A life without cluster headache dominion, is the last of 3 posts about changing your beliefs about yourself and your cluster headache. Here I will try and explain how I started to manifesting a life in which clusters no longer had dominion over me. Meditation has helped me greatly in manifesting and changing my beliefs.
Disclaimer; I am in no way a healthcare professional. Everything I discuss here is based on my personal experience. What I describe are my personal experiences and opinions. What you do with the information on this site is entirely up to you. Things that have worked for me might not work for you, as everyone is different. I would always advise you to keep in contact with your healthcare professionals and be honest with them if and when you decide to try some of the things that I have done.
Manifesting a life without cluster headache dominion
Getting out of the victim mind state can be difficult. I experienced that myself. Once I was finally out, I realized I still had the similar beliefs from when I was in that victim mind state. Thus, the chances where I would gradually fall back into that mind state. Having made the lists and starting to change small things in your life will give you measurable accomplishments that will hopefully help you to starting to believe that there are still things that you can do, influence and even change. But changing long existing beliefs about yourself is a bit more difficult than starting to do small things.
Affirmations
You might have heard about this. Affirmations. Affirmations are a tool you can use to change your belief system, and help us start living a life without cluster headache dominion. This is a gradual process, taking some time depending on how big/strong the belief you want to change is.
What it basically is, is that you start telling yourself over and over again what it is you want to believe and/or manifest. So for instance; I am in perfect health. This might sound and feel weird as you are not in perfect health at the moment. The beauty of it is that your affirmations don’t need to be true. In fact, they shouldn’t be true. The point is that you want them to become true. But how does that work?
Reality
Before I go into affirmations and how they can help you start living a life without cluster headache dominion, we need to understand reality. Reality is created based on what we believe to be true. The mind does not know, no.
Don’t think about an elephant. Bet you thought of an elephant, didn’t you? What we put into our minds is what we will see and eventually manifest. When you are skiing, and you think; don’t hit a tree, don’t hit a tree, you are most likely going to hit a tree, as that is all you see.
But when you think; follow the path, follow the path, the path is all you will see. It works like that with everything in life. When you think I’m in need of money, I can’t afford this, you will manifest situations in which you are coming up short in money and can’t afford the things you want or need. Where attention go’s energy flows.
Conscious and subconscious
Our minds have 2 parts. A conscious and a subconscious part. We like to believe that during our day we operate with our conscious minds and that all actions we take are conscious ones. Fact is that we operate only for 10-20% with our conscious brain and for 80-90% subconscious or on autopilot. Think about it, do you think how you make a sandwich or drive a car? No. Because our focus is on what we are consciously thinking about, we tend to believe that there lies the power of our mind. Yet study shows the opposite to be true.
When we learn things we create a pathway inside our brain leading toward a belief, action or outcome. Once this is learned and later a similar situation appears in our lives, the subconscious mind checks the pathways to see if they are still valid and then uses them. This is because the mind is designed to use the easiest and shortest way. It’s lazy. It will not try and find a different way to do something when it already knows an effective way of doing it. This applies to actual actions like driving, but also to thinking patterns.
Another interesting thing about the subconscious mind is that it can not differentiate between our reality and our imagination. For the subconscious mind, these are the same. Also, it does not care if the outcome is a positive or a negative one, as long as it is in line with what you believe to be true. It does not know the word no. All you put into it will become reality.
How do affirmations work and how to use them?
Reciting affirmations creates an opposite inside our subconscious brain. You tell it something that isn’t true at the moment. Your subconscious tries to validate what you tell it and finds it to be false. At first, it can discard it. But when you keep telling it over and over, and it keeps trying to validate what it’s told and can’t, that’s when the magic starts to happen.
As the subconscious does not know, no, and it can not validate what you say, it gets an error. By continuing to do so you force your subconscious to create a situation in which what you say is actually true. That’s how affirmations can help you manifest a life without cluster headache dominion. Your mind will find a way to manifest it for you, but it will start very small, with an action.
Put to the test
I’m myself a western European guy and when I first came across this I wasn’t all to sure If this was true or not. That’s because here we are thought to see first and then believe. But I decided I’d give this a shot. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t putting in effort for nothing, so I searched for a way that I could measure if this actually worked. For about 20 years or so I have had warts on my right-hand knuckles. I tried everything to get rid of them, but without avail. So I decided to make that one of my affirmations; How come I’m totally cured of my warts?
“You can only connect the dots looking back” a quote by Steve Jobs. Looking back I can say with certainty that my affirmation on my warts lead me to take a subconscious action that lead to me healing my warts. I never thought of myself as an unhealthy eater, but during the starting period of my affirmations I got the idea to start making smoothies in the morning. The vitamins and nutrition that they provided me with were exactly what my body was needing to be able to self-heal my warts. Apparently I had been lacking in that department.
When can you best do your affirmations?
Affirmations work best when done as soon as we wake up. The brain has different wave lengths in which it operates. When we are a sleep we are in the theta brain wave. During our day we operate in the Beta brain wave. In the first 20 minutes of being awake, our brain shifts from theta, through alpha into beta state. And in that 20-minute window we have the most power to influence the subconscious mind and rewire the pathways.
It works best when done in front of a mirror where you look yourself directly into your eyes. Having some 528Hz frequency playing in the background also helps. Then start to recite your affirmations in an affirming yet questioning form like; How come I am in such perfect health? Why am I so good at woodworking?
Make sure the affirmations are personal to you, that it’s positive, in a present tense, and it has an emotion that you can feel. Try and feel what you imagine having that affirmation come reality would make you feel. How would a perfectly healthy you feel? If needed write them down until you have memorized them, or use some paste it’s to remind you.
Visualization
Another way to reaffirm your affirmations is by visualization. This can be done as you recite the affirmation, or when you are mediating. It works best when you see the thing you are affirming. Like being a good woodworker. See yourself inside a woodworking shop finishing a beautiful piece. Feel the wood, smell it, hear the sounds. Feel the sense of accomplishment and joy it brings you.
Reading can also help you in developing your visualization skills as it taps into your fantasy to make a book come to life.
Making a vision board can also greatly help. Choose pictures of things you want to experience and have or want more from. This can be anything as long as it is personally of interest to you.
Actions that lead to a life without cluster headache dominion
You will find that the affirmations will lead to actions. Like my smoothies. First subconscious, but when looked at the outcome you will be able to connect the dots back to the affirmation. Sometimes it can take a while before something happens that makes you take an action that can be traced back to the affirmation. Not to worry, in time all affirmations will lead to thoughts and ideas you can put into action. You just have to recognize them. And if you don’t, that’s fine too, another will come along with time.
Still a negative outcome?
But what to do when the outcome of the action is still a negative? For instance, you affirm to be a great woodworker but in reality you still make mistakes?
The key is to understand that every action has a learning curve. Just affirming you’re great at something doesn’t make you great at it. But it does lead you to take action. To get the confidence to do something. And in that action you will learn to become great at what you are affirming. So when you initially fail, recognize that and then affirm to yourself that that’s okay as you are learning a new skill or habit and just continue. Affirmations lead you to actions that will help you become the person you need to be in alignment with what you are affirming. Trust the process. Rome was not built in a day.
Mirror mirror on the wall
The world that we see is a mirror of who we are on the inside. But it has a delay. What you see right now is what you were and believed in the past. Changing and manifesting takes time. When you affirm things every day and in your reality they are not manifested, and you acknowledge that you make it a negative.
Example; you affirm you are rich. In your reality you did safe some money but are still unable to buy your dream car. Focusing on not having the car is a negative and if you keep doing this it will not work. You will manifest more of not having the car. Instead, see and acknowledge that you saved up some money and are on your way to buying your dream car, now it is a positive.
When ever we do something routinely it will have a compounding effect, meaning it will stack up on each other like a snow ball going down hill and growing in the process. So beware if you are compounding negatively!
Habits that will continue to give positive energy
Actions can lead to habits. A habit of positive self talk, eating healthy etc. Affirmations themselves are a habit, as it is key to do them daily. Once you start to do your habits, they will gain momentum. Making your actions a habit will help you manifest the life you want to live. But like everything, manifesting will take time, effort, discipline and repetition.
A habit is formed after about 30 consecutive days or times of doing said habit. By then the brain is acquainted with the habit and starts to see it as the new norm. After 100 days/times you can be safe to say that you have set the habit as the new norm. By then you do not need to think about it anymore, you just do it.
Start small
Setting habits can be difficult, so start small. Maybe you affirm that you are orderly and after a while you get the urge to do something with that, but you’re not sure how. Search for something that’s in line with the affirmation and not too difficult, like making your bed in the morning. Then build it from there. Put your dirty clothes in the laundry basket etc. See if you can link them to your list of positive things you want to do/manifest more of.
I’m a very disciplined person myself and a stick to new things easily if I feel they benefit me. But I understand that it can be difficult. A book that can greatly help you with this is atomic habits by James Clear. I highly recommend it.
I hope that this will help you in manifesting a life without cluster headache dominion over you. You deserve that. In the next post I will address relationships and cluster headache