Reboot Your Body

 Your body is a temple, but only if you treat it as one.
Astrid Alauda

The body is like a car. Cars come in different shapes and sizes, colors, makes, and models. But all cars have three things in common: They are unique, they require fuel, and each needs a driver. Keeping a car running smoothly and in alignment requires regular maintenance including oil changes, fluid checks, and replacing parts when necessary. Regular cleaning helps reduce rust and keeps the body strong.

Like a car, the human body comes in assorted shapes, sizes, and colors. Our bodies require fuel in the form of food and drink, and each of us has a driver in charge of operation and maintenance. A body neglected will not operate efficiently. We can care for our body by fueling it with foods that support strength and good health; we can schedule regular check-ups for health and wellness; and we can choose to keep our bodies clean, fit, and strong.

This week, make a commitment to paying attention to your body. Select foods that taste good, feel good, and resonate with your body's natural energies. Move naturally by taking the stairs instead of the elevator; take a walk at lunch or after work; if it's cold out, go to the mall and window shop as you get in some extra steps; pay attention to how you feel as your breathe; drink an extra glass of water before every meal. Notice how your energy changes as you gently shift your activities.

As you take care of your body and listen to its messages, you will be guided to better health, strength, and balance.

To Better Balance!

Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

Find better balance in your life, relationships, and work. 
Visit 21daystobetterbalance.com and learn more.

Declutter Your Mind

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein

Whether it's due to the expansion of technology or the plethora of choices that we face each day, our ability to filter information and stay focused is a constant challenge. You have the potential to make healthy choices and balance your priorities no matter where you are on your life journey. However, change doesn't come easily—it takes courage, dedication, and commitment. Lasting change comes in small steps. Each step evolves into a new habit, and over time, healthy habits become major life changes.

When you find that your mind is becoming cluttered with too many thoughts, try a quick and easy exercise called "Brain Drain." Begin by taking out a piece of paper and pen (or start an electronic page), and set an alarm for fifteen minutes. Write down everything that is currently going on in your mind. You can write about anything—your feelings about work, what to do for Mom's birthday, how to pay off that student loan faster—whatever thoughts are swirling through your head at the moment. No rules, no requirements. When fifteen minutes are over, stop writing. Take notice of how you feel. Relieved? Less stressed?

The goal of this exercise is to "drain your brain" of the chatter that prevents you from sifting through your thoughts and feelings. The act of writing allows us to release energy onto the page instead of allowing it to occupy valuable space needed for creativity and focus (think of increasing your personal RAM). Try using Brain Drain first thing in the morning—it can help to clear your palate for the day. If you want to make some serious progress, increase your time to 30 minutes and use Brain Drain every morning for a week. Notice if your ability to focus improves as you declutter your mind. With new space released, new creative ideas can begin bubbling to the surface.

Be Balanced!

Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

Find better balance in your life, relationships, and work. 
Visit 21daystobetterbalance.com and learn more.

The Nudge

 We are not human beings on a spiritual journey.
We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
Stephen R. Covey

Something I learned early-on in my healing work was to give my thoughts, feelings, and intuition a "voice"—a way for me to better understand my mind, body, and spirit. We all have the ability to perceive information via our senses, and information is constantly being filtered and transmitted through our thoughts, feelings, and intuition. Often, we put words to our thoughts and feelings and experience them as a voice within. But what do we hear?
 
Usually the loudest voice—our Mind—is busy analyzing information and making conclusions. Simultaneously, our Body is translating all the visual, audio, and tactile stimuli of our busy world and giving us feedback through the voice our feelings. Logic and emotion—the constant balance between head and heart. But while our minds and bodies are "doing", our spirits are just "being". In fact, our Spirit is working with the power of our intentions—consciously and subconsciously—and the voice of Spirit is always coming from a place that knows what we really want, versus what our minds and bodies think we want.

The quiet voice of Spirit gives us little nudges and leaves us with that “tingly” feeling in the pit of our stomach. The nudge may come in forms such as, “I should hold this door open for that next person,” or “I can spare some change for the woman ahead of me in line at the store.” Spirit never asks from us more than we can give at a given moment. Spirit knows our boundaries. In fact, Spirit lets us exercise our healthy boundaries and create new ones, while our Mind may have us thinking in old patterns or behavior and repeating the same mistakes. Been there, done that!

So if you pay attention to those nudges, you will get closer to tapping your natural intuition. In fact, if you get quiet and really listen, you will start to hear the calm rhythm within. And once you start accessing your Spirit, you can bring your thoughts and feelings into better alignment with intuition, and activate that knowledge to create better balance in your life—awareness, alignment, activation: the balance formula is complete.

How can you be quiet and listen to the intuitive voice within you this week?

Be Balanced!

Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

Find better balance in your life, relationships, and work. 
Visit 21daystobetterbalance.com to learn more.

The Key is Activation

 
The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Lao-tzu

Last week we celebrated the new year. Did you make any resolutions for 2014? Part of finding better balance in life comes from creating intentions—and those new year's resolutions are based in our intentions. So why do we often find it so difficult to follow through? Because we are attempting to activate an intention without properly preparing ourselves. Actions without full awareness and alignment are simply good ideas.

Need some help with activation? Try my simple 3-step formula:

1) Awareness brings your attention to the critical factors affecting your balance;
2) Alignment helps focus your energy internally and externally; and
3) Activation puts theory into practice and ideas into motion. Activation is the key to implementation and a critical step to finding better balance.

As you become more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and intuition, you'll be able to take action on them, knowing that the internal nudge is coming from your deeper purpose and authentic self. Learning to connect with yourself is learning how to "begin within".

Focusing on activation helps us make changes in our lives and reminds us that manifesting our truest purpose and our dreams both depend on our ability to take action.

Happy New Year!

Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

Find better balance in your life, relationships, and work. 
Visit 21daystobetterbalance.com to learn more.
 

Healthy Holidays!

 

Speaking from someone who loves to celebrate, this time of year can be most exciting. The holiday season gives us opportunities to be thankful, giving, and ring in another new year. With all of these reasons to act in exceptional ways, this time of year can also cause many of us to lose our sense of equilibrium. Stress, expectations, and "waiting until the last minute" to get something done can push us out of alignment and affect our natural sense of balance.

As the holiday season is moving into full swing, here are some quick tips to help us maintain better balance in our mind, body and spirit while we celebrate this exciting time of year:

• Get plenty of rest. The holidays always include extra activities and will take more energy than usual, so getting adequate amounts of rest will let us join in the fun!
• Drink lots of water and other fluids (including hot teas). This will keep us properly hydrated and less prone to holiday germs.
• Eat healthy foods high in vitamins and minerals. Most of us will eat some holiday treats (candy, chocolate, etc.), but be sure to keep it balanced with healthy portions of proteins, fruits and vegetables. Too much sugar will spike our energy and can cause headaches and fatigue.
• Help stop the spread of holiday colds and illness. By covering our mouths when we sneeze or cough, and washing our hands often we lessen the spread of germs. Carry extra tissues with you if your nose is runny or throat lozenges if you have a cough.
• Get plenty of exercise. Even a short walk in the mornings or evenings will help keep our blood moving. Exercise and stretching helps improve circulation and promotes faster healing!
• Take time to spend with people. Visiting with our family and friends during our holiday time off and taking the time to reconnect with those we love strengthens our relationships, boosts our immune system and reconnects us back to ourselves.
• Unplug a little! Take time off from the busy hustle and bustle: Turn off the ringer on your phone and let calls go to voice mail; take a few days off from Facebook & Twitter—the world won't end without your updated status; don't read email for a couple days; turn off the TV and pop in a classic holiday movie—unplug from the world and plug back into a good book, the people, the music, and the nature around you. It's all there waiting for your attention!  

May this holiday season allow you time to relax, refresh and "recharge" your batteries, and provide you with the opportunity to connect to the natural balance within you.

Namaste,

Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

Bring in the new year by returning to better balance. Need a bit of motivation? Pick up a copy of 21DaystoBetterBalance or another book in the series, and start finding better balance with yourself, your relationships, or your career in 2014!

Moving Into Alignment

 If you are attuned to your inner guidance,
there is no way you can become severely out
of balance with your natural environment.
Shakti Gawain

Have you noticed know how some days just feel better than others? How about how some people seem to emit better "vibes" than others? Our feelings are feeding us information, and feelings of balance can be most easily experienced through our feelings of alignment. After exploring Awareness, Alignment is the second part of finding better balance in your life.

Alignment happens both on the inside and outside of us. Alignment means that our thoughts, beliefs, and intentions are aligned with our deepest truth and best understanding of our purpose in the world. Internally, this means that we strive to be conscious of our thoughts, feelings, and intuition so that our behaviors reflect our true values. Externally, this means that over time, we bring our attitudes, actions, and words closer and closer to our fundamental beliefs. Alignment also comes through our relationships with others. As we move in and out of alignment with our deepest selves, our relationships directly reflect our present state of balance—relationships are mirrors.

This week, think about someone in your life who challenges you—a friend, family member, co-worker, boss—someone who is driving you crazy, or someone with whom you just don’t get along. Now put that person in your mind’s eye, and begin to think of something—anything—that you genuinely appreciate about them. Even if it takes a while, come up with a list of at least three things. There’s buried treasure in there somewhere! Focus on those things the next time you speak with that person, and notice how this simple act of unspoken appreciation brings them into better alignment with you.

This second step of moving into alignment helped me reconnect with my natural state of balance and reminded me that whether it's my own sense of equilibrium or the alignment I feel with others, the power to change my life is always in my hands.

Namaste,

Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

Find better balance in your life, relationships, and work. 
Visit 21daystobetterbalance.com to learn more! 

Welcome to Awareness

 

 Let us not look back in anger, nor forward
in fear, but around in awareness. 

James Thurber

My search for better balance began while I was living in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the late 1990s. A good friend and I were making observations about how the mind, body, and spirit are connected. We discussed how our life experience reflected our state of balance—the more balanced we were, the more serenity and peace we felt.

During my years of study I found a recurring theme: Being balanced is natural. Returning to this natural state means removing the barriers to balance within us, many of them created by our own thoughts and behaviors. I knew there must be a way to break old patterns and return to a healthier balanced state. I also realized that in order to find better balance in my life I needed to first become aware of the factors that influenced my state of balance. When I started taking note of the different events, environments, and people that had the largest impact on my balance, I became empowered by the results. Sometimes the best teacher is our own experience.

This first step of Awareness started a movement within me. With this "wake up call" came a flood of new information about my patterns of thought—all of which were influencing my attitudes, actions and words. Becoming aware of these influences shifted my energy, and as a response, I began to see the world around me shifting as well.

This week I encourage you to become aware of the people, places, and experiences that have the greatest impacts on your sense of balance and happiness. Notice your feelings, follow your intuition, and pay attention to the results. Raising your awareness helps you reconnect with your natural state of balance and reminds you that the power to change your life is always in your hands.

Namaste,

Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

Find better balance in your life, relationships, and work. 
Visit 21daystobetterbalance.com to learn more!