Tag Archives: passion

What are you passionate about?

What things get your juices flowing?  Are there topics you find yourself talking about socially that you could go on and on about?

It is important to know what really makes you excited, and then make sure you are including those things in a big way in your life.

Enthusiasm is contagious.  It makes life lighter. It fuels your energy tank in ways that nothing else can.

So why is it that so many women live lives that lack pizzaz?  Do any of these hold you in a place of hum-drum daily existance?

  • Prior commitments.
  • Responsibilities.
  • Bills need to be paid.
  • No time for anything else.
  • Don’t want to hurt anyone.

Too often, women assume that their needs have to be met AFTER everyone and everything else is taken care of.  This tactic results in slow simmering anger and resentment or subtly growing depression for many.  How do you avoid this slippery slope?

You must make it a priority to feed your soul. This is not another to-do to add to your already overflowing list of obligations.  Rather, this is what will give you the energy to complete those things with a smile on your face.

I help women find their passion and incorporate it fully into their professional life, usually by creating a company that embodies their values, has a mission they are passionate about, and surrounds them with people and events that they would enjoy–whether it was work or not. You can learn more about my Wealth Development Program here.

Having your work life BE your passion is one way to ensure you include what you are enthusiastic about in your daily world.  But their are other ways, too. Here are just a few:

  • Volunteer with an organization that is doing what you believe in. By actively helping in an area you care about you will start to feed your belief you can make a difference.
  • Dedicate Saturday mornings doing something you love (painting, dancing, kayaking…) before you venture into chores or other activities. If Saturday mornings don’t work, find a day you can commit to. Time spent cultivating enjoyment will help you re-ignite your life and your belief things can be fun.
  • Spend time regularly with someone who is doing what they are passionate about and support their efforts. As you see how someone else incorporates their passion into their life; you will begin to see opportunities for your own life to change.
  • Regularly go outside your comfort zone.  Too often, the biggest challenge to improving your life is your habits–the way you always do things. If you want things to change you are going to have to change things in your life.  If you want more of the same, continue doing what you always do.

Don’t let your life and the weight of it control you.  You control your life.  Most women avoid this because they think it means throwing away their career, their marraige, or some other important element of their current life.  Maybe it does.  But most likely, once you embark on waking up your passion the changes will look much different than they do today.

Take a small step. Today. And then another step, tomorrow. Move in the direction of living fully. You will be amazed at the joy you bring back into ALL aspects of your life as YOU become more fully alive.

 

Superwoman not to the Rescue

Does your success come at too high a price?

Or have you forsaken achieving success because you were unwilling to pay the price?

Bonnie Marcus wrote a great blog about this awhile back, that I still relate to a little more than I would like to admit.  She talks about breaking through any obstacles with strong intention, passion and energy to power through.  Does that sound a bit familiar?

Each of us has our own way of countering burnout that comes from this over-achiever mindset; whether it is meditation, yoga, running, journalling, or a night out with friends.  But in some ways these positive habits just keep us stuck in this pendulum pattern similar to enabling an addict.

Maybe the trick is not in pacifying our tired, stressed out soul with a quick fix; nor is it giving up achieving altogether.  

Perhaps we need to stop pushing through and start listening to our inner voice that tells us something is not right.  What if the struggle is more about not following the question that would help us achieve our goal with ease?

Somewhere, you and I were taught that to get anywhere,  we had to work hard ( in fact harder than everyone else if you want to be on top).  But have you ever noticed how many truly successful people are actually enjoying what they are doing, and work does not appear to be a struggle?

It is time to start asking if the struggle is because what we are doing is not what we really want to do, or is it a struggle over what we think we should be doing.  Maybe you spent a lot of time in this industry and think it is where your strength is even though it does not inspire you?  Or do you feel tied to what you do because of all the bills, debt or maybe your children’s college expense?

Bob Proctor recently gave me two incredibly simple, yet life changing, questions that I will now give you.

1.  How does this make you feel?

2.  Do you want to feel more of this?

If it makes you feel good and you want to feel more of it, then you are on the right track and there won’t be a need to be superwoman because you will be enjoying what you do.  If it does not, then listen to that voice and take action.  No more ploughing through because you are tough enough to do so.  You will be amazed at the energy burst you get when you start to listen to this voice.  I know I was.

And did you know there is a bonus gift to doing so?  Prosperity will find you much easier when you are pursuing your dreams. It will also find you happier than when you are struggling, pushing through, and being superwoman.

So relax and start to enjoy the journey.  Ask yourself these two simple questions regularly, about little and big things.  And see what magic starts to happen.

What do you REALLY want?

I often study Napoleon Hill’s work.

He wrote Think and Grow Rich and The 15 Laws of Success. Most of today’s self-help industry is based on Hill’s work in the early 1900’s. Although it looks like it is tied to money as a form of success, Hill really speaks to attaining your desires, whatever they may be.

One aspect of Hill’s work that I love is his revelation that of the 16,000 people he studied the successful ones (only 5% of the total people studied) all were doing what they loved!

How amazing is that?

My work, whether coaching women in business or personal areas, always starts with going deep into the question, “What do you really want?” For years, I could not even begin to answer that question, even about the most mundane things like what restaurant to go to. Why? Because my radar was tuned so strongly to my environment, keeping everyone else happy, and doing what others wanted as my means of getting ahead that I had lost touch with looking inside to find any answers—even those.

You, too, might be struggling to define what you really want. Without having a definite purpose or aim your life probably feels lackluster. Many women go through life like a ship without a rudder because they spent so many years helping others achieve their goals—spouses, children, even bosses.

If you have reached the point where you no longer have children at home, or you want to change your work but don’t quite know how then now is the time to invest in you and find your passion and create a plan to live it.

Carol Hagar and I create women’s retreats throughout the year to help women find their strength and live from it. Our beginning of the year retreats are always amazing because our focus as a culture is always keen on creating plans and making changes at this time of year.

I invite you to join us this year, as we bring together a group of kindred sisters and explore true nature of our inner wishes and find the means of expressing them in our world. We will meet near Austin, Texas, on Saturday, January 31st. If you cannot make it in person, we will have a live training online later in February. However, if you attend live you will get the added benefit of connecting with other women who can hold your intention in their hearts as you move forward into creating 2015 to be your best year thus far.

Are you unstoppable – like this woman?

This woman suffered outer circumstances you and I could not imagine.  Yet, she is unstoppable.  Are you?

Jane was pulled out of school by the age of 9 years old,  married by 12,  had 5 children and lived in poverty.  Yet, Jane decided to make sure her own children were educated.  Then she decided to become educated herself. (Note: decisions are key, you can wish and whine until you die — or you can decide.)  She learned basic math, bookkeeping, and income-generating skills, as well as how to save money and secure loans as part of the income training in The Unstoppable Foundation’s 5-pillar development model.  She developed skills that positioned her as a leader in her community.

Her decision and subsequent actions created inspiration for her husband who also got educated.  Then he organized the men in the village to become educated.

Next, their village agreed to stop marrying girls by age 12 and now commit to everyone being educated.

8 years later from her decision to come out of poverty she has changed her whole village to one that is prospering and sustainable.  You can read more about her and others like her here.

The key to being unstoppable is going after something you have a strong desire for, like Jane when she determined her children (even her girls) were going to be educated.  If you are doing what you are passionate about — you will be unstoppable!

How do you figure out what you are passionate about?  Take time to listen to your quiet inner voice through meditation, retreats and journalling.  Take time to fantasize the life of you dreams.  Dream big.  Notice what things make you feel enlivened and what things drain you. You can start today.  Take my free quiz and then listen to the free meditation audio you will receive.  It will help you move your imagination until you can dream of a life that brings you joy, not every once in awhile–but every day.

 

What are you excited about?

“What are you most excited about right now?”  What a great conversation starter!  This article by Kate Northrup really highlights my mantra–do what you love, be passionate about what you do, find goals that inspire you and every thing else will fall into place.

Give yourself permission to create a beautiful vegetable garden feeling as good about it as running a multi-million dollar business. And give other women permission to do the same every opportunity you get.  Reminding each other that we are valuable in the small things we do, not just in our public successes helps us stay out of overwhelmed and under-inspired lives. My favorite thing Kate wrote is:

“THE ACT OF PASSIONATE CREATION ITSELF IS WHAT GIVES AN ENDEAVOR MERIT — NOT ITS VALUE IN THE MARKETPLACE.”

We women have been running the race to prove we are worthy of equal pay, equal opportunities and equal respect for so long we have forgotten to check in with ourselves and make sure we are doing what we love.

Really take in what this says.  “The act of passionate creation…”  When was the last time you did this?  The more often you create with passion, the more alive you will feel.  Guaranteed.  “…is what gives an endeavor merit”  Not what other people think.  Not how much you get paid for it. Not whether anyone else acknowledges it at all.  Nothing in the outer world can give value to or take value away from your passionate creations.  They have intrinsic value because you created them with passion.

What are you excited about, today?

Your New Life Awaits — Part 1

I read a statistic today that 93% of women are depressed or despondent towards there future!  I don’t know how they calculated this or if it is a gross exaggeration of the actual study; but ladies, even if we cut the number in half something is terribly wrong here!

Depression and despondency come from a lack of passion and joy in our days and weeks and months as they pass by.  They come from feeling trapped in a place, a job or a relationship that does not feed our soul.  They come from a life not lived–but merely endured or survived.

Most of us have moments of both joy and depression.  The question is in where are we most of the time?  Do our moments of joy kindly spice an otherwise dull existence just enough to keep us there?  Or do our moments of depression and despondency come when we occasionally forget to take care of ourselves and exhaustion sets in?  The first is a prescription for trouble.  The second is a wakeup call to recalibrate our priorities.

Many of us in the first scenario of joyful moments feeding us just enough to keep us stuck happen because we have created our own prison.  Before you put up your defenses and your story–stay with me.  Reflect on your own passage to your current life.  Most of us at some point or another choose to follow a certain “path” of how we project our womanhood to the world.  Whether it is because we were rejecting who our mothers were or because we followed their tradition does not matter.  How we got here–whether we saw power in this path or because we ran from the reaction people had to us when we attempted another path, or something in our history–no longer matters.  

What matters is what path we choose today.  Does it empower us to feel alive, or have we carved away huge parts of our feminine soul in order to “be” the role we have assumed.   Next time we will look at some generalized paths women are taking, how they affect us, and how we can break free from our own imposed prison if we find ourselves less than fully enthusiastic when we awake each day.

For the Good of the Tribe

Our world will be healed, our lifestyles will be sustainable, our communities will thrive and our relationships will be enlivening only when the feminine is valued, nurtured and has a voice.

Although this blog speaks to women, eventually strong women leads to men and women valuing the feminine in each of us.  And this is where balance can be found.  Since the 1960’s women have developed and honored our own masculine traits.  It was a difficult and bold change from our foremothers.  We now have both power and influence in our world in many ways.

Yet, we journeyed here at a severe cost to our internal feminine compass.  It is incumbent upon women in this new era to raise our feminine while continuing to honor and develop our own masculine.  It is essential we find our voice in ways that encourage the masculine in our men, rather than demean them.  Balancing our own masculine and feminine natures – and requiring the men we choose relationships with to do the same – will create new co-empowered relationships in our homes, communities, work places and government.    In her book Mutant Down Under, Marlo Morgan asked the aboriginal wise woman/grandmother which was more important in their culture – men’s work or women’s work?  It took multiple translations back and forth before the grandmother replied, “I understand her words, but her question does not make sense.  Both men and women’s work is essential for the survival of the tribe.” 

Look at our school systems, our health care system, our economy, the environment and our government.   The survival of our tribe is at stake!

We must start with our inner world.  And it will come as no surprise that the quickest way to find your inner roadmap (its joys, its detours and potholes) is to raise a child.  For women having our daughters enter adolescence can be a loud wake up call to our own unprocessed issues about being a woman.

The survival of our human tribe depends on women learning to influence the fabric of our culture from our deep inner feminine wisdom.  We must walk away from the trance of our culture and remember our place in the circle of life.  We must remember our worth, so we speak our truth and inspire ourselves and our men to bold acts of integrity and soul filled businesses, governments, and economies.  It is within our grasp.