There are many personal development strategies that CAN actually help you to develop into the kind of person that you want to be and shift your life direction toward something more favorable to you. Still, many people have difficulty ACTUALLY putting a lot of these nice-to-hear approaches into practice. This is not to say that the practices and techniques don’t work or that they are just to make you feel good about not being where you want to be, but that an inner movement is also an essential aspect of any new development. This “inner movement” I’m referring to is a real profound shift in your awareness to where you are moved to a new level inside. This article will detail one powerful way to do this, utilizing only natural foods and herbs as well as empowering strategies that you can act on right now.
The Cacao/Empowerment Connection
Many times, the single attribute that brings inspiration and real productivity is empowerment. When you feel utterly empowered and ready to create what you want in your life, you’ll more than likely receive new insights about how to further your success and you’ll be in more of a position to take action on them because empowerment brings motivation. This is often what many of us are striving for in our search for self-help insights. How do we increase this sense of empowerment quickly and easily?
My answer to this might surprise you if you have not read other articles that I’ve written: Cacao, or dark chocolate.
Dark Chocolate, or even better in most cases, raw cacao, is one of the most powerful foods for increasing feelings of empowerment. It contains so much magnesium, compared to other foods, that it can help to “fill in the gaps” regarding our need for replenishing this important stress lowering mineral. Just by introducing high quality raw cacao, or dark chocolate, into your diet you can begin to obtain more of this calming, centering, mineral that helps to offset excess stress. This is key for those who want to feel more uplifted, more often.
In addition, cacao contains the endorphin Anandamide, which is what we release during excersize. It also contains PEA, which is a component we naturally produce in high amounts when we are in a state of love. This has been shown to increase contentment and concentration. Furthermore, cacao contains MAO inhibitors which help us to have the “feel-good” dopamine neurotransmitter circulating for longer periods of time.
With these attributes, cacao is definitely a love food. As a result, in can help you to connect more to your true self, which might be covered at times by fear and other emotions. As you can probably agree, love is a powerful antidote to fear. In this way, cacao can help you to transcend limiting emotions that might be holding you back. While you can certainly cultivate these qualities of empowerment and love without cacao, it can be a very helpful tool and potentially make it easier. Of course, like other foods and herbs, you likely don’t want to consume very high amounts of it every day, as that might be a little imbalancing to some people. A good idea is to see how well you feel eating and eat it whenever you truly want it, which could be essentially everyday for periods of time.
Eating Cacao With A Purpose:
While it is always good to eat foods that inspire and uplift you, it is something else to eat them with an intention. The intention here would be to empower yourself and use that increased sense of courageousness and creativity to notice insights and inspired ideas for you to act on.
Here is a useful equation that I’ve found to be helpful for this:
Uplifting food + directing your thoughts toward creative ideas regarding your goal or overall desire= improved ability to define and act on the steps needed to obtain or reach that goal.
This means that cacao or other foods that you find to be helpful to you, including tonic herbs, can give you that extra natural lift in order for you to see your objective with greater illumination and creative insight. By feeling more capable of reaching your goal, which cacao and other feel-good foods can promote, you’ll naturally notice more applicable steps for you to take toward it, many of which you'll actually feel inspired about.
It is a way to more easily get into the flow and use your creativity to power your ability to take that first step. By noticing an abundance of choices, through feeling empowered and directing your thoughts toward solutions, you can decide on one small action to take. If you’re in a real flow and feel utterly inspired, you might want to write down your plan and list how you are going to get to where you want, along with a few steps that you can take NOW. If you are having any issue with procrastination, a powerful key is to choose just one small aspect of the first step and decide to do just that, allowing yourself to stop right after that one small step if you want to. Very likely, that little step, no matter how small it is, will give you the motivation needed to do the next step.
In essence, by eating cacao with the intent on being entirely productive and moving forward on an area of your life, you can likely “tune into” more creative ideas and intuitive nudges about steps for you to take.
A small note about cacao is to choose high quality cacao if you can. This is usually raw cacao nibs or powder that has more of a deep, rich taste along with its natural bitterness rather than a very off taste. Also, if you do not feel well after eating cacao it’s likely either an indication that the type or brand of cacao doesn’t work well with you or cacao itself doesn’t work well with you right now. For some people, cacao increases feelings of well-being without being too stimulating. It provides a sense of satiety, nutritionally, that outshines many other foods but without any notion of “side effects”. If you do not have this beneficial experience with cacao, you might not want to eat very much of it.
Dark chocolate is a good second choice, especially for short term productivity improvements and creativity sessions, though it might be slightly too stimulating for some people to eat on an ongoing basis. You can usually tell whether it appears to work well with you by how you feel hours after eating it. If you feel overly tired, as if you drank too much coffee earlier in the day, it might be too stimulating for your adrenals. If that's the case, just eat it infrequently if you choose to eat it at all. High quality raw chocolate, for many people, does not have nearly the same level of stimulation, yet is very uplifting and nutritionally dense. Choose what works for you.
The Cacao/Empowerment Connection
Many times, the single attribute that brings inspiration and real productivity is empowerment. When you feel utterly empowered and ready to create what you want in your life, you’ll more than likely receive new insights about how to further your success and you’ll be in more of a position to take action on them because empowerment brings motivation. This is often what many of us are striving for in our search for self-help insights. How do we increase this sense of empowerment quickly and easily?
My answer to this might surprise you if you have not read other articles that I’ve written: Cacao, or dark chocolate.
Dark Chocolate, or even better in most cases, raw cacao, is one of the most powerful foods for increasing feelings of empowerment. It contains so much magnesium, compared to other foods, that it can help to “fill in the gaps” regarding our need for replenishing this important stress lowering mineral. Just by introducing high quality raw cacao, or dark chocolate, into your diet you can begin to obtain more of this calming, centering, mineral that helps to offset excess stress. This is key for those who want to feel more uplifted, more often.
In addition, cacao contains the endorphin Anandamide, which is what we release during excersize. It also contains PEA, which is a component we naturally produce in high amounts when we are in a state of love. This has been shown to increase contentment and concentration. Furthermore, cacao contains MAO inhibitors which help us to have the “feel-good” dopamine neurotransmitter circulating for longer periods of time.
With these attributes, cacao is definitely a love food. As a result, in can help you to connect more to your true self, which might be covered at times by fear and other emotions. As you can probably agree, love is a powerful antidote to fear. In this way, cacao can help you to transcend limiting emotions that might be holding you back. While you can certainly cultivate these qualities of empowerment and love without cacao, it can be a very helpful tool and potentially make it easier. Of course, like other foods and herbs, you likely don’t want to consume very high amounts of it every day, as that might be a little imbalancing to some people. A good idea is to see how well you feel eating and eat it whenever you truly want it, which could be essentially everyday for periods of time.
Eating Cacao With A Purpose:
While it is always good to eat foods that inspire and uplift you, it is something else to eat them with an intention. The intention here would be to empower yourself and use that increased sense of courageousness and creativity to notice insights and inspired ideas for you to act on.
Here is a useful equation that I’ve found to be helpful for this:
Uplifting food + directing your thoughts toward creative ideas regarding your goal or overall desire= improved ability to define and act on the steps needed to obtain or reach that goal.
This means that cacao or other foods that you find to be helpful to you, including tonic herbs, can give you that extra natural lift in order for you to see your objective with greater illumination and creative insight. By feeling more capable of reaching your goal, which cacao and other feel-good foods can promote, you’ll naturally notice more applicable steps for you to take toward it, many of which you'll actually feel inspired about.
It is a way to more easily get into the flow and use your creativity to power your ability to take that first step. By noticing an abundance of choices, through feeling empowered and directing your thoughts toward solutions, you can decide on one small action to take. If you’re in a real flow and feel utterly inspired, you might want to write down your plan and list how you are going to get to where you want, along with a few steps that you can take NOW. If you are having any issue with procrastination, a powerful key is to choose just one small aspect of the first step and decide to do just that, allowing yourself to stop right after that one small step if you want to. Very likely, that little step, no matter how small it is, will give you the motivation needed to do the next step.
In essence, by eating cacao with the intent on being entirely productive and moving forward on an area of your life, you can likely “tune into” more creative ideas and intuitive nudges about steps for you to take.
A small note about cacao is to choose high quality cacao if you can. This is usually raw cacao nibs or powder that has more of a deep, rich taste along with its natural bitterness rather than a very off taste. Also, if you do not feel well after eating cacao it’s likely either an indication that the type or brand of cacao doesn’t work well with you or cacao itself doesn’t work well with you right now. For some people, cacao increases feelings of well-being without being too stimulating. It provides a sense of satiety, nutritionally, that outshines many other foods but without any notion of “side effects”. If you do not have this beneficial experience with cacao, you might not want to eat very much of it.
Dark chocolate is a good second choice, especially for short term productivity improvements and creativity sessions, though it might be slightly too stimulating for some people to eat on an ongoing basis. You can usually tell whether it appears to work well with you by how you feel hours after eating it. If you feel overly tired, as if you drank too much coffee earlier in the day, it might be too stimulating for your adrenals. If that's the case, just eat it infrequently if you choose to eat it at all. High quality raw chocolate, for many people, does not have nearly the same level of stimulation, yet is very uplifting and nutritionally dense. Choose what works for you.