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Investing in Yourself

Investing in yourself is the ultimate gift that keeps on giving.

Invest in your brain.

Read stimulating non-fiction books that challenge your thinking. Read great fiction that increases your empathy. Have regular conversations with those who cause you to look at things in different ways. Choose your friends wisely.

Invest in your physical being.

Strive to create a body capable of serving you at a higher level by giving you all the energy you require. If you have been on the planet for a while, consider shifting your philosophy about work-outs from doing things to make you ‘look good’ to working out to have the strength and flexibility to live your life without strain, pain and fatigue.

Invest in your health.

You are what you eat. Choose to intentionally fuel yourself with the best quality food available to you. Put down the rebellious gauntlet and care for yourself as the precious gift that you are.

Invest in your spirit.

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The News

Being a news addict is big these days.

Perhaps you see the news as an important part of your day. Maybe having your finger on the informational pulse of the world is vital, possibly even for your job.

Or you could be like the rest of us, where we have the belief that we ‘need’ to know… but we are often unsure as to why.

Many years ago, I listened to an interview with someone I had a lot of respect for. And they publicly admitted to not partaking in the news.

The concept blew me away as I had always found myself trying desperately to keep up on things because I didn’t want to be uninformed. Even though I found it exhausting.

But in that moment, I felt like I was given permission.

And if the concept intrigues you, I would like to officially invite you to join me.

Just say no and stop watching the news.

While I know I just lost a bunch of you, let me chat with the rest.

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Procrastination

Ever had a time when you procrastinated and were happy you did?

Yeah, me neither.

Procrastination is intentionally delaying a task we know we must do. And we do it, even when the delay comes with a cost. So why?

I once thought it was because I lacked discipline. Or maybe because I lacked inspiration. I’m not a slacker…or am I?

What I know for sure is it’s not a character flaw. It is not impossible to overcome. And everyone deals with it.

We don’t procrastinate to avoid work; we do it to avoid our feelings.

When we come up against a task that requires effort or one that we don’t think we are going to enjoy, the brain irrupts in all the fear-based bs thoughts to distract us. (sadly it is programmed to do this and we all experience it!)

Thoughts of doubt, lack of competence, inadequacy, fear of failure….

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Abundance

Would you rather earn a million dollars or win a million dollars?

It can be a challenging question for many but somewhere in the answer is the idea of living in an abundant mentality or one of scarcity.

I often ask the question to my clients and I love the answers I get.  Many say they would rather earn it because then if they lost it, they knew they could earn it again.  Others were quick to say, ‘win it!”, because of how they thought it would change their life.

But having a lot of money in your bank account does not equal what I think of as abundance.  Abundance is a mindset.

I look at my parents.  They both were born into rural farming communities in the 20s and the stories I heard were always about humble beginnings and a lot of hard work. Yet they always saw the possibility. My father was a serial entrepreneur, way before that was a thing and I saw businesses take off and businesses fail.

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Self Worth

Where does your self-worth meter sit?

When we unpack our personal problems, I would say 95% of the time it comes down to an issue of worthiness.

Fact is, we are all born worthy. But somewhere along the way, we started to doubt it. We unknowingly allowed a poisonous idea to creep into our brains and it became our go-to thought to explain most anything that went sideways in our lives.

But it was the thought error of a child. That sweet adorable youngster, who didn’t know any better, came to an incorrect conclusion.

That inexperienced young brain wrongly attached the meaning “I am not worthy” to someone else’s actions or words or to a random event.

They were wrong, but it happened. And once the thought was established, that sweet little brain used it again and again until the thought grew legs and became a belief.

We all have areas of our lives where our self-worth meter has a low reading.

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Being Willing to be Wrong

Are you willing to be wrong?

I would guess most of us might have some push back with the idea.

Life seems simpler to understand when we have a clearly defined right and wrong or good and bad. It allows us to have filters so we can quickly make sense of things.

But what happens when we pull those filers out of the depths of our brains and examine them?

This weekend (just for fun lol) I identified a few beliefs I had looping somewhere in the back of my brain.

One was something I knew I was not good at.

One was an observation I had made about myself as a parent.

One was a description of who I was as a person.

For years I had seen them as facts. Observations. But not one of them served me or made my life any better – quite the opposite.

I examined what those beliefs had cost me in the past. I saw how they were currently playing out in my day to day.

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Letting Go

What are you willing to let go of in order to get what you want in life?

I was working with a client one day and used the analogy of a boat.

Many of us build amazing boats, filled with wonderful things. We work on our boats for years and they truly are lovely…but they are tied to the dock of the ‘here’.

We have never taken them out of the harbor, even though we built them so they could sail on the ocean.

We tell ourselves ‘one of these days’ the time will be right.

But for now, we would rather stay in prep mode. We have tried to imagine the future but the water between the dock ‘where we are’ and the shore ‘where we want to be’ seems scary and unknown.

One of my clients was bound to her dock by a story of inadequacy from her childhood. A story about family dynamics and the effect it had on her. She had spent years in therapy and self-analysis and had a very thorough understanding.

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Who Do You Want to Become?

Who do we want to become?

I ask this question to many of my clients. Getting clear on where and what we are striving for always helps us make decisions in the moment.

Understanding the ‘why’ is also important because it give us something to lean into when the road gets bumpy.

I’ve sat with people who want to increase their annual income so they don’t have to worry about money anymore. But when the ‘why’ is so we can stop worrying, chances are we will never find the success we want. When we have created the habit of worrying, having more money will not magically change it or make us happy.

The same reasoning will apply If someone wants to lose 20 pounds so they can stop feeling like a ____(insert jab here). Loosing any amount of weight won’t magically make us love life if we have the habit of negative self-talk and a lack of self-appreciation.

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