Find Your Calm

Mindful Lessons for Balance, Peace, and Harmony

Johanna Bassols

• Publisher: Rock Point
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781631067556
• eBook ISBN: 9780760370315
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Beautiful, inspirational, and practical, Find Your Calm shows you how to recognize your negative patterns and behaviors and reprogram your thinking to live your best life. It is the perfect guide for those wishing to attain inner peace. When you find calm, you are in perfect harmony with yourself.
 
Each of the sixteen chapters in this life-changing book is devoted to an enlightening and practical lesson to help you create the habit of experiencing calm. Johanna Bassols, an expert on the elevation of consciousness, gently shows you how to use subconscious reprogramming to change your patterns and behaviors with this simple yet powerful four-step practice:

1. Meditate to recognize the pattern or behavior you would like to change.
2. Visualize yourself experiencing the new pattern or behavior.
3. Implement an action plan to adopt the new pattern or behavior effectively.
4. Internalize your intention to solidify your goal.

Find Your Calm encourages you on every step of your journey, and once you make calm a habit, its benefits will be applied effortlessly to your daily life, as you reach your highest self for a balanced, stress-free, and healthy you.

Words of encouragement and inspiration from women around the world come together in the Everyday Inspiration series from Rock Point. Follow the journeys of hundreds of strong female leaders from past to present through thoughtful biographies and empowering quotes, and receive advice for how to live a more thoughtful and fulfilling life overall through performing acts of kindness for other or various methods of self-care. The perfect gift for family and friends, these gorgeous hardcovers featuring foiled covers and full-color interiors bring these amazing words of wisdom to life.
 
Other titles in the series include: Grit & Grace; Find Your Glow, Feed Your Soul; Follow Your Bliss, Beautifully Said; and Hello Gorgeous!

Healing Your Perception of the present

OUR PERCEPTION OF THE PRESENT IS OFTEN INFLUENCED BY ELEMENTS SUCH AS MEMORIES, BELIEFS, IDEAS, THOUGHTS, AND INTERACTIONS WITH THE ENVIRONMENT.

Sometimes these elements can influence our true experience of the present and change it to be understood on their terms.

For example, you can feel nervous about meeting new friends because of a bad experience with another person. This past experience takes you away from the present moment, and you observe the new interaction through the filter of the negative experience.

You can also have unrealistic expectations about a new experience simply because in the past you had a different outcome in a similar situation. However, leaving behind past identifications doesn’t mean that you will disregard your learned experiences; it means that you will know how to observe yourself in the present moment without making judgments based on those experiences, because each moment is precious in its own way.

To experience the present time, our focus can’t be on external circumstances, but rather on our inner self. This is a mistake that many of us make. We think that being present means interacting with an external circumstance, but it’s not until we bring that awareness inward that we can really say we are present. The present moment can never be appreciated exclusively or directly through external circumstances, because it requires us to be in relationship with our experiences.

THE RESULT OF PERCEIVING THE PRESENT MOMENT FROM THE INNER-SELF PERSPECTIVE IS GAINING MORE SELF-AWARENESS WITH EACH EXPERIENCE.

When the focus of your perception is on the external circumstances, the only reference points you have to guide your discernment and to interact with those circumstances are your past experiences, beliefs, patterns, and judgments. But when you observe those circumstances from an inner-awareness perspective, all you need is yourself.

This means that by changing the focus of your awareness, you can, in fact, change your perception of the present moment. But not only that, your perception of all the other reference points that you were using before to experience the present moment—or, at least, so you thought—also changes, because it is no longer needed to define you or the present experience.

After a period of changing your focus to self-awareness, you will start to notice that the identifications and attachments you were clinging to in order to be functional or have an identity in the present moment start to fade. They become obsolete.

The past is no longer needed to define you, nor your old beliefs about trust, nor the fear of giving and receiving love. None of these reference points is useful when your focus is the inner self. The inner self doesn’t need to be defined in those terms. Your inner self is whole regardless of present, past, and future circumstances.

YOUR INNER SELF EXISTED BEFORE, AND IT WILL EXIST AFTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES YOU ARE EXPERIENCING. YOUR TRUE MISSION IS TO KNOW HOW TO REMAIN AWARE OF YOUR INNER SELF REGARDLESS OF WHAT’S HAPPENING OUTSIDE.

The real value of a life experience is not about learning how fear can protect you from possible harm in new experiences, but about how to use those experiences to reaffirm your self-awareness regardless of the direction in which the circumstances are trying to take you.

How different is the same experience for someone who has previously suffered a heartbreak and is now trying to start a new relationship than for someone who has only had positive relationship experiences? If the person with a negative experience focuses on the fear that the past circumstances caused them, they will be limiting their experience, and perhaps they will not want to have a similar situation happen again, because they have brought unhealthy boundaries to the present.

However, if the same person is able to shift the focus of their perception to their inner self and experience self-awareness, they will be more aware of the present moment as a whole new experience. The new experience depends on how they see themselves in it at the present time, and not according to past experiences.

When your focus is the inner self, different questions arise when you interact with present experiences. For example, instead of wondering how to defend yourself from a new experience, you wonder how this experience can help you learn more about yourself and how it will help you improve. This change in your way of evaluating your experiences creates safe boundaries that are much easier to identify because you are always the reference point, not the variable circumstances. The inner-self perspective will help you place safe boundaries that don’t limit your new experiences based on the past, but rather ensure that you are protected according to your awareness of the present.

For example, someone who has had an addiction problem in the past, has been able to recover, and is now focused on their inner self-awareness may be presented with the circumstance of returning to the addictive behavior.

They will be able to identify this circumstance, and by refusing to engage in the addictive behavior again, they will continue to reaffirm their inner awareness. However, if the focus of their perception is their past experience, it’s possible that their evaluation of the circumstances may make them reconsider going back to the addictive behavior. Circumstances are variable and can always be used to justify any type of behavior.

SO, HOW DO YOU ACCOMPLISH THE CHANGE OF FOCUS TO THE INNER-SELF PERSPECTIVE?

Changing your focus requires that you first recognize yourself in each of your experiences. And all you need is practice doing this. At first, you will have to pause and consciously bring your awareness inward, but after repeated practice, this process will happen as naturally as breathing and walking.

MAKE IT A HABIT

Healing Your Perception of the Present

meditate

START BY ANALYZING how you perceive your circumstances right now. How do you identify yourself in the present? Write a description of yourself using as many details as possible.

Next, circle any words you used to define yourself that belong to the past (e.g., past occupations, hobbies, relationships, preferences, etc.). If you wrote, “I used to work in finance and now I am a personal trainer,” then circle the portion where you mention that you used to work in finance. Or if you wrote, “I was a student of medicine for ten years and now I have finally become a doctor,” then circle the portion where you pointed out you used to be a student.

Using a different-color pen, circle all the times you used the words “I am” (e.g., “I am a mother,” or “I am a good friend”). These are identifications that usually have to do with roles, patterns, and familiarity. The true present experience of you as an observer of the circumstances, and not as the circumstances t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• How to Use This Book
• Cultivating Self-Awareness
• Allowing More, Controlling Less
• Finding Balance & Calm
• Opening Your Heart with Calm
• Reinventing Yourself Through Detachment
• Minding What You Eat
• Minding What You Say
• Minding What You Think
• Healing Your Perception of the Present
• Healing Your Perception of the Future
• Choosing What to Keep & What to Release
• Finding Your Peace
• Being Kind to Yourself
• Giving Love
• Making Time for Calm
• The Healing Power of Calm
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Copyright