The world can be unpredictable, presenting challenges and tests along the path to a better life. In Finding the Balance, author Shelley Hallmark draws upon her own personal experiences, challenges, and past relationships, to offer a navigation chart through uncertain waters. Whether you are feeling like you are at a crossroads or you just wish to enhance your own awareness, self-empowerment is the best tool you will ever have.

FINDING THE BALANCE

Insight to Understanding Life's LessonsBy Shelley L. Hallmark

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2011 Shelley L. Hallmark
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-3210-3

Contents

PREFACE....................................................viiCHAPTER 1 NEGATIVITY.......................................1CHAPTER 2 MANIPULATION.....................................5CHAPTER 3 DISCRIMINATION...................................11CHAPTER 4 RESPECT..........................................15CHAPTER 5 CONFIDENCE.......................................21CHAPTER 6 RESISTANCE.......................................27CHAPTER 7 GRATITUDE/APPRECIATION...........................33CHAPTER 8 FAITH............................................39CHAPTER 9 FORGIVENESS/COMPASSION...........................49CHAPTER 10 CONTENTMENT.....................................53CHAPTER 11 INSPIRATION.....................................59CHAPTER 12 INTENTION.......................................67CHAPTER 13 DETERMINING YOUR WEAKNESSES.....................81CHAPTER 14 RECOGNIZING YOUR TRIGGERS.......................87

Chapter One

NEGATIVITY

Negativity is one of the harder emotions to fight, and it takes a great deal of inner strength to overcome it. Negativity is not easily avoided, but it can be deflected and defeated. You must refuse both emotional and physical negativity. Emotional negativity can be thwarted by learning to recognize the moment when a negative thought process begins to enter your mind, cutting it off immediately, and replacing it with the opposite positive thought. In other words, you must view the glass as half-full instead of half-empty. For example, focus on the negative aspects of a beautiful painting can be conquered by looking for the hidden beauty that you might miss when only taking a quick glance. Acknowledging all the work required to create each individual brush stroke and how difficult it would be for a beginner to attempt such a thing could also help you look past superficial flaws to appreciate the beauty of the painting. Once you train yourself to turn the negative into positive, you will be surprised at how easy it is. Soon, the habit of looking for flaws first will change. Your default way of thinking will begin to lean more towards the positive, thereby creating a much healthier thought process for your everyday life.

Others can also inflict negativity upon you. You need to protect yourself against this. When you begin to work to change your own thoughts, you will be more aware of negativity in others. One way to handle this is to excuse yourself from the negative person's presence. When people sound off about any topic, even though they aren't angry with you directly, they are conveying negativity. A day of running into five people like that can make you feel like you have five pianos tied to you. You become emotionally tired and drained; sometimes another person's negativity will cause you to feel negative about things. This is why deflecting negativity is important—so it won't rub off on you.

Once you've changed your own thought process and have begun to think only positive thoughts, the negative thoughts become things of the past, and you are better able to protect yourself. When others are inflicting negativity, you can easily counter their attitudes by keeping your mind strong and affirming the opposite as a positive in your mind. You don't need to berate another for their behavior. You can, however, point it out (if you feel so inclined) and move on. Not everyone is open to constructive advice. You are the better judge of those in your life and whether you need to censor your communications or not.

Physical negativity is behavior that enforces emotional negativity. When people become too interested in the personal lives of others, boundaries get crossed. Spreading gossip is the action that can sometimes precede the emotional pain that one feels from being the subject of gossip. The subject is then confronted by both the negative actions of others and their own emotional pain.

Negativity's sole purpose is to hurt others. It feeds and grows in very dark places—and like a virus, it makes people feel so awful that they pass it to others in an effort to alleviate their own sadness. Most of the time, negativity is passed on by the carrier, because they don't realize that the negativity they are spreading is actually connected to their own unhappiness. Unfortunately, the more they try to disperse that negativity, the more it comes back to them. This pattern can continue to go around in circles until one of two things happens: the person experiencing the negativity learns to recognize and deflect it, or they completely defeat it.

I realize that there is much negativity in this world, but I choose not to have it in my life. I choose to be happy. That being said, everyone—at some time or another—experiences the downside of negativity. There are low points in our lives when we don't have the energy to deflect or defeat negativity. One thing I can do at these times is to try to avoid projecting this negativity onto others. This may mean that I avoid interactions with others. When I can't, I do my best to bite my tongue, politely nod, and move on. Sometimes that's all I can do.

I've found that the more aware I became of others' desires to maintain the drama of unhappiness, the less it affects me because I realize it has nothing to do with me and more to do with what might be going on in their life. Awareness has been the key that has helped me to take a step back and not let the negativity of others infect me. I now recognize that these tests of negativity are their lessons to learn. Someone else's negativity has nothing to do with me. The more I understand this, the easier it is to create a barrier to protect myself. Awareness is power.

Thinking or saying something like, "If it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all" has a way of determining the future. We do tend to get what we wish for. Thoughts are very powerful. Positive thoughts can help create positive change.

Negativity is very difficult to overcome. Some people use negativity to protect themselves from being hurt. They are not always willing to let go of the protective barrier they have erected to prevent personal hurt.

Sometimes negativity is about revenge for past hurts. It may not even be directed at the person it is being inflicted upon. Sometimes you just happen to be the one in the vicinity at the time. Remembering this when it happens is one way to realize the idea that awareness is power. If you can recognize what is really going on, try to introduce positive energy into the situation and leave. Negativity cannot survive in a positive environment. It either dissipates or has to move away. Darkness cannot survive in light; negativity cannot survive in the positive. When you introduce light into a negative environment, the negative person will either follow your lead and become more positive, or they will leave. Either way, you have chosen not to let negativity ruin your happiness.

Chapter Two

MANIPULATION

Understanding manipulation is tough. Knowing how terrible I would feel if I had manipulated another person has always made it difficult for me to detect and accept that people willingly do it. I've always given others the benefit of the doubt—even when my gut told me otherwise. One of my biggest challenges was learning to listen to my gut instincts. Even though my instincts...