Unflappable: 6 Steps to Staying Happy, Centered, and Peaceful No Matter What: 6 Ways to Staying Happy, Centered, and Peaceful No Matter What - Softcover

Michaels, Ragini Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573244899 ISBN 13: 9781573244893

Verlag: RED WHEEL/WEISER, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

<p>We all want to be happy. But, sometimes life gets in the way. People lose jobs. Spouses are unfaithful. Kids are hostile. Friends die. Houses burn down. It is a jungle out there.</p><p><i>Unflappable</i> is a book that helps readers not only survive, but embrace these ups and downs of life, and learn to stay centered and peaceful regardless of the circumstances.</p><p>Drawing on the wisdom of the mystics and her NLP (neuro linguistic programming) training Michaels offers a sixstep process for happiness and serenity regardless of how crazy life gets.</p><p><I>The Six Steps include:</I><br><ol><li> Discover the lay of the land: Look at the inner contours of your life. Decide where you are and where you want to go.</li><li>Examine the river running through your inner landscapein all of its inconsistencies and incongruities.</li><li>Ride the river's rapids: go with the flow.</li><li>Learn to identify personal challenges on your journey.</li><li>Learn how to reduce heightened emotional distress.</li><li> Enjoy the ride.</li></ol></p><p><i>Unflappable</i> offers a unique route to a different brand of happinessone that doesn't depend on outside circumstances, and incorporates a model for conscious living that leads to serenity.</p>

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

<div> Ragini Elizabeth Michaels is an internationally acclaimed trainer of NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) and hypnosis, and an accomplished Behavioral Change Specialist. She has traveled the world sharing her Facticity® program, a unique process for how to live with paradox </div>

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UNFLAPPABLE

6 Steps to Staying Happy, Centered, and Peaceful No Matter What

By RAGINI ELIZABETH MICHAELS

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2012 Ragini Elizabeth Michaels
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-489-3

Contents

Acknowledgments
A Note to the Reader
Introduction: The Chase after Happiness
PART ONE SOLVING THE HAPPINESS PUZZLE
1. Happiness from a Different Angle
2. Longing for Magic
3. The Wisdom of Your Discontent
4. The Bewildering Nature of Paradox
5. The Steamy Love Affair between Opposites
6. Dilemmas: Opposites' Tenacious Offspring
7. Entering the Land of Unresolvable Dilemma
8. The Magic of Impermanence
9. Preparing for Your Peaceful Journey
PART TWO YOUR MAP TO THE LAND OF UNRESOLVABLE DILEMMA AND THAT DIFFERENT 
BRAND OF HAPPINESS
10. Beyond the Awareness Paradox
11. Step One—Exploring the Lay of the Land
12. Step Two—The River Running through It
13. Step Three—Riding the River's Rapids
14. Step Four—Obstacles to Your Enjoyable Travel
15. Step Five—The New Perspectives for Your Journey
16. Step Six—Enjoying the Ride
Conclusion: Your New Wisdom in a Nutshell
Resources
Featured Quotes from the Mystics
Notes

CHAPTER 1

HAPPINESS FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE

If you're still looking for happiness, you're not alone. An Internet search forit can get you over 100 million results. A search for "wisdom" will produceabout the same. Who would have thought being happy and wise could be so elusive?You'd think by now we'd have absorbed the guidance of the multiple traditionshanded down through time—spirituality, psychology, philosophy, shamanism, self-development,and even today's Energy Psychology and New Age.

We haven't absorbed it because a fundamental problem makes this guidance lesseffective than it could be. It's a core confusion that leads us to take sidesinstead of cooperating to find new ways to make the wisdom practical andaccessible.

The essential problem is not the wisdom offered, but how we understand it.Whatever meaning we take away consciously, the unconscious mind consistentlyinterprets the wisdom (regardless of how it's offered) as saying this: thesolution to our pain and suffering is to permanently establish the positive andthe good by permanently eliminating the negative and the bad. That will bringhappiness and joy. This is the crucial issue: our deep misunderstanding ofopposites and how to handle them.

I see this with most people who come to work with me. They are intensely engagedin removing anything bad or negative, but they feel overwhelmed with all itentails—and the unsatisfactory results. Emily is an excellent example.

Chasing After Happiness Is What We Humans Do

Emily, a thirty-eight-year-old supermom, had a handsome, loving husband, threepre-teen kids, a nice home, a career in the medical field, and a way to giveback through volunteer work at the homeless shelter. She was convinced this wasas good as it got and should have been the key to her fulfillment and happiness.Yet when she came to see me, her stress level was off the charts and anxiety washer constant companion.

One day, desperate for relief, Emily flew into my office, gripping her cup ofjasmine tea so tightly I thought she would break it. She flopped into her usualchair and began to cry. "I try my best, but I just can't keep things undercontrol. I can't keep my husband happy, the kids focused on school, the houseclean, and my career on track and stay sane. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'msure I could do it better if I just knew how."

Emily isn't alone. She is one of the thousands of unhappy individuals I'veencountered in my work who have had the same complaint: "I can't seem to dealwith all the choices I have to make every day and be happy. There has to be abetter way, doesn't there? My life is driving me crazy!"

And it's not just that Emily has the stress of being a working mom. Emily wantsnot only happiness, but also wisdom—a practical way to better manage herresponsibilities. She told me she wants to stay calm and make decisions withoutgoing in circles, worrying if they're right or wrong—decisions such as whetherto

• pick up the kids' clothes or leave them lying around for a day

• cook good organic food for dinner or eat out at a fast-food restaurant

• finish that art project sitting in the garage or put it off for another day totake a seminar for her medical career

• have coffee with her friends or hang out at home by herself

Emily goes in circles because she wants to feel good and pick the right choiceto get her there. But she's not aware that all of her decisions, big and small,are deeply influenced by something outside her awareness: her unconscious mind'sdrive to feel good, be happy, and choose what will bring maximum good feelingsand pleasure. This seems like it should make her happy, right? The problem is,following your unconscious directive to always choose what feels good doesn'talways make you happy in the long run.

When you find yourself struggling with an either/or situation, it's yourunconscious mind that makes deciding hard. And you may not realize that you'refaced with these kinds of decisions all the time:

• Being alone or being together

• Taking care of you or taking care of others

• Being safe or taking a risk

These dilemmas can leave us paralyzed, corner us into arguments, catch us inpower trips, make us controlling, debilitate our health, make us lose courage tostand up for ourselves, exhaust us, turn us into workaholics and codependents,block us from choosing our career path, and hook us into other addictivebehaviors.

All of this is because we don't know how to navigate the flow between oppositesand the tension between them—the things that make up dilemmas.

A Different Brand of Happiness Is Available

I'm glad to report there is another way to find happiness and feel good. Itstill requires you to choose and make decisions (after all, that's human life),but there's a wise way to do it that frees you to feel good about yourself—nomatter how bad you feel. Paradoxical? Yes. Impossible? No.

I'm going to map out for you another route to a different brand of happiness—onethat doesn't depend on outside circumstances, or whether your body is feelingpleasant or unpleasant emotions. This is very different from the happiness thatcomes when you get what you want (and don't get what you don't want), the mostordinary go-get-it brand of happiness. It's also not the same as that moremysterious, esoteric brand of happiness that comes for no reason at all.

The focus of this brand of happiness is creating a sustainable sense of peaceand calm in the presence of your own emotional turmoil, not in its absence. As abonus, it offers you a wonderful way to travel between the other two brands ofhappiness.

I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: RED WHEEL/WEISER
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1573244899
• ISBN 13: 9781573244893
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar