God bless us everyone and every part

When in a bad mood
Especially at this time of year
They may call you Scooge
Insisting on holiday cheer

To make matters worse
You drag out your internal bat
Making yourself wrong
For this and that

Accept all of you and all that you are
No more excuses and no more blame
Turn that bat into kindling
Stoke your internal flame

Hello one and all,

I hope that your cup is still running over and that you are having the happiest of holidays. If you aren’t feeling quite as chipper as you think you should, this week’s blog will be right up your alley. Call it divine guidance or instinct but I was inspired to write about one of this holiday’s infamous characters, Ebeneezer Scrooge and how he lives in all of us. You might say “Bah!” to that statement but the sooner you embrace your Ebeneezer like qualities, the more peaceful you will truly be.

Though this is my favorite time of year, last week a friend of mine called me Scrooge because I wasn’t being my usual happy and jovial self. When I got home that evening I thought of how many times that I beat myself up because I wasn’t the (happy, smart enough, thin enough, pretty enough) person that I thought someone expected me to be. But this time when I was “accused” of not being cheery enough I laughed it off. I was able to laugh it off and remain unaffected by what the person was saying because I am able to love the Scrooge part of me.

As a coach, by asking my clients powerful questions, I help them to uncover parts of themselves that they have been resisting. One of the first steps in this process is to create a list of people (that you know or don’t know) that you don’t like or you would never want to be compared to. The next part is to make a list of that person’s qualities. So when I was called Scrooge I asked myself “what qualities does Scrooge possess”? Selfish, stingy, cruel, clueless, and angry are the qualities that I thought of right off the bat. The next step in the process is to ask “has there ever been a time where I’ve been selfish, stingy, cruel, clueless and angry”? The answer is yes to all of the above. I’ve been them all at one point or another.

You might ask yourself (I know I have) what’s so great about being selfish, stingy, cruel, etc? It takes practice but I guarantee that you will find a gift in that quality that you have resisted. For example, I’ve been selfish and stingy when spending time with my daughter because I do not get the benefit of being with her every day anymore. I’ve been cruel plenty of times to myself. I have lost count of the times I’ve been clueless and of course I’ve been angry. Even if I wasn’t able to recall a certain time where I’ve been these qualities, I have learned that being human and put under certain circumstances will bring out qualities in us that we didn’t know we were capable of.

The other lesson that I learned is that until we are able to accept everything we view as “bad” or “wrong”, we will be stuck and unable to stand in our power, shine in our greatness and share ourselves completely (body, mind and spirit) with the world. Isn’t that the real reason we are all here?

So if you find yourself wanting to say “Bah Humbug!” this season just remember that in order for Ebeneezer to show everyone the truly happy and giving person he was, he had to meet his “faults and misgivings” face to face and make peace with them.

Here’s to a week of decking the halls and loving it all!

Warm blessings,

Mary Laughlin Cunningham
Life Coach/Author/Workshop Facilitator

http://www.life4ce.net/
Where the difference is YOU!

One Cup At a Time

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is way great spiritual giants are produced. – Swami Vivekananda


Hello everyone,

I hope that your week and weekend was filled with peace and relaxation.

This morning I went out to do a little bit of shopping and put myself in the midst of the “holiday rush”. I met everyone I saw with a hello and smile. I was amazed at the people who were stunned by a stranger saying hello and actually smiling at them. While it warmed my heart to connect with strangers, I noticed that most of the people running around were on a mission and not taking the time to stop and enjoy the moment they were in. It was almost like I could see their wheels spinning doing what they needed to get done to get onto the next thing.

When I got home I thought of how often I find myself thinking about the future and what my dreams and goals are for the coming year. I thought about everything that I wanted to accomplish and ended up having to take some deep breaths to bring me back to the NOW moment. In that now moment, I began to make a list of not only what I accomplished during the year but also what I considered an incompletion. After celebrating my completions, I took a list at my incompletions and was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few weeks ago.

We were on the phone talking about our goals for the future and how when we get excited about creating more opportunities that will move us forward in pursuing our dreams we tend to jump in with both feet and find that our energies get scattered across other areas of our lives. That one new thing that inspired us can end up being “just one more thing to do”. He used a beautiful analogy that went like this, “it is like I have all these glasses on the counter to fill and only have a cup of water to fill them all’. If you had 5, 6 or even 10 glasses on that counter, some would contain a few drops, some would have a little more and some would have none. Now, imagine that you could only drink from one of those glasses. Would your thirst be quenched? Would you feel nourished?

In life coaching, I ask my clients to fill out a “life wheel” where they rate certain areas of their lives including spirituality, relationships, career, finances, health, leisure time and home and surroundings. The areas are rated from 1-10 with 1 being the lowest vibration that they are living from to 10 being the highest. Just like the glass analogy used above, if a client chooses to work on more than one area at a time, they might end up feeling incomplete and undernourished from not paying enough attention and focus to just one area. Learning to focus their attention and energy on just one area will bring them to their goal that much sooner. One of their glasses on the counter is now full and overflowing into the next glass.

Your challenge and opportunity for the week is to see how many glasses you have on the counter and ask yourself “what do I need to do or let go of to allow this glass to runneth over”? If you need to put a few glasses in the cupboard, that’s ok. They will be there when you are ready to fill them up!

Here’s to a week of extra nourishment and hydration.



Blessings to all,

Mary Laughlin Cunningham
Life Coach/Author/Workshop Leader
http://www.life4ce.net/
Where the difference is YOU

Stuffing - Let's leave it to the birds...

It’s used in toy bears

And turkey’s too
Let’s take a look then
At the stuffing in you

Hello my dear family,

I hope that you all had a great week and that you are looking forward to spending the upcoming holiday with friends and loved ones.

This week I sat in contemplation around what I have been most thankful for this year. I am thankful for the courage and tenacity it has taken me to discover the real me. It’s been over three years now and the journey continues. While this year has not been easy or comfortable, it has been perhaps the most rewarding to me. I have been presented with the greatest opportunities for growth and I have just begun to uncover what I stuffed down for so long.

Stuffing is fine for toys and turkey but when it comes to a way of life I wouldn’t recommend it. We self sabotage ourselves when we keep our feelings inside of us. Whether the feelings are based on fear or love, we become afraid to reveal our true selves because of what others might think of us. The need to feel accepted and acknowledged becomes so important that we forget who we are and what we want. We hold back because we don’t want to be rejected. I ask you, what’s more tragic? Being rejected by someone or rejecting ourselves?

When we reject ourselves our thoughts and emotions begin to turn toxic. We begin to believe that we are not deserving or worthy of having everything we want in our life. To make ourselves feel better we either compartmentalize or deny what is really going on. We get involved in using stuff on the outside to make the stuff on the inside more comfortable. We overeat, overspend and overindulge creating a vicious cycle of merely surviving and not truly thriving.

What is even worse is that when we fill ourselves with stuffing we cover up the best part of ourselves, our light and our unique gift that is so needed in the world, right now! So my wish for you this holiday season is for the comfort and security that you need to share your innermost selves with those who you hold so close, starting with yourself. Let’s keep the stuffing on the table where it belongs.

I’m so grateful for all of you!

Peace, blessings and warm wishes,

Mary

Who's to blame?

Playing the blame game

There’s never a winner
No matter who it is that’s playing
A saint or a sinner

Hello everyone,

Hope your week was full of excitement and that you all reached a little bit outside of your comfort zones. Because I have spent a lot of time outside of my comfort zone lately, I decided to celebrate and return to one of my favorite places of comfort, the mall!

Walking through those doors at Macy’s, seeing all the fashion, smelling the perfume and looking at all the décor was like returning home for me. I wanted to shop till I dropped, but I was stopped in my tracks. The only item in my wallet that was plastic was my driver’s license. I wanted to celebrate and be happy that I was no longer living on credit but instead I felt frustrated and a bit depressed. I wanted to be able to shop, to get that fix that used to feed me. The frustration turned into a little bit of anger which quickly turned to blame.

Let’s see, who could I blame for not being able to shop? First, I could blame the credit card companies who charge outrageous interest rates making it next to impossible to EVER pay them off. Second, I could blame my parents for never teaching me the importance of saving money and lastly I could have blamed my ex-husband for not helping me out with my serious financial issue forcing me to close all my accounts and start paying off my debt all on my own. If I let myself stew in this self pity any longer, I am sure I could have come up with more people and events to blame for my inability to get things. At this point, the “old” me may have just decided to be pissed off and leave the mall casting blame and judgment on whomever I thought deserved it. Though it seems like I was immersed in this blame game for what seemed like hours, in reality it lasted only for a few minutes.

Because of the inner work that I’ve done, two things happened next. The first thing that I did was take a second to acknowledge the part of me who was selfish and pouted when she didn’t get what she wanted. I found the girl inside of me that wanted the golden goose and wanted it now! I took a minute to sit down on a bench in the mall, close my eyes and talk to her. I explained that while we may not always get what we want, we will always have what we need and that anytime she wants to throw a tantrum, I’ll be there to listen. After taking a deep breath, I stood up and continued to walk about the mall, taking in the people, the beautiful decorations and the lovely clothes, shoes, bags, all of it. It felt good to not need any of it and just enjoy the scenery.

The lesson that I learned at the mall was that sitting in judgment and blaming others keeps us stuck in the past and we end up giving our power away to something outside of ourselves. It becomes almost impossible to move forward and take action. It is something like saying “well he/she/they/it did this to me so there is nothing I can do about it.” With that frame of mind we become stagnant and our choices become very limited. The only way that we can stop looking back and start looking forward is to take full ownership of our part in whatever the situation might have been. When we do this, we are able to move through life with open arms, eyes, ears, heart and minds creating limitless opportunity.

Next time you find yourself wanting to blame someone or something take a step back, a deep breath and see what part you played in the game. What are you willing to do to turn around the blame, own the game and create a winning outcome, not just for you but for everyone involved?

Wishing you a week of endless possibility and discovery!

Me...Me...Me!

Time spent wracking our brains

Trying to figure out who we’re supposed to be
The most important thing to remember
Is that it’s not you, it’s me

Greetings all,

Thank you for all your kind comments on my blog last week. I hope you were all able to sit in gratitude for all that you do have and that you took some time out just for you. This week the focus is on ME time.

Many of us rush through our days busy with our careers and our families forgetting to take time out for ourselves. We are faced with daily responsibilities and before you know it, the homework is done, the dishes are cleaned and then it’s time to collapse into bed ready to start it all over again in seven or eight hours, if we're lucky enough to give ourselves that much rest.

Some of us haven’t learned to take the quality ME time that we need every day. Perhaps we grew up learning to please others or we were afraid that we’d be called selfish if we took time out for ourselves. For many years, I struggled with being called selfish. I was taught, as many were, that being selfish is bad and not right. Being selfish to a lot of people means only thinking of themselves without regards for any other person. I do believe if taken to extreme, being selfish will rob you of your true purpose in life. Perhaps a step to getting closer to your true purpose is to accept that on some level you may be seen as selfish because you know how to take care of your body, mind and spirit first before being of service to others. You make it a daily practice to fill your own container of self worth and love so that it overflows out into your world. It is not only important but imperative to learn how to do this. Robbing yourself of self care can lead to resentments, anger and just plain exhaustion.

Whether it’s through exercise, reading, writing, listening to music or just sitting still, we all need some time each day to recharge our batteries. This week I encourage you to take a few minutes each day just for you. Find something that fills you with joy. See if you can start with just 2 or 3 minutes and then add a minute each day allowing more serenity into your life.

And if you are worried about seeming selfish when taking time for you, take the advice of any flight attendant and “put on your oxygen mask before assisting another.”

Breathe it in…

Less is More

Remember the saying

He who dies with the most toys wins
I think it is due time to examine our values
To wake up and realize
He with the highest of scores
Is he who has learned that needing less
Gives you so much more

Hello everyone,

I hope that you all had a safe and fun Halloween. I was able to volunteer in my daughter’s classroom for part of the day and what a gift and treat that was for me. It reminded me of the simple things in life and that it is possible to have a great time without affecting my checking account. As I sat in this moment of “some of the best things in life are free” I decided to share my thoughts around money and what I’ve learned this week.

Due to the state of the economy, we have all had to cut back and reduce our spending. We’ve had to cut corners and some have even had to make very difficult decisions such as home foreclosure and filing bankruptcy. One of my greatest secrets that held so much shame was the amount of credit I had racked up. I became one of the statistics that was living on credit and was in denial about the damage that it could do. Not only did being in denial and hiding this shame create issues with my credit report, but it caused some irrevocable damage to a certain relationship in my life. I am not writing this blog to talk about my shame and how I kept it hidden. That’s a whole other story in itself. Instead today, I am going to write about the gift of this shame.

The gift I have been given is the gift of making new choices and finding the pleasure in little things and yes, living with less than what I was used to. I was used to being able to buy what I wanted when I wanted. Shopping was my addiction and in order to break that addiction, I had to sign up with a debt management company and get rid of all my credit cards. I can now celebrate living within my means and not using credit cards for over a year now. Though this hasn’t always been fun or easy, living with less has given me so much more. I have learned to take better care of my things and appreciate what I have. And now when I treat myself every once in a while to a nice meal or even a delicious latte, I savor the moment and not take it for granted. I make sure to hang up my clothes after work or after they come out of the dryer and when I go to bed at night, I am grateful for the roof over my head and the bed I have to sleep in along with so many other priceless things, my family, my friends, my community and the list goes on.

It has been said that there is a purpose for everything under heaven and maybe the purpose for the economy crisis is to teach us how to live in appreciation and gratitude for everything that we do have.

Food for thought (thoughts are free after all)…

With respect and humility,

Mary Laughlin Cunningham

Surprise!

“…this is more about our life plans and how we make them…but if we’re really honest with ourselves, many of our plans don’t work out as we hoped…so instead of asking what are my plans for the future maybe we should tell ourselves, plan to be surprised.”


The above paraphrased quote was from a movie “Dan in Real Life”. Our character Dan was talking about life plans and how they don’t work out as we had thought we wanted.

How many times have you made plans only to find out that what actually happened wasn’t anything that you had expected? I think one of the great paradoxes of life is that we make plans with the best of our intentions, yet life has a way of showing up and giving us something different. We find ourselves asking “how did I get here?” I know that in the last couple of months, I have asked myself that very question. Sitting in the space of “what the heck happened?” you have two choices, either to react or act.

Reacting, in my opinion, is focusing on what didn’t happen instead of being in the present moment to what life wants you to experience. We stay in resistance to what is in front of us and rack our brains by going over and over, step by step, what we could or should have done differently. Reacting gives us an opportunity to point the finger and blame other people, places and things for the circumstances that now exist. It also keeps us stuck in the past unable to let go, accept what is and move forward. Resentment starts to build up keeping us closed off to seeing new opportunities and possibilities.

Choosing to act is another term for taking action. When we decide to take action, we see things as they are, not how we wanted or expected them to be. Instead of focusing on what went “wrong”, we learn to find the lessons by uncovering, integrating and accepting ourselves and how our choices and free will contributed to the experience. We sit in acceptance, chalk it up to “life happens” and take away the gifts, moving forward ready and willing to see something new. We go with the flow instead of padding desperately upstream.

I am a firm believer that the Universe has greatness planned for all of us. Part of that greatness lies in how we act or react to the surprises that show up in our life. So next time you find yourself surprised or when your life show’s up in the middle of your best laid plans, will you act or react?

And when you are sitting in the place of “what happened here?”, always remember what John Lennon said “life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans”.

Wishing you a week full of surprises!







Boo!

Shadows and Addictions - BFF's

Hello all,


Each week, I usually start my blog with a short poem that I wrote. Due to the subject of my blog this week, I chose this quote instead:

“We move in our recovery from one addiction to another for two major reasons: first, we have not recognized and treated the underlying addictive process, and second, we have not accurately isolated and focused upon the specific addictions.” - Anne Wilson Schaef, Ph.D.

As most of you know, the coaching work that I’ve emerged myself in for over three years now focuses on the shadows that lie within each of us. I ran across this description of the shadow recently which states:

“Hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself, both good and bad, which the ego has either repressed or never realized. They are rejected aspects of ourselves and also underdeveloped potential. Jung said our shadow is 90% gold.”

The only thing I would change with the above quote would be the words “both good and bad.” I would replace those words with both light and dark. The reason is because we have both light and dark qualities of ourselves that we keep locked down and hidden. Because we aren’t able to be with these qualities, we will do whatever it is that we need to in order to remain unconscious of what lies within us. We seek solace in external comfort by using food, work, people, money, alcohol, drugs and whatever else it takes to get through another day. After awhile these “things” on the outside turn into addictions. Some may think that the longer we live on the outside of us, the deeper the addiction may be. What I do know, by my own experience, is that until we are able to uncover, accept and integrate those parts of us that we are hiding, it is quite possible that we will move from one addiction to another.

Addiction is not just about drugs and alcohol, even though that is what most people associate it with. That is what I used to think. To better understand addiction, the first thing I did was look up one of the definitions for it which describes it as being “the condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied or involved in something”. This may be presumption but I am fairly sure that we have all, at one point in our lives found ourselves compulsively occupied with something. I know that I’ve experienced addiction around diets, relationships and spending sprees to name just a few. When I become compulsively occupied in any of these situations, it is usually because there is something inside of me that I am either unaware of or am too afraid to deal with. I am not an expert on addictions but I do believe that no matter what your “poison” is, it can rob you of your passion, your soul and your life. Therefore, it is important to understand where our addictions come from first before we can start to get control of them.

Do I think that our addictions will go away if and when we are willing to look inside of ourselves and uncover something we have yet to see? Because we are humans I don’t think we can ever rid ourselves of whatever addictions we might be suffering from. However, if we are willing to do the internal work to unlock that which is in us that we don’t think we can handle or be with, that will be one small step to enlightenment and one huge step for living your life as the extraordinary being that you are!

I keep you all in my thoughts and prayers. Thank you for being you.

Have you ever woken up

And pulled the sheets o’er your head
Not wanting to get up
And face the day ahead

What is it you’re afraid of
This could be your best day yet
Throw the covers off your body
Invite in the light, let go of regret

Happy Fall everyone,

Can you believe that we’re into November? Where has this year gone? It feels like yesterday was the beginning of the year and now we are approaching the end. Since fall is the time for gathering and harvesting, I thought this would be the perfect week to talk about what it is that you’ve planted this year and what it is that you would like to be harvesting.

My year has been a bit insane but there is so much I am grateful for. At the beginning of the year, I planted some unexpected seeds in a barren garden bed. Doing my own internal work provided the soil with plenty of nutrients so when it was time for harvest, the healthiest and richest part of me surfaced and is now ready to be plucked from the ground and integrated into my soul. This healthy and rich part of me comes down to one word, responsibility. While I have been responsible in some areas of my life, it was very clear that I was very irresponsible with others. The harvesting of my heart and soul has shown up as me taking responsibility for all areas of my life and doing something every day (ok almost every day) that is new and different and that sometimes scares me.

There have been days where I don’t know where I get my strength from but one thing I can say for sure is I have NEVER felt more alive than I do right now. Just last night I opened up to a dear friend of mine and what I shared had me feeling very vulnerable and scared to death. I was scared because I knew that what I was sharing could freak them out but I also knew that if I didn’t share my authentic self, not only would I be robbing that person of really knowing my heart, but more importantly I would be robbing myself of fully living.

As I sat down to write this blog I thought “Sure we all know what we need to do to survive and exist but do we know what we need to do to fully experience being alive?” Is it recognizing, integrating and celebrating our beliefs, thoughts and feelings instead of using some external agent (work, tv, food, sex, exercise, drugs, alcohol, etc) to numb out? Is it being true to ourselves first and figuring out what feeds our soul instead of selling out to who others want us to be? I don’t think there is one right question to find all your answers. Maybe it is a gathering of powerful questions that will help you to listen to what your body, mind and spirit are telling you.

As the days get shorter and the evenings longer, I encourage you to take an inventory of what you have harvested this year. Is it more of the “same ol’, same ol’? If it is more of the same, ask yourself “have I fully lived each and every day to the BEST of my abilities this year”? If the answer is no, you might want to take a look around on the inside to see what shifts you would need to take in order to create your best year yet. We have ninety-five days left this year, let’s make them all count! Are you with me?

Wishing you a bountiful harvest full of gratitude and peace.

What are they thinking?

Putting a priority on what others think

Offers us no more than grief
And saps our energy and power
But what matters most is what we think of ourselves
Because for what anyone thinks of us
Is their business and none of ours

Hello all,

I hope last week was filled with lots of breathing space for you. I made sure to follow my own advice this week and create the space I needed to reflect and spend some time reading and writing.

As you may know, I get a lot of my blog ideas from things I may have read or from conversations I have had with others. A recent conversation I had with a girlfriend of mine was around how, as humans, we have the tendency to put a lot of value on what others think about us. That had me thinking a bit about how much time and energy we waste worrying about what to say, what to do or who to be so other’s will think highly of us. We walk on eggshells around certain people in our lives in fear of being ourselves and speaking and acting from our hearts. Well guess what, no matter how good we get on walking lightly on those eggshells, they are going to think whatever they want and we have no way to control that.

Now does that mean that I think that we should do, say and be whoever we want without taking anyone’s feelings into consideration? Not really. But first, I think we need to examine why we do, say and be who we are in our interactions with others. What part of ourselves are we feeding and giving our energy to? Are we putting on a mask so we don’t expose who we really are, or are we coming from that place of authenticity that exists within all of us?

Now you might be thinking, how do I know when I am being authentic? There are several definitions of the word but I think it comes down to knowing who your true self is, and acting as much as you can from that place within you. I further believe you arrived into this world as your true self who was pure love and light energy filled with wonderment, emotions, excitement, inspiration and kindness.

This week, I encourage you to pay attention to your interaction with others and ask yourself the question “am I being authentic and my true self or am I more concerned with what they think and who they think I need to be?”

Wishing you a week of great interaction with yourself and others.

Breathing Space - Do you have enough?

It’s easy for us to get caught up
With life’s crazy pace
Do we stop and take notice
Of our breathing space?

This week’s blog was inspired by a conversation I was having with a friend this week. We were talking about our recent experiences and where we were in life. Being the friend I am, I asked him if he was satisfied with his life. His response that followed had me asking “so would you say that you are breathing but not truly living?” He told me that was a good way to put it. He has learned to compartmentalize certain feelings in order to comfortably sustain his place in life. I know that he is not the only one who has done this. I know that I have and I’m pretty sure at one point and time most people have.

That had me thinking, maybe we take breathing for granted because it is easy and not something we have to think about. In this day and age, we have so much going on it’s nice to know that we don’t have to think about one other thing. But just for the few minutes that it takes for you to read this, I am going to ask you to pay attention to your breathing. Where is your breathing right now? Is it slow, deep and relaxed or is it quickened and shallow? Stop right now and notice where it is, just notice it, don’t try and change it. Was it what you expected?

The next question I have might not be so easy to answer. The question is this. Are you living and breathing? The good news is that we don’t forget to breathe but do we forget to live? Live as is experiencing the present moment, live as in keeping open to all the possibilities that lay before you? For most of us, including me, it’s not easy to live each day to the fullest but is there one thing you can do this week to get closer to living just one day or even just a few hours filled with inspiration and passion? What is that one thing? This is what I will ask myself every day this week. How about you?

Here’s to a week with lots of breathing space and making the most out of it!

Sharing the light with all of you,
Mary

Living Inside Out

Some use external resources
This is the path they’ve taken
But as Carl Jung so eloquently wrote
Those who look outside dream
Those who look inside awaken

Dear Ones,

Hope you had a blessed week of going with the flow and living in the unknown. This week I’m going to start with a story that was told by Wayne Dyer in his latest PBS Special “Excuses Be Gone”.

There was a story about an old woman who lived in the Himalayans. Every day she would walk to the river to sit and rest. In her hand she carried a bag that held bread in case she was to get hungry. On this particular day at the river, she saw a shining rock at the bottom of the shallow riverbed. She fished out the stone realizing that not only did it take up the whole palm of her hand, but that this was not a stone but a precious jewel and could bring her anything she wanted in the world. She dried the stone and put it in her bag and went on with her day.

One day, a man approached her exclaiming that he had been traveling for a while and was hungry and asked if she had something to eat. She willingly took a piece of bread and handed it to him. While she was doing this, he noticed the stone in her bag. He said to her “that is a beautiful stone, may I have it?” She said “of course”, reached in her bag and handed him the stone. He held the stone in his hand knowing that all of his problems were solved as now he would have all the abundance, wealth, success, etc that he’s always dreamt of.

The next day, the man found the woman again sitting at the river. He came to return the rock to her. When asking him “why would you return such a precious jewel to me?” He told her, “what I want is more precious than this jewel could ever be, what I want is whatever that you have inside of you to offer me this stone”…

When I heard that story my eyes glassed over and I thought “yes”. I also began to think about how so many of us, including myself, put so much value on things, situations and even people that are on the outside of us. It used to be the only way I knew how to live.

Not until I started training as a life coach did I really see the importance of how we feel and what we belive about oursevles on the INSIDE is what shapes our realities and that while we could make sure that our lives appear pefect and happy on the OUTSIDE by acquiring the perfect job, the perfect mate, great clothes and a nice car, until we are willing to get still, quiet our minds and learn to look inside ourselves, we most likely will be left wanting. I’ve even found myself doing hundreds of affirmations, writing unlimited journal entries, buying bookshelves of self help books and attending dozens of seminars in order to find the answer that I thought I needed to get me to where I wanted to be in life. While yes, in a few of these workshops and books I learned to look inside of myself, I would find myself falling back into old patterns whenever it started to get uncomfortable to be quiet and still and start to delve into the depths of my existence. Action steps became too hard because it meant that I was going to have to face parts of myself that I thought were too scary or even worse, people wouldn’t like me and I would be left alone which would mean that I would really have to face my biggest fear, how I really feel about myself. It wasn’t until just last week that I realized I was going “half-way” with my coaching because it kept me safe and I didn’t have to really put myself out there.

In order to go full tilt and make my dreams a reality, I am going to have to go inside even more and uncover whatever limitations and beliefs are still there that continue to hold me back. I have decided to document this process not only in writing but also through a video blog that I will share on my weekly blogs and on my website. This will be my first step in getting out into the world and it is with hope and intention that other people will join me in the process of transformation and illumination.

I am grateful for all of you and look forward to being on the journey of transformation with you.

The light in me cherishes the light in you,

Do you really want to know

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a crystal ball
To show us which way we need to go
But the Universe gives us the gift
Of being with “I just don’t know”

Dear Ones,

I hope you all had a great week of being in the moment and experiencing your life.

As many of you know, I am going through some major life shifts. There have been so many days where I wake up wondering where life is going to take me next. I’ve considered consulting a psychic for guidance and find myself on some days asking my friends for advice. While it’s important to get validation for my decisions, I am ultimately the only one who can decide if what I’m doing is right for me. What is even more important is being comfortable with not knowing where life might be taking me.

It’s funny, I’ll be at work and I will hear people get frustrated when they ask someone a question and the answer they get back is “I don’t know”. Is that because none of us are comfortable with not knowing? Is it because we have set expectations that we should know? Of course, it’s important to know what we’re doing when it comes to work and often I might say “I don’t know but let me see if I can find out for you”. It’s just another form of being in service to others. But on the other side of the coin, if more people were ok with living in the unknown, would that make things easier for them?

Debbie Ford, my spiritual teacher and mentor says that “knowing is the boobie prize.” We can make plans and set goals for our lives but I think by needing to know what is going to happen can set us up for disappointment. It can also limit us to what we can accomplish. If we are set on needing to know what is going to happen, we pigeon hole our possibilities. It’s important for us to make plans and set goals that will help us to become who we were meant to be in our lives, but it is equally important to being ok with not knowing what the specific outcome might be. By sitting in the not knowing-ness of it all, we open ourselves up to unlimited possibilities. When we do this, we can ride the tide with the flow of the Universe and stop exhausting ourselves swimming upstream and trying to control our outcomes.

So here’s to a week of unlimited possibilities and not knowing where we are all going to end up.

Cleaning up our mess

As we move through life
There is much to address
Instead of leaving our trash behind
Let’s clean up our mess

Hello everyone. We are half way through summer, can you believe it? I hope you are all staying cool and remembering to stay hydrated as well as helping to keep children and elders hydrated.

Last week, I wrote about learning lessons as we navigate our way through life. This week I’ll be touching on the lessons we learn as children and pass on when we have kid’s of our own. One lesson that I am constantly teaching my daughter is that of reminding her to leave her surroundings the way she found it which includes cleaning up after herself. Just yesterday as we were leaving, I asked her to put her toys away in her room and pick up the blanket she had left on the floor. When we got in the car and were leaving I thought of the type of example I am being to my daughter. Do I pick up after myself when she is around me and more importantly what other messes in my life do I need to clean up to be the best mom I can be?

Many of us have “messes” that may not be seen by others. These could be considered secrets or shame that we might be holding to and we don’t want anyone to know about. These are things in our lives that we might not want to face in terms of our finances, our health, our relationships, our personal and professional lives. You can consider these issues “clutter of the soul” and until you clean up the mess around those areas, your soul will not be free to help you be the best person you can be and shine your light and special gifts to the world.

I have a lot of clutter around my relationship with money and how I manage it. So this week I will finish the budget chart I set up on my computer and will keep accurate records of where I spend my money so that I can start to clean out the mess around this situation which will be the first step in regaining and maintaining a healthy relationship with money.

What can you do this week to help clean up your mess? Do you need to make that doctor’s appointment you’ve been putting off, spend more time with your children and loved ones, or perhaps you need to have a conversation with a co-worker, spouse or friend that you’ve been putting off until later. Whatever it might be, you will feel better once you’ve started to clean up your personal clutter and it will trickle down to other areas of your life that will open up more space for you. Consider it a small but important step in helping clean up the collaborative mess that we’ve all created.

Here’s wishing you a week of getting rid of clutter and letting go of what no longer works for you or serves your best interest.

Life's Lesson Plan

We’ve had our share of heartbreak
Even say we’ve been burned
Instead of wondering what went wrong
Look for the lessons learned

Hi friends. I hope last week was filled with moments of gratitude and abundant blessings. Last week, I introduced you all to Shelly who is fighting for her life against a rare form of cancer. We are keeping her in our prayers and are keeping hope and faith alive that she will beat this and be one of the greatest success stories ever told.

Unfortunately, not all people dealing with life altering situations make it through their struggles. At some point in our lives, we have all experienced loss of loved ones, jobs, friends, relationships and some of us have even lost ourselves along the way. Sometimes we feel so much heartbreak we aren’t sure if we can go on. We ask ourselves why it had to happen and try to make heads and tails of our lives.

Any type of loss is a sort of “death” in our lives. What I mean by this is that when we suffer any type of heartbreak we go through stages of anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It’s important to remember that these stages don’t necessarily appear “in order” and that even though you’ve started to accept the situation you may still experience depression, anger, denial and bargaining again. One day you may find yourself waking up really angry and can’t figure out why. Eventually you connect it to your experience of heartbreak and may say to yourself “wow, I thought I was over it”.

You’ve heard the sayings, “there is always a silver lining” and “the gold is in the dark”. These sayings are to remind us that even when we experience heartbreak and loss, there are important lessons for each of us to learn. I recently heard in an interview done with Louise Hay that once we think we learned the lesson, it will come back to us at least one more time to see if our reaction to that lesson has changed. In a movie that I just watched tonight, I was reminded that these events, however traumatic, make us who we are and often remind us of our compassion and our ability for forgiveness which helps to open up our hearts.

So maybe we will never completely be over the loss and heartbreak in our lives, but once we learn what was specifically laid out just for us from the Universe, we will be able to move forward and be well prepared for the next lesson that comes along and will face those lessons with more courage, love and strength than we had before.

Wishing you a week of opportunity.

Teach Your Children

Value, ethics and love all start in the home
We can’t always be where our kids will roam
But what we can teach
Instead of scarcity and lack
What it means to live abundantly and give back

Hello all. I hope you had a good week and that this week is starting out well for you.

As my poem states above, values, ethics and love start in the home. Unfortunately, with the stress that many people are under and with the programs that have been taken away from our schools, our children end up being the ones who suffer. Many times we sit and wonder how we are going to pay the bills and make sure our kids have enough food on the table, not to mention having enough left over for after school programs and events that help our kids with social skills while teaching them the importance of giving back to society. We do all we can for them and yet sometimes we end up falling short or wishing we could do more but aren’t sure how one person can make such a difference.

One of my goals as a coach is to provide guidance and support to kids so that by the time they finish high school, they have such a strong sense of themselves, they will go out into the “real” world with confidence and the ability to do anything their heart desires while knowing the importance of gratitude and giving back. Yet, I too get stuck with wondering how I am going to do this, what additional schooling will I need, who I should contact, the list goes on. So many times, I dream about how cool it would be to be able to do this instead of doing the research needed to make this a reality. And then suddenly this week, I stopped knocking on the door of “how” and looked to the open window that was called opportunity.

A few days ago, I was introduced to a like-minded soul who is giving back to humanity through his music. I have been told many times that I have a knack for connecting people to one another. A conduit of such, so this week my way of giving back and contributing to the greater good is to introduce you to Christopher Milo Productions, a musician and crew that is dedicated through music to help a 5 year old beautiful angel by the name of Shelly. Shelly is suffering from a form of cancer called Neuroblastoma. You can see more of Shelly’s story at www.christophermilo.com. I have spoken a few times with Christopher and I told him that I would share his mission in my blog and ask that everyone that reads this to say a healing prayer for Shelly and to pass on the information to keep the prayer circle going. That’s all we’re asking for is one minute out of your day to say a prayer for Shelly. If you aren’t the praying type, please send out healing energy to Shelly and all who are in need of it.

As the days run into each other this week, please take time out to bring yourself and the world healing energy. Think about it, if all people that read this blog focus on healing energy and then share that with others, what a difference it can make.

Here’s to a week full of inspiration and contribution (remember that doesn’t have to involve money) J

Problem Solved

We are faced with problems
And we wonder what to do
What if solving the issue
Is to first admit that the problem is you?

Hello all. How did you do with letting go of some of your control last week?

I realize that this week’s topic might rub some of you the wrong way and the first four lines of this blog have caused you to close your email and delete this. I hope that it peaks your curiosity enough to keep you reading. I am bringing about this subject because of an email that I received this week that partially read: It's really a nice day when you can sit by yourself and not have any problems. When you do that, then you'll find out that you were also the source of your problems. And all the people you blamed for being your problem, were only reflecting to you your state of imbalance.

That statement made me take a hard look at what I see as problems in my life and challenged me to see my so called issue’s for what they are. We all have many challenges and situations that we see as problems and we rack our brains to try to find solutions. Instead of looking to ourselves, we look around for things and people that we can place blame on. When we do this, not only do we bring in more negative energy but we give up our power to those very things and people that we believe have brought on our grief. As the above states, these people and things are just reflections of ourselves where we could be “out of balance” with ourselves. I prefer talking about being in harmony with ourselves, but for the cause of this blog, either one works.

In coaching, we discuss different areas of your life; there are several including relationships, career, play and fun, health and wellness, finances and a few others. While I think that we won’t have a balance of all of these at one time, I think that we can create harmony in all of the areas of our lives by first accepting what is not in harmony or what we see as being “out of balance”. So when a situation in your life comes up and you quickly decide who and what is to blame for your problem, try and take a step back and see where you might feel out of balance with yourself about that situation. If it is someone at work that annoys you, maybe you need to create a shift in the area of your life around career. Just like if you and your spouse or significant other can’t stop arguing about money, maybe there is something you are feeling about your financial place in your life that you haven’t seen yet.

For this week, when I start to blame something or someone for what I see as a problem, the first thing I am going to do is take a step back and see where I may be out of balance or harmony with parts of my life and then see what new opportunity there might be for me in seeing something new and different about myself that I hadn’t seen or wasn’t willing to see before. What will you do differently?

What are you trying to control

To accomplish our dreams
We set up our goals
Is one of your first steps
To give up control?

Peaceful greetings to one and all. I hope that you had a great week and that you are continuing down your path that was meant just for you. We all have our own paths to walk down. Some of us walk down the path that has been set out for us and some decide to blaze their own trail. Whichever one is right for you is for you to decide. One thing I am almost certain of is that whatever path we choose, from time to time we set out personal goals for ourselves in regards to our jobs, our families, our future and ourselves.

Some of us give up our goals when what we set out to accomplish doesn’t work out they way that we think they should have. I know that in the past when I had set up a goal and it was too hard or it took too long or it was just too much work, I would give up and start over again. There were those times where I would “white knuckle” it, holding on to the control I thought I had of the situation. I find that when I “white knuckle” life and try to hold on to it, I am faced with struggle and sometimes unhappiness because what I thought I wanted didn’t happen the way I thought I wanted it to.

I think that we limit ourselves when we try to control the outcomes that we strive for. We limit ourselves by seeing the outcome as only one way. Sometimes we even dig our heels in pounding on that proverbial door that never opens and we are so busy trying to control it, we don’t see the other door that just opened wide for us. It’s been said that when you make a plan, God laughs. It was John Lennon who wrote in his song Beautiful Boy “life is what happens to us when we’re busy making other plans”.

This week, while making my plans and setting my goals, the first guidance from my spirit guides I will be asking for is to let go of the control and show me opportunities I may not have seen before if I had held on to tight to the control I thought I needed. What is it that you may need to let go of?

Wishing you a new week of endless opportunity…

When Life Isn't What We Want It To Be

Life experiences, they say
Are the best teacher
And it’s usually the negative ones
When we become the seeker

I hope that you all had a great week last week. A good friend of mine had called and she’s in a very dark place right now. She had requested to be removed from the mailing list because she was having a hard time seeing the positive out of the negative events in her life. Don’t get me wrong, she has a lot of, to be blunt, crap be throwing at her right now and I don’t blame her in the least for where she is. It got me thinking about how sending bright and positive messages out in the world might not be what is always needed. In the coaching work that I do, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows; it can get very deep, very negative and very dark for some. However at the end of that dark path, the light starts to shine and the lessons that are taken away are nothing short of amazing and the most incredible part is that the person travelling down that path finds their own answers and their own way.

Negative and traumatic experiences that rock our place in this world, I believe, are necessary in order to knock us off balance, wake us up and make us take a look around. A few days ago, I received an email message that read:

We learn from our experiences in this world, and we often learn most effectively from the negative experiences. It's not necessary, but sometimes when things are going well, we tend to get a little complacent and a little sluggish in our approach to life. Then something comes in that upsets us, that shakes us up, and we may stop taking things for granted…

There was a little more to the quote but the part that spoke to my heart was the last line about how we may stop taking things for granted when all is going “right” in our life. This being said, I’m not wishing any of you trauma and grief but maybe, just maybe, the trauma that shakes us up is exactly what we need in order to take us where we need to go…down our paths, feeling our way through the dark times so we can be even more grateful when the light shines again.

Find Your Spark

Three legends left the earth last week
Lives of legacy, they left their mark
What a great reminder for all of us
To find our uniqueness, to find our spark…

How was your week last week? I hope that you were able to get in touch with that spirit within you that encourages you to being the greatest you there is.

We lost some legendary celebrities last week. Say what you will about these three who are now among the angels; they all brought a unique spark. Ed McMahon and his “here’s Johnny” voice, Farrah Fawcett and her signature hair and Michael Jackson and his talent to light up a stage and entertain with his voice and dance moves. It got me to thinking about how each and every one of us has a unique talent and some of us might not know yet what that talent is and other’s might be afraid to find that talent and let it shine.

So, for this week, I am sending along a poem written by Marriane Williamson that begs to ask us what stands in the way of us of finding that spark inside that is aching to be released.

"We fear that we are inadequate, but our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be these things? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people around you won't feel insecure. We are all meant to shine as children do. We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically releases others."—Marriane Williamson, from 'A Return to Love'.

After reading that poem, I hope that you are inspired to find your own special spark and go out into your world encouraging others to do the same.

A Conversation on Spirituality

We all experience times of
Sadness and grief
When you are feeling lost
What’s your belief?

First of all, I would like to wish each and every dad out there Happy Father’s Day. I hope you had a restful day filled with love and relaxation.

I wasn’t sure about this week’s blog on spirituality. When people hear the word spirituality, it is often associated with religion and for so many that is such a sensitive topic. Today, I ask that you read this blog with an open mind and heart and be willing to see spirituality in a different way.

I have had many a conversation with people about spirituality and what it meant to them. Most of the time, it was associated with what we were taught growing up. Some of us went to church every Sunday, some of us only went to church on holidays and some of us never went to church. And then there is the spectrum in between. No matter where you fit in to this picture, I believe that we all have a spirit within us and that it is very personal and very sacred to each of us. For me, spirituality is the belief of something “bigger” than me out in the Universe. Whether it is a “universal energy” or “God” or even mother Earth, I believe that there is something out there that connects us to ourselves, to our beliefs and to each other. That “something” is what gives us the inspiration to dream and create the lives that we desire.

I have had a lot of change in my life recently and have had the opportunity to be still and get in touch with my spirituality. My spirituality exists within me, on the outside of me and through me. It is what keeps me going when all I want to do is stay in bed and pull the covers over my head. It is what drives me to learn more about who I am and how I want to show up in the world. It is the one thing that I have learned to lean on when all else seemed lost, even my faith. It is what has helped me navigate my life through the storm and has encouraged me to dance in the rain.

As I said, spirituality is very personal to each and every one of us. Maybe some of you never thought of yourselves as a spiritual being. Maybe you aren’t sure what it is to be spiritual.

I found a website that explains spirituality (in a non religious way) that I wanted to share with you. At the end of the article, there are some questions that might benefit you as you look at your life and what drives you to get up every day and keep going. Click here for the article.

I wish you a week filled with opportunities to find the spirit within you.

When it's time to make a change

We all have our own reasons
To take a new direction
Accept that mistakes will happen along the way
It’s about the journey, not perfection

Hello all,

Because I believe that moving through change with ease is an important part of life, I dedicated this week to “ok you want to make a change, so now what?”

I found this quote from President Obama who said “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” While he was talking about us together as a nation, I think that we can also use that for ourselves. In order to create change and movement in our lives, it depends on our thoughts, our words and our actions. It has nothing to do with another person, what they think or what they do. Yes, we are interdependent of each other but we don’t need to wait for them to do something in order for us to make the changes that we want to make.

I ran across a great article last week about what motivates us to change. And instead of making this blog only my point of view, I thought I would CHANGE it up and include other’s ideas as well. Click here for the link to the article. Though you might not relate to every word in the article, there are some good tips at the end that will help you make the change you are seeking.

Wishing you a week of positive changes (even if it’s just in your attitude) and as always lots of opportunities to be the amazing person that you were put on this planet to be.

Change - It's not just for the jar anymore

It can be found at the bottom of your pocket
Or under your couch
Finding that sort of change is always fun
But is how you deal with the “other” sort of change
That matters
When the day is done…

How was your week last week? Did you remember to find your ME moments and celebrate that? If you forgot or were “too busy”, what do you think would need to change in order for you to recognize the magnificent self that you are?

My apologies for the lateness of this blog. Life happens when we least expect it sometimes and we have to be able to adjust and change which is a perfect segue into the topic for this week. This week is how you deal with change. For me, not getting this email out for the morning was driving me a bit crazy but then I realized that it is the ones who know how to adapt and change with grace and ease that will be most successful in their lives. So instead of freaking out and worrying about getting out the email, I chose the opportunity to look at the situation with new eyes and thought "what a great example this will be for the blog."

Change can be scary, exciting, nerve wracking, anxiety driven and so much more. I found the following quote by Alan Cohen on change: It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. Wow! There is power in change! That is good news because while we are all dealing with our own personal change and growth, the world has experienced changes that can cause us to feel very uncomfortable and insecure about the future. From the wars around the world, to the economy issues, the polar caps melting, and a new leader of our country, I would say most of us have seen more change in the last year or so than we might have ever expected in such a short period of time.

It’s important for each and everyone one of us to be the change that we want to see in our homes, in our communities, our schools and our world. In order for us to be that change, we need to be comfortable with change and accept that maybe it’s not the change itself that we are in fear of but how we react to it. You have an opportunity every day to change what is not working for you anymore in your life. If there are any areas in your life that are no longer meaningful to you would you be willing to look at changing what you would need to in order to get one step closer to having the time of your life? It can be as simple as changing your attitude and perspective and see where that takes you. This week I welcome you to think about what change, no matter how big or small you are wishing to take. Next week, we'll talk about wanting to make a change and what gets in the way for us.

And speaking of change, check out the new front page of my website, complete with an inspirational video I created about having the time of your life. Just click on website and find the video on the top of the page where it asks you "Are you ready to have the time of your life?" Great question, isn't it?

Have a great week full of lots of loose change while you practice adapting to the changes that are going on around you and within you.

Supersize Me!

Give yourself kudos for even the smallest of things
Take a breath, hold and release
Bear witness to the joy it brings

Look at your life through new and fresh eyes
Lo’ and behold
Fries aren’t the only thing
That can be super sized…

Last week we addressed the elephant in the room and this week I thought I would focus on celebrating the smaller things in life.

I had an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine last week and we were talking about steps he had taken to live full out in order to have the time of his life. He had told me a few things he had done in order to take a step in the right direction and then ended with something like “though they aren’t a big deal”. Sorry, I had to paraphrase a bit there but you get my drift. Being the coach and confidante that I am, I asked him “do you notice how you minimize almost everything, even the good things?”

It got me thinking of how some of us don’t give ourselves enough credit and we don’t celebrate the most minuscule of things. For example, sometimes getting up, getting ourselves ready and out the door for work is all we can muster for a day. How many times have you done that and then thought to yourself, “well I still wasn’t able to get this done or that done?” Instead of that thought, how might your day have turned out if you said “whooo hooo, I got out of bed and put in a good days work today?” We tend to overwork our minds and our bodies. I think it’s time to give ourselves the break that we deserve and shift our focus to super size our spirits and our passion for life.

So this week would you be willing to find one thing every single day to celebrate about yourself? You don’t have to share it with anyone but yourself. If you want to share with others, please do so. Celebrate your ME moment and don’t worry about looking arrogant or prideful. It’s what you feel about you on the inside that counts and I can bet that if you take the time each day to celebrate even the tiniest of things you will become a source of inspiration not only to yourself but to others.

So go ahead, super size your spirit and passion for life and see what unfolds for you.

Wishing you a week filled with goodies, smiles and lots of celebrating YOU!

The Elephant in the Room

Out the window, sad elephant stares
Why is he locked inside?
How did he get there?

It’s time to face the issues
That we might not see
But are definitely at hand
It’s time to set that elephant free
To romp and play and roam the land…

I am sure all of you have heard of the term “the elephant in the room”. I was looking for a way to describe it and found this meaning on the internet. “Having an elephant in the room is a metaphor for living with a huge issue and either you see the elephant but do nothing to get rid of it or you don’t even see it”. In other words, there is some issue that you have been avoiding or denying because either it’s so big you don’t know where to start or you don’t think it’s that big of a deal and hope that it will just go away by itself. Unfortunately, not dealing with the issue or issues at hand will only cause the elephant to get bigger.

And because each of us are unique in our own ways, we will have unique issues but I would bet that most of them revolve around our relationship, our finances, our homes or our health. Probably for most of us, it’s more than one. I have been known to have more than one elephant in the house at a time and man does it get cramped and crowded and messy. In all seriousness, when you find yourself with one or more elephants, tackle one at a time. When you have the first one handled, you will find it that much easier to set the rest free.

For this week, challenge yourself to first recognize the elephant. Pay some attention to it and see what you would need to remove from your thoughts in order to set it free. Can you come up with one excuse you think of that helps you avoid that beast of burden? To get you started, here is mine for the week…”with everything going on in my life, I just don’t have time to…

OK, now your turn…

Wishing you a week of inner beauty, laughter and peace as you move through your days. As always, I am here to support and guide you in having the time of your life, no matter what that is.

Superheroes and their masks

Superheroes and their masks --- what is that all about?

Last week, I was thinking about superheroes and the masks that they wear. I was also thinking about how if they didn’t wear the masks and costumes, their super powers were taken away. Well most of them at least. I wonder if their powers were really gone or if that is what they were told would happen so they dare not try to be powerful in their own right unless they were wearing a mask. As I was talking to my sister about this, I was reminded of how superman still had his power. Yet, while this is true, when he didn’t have that huge S on his chest and was flying around town, he had to keep it hidden and take on the role of a “nerdy” newspaper reporter, which in itself was a mask. This to me was art imitating life. So many of us, myself included wears many masks at different parts in our lives while hiding our own true hidden power that lies inside of all of us. We don’t dare expose that part of ourselves unless we are wearing some sort of mask or costume.

I recalled one of my favorite movies, Never Been Kissed when the teacher was explaining to his students that when you wear a costume and pretend to be someone else you can do things that you never even dared to do with them on. So this got me to thinking about all the masks that I’ve donned throughout life to fit in, to blend in or to even grab the center of attention depend on what it was I thought I needed. Mine was the power of a chameleon, a comedian and a charmer. I played them all very well. But like most superheroes, at the end of the day, even though I had accomplished a job well done I went home alone and empty inside.

So I wonder do we keep our masks on because we are afraid of our own special abilities and the power that they hold? As you go through your week this week, see if you are wearing a mask and is it promoting your own personal power or diminishing it…

Some mask examples:
Happy girl/Happy guy: Are you wearing a smile just because you think it’s the right thing to do and you don’t want people to know what you’re feeling or maybe you don’t want to know what you’re feeling.

Martyr: Boy this is a popular one of mine, I even have it in different colors…where might you be a martyr this week?

Entitled supporter: This is my personal favorite. Are you in a supportive role at home or at work or with your friends? If you are, do you give unconditional support or do you expect something in return?

One thing I wanted to mention is that while I think that we wear masks at different times in our lives to get through our days, I also see many people being their authentic selves and that’s a beautiful thing. Hmm…since all people that we come in contact with are reflections of ourselves, perhaps I see these authentic beings when I myself decide to remove that mask for a moment and be my authentic self. That might be another blog in its own right...

Have a bright and blessed week of self discovery and if anything comes up for you around this and you need additional support, I’d be happy to lend an ear, a shoulder and my heart.

Peacefully yours,
Mary

Penny for Your Thoughts - May 10, 2009

Thoughts come in and out
A natural flow
Where they go next
Only you can know…

Greetings and to all the mom’s out there I hope you had a fantastic mother’s day.

So imagine if you truly got a penny with each thought you had? I guess there would be no national debt, no bailout packages, and no stimulus checks. We’d have all the money we ever wanted. Well, unfortunately that “penny” is make believe and if we were truly paid for our thoughts, I think they are worth a lot more, for it is what we are made of, our reality and our perception is born from our very own thoughts.

Last week I had mentioned that I would keep a thought journal during the week and then write a little bit about the outcome. Even in this moment, thoughts are coming in a mile a minute…let me take a deep breath…why don’t you do the same just for a moment…inhale and count to 3..hold for a count of 3…and now exhale for a count of 3. There much better.

OK where was I? Oh yes, the thought journal. Did I journal everyday about my thoughts? The truth is no but I did journal about them and what was created by them. I had both positive and negative thoughts and some were even transferred to other people (it’s called blame and judgment in case you were wondering). One thing I did last week was practice a tool that I had learned from a friend of mine who has worked with a coach by the name of Byron Katie. It’s called Judge Your Neighbor and once you have the thought of the person you turn it back around to yourself. For example, a person at work had said something and I immediately thought “how can this person be so negative, how sad for them and how rude”. As soon as I had that thought I turned it around to me and looked to see where I was showing negativity and where I was perhaps being rude. I did this through the day that day and into the next. It became a sort of a game for me. I realized that whether the thoughts were negative or positive and if they were coming to me by way of a person in my life, I was able to see that this wonderful being on the other side of me was just showing me myself and qualities that I might not have been seeing at the time. I was able to let go of blame and resentment and now when I thought of this person I quietly said to myself “thank you for the lesson you just gave me.” It turned things around for me and all in all, with what I have going currently in this crazy game of life, the week turned out to be a pretty great one. At least I THOUGHT it was.

Your mission this week, should you choose to accept it, is to turn your thoughts around. When you are blaming someone or some circumstance for something in your life, turn that around and see where you do it. For example, “he must not care for me or he wouldn’t….” can be turned around to “I must not care for me because…” No, it’s not an easy process and if any of you are courageous to give it a try and need some encouragement around it, let me know, I’d be happy to listen.

As always, I wish you a week filled with many lessons, lots of extraordinary moments and an abundant supply of joy.

Peace to your body, mind and spirit,
Mary
p.s. for more on Byron Katie and The Work please go to http://www.thework.com/thework.asp#1
hasEML = false;

Fear and "Swine' Flu - Let's change our thought process...

I just received an email from my daughter's school district. It turns out there that has been one or two cases of the "swine" flu in the district. Of course, upon reading this message the first feeling that kicked in for me was fear. I started to wonder if it was safe for my daughter to attend school tomorrow or take her to her gymnastics class this coming Tuesday. I got a bit freaked out and my world became about what I would do if something happened to her. Sure, this is a normal human reaction for any parent. Then I began to think about a lesson I learned about a year ago. A lecturer wrote two words on a board:

Illness and
Wellness

So the first thing she did was take off the "ness". What do you get? Ill and Well...and then she decided to take off the double ll's and what do you get? I and We. It seems, by this statement, when we are focused on the "I" part of our lives it could mean that we bring more illness to ourselves. I also noticed how when I read that email from the school district it became about ME and how would I handle it? I quickly recognized that and when I turned to the "WE" I was able to take a deep breath, pray for all those who have been infected and pray that the spreading of the disease pasts quickly. When I shifted from a place of fear and being in "I" mode and went into the "WE" mode, the fear dissipated and I was more at ease. My own fear made it all about "me" in that moment and not about anyone else.

Don't mistake ME moments as wrong or shameful. I think we all need our ME moments and let's be loud and proud about them. However, when the ME moment is driven by fear, I think that something else is going on besides acknowledging ourselves and what we've accomplished. The fear in us leads us to illness and vice versa and back again. Here are a few other thoughts on how illness and fear can go hand in hand.

Illness and fear can both lay you flat and create you to stop in your tracks and live your life. If you become ill, of course you aren't able to function at the level that you are used to. And if you live in fear, you are so worried and stressed about life in general it brings on illness.

A good example of this happened to me on Friday night. I was going to treat myself to a movie and then I started thinking things like "what if someone in the theatre coughs or sneezes while I'm in there?" "What if the guy serving my popcorn and giving me my soda has been infected"? It caused enough concern in me that I ended up staying home.

Don't get me wrong I think that caution, especially in this day and age is mandatory and we need to be cognizant of our surroundings and the people around us. However, I don't believe that we should fear going outside because we might become ill or bring the bug home to our families.

When fear takes over, we worry more and have less joy in our lives. We worry if we are going to get laid off, if we'll be in an accident, if our kids and family are ok. We worry about our spouse or or partner or lover being unfaithful. The list can go on and on. I grew up with alot of worry and in the last few years, especially the last few months have learned to let go of the worry and focus more on joy and living every day present and aware.

An author by the name of Mike Dooley has a website (www.tut.com) and has written a few books. His basis of his books is that Thoughts Become Things. If this in case is the truth, which I believe it is, and we are in a constant state of worry and fear, what do you think will become of our situations in life? What we worried about will come to fruition which will bring us more grief, fear and worry. It's a vicious cycle.

Now, just imagine if your thought was something like "I know that there is sickness out in the world, but I know that I am happy and healthy and will continue to live that way". Sure, we've all done our share of affirmations and I think that affirmations are an excellent tool because eventually if you hear a statement enough times, for better or for worse it does become your reality. It is time for us to all to be present and aware of what our thoughts are at any given time a day. This week, I'm going to keep a thought journal and write down as many thoughts as I can remember as they happen. This seems like a daunting task, but often I have the same thought over and over so it shouldn't be that hard and my thought about this is that it will be fun and interesting to see how they affect my day.

I would like to invite you to do the same and see if anything surprises you. Go ahead make a list of your thoughts and outcomes during the week and see if they correlate in any way. I would love for you to share your results with me and I promise to share mine with you as well.

Here is to your week having many thoughts of abundance, beauty, peace and lots and lots of lots of joy!

Mary