiet means that they are left on their own, no parent or carer engages with them. But they crave attention and interaction and notice that they get a great deal of it if they act out, shout, or break the rules or display anger. Depending on how that is received, the code is then set up – act angry and upset etc and I will get the attention I so crave. They are simply trying to get what they need in the only way they know how.

Another common example is bullying – belittling, dominating behavior of any kind. Generally speaking, people who need to engage with others by making them feel small, stupid, unimportant and dominated are actually feeling all those things themselves. At some point they have taken on the belief that they are small, a failure, insignificant etc. So all their behavior – subconsciously – is driven by a need to make themselves feel better & more important.  So they have made a choice – still subconsciously – to make others feel dominated because that means they feel better about their own importance.

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