Thinking

Lessons From An Upset Stomach – Learning To Live In The Present

/ George Halfin / Leave a comment

Being in the presentA few weeks ago we were due to go a good friend’s wedding. It was going to be the first time we had gone out without the baby and because I was so happy they were getting married and I knew it would be really special I was really looking forward to going.

Then on the day before the wedding, disaster struck. I went to bed feeling not quite right and spent the night with an upset tummy.  The next morning it continued. As well as not feeling well, I started to think into the future about the wedding about how I may not be able to go and this made me very upset. I could have taken some pills to help (how can I put this delicately) stop my ‘ailment’ but I felt I should let it ‘run’ its course (tee hee). Alongside this I started to have thinking about it being more than just something that could be solved by taking something to stop it – to being a bug that could be passed on to others despite none of my family having any sign of having it. This made me think more about the future and not going to the wedding, thus feeding my upset. Continue reading →

An Insight About Insights From Potty Training

/ George Halfin / 1 Comment

lightbulb moment in potty trainingFor the past few months I’ve been trying to potty train my 3 year old. A friend of mine who has 6 children and a good knowledge of the 3 Principles told me that potty training is just like thinking in the sense that when we are ready to drop thought we just drop it. It’s not something  we can make ourselves do – ie If you’re in a bad mood or have negative thinking about something the more you tell yourself to stop thinking about it the more you think about it! – Just so with potty training. If a child is ready to go to the toilet they are ready and no amount of cajoling bribing and anything else can make them.

I’ve discovered this is very true! The nursery my son went to was encouraging me to potty train him a few months ago when the baby was born and even though we had misgivings about it, we tried but he just didn’t seem to care if weed or poohed wherever he was. Despite trying to encourage him onto the potty with sweets and other incentives he just wasn’t interested. So we put him in pull ups and just took him to the toilet regularly.

Continue reading →

How One Change Of Thought Can Build Into An Avalanche!

/ George Halfin / Leave a comment

Explosive bad moodI recently returned from a family holiday. On the last day of our holiday everyone decided to go to the waterslide park. I put my swim suit under my clothes and agreed to go along and sit outside with the baby because he was too young to go in, with a view to possibly going in later. After about 10 minutes my sister and my husband came to see if I was Ok and ask if I wanted to go in. I wasn’t feeling that well, so as the baby was asleep I said I was happy to stay outside and have a rest which I did. After about an hour I woke up and decided that now I did actually feel like going in, so I did quick looks around inside to try and find everyone to no avail. Each time I went inside (abandoning my post) I got more and more into the thinking of how I wanted to go in and couldn’t someone else come and watch the baby. Then the baby woke up and I took him inside looking everywhere even the changing rooms for my son and husband but to no avail. By this point the baby was screaming and I had started to feel very angry. Continue reading →

Contemplating Lack Of Sleep – Is It A State Of Mind?

/ George Halfin / Leave a comment

Lack of sleepIf you go to any classes about the 3 Principles you will often hear people talk a lot about ‘State of Mind’ and ‘Levels of Consciousness’. What they mean is that we are all going in out of moods all the time and this effects how we see the world and our lives, and this is completely natural. So to explain ‘Levels of Consciousness’:  if you imagine a lift on the outside of a high storey building  and  on the bottom level all you can see is what’s directly in front of you, for example the grass and the trees surrounding the building. As the lift rises to different floors you begin to see more and more, so the tops of the buildings, the surrounding area etc, etc. This is similar to our state of mind. – At the bottom the lift you just see the crowded thoughts in front of you and they seem very real and very compelling. As you rise in the lift you see more and more of the bigger picture and thus gain more and more perspective, so that the thoughts from the bottom of the lift don’t seem so compelling any more. The lift can stay on a floor or move up and down.  Sometimes you can be on the bottom floor for a while maybe a few days or longer. Sometimes you can be up and down the lift at different points in the day, depending on how much you are taking your thinking seriously at any given moment.

Someone once said to me ‘lack of sleep’ is a state of mind and I really didn’t get it because to me it seemed so real that it must be an exception to the rule. Now I’m not so sure… Continue reading →

Learning To Go With The Feeling In Other Words Learning To Trust Yourself

/ George Halfin / 4 Comments

Doubt - Questioning oneselfIn the 3 Principles world there is a lot of talk about going with the feeling rather than your intellect.  In other words you could say going with your gut instinct, or intuition rather than your rational weighing up of situations.

As a professed Overthinker I have spent many years overthinking everything and going with the feeling is something I still struggle with as I’m so used to relying on my rational mind. People would often say to me ‘ George you need to learn to trust yourself’ and I guess what they mean is trust your feeling (or intuition) rather than asking everyone else’s opinion all the time. Continue reading →

Adults Have Tantrums Too – Learnings From A Low Mood

/ George Halfin / Leave a comment

Low Mood WordsIt’s now over 10 weeks after the birth of my second son and even though I’m in an amazingly good space compared to when I had my first baby, I can’t deny that exhaustion is setting in. – Recently this resulted in me dropping my phone down the toilet. I think that is proof enough!

A few weeks ago we were due to go to dinner at my parents which me and my elder 3 year old son were really looking forward to. But then my husband got home and said he was too tired to drive. After much emotional tooing and froing we made an attempt to go, but the traffic was bad and my husband decided to turn back.

I was very upset and thought that my 3 year old would be so disappointed he would throw a massive tantrum that would last until bed time. How wrong I was! – In fact it wasn’t him that had a complete meltdown it was me! I felt very emotional and upset and my thinking started running wild! Continue reading →

When The Unconscious Becomes Conscious – When What Is Staring You In The Face Becomes Visible To You.

/ George Halfin / Leave a comment

Blinkers

For the last few months our 3 year old son has been constantly saying to us ‘ What are you doing mum?’ ‘What are you doing dad?’ several times over even when we’ve explained what we are doing from the mundane ie putting washing in the machine to the overly obvious ‘getting you dressed’. Since at times it occurs to us that this question is asked incessantly we find it fun to ask him jokingly back ‘What are you doing ‘S’?’ or to when we want to test if he understands ‘What do you think I am doing ‘S’?’.

We like his curiosity – I was a curious child myself – driving everyone I knew to distraction with my constant asking ‘Why?’ as a young child. When people despaired of me I would say ‘But mummy says it’s good to ask questions – why?’ so they had no escape.

Yet we wondered where he got this phrase from…Then yesterday as I was looking after him and I feeding the baby in the other room I noticed I kept asking him ‘What are you dong ‘S’?’ and it was so subconscious to me that I hadn’t realised that it is me who asks him this question all day long as a way of trying to him out of mischief/or to put more generously – as a way of keeping his curiosity from getting him into dangerous/ undesirable situations!

How funny that I hadn’t noticed that these words came from me all day long and yet they have literally been staring me in the face for months, and it made me think how many other things do we think, say or do regularly out of habit that we don’t even notice and what effects does this have on ourselves and those around us?

What We Can All Learn From Toddler Tantrums

/ George Halfin / 2 Comments

Toddler Tantrum Picture

My son is going through what some people call his ‘3nager’ stage. This translates to at times him refusing to do what he is told for no reason that we can gather other than that he doesn’t want to do it. When I say refusing I mean ‘shouting, sulking, crying, and being generally petulant.’ Occasionally this can make for fun and games when I’m trying to get him to nursery on time and have to take the baby too. When he is in this kind of low mood he simply refuses to do comply with what is asked. When you need to get him dressed he is very good at making himself into a dead weight so it’s almost impossible to make him and if you do you are in for quite a few kicks. What I’m learning is as, as quickly as these thoughts of ‘I don’t want to’ come they also pass, once his thoughts change to something else. So for 10 minutes he can be refusing to get dressed and you leave him in his room to sulk and suddenly he changes his mind.  – Or he refuses to have his breakfast and while sulking he spots you eating yours and asks to try some and before you know it he has changed his mind and starts eating his. Continue reading →

Does Thinking Affect Our Sociability?

/ George Halfin / Leave a comment

I recently joined a big crowd of our friends who were having lunch, and it struck me how much our thinking can influence our experience of any situation, moment to moment.

At times I was enjoying full conversations with friends, at times I felt overwhelmed by the number of people there and felt I couldn’t really properly talk to anyone. At other times I felt distracted by thinking of feeling self-conscious about things I had said or not said. At times I felt very connected with people at others I felt distant and not connected.

I wandered if everyone was having a similar experience but not realising it or acknowledging it?

Continue reading →

Where Does Fear Come From?

/ George Halfin / Leave a comment

As someone who has entertained fearful thoughts from early on in life and believed them so much they have affected my life deeply in many ways; including keeping me single into my early 30s to staying in jobs until well past their sell by date when they were no longer healthy for me to be there. –  This is something I am curious about.

Continue reading →