Permission to Dream

Are you one of the billions of people who feel there is more to life than this?  There is a common dialogue I hear about why people feel off track and stuck in a life.  It goes a little something like this:

How can we live into our fullest potential when we are living in a world that measures, judges and punishes everything we do? Of course we find ourselves and others living a mediocre life.  We are merely surviving from a place of fear, doing what our fears say.  Fear is running our lives.  Fear is what holds us back from being who we are meant to be.  In turn, we have created a society of fearful robots and treat them as if they are incompetent to keep them fearful and feeling inadequate.  A never-ending cycle of people moving through this world as untapped potential, never growing and therefore miserable with their lives.

Yet we continually search for who we are, but too fearful to step into just that: who we are.

How can we step into who we are and who we want to be when we are scared? When we fear we may not thrive or worse we fear there is nothing out there for us if we do.  We were made to grow.  We are designed to dream, to tap into what lights us up and to uncover our potentials. You know this because you search, you experience moments of feeling totally aligned, you know in every cell of your body there is a whole ocean of this life to dive into.

What if you gave yourself permission to focus on what it is you want?  Allow yourself to day dream about who you are when you experience the feeling of being in alignment and in flow with this life. Focus on what it would be like to become that person.  What would it be like to show up in this world as who you are in every moment?  What would you feel, what would you experience, what does that look like?

 

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Where are the Answers?

What if you already have the answer in you?  What if you are just looking in the wrong places? What if there was a way to find the answers that are tailor made for you?

We all have the answers we need somewhere inside of us.  We each have an internal guidance system, we just don’t use it. This system is just buried underneath stress, the expectations of others and society, pressures we put on ourselves, not to mention the feelings of guilt and shame we hang onto.  All of those things interfere with our internal system and cloud our vision, muffle our hearing and ultimately take us off our path.

So, how do we go beyond the chatter and stories of the mind?  Pause and ask questions.  Questions act to disrupt the chatter and pull you out of states of worry, frustration and confusion. They shift you into a place of pure curiosity, honesty and discovery.  This shift places us beyond the mind and into a space where we find all of the answers that line up with who we are and inspire us into action.

Next time you find yourself stuck, stressed or just a little frustrated, just pause for a moment.  Take yourself away from the situation by taking a short walk, go to the bathroom or turn on some music.  A change in environment helps to accelerate the shift and creates space for the honest answers to come through.  Once you feel calmer, you can begin to ask questions. You will find your answers coming from a different place.  If the situation has been going on for a long time a brief walk or pause may not give enough space.  You may need a day or two before the space is there for you to uncover the answers.  It is important that you not force the answer.  Trust the answer is there and it will reveal itself.

As you practice pausing then asking, you will find it easier and easier to access your internal guidance system.  You will find your life in flow and see life is truly beyond the thoughts and stories of your mind.

 

 

One Question for Big Changes

The New Year confetti has settled and the momentum has fizzled out on your resolution.  Now that we are 2 weeks into the year, it’s time to get real and honest with ourselves.  Look around and you see life somehow returned to the way it was last year.  The resolution you declared with so much passion, the one you swore up and down you were going to stick to no matter what, has been thrown aside like that unwanted Christmas gift.  Every year we make these resolutions, yet they don’t seem to work.  They come in as boldly as the New Year with promise of instant change but somehow they fade away as if they never happened.

There is a reason resolution fade away as soon as the New Year confetti settles.  It is simple when you think about it.  Big, sudden, forced changes do not last.  Just like the big sudden change of your in-laws coming into town and staying with you for the holidays, it’s simply too much stress to last forever.  Another way to look at big changes is to imagine stretching out a rubber band. A rubber band cannot stay stretched unless you continue to put stress on it or that forced stretch will either break the rubber band or frees itself by snapping far away from your fingers.  Resolutions are big dramatic changes and shocks to your reality that cause a great amount of stress.  You didn’t train, lay some groundwork or prepare yourself before the big day.

However, what if there was a way to make big, bold changes in your life this year?  The change you have been promising yourself but always seem to slip out of your grasp.  You can have that kind of change and at the end of the year you will look back to see and celebrate how far you have come.

How?

By taking small, purposeful steps every day.  Small incremental shifts make sustainable changes possible.  One small shift every day, from now until the end of the year will multiply your chances of making your dreams come true.  Think about that for a moment – 1 small shift.  A small step every day to get you from here to the end of the year is easier than attempting to jump from January to December in one giant leap!  Imagine how awesome your life will be after 365 small shift.

If you aren’t sure where to start or what small step to take, allow me to share my secret with you.  This changed everything for me a few years ago.  It is simple and you will get better and faster results than you imagined.  All you need to do is ask yourself a simple question:  What is the next right action I can take? Simple questions produce powerful results.  You do not need to know all the steps or have all the pieces figured out – just do the next right action.  What a relief! I find this especially powerful when I notice I have gone off track.  Instead of beating myself up and stressing myself out, I simply stop, take a deep breath and lovingly ask myself; what is the next right action I can take?  Works like a charm.  Added all up, those little steps build up a ton of unstoppable momentum.

Here is a bonus secret for even faster results.  Every time you do that next right action, celebrate. I like to do a little happy dance when no one is watching (ok I do happy dances even when people are looking)!  Even a smile to yourself is a private celebration.  Whatever makes you feel all warm and fuzzy or excited do it!  Also keeping a daily or weekly journal of all your wins is a great way to celebrate.  Journaling is an awesome practice and you will be able to look back over the year at all the little steps you took that added up to your big change.  Then you will really want to do that Happy Dance.

This year, once the confetti has settled, you have your plan to stay on track.  You are prepared.  You are ready to take on that big, bold resolution: One small, next right step at a time.

 

Happy New Year

It’s a new year. The calendar’s way of reminding us of new beginnings and an invitation to reset.  Another reminder that every day is new and filled with infinite possibility if we choose to see it.  There is nothing in this world that stays the same.

We choose to grow just as we choose to stay stagnant. Every single moment we choose our experiences.  We choose who we are and how we show up in this world.  We choose our experience of this life: the joys, the pains, the connections, the lack, the shame, the love.  Every moment, everyday we get the opportunity to react and to create our experience.

Have you ever walked through life with everything bother you?  We all have at some point.  It feels like the entire world is against you.  All you knew to do was to either fight with it, complain about it or just be angry.  You took all of that in and it got stuck somewhere.  You even started to feel the discomfort of holding onto all those negative energies.  You started looking around, angry at the world and the people in it. You blamed the outside world for all of your inner pain.

The more this life unfolds, the more I see that nothing can stick to me unless I allow it to.  It is my choice to be mad about something.  I alone choose to hold on to that anger when the moment is gone.  It is my choice to also see that the moment is gone, done and complete.  The only thing keeping the anger alive is me.  This may seem a bit crazy to some, but if you give it a look you will see the truth.  The truth that you and I alone create our reactions, our emotions and ultimately how we experience this life.  No one can make your inner emotions, make you react as you do or make you hold on to the thing you hold on to.

This truth is liberating and opens a whole new world to us every day.  Imagine, you, choosing how you experience your life. You can either hold on to the things that appeared unpleasant or you can decide to let that unpleasant thing be fully experienced so it can flow through you then out of you as complete. Now you are open to new experiences.  The very act of holding on keeps us stuck and unable to experience anything else fully and completely.  There are always new experiences knocking at your door, but we are too busy and too distracted with our holding on to see them.  You can’t hold on tightly to something with all you have and expect to have a free hand to catch something new.

Choose to let go.  Choose to be open.  It’s like dipping your open hands into water and allowing yourself to feel its coolness or warmth or the cleansing qualities of its flow.  All of these experiences of water would be lost if you tried to grasp on to it and hold on.  Just like water, life is also in a continuous flow.  Experience the flow, stay open and allow it to flow through you.

The new year is an invitation for us to see each day as new.  We can reset, choose a new experience and flow with life’s infinite possibilities on any calendar day. Go into this new year with an open heart and mind.  Allow yourself to see each and every day as a new opportunity.  Remain open to the flow of life.

 

It’s a Simple Matter of Perspective

Every one of us is unique. Our fingerprints are unique, our family and set of friends are unique combinations. Even the experiences we have and the order of those experiences in this life are unique to us. Yet, as unique as we are as individuals, we all desire to feel the same positive feelings and want similar things from life.  I’ve had the opportunity to work with many people from all over the world and have seen this first hand.  We all experience problems or things that upset us. Each of these with different chains of events, players and circumstances, but there is one thing each of these unique problems has in common.  We are upset because of how we perceive, or interpret, the experience.  It is our perception that says we don’t like it and we aren’t experiencing the feeling we desire.

We go through life presented with many of the same situations. One person is effected by the situation one way while the person right next to them can go through the exact same situation and experience it completely different.  How is that even possible?  Perception is how that is possible.  We each see the situation from a slightly different angle and that shifts the perspective.

Here is an example of this perception shift.  Two people driving down the road suddenly come up on an injured dog.  One person drives around the dog and keeps going about their day.  The second person slams on their brakes, gets out of the car in tears, kneels down next to the dog, and pleads for the dog to be all right.  It is the same situation, yet we have two completely different responses because they each see the dog from a different perspective.

Hmmm. What happened?

The first person was in a hurry to get home to the kids.  The babysitter called saying one of the children was badly hurt because they fell out of a tree.  When the first person comes up on the hurt dog they don’t see that injured dog as important in that moment.  They drive around the dog to get to what is most important to them in that moment, their hurting child.

You can probably guess the second person was the owner of the injured dog.  WOW, that is a completely different perspective or angle to see the situation. That shift in perspective created a deep emotional reaction.

This shift in perspective applies to any situation.  There are as many perspectives and angles to see a situation as there are people on the planet.  From the dog example each perspective was what is was.  Neither perspective was the absolute right or absolute wrong.  Knowing this, you can start to feel relief and begin to see it is possible to see situations, people and even the world differently.  All you have to do is shift your perspective.

Imagine that, a simple shift in how you decide to see a situation can change how you react, change the emotions you feel and can change your life.

I want to share a powerful perspective shift experiment with you.  This experiment is so much fun.  The next time you find yourself thinking or saying, “I don’t want to…” just pause and notice for a few seconds.  Then take a moment and ask yourself, “Alright, if I don’t what that, what do I want?”  Allow your mind to focus on the feeling of what it is you want.  This simple and subtle shift will start to change your perceptions and create a radical difference in your life.  Commit to this for the next 7 days and see what positive shifts happen to your thoughts, emotions, perspectives and in your life.

Everyone I have talked to about the shift loves how it creates positive shift in their relationships, work and even in how they see themselves.  I would love to hear your stories of how this experiment I playing out in your life.   Share this article with your friends, using the links below, so you can have fun with this experiment together.

 

The Distractions of the Past

Psychology has it place in the world.  I love psychology, even have a graduate degree in the subject.  I completely geek out on the study of human behavior, motivation, theories, techniques, cognitive and behavioral modification therapies, well I think you get it.  While psychology can give us a glimpse and help us understand the underlying reasons we behave or think the way we do, it does not necessarily do a great job in helping those of us in our everyday life.  We can spend a whole lot of time breaking down why we did something, or why we think the thoughts we think that led us to the behavior, but if all we are doing is continually looking at the past then we never be able to enjoy our life in the present.

To make truly profound shifts and transformations in any area of life, whether it is business, relationships, financial, and even in your spiritually, you must acknowledge the past for what it is and incorporate what you gained or learned from the experience.  Acknowledge the past as something that it is done, complete and can do nothing to you right now in this moment nor any other moment in the future.  We cannot go back; we cannot make changes to the past. Trust me, I tried to go back a few times and it did not work, it only left me sitting there exhausted, scared, frustrated and embarrassed.

Even though the past is already a done deal, I see it taking over and destroying so many lives, relationships and businesses.  The past is weighing so heavily on people because they keep trying to change it, control it, run it over repeatedly in their mind. They keep it as a focal point and filter for which they live their lives.  Herein lies the danger, because what you focus on will surely grow.  It cannot help but grow because while you are focused on the past there is no room for anything else.

Maybe you don’t focus on the past; perhaps you do everything in your power to resist the past.  You create ways to never repeat the past and avoid it at all cost.  Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but what you resist will continue to persist.  Yes, the past is still a strong focal point even when you are resisting.  It takes a great deal of effort and energy to resist something.   It would be like me telling you not to think about zebras for the rest of the day.  You are not allowed to picture a zebra in your mind today.  What just happened? Are you thinking about a zebra right now?  Well stop thinking about zebras already! Oh wait that is just the resistance thing I was just mentioning.  Resistance and avoidance do not work very well.  This is why just trying to think positive thoughts all the time to avoid negative thinking often backfires.

Here is what I believe.  We must start with where we are right now.  Look around you. Is your life what you want it to be?  If not, what do you want your life to be like or feel like?  Oh, that sounds wonderful!  Get yourself dreaming again, light yourself up, get enthusiastic about life.

Uh oh! Let me guess, you have a voice in your head telling you: you can’t have that, you can’t do that, oh that is selfish, how will you get that done, you don’t have that kind of money, you definitely don’t have the personality, your family would never go for that….

Every single one of those little voices in your mind are nothing more than a distraction. They hold no truth in them whatsoever.  The mind loves to hear itself talk and it loves to tell you that you cant.  But I am telling you that you absolutely can.  If you are still reading this I know you can and have probably gotten over more distractions in your life than others to get you to where you are in life today.

Start where you are right now.  Determine where you are today and if it is not where you would like to be, started taking steps today.  There are infinite possibilities out there waiting for you. You know which ones light your fire and inspire you.  Your past cannot hold you down when you see it as it is, in the past. You are free to live and experience this life in this moment with a clear and curious mind and an open heart.

Stepping Out of the Trap

As I looked back though my personal journal this week, I found an entry from a time I was trying hard to overcome some fears in my life.  As I read the words, they spoke to my heart and reminded me how to keep fear and control in proper perspective so they don’t completely consume, overtake and leave me feeling trapped.

In life, I notice things going off course or not going my way whenever we judge our circumstances, outcomes or people harshly.  When those things don’t go the way we think they should, we then enter into a state of fear and in turn we attempt to force control over the given situation.  I see fear and control as the trappings of our mind that create to feel of quicksand.  The more we struggle and fight with the quicksand the faster and deeper into the trap we go.  Notice the cycle.  The more we judge the situation, person or outcome harshly the more we feel we must control. The more it doesn’t bow down to our control or turn out the way we want, the greater the fear.  When fear enters the picture, we feel trapped and try even harder to control the situation.  We think forceful control will somehow get us out of the state we find ourselves. But more often than not, we only discover that fear turning into panic and then becomes all-consuming.  HMMMM, something seems really off about the logic here.

If I continue doing the very thing sinking me farther into the trap, what can I expect?

Here is where a personal coaching strategy comes in.  If you can catch yourself in the judgement phase great.  This is one of the earliest places we can step out of the quicksand with little damage done.  For some of us, yes, I am included; we still need to go into the fear trap a little deeper before we catch ourselves.  Wherever you catch yourself in the cycle is perfectly fine.  Noticing you are in a cycle to begin with is a giant leap and gets you more than half way out.  This is the point where you finally stop fighting and struggling and become still enough to see what is truly happening.

Standing still in the midst of our judgement or panic and fear may seem counter intuitive, but it is the best step to getting out of the fear cycle.  Just like when you find yourself in quicksand. The minute you get still and stop struggling to get out of it, is the same minute you stop yourself from sinking farther in.  When we slow down, we wisely and strategically make moves necessary to free ourselves from our perceived troubles and fears.  The act of slowing down allows you to see the truth of what is happening around and inside of you.  Once you identify the truth of the situation or expose the trappings in your mind, you can begin save yourself from the trap.

Once you have slowed down, exposed the lies and identified the truth, the rest is easy.  All the other stuff was just a distraction, like a blindfold over your eyes keeping you from seeing where to go next.  With fresh eyes and a clear perspective you are able to see and accept where you are right now.  You have slowed down enough to do a true assessment of the situation and begin to make the most important moves that will give you the greatest progress.

Here is a bullet point version for your personal coaching moments:

1. Notice you are in a cycle of judgement, control and/or fear
2. Slow down – Stop fighting and struggling
3. Stand still for a moment – Know that you are alright, see that fear cannot overtake you
4. Expose the lies in the trap (perceived troubles and fears)
5. Accept where you are
6. See the truth
7. Make the next most important move

My wish for you is to take this out for a test drive this week and let me know how it plays out in your life, work and even in your relationships.

Have a wonderful week.