Just before Christmas when I was 7 years old my dad died and I experienced a life altering paradigm shift. It was as if the curtains closed at the end of an act on the stage of my life and when they reopened, the scenery had completely changed leaving me feeling unsafe and bewildered. As a result, I can rationalize, deny and forget anything. It is a mechanism I employed to make sense my unfathomable reality. It helped me survive the grief and terror that threatened my sanity for decades and felt life threatening. I thought I was safe in my head even though I knew on some subconscious level that I didn’t feel safe. This ‘survival’ mechanism carried me until I was 35 years old when it backfired for the last time.

At the age of 35 I experienced another paradigm shift. I could no longer escape my reality. I had to embark on that treacherous journey from my head, where I rationalized my experiences, to my heart, where I began realizing them. When I ‘surrendered’ and began processing my crippling feelings of grief, rage, shame, resentment, etc., something amazing happened. I learned that the seemingly miraculous solution to any of my ‘problems’ is contained within my deepest fears! When I began to feel the feelings I had resisted, I made some critical discoveries:

1. That which I resist persists.
2. My emotions won’t kill me.
3. Emotions are simply energy in motion.
4. My emotions they cannot pass if I resist/deny/stuff/block them.
5. When I feel my feelings, I can release them and drop my ‘baggage.’
6. Once I process the emotion, I discover that “peace that passes all understanding” rationally.
7. Established in this peace of mind I am able to and I want to stay in present moment awareness.
8. The Intelligence and the Power that creates worlds exists only in the present moment.
9. Connected to that Power – my fears slip away and I gain ‘control’ of my life.
10. When I feel a constricting emotion it is my sign that I am shutting down, resisting my experience, and cutting myself off from the Power to change that undesirable experience .
11. When I accept the experience as it is, I return to the present and the Power it has. A feeling of expansion results.
12. The ‘control’ (over my thoughts, words, deeds and experiences) that I craved was in my Awareness all along!
13. As long as I was looking for that Power and Control over my life ‘out there,’ it would remain illusive.
14. This EOS (Emotional Operating System) is my infallible IGS – Internal Guidance System. If I remain aware and pay attention to it, it will guide me to the life of my dreams and deepest desires.

I can think of many examples in life when I ignored the wisdom of my IGS and paid a steep price. One obvious example was in my early twenties when I took a job as a mortgage-backed securities bond broker. I was about to become the only woman on a dog-eat-dog bond-trading floor. I had many reasons for taking the job despite a nagging ‘sinking’ feeling. I was unable to show up for my first week on the job because I had colitis, which in retrospect was my IGS on overdrive, desperately trying to get my attention. I had stuffed every emotion that surfaced before and after taking the job because I was in survival mode. I felt that I had to stuff the grief associated with selling my soul to survive because I believed I had to take that job. The disease I developed as a result of my dis-ease with my decision forced me stop physically. But since I refused to stop mentally long enough to just be in the present moment, I delayed my discovery of true Power.

I was extremely ‘successful” and convinced myself that I was in control (happy, safe and secure). I went on compromising my integrity for years saying and doing things that made me so uncomfortable I could hardly stand in my skin…another feeling I worked at denying ! Every year it became more difficult to contain all the trapped energy of my repressed emotions. Finally at age 35, I reached the tipping point. Choices I made (albeit unconsciously) resulted in a situation that I would typically have denied, but at that particular moment, I could not house another emotion without imploding. As a result, I accepted reality in the moment and suddenly, in touch with true Power, all my walls collapsed instantly and I stepped into this new miraculous paradigm.

Author's Bio: 

“when we understand that our circumstances and personal life experiences are the result of our inner life and not the cause, we will pursue peace of mind at all cost.”
— laura nash

Laura Nash is a consultant and instructor, guiding both individuals and groups to attain their goals using a surprisingly simple and effective vehicle: PEACE OF MIND. Her clients come from all walks of life – CEOs and senior executives of major corporations, professional athletes, artists, physicians – anyone seeking to improve their life. Her philosophy is that people already intuitively know how to solve any dilemma. They, merely, get so bogged down by the details of an issue or the emotion surrounding it, that they cannot discern their own answers. Laura demonstrates how to cut through all the chaos and drama of life to arrive at the simple solution.

Background

Trained and certied by Deepak Chopra, M.D., world renowned author of dozens of best-selling books on the topic of mind-body medicine, Ms. Nash is a well-established teacher, speaker and workshop facilitator. With a B.A. from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, this former institutional bond broker and vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, Inc., brings both a philosophical and entrepreneurial perspective to her audience. She is certied to teach the authentic, ancient form of silent meditation from the Yoga tradition of India, as well as “Wellness in the Workplace,” a program designed for companies, based on Dr. Deepak Chopra’s personal development masterpiece, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. She was recently awarded for her status as the most active Chopra certied instructor in the world.