Contrast

When do you know that you value wellbeing the most? When you experience the contrast of not having wellbeing! When do you know that you value freedom the most? When you experience the contrast of feeling restricted, tensed! 

The Hearts Open Power approach is to make incremental changes. Changes that maybe they don't seem important at the moment but in time the benefit from making even a small 1% improvement will multiply exponentially.

The incremental improvements can be:

• Your beliefs reflecting what you prefer
• Your expectations
• Your images, movies about what you want
• New connections between what you prefer
• Your vibration
• Your availability to receive

All the above improvements can be resumed to improving your beliefs because your beliefs will shape your expectations, what you allow yourself to visualize, your connections, your vibration mix and your availability to be in receiving mode.

In this specific story, let's explore the concept of contrast. Contrast, as relevant here, is defined as the feelings, thoughts, and expectations you have when you don't experience pleasant or neutral feelings. So every time you experience an unpleasant feeling, it defines a contrast. 

To be even more specific, let's only consider the moments where you experience contrast but nothing is happening that at that moment affects your physical wellbeing.

The experience of contrast comes with:

• Unpleasant feelings
• Thoughts that seem intrusive 
• Images that you don't prefer
• Expectations that you don't like

But what is even more important to see is that each contrast moment comes with specific beliefs.

And just as the contrast comes from specific beliefs, there are also specific beliefs related to the actual contrast experience.

Let's focus on these specific beliefs related to the contrast experience. The beliefs you hold about the experience of contrast will automatically choose one path or another going forward.

As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. Let's illustrate this with a practical example.

Let's consider a common example like feeling uncomfortable while working. You're sitting at your computer working and suddenly, you get an unpleasant feeling of tension in your body. This feeling of tension might be especially located in your front upper area, and as you look closer, you might also notice tension in your neck.  This is enough contrast to get your attention. The thought that first comes to mind when you experience this contrast is the belief you hold about contrast. 

One possible path:

You might get a thought like: "Oh, no, I don't want to deal with this now, I have so much to work on." So you immediately try to ignore it. After another 10 minutes, you experience the unpleasant feelings again but this time more strongly. Along with those feelings, you now get a feeling of being very restricted. From this point, you might try to move a little bit, you might even get up and move but quickly return to what you were doing. For anyone that's experienced this, you know where this is going.

If we take the first thought here: "Oh, no, I don't want to deal with this, I have so much work," we can quickly see that there is a belief that what is happening is wrong and unwelcome. From this, everything builds into more and more tension, consuming your energy quite fast. In time, more and more uncomfortable symptoms will appear, like neck and back pain. Going with the same belief that something is wrong, you'll try to fix it by either taking painkillers, getting massages, working out, going to all kinds of experts, basically trying to figure out what is wrong. For anyone that is going through this process, you know that this is a never-ending process and the only thing that keeps you going are the brief moments of relief.

Another possible path:

You might get a thought like: "Oh, I'm experiencing discomfort now, I'm wondering what gift is here, prepared for me to receive!"

So, you immediately open your heart to find out more. And to find out more you might use any process of exploration like meditation, HOP Steps, or simple curiosity. As you stop what you're doing you notice that the discomfort subsides. And you say… that is interesting. So it might be related to what you were doing. What were you actually doing? You were working and you see that there is something very interesting that you want to accomplish. But you notice that you experience discomfort when you try to accomplish that. But it's so precious… you want that, now… and the discomfort comes again. So you become aware that you want that but you also want to be comfortable while doing it. So you choose to just stay with that thought of comfort for a few seconds. 

We can quickly notice that in this possibility the initial thought is pointing to different beliefs like: Everything is ok, there is something new for you to receive, to discover. The contrast, the unpleasant experience in this possibility is a precursor to receiving a gift. And these beliefs will define a totally different path ahead. A path that is full of curiosity, awareness of your values and trust that everything is working out for you. This path will lead you to receive a gift again and again, because having contrasts in your life will never stop. In this framework, with each contrast, your life becomes richer and richer, full of wonder, curiosity, wellbeing, freedom, connection.

By reading the above, without even you noticing, question marks appeared in your experience. One of the question marks might be: what if there are other possibilities? What if life is built by you, what if each contrast comes with a gift for you to discover, to receive? Would this possibility be something you prefer? If yes, then you can simply integrate this into your life by simply being curious if this is indeed so. By simply searching for reasons, proof that this is indeed so, that everything is for your own joy, especially the contrast.

By having these question marks, you've made that 1% improvement. Do this every day and your life will start to reflect more and more the wellbeing you prefer, the curiosity you express, the joy that is innate to your whole self.

This would not be possible without you having an inner guide that you can trust. And in this framework, you get to trust yourself. This doesn't mean that you will not trust anyone else, but it means that in this framework it will become obvious who you can trust. Because after all, it's so much fun to connect and have fun with people.