Category Archives: mindset

Be Your Own Holiday Hero

As you enter into the holiday season it is easy to get swept away with all the activities and loose focus on what matters most to YOU! In fact, most people live like that all year—swept away by the momentum of external events with little internal direction to meet their own needs.

With a small amount of attention, you will enjoy the holidays more and wake up in the New Year with a clearer sense of purpose and direction, ready to create new goals and more importantly prepared to achieve them.

I have a fun exercise to help you achieve this. Take time in December to reflect on the year almost at a close. Make note of what goals you accomplished, which have changed, and what remains unrealized; but focus on what has gone well. Start to build a list or journal of everything that you have done, all you overcame, and things you accomplished this past year.

By putting energy into remembering your successes before the year ends you are:

  • Preventing a feeling of overwhelm as holiday distractions have a tendency to make you feel like you are not getting enough done.

  • Reminding yourself of what you consider important which will help you make choices about how you spend your time this month.

  • Reinforcing what you do well and your self-confidence.

  • Remembering what things you enjoy doing and do well.

  • Creating a strong platform from which design goals that inspire you, not ones you feel you “should” do, at the beginning of next year.

Make sure you include personal and professional successes. You can start by taking a half-day retreat, or just an hour one morning to get started. Then read and add to this list (or journal) at least once a day. You will find your holiday season more fulfilling and you will be ready to embark into next year full of positive energy.

Note: It does not hurt that this exercise also expand your holiday party conversations beyond the weather!

 

 

 

Words of Wisdom For Instant Happiness

Today, I received an email from a friend and colleague who I admire, Natalie Ledwell, quoting one of the women I admire most, Marianne Williamson. The quotes are pointers to how I choose to live. I think you will enjoy them so I have reprinted Natalie’s email below.

If you don’t know about Natalie’s work with Mind Movies, you will want to look into them. Mind Movies allow you to program your mind to the things you want, overriding all the programming you take in unintentionally–and you actually get to create your personalized version!

One of the reasons I love Natalie’s work is that she and I both are passionate to help people learn how to succeed, without the struggle and heartache most people stay stuck in. Both Natalie and I have been in the trenches and are teaching what worked for us, not some theory about what we heard works, but real life-tested ideas.

My success in various businesses would be fleeting and meaningless if it were not for teachers along the way that helped me create fulfillment not just bank balances, and purpose not report cards and titles. Marianne Williamson was one of those teachers.  I first stumbled on to her work over 20 years ago and have been enjoying her wisdom and turning to her guidance ever  since.

In Natalie’s words:

If you haven’t come into contact with this woman’s extraordinary work, you’re really missing out!

I’m talking about Marianne Williamson who, besides being a NY Times best-selling author and lecturer, has been a spiritual friend and counselor to Oprah! YES – Oprah!

If you’d like to be enlightened by her wisdom, read below for seven of her best lessons for instant happiness:

1- Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.

2- Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

3- We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?

4- Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.

5- The new midlife is where you realize that even your failures make you more beautiful and are turned spiritually into success if you became a better person because of them. You became a more humble person. You became a more merciful and compassionate person.

6- The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.

7- Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.

Enjoy!
Natalie ~ Mind Movies

Graceful Transitions of Seasons and Self

As winter storms start appearing in the Northern Hemisphere, springtime is beginning to bloom in the south. Cycles of life that we expect, often look forward to, and plan on.

Yet, so many other cycles of life–like children growing up, parents dying, and other passages–while still predictable are not always welcomed or easy.

Your ability to feel your feelings in these circumstances, while not getting pulled into a complete downward spiral, is the key to healthy transitions. I am in the midst of these transitions as my youngest child leaves home, I move out of our family home where I raised my children these past 18 years, and I move across country, embark on a new business venture, and start a new chapter of my life.

A passage in James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh has held me during this time and might help keep you from allowing challenging life passages to send you into realms of emotions that are hard to break:

“Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown away by anxiety and doubt. Only the wise woman, only she whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey her.”

Of course, I modified the passage to meet me as a woman and added emphasis.

I choose to control the storms of my soul, do you? There are definitely times in my life where I have allowed uncontrolled passion to make me lash out at others, unprocessed grief has run havoc on my life, and anxiety and doubt have overwhelmed me. If you are like me, these are not states you choose to experience. So why do we?

It is because we believe our thoughts to be the result of our external life, instead of something we have control over. The key is watching where your thoughts are leading and to be their master instead of them dictating your state. Does that mean you will never experience passion, grief, doubt or anxiety? Absolutely not. But it does mean these will not control you. I am learning to be master of my thoughts, and therefore of my fate. How about you?

 

Three Steps to Greater Happiness

Recently, I heard a brain specialist talk about they have learned how readily our brains can morph and learn new things–even long into adulthood!  That is good news, because years ago they thought once we passed a golden age we no longer could create new neuro-pathways or widen our pathways to carry more information. But today, brain plasticity is considered proven by science.

So how does this relate to your happiness? Well, if you are like many people your life has a certain rhythm to it. Things happen the same way today that they did yesterday.  You eat the same things this month that you ate last month and spend time with the same people. There may be nothing wrong with all this; but there is also not much stimulating about it either.

They are called habits; we all have them and we actually are controlled by them.

What if I told you that by changing some of your habits you would actually be increasing the plasticity of your brain AND would become happier? It’s true!

Here are three steps that help with brain plasticity that you can do anywhere, anytime; so start today!

  1. Select on thing you do every day and change it.

    Don’t start with the most ingrained habit that will be hard to change like smoking, coffee, or such. If you always wake up at 7am, start waking up at 6:45 and find something pleasurable to do with the extra 15 minutes BEFORE you start you regular morning routine.

  2. Focus on one thing at a time for at least 30 minutes each day and increase the amount of time as you can.

    This can be meditation, but it can also be that you are committing 30 minutes each day to a specific project when you turn off your phone, close your door, tell others you are unavailble and resist the urge to check your emails or social media as a distraction. Training your brain to focus is like exercising; it starts hard and often you don’t initially see results and can become discouraged. But, just like physical exercise your mental exercise will pay off in big ways. You will not only get the accomplishment of finishing more things as you learn to focus, but you will also find your ability to solve problems and think will expand, too.

  3. Expose yourself to new experiences.

    This will take some effort and planning in order to be doing new things regularly.  This is why adventurous vacations make us feel more alive; while staying at the same old hotel chain in a new city feels dry. What things have you wanted to do and never have? Take that photography class. Go to the MeetUp group. You don’t have to do things you would not enjoy to go outside your comfort zone; you have probably a plethora of things you have never done that you wish you had!

A little help from my friends

Sometimes staying positive and upbeat gets difficult and there are days it can feel downright impossible. That’s when you turn to inspiration.  You can boost your seratonin, your mood, and your energy by feeding your brain and your environment with things that make you feel good. Maybe for you it is:

  • Talking with good friends
  • A long, bubble bath
  • Going for a hike, or
  • Reading a good book

Three things that are scientifically proven to help our state of being are:

  1. Getting out into nature; especially long walks with your gaze far in the distance.

  2. Hugs and human contact.

  3. Reading or listening to inspiring books or talks.

The latter can be found in your bookstore, on podcasts, or books on tape, as well as recordings of great seminars. Find a few favorites to use over and over again, as well as look for new information. Repition can ingrain the important ideas into your way of thinking that a fast, once-over reading can never do. And let’s face it, all of us have plenty of negative self-talk rattling around in our brain that can use replacing.

This fall the Texas Women’s Conference was again a powerhouse of ideas and inspiration. All the sessions are available by podcast, and there are still some free trainings that some of the speakers are providing.

Have fun listening to these and exploring the things that inspire you.

 

The fringe benefits of failure

In 2008, J.K. Rowling gave the commencement address to the graduating class at Harvard and titled her speech, “The fringe benefits of failure and the importance of imagination.” I wish I could have been there, as both of these ring so true to me today. More importantly, I sure could have used learning that lesson much earlier in life.

As a college student and in my early professional years, the idea of failing was the tiger chasing me from behind–always keeping me running faster. It could have never occured to my younger self that failing might have its benefits. Did you understand this when you were younger? Do you actually believe it, today?

Yet, today I know that I have learned more from my failures than my successes and that many of my successes came from the ashes of my failing.

But the biggest benefit of failure is NOT the lesson you might learn from the fall. The benefit comes from trying at all!

So many people give up–on an idea, a vision, a dream–long before they ever begin because they fear failure. I bet you can think of at least a few times you never tried because you did not want to fail. I can.

The willingness to fail and learn from your mistakes might be the single most important determining factor on whether you will succeed.

If you think failing puts you in the company of loosers, remember then Thomas Edison attempted to create the incadescent light bulb over 10,000 times before succeeding.  When asked how he could continue after failing so many times he replied that he did not fail but came that much closer to the right answer.

So how about it? What could you try? How might you challenge your status quo and go outside your comfort zone?

Happiness 101

Do you long to be happier?  Maybe you are content with your life; yet, feel your day to day mood rarely swings into full gear on the happiness throttle.  What can you do?

I recently saw a social media post about neuroscience research on happiness that intrigued me so much I followed it all the way to the various source articles that it referenced to learn more. The Business Insider article by Eric Barker that summed it all up offered four keys to becoming more happy.

Although you may have heard it all before, it is important to understand that neuroscientists are studying human brains and finding confirmation that these steps truly change the chemical make up in your body and the activity in your brain.  If you are not actively doing all four regularly, you might want to ask yourself, “Why not?”

The four things you can start doing today and feel real results do not take a lot of time, are fairly simple to do, and are in your control.

  1. Find what you are grateful for.

    There are lots of reasons to look on the bright side of life; and we often feel shame when we don’t. But now the research shows that even looking for something to be grateful for on the days when it feels like your whole world is upside down can increase your levels of dopamine and seratonin–both of which help you feel better. Researchers even found that gratitude and searching for things to be grateful for increased you neuron density creating greater emotional intelligence, which makes finding things to be grateful for easier. So the more often you do it the easier gratitude becomes. I use a gratitude journal as one of the key antidotes for feeling stressed and unhappy. 

  2. Give your negative feelings a label.

    This is an interesting tactic you might remember from parenting classes. Parenting classes always include the advice to help your child identify their feelings and put a name to them. The mere act of labeling your feelings disipates their power over you. This is not going into the story and justifying how terrible things are; it is simply a word or phrase that describes how you feel. Researchers have now studied people’s brains using MRI technology while they are upset and find that labeling how you feel reduces the activity in your amygdala–you know the place in your brain that makes you overreact and go into fight or flight. How simple, yet powerful!

  3. Make decisions.

    Decision making is often stressful and you might think putting this on a list of ways to become happier is non-sense. But don’t rule this gem out so quickly because making decisions reestablishes your feeling of being in control, and we all know that is a whole lot less stressful than feeling out-of-control. Apparently our friends in neuroscience have found that making decisions engages the pre-frontal cortex and reduces anxiety and worry. But not all choices are easy and you can read more about ways to help you make even the toughest choices in my blog.

  4. Hug someone.

    Scientists have confirmed that human touch is good for us.  Whether you hug everyone you see today, shake people’s hands, or go get a massage, you will be releasing oxytocin–the feel good hormone. Here is a challenge.  Apparently, research shows that 5 hugs a day for four weeks increases your happiness quotient big time. Want to try it with me?

I love the idea that things we intrinsicly know about life are starting to be proven with science. Hopefully, knowing the science behind the advice will encourage you to take action and live happier, starting today!

For more ideas about increasing your feeling happiness each day read 5 Easy Steps to Increase Your Happiness.

Are you avoiding sorrow?

This week I lost a dear companion, Chico, my horse of 13 years. I want desperately to stuff the deep feeling of sadness away and put my attention on something else. But, the weight in my heart remains. As I let myself feel my sorrow I realize it holds many other losses—losses that never were fully felt and so need attention, too. I feel the grief of loosing my Mom and brother in the same year as my business burned leaving me little time to really grieve either of them. Other losses come up as well, some with names others just shadows.

Grief work is deep work and we are not taught how to do it. In fact, if you have experienced significant loss you were probably given subtle (and perhaps not so subtle) cues that everyone around you hoped you’d get over it soon.

My previous efforts to “get over” my other losses prompted me to pretend I didn’t feel what I was feeling. It is a loosing game. Rather, when I have led grief groups in the past, I encourage people to recognize the wave of grief when it hits, feel it, and know that it will pass. Another wave will come, and another; but, sooner, or later, the waves get further apart and one day you realize they have even gotten smaller.

So today it is time to heed my own advice and feel what I feel and know that the wave—even if it knocks me over and I come up spitting sand—will pass.

I encourage you to look at any experiences you have not quite let go of and ask if you have avoided really feeling how you feel about what happened. If so, sometimes taking time to feel your feelings is the salve that helps you move forward to create a more joyful future. In order to fully experience joy you also must be open to experiencing sorrow. Your heart is open to the extent you are willing to feel; it does not open and close depending on the situation, but is expanded by these situations if you feel them.

Wishing you (and me) the courage to feel your feelings and live life fully. I hope the bumps and bruises you experience in life are small and may you be held in love when they are not.

Follow your intuition

How many times have you heard me say, “Follow your heart?”

It is because our intuition is so much wiser than our day to day mental processes.  We know more, see more, and understand more than we give ourselves credit for when we fret and worry over decisions–looking at the pros and cons of each option as if we could measure things like enjoyment, happiness, connection to those we love, and fulfillment.  These intangibles make up a great deal of the final result of whether a decision was “right” for you.

When you learn to follow your intuition and feel how different choices make you feel, you will start to live a life worth living.  The rest is just biding time, filling voids, and keeping busy.

Amazing things await you when you follow your heart.  Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, put it like this:

Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Are you the Queen of “What if?”

Have you ever noticed that when you become anxious about something your internal voice that asks “what if?” goes into overdrive?

Questions that start with these two words actual do not improve your ability to assess a situation and make sound decisions.  No, these two words just add fuel to your stress and worry. According to Travis Bradberry, coauthor of Emotional Intelligence 2.0:

The more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you’ll spend focusing on taking action.

So rather than fret and worry about what might happen here are some tips to get you into a mindset that will support your success in the next stressful circumstance (let’s face it, another one will come sooner or later).

  • Breathe!

    • This is always my first and formost recommendation when anxiety mounts. Take at least two minutes (excuse yourself to the bathroom if needed) to just breathe deeply. Oxygenating your brain will improve your thought process.  Slowing down to breath will calm your nervous system.  And lastly, deep breathing for two minutes will allow you to respond, not react, to whatever troubles you.

  • Think outside the box!

    • When faced with a crisis of sorts you might tend to resort to restrictive thinking. “This is how it always is.” “This will never work.” Sometimes you need to imagine how another person would see and handle this situation, rather than yourself, to start to expand your possible solutions.

  • Imagine the outcome you desire in detail.

    • Unfortunately, if you are like most people you problem are great at imagining the details of what can go wrong but spend little time imagining things going exactly how you would want them.  Put time into creatively imagining how you want things to go and put your focus on the postitive possibilities.

  • Create a plan of action for achieving what you want.

    • Sometimes a list of what I need to do, broken down into small steps is extremely soothing to me.  It helps take me out of crisis mode and into planning mode. It also helps me see things from the smaller details that look managable rather than the overwhelming problem where I started.
    • You can even add in contingency plans to settle your “What if” queen, as long as they focus on how you can overcome possible obstacles and do not start a list of reasons it won’t work.

  • Ask will this matter next month, next year, in five years, or when I am old.

    • This is one of my favorite exercises and one that has saved me from spiraling into uncontrolled anguish that my first boss gave me. It will help you put things in perspective quickly when your fight or flight system has been triggered.