The Generous Moment:

A time for mindful transformation.

How can we learn to live more fully in the present? What keeps us from enjoying the here and now? There are no simple answers to this question. But within the answer lies the secret to fulfillment, connection, and purpose. There are multitudes of distractions that keep us living in our heads or pursuing unhelpful habits.

Some of these distractions keep us lamenting over the past, others have us worrying about the future, some keep us ruminating about imaginary scenarios, and yet others are used to numb us out or to escape our current reality. But why are we trying to run away from reality? Wouldn’t it make more sense to create a reality so beautiful that the last thing you would want to do is escape it?

Positive transformation can only take place in the consciousness of the present moment. Like most things, learning to distance ourselves from our constant patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving takes time. Mental fitness, just like physical fitness takes commitment, consistency, and practice.

How we feel and what we think about ourselves directly influences the depth and connectedness we have in our relationships. And the quality of our relationships directly influences the quality of our lives. We now know that addictions and many mental health problems are symptoms of disconnection. A disconnection from our own true selves and our loved ones, and disconnections that stem from various life experiences.

Our life experiences can create limiting beliefs and cognitive distortions through which we see ourselves and the world through. Taking time to work through these and discover our true nature helps us overcome unhelpful patterns, brings us inner peace, helps us focus on our greatest life vision, and strengthens our communication with those we love and care about.

Everything that the mind can do,

the mind can undo. Believe in

your power to transform.

You are alchemy.

-Elaine Kite

Below are some common Cognitive Distortions:

1. BLACK OR WHITE THINKING: Extreme thinking that often leads to extreme emotions and behaviors. When things are either ‘black-or-white’, we’re either perfect, or we’re a complete failure – and there’s no middle ground.
2. FILTERING: When we’re anxious, we commonly develop tunnel vision where we focus solely on the negative aspects of situations without considering the positive aspects. The whole picture can be colored by a single negative detail.
3. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: This involves processing information in a biased way. It’s a mental process that changes a positive event into a neutral or negative event in your mind.
4. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: When you make a negative interpretation or prediction even when there is no real evidence supporting your conclusion. This sort of thinking is often based on what we think other people feel or feel towards us.
5. EMOTIONAL REASONING: When a person believes that what they feel must automatically be true. Depending heavily on our feelings as a guide very quickly leads us away from the path of reality.
6. RIGID RULE KEEPING: When you have a list of rules about how you and other people should behave. Those who break the rules make us angry, and if you break the rules, you feel guilty as a result.
7. CATASTROPHISING: Taking a fairly minor negative event and blowing it completely out of proportion – imagining all sorts of disasters resulting from one small event.
8. OVERGENERALISING: Based on one instance in the past or present, you make the assumption that in the future all others will follow a similar pattern. A sense of helplessness often accompanies such overgeneralisations.
9. LABELLING: When we label ourselves based on our behavior in specific situations. We define ourselves by one specific behavior (usually a negative behavior) and fail to consider other positive characteristics and actions.