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The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking ~ Eckhart Tolle

Becoming conscious of your thoughts as you go about the business of your life is one of the most powerful ways to transform the direction of your life. Your thoughts are intimately linked to your attitude and beliefs that are in turn reflected in your external world. It follows that distorted patterns of thought can create life circumstances that defeat possibility of joy and happiness.

Breathwork is a profound and transformative tool to breaking up inherited or distorted patterns of thinking patterns. As you practice the exercise below, consider how Breathwork sessions can help accelerate your process to clear thought in your life.

Try this ->

• Below are a number of thinking processes that can build obstacles to your ability to live that joy and happiness.
• Take a moment to reflect on the top three or four thought styles that you practice that might be intruding into your ability to be governed by thoughts that allow you to live from your essential nature.
• Commit to choosing one thought pattern you want to change and focusing on the number of times it surfaces and invades your speech and actions. Keep score as much as possible through journaling each day for one week.
• As you become more aware of your distorted thoughts, consider one or two steps you can take to entertain a directly opposite thought. For example – if you discover judgmental thinking, how might you be more open and accepting in any situation.
• Commit to practicing the opposite approach for one week.
• Consider embracing Breathwork sessions to focus on the intention to change a specific thought process.

Distorted Thinking That May Need Your Attention:

• Polarization – All or Nothing – Things are either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. There is no middle ground
• It is all about you/self-blame – Everything is a statement about you and your behaviors, shortcomings or capability and/or your behaviors cause others actions. An off-shoot of this includes always comparing yourself to others and coming up short.
• Taking no responsibility – believing any misstep is everyone else’s fault and only positive outcomes are attributable to you. Negative outcomes are the result of another’s failure.
• Should-ing all over yourself (and others) – How often do you use the words, “should”, “must”, “ought” in your thinking and speech? Are you creating unrealistic expectations of yourself or others?
• Negative vibes – You tend to see or imagine the worst possible outcomes or unpleasant occurrences
• Sizing Issues – Situations are perceived as highly exaggerated and bigger than they really are or less significant and less important than they are.
• Assumptions rather than facts – Presuming to know what the other person is thinking or deciding you know about a situation or future outcome based on your feelings or hunches.
• Fixed in space – concluding that things are ‘always’, ‘never’ or ‘all’ a certain way with no ability to entertain the experience might be simply a single event
• Doom and Gloom despite opposing evidence – the inability to embrace positive aspects of a situation or event. The experiences are filtered through a negative lens that cannot entertain positive options.
• Emotionally Faulty Reasoning – deciding that a mistake is an abject failure, that the feeling (fear, stupidity) is the fact (there is danger; I am stupid). Mistaking feelings for facts.
• Faulty Belief Patterns – Others will change to suit your needs if your push them enough. That way you can be happy; All sacrifice will pay off and you will receive your reward; You know what is fair and are resentful when others do not agree with you.

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Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything ~ George Bernard Shaw

For more information about Breathwork, contact John Stamoulos at john@johnstamoulos.com