The world can be unpredictable, presenting challenges and tests along the path to a better life. In Finding the Balance, author Shelley Hallmark draws upon her own personal experiences, challenges, and past relationships, to offer a navigation chart through uncertain waters. Whether you are feeling like you are at a crossroads or you just wish to enhance your own awareness, self-empowerment is the best tool you will ever have.

FINDING THE BALANCE

Insight to Understanding Life's LessonsBy Shelley L. Hallmark

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2011 Shelley L. Hallmark
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-3210-3

Contents

PREFACE....................................................viiCHAPTER 1 NEGATIVITY.......................................1CHAPTER 2 MANIPULATION.....................................5CHAPTER 3 DISCRIMINATION...................................11CHAPTER 4 RESPECT..........................................15CHAPTER 5 CONFIDENCE.......................................21CHAPTER 6 RESISTANCE.......................................27CHAPTER 7 GRATITUDE/APPRECIATION...........................33CHAPTER 8 FAITH............................................39CHAPTER 9 FORGIVENESS/COMPASSION...........................49CHAPTER 10 CONTENTMENT.....................................53CHAPTER 11 INSPIRATION.....................................59CHAPTER 12 INTENTION.......................................67CHAPTER 13 DETERMINING YOUR WEAKNESSES.....................81CHAPTER 14 RECOGNIZING YOUR TRIGGERS.......................87

Chapter One

NEGATIVITY

Negativity is one of the harder emotions to fight, and it takes a great deal of inner strength to overcome it. Negativity is not easily avoided, but it can be deflected and defeated. You must refuse both emotional and physical negativity. Emotional negativity can be thwarted by learning to recognize the moment when a negative thought process begins to enter your mind, cutting it off immediately, and replacing it with the opposite positive thought. In other words, you must view the glass as half-full instead of half-empty. For example, focus on the negative aspects of a beautiful painting can be conquered by looking for the hidden beauty that you might miss when only taking a quick glance. Acknowledging all the work required to create each individual brush stroke and how difficult it would be for a beginner to attempt such a thing could also help you look past superficial flaws to appreciate the beauty of the painting. Once you train yourself to turn the negative into positive, you will be surprised at how easy it is. Soon, the habit of looking for flaws first will change. Your default way of thinking will begin to lean more towards the positive, thereby creating a much healthier thought process for your everyday life.

Others can also inflict negativity upon you. You need to protect yourself against this. When you begin to work to change your own thoughts, you will be more aware of negativity in others. One way to handle this is to excuse yourself from the negative person's presence. When people sound off about any topic, even though they aren't angry with you directly, they are conveying negativity. A day of running into five people like that can make you feel like you have five pianos tied to you. You become emotionally tired and drained; sometimes another person's negativity will cause you to feel negative about things. This is why deflecting negativity is important—so it won't rub off on you.

Once you've changed your own thought process and have begun to think only positive thoughts, the negative thoughts become things of the past, and you are better able to protect yourself. When others are inflicting negativity, you can easily counter their attitudes by keeping your mind strong and affirming the opposite as a positive in your mind. You don't need to berate another for their behavior. You can, however, point it out (if you feel so inclined) and move on. Not everyone is open to constructive advice. You are the better judge of those in your life and whether you need to censor your communications or not.

Physical negativity is behavior that enforces emotional negativity. When people become too interested in the personal lives of others, boundaries get crossed. Spreading gossip is the action that can sometimes precede the emotional pain that one feels from being the subject of gossip. The subject is then confronted by both the negative actions of others and their own emotional pain.

Negativity's sole purpose is to hurt others. It feeds and grows in very dark places—and like a virus, it makes people feel so awful that they pass it to others in an effort to alleviate their own sadness. Most of the time, negativity is passed on by the carrier, because they don't realize that the negativity they are spreading is actually connected to their own unhappiness. Unfortunately, the more they try to disperse that negativity, the more it comes back to them. This pattern can continue to go around in circles until one of two things happens: the person experiencing the negativity learns to recognize and deflect it, or they completely defeat it.

I realize that there is much negativity in this world, but I choose not to have it in my life. I choose to be happy. That being said, everyone—at some time or another—experiences the downside of negativity. There are low points in our lives when we don't have the energy to deflect or defeat negativity. One thing I can do at these times is to try to avoid projecting this negativity onto others. This may mean that I avoid interactions with others. When I can't, I do my best to bite my tongue, politely nod, and move on. Sometimes that's all I can do.

I've found that the more aware I became of others' desires to maintain the drama of unhappiness, the less it affects me because I realize it has nothing to do with me and more to do with what might be going on in their life. Awareness has been the key that has helped me to take a step back and not let the negativity of others infect me. I now recognize that these tests of negativity are their lessons to learn. Someone else's negativity has nothing to do with me. The more I understand this, the easier it is to create a barrier to protect myself. Awareness is power.

Thinking or saying something like, "If it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all" has a way of determining the future. We do tend to get what we wish for. Thoughts are very powerful. Positive thoughts can help create positive change.

Negativity is very difficult to overcome. Some people use negativity to protect themselves from being hurt. They are not always willing to let go of the protective barrier they have erected to prevent personal hurt.

Sometimes negativity is about revenge for past hurts. It may not even be directed at the person it is being inflicted upon. Sometimes you just happen to be the one in the vicinity at the time. Remembering this when it happens is one way to realize the idea that awareness is power. If you can recognize what is really going on, try to introduce positive energy into the situation and leave. Negativity cannot survive in a positive environment. It either dissipates or has to move away. Darkness cannot survive in light; negativity cannot survive in the positive. When you introduce light into a negative environment, the negative person will either follow your lead and become more positive, or they will leave. Either way, you have chosen not to let negativity ruin your happiness.

Chapter Two

MANIPULATION

Understanding manipulation is tough. Knowing how terrible I would feel if I had manipulated another person has always made it difficult for me to detect and accept that people willingly do it. I've always given others the benefit of the doubt—even when my gut told me otherwise. One of my biggest challenges was learning to listen to my gut instincts. Even though my instincts have never led me astray, my own ego-consciousness has. As it turns out, that was my weakest link.

Recognizing that I contributed to being manipulated is even more difficult to deal with than actually being manipulated. My contribution was not enforcing my boundaries and allowing someone else to control me. Avoiding being manipulated by others involves learning from the past. This means understanding not only why something happened but also why I was blind enough to allow it.

You know the routine! Many people today are still experiencing this sort of subtle deception. Why?

Everyone comes into this life with lessons to learn. Some lessons are harder than others, but one thing is the same—and that is that all the lessons learned help us to experience personal growth and shape us into the people we are meant to be. I have often asked myself, "What possible path could I be meant for that would require me to be manipulated by others?" Well, one very good possible reason would be that I wouldn't be able to share my experience with you, and if I didn't have this very valuable insight, then my writing here would be lacking a vital part. Based on my own personal nature as I know it, I might also have experienced the manipulation on a smaller scale then what might have happened in my later years, which could have been quite catastrophic.

If, however, we do not learn one of life's lessons the first time, we will keep repeating that lesson until we do learn it. I can honestly say that I've had the displeasure of not learning the first time around—and when the lesson came around again, the experience was stronger and harder to deal with. After going through the difficult emotions again, I wished I had learned my lesson the first time; but I'm glad that I at last learned. I think the components and severity of the situations increase with each time the lesson repeats itself.

The hardest thing to get past when you have been subjected to manipulation is the shame and guilt you put on yourself. As hard as it is at that time to look ahead, it's better to realize that we are human, and at one time or another, we might be taken advantage of—for no other reason than the learning experience itself. Think of it as being a creative mistake. We all create what we want; sometimes we make errors. It just means we go back to the drawing board and create to our liking.

We need to learn not to judge ourselves so harshly. I know this is a hard task—I still struggle with it, although not as much as I used to. Wisdom and time have taught me that I am not to blame—but rather that I need to strengthen and enforce my boundaries.

I was quite ego-conscious from the first time I experienced manipulation, and I thought that it wasn't going to happen to me again—lesson learned. How wrong I was when it came around a second time.

When we don't understand or learn a lesson the first time, we tend to blame ourselves. The idea here is not to blame yourself. Believe me; I know that is a hard request! Instead, focus your energy on figuring out why you allowed the manipulation to happen and how to recognize and prevent it in the future.

Did you allow yourself to be manipulated because of a greater need for something else you wanted, and even though the package wasn't perfect, it would do, because you were growing impatient? Don't sell what you deserve and need short. Never settle! Everything that you desire is available—you must maintain your vision and focus on attaining it.

If you find that there are people in your life who are constantly draining your spirit and emotional state of mind, it might be time to reassess what contribution or effect (positive or negative) they are having on your life. Within every relationship, there should be an equal exchange of give and take—and that applies to the very innermost desires of your soul. No one person deserves or should be subjected to anything less than that. Your inner soul's needs are the most important needs to be met. If your soul is injured, that injury affects everything in your body and everyone in your life. Your soul's needs aren't just for your own happiness, but for your existence as well.

Please do not continually beat yourself up about why something has turned out the way it has. There is no benefit to doing that—benefits lie within changing actions in the future, and that is something to take pride in. If nothing else, you can create a more prosperous and happy future. What could be a better outcome than that?

As difficult and emotionally draining as some of these lessons can be, without them, we will never reach our ultimate goals. What is your ultimate goal? Well, that is different for every individual, and it depends on the lessons we chose to learn. You may notice that many people have relayed the experience that doors just opened for them, they were led to a certain outcome, and things just flowed. I think when you experience the path of least resistance, everything will just flow—and that is how you know you are on the right path. When you are on the right path, you will prosper in contentment, faith, abundance, and acceptance.

The reason a positive person experiences life as they do is because they have chosen to create a more prosperous and happy future. This is the result of changing how you view things—you are able to interpret and affect the outcome of a situation.

My two hardest subjects to write about are negativity and manipulation—mostly because I don't like to give a lot of energy to either of these. It's not that I don't think these feelings are an important part of creating who we are as people; it's just that there is no benefit to focusing too much energy on negative emotions. Yes, some of us have to learn about them the hard way—but once the lessons are learned, what results is a positive outcome. I've found that often when others are relaying hard times, they usually have a success story that has come from it—the success being that they got through the difficult time and were better for it.

Really, though, if we learn to take a step back and try to make a positive assessment, things might seem a little less stressful on our minds and hearts.

Dwelling on things in the past will only keep the source of the negative energy within you—and that, of course, will keep it in your mind and in your life forever.

Chapter Three

DISCRIMINATION

It's unfortunate that even with all the advances we have made, we still experience discrimination. Who is anyone to judge?

Discrimination comes in many forms, but they all types of discrimination have one thing in common—people are judging others based on their own sense of what is considered valuable. Who do these people think they, are and what gives them the right to determine the self-worth of others?

This is an ego-related thought process—an "I'm better than you" attitude. Sometimes this attitude is born from a false sense of superiority, for whatever reason such as money or stature. It can also come from intense insecurity—sometimes people will attack others in an effort to make themselves feel more worthy.

Another source of discrimination is bad experiences—and those experiences are then held against anyone who bears a similarity to the negative experience. These bad experiences can also be passed on from others. Your environment in your formative childhood years plays a major part in who you are. Sometimes our families and friends can be the instigators of our biggest lessons and the causes of some of our not-so-great traits. People don't just grow up with discrimination inside them; it takes conditioning of some sort, and it can take a lot of work to turn this kind of negativity around. People don't want to readily let their discriminatory attitudes go.

Feelings like discrimination can become protective barriers to many. When people project this negativity onto others, it takes the focus off of them and can become a defense mechanism. An example of this is the child on the playground who feels picked and then finds someone they believe to be of lesser stature to pick on. Discrimination can be, like negativity, a shield to hide behind—and there are more people than you would think who actually hide behind these shields.

If you are one of the people hiding behind this type of shield, then you know that without your shield, you can feel completely exposed and very vulnerable.

The effect of this shielding is that others will not get to know the true person behind the shield. In an effort to protect ourselves, we have also distanced ourselves from having very real and honest relations with others that could possibly provide much more reward and happiness than hiding.

I have noticed that some people put themselves in a never-ending cycle of unhappiness—not because they don't want happiness, but because on some level, they feel they don't deserve it. This couldn't be further from the truth. Sometimes we judge ourselves too harshly—

The people I have come across who feel they don't deserve happiness end up continually pushing away any people or situations that could result in happiness, because experiences from their past that have left them feeling unworthy or unloved. They sabotage their own happiness because of this. These people are unhappy with how their lives are turning out, but they do not seem to realize that they are the cause of their continued heartache. I think that on some level, they know this, but attribute their unhappiness to the idea that what life is actually bringing to them is what they deserve. This could not be further from the truth; they themselves are attracting unhappiness. The people I've known who do this to themselves don't deserve their unhappiness as much as they think they do.

On the flip side of this, there are people who don't judge themselves harshly enough and take advantage of others without feeling remorse. Surprisingly, these people are the ones who judge others harshly, although they seem to act without conscience. It's been my experience that the people who continually punish themselves are the ones who are committing the lesser evils compared to the ones with the over-inflated egos.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from FINDING THE BALANCEby Shelley L. Hallmark Copyright © 2011 by Shelley L. Hallmark. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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