Create Joy in the Way Your Life Unfolds

This is about responsibility ... your responsibility in creating joy in the way your life unfolds.

No, I can't do that.My life is not unfolding to plan. My life is not good. I don't like my life. Under such circumstances how do you expect me to create joy in the way my life unfolds?

That is, however, precisely it. Most of our lives don't always unfold according to plan, or in the best way possible. That's the reason why we have to take charge about creating joy in the way our life unfolds.

If we do that, we begin to see joy appear in the most unexpected ways and in the most unexpected places. Once that happens, we are well on the road to experiencing joy in our lives at will, no matter what the circumstances.

How can we create joy? How can we become responsible in creating joy in the way in which our life unfolds? By deciding to do so. It's a choice. So simple. Start now.

***************

Also visit my book website: www.gabriellakortsch.com where you may download excerpts or read quotations from any of my books. My latest book Emotional Unavailability & Neediness: Two Sides of the Same Coin is available globally on Amazon in print & Kindle. You can also obtain it (or any of my other books) via Barnes & Noble.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch (English)

Bücher von Dr. Gabriella Kortsch (Deutsch) ... JETZT bei Amazon (Taschenbuch oder E-Book) erhaltbar 

DEINE SEELE UND DU

  

Angefangen mit Rewiring the Soul - auf Deutsch: Deine Seele und Du, jetzt weltweit erhaltbar als Taschenbuch oder Kindle E-Book (Blog hier), werden auch meine anderen Bücher in Zukunft auf Deutsch bei Amazon erhaltbar sein.

Libros por Gabriella Kortsch (español) ... próximamente en Amazon en versión bolsillo y E-Libro para Kindle

Empezando con Rewiring the Soul - en español: Reconectar con el Alma (blog aquí), se podrán encontrar mis libros en español por todo el mundo próximamente en Amazon.

Note: If you are wondering why this blog is not currently appearing on a daily basis it is because I post on my other blogs in English, Spanish, and German. These are the other blogs: Rewiring the Soul, so named for my first book. Click here to visit the blog and/or to sign up for the feed. The other blog in English is The Tao of Spiritual Partnership. Links to the blogs in German & Spanish can be found above at the top of this blog, on the tabs, as well as under the images of the books in those languages.

My blog posts are also featured on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest & you can find me on Instagram 

Making Life Easier By Deciding To Do So

Life truly is difficult.

Things tend to go wrong for me.

I'm just not so lucky.

Nobody every got anywhere without very hard work.

Do you recognize some of these thoughts? If not exactly the same, then other, similar ones? Are you convinced that life is hard?

Try to imagine the number of times a day you tell yourself that. The number of times a day, as you go about whatever it is you do, that you figuratively nod your head, thinking: yep, this is just another thing that proves how tough things are for me.

Or maybe you try to escape from those awful thoughts, and go about your day, your week, your year by pretending it is not so, only to fall into a hole because you forgot to watch out for those deep, black holes that life prepares for us and because of that you started remembering once again how hard things are.

Either way ... life keeps showing you over and over again that things are hard.

But I posit that there is another way. And by taking me up on my suggestions, the actual events of your life won't change - at least not at first - but what will change is how you see those same events. And then, because you take a new stance, bit by bit, other things will begin to change, and then perhaps, you will begin to notice that life is not so hard after all.

Let's take, for example, a morning that started badly. Your alarm clock didn't work (it's electric, and the electricity went off during the night for 45 minutes). Then, as you raced out the door with no breakfast and a shower that might not have been one, you bang your knee on the door jam, and it's the same knee that started giving you trouble several weeks ago when you slipped and fell on the freshly waxed floor at work. As you get into the car, you realize you told yourself last night while driving home, that you would get gas this morning, that you would get up 15 minutes earlier to have time to do so, but you forgot. So now you need to waste more time doing that, and have not a hope in hell to get to work on time.

Doesn't that prove that life is hard?

OK...so let's take another look. Nothing is different, all you're going to do is decide to look at if from another angle. You are going to find something positive in the events of this day.

Perhaps you will decide that you should have an alarm clock that's not dependent on electricity. (OK, I agree, that's not particularly mind-shattering). Or perhaps you'll decide that you should not leave for tomorrow what you can do today (don't leave the empty tank to be filled tomorrow on the way to work). That one is already a bit more different. In actual fact, if you put that one into action on a consistent basis (not putting off until tomorrow what you can accomplish today, or said in other words, planning more efficiently), you may find that much in your life will change.

Now take it a step further. Make the decision to look at all those things that make life appear to be so hard from the point of view that there is something in there of value for you, something that can take you further down the road to a better, more growth-oriented life. Make the decision that no matter what happens to you, no matter what the circumstance, you will do your utmost to find something in it that can take you a step further, that can move you into a more rich and satisfying life. There is always something new to learn and understand and those events that heretofore you have classified as the proof of life being hard, can now become the events that show you the direction in which you can grow.

***************

Also visit my book website: www.gabriellakortsch.com where you may download excerpts or read quotations from any of my books. My latest book Emotional Unavailability & Neediness: Two Sides of the Same Coin is available globally on Amazon in print & Kindle. You can also obtain it (or any of my other books) via Barnes & Noble.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch (English)

Bücher von Dr. Gabriella Kortsch (Deutsch) ... JETZT bei Amazon (Taschenbuch oder E-Book) erhaltbar 

DEINE SEELE UND DU

  

Angefangen mit Rewiring the Soul - auf Deutsch: Deine Seele und Du, jetzt weltweit erhaltbar als Taschenbuch oder Kindle E-Book (Blog hier), werden auch meine anderen Bücher in Zukunft auf Deutsch bei Amazon erhaltbar sein.

Libros por Gabriella Kortsch (español) ... próximamente en Amazon en versión bolsillo y E-Libro para Kindle

Empezando con Rewiring the Soul - en español: Reconectar con el Alma (blog aquí), se podrán encontrar mis libros en español por todo el mundo próximamente en Amazon.

Note: If you are wondering why this blog is not currently appearing on a daily basis it is because I post on my other blogs in English, Spanish, and German. These are the other blogs: Rewiring the Soul, so named for my first book. Click here to visit the blog and/or to sign up for the feed. The other blog in English is The Tao of Spiritual Partnership. Links to the blogs in German & Spanish can be found above at the top of this blog, on the tabs, as well as under the images of the books in those languages.

My blog posts are also featured on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest & you can find me on Instagram 

Taking Responsibility For Your Unhappiness

Yeow!

That is not a fun title.

Taking responsibility for your unhappiness sounds like there's no one and nothing left to blame. And that - of course - is what this is all about.

When you are unhappy, it is because you have chosen to be so due to someone not behaving the way you wanted them to, or something not turning out the way you might have it expected to. So life did not go your way. Things simply weren't the way you wanted them to be.

• your partner forgot your wedding anniversary
• your boss did not promote you
• you wanted to go to the beach and when you opened the curtains, you saw it was raining
• you expected to be able to find the car of your dreams for the budget you had stipulated, and then realized it would cost much more. So now you have to make do with a lesser car
• you thought the person you had dinner with the first time two nights ago would call you by today, and they have not done so
• you expected your son to help you with the garden this weekend and he went out with his friends instead
• you expected your best friend to help you set up your party, and it turns out she forgot!

And so - understandably - you are unhappy.

And of course you believe you are unhappy because of what the other person did or did not do, or because of the situation that did not turn out the way you would have liked it to.

And that is precisely where you need to begin to take responsibility for your unhappiness.

How?

By taking responsibility for your happiness. So if you are unhappy about something, you are the one who can change how you feel. Either by choosing to change how you feel about something. how you think about something, how you view something, or by choosing to do something that will raise your energy to levels where you are able to once again feel happy.

Your happiness is in your hands. If you leave it in the hands of the acts and deeds of others, or in the manner in which situations in your life turn out, you are not free.

Freedom implies being in charge of your happiness.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch:

Rewiring the Soul

Click here to download the first chapter.

To see the Table of Contents click here

Reviews From the Back Cover:

"The masterwork of a profoundly gifted healer of the soul. Dazzling, challenging, wondrously useful." Peggy Rubin, Director, Center for Sacred Theatre, Ashland, Oregon; author: To Be and How To Be, Transforming Your Life Through Sacred Theatre

"Rewiring the Soul is one the best introductions to the spiritual life I've ever read. Not esoteric but real-world & practical. The implications are profound." Peter Shepherd; Founder Trans4mind.com; author: Daring To Be Yourself 

"The human being's directory to the soul. A breakthrough for those seeking practical assistance, those of a more mystical bent & every soul awaiting discovery." Toni Petrinovich, Ph.D.; author: The Call: Awakening the Angelic Human

The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

To download the first chapter, click here
To see the Table of Contents click here

Praise for The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

“All humans seek the illusive touch of another's Soul, which opens us to the sense of belonging to something bigger than the self. Dr. Kortsch has given us the true "tao" of relationship in this brilliant exploration of emotional tapestry. We will be grateful for this illumination of spiritual partnership for generations to come."
Chris Griscom: Spiritual Leader, Author (among others) of: Ecstasy is a New Frequency

“Eloquently and comprehensive, showing how your primary love relationship may be a sacred vessel that transports you and your partner to a place of mutual healing and expansion.” 
Robert Schwartz: Author of Your Soul’s Gift: The Healing Power of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born 


The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self 

My new book: The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self, is just out. Here is a brief excerpt from the Introduction:

It is your right to live a life of love. It is your right to understand that loving yourself first is not a selfish way of behavior, but one that allows you to live that life of love. However, it's highly probable that you never got the instruction manual explaining exactly how to accomplish this. Possibly your family - and it may have been a loving family - considered loving the self an act of selfishness. Or perhaps the members of your family simply didn't practice loving the self, and of course, what you didn't see - what was not shown to you - while you were growing up, meant that you just didn't learn how to apply it to yourself. The closer you are able to move towards loving yourself, the closer you will be to living a life of love - quite independently of whether you are in a love relationship or not. A life of love can be lived with or without a partnership, because a life of love implies that you know that it all begins with you by loving the self. The more clearly you understand how to love yourself, the more clearly you will see that it is very hard - if not impossible - to love others in ways that are unrelated to fulfilling any of your needs. Loving yourself first is - for so many of us - one of the hardest things we will ever learn how to do. But know this: the benefits affect you in every particle of your being - body, mind, and soul - and are greater than you will ever be able to imagine.

Keep Focused Beyond the Horizon

Keep your eye beyond the horizon? Why beyond the horizon? That's where your goals are. So why is it necessary to keep your eye beyond that?

Because if your eye is merely on the horizon, when you get there, there will be nothing left to strive for. You will have lost momentum. Call it an anti-climax. But if your eye is beyond the horizon, you will continue moving full speed, with all enthusiasm, even after you have reached your current goal because the next goal, the one that is beyond the horizon, will spur you on.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch:

Rewiring the Soul

Click here to download the first chapter.

To see the Table of Contents click here

Reviews From the Back Cover:

"The masterwork of a profoundly gifted healer of the soul. Dazzling, challenging, wondrously useful." Peggy Rubin, Director, Center for Sacred Theatre, Ashland, Oregon; author: To Be and How To Be, Transforming Your Life Through Sacred Theatre

"Rewiring the Soul is one the best introductions to the spiritual life I've ever read. Not esoteric but real-world & practical. The implications are profound." Peter Shepherd; Founder Trans4mind.com; author: Daring To Be Yourself 

"The human being's directory to the soul. A breakthrough for those seeking practical assistance, those of a more mystical bent & every soul awaiting discovery." Toni Petrinovich, Ph.D.; author: The Call: Awakening the Angelic Human

The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

To download the first chapter, click here
To see the Table of Contents click here

Praise for The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

“All humans seek the illusive touch of another's Soul, which opens us to the sense of belonging to something bigger than the self. Dr. Kortsch has given us the true "tao" of relationship in this brilliant exploration of emotional tapestry. We will be grateful for this illumination of spiritual partnership for generations to come."
Chris Griscom: Spiritual Leader, Author (among others) of: Ecstasy is a New Frequency

“Eloquently and comprehensive, showing how your primary love relationship may be a sacred vessel that transports you and your partner to a place of mutual healing and expansion.” 
Robert Schwartz: Author of Your Soul’s Gift: The Healing Power of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born 


The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self 

My new book: The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self, is just out. Here is a brief excerpt from the Introduction:

It is your right to live a life of love. It is your right to understand that loving yourself first is not a selfish way of behavior, but one that allows you to live that life of love. However, it's highly probable that you never got the instruction manual explaining exactly how to accomplish this. Possibly your family - and it may have been a loving family - considered loving the self an act of selfishness. Or perhaps the members of your family simply didn't practice loving the self, and of course, what you didn't see - what was not shown to you - while you were growing up, meant that you just didn't learn how to apply it to yourself. The closer you are able to move towards loving yourself, the closer you will be to living a life of love - quite independently of whether you are in a love relationship or not. A life of love can be lived with or without a partnership, because a life of love implies that you know that it all begins with you by loving the self. The more clearly you understand how to love yourself, the more clearly you will see that it is very hard - if not impossible - to love others in ways that are unrelated to fulfilling any of your needs. Loving yourself first is - for so many of us - one of the hardest things we will ever learn how to do. But know this: the benefits affect you in every particle of your being - body, mind, and soul - and are greater than you will ever be able to imagine.

Controlling Ourselves, Our Lives, and the People in Them

Many of us fall into the fallacy of believing that we can control our environment and the persons who people it. Therefore, we steadfastly cling to the mistaken belief that:

• if only we could make our spouse more emotionally available


• if only we could make our parents less intrusive


• if only we could make our boss more approachable


• if only we could make our teenage offspring more manageable


• if only we could make our neighbours less noisy


• if only we could do any of these of any number of other things, life would be wonderful

And we spend our time working on devising ways of changing these people, driven by the conviction that this would be the solution to all or most of our problems. The truth of the matter is that the only one we actually can control is our self.

We rarely look at this other side of the coin…the fact that if we want to achieve any kind of change in our lives, it has to begin with our self. Frequently change that we bring about in our own person will motivate change in others, almost like a ripple effect that can be observed in a pond when you throw a pebble into the water, but this change in others, or in the environment should not be the stimulus to your own change. That should be sought for itself, in order that you can become more of what you really are, and are capable of being; in other words, in order that you grow into yourself.

Evidently the eternal question is: how do you change or control yourself? What is the magic formula? Is there a silver bullet? And the simple answer is choice. Knowing that no matter what you feel, think, say, or do, you always have choices and alternatives, is one of the most enriching and liberating thoughts there is. When you are reacting to a given event, brought upon by your own thoughts, a nostalgic song on the radio, another person, a difficult financial situation, or even a cataclysmic global incident, always ask yourself whether there are alternatives to your current way of reacting. Then ask yourself whether any of those alternatives are feasible, and whether they would make a positive difference as compared to the initial mode of reacting you had intended. By consciously choosing to react differently, you are not only controlling yourself by self-awareness, but you are also changing yourself because your reaction is no longer unconscious, and thus you are offering yourself one of the greatest gifts of all - freedom from that blindness.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch:

Rewiring the Soul

Click here to download the first chapter.

To see the Table of Contents click here

Reviews From the Back Cover:

"The masterwork of a profoundly gifted healer of the soul. Dazzling, challenging, wondrously useful." Peggy Rubin, Director, Center for Sacred Theatre, Ashland, Oregon; author: To Be and How To Be, Transforming Your Life Through Sacred Theatre

"Rewiring the Soul is one the best introductions to the spiritual life I've ever read. Not esoteric but real-world & practical. The implications are profound." Peter Shepherd; Founder Trans4mind.com; author: Daring To Be Yourself 

"The human being's directory to the soul. A breakthrough for those seeking practical assistance, those of a more mystical bent & every soul awaiting discovery." Toni Petrinovich, Ph.D.; author: The Call: Awakening the Angelic Human

The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

To download the first chapter, click here
To see the Table of Contents click here

Praise for The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

“All humans seek the illusive touch of another's Soul, which opens us to the sense of belonging to something bigger than the self. Dr. Kortsch has given us the true "tao" of relationship in this brilliant exploration of emotional tapestry. We will be grateful for this illumination of spiritual partnership for generations to come."
Chris Griscom: Spiritual Leader, Author (among others) of: Ecstasy is a New Frequency

“Eloquently and comprehensive, showing how your primary love relationship may be a sacred vessel that transports you and your partner to a place of mutual healing and expansion.” 
Robert Schwartz: Author of Your Soul’s Gift: The Healing Power of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born 


The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self 

My new book: The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self, is just out. Here is a brief excerpt from the Introduction:

It is your right to live a life of love. It is your right to understand that loving yourself first is not a selfish way of behavior, but one that allows you to live that life of love. However, it's highly probable that you never got the instruction manual explaining exactly how to accomplish this. Possibly your family - and it may have been a loving family - considered loving the self an act of selfishness. Or perhaps the members of your family simply didn't practice loving the self, and of course, what you didn't see - what was not shown to you - while you were growing up, meant that you just didn't learn how to apply it to yourself. The closer you are able to move towards loving yourself, the closer you will be to living a life of love - quite independently of whether you are in a love relationship or not. A life of love can be lived with or without a partnership, because a life of love implies that you know that it all begins with you by loving the self. The more clearly you understand how to love yourself, the more clearly you will see that it is very hard - if not impossible - to love others in ways that are unrelated to fulfilling any of your needs. Loving yourself first is - for so many of us - one of the hardest things we will ever learn how to do. But know this: the benefits affect you in every particle of your being - body, mind, and soul - and are greater than you will ever be able to imagine.

Our Joys

Poetry can often be inspiring, and today this crossed my desk:

Our joys as winged dreams do fly; why then should sorrow last? Since grief but aggravates thy loss, grieve not for what is past.

Thomas Percy, English poet 1729-1811

Grieve not for what is past ... our joys as winged dreams do fly ... doesn't it make sense that we behave the same way with our grief as we do with our joy? As the poet - Thomas Percy - says, are joys tend to leave us very quickly. And yet we dwell on our sorrows.

This is in fact, an unusually interesting statement about the human condition. We have a much greater tendency to stay with those aspects of our lives that are not bright and clear, that do not have sunshine and warmth, and tend to bring on the clouds swollen with rain. Why do we do this? Is it just a wired into us? Wired into our hearts? Wired into our brains?

I don't think so. This may very well be due to what part Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body, and what Chris Griscom calls the emotional body. I've written about this in the past, so I'll just briefly reiterate the basic points:

• the pain body is seductive
• the emotional body has an emotionally sticky quality that we find hard to pull away from
• both pain body and emotional body are familiar to us because they represent pain, difficulties, and hardships that we have been subject to in the past
• this very familiarity based on the amount of time we have spent revisiting those difficult moments, is what causes us to field the seductive pull
• once we give in to the seductive pull into the pain or the negative emotions via our memory needs, we tend to wallow in the pain, much as pigs wallow in mud
• why?
• Because we prefer the familiarity
• if we spent as much time revisiting our joyful moments as we do our painful ones, we might find - ironically - that we experience greater familiarity with our joy than with our pain - and wouldn't that be a wonderful state of mind to be in...

Have you ever considered why the sum total of your life very possibly seems to have an uneven tipping of the scale in favor of the negative? Could it not be simply because of where you spend much of your mental time? And don't you agree that where you spend much of your mental time is a matter of choice? And if it is a matter of choice, why not spend more time with your memories of the joyful moments, as opposed to memories of the painful ones? It really is that easy.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch:

Rewiring the Soul

Click here to download the first chapter.

To see the Table of Contents click here

Reviews From the Back Cover:

"The masterwork of a profoundly gifted healer of the soul. Dazzling, challenging, wondrously useful." Peggy Rubin, Director, Center for Sacred Theatre, Ashland, Oregon; author: To Be and How To Be, Transforming Your Life Through Sacred Theatre

"Rewiring the Soul is one the best introductions to the spiritual life I've ever read. Not esoteric but real-world & practical. The implications are profound." Peter Shepherd; Founder Trans4mind.com; author: Daring To Be Yourself 

"The human being's directory to the soul. A breakthrough for those seeking practical assistance, those of a more mystical bent & every soul awaiting discovery." Toni Petrinovich, Ph.D.; author: The Call: Awakening the Angelic Human

The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

To download the first chapter, click here
To see the Table of Contents click here

Praise for The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

“All humans seek the illusive touch of another's Soul, which opens us to the sense of belonging to something bigger than the self. Dr. Kortsch has given us the true "tao" of relationship in this brilliant exploration of emotional tapestry. We will be grateful for this illumination of spiritual partnership for generations to come."
Chris Griscom: Spiritual Leader, Author (among others) of: Ecstasy is a New Frequency

“Eloquently and comprehensive, showing how your primary love relationship may be a sacred vessel that transports you and your partner to a place of mutual healing and expansion.” 
Robert Schwartz: Author of Your Soul’s Gift: The Healing Power of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born 


The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self 

My new book: The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self, is just out. Here is a brief excerpt from the Introduction:

It is your right to live a life of love. It is your right to understand that loving yourself first is not a selfish way of behavior, but one that allows you to live that life of love. However, it's highly probable that you never got the instruction manual explaining exactly how to accomplish this. Possibly your family - and it may have been a loving family - considered loving the self an act of selfishness. Or perhaps the members of your family simply didn't practice loving the self, and of course, what you didn't see - what was not shown to you - while you were growing up, meant that you just didn't learn how to apply it to yourself. The closer you are able to move towards loving yourself, the closer you will be to living a life of love - quite independently of whether you are in a love relationship or not. A life of love can be lived with or without a partnership, because a life of love implies that you know that it all begins with you by loving the self. The more clearly you understand how to love yourself, the more clearly you will see that it is very hard - if not impossible - to love others in ways that are unrelated to fulfilling any of your needs. Loving yourself first is - for so many of us - one of the hardest things we will ever learn how to do. But know this: the benefits affect you in every particle of your being - body, mind, and soul - and are greater than you will ever be able to imagine.

Where Are You Now?

Asking yourself where am I now at intervals throughout your day in order to discover not so much where you are physically, but where you have gone in your mind will begin to show you how frequently you are not present here and now.

This is a problem of phenomenal proportions when we pause to consider what happens when we are not in this now moment:

• we are concentrating on a problem or worry that is not part of what we are actually doing now, and that therefore keeps us from being present in what we are doing now


• we are reliving past pain and hurts that keep us from being present in what we are doing now


• we are reliving past moments of joy that keep us from being present in what we are doing now


• we are concentrating on future possibilities - good or bad - the thought of which keeps us from being present in what we are doing now

All of these examples indicate that we have left the only place where we live, where we are, which is now.
Take a moment to recall your childhood. Especially the parts in your childhood when you were aware of time passing. Perhaps someone went on a trip and it seemed to you that they had been gone forever. My father had traveled to Europe on business when I was about seven and living in Canada. A friend of my parents came to pick me up in order that I could play with his young daughter. On the way to their house he asked me if I had heard from my father. I told him how much I missed him and that he had already been gone for about a year. The friend looked at me and said It's only been three weeks.

Of course at that age it meant little to me, but I always remembered the incident insomuch as it demonstrated to me as an adult, how malleable time is. As a child a mere three weeks seemed endless to me.

Other examples you might resonate with are summer vacations. When they started, they seemed to stretch into delicious infinity. Sometimes just one single, solitary day seemed so long, so full of possibilities.

So fast forward to now. 2008. How long does a day seem? A week? A month? Even a year? Isn't it true that now they seem to pass in a flash? Monday comes, and as much as the work week may seem onerous, before you know it, it's Friday evening. January begins, and before you know it, it's Easter, then summer, Hallowe'en, and Christmas is on us again.

What really causes this apparent speeding up of time?

Without going into any kind of scientific or quantum explanation, I'd like to offer this: as children we live totally in the now. We pay attention to what we are doing while we are doing it. When we are on a swing, that is what we are involved with, with all our being. When we are building a sand castle on the beach and collecting shells, and pebbles, seaweed, and sticks to decorate it, we are involved with this creation with all our being. When we watch a movie or read a book, we are involved with this activity with all our being.

However, as adults we tend not to be involved with what we are doing, because we are off - in our minds - elsewhere. As illustrated earlier, we are worrying about something that may never take place, or reminiscing about something that already took place, or looking forward to something that will take place once such and such happens. All of these modes of thinking mean that we are not here and now. We are escaping the now moment, either because we don't like it, or because not being in the now moment has become such a habit, that we barely know how to remain there anymore.

This is huge. If we are not in the now moment, I ask you, when do we live our life? Now is all we have, as Eckhart Tolle so aptly pointed out in his The Power of Now. And if now is all we have, does it not make sense that we learn - remember - how to remain present?

Hence the question at the beginning of this article. Get into the habit of querying yourself about where you are at this particular moment. And once you pull yourself back into it - even if it is while you are involved in an activity that gives you little stimulation or joy - attempt to remain present, to do whatever it is you are doing with a sense of awareness, and in order to determine whether you could - if you really put your mind to it - derive satisfaction even from this (whatever it is).

More importantly, when you are involved in a pleasant activity, perhaps spending time with your partner or children, or out on the golf course, or bicycling through the neighbourhood, and you ask yourself the question, if you then also find that you are elsewhere inside, you will realize how monumentally important it is that you begin to be here now. Jon Kabat-Zinn's book about mindfulness Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life is excellent for further pointers, as is Charlotte Joko Beck's Everyday Zen: Love and Work, and also Tara Bennett-Goleman's Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart.

I encourage you to explore your now. With some patience not only will you find unaccustomed joy, but you will add years to your life, simply because you will be so much more aware at so many more now moments.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch:

Rewiring the Soul

Click here to download the first chapter.

To see the Table of Contents click here

Reviews From the Back Cover:

"The masterwork of a profoundly gifted healer of the soul. Dazzling, challenging, wondrously useful." Peggy Rubin, Director, Center for Sacred Theatre, Ashland, Oregon; author: To Be and How To Be, Transforming Your Life Through Sacred Theatre

"Rewiring the Soul is one the best introductions to the spiritual life I've ever read. Not esoteric but real-world & practical. The implications are profound." Peter Shepherd; Founder Trans4mind.com; author: Daring To Be Yourself 

"The human being's directory to the soul. A breakthrough for those seeking practical assistance, those of a more mystical bent & every soul awaiting discovery." Toni Petrinovich, Ph.D.; author: The Call: Awakening the Angelic Human

The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

To download the first chapter, click here
To see the Table of Contents click here

Praise for The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

“All humans seek the illusive touch of another's Soul, which opens us to the sense of belonging to something bigger than the self. Dr. Kortsch has given us the true "tao" of relationship in this brilliant exploration of emotional tapestry. We will be grateful for this illumination of spiritual partnership for generations to come."
Chris Griscom: Spiritual Leader, Author (among others) of: Ecstasy is a New Frequency

“Eloquently and comprehensive, showing how your primary love relationship may be a sacred vessel that transports you and your partner to a place of mutual healing and expansion.” 
Robert Schwartz: Author of Your Soul’s Gift: The Healing Power of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born 


The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self 

My new book: The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self, is just out. Here is a brief excerpt from the Introduction:

It is your right to live a life of love. It is your right to understand that loving yourself first is not a selfish way of behavior, but one that allows you to live that life of love. However, it's highly probable that you never got the instruction manual explaining exactly how to accomplish this. Possibly your family - and it may have been a loving family - considered loving the self an act of selfishness. Or perhaps the members of your family simply didn't practice loving the self, and of course, what you didn't see - what was not shown to you - while you were growing up, meant that you just didn't learn how to apply it to yourself. The closer you are able to move towards loving yourself, the closer you will be to living a life of love - quite independently of whether you are in a love relationship or not. A life of love can be lived with or without a partnership, because a life of love implies that you know that it all begins with you by loving the self. The more clearly you understand how to love yourself, the more clearly you will see that it is very hard - if not impossible - to love others in ways that are unrelated to fulfilling any of your needs. Loving yourself first is - for so many of us - one of the hardest things we will ever learn how to do. But know this: the benefits affect you in every particle of your being - body, mind, and soul - and are greater than you will ever be able to imagine.