Category Archives: Uncategorized

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

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.

 

What is “normal?”

I am often struck by the choices mothers have to make in other parts of the world, when compared to the dilemmas I faced raising my own children and what I dealt with as normal.

Choices such as should I send my child to school so they can have a better chance to escape the poverty we face, or keep her home in hopes of earning a few pennies more or harvesting a little more food to keep our entire family fed are far from the reality I faced. The normal these mothers face leaves my heart aching for these mothers. Often my sense of connection with them leaves an unmet yearning to help, and so often a feeling of helplessness to do so.

Do you, too, wish you could somehow offer solace, support and a hand up to your sisters in other parts of the world?

Every once in awhile I find people who are making a difference and are creating avenues for you and I to satisfy our yearning to help. One of my favorite businesses, Raven + Lily, understands that it does not help to make people in 1st world countries feel guilty for the plight of others without giving them sustainable ways to contribute to the betterment of the lives of these mothers in impoverished conditions.  Owner, Kirsten Dickerson, puts it this way, “People want to know how they’re being a part of the solution otherwise they feel paralyzed and overwhelmed by the problems.”

Donna Berber and Cynthia Kersey both run amazing organizations with the goal of empowering whole communities helping them lift themselves out of poverty in Africa. Their models look at education, health, and long-term income for the women, families and communities they help and there are many ways for you to get involved with their organizations–Glimmer of Hope and The Unstoppable Foundation.

Today, as the Syrian refugee crisis mounts we are faced with real time images of families suffering.  Mothers choosing between dodging bombs to get children to schools or facing incredible suffering to get their family hopefully to safety. Questions I never had to face and probably ones you never did either.

Fortunately, the growing technologies of social media and crowd funding are making your and my ability to contribute directly to causes we believe in very accessible. The U.N. Refugee Agency has a Kickstarter campaign where you can learn more about the refugee situation and contribute if you are called to do so, right there.

Whether it is down the street or across the world, the more women unite to create safety, security and opportunity for each other, the kinder our world will become. Together half of the population is a force to be reckoned. Find your way to join hands with other women, whether you support another woman who is creating change or you find your own passion for action.

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.

Do you love yourself?

“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

~Marilyn Monroe

One of the hardest and best books I ever read was Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection. I had spent my whole life trying to be perfect for other people so they:

  • Wouldn’t leave me.
  • Would accept me into their circle.
  • Would admire me.
  • But most importantly would love me!

Brene’s book rocked my very soul.  It then took years for me to embrace it’s wisdom–and really I am still learning.

Do you love yourself just the way you are?  Are you ready to be as bold as Marilyn and tell someone if they cannot handle you at your worst they don’t deserve you at your best?

I am!

“Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional”

As the United States remembered 9/11 last week,  I was reminded that none of us are immune from grief.

You have no doubt experienced sorrow and loss.

Perhaps your life looks nothing like what you had hoped for at one point.  Maybe you have lost someone important to your heart through death, divorce or other circumstances. Deep loss is felt by our bodies, minds, and souls. It is not a trivial experience. No matter what the cause, you have probably grieved deeply, and most likely you will again.

Over the years, I have facilitated various grief workshops for people who have recently lost a loved one–husband, child, sibling or parent.  The most profound of those workshops was a group of teens who had all recently lost a parent.

What was different about my group of teens?  Once they crossed over the barrier of being vulnerable with the group, they did things that helped their process that so many adults refuse to do:

  • They felt their grief as a real-time, present moment experience.  (My adult groups spent considerably more time focused on re-living moments of past grief, rather than identifying how they felt at the current moment.)
  • They had no goal to achieve in the process, they simply processed what they were feeling. (My adults participants usually measured and re-measured their progress by random, unconscious beliefs about where they should be in their process. This often colored what they shared with judgment about themselves, or pretense about where they were–rather than open, really vulnerable sharing.)
  • They knew they spent most of their time running from their pain and were honest about it. (Participants in other groups often took weeks or months to acknowledge their coping mechanisms so they could assess what was working and what was making things worse.)

These are gifts given unknowingly from my group of teens that anyone can embody.  What things still bring up feelings of grief for you?

Use the following steps based on the wisdom from my teens to help you move from feeling stuck in this grief to finding your inner transformation and resilliance.  You might want to journal your answers.

  1. Do you re-live this event in your mind frequently? Can you identify the difference between how you initially felt about this situation and how you feel NOW? Take a moment to describe this situation from your perspective today.  Anytime you notice your story going into how it felt “then,” cross it off and resume writing from the perspective of how it feels today. It is a good idea to do things that ground you in the current moment while doing this exercise. You might write for awhile, then go for a walk outside before continuing.  Other things that can help keep you grounded in today are exercising, contact with water (washing your hands or feet, swimming, taking a shower, foot bath in epsom salts), walking barefoot on the earth, and digging in the earth (weeding, planting).
  2. What judgments do you have about how you have handled grieving this situation, especially verses other people? Write them down.  Be specific.  You might start with sentences like, “I should have…,” “By now…,” “Other people…” Once you have exhuasted your litany of self-condemnations, rewrite each one beginning with the statement, “It’s OK that I…” Then find a nice place to walk where you can have a destination goal of at least 100 feet.  As you walk that distance take each step deliberately and state “It is OK that I…”  Do this as many times as you need to until you feel a release of judgment from each item.
  3. Identify (with scathing honesty!) all the ways you have ignored and run from feeling your feelings around this situation.  Write them down. Which ones of these are serving you and which ones are just keeping you tied to your grief? Make conscious choices as to which behaviors and actions you plan to continue and which you want to cease.  Call your best friend and tell her what you have discovered and ask her to help keep you accountable to your new goals. Create new behaviors that help you feel your feelings and release them, rather than cover over them. Here are a few suggestions:
    • Commit to feeling fully the grief when it comes.  If it is convenient, go into the shower and cry until you feel complete, go into a private room and turn on music loud to cover your sobs, or climb into bed and rock yourself in a fetal position.
    • Take long walks in nature regularly to reconnect to yourself and let go of the outside world
    • Journal everytime your emotions get triggered.  Give all your feelings voice–whether good, bad, or ugly–not just the socially acceptable ones.  Let your hurting inner-self really express the depth of how she feels. By ackowledging, not hiding, how you feel you take away these emotions power over you sand they can no longer control you.
    • Forgive yourself. You are usually encouraged to forgive others who have hurt you in order to heal from grief.  While that is an important element, the more often ignored and more important step is to forgive yourself.  Forgive yourself for the choices you made that helped create this circumstance, or for not taking care of yourself sooner, or for handling your grief in a way that has kept you stuck.  Whatever it is, forgive yourself over and over for it until you have set yourself free.

No one is immune from painful experiences that trigger feelings of sorrow and grief.  It is part of our human condition.  Yet, how we approach our grief can determine how long we carry its weight around our necks.

As the Buddha is oft-quoted as saying,

“Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”