TOOLS FOR TRANSFORMATION – GRATITUDE

Dec 04
2013

Two Perspectives on Gratitude as a Tool for Transformation

Dr. Amit Nagpal, New Delhi, India, and

Dr. Janet Smith Warfield, Florida, USA

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Dr. Amit Nagpal’s Perspective

Amit Nagpal (new)(cropped)Was I always grateful? No, definitely not.

Yet I would say the most important lesson I have learned in my life is gratitude. The more grateful I became, the more blessings the Universe bestowed upon me. It has been a long journey though.

I had more complaints and less gratitude for almost 25 years of my life. I felt I always got less than what I gave. So naturally, I deserved to receive gratitude, not express it. The Chicken Soup for the Soul series initially inspired me to give thank you notes and express gratitude wholeheartedly (around 1998). While the complaining attitude was clouding my mind, gratitude helped me find clarity and fill positive energy in the mind.

The more grateful I became, the more my life began overflowing with beautiful souls. And on thanksgiving this year, I was able to gather strength to even express gratitude to the relationships which have been lessons rather than blessings. The people who had rather rubbed me like sandpaper, also deserved my gratitude, since they had made me grow and evolve. I also realized it’s good to give people a benefit of doubt. In fact practically speaking, giving benefit of doubt to people, gives you also peace of mind.

If you still have doubts, then I would speak the language of science. Gratitude releases the negative energy from the mind. When there is no negative energy (grudges, guilt, suppressed anger and so on), it is easier to meditate and find that peace or desired results. In your own interest forgive and bury the past. Wallace D Wattles rightly says, “The grateful mind is constantly fixed upon the best; therefore, it tends to become the best.”

In fact these lessons helped me find peace, and meditation helped me find perfect peace. Perfect peace led to regaining my lost creativity and finding clarity, purpose and joy. Beautiful souls walked in, unexpected events started happening, surprises started becoming a norm, and life became wonderfully worth living.

Let me end with a note of gratitude,

“Some inspiration comes from my inspiration (muse),

Some inspiration comes from the divine.

Some inspiration comes from my friends,

There is nothing I can claim to be mine.”

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Dr Amit Nagpal is Chief Inspirational Storyteller at AL Services. He is a Social Media Influencer,  Author, Speaker/Trainer & Coach. To know more, visit www.dramitnagpal.com. (His special interest and expertise lies in inspirational storytelling, anecdotes and visual storytelling)

AL Services offers content development/story writing, consulting, training and other services in the area of brand storytelling. To know more, write to amit@dramitnagpal.com.

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Dr. Janet Smith Warfield’s Perspective

Dr. Janet Smith Warfield

Tears dampen my cheek

washing the pain from my Soul.

Refreshing shower.

 

After 21 years of marriage and three children, my husband abandoned me for another woman.

I had been a wonderful wife. I had washed the family clothes, cleaned the family home, baked homemade bread, cared for our yard and organic garden, joined my husband on his sailing excursions and trips to Maine, watched football games with him, entertained his friends, played bridge with him, sung our children to sleep, read them stories, played games with them. He said we had the perfect marriage.

Yet he abandoned me and our children to rut after another woman.

My whole world turned upside down. What had I done wrong?

I lost my trust in people. I lost my trust in the social systems that had supported my family over centuries. I was hurting, my children were hurting, and there was little I could do to make anything better.

I sobbed alone at night for hours. My heart shattered wide open and split into millions of pieces.

One of our sons went from straight A’s to Straight F’s in a single year, got hooked on drugs, and became involved in physical violence and arrests. I was waking up in the middle of the night with such deep rage that it felt as if my guts were being ripped from my belly. But for emotional and financial support from my parents, I might well have bought a gun and murdered both my husband and his mistress.

How can one be grateful for such a life-shattering experience?

I learned I was a survivor and spiritual warrior. Being used by this man as a convenient housekeeper, babysitter, and sex object was not the life I was intended to live.

At age 20, becoming a lawyer had never been part of my vision. At age 40, I needed to go to law school to learn how to use words and the patriarchal system to protect myself against words and the patriarchal system. I graduated cum laude and practiced law for 22 years. On more than one occasion, bullies, incompetents, and dysfunctional politicians disintegrated and disappeared as I presented relevant facts and arguments to support a dynamic, all-inclusive, co-creative community.

I learned how to think for myself and take care of myself. I became a free woman. I am beholden to no one other than the Source I have chosen to believe in, myself, and those humans who are accountable and conscious enough to deserve my gifts and my love.

I’ve experienced many dark nights of the Soul, but I’ve learned to dance with words and dance with wisdom. I’ve even learned to dance with functional, respectful, appreciative men.

Here’s a short video on gratitude you may find useful:

Gratitude

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Dr. Janet Smith Warfield serves wisdom-seekers who want understanding and clarity so they can live peaceful, powerful, prosperous lives. Through her unique combination of holistic, creative, right-brain transformational experiences and 22 years of rigorous, left-brain law practice, she has learned how to sculpt words in atypical ways to shift her listeners into experiences beyond words, transforming turmoil into inner peace. To learn more, go to www.wordsculptures.comwww.janetsmithwarfield.com, and www.wordsculpturespublishing.com.

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TOOLS FOR TRANSFORMATION – JOURNALING

Oct 15
2012

Two Perspectives on Journaling as a Tool for Transformation

Dr. Amit Nagpal, New Delhi, India, and

Dr. Janet Smith Warfield, Florida, USA

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Dr. Amit Nagpal’s Perspective

Journaling is one of the best tools for personal transformation. Let us take a look at how to do journaling for personal growth and transformation purposes. Primarily it can be divided into three categories, viz.

  • Tool for self-reflection
  • Tool for release of anger
  • Journaling as a filter

 

Tool for self-reflection

Journaling is primarily a tool for self-reflection. Have you ever reflected upon what are your three core values? Once we decide our three core values, we can do a self-reflection every week, “Am I living according to my values? What are the areas I need to improve? What mistakes did I make in these areas?” as part of the journaling process. You can monitor your own growth by reading what you wrote three months back or a year back and compare your current state.

Tool for release of anger

When you are feeling very angry-you have two options, viz.

  • Write it out and then tear the pages
  • Write it and keep it to monitor your own progress.

What is written in extreme anger should be destroyed as it can be dangerous if it reaches the wrong person by mistake.

Journaling as a filter

Creative people often have phases of creativity blasts and phases of dryness (of ideas). When you are inspired and are flooded with ideas, the journal becomes your filter too. Write everything in the journal before posting on social media. Double check whether it is worth posting and aligned with your three core values (from focus/personal branding perspective). Double check the errors, if you are developing yourself as a professional author or blogger.

Sometimes when you read your own stuff after six months or a year, you feel like laughing at your stupidities or your raw language at that point of time. So journaling can be a source of entertainment too at times.

The trouble of today is the joke of tomorrow.

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Dr Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant & Deepest Passion Coach. He is based in New Delhi, India and specializes in personal branding with a holistic touch. His philosophy is, “Enlarge as a Human Being, Excel as a Social Media Being and Evolve as a Personal Brand”

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Dr. Janet Smith Warfield’s Perspective

 

 

 

For the YouTube video, please click here:    Journaling

If you prefer a quick read, please continue below.

 

Benefits:

  • Clarity
  • Understanding
  • Inner Peace
  • Healing
  • Increased Self-Esteem
  • Joy
  • Freedom

What You Need:

  • Pen or pencil
  • Journal or pad of paper
  • One hour of uninterrupted time
  • Quiet surroundings
  • An open mind

Guidelines:

  • Don’t censor your thoughts! (I can’t stress this enough.)
  • Notice your thoughts.
  • Allow your thoughts to flow wherever they want to go.
  • Write everything down on your paper
  • Just watch what comes through.

Personal Safety:

  • What you write is for your eyes alone.
  • Feel free to shred what you’ve written at any time.

Don’t be Surprised if:

  • You don’t know what to write about. (Just sit in your “not knowing” until thoughts show up.)
  • Unexpected emotions suddenly surface. (If these appear, just notice them, and when you are ready, return to your journaling. You may want to use them as a starting point for a new thread of writing.)

Allow Yourself to:

  • Misspell words
  • Use the wrong word
  • Use wrong grammar
  • Be judgmental
  • Pour out your rage
  • Look at your fear
  • Grieve

My personal experience with journaling is that I start out struggling with a problem, meander along twisting, winding paths, jump to a seemingly unrelated train of thought that just won’t leave me alone, and end up with new insights and new ideas for moving forward.

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Dr. Janet Smith Warfield serves wisdom-seekers who want understanding and clarity so they can live peaceful, powerful, prosperous lives. Through her unique combination of holistic, creative, right-brain transformational experiences and 22 years of rigorous, left-brain law practice, she has learned how to sculpt words in atypical ways to shift her listeners into experiences beyond words, transforming turmoil into inner peace. For more information, see wordsculptures.com, janetsmithwarfield.com, and wordsculpturespublishing.com.

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Piercing the Veil of Word Illusions and Creating Our Own Reality

Jul 14
2011

Two Perspectives on Piercing the Veil of Word Illusions and Creating Our Own Reality

Dr. Amit Nagpal, New Delhi, India, and

Janet Smith Warfield, J.D., Florida, USA

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Dr. Amit NagpalDr. Amit Nagpal’s Perspective

 

Words do not matter. The meanings do. Words are understood in the context in which they are spoken, the tone which is used, the cultural interpretation added, and bias for/against the individual. With all these factors mixed, our personalized meaning of the words is ready. Words are actually a cocktail.

Two words which have always fascinated me are ‘exploitation’ and ‘love’. While the dictionary says exploitation of resources is positive and should be done, the same dictionary says that exploitation of labor is negative and should not be done. Is labor not a resource?

Love is such a glorified word since the languages began that I am scared of using it even in close relationships. Is humanity not basically selfish and incapable of love, the idealized love, we always talk about? I prefer to use the word ‘care’; it does not create unrealistic expectations. The background which the word ‘love’ carries makes me feel that only a spiritually advanced person has the capacity to love. Ordinary mortals like me don’t. What ordinary mortals do is only an exchange of emotional energy, a business. Maybe when you develop the capacity to truly love, you cannot restrict it to family and close relationships. You will be in love with everything around. You will become a Rumi, a Kabir or a Mother Teresa.

Do words wear the veil of illusions or do we human beings add the veils to them? Words only convey approximate meanings. No wonder lawyers have to work so hard at them. After the lawyer has worked for long hours on refining the language, the opposing lawyer finds a loophole to give a totally different meaning to the same words.

Under such a background, do words matter? To me, they don’t. To me what matters is the meaning hidden behind them, the intentions, the feelings, the emotions, the tones and overtones, the vibrations that they carry. To me what matters is the non-verbal part, the honesty which you can see only in the eyes, the genuineness which you can feel only in the smile, the coldness or warmth which you feel in the vibes that they carry, the underpinnings and overtones which tell more about the sincerity than the words themselves.

The more we clear ourselves of negative energy, the more sensitive we become to the subtleties behind the words.  We develop maybe a seventh sense of reading the intentions, listening to the unspoken messages, smelling the vibrations, tasting the warmth or the coldness behind and feeling the touch of the soul (or soullessness) of the entire communication.

Then only can we create our own reality integrating the words with the environment and comprehending the essence of not just the words but the integrated communication.

If my words do not make any sense to you, please sense what is between the lines, between the words, between the alphabets…..

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Dr. Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant and specializes in Personal Branding with a holistic touch. He is based in New Delhi, India. His philosophy is, “Take charge of your life and your brand.” To know more about him, click here: http://www.dramitnagpal.co.in/p/about-us.html

Copyright © 2011 – Dr Amit Nagpal. All rights reserved

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Janet Smith WarfieldJanet Smith Warfield’s Perspective

A Co-Creation Allegory


Imagine you are part of a beautiful moving picture. The picture flows. The story line flows. One scene moves flawlessly into another, and you move with it. You are totally immersed in the flow.

Then suddenly, you bump into a rock or tree or mountain and experience pain. You bump into a monster and experience fear. Your mind wants to understand the pain and fear because you want to control it and stop it. Your mind moves outside the flow and becomes an observer. Your mind has now divided what was once just flow into:

  • Flow, and
  • You as observer of the flow.

You have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge and been cast out of the Garden of Eden. Your mind has stopped the moving picture at a single frame so you can analyze it, dissect it, understand it, and control it.

Science does this very well. So does orthodox religion. However, each of these is only a single limited understanding within the confines of the single frame they have stopped.

Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

If everything is a dynamic flow of energy, then each one of us is a minuscule part of that energy, all flowing and connected. Rocks are energy. Trees are energy. Cockroaches are energy. Words are energy.

Our minds can artificially stop the flow to try to understand and control it, but all our minds can truly understand is that one single frame on which we are focusing at a particular moment in time. This is understanding of a sort, but it is only partial understanding. Depending on where we stop the moving film and which frame we look at, the perception, dissection and analysis differ. When our minds hold onto any one single frame, any one set of words or symbols as Truth, we remain divided and separated from the energetic flow. When we allow the energy to flow through us, we tune into all that is and become magnificent co-creators of something much larger than any one of us individually.

To know is to know that we don’t know. We can only co-create.

When we shift our beliefs that words say something about an external reality to beliefs that words, for sure, say something about our perceptions of an external reality, we can choose to shift our perceptions to something that works better for both us and everything around us. We all then return to the dynamic energy flow of the Garden of Eden as conscious co-creators.

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Janet Smith Warfield works with wisdom-seekers who want understanding and clarity so they can live peaceful, powerful, prosperous lives. Through her unique combination of holistic, creative, right-brain transformational experiences and 22 years of rigorous, left-brain law practice, she has learned how to sculpt words in atypical ways to shift her listeners into experiences beyond words, transforming turmoil into inner peace. For more information about Janet, go to www.janetsmithwarfield.com; www.wordsculpturespublishing.com; www.wordsculptures.com.

Copyright © 2011 – Janet Smith Warfield. All rights reserved.