Your Inner GPS: Follow Your Internal Guidance to Optimal Health, Happiness, and Satisfaction
208
Your Inner GPS: Follow Your Internal Guidance to Optimal Health, Happiness, and Satisfaction
208Paperback
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Overview
Just as cars have a GPS that helps us get where we want to go, so do our bodies and souls. Too often, we ignore the life-directional system we were each born with, what Zen Cryar DeBrucke calls our Internal Guidance System (IGS). This book simply and easily teaches you how to tune in to this guidance, a system that wants you to be happy, successful, and stress-free. You’ll discover how you can leave painful memories behind, abandon destructive relationship patterns, follow the best course of action in every situation, and learn to experience the life-changing guidance you were born to follow.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781608684120 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New World Library |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2016 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Your Inner GPS
Follow Your Internal Guidance to Optimal Health, Happiness, and Satisfaction
By Zen Cryar DeBrücke
New World Library
Copyright © 2016 Zen Cryar DeBrückeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60868-412-0
CHAPTER 1
PART ONE
YOUR IGS
What It Is, How It Works, and Why It's Important
What Is Your IGS?
You were born with a factory-installed guidance system. It is like the GPS in a car. This system is called your Internal Guidance System, or IGS.
The guidance it gives you has many different purposes. The most important one is to get you from one end of your life to the other with as much joy, ease, and fulfillment as possible. Throughout the book, I will reveal other parts of its purpose in guiding you. For now it is important for you to recognize that it knows and deeply understands everything you desire to achieve, as well as countless things you have yet to even think of. It also knows specifically how you would most like for your desires to be achieved. Its purpose is to guide you to the specific way of going about your life that will make you, and everyone around you, the happiest.
The reason its guidance is unique and special is because it was designed just for you and your life purposes. What I have discovered is that we have not just one life purpose but several, if not hundreds of them: to be a good parent, to support particular people in our lives, to be a good child, to care for aging parents, to transform the world around us in either little or big ways. Your life purposes can range from something as simple as giving the perfect book to someone at just the right time, to transforming the industry you work in, to giving your child the start in life they need to accomplish their own life's purposes.
There are also things in your life that are not yours to do, and your IGS will guide you away from them so you don't waste your life force or use it unsuccessfully. As a group these purposes can feel overwhelming, but with your IGS it is not only possible but also easy and enjoyable to do it all.
This inner GPS contains your life's specific road map, which shows on a soul level all the things you are here to participate in, experience, and achieve. Your GPS is with you every moment of every day, constantly there to support you — to give you guidance about what you are thinking and doing and how you are being. This can sound a bit scary or uncomfortable, until you realize that it has no judgment on any of these aspects. It does not think of you as good or bad. It relates to you as a soul that it is here to guide and protect. It knows who you really are deep down inside. It knows the "pre-you," the one who preceded who you are now. One of its purposes is to help you uncover and remember who you really are — the "you" who existed before life took over and covered up your perfection and beauty. It has only unconditional love for you and the journey you are on.
Your IGS is very much like a wise best friend, a career counselor, a life coach, and a spiritual teacher all rolled into one. In fact, it is so amazing and interesting that I had to write an entire book to introduce you to it.
How Your IGS Works
Your IGS provides guidance by giving you sensations in your body. It resides in the area between your throat and solar plexus. The solar plexus is the triangular area between your lower ribs, above your stomach. The sensations that you feel in this area of your body are forms of guidance.
As you are thinking, your IGS is listening and sending a physical signal letting you know whether your thoughts are true, aligned with your purpose, and taking you toward health and happiness.
Your IGS creates what I like to call an urging feeling. It nudges you to move toward various activities in the world around you. It feels like a desire upwelling inside you. For an example, think of the last time you had an urge to call a friend or family member. When you followed that urge, did they respond with "I was just thinking of you!" or possibly "I really needed to talk to you. How did you know?" That urge was from your IGS.
Your IGS provides you with information that supports you as you:
• respond to your life as it develops instead of reacting to it according to false scenarios, old habits, or unconscious beliefs; and
• learn to focus on your desires instead of fears.
By learning to follow your IGS, you will find that your life seems to work out, that it is somehow just right in the way it unfolds, and that you become a magnet for what many consider small and large miracles. Now it is time to give you an experience of how it feels to receive guidance from your IGS.
How to Quiet Your Mind to Feel Your IGS
First, it is important to get yourself relaxed, to center yourself, and to feel your body. It may seem silly to think that you are not feeling your body, but very often we go through life in our minds. By that, I mean we focus on our thoughts instead of on the world around us or on what our bodies are experiencing. Have you ever driven home and found that you don't remember actually driving home? What about finding a mysterious bruise on your leg and realizing you don't remember how it got there? These are examples of times when you were not feeling your body.
Since your IGS communicates with you through sensations located between the throat and solar plexus, it is important to start by making sure you are connecting to what your body is feeling. Below is a simple practice that will make it easier for you to consciously experience your IGS for the first time — or, as I call it, "drop into your listening."
When I coach people to use their IGS, I tell them, "Drop into your listening." I recommend you do this easy practice whenever you want to interpret guidance from your IGS. I will be giving you a more advanced practice shortly to help you deepen this listening practice. For now, I want you to quiet your mind so we can move to the next practice, feeling your IGS. First read through the practice, and then do it for a minute or two before you go on to the next section.
PRACTICE
Sit up straight with both feet on the floor and your hands resting in your lap. Close your eyes and take a deep breath, slowly letting it out. As you do, start focusing on relaxing from head to toe, relaxing your body as your awareness moves downward from your head to your torso, down into your legs, and to your feet.
Next, stop and focus on what the bottoms of your feet feel like as they rest on the floor. Really take the time to feel your feet. They may suddenly come alive as you put your attention on them, becoming slightly tingly. Take a moment and feel your toes, from your big toes to your little toes, now the arches of your feet, then finally the heels. Experience the pressure between your toes and heels. Relax, breathe deeply, and stay focused on your feet as you also feel the force of gravity gently helping you sink more deeply into your chair.
Now, shift your awareness to the palms of your hands resting in your lap.
Feel your palms come alive and tingle slightly as you become more aware of them. Stay focused on both your feet and your hands at the same time.
While staying focused on your feet and hands, begin to listen to the room around you.
What are you hearing? Try to listen to the sounds of the room around you without letting your mind name the sounds. If your mind begins to think "bird, car, fan, talking," then focus on your feet and hands and listen again. Just be with the sounds you hear in the room in the same way you are being with your feet and hands. As you focus on hearing, try not to judge or name what you are hearing. Instead, just experience the sounds.
Practice that for a minute or two before moving on. It is very important and will greatly help you feel your IGS. Remember: feet, hands, then listening. It is not a problem if your mind begins to wander. Simply return to feeling your feet and your hands and to listening to the room around you.
Now, why am I having you do this? When you focus on more than one body sensation at a time, your mind begins to quiet. It may seem complex at first, but very quickly, with a small amount of practice, you will be able to do it in a second without anyone noticing. What this will do is allow you to move from your mind to your IGS in a moment so you can interpret the guidance you are receiving.
Please don't be frustrated if at first it takes a minute or two to drop into your listening — especially if you are new to mind-quieting practices, or if you are not used to relaxing the mind by focusing on three body sensations at once. Let yourself take the time you need to really listen, releasing your mind from thinking. If at any time during the meditation you find your mind becoming active again, just relax and notice your feet on the floor, notice your hands, and go back to listening to what is both near and far away.
A Simple Meditation to Feel Your IGS
Before you do this meditation, put away anything that is distracting, and find a quiet area. Sit down and relax. It can be very helpful to close your eyes. Start by focusing on the sensations in your feet and hands. Then bring your awareness into your chest area, drop into your listening, and think the following statement:
I do not have an Internal Guidance System.
Try to let the statement pass quietly and slowly through your mind. Try not to hold on to the thought or concentrate on it at all. Instead, simply imagine the statement floating through your mind as if it were a cloud passing through the sky. If your mind reacts to the statement, just let that thought go and put your focus back on your feet and hands and what you are hearing in the room around you. You might want to repeat the statement again out loud. When you think or say the thought to yourself, notice the first sensation you feel in the area between your throat and stomach. If you feel something, describe it to yourself out loud in words or write it down on a piece of paper.
When you've noted your sensation, move on and try the statement below in the same way. Notice what you are hearing, without naming or judging the sounds. Relax, keep your eyes closed, and when your mind quiets, drop into your listening and think the following statement, seeing the thought as a cloud passing through the sky of your mind:
I do have an Internal Guidance System.
Again, notice the first sensation you feel between your throat and stomach area. Describe it to yourself out loud or write it down. It could be a strong feeling or a subtle one. If you have no sensation at all, don't be concerned. This is a normal response when first becoming aware of your IGS. Focus again on how your hands and feet feel, putting your attention on the practice of listening in order to quiet your mind one more time before moving on.
If you had trouble or did not notice anything, please go to www.yourinnergps.org/feel_it and view the video there, which will guide you through the process. It may be easier than the above practice. You can always go back later and follow the above instructions on your own.
What Did You Feel?
What you may have felt in the meditation are sensations of expansion/opening and contraction/closing in your chest, throat, and/or solar plexus area.
Very often when people state, "I do not have an Internal Guidance System," they report feeling a tightening, a constriction, a pressure in their chest, or a feeling of being less able to breathe. For some, it feels like a "dropping" or a "wilting." Others realize they have felt the sensation of constriction before and called it a feeling of anxiety, stress, or worry. This is the sensation I refer to throughout the book as "closing" or "being closed."
Often when people state, "I do have an Internal Guidance System," they notice that their chest seems to "open up." Some describe it as an expansion, a release of pressure, a relaxing feeling, an upward opening of energy rising in a V or Y shape, a sense of lightness or an ability to breathe more deeply. This is what I refer to as "opening" or "being open" throughout the book. If you felt none of these things, don't worry. Your IGS is there, and you will begin to realize what it is as you read a bit further.
Some people (often because of their careers) have to live in their minds — strategizing, planning, and creating all the time. If this is true for you, you may be so used to not feeling the sensations your body produces — such as hunger, thirst, tiredness, or even stress — that it can take a bit more practice, by dropping into your listening, to get in touch with your IGS. You may want to spend more time focusing on feeling your body to make it easier for you to recognize the sensations of your IGS.
The practices in this book will support you in naturally connecting your IGS to your thoughts. What I can tell you is that you have been feeling your IGS all your life but, most likely, have been identifying the sensation of closing as stress, fear, and anxiety, and the sensation of opening as desire, passion, and confidence. So just read on, and in no time you will be delighted to discover you are easily feeling and receiving the insightful guidance of your IGS. The first practice in part 2 will deepen the experience of "dropping into your listening," which will help you feel your body more clearly and, as a result, your IGS. Feel free to skip ahead to page 64 and try it out. You will need to do it for a few days, while doing different activities, so getting started is a good idea.
Why Is It Important to Follow Your IGS?
Your IGS is more than just a guidance system for your life's purpose. Another aspect of what it does is reprogram the thoughts in your mind that are false and limiting and that come from your past, not your present experiences. Let me give you an example of this. I apologize in advance for using a North America–centric example, but I think you will get the point. For years I have been teaching people how to use the IGS. In my course, I ask people from the United States and even Canada: "What color is a yield sign?" and 85 to 90 percent of the participants answer "yellow and black."
This answer is actually incorrect. The colors of a yield sign in the United States are red and white. In fact even when I tell people this, they still cannot recall a yield sign that is red and white; some even vehemently tell me they will take a picture of one and send it to me. To date, no photos have arrived of a yellow-and-black yield sign.
An interesting test of this is to ask random people from the United States what color a yield sign is and get a sense of this for yourself. Here is an astonishing fact: If you answer "yellow and black," even though you have been given the correct answer you will not remember "red and white" in two months' time. What? That's right. My giving you the answer did not update your mind's opinion about the color of yield signs in the United States. You cannot simply update your mind by adding new information. Updating has to be done through the nervous system.
If I gave you a box of crayons, showed you a picture of a red-and-white yield sign, and asked you to draw it, then you could remember that it was red. One of the ways your mind is programmed for permanent retention of information is through your nervous system, which is what your IGS uses to guide you. The mind does not respond well to new information that comes in once. It will revert back to old habits unless you physically make an effort (by using flash cards, swinging a racket, driving, or engaging in any other repetitive practice) to create new mental, "muscle" memory.
In 1971 the yield sign changed from yellow and black to red and white. There have been no yellow yield signs for forty-five years. Just a few months ago I was watching a brand-new episode of Sesame Street, a children's program in the United States, in which they displayed a yellow yield sign in one of their skits. Now my son, who was sixteen months old at the time, has seen and experienced the yellow yield sign. That is how the information continues long after the sign has been retired. Now, why are people still using the yellow yield sign?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Your Inner GPS by Zen Cryar DeBrücke. Copyright © 2016 Zen Cryar DeBrücke. Excerpted by permission of New World Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Sonia Choquette xiii
Introduction 1
Part 1 Your IGS: What It Is, How ft Works, and Why It's Important
What Is Your IGS? 13
How Your IGS Works 15
How to Quiet Your Mind to Feel Your IGS 17
A Simple Meditation to Feel Your IGS 20
What Did You Feel? 22
Why Is It Important to Follow Your IGS? 24
What Is Stress? 28
What Causes Anxiety and Worry? 31
Fear: Desire Unexpressed 34
Neutral Is One of the Guiding Sensations 38
Think of Your IGS as a Compass, Not a Yes-or-No System 40
The Anatomy of Your IGS 42
Your IGS Closing Is Always about What You Are Thinking 47
The Source of IGS Guidance 50
Your IGS in Relation to Positive and Negative Thoughts 53
Your IGS Always Moves You toward Fulfillment and Success 56
Part 2 Using Your IGS
When to Use Your IGS 61
Deepening Your Listening Practice 64
How to Start Using Your IGS Every Day 68
Stating When You Are Closed 72
What Was I Thinking? 76
Discovering Your Closing Themes 80
Four Terms That Often Cause Closing 84
Emotions and Your IGS 88
Your Emotions Are a Gateway 92
Using Your IGS for Time Management 100
Voices in Your Head 105
Urging from Your IGS 109
Asking Direct Questions 113
Questions versus Statements 115
Getting to the Bottom of Fear 117
Being Controlling Is Closing 120
Reacting versus Responding 124
Is This Story True? 128
Questioning Unexamined Assumptions 131
Using Your Imagination to Receive Guidance from Your IGS 135
Four Powerful Questions 137
Part 3 Troubleshooting
Being Hijacked by Your Mind 145
Asking Too Many Questions 149
The Frozen Mind: Changing the Channel 152
Pushing to Change the Response from Your IGS 155
Not Trusting Neutral 157
Compulsively Reversing Questions When in Doubt 159
Thinking That Something Outside You Is Closing You 161
When Your IGS Appears to Be Incorrect 164
Closing Is Just Closing 168
Don't Panic If You Followed the Thoughts 170
Keep in Motion 173
Your IGS Rarely Leads You Directly from Point A to Point B 175
You Cannot Trick Your IGS 178
Waiting on Divine Timing 180
Conclusion 183
Appreciation 189
Going Further: IGS Programs and Coaching 191
About the Author 192