Tag: Life Coach

Making Everything New Again

As I was sitting down to write I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. As I took another sweet breath of fresh air the thoughts suddenly faded and suddenly I could hear silence.

I heard the tick tock of two different clocks, the distant base of a passing car, the birds happily chirping, and the sound of my own inhale and exhale. Then suddenly more new sounds started to introduce themselves! A skwak of a crow, new cars passing by, a buzz from my phone. And in this new moment I am reminded of a great truth I learned earlier on – every moment is a new moment.

A strikingly simple way to be fully alive and present in the moment is to be still and discover what’s new in this very moment. You’ll suddenly realize you can’t stop! Everything is new all the time. You’ll notice the presence in a completely different way and suddenly you are the observer.

The more you practice this the more you will also realize how many “new” and some times not so new thoughts pass through your mind all the time. But you’ll be so busy noticing what’s new in the moment there won’t be time to indulge. This is the practice.

So give it a shot. Try to experience the present by making everything new again. You’ll begin to feel an expansion in your heart and feel alive in a whole new way… at the aliveness of it all; the pulsation of life.

Here’s to another wonderful week full of new.

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Danka & Peter on Unsplash

Friday Focus – 12/1/17 {Living With Complacency Or Finally Making CHANGE!}

I am beyond excited about a couple of things. For one, it’s DECEMBER. To be honest, I didn’t really feel like it was the holidays just yet. But something hit me yesterday… maybe it was all the neighborhood decorations, the overall mood of this city, or sitting at Starbucks reading Peter Levine’s Trauma and Memory while Christmas music was playing in the background. Either way, I am FEELING IT and excited to give this last month of 2017 100%.

Second of all, it’s Friday Focus and today – I wanted to talk about something that I have been feeling passionate about ALL WEEK. Clearly I have a lot of passion in general these days given the number of CAPS I’ve been using so far in this post 😉

Ok, so for this week’s Friday Focus I wanted to talk about PATTERNS.

Yes, I write about patterns – a lot. But what I want to drive home today, especially since a lot of people will be reflecting on this past year and working on New Year resolutions, is the idea around pattern recognition and why change ensues (or doesn’t).

Can we for one moment have a come to Jesus moment about our patterns? It’s one thing to say, “Oh yea, I kind of do that don’t I?” and grin at your friend, it’s a complete other thing when you actually recognize the pattern and the EFFECT it has on your life and most importantly the outcome.

Which outcome, or area in your life are you unsatisfied with? You see it every single year and yet, no change. Why? No really, WHY?

Scrutinize your patterns. There is an underlying emotion that is prohibiting you from stepping forward and making progress. Did you know that?

Often times, we say we want to make change in our lives and yet, we know deep, deep down we won’t do anything about it. And to be honest, that’s ok.

You see, we have to be completely READY for change to actually happen. No matter how hard you consciously try, if your subconscious doesn’t believe you, then unfortunately change won’t happen.

I actually LOVE telling people this because it’s the wakeup call that everyone needs to hear to A) either come to peace with the complacency and stop the mental shaming or B) grit their teeth and believe it to their bones that they are actually ready for CHANGE.

Isn’t that empowering? I mean, either way…. Now the power is truly in your hands!

Ok, this was sort of a love rant because I truly do care. I mean hey, we’ve all been there where we wanted to see change in one area of our life but couldn’t figure out why. This is one big hint as to why that might be the case!

When you have a moment to reflect, jot down the patterns. See where you are held up, where things aren’t flowing, and try to understand yourself a little more. It’s the one small step toward change you can make today before understanding the type of change agent you need to seek 💗

In deep wellness,

Susan

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

 

Building The Personal Power Mindset

In an earlier post I wrote about personal power and how easy it is to give it away to other people, objects, or simply daily events that happen in our lives.

Today, I wanted to focus specifically on one major way we give away our power so easily, and that is: caring about what other people think.

If you’ve done the 24 hour self realization test you may have noticed this particular theme come up over and over again. Why is it that we care so damn much about what others think? To the point that it actually changes our very own behavior and possibly the trajectory of our path?

Let’s be honest, we’ve all done this at one point or another in the past. Heck, maybe even within the last day!

  • Your baby is uncomfortable and crying on his/her first flight and you’re flushed and embarrassed at the thought of other people being annoyed at you and your baby.
  • You wear something amazing to school or work only to notice someone else is getting much more attention. You decide to keep your jacket on and wear your outfit on another day.
  • You pack your lunch because there’s an important lunch meeting and you notice no one else is eating. You decide to eat later and hope to God your stomach doesn’t growl during the hour.
  • You have an accent and you’re afraid other’s might think less of you so you avoid any job that requires speaking over the phone or public speaking.

The list can go on…

What I’ve noticed a million times over is that people who have this tendency are doing one thing 90% of the time – they aren’t caring enough about themselves.

What’s happening in our brains is that we are already looking outward and caught up in a fear based state of other people’s projection. Now, remember what I’ve said over and over again – with every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. This is power.

If you have a tendency to immediately jump to what other people think, you also have an equal tendency (or the opportunity) to  immediately jump to what YOU care about in yourself.

Instead of caring about what other people think about you, why not care about what you want to do?

  • Why not care about your world for once?
  • Why not care about your voice?
  • Why not care about how your potential failure can lead to future success?
  • Why not care about yourself?

You may begin to feel something shift within you. You may begin to imagine all the times that if you shifted your mindset to caring about yourself first, how empowering this actually feels.

Remember,  no one is actually thinking about you as much as they are thinking about themselves.

Take baby steps to build your personal power. Use the right tools whether they be books, meditation, a spiritual practice, or a coach/therapist to get you along the right path.

Owning your personal power is a birth right and we need as many people (with the truest of intentions) to step into their God given power – your true Light!

In wellness,

Susan

Friday Focus – 10/20/17 {Don’t Let IT Define You}

Labels. Society and humans have created labels as a way to quickly categorize every thing possible including the way we feel. While it is highly efficient to name and label things so that we can go about our lives and continue to evolve, labels can be detrimental to our quality of life.

What I’ve seen time and time again is how a feeling or an event can suddenly be so generalized in the mind that suddenly you are IT. 

For example, you have a prolonged depressive time in your life where you are in a medical condition you wish you didn’t have. Suddenly that moment (or moments) where you felt severely depressed is so generalized you are suddenly “in depression”.

Or how about the few times at work where rushing deadlines and frantic managers have caused an uncomfortable level of anxiety within you and suddenly you believe you “have anxiety”.

This list is endless as you can imagine. Fortunately, through awareness and active monitoring of our thoughts, we can stop the generalization of these moment to moment feelings so that we suddenly aren’t just a label.

Yes, that feeling was real. The event did happen. However, it doesn’t define who you really are.

You are much more than the feeling that lasted a couple of minutes or maybe an hour or two. You are much more than what happened in the past. You are now. You are living and breathing. You are love in this very moment. You are the experiencer of experiences. Not the actual experience.

The power is in your minds, and how freeing is this? To know you always have a choice. To know that if it’s possible to generalize a thought so much so that we become the thought, that we have the same power to go the complete opposite direction and unbecome that very thought in an instant.

Powerful thoughts on this wonderful Friday morning.

In wellness,

Susan

Visualization – Getting To The Truth In Minutes

Have you ever found yourself literally talking to yourself inside your head? Or perhaps talking to yourself, and it’s as if you can’t stop your own voice from thinking?

“I know what I’ll say to her when I see him next time, I’m going to say….”

“That just doesn’t make sense, why would you even think such a thought? It’s not even who you are!”

“Why is this the longest minute ever… and I still need to run another 3 minutes before my next station. Oh I see that it’s still raining maybe I do need to get that new umbrella this season.”

“Why am I having this thought and why the hell can’t I stop myself from thinking?!”

And so it goes on…

If you’re advanced in the mindfulness arena you’re well aware this is your ego, your smaller self.  But what is one to do once you’re aware of what’s actually going on?

One way, as there are several, is the use of NLP. What I love about NLP is the use of customized visualization. You can visualize whatever detail you need to help you get to the truth and today, I will share with you exactly what helps me in this type of situation when I struggle with stopping thoughts whirring inside my head.

Whenever I need to get out of my head and into my heart I drop into the heart space. I go straight to visualizing my living, breathing heart in the flesh. I imagine it’s steady heartbeat, the blood pumping in and out of the main arteries. I see my heart doing what it does automatically and suddenly I feel and know the deeper truth of the moment. It’s as if I stepped down (or up, remember NLP is all about finding out what works for YOU) out of the silliness of my thoughts into something real… the TRUTH.

Now stop and think about what works for YOU. Is it imagining that you’re suddenly in outer space and you can’t hear a single thing? Or maybe it’s visualizing looking into your dog’s eyes and knowing there is a deeper wisdom in those eyes and by looking into those eyes suddenly you are made aware of a deep truth you always knew inside.

You see, visualization is limitless. You just need to find what works for YOU and how powerful is that?

Spend a few minutes today figuring out what works for you. After all, it may save you hours of misery from the mental rat race we so easily find ourselves in if we’re not mindful of our thoughts 😉

In wellness,

Susan

Are You Giving Away Your Power?

Are you? Are you aware of how often you give away your very own power? Are you aware that your power is limitless and no matter how empty you feel, you can feel on top of the world in an instant?

When we aren’t conscious about it, we give away our power in so. many. ways.

Case in point:

  • Someone is rude to you and you feel offended. I mean, how could they?!
  • You’re trying to make a coffee order and the server treats you halfheartedly while smiling enthusiastically at someone else. Really?
  • The customer service rep doesn’t seem to respect your situation. I can’t even…
  • Your boss/client says something in passing and you can’t seem to stop thinking about what they said. What’s wrong with me? Am I a failure?
  • It’s a month into your new diet and the scale doesn’t seem to agree. Why do I feel like a loser?
  • A beautiful, young woman seems to have everything going for her while you happen to be in your rumpy old work out clothes. Don’t go there, don’t go there…

While these may not all apply to you, the point of the examples above was to reflect the ways in which we give away our power so easily. To others, to objects, and yes, even that small anxious voice in our very own heads.

The first step in harnessing our own power is simple yet requires training and discipline.

It’s self realization.

Have you actually tried to count the ways you give away your power in a single day. I bet you’d be surprised at what comes up 😉

Try it! Set an alarm each hour and track the moments of the past 60 minutes in which you felt annoyed, depressed, stressed, or worried. At the end of the day, you may notice an overarching theme or two… or three.

You see, most of the “why’s” in which we give away our power stems from old beliefs or anchored fears. What do I mean by that? Here are a few examples:

  • I’m never good enough
  • People don’t respect me
  • What if I don’t make it?
  • I’m not loveable
  • I’m emotionally weak
  • I appear to be too powerful
  • People don’t listen to me
  • I get sick too easily
  • People always seem to leave me
  • I’m “fat” or I’m “too skinny”

This list can go on forever… that’s how smart and powerful our minds are. If we aren’t careful we can be chasing this wild rabbit for YEARS.

I can’t tell you enough how many people begin to expand their own awareness once they realize what their overarching themes are.

Once you realize what old beliefs and anchored fears are holding you back you begin to step OUT of the story and IN to your own power.

For the most deeply rooted fears and limiting beliefs there are several techniques that can be used to help offset the years of patterned behavior which I hope to write about soon. But for now, try the 24 hour journal. Get to know your self in a way that will change your life forever.

In wellness,

Susan

Approval & Acceptance

Approval and acceptance. It’s such a hard thing to get away from isn’t it?

When you are going about your daily life or making key decisions (that ultimately will change the direction of your life) ask yourself this question: if you need these two from anyone other than yourself to make you “ok” or “happy” are you ready for the roller coaster? And by roller coaster I mean the worst one you can possibly imagine!

Just remember this one thing: to need approval or acceptance from anyone implies there is lack, but how can that be when you’re already perfect?

Once you have accepted this and are willing to change, fundamentally, how you look at approval and acceptance, has begun to change; pat yourself on the back. That is half the battle. However, understanding how human nature and psychology works this new belief now needs to be set in the brain. You must set new patterns to break old ones.

Just as you practiced the old beliefs around approval and acceptance you must practice the new, positive, truer belief around approval and acceptance.

Just remember that change is possible and you are already perfect.

Namaste.

New York

Oh New York, how do I describe you?

I just returned from an intensive diving deep into the world of change work, NLP, unconscious mind training, neuroscience, embodied cognition, and so much more. Having experienced this work firsthand, months prior, undoubtedly allowed me to take these new findings to a whole other level. A level to where I have seen its effectiveness and how my current practice and frameworks are not only compatible, but strengthened with this new information.

Despite having around 3 hours of sleep a night (I blame it on the broken service door on our floor at the hotel. Every time room service needed to access the room, the door would slam shut and rattle all the other doors on our floor! But I digress…?) my energy levels have never been higher! The pure energy one feels when you know you are making an incredible difference in peoples lives is exhilarating.

Thank you to all my teachers, students, colleagues, friends, and to every single person (stranger or not) I met in New York – THANK YOU! Your kindness is mindblowingly heart warming and I can’t wait to be back.

With much love,

Susan