Anxious thoughts Archives - Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Worry Not and Be Bold

Worry is a state of mind that is not productive. You can lose sleep when worry is left unattended… meaning, that after you’ve thought of what the worry theme is about and what you can do about it, then putting the worry to bed (and away from your good sleep 💤) is productive.

…If only it were that easy! 😉

But it’s a smart choice we get to make to let go of worry that drains.

We can’t always choose what happens to us or the thoughts that enter, but we can choose what we do in reaction and what thoughts we allow to stay.

Because worry can linger around like heavy gray clouds until it passes.

And walking away is one proactive way to get away from worry. At least temporarily…

You can quickly distract yourself from worried thoughts by changing your scenery.

Your new sensory environment changes your thoughts even if it’s just clearing your head walking down the hallway.

And this is because we get a new perspective in sight, sounds, and smells.

For me, colors, music, and pleasing scents break the pattern in my world.

And that can be for you too. You may not have yoga as a practice, so that could also be a pattern break.

In yoga poses, when you look up to the ceiling or sky, you get a different perspective than when you look down to the floor or to the side of the room that can change how you feel… calm, grounded, inspired…

Away from a mat, that’s the effect exciting travel has. When you explore a new city or place, your new senses are heightened.

If you spot a new painting or a new view from a picture window, this can be a joyful experience and mindful change of pace.

But as time passes, wherever you are and no matter how far you’ve traveled, the original worry thoughts creep back in.

The euphoric feeling from distractions wear off and the worry thoughts pop back in as easily as they popped out.

You can only distract yourself for so long and then your mind catches back up to reality.

…Your life reality (that can be worry-free thoughts).

But that’s why no one can run away from problems carried in the conscience for long in conscious living.

I tried one summer when I was 20, moving away to the beach. It didn’t work. 😀

But so often we choose to numb in semi-conscious daily living.

Like when we’re on a mission, we tend to forget nature buzzing around us carrying out life. They’re in their environment and we’re in ours, even if it’s within earshot.

As long as we’re not in harm’s way, we can miss what’s happening around us… and sometimes the calls to us that could lead to our greater life’s purpose.

If you think about it, a bird chirping is pretty loud in decibels. But often we don’t hear those over the voice and noises in our head…

And I’m no bird expert, but I’m told this bird in a tree is a red tailed hawk. It caught my eye because of its sounding vocal chords.

While I stopped to stare at the big bird for a few moments, I also noticed most people in the parking lot didn’t do the same.

…In fact, no one around me looked up. They just went on their busy day’s mission.

That’s how it is with us if we’re running on our mind’s mission. We don’t make time for interruptions… and sometimes opportunities calling us.

When we’re in a hurry, that’s even more true listening to our daily to-do list creating stress.

Worry and stress thoughts can be loud like that.

…So loud that we can miss that they’re robbing us of our full presence and better happy day.

And worry especially can play into our insecurities without us knowing (in semi-conscious living), affecting more than just our daily choices we make.

Worry is part of our DNA. It’s a Vata sign and trait in Ayurvedic terms.

Most of us have some or dominating Vata in us.

If you find yourself worrying for no good reason about everything going on in your life and others, then you likely have a Vata imbalance.

For most, that can be restored with simple lifestyle changes.

It’s not a sentence you’re stuck with in life.

If you want to know if you have a Vata imbalance and then how to restore, take the body balance quiz.

Your body helps us out by giving us preferences and through our senses.

But sometimes those are blocked from us for reasons like the noisy complex culture we’re in.

…So even if a meditation or yoga break sounds like a good idea, we could put it off even though we could definitely use the reset to help remedy our worry.

And transforming worry ways as a daily way is very possible… I know because I did just that. I got tired of holding onto worry. It’s too darn draining.

And as some friends would say, “Girl, I ain’t got time for that!”

One good habit that changed it all was to proactively pray off the worry. That was one of the 8 ways I shared to live out a don’t worry be happy life!

And another way is to picture yourself bold and fearless. Or put yourself in that frame of mind by reminding yourself how you feel and act when you’re confident…

If you’re a caring or reserved person, this is where you stop caring so much about what others think or what will happen.

You get out of your head and into your empowered self and abundant life.

It’s not about others or what happens next… it’s about you and your peace. What makes sense to you? Do it.

Let the outcomes happen. Your life is rigged in your favor with the Universe on your side.

You will be met on the other side with your bold confident moves.

The world wants the best YOU and you get to decide what that is!

So let go of worry and let go of the control of how things pan out. I know that was one lesson that took me the longest to embrace.

When I could trust “what happens next are meant to be’s,” that released me from unnecessary worry.

You’re equipped with the intuition. So when you have to make a choice, do your best and let the rest work out… even if it’s in another direction or environment.

Brain Fog Is Often Spiritual

Brain fog is a way to describe the forgetfulness nature that Ayurvedic Vata minds commonly daily express that we accept as part of us.

Our morning habit choices we choose could be adding to brain fog. — Brain fog accumulates in our daily lives.

In this article, you can learn all about brain fog from our daily environment and simple things we can tweak. You’ll also learn how brain fog isn’t always bad like when it’s from spiritual sources.

Brain fog is the general symptom description for not being able to think clearly.

Often this is when you want the mind to work for you.

Brain fog moments often shows up as confusion, lack of focus, or forgetfulness.

So brain fog would make sense as an explanation for simple memory blips.

But there’s more to this from a spiritual lens that I explain further below on how you can see it as a benefit and a blessing at times.

Because usually brain fog only has negative connotations in our practical culture.

And this article provides some healthy lifestyle tips to eliminate those daily negative brain fog aspects, plus presenting the balancing Vata brain fog positives (that’s a common built-in feature in our Vata mind nature).

In either positive or negative case, we don’t often sit around and analyze what’s going on with brain fog when our minds are in the clouded mist.

And what we experience is usually harmless, like forgetting eye glasses on our heads and looking everywhere for them.

While that can be comical, it’s extra minutes of distraction when the answer was sitting on you above your nose.

For daily routines and tasks, Vatas often create forgetfulness habits to set reminders and purposefully not forget.

High Vatas have active minds of worry-anxiety, more so than Pittas and Kaphas that can have other brain fog distractions.

This btw happened to me when I baked a healthy dessert for the morning and next morning. And the next morning, I forgot about all about it in my mind’s distraction.

A simple scenario like that happens to all of us at some point.

…And when I remembered the forgotten cool peach dessert, it was actually when I would appreciate the bite more after lunch so it could be an enjoyment positive experience.

In your daily life, if someone ever asks you why you didn’t do something and you answer I forgot, you often don’t get a lot of out-of-the-ordinary questioning.

Because forgetting is so normal.

Forgetting can also be healthy for us who like to control ideas. You let go of controlling your mind or the device in front of you that you’re tethered to.

This can invite in creativity inside us and help us let go of rigid ways.

But then there are also negatives such as cognitive decline brain fog instances we want to help prevent. It’s the “elephant in the room” but a diagnosis growing in our world, and that’s something we can be aware of and doing something about in our lives today.

Preventative Healthy Living Helps With Brain Fog

Brain fog can grow when we have these elements in our daily lives: high-processed foods, pesticides, phthalates, non-purified air, and mold, to name a few culprits in our modern lifestyles.

They alter our bodies and that affects our mind in the body-mind connection and in our mental health.

Processed foods for example become whole nutrient-stripped in the plant process (as in factory plant 🏭).

Organic plants 🌱 are better options where we don’t find the same trace levels of pesticides that are found in non-organic foods.

If you garden, you know what natural sprays you’ve used or not used in your care. And when you bake like I do, you know what ingredients you’ve added. You know the wholesomeness details.

In grocery stores, we see the ingredients in our carts we’ll be using to cook with or eat. And we can read labels.

But we don’t see the processes in-between, so this makes comparing foods an apples to oranges experience.

Cheese is an example. Rennet that is found in some parts of the world isn’t the pasteurized cheese process found along the shelf rows in our American grocery stores.

The goat and sheep’s cheese that the Sardinians farm and eat isn’t what we find in our guts.

And for daily coffee drinkers, switching to organic is good for preventative health as coffee is naturally high in mold.

Mold is a brain fog offender.

Organic coffee is considerably more expensive and more difficult to source, but it’s out there when you look and put your health first.

You can get resourceful and save money by buying whole roasts and then doing the grind work yourself. You can feel much more grounded like your coffee when you do. 😊

Daily clean air is also going to be healthy preventative help against the brain fog cause. Developing daily hayfever-like allergy symptoms is one common sign.

And building in more wellness habits and healthy intentions to your life is going to help you most in your sleep, health conditions, and mental fatigue. Yoga is one way to bring in more self-awareness intention.

When you calm and relax your mind and self that also brings down your stress and anxiety levels that help Vata brain fog.

Calming and Relaxing the Mind

Good answers and thoughts show up when the mind is calm and relaxed, and not anxious or worried like when running with high Vata brain fog symptoms.

When our minds are under stress, often we can’t think of the answer when put on the spot.

If we’re asked a Family Feud game show question like what is the first thing you do in the morning?, we can usually come up with an answer. And maybe one that lights up on the board.

But when someone asks us the same question in an interview where we know others will put judgment on what we say, we can’t come up with the answer under mind stress.

We could just give a safe answer.

…Or you may surprise yourself by blurting an answer that surprises you.

Those answers that pop up in memory unexpectedly often come from our spirit.

The answer that pops in our mind come from our deeper wisdom inside us.

We didn’t rack our brain for the answer. They just entered out of no where.

Those thoughts can be blessings when you connect-the-dots.

I’ve had a lot of time and spiritual experiences to teach me wisdom lessons learned to show me this.

Over time, the lessons gave me a different perspective to gain the deeper meaning behind those memory moment lapse blessings.

Once you know you can’t go back to not-knowing and wouldn’t want to as cracking the code secrets toward a happier life.

And you can notice when thought lapses land in aligned perfect timing.

That’s when it’s a spiritual miracle and blessing.

An example is we forget what we were going to say from our rational brain from losing our train of thought.

We get other thoughts that enter.

In groups I attended, we called these other thoughts: popcorn thoughts. These answers come from our heart as though we didn’t process the thought first.

If it’s a helpful suggestive thought, it’s often helpful for others to hear who need the suggestion.

If you can get over what others will think or any insecurities you have in those moments, and blurt out what you’re thinking, often it helps someone else.

You don’t necessarily know how it will help, but it does when you dare to stay vulnerable in sharing.

They are spiritual collaboration opportunities that are expressed when you speak them aloud. You can feel good about showing up.

In the same token, sometimes others blurt out something you needed that sticks with you. It’s the same when purposefully listening to a podcast or a message that you need.

So we’re giving back in a way.

We can all contribute and give back in the energy of life in this way and without much effort.

If you want more of these opportunities to show up and are willing to have your day rearranged in some way, ask quietly aloud or in self-talk: what can I do today to be helpful?

Then be prepared to be useful to others. 😊

And in daily life, these prompted thoughts and memories will show up more frequently if you pay attention (that’s an active move).

You could ignore and override those thoughts to stay on your linear agenda.

That’s how I was until I knew better.

As a planner, we don’t prefer going off course. But over the years, I grew to embrace impromptu thoughts entering, seeing this new spiritual perspective.

And maybe that would help you.

Spiritual impromptu thoughts help you align and redirect to a better way, day, and life. They lead to a life of more purpose, happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. 🎉

So you can be curious next time and openly ask yourself: why did I have ____ particular thought? And see if you get anything back as a thought.

Most likely you won’t immediately.

But that makes you consider another way of thinking and living that can be spirit-filled and coming from deeper inside of you that knows deeply what you want.

And you can stay curious and wondering until something clicks like it finally did for me.

So if we wonder about those spiritual impromptu thoughts, that opens the door to our exploring our spiritual wisdom inside us that isn’t brain fog.

This can be our new norm.

And for our daily mattering lives, we can invite in ad hoc thoughts in our mantras, meditation, and centering to help advise us on what to do next.

And as you can tell, I enjoy baking meditation where this dessert was dreamed up and you can enjoy making.✨

Low-Sugar Peach Shortcake Dessert

Course Dessert

Cuisine American, French

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup plain flour
2-3 eggs
fresh peaches
sugar and salt (optional)

Instructions

Melt the butter in the milk and water on medium heat on the stove.
Add the flour and stir.
Take the mixture to a mixer and mix in egg yolks.
Pipe into a baking vessel to make a shape or add on a baking pan for a free form.
Bake at 325°F/165°C until warm golden brown.
Use your favorite filling, topping, and add diced peaches as the star ingredient. Peaches have fiber, Vitamin C, and A antioxidants.

Vata Active Mind Calming Tips

Vata active mind runs in high Vatas and imbalanced Vatas.

The mind overruns when we want to be done with our thoughts and the turmoil emotions that anxious, stressed, or worry thoughts can create in the mind-body connection.

This looks a bit like Pacman eating pellets that was a happy memory for me. And this low-sugar very Greek yogurt berry cheesecake recipe is one you can re-create. 🫐

This article is about how to deal with a Vata active mind that isn’t serving us.

When we’re confronted with ingested stress turmoil, we want to run from our mind especially when our ego dials up high fear trying to protect us from the world and our repeated hurt past experiences that have semblances in our current situation.

It’s not that severe, but our minds can overreact if we allow it to.

Because the ego serves us repeated warnings that can grow into anxiousness from our fearful thoughts.

The problem grows and can fester when our fear and associated negative thoughts have no where to go unless we successfully get them to take a hike and that satisfies our mind… or we get the feelings from I got this!

Otherwise we ride the trapped ego wave with our evolved human heads spinning in a brain fog cloud until exacerbated ego goes away or some other message distraction comes along to switch up what’s important.

We want to change our channel that can stubbornly stick around on its own.

The default is: we allow our ego to build drama in our lives until we exercise our right to put away the anxious thoughts.

We don’t have to delay our balance for more than a day or more than a few moments. We can practice shutting down our ego and getting better at our practice.

I didn’t start off as the poster child for this as I let repeated thoughts get to me.

But these days I recognize the offender right away and shut it down as soon as humanly possible.

You and I get to celebrate progress in us! 🤸🏻

The progress motivation can be as simple as wanting to enjoy life as much as possible.

We can do this if we know how to recognize and change the thought trajectory when an anxious triggering thought arises from a triggered situation or trauma.

Getting rid of a Vata active mind means having a new way with your new or current situation to get away from anxious thoughts and worry.

Developed fear or insecurity could have come from a past trauma situation, thoughts, or memories.

We can start practicing getting rid of unwanted emotions stirred up by an Vata active mind.

This is how it can go in a typical scenario…

A day can go by where we’re busy and caught up with those nagging thoughts as an under current theme.

We can delay doing something about it until the next day where we’ve confirmed we lost sleep because of the active mind in Vata.

We stayed up way too late in anxious-worry thoughts that’s now confirmed as stuck in our body’s energy.

So now we’re paying for it the day after feeling tired and bad in some way.

We want to get rest and sleep. We know that’s the formula to a healthy life that we want and productivity for our day.

And if we’re healthy, we can be more happy. If we’re happy, we do more in our lives that fuels more happiness. Plus, happy people live longer.

So ridding of an over active mind vs. calm mind isn’t just about feeling rested and better. It’s a protocol for a healthy well-being lifestyle.

It’s easy for us to tell others to not worry or be anxious. But when we’re confronted with our situations, we’re intimately wrapped up with our mind, the emotions, and thought implications of what if the worse happens?

This can show up in all kinds of other ego feeling-defeated flavors.

In those cases, one way I know that works is to have a backup plan so that the best happens coming from Plan A and you don’t have to resort to any backups.

Just having a backup plan shuts the ego down. (Remember: I got this!)

The best time to handle this is right now in this moment.

The tip again is coming up with a backup plan that satisfies you.

It’s not what you’re actually planning to do.

But things do happen in life, that you and your ego know from the past experiences and history that you have no control over.

So having a Plan B in your mind puts you and your (ego) mind at ease at the moment, as not putting more energy into worry, what-if, and other time sucking thoughts.

And in the rare instance that the situation outcome you don’t want to happen actually happens, you have a trampoline to fall on (your Plan B).

If you do this mental exercise for your Vata active mind, this puts your mind at rest.

And when you rest a Vata active mind, then you feel calm and can get on with your day.

You can enjoy the next moments instead of leaving worry on the table to be seen again later on in your thoughts without any real life evidence you need to be alarmed.

There’s no reason to be anxious or worried about anything not alarming, as it solves nothing and is unproductive.

Breaking this down: once you know what the anxious thought is about and determine it’s not clear and present danger, you can move into active mind management, such as having a mental Plan B.

The second thing you can do is have a specific mantra that becomes your outlook.

When anxious thoughts loom, you can refer to a mantra like: I know tomorrow will be better. It always is.

How can you convince you and your ego that’s true?

You have so many examples in the past of that truth. Find a supporting example in your past where the worry you had didn’t pan out, and you actually turned it into something better now that you have hindsight.

Remind your mind.

Because there’s 3 of you on your team: you, your mind, and your body.

When you have positive belief and conviction like “it always is” you’ve defeated ego because there’s no debating “always” in ego language. It’s like calling ego out.

That was ego’s ploy to turn “always” into a negative position such as it’s always going to be like this or it always will be raining.

But you’ve turned the always statement upside down on its head to a positive thought and belief that shuts ego up.

That’s how you fairly head wrestle with ego.

And, here’s how you can practice this:

Let’s use the weekend or your work days off as an example since you have more control over what you get to do or think on those days.

Say, today is Saturday and you’re stuck indoors with lousy weather and you had planned to relax today.

You didn’t sleep well because of anxious thoughts circling from the week before, so all that compounds and adds to your feeling deflated or defeated in some way in your day even though it’s your day off.

This isn’t how you wanted to spend part of your day.

But you can’t plan your thoughts and feelings in advance. What you can do now is prepare your better thoughts and feelings for tomorrow with these steps:

Start re-setting today. Think and repeat: tomorrow will be a new day.

Go to bed earlier tonight so you can get a good’s night rest (as you didn’t sleep well the previous night).

Plus, going to bed early keeps you from scrolling on your devices, overeating and overdrinking, and watching shows that make you feel bad or worse the next day.

So to recap: you’re productively going to bed early and you anticipate a better day tomorrow. And the next day (or Sunday), you wake up better rested compared to the lousy night you had before or on Friday.

That’s because you put a good intention the day and night before.

On Sunday, you’ve reset yourself and your thoughts. And hopefully you got more sleep.

You keep the mantra running in your mind: it’s a brand new day.

You have a new chance to feel productive and happy.

Plus, our minds loves to compare. And fresh-in-mind-memory was that yesterday wasn’t so great. Yesterday is over. So this new day is victory in comparison. 🎉

You could enjoy a cup of tea in peace and that makes you feel much better than turmoil yesterday.

Keep focusing on re-centering yourself in the moment.

The anxious fears of yesterday are put in the dust. Re-focus on your built-up love intentions today.

When the clouds lift, celebrate with singing, dancing, humming or whatever fancies you so you create a new recent happy memory.

Bring out more of the happy, creative person within you. Remove and lower unfocused Vata tendencies.

That’s the happy balance in life that we can reset daily.

Keep doing this even if it takes a few days. Sometimes we need more than a night. The more you practice, the shorter the time becomes to bounce back.

You can choose to get out of self-pity, feeling anxious. or sad in a healthy and graceful way faster.

We can shorten the duration of regurgitating thoughts that don’t serve us. We can put them to bed after we realize they serve no helpful purpose and rob us of time and energy.

Robbing can show up as depressed moods, procrastination, self-loathing, blaming others, self-pity, etc.

I spent way too many seasons feeling self-pity. Especially if my seasons didn’t measure up comparing myself to culture’s standards, those around me, and the high-elated feelings on the flesh level.

Those created my next season lows in the hangover effect when they didn’t measure up.

I had the wrong set of wants that weren’t aligned with what would actually make me happy… me.

People, accomplishments, or things were crutches. It was me that could make me happy.

And it’s you that can make you happy.

If that doesn’t resonate now, know it’s now in your system to digest.

Welcome in your curiosity and questions that wonder about this idea. Maybe you wrestle with this a while. But by processing this, one day, you may find yourself happy with authentic you and who you’ve become that started with practicing quieting a Vata active mind.

Baking in a healthy and happy dessert like a berry cheesecake can start your daily happy.

Greek Yogurt Berry Cheesecake Recipe

Indecisive Traits Keeping You Stuck?

Indecisive traits do keep us stuck. Instead of moving forward or going back, we stay in place.

Indecisiveness is one way to describe how Ayurvedic Vatas act often. This could be new news to you. It was new to me too up ’til 2008 when I learned about Ayurveda. The information in this article can help you learn a new way and so you can take more better risks.

Indecisive moments are found in common daily decisions like choosing to go right or left. — Indecisive – which path will you take?

…That’s when it clicked and made sense as to why I had indecisive and other Vata tendencies.

You can read my back story here about when I went to go get help for my immediate Pitta mind-body symptoms. And I also came out with knowledge and awareness on why certain Vata ways were natural to me. I’m naturally a Vata with some dominant Pitta mind, but like all of us… sometimes tired Kapha kicks up.

…And whether you tend toward uneasy, annoyed, or listlessness it all ties back to your balance.

If you’re wondering if you have Vata traits, this article shares more and how you can benefit from knowing.

Growing up, I always felt hesitant about small decisions. Do I want an orange or crackers? Do I want pink or blue to wear? This could easily be chalked up to the fact that most of us like more than one food or color. …or I’m a female, so being indecisive is typical.

But in reality it’s not about the color, food, or gender. Or even about how you were raised.

It’s about our natural makeup, that’s unisex. We have Ayurvedic orientations called Vata, Pitta, and Kapha inside us. Or wind, fire, and earth if that’s easier to remember. 💨🔥🌎

Earth, Wind, and Fire is already taken. 🥁🎹🎺

Vata is the wind element with some common tell-tale Vata signs.

But keep in mind, we’re often dominant in one or two of those elements in body. And same goes for the mind. Putting those two parts together, you get the mind-body connection that affects so much of our lives and behaviors.

Indecisiveness is one way that’s mostly a mind situation that you can easily pinpoint from an Ayurvedic lens.

When you can do that, you can restore the healthy balance back in awareness to your calm and confident decision-making.

Being decisive all around not only saves time, but leads to better decisions and outcomes.

How Being Vata Indecisive Can Hurt

At the heart, indecision is second guessing your first decision that comes from gut instinct and clear minded processing. So in a way, being Vata indecisive is being confronted with a brain fog moment.

Indecision can lead to worry that Vatas lean into already. And that state of mind can lead to staying stuck in a cycle of unproductive thoughts playing as an undercurrent in the back of your mind. 🌊That’s added stress that doesn’t need to be there.

Feeling anxiety also can cause indecision as body symptoms make it more difficult to clearly process thoughts.

Vice versa, indecision can lead to anxiety (that’s another common Vata trait).

Depending on the body symptom severity, anxious feelings lead to poor decisions and outcomes.

It numbs awareness of what is real.

And making matters worse, that pause can linger and keep you frozen from making a decision or in “fight or flight” that can cost.

For small things like daily preferences, that’s not such a big deal… but if it’s deciding on taking a right or left or making a quick life threatening decision, that can be concern- elevated.

Vata indecisive traits can compound into feeling uncertain about other areas in your day when those moments could be better spent enjoying yourself or even better… being in the moment in peace and mindfulness.

That’s when stress melts away for whatever is in your life eating at you. Those anxious feelings are traded in for feeling calm and joyful.

That’s the ticket for your healthy and happy life. 🎟️

And that can be your norm or new norm! I know because my life did a 180-turn from stress to peace when I got rid of the triggers. I became self-employed.

And I became more clear-headed… more like a human and less walking around like a busy Bot. There are too many of those already roaming our internet spaces.

How to Get Back To Your Vata Mind Balance

And in learning from my balanced seasons where I could disconnect and detox, I’m more decisive.

I’m my balanced Vata (the way that is naturally greater and my optimal best) 🧘🏻‍♀️

I don’t teeter back and forth. I can catch myself in the act of hemming and hawing and doing what I know to do to restore any Vata imbalance that tries to creep back in.

It’s not difficult or unnatural. It’s simply being intentional daily doing the specific balanced steps that turn the tide around for a better life. 👣

No one is doomed to the “I’m just indecisive” label. That’s putting a stamp of acceptance that’s not the way it has to be or stay.

And you can start by doing these two balanced healthy steps:

1) Get self-awareness in the moment so you can be next step-intentional.

2) Then, breathe the calm back into your mind-body as soon as you can so you can feel the calm pause in the next moments.

Finding ways to have a calmer life, I believe is underrated. And not what Western culture aims for although we’ve wised up post-2020.

As mentioned, calm allows for clearer, confident decisions.

Calm is also better for your healthy outcomes.

But if you don’t have that life now because of situational triggers you can’t avoid, then restoring daily when you can with what you do have as calming resources will be the next best way.

Use your surroundings: calming activities and scents, music, yoga, and a nature walk.

Do this daily and often.

They’re not time wasters. It’s like taking care of your teeth. It’s always minutes well spent investing in your daily smile. 😁

If you feel you’re daily Vata indecisive for what to do (such as jumping from task to task), get back to your breathing awareness.

We often forget, yet another Vata common trait. Not picking on Vatas as we’re a creative, enthusiastic bunch… but in your remembering moment (or in the slight gap pause), recall there is calm balance and no anxiety.

Let the weight of the world you live in go by letting all that out in deep inhale and exhale breaths. That’s an activity you can do anywhere, anytime… and wise to do all the time.

Set a reminder if that helps. ⌚️

And when you do your breathing exercise, you’re able to work your way out slowly in the gap or one moment at a time.

And this date recipe that you can make for your daily self 😊 can help restore your Vata especially if you add the orange and cinnamon tastes.

Print Recipe

Low-Sugar Date Cookies

You can make these ahead of time and in any oven including an apartment oven. And enjoy.

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

coconut flour and plain flour combined
a few pats of butter (or coconut oil)
chopped dates
water as needed
orange zest and cinnamon (optional)

Instructions

Prepare and chop dates filling. Tip: since dates are sticky, it's easier to use a serated chopping knife with edges. Add cinnamon and orange zest if you'd like more Vata sweetness.
Mix cookie ingredients: flour, butter or oil, and water as needed to make a cohesive cookie dough disc. You can make this in advance and freeze the dough if you like.
When dough is slightly cooler than room temperature is the ideal temperature to work with this dough. Roll out cookie dough to about 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick (doesn't have to be too thin).
Add date filling to center of dough.
Roll up and cut into small, even pieces.
Bake on 350°F for about 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Balanced Mind Questions For Better Outcomes

personalized mind body recipe to help get answers to balanced mind questions — Get better mind body answers with a recipe from an online personalized assessment.

Your mind life is the second part of this mind-body series that I started last week… and below are some balanced mind questions to ask yourself if you want to:

✅ Live your best abundant, joyful, and empowered life

✅ Get out of your rut patterns in life

✅ Restore and feel your peace and calm

And in calm and joy, the mind is where good moods start. And then in contast, where discouraging moods like unrest or boredom kick in. Rarely, are we in neutral-mind mode. Like, dogs who have this natural built-in feature. 🐶

As a higher-thinking creature, you want to start your day not believing everything that enters your mind so you can better influence your moods and feelings. This was a strange concept for me early on as we’re not taught this in school or growing up. …and maybe for you too?

And if so… don’t worry, you’re in good company. Most of us start out that way and you have a chance to keep growing especially if you keep the below beliefs and open attitudes in mind.

Balanced Mind – Question Your Feelings

Challenging your thoughts is a healthy habit.

An easy way to gauge your thoughts is observing how you feel from your thoughts. Is it a negative feeling-thought that you’re holding onto? Do you feel icky from the thought of the thought, and does the thought unpleasantly linger longer than needed when you’ve already moved on?

…Or, is it a positive feeling and thought where you want to hold onto the nice memory, new thought, or dream about the future?

Does the thought bring you warm fuzzy feelings and make you happy?

…Or is it a neutral thought like when you’re in work mode, busy, or just focused on the task at hand?

Determining whether it’s a neutral, good, or bad feeling is an easy first step. And these are some feeling thought types from balanced mind questions you can ask yourself.

Do you have?:

Calm vs. worry thoughts

Peace vs. angry or irritated thoughts

Encouraging or exciting vs. withdrawn, listless, or repetitive thoughts

If thoughts are repetitive or disruptive to your day or longer, then you want to do a little detective mind work to discover where it may have come from and then end the mind drama with distraction.

Is there something you can gain or learn from this thought episode that may have shown up as a slightly different situation the last time?

…Because the sooner you figure that out in present awareness, the sooner you get to live our your optimal thought life. You’re free from mind imprisonment and you know what to do again.

Next time you connect the dots of your thoughts and life, that’s victory because then you can do something better with the thoughts… like tell it to take a hike or rewrite the thought to an aspired one that could become your dream life one day in self-fulfilling prophecy.

The opposite would be letting the ego have its way. Sadly, most of us live that way for some parts of life when we’re not fully aware.

And had I not lived that way before I was aware, I would’ve not clearly been able to see the other side. 🌈

The ego affects your feelings (and vice versa). The problem is that when the ego is stroked, it can run your thought life (or ruin parts of life leaving a regretful backlash).

The ego in your mind is like a clock in that it’s running all the time. Even if you want to shut if off, you can’t.

It’s job is to try to protect you, but in the modern world we don’t need most of its protective ways. It pulls information gathered from your past and in the present, tries to protect you from getting hurt. Doesn’t sound bad, right?

…Well, except its methods are deceivingly destructive. The ego ticks in a very twisted way, and can lead you into prideful ways or unconsciously hurting people in its wake.

You want to feel better, but not at the cost of others or yourself.

And if you want to live an abundant life through your better thoughts, then in most daily situations you want to disconnect the invisible-to-the-eye ego cord.

And if it involves people, pause and override your first reaction. Then move onto your higher intellect and power within you to trust people when they’ve earned a bit of trust.

No one is perfect, but if someone shows up consistently 90% of the time and doesn’t deliberately or intentionally take action to hurt you in some way, then your ego is wronging you by putting up a defense for this person or all people.

The ego loudly tries to influence you by reminding you to stay away from all people that do ___ or have ___ traits in certain situations.

This creates divide and me vs. you. The opposite of love.

And btw, this power struggle is what happens to unaware couples in long-term relationships where the ego in them takes over one or both of them in a few short months or sometimes years.

The effect is: you don’t recognize the person you’re staring at based on what comes out of their mouth (and what’s going on behind the face with their ego mind running their show).

So, how do you become more ego aware?

You unmask the ego and make it naked in awareness. You remove the feelings attached and you observe your thoughts. And you ask balanced mind questions.

Do a thought inventory check. Start objectively with openly asking yourself: how much of your life is ruled by ego?

Take a guess… is it 20% of your day or 80% or more of your day?

To get a better answer to balanced mind questions, do any of these describe your daily thoughts?

__ your initial entering thoughts make up most your daily small and/or larger decisions

__you have obsessive or repetitive thoughts that take up a good chunk of your day

__your thoughts go down rabbit holes and sometimes may even have unfactual endings attached that are NOT based in what’s happening in reality

Any of those descriptions could easily put you in the 80% or more category. And that’s common, so you’re not alone.

AND you can change this in you.

The solution is simple: if you want better results, then remember to frequently change your thoughts.

Staying closed minded and far away from present-moment mindfulness are some of ego’s biggest defense tricks. So keep questioning if you have balanced mind thoughts or need some tweaking love in some areas.

It’s not always easy to do if you’ve never practiced or stretched your thought mind muscles. Once you’re aware, it’s a LOT easier. And to give a nudge encouragement, just know it’s not about being a deep thinker.

It IS about getting happy, free, and the best abundant life you can have.

Just something to consider as you rewrite your habits and daily thoughts. I’m cheering you on. 🤗