Belief Makers

I thought the volcano eruption on Iceland wouldn’t affect me, but it did. This is a perfect opportunity for me to practice to choose happiness, to stay present, to focus on what I want and to stay positive.

First I got the news that the family I was going to work with got stuck on their holiday. So I thought, no problem, I’ll go home earlier. (I am in the UK for a two weeklong outreach journey)

I told the family to focus their energy on staying positive instead of worrying and so allowing everything to work out perfectly. This is so easy said to someone else! But then...

Then I booked a ticket for Tuesday, so I would be home three days early. The days moved along and Tuesday was getting closer, and the ashes were not disappearing. I noticed that I started to use some worrying thoughts, but was able to stop myself. This was another perfect situation. The universe gave me the opportunity to practice. So I decided to stay positive and go with the flow even when it became clear that I would not be able to fly on Tuesday!

I am really doing it! I am so amazed by myself! Me, who used to worry about everything all the time!

So, what is helping me?
• Prioritize feeling good, no matter what.
This is really cool. If we stop, take a moment and decide what we want to focus on in a situation we can really create our experience.

Labels: barbara balla, positive thinking, vulcano

As a child facilitator being present is a very important aspect of my work, and of the every day fun I have!

Being present helps me to focus on my little friend. I can play with one hundred percent of my attention and notice his or her cues, which helps me to help him/her the best way I can. Being present also allows me to fully enjoy our time together.

This hasn't always been this way. I used to be an expert worrier and I used to spend at least 80 percent of my days thinking about different things. For example I would be thinking about my to do list or I would be occupied with beating myself up for things I did in the past. Or I would be feeling sad about everything that was happening to me (my lovely victimhood).

I used to have conversations with people and have my thoughts somewhere else or read a book and then realize after some pages that I had no idea what I read.

Why do we time travel?

Labels: all blogs, barbara balla, present

Do our beliefs create our future?

This world is a fantastic place and I always wanted to figure it out completely. I remember being sixteen and having these long conversations with my high school friends about how life works. I used to search and search for answers and finally I started feeling that I found my path when I found Option.

Later on I got into spirituality, learnt other perspectives and realized the basics are all the same. What I read in spiritual books I find in Option books. Some of the thoughts might be written a bit differently, but seem to have the same meaning. I guess we all head towards the same understandings, but we get there walking different paths.

As we are all different, we all have preferences to different philosophies and religions. A very popular topic right now seems to be to manifest, and attract things into our lives. Lots of spiritual teachers sell the belief that holding positive thoughts about a future event will draw that situation into our lives. When I first explored this process, I made myself scared by thinking "Oh I am attracting all these negative things because I have fearful thoughts regularly".

When I started working through my fears, I opened myself up to a more positive view. I started reading again about manifesting and realized it is an amazing concept. After I discovered the beliefs that did not result in positive thoughts and feelings, and changed them into beliefs that made me feel great, I actually I got myself to a place where I could start attract positive things into my life.

I started to realize that by spending time on discovering and changing my beliefs to become more positive, I create a solid space from which I can live positively naturally and which results in more creativity in my live.

Labels: all blogs, barbara balla, beliefs, law of attraction

I was wondering the other day about things that happened in my past. While studying psychology I learned that we can suppress things that continue bubbling in the deep and then break out one day making a big bang.

Labels: all blogs, barbara balla, beliefs

My boyfriend and I went Christmas shopping. It was the second time we went shopping for Christmas presents and both times we ended up with loads of stuff for us, along with some for our loved ones. We love to treat ourselves!

When we went into a very cute shop with home decoration things in it, I saw a fridge magnet saying, "Let go!"

I produced an anxious feeling in my tummy, as this is not something that has been easy for me to do. My inner thoughts screamed, "Letting go means being totally out of control, and I have to control everything to feel safe!"

So I thought this would be perfect for me. I would buy the magnet and put it on the fridge to remind me many times during the day when I am at home.

Floating Happy Bubble
After meeting my magnet, I started thinking about letting go. Out of experience and observation I know that we tend to believe that if they would let go of our beliefs that are keeping us in line (our drive to succeed, our commitments, our worries and anxiety, our wanting to be in control, our unhappiness), we would end up floating happy bubbles doing nothing at all.

How amazing that we are scared to be happy because we believe that we wouldn't do anything.

Everything Seems Easy When You’re Happy
I also thought of the times when I feel truly happy. In spite of beliefs that I need to hang on tightly to motivate myself, at those times I am totally motivated to do things and everything seems easier. I am joyful, my day is more colorful, I have amazing interaction with the people around me, I can focus better and I can inspire the ones around me to also choose happiness.

Dying from Happiness
Letting go my unhappiness producing beliefs was difficult for a long time because I believed that if I were happy I would die. Over time I created proof that disproves this belief. I have been happy many times, I have let loads of beliefs go and I am definitely still here!

I realize that I also believed that life is a school where I have to complete different tasks and when I will be done I will leave school. The goal is to graduate and get home to God. To graduate, I can't be happy (see my belief above); I need to be unhappy to live and learn my lessons and do my tests. Isn't it amazing what stuff we can make up about life. Does it really have to be this complicated or can we live simply happily?

Happy People are Weird!
Sometimes I believe that if I were happy all the time, I would be such a weird person that nobody would love me or want to be with me. I would just not fit in. But actually, since becoming more and more happy, I am finding more people who are on the same path and I am able to share my experiences with them. We are so good at scaring ourselves into unhappiness!

Letting Go of Expectations Works
Expectations are another area for me where I often practice letting go. In my job working with autistic children, I expect so much from the children I work with, but well... they don’t always do it.

Ok, ok, I am just joking! The Son-Rise Program is the place where expectations are left outside the door. This creates an amazing environment for the children that helps them blossom into wonderful flowers in the smoothest ways. When we start expecting, we start pushing or pulling and the other person tends to get stubborn or push back. And this is so true outside of the playroom, too.

Letting Go is Magic!
Magic happens when we let go! It is so amazing, many times almost in the instant we relax and say goodbye to our expectations, the other person does what we want him/her to do, immediately. Once a Son-Rise dad was telling us a story of his child not wanting to wear clothes. He and his wife were working with him to encourage him to wear clothes for a long time, but he just did not want to do it. One night they decided to be OK with their son not wearing clothes and the next morning he got dressed!

Isn’t that amazing? We work ourselves up, get unhappy to get others to do things, and the easiest and most pleasant way is actually when we feel relaxed and trust that it will all work out the best way.

The bonus is that we can be happy the whole time, before it works out, after it works out, and even if it doesn't work out!

So, let go... let go... let gooooo...

Labels: all blogs, barbara balla, philosophy, son-rise

written by Barbara Balla

It is so easy to go with the thousands of thoughts that race through our minds and get distracted all the time. It is also easy to go with the negative thoughts and get caught up in them.

Sometimes I catch myself  being distracted with my worries. In these moments I want to look closer at the thing I am worrying about, because, "I'd better worry well to solve it!" But it definitely does not help. From worrying I just get in a spiral of negative thoughts inviting negative beliefs, and I go deeper and deeper into my worrying.

Well, I figured out this isn't the way that takes me to happiness!

Focussing on my wants
So my new strategy, which works very nicely, is: focusing on what I want, identifying the beliefs that are in the way of believing that I can get what I want and gathering evidence of why I can have it. This process surely feels so much better. And knowing the wonderful Option philosophy: wanting things is very different from needing things. It's so much easier to go for what I want when I don’t attach negative emotions and outcomes to it.

Strengthen our beliefs
When I was a volunteer at the Option Institute we were taught to gather evidence to strengthen our new beliefs. I didn’t really see the huge benefit of doing this. I was thinking once I changed a belief it should stick and I should (of course I should - it was one of my most used words back then) be able to use it all the time!

Since then I have realized strengthening a new belief is so important.

I understand that we use a belief over and over again every day, and that a belief has lots of situations connected to it. It created such a well-traveled path in my brain, than the belief can drive its little car without a driver. The wheels of the car made deep tire treads in the road, so even a big wind can't divert it.

Its up to me to help my new belief take this road and settle into the tire marks, so it can take the road by itself.

My way of doing it
Every time a situation arises where I use my old belief, I stop and think about how I would like to feel in this situation. I think about what I really want and remember my new belief that gets me there, and then I look for evidence that supports my new belief.

The more I consciously stop and replace the old belief with the new one, and support it with evidence, the easier it gets not to go back to the old belief. I used to be discouraged when I used an old belief and I would get myself unhappy, just to help myself to even deeper unhappiness. I would really discourage and judge myself. Knowing that it takes time and conscious effort to strengthen the new belief helps me now to have fun with it and be easy with myself.

Focussing on my wants
When I focus on the difficulties of my wants I totally loose sight of my wants and start engaging beliefs that are stop me from doing what I want. But when I focus directly on my wants, and pay no attention to the difficulties, I seem to fly towards my want.

Lately I have just been going for my wants. When things come up along the way, it is so much easier to solve these challenges because I am easy with myself and have fun with the challenges. They actually stop being challenges and become training opportunities. I training my new beliefs and I can quickly go back to focusing on my wants.

Challenges are fun
So how do I create fun with the challenges: by treating them as friends, who help me grow stronger in my happiness. I can say hi to them, welcome them into my life, offer them a cup of tea and playfully figure out how we can depart with love. Also I can tell them how much I appreciate them for helping me and actually I don’t need them any more.

Wow, the world is such a wonderful place with all these different friends (the challenges) in it, who help us grow!

Thank you, my lovely challenge buddies!

Labels: all blogs, barbara balla, philosophy

If you would ask someone in my past to mention one characteristic about me I am sure it would have been "controlling". I didn't really understand why people said that about me, but now that I am letting this "wonderful" but hard to live with quality go I can see what they meant. When someone is controlling they don't ask from a happy place. They have to have it and usually in the way they want it.

Today I am staying at a hotel where the Internet connection isn't strong enough in all the rooms. My laptop couldn't pick it up in my room. So I went to ask the lady at the reception whether I could have another room. I didn't need it, so I could ask it with ease and an honest smile. She also responded very nice and told me that they were all booked up, but maybe something would open the next day. I was totally fine with her answer and I really appreciated the next day option. It is still nicer to work from my room for 4 days than staying at the tiny reception table for 5 days.

And when I was about to go back to my "Internet-less" room the receptionist remembered that the disabled access room was free and she offered it to me. I checked it out and the Internet worked, hurray. And even better, I had never seen a disabled access room before. It is amazing! It has all these handles you can grab and strings coming from the ceiling you can pull if you need help.

After the first excitement of exploring this new room I started thinking about how my life would be if I were in a wheelchair. I could feel two ways while exploring this room. Either I could feel unhappy about me being so different and that I need all these special equipment to get by or I could be really appreciative that there is all this help, so I can do all the same things as if I wasn't in the wheelchair. Coming from the happy place makes life so much brighter.

Anyway the light doesn't work in my bathroom, but they will fix it tomorrow. This made me wonder how funny we people are. For each of us different things are important. I am happy to have a romantic almost no light shower in my Internet accessible and disabled accessible room!

So today I had a lovely evening because I was asking from a happy place! What about you?

Labels: all blogs, barbara balla, philosophy

Hello lovely Option people,

My name is Barbara. I am a certified Son-Rise child facilitator. I live in Hungary and work all over Europe and in Nigeria. I love my job and I would love to share with you why Son-Rise is so amazing.

I haven't always seen all the beauty I see now in the Program. Being quite a self-centered person didn't give me much opportunity to find beauty in other things. It was totally ok to be self-centered. It was the way for me to take care of myself, to feel safe and find my way in the world. I always loved personal growth stuff but when I got involved with Son-Rise I started the big journey to become myself. By doing that I created the capacity to see the world in a different way. It was kind of doing a Son-Rise Program for myself. Exploring my beliefs opened up new ways to see and understand myself.

I wanted to share the above about myself because I used to admire people for how amazing they were and I never thought about where they started out. I just assumed they were always the way I met them. It is nice to see that life is all about growing, we never stop and there is always room to stretch ourselves more.

I love my job, seeing the beautiful children and meeting amazing families. I love how respectful, loving, gentle and effective Son-Rise is. I meet a child for the first time and it is so easy to make a connection from the place of total acceptance, love and respect. It is amazing to see how children respond when they have the first contact with someone who doesn't push them at all and who is happy to play their games for hours (join their isms) if that is what they choose to do. They just "soak" it in, relax and appreciate it so much. I get the most amazing smiles, looks and hugs from my little friends. By giving them the opportunity to take care of themselves and be who they are without any judgments or need to be someone else or do something else they can recharge and be ready to make steps toward things that might be challenging for them. I see with many children that they love to be challenged because it happens when they are ready for it and it is in a fun and easy way. Can you imagine anything better than having a friend who is so excited about what you love and is there for you and helps you on the way when you face challenges in your life? I am so grateful I can be a friend like that for the children I play with.

Talking about being grateful. It is a shortcut to happiness, as we all know. It was always nice to read it and think "yeah it's a good technique" but I didn't really feel it often. Then I just started practicing it more and more. I have started being grateful for the small things in my life and it really works. Slowly it is helping me to transform the way I think and see the world. I just have more and more good coming into my life and I recognize it more and more. I was just thinking that I am happy for the majority of my days, though I have my down moments. But the trick is, after I am unhappy for a little bit, I start looking for something I can be grateful for in the situation and it works amazingly.

So keep being grateful and enjoy the amazing fruit of your effort.

With huge love,

Barbara

Labels: all blogs, autism, barbara balla, son-rise