Category Archives: Self-Awareness

What to Do When Something’s Wrong or Something’s Missing

Take a deep breath right now. Before reading on, just take a breath.

I’m going to invite you to take an honest look at something really important. I invite you to look at all the places where you are telling yourself that something’s wrong or something’s missing:

    • What is wrong with you?
    • What is wrong with your spouse?
    • What is missing from your relationship?
    • What is wrong with your job or your financial situation or your ability to provide for yourself and your family?
    • What is wrong with your health?
    • What’s wrong with the way your employees are doing their jobs?
    • What are all those things that if you had them in your life, you’d finally be happy?
    • Do you feel like you don’t have enough time or resources or love — is that’s what’s missing from your life?
    • What’s wrong with our government, or the way people treat you or others, or the way we are living our lives and utilizing resources?

Let yourself feel what it feels like when you believe all of those thoughts. Really marinate in it all for a moment. Let it all sink in. What emotions do you experience? What images do you see of the past and the future? How does your body feel when you bring those thoughts front and center? How do you treat your spouse or your coworkers or your children or your parents when you believe that something’s wrong with them or what they are doing or what they want or believe? How do you treat yourself when you believe that you’re broken or not good enough or don’t have what it takes?

Now take another deep breath.

What if all of those beliefs, all of those thoughts, are just stories? What if you are just making it all up, like some grand fairytale? What if those thoughts are like clouds that float through the sky of your consciousness? What if they come and go — just like the waves that roll into the shore and recede, just like the flowers that bloom and fade, just like the emotions that you feel? What if it’s only your choice (conscious or subconscious) to hold onto them that gives them any energy or power at all? What if there’s another way?

I invite you to remember that you are constantly making meaning out of things you see or experience or even feel. Even more importantly, I invite you to remember that you actually have a choice.

You can choose to continue to do things and be with yourself and others in the way that you have, but we all know that chances are good you’ll keep getting the same results you’ve been getting. So if you’re happy with the results you’re already getting, that’s great! If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!

If you aren’t happy with your results, though, ask yourself this: what are you really committed to? Are you serving safety and comfort, or are you serving something even more deep and meaningful to you? What mission moves you and motivates you and inspires you? Here’s mine…

I inspire, support, and honor wholehearted living, courageous loving, and true connection. 

Sometimes I get caught (more often than I’d like to admit during the past few months) in serving safety and comfort rather than what really matters to me. It’s like the clouds come in and I somehow forget that the sun is still there in the sky, shining as brightly as ever. I forget just because somehow I can’t see it in this moment. That’s why self-reflection and self-awareness is so important. It’s what supports us to live consciously and intentionally, rather than being driven by our habits.

As soon as I see that that is what I am doing, I wake up again to who I really am. I remember that we are all connected. I remember that I have a choice. I begin by forgiving myself for having fallen asleep, and then I look at the stories I’m making up about my boyfriend or my brother or myself, and I ask myself: are these stories serving wholehearted living, courageous loving and true connection? If not, I choose to let them go. They aren’t me, they are just a tape playing in my head. It’s a radio station that plays the same songs again and again, and they are songs I’m not interested in listening to anymore.

I choose wholehearted living, courageous loving, and true connection.

What are you choosing?

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Take Action Now

What are the things that you have been putting off, avoiding, ignoring in hopes that somehow they will resolve themselves and you won’t ever have to deal with them? How’s that working for you?

If you are someone who procrastinates, it’s time. Time to face the reality that the project on your to-do list that you’ve been avoiding isn’t going to magically cross itself of your list. The reality is that you have two choices:

  1. Remove It From Your To-Do List — Ask yourself if it’s something that really needs to be done. Would having it done contribute to your health, well-being, or happiness or is it something that found its way onto your to-do list when you made a habit of busy-ness?
  2. Do It Now! — If it’s something that you definitely need to do, take action. If it’s a big project, first chunk it down into manageable pieces. But don’t delay any more. Do it now.

You will feel better when you take either of these steps. Why?

  • Removing the item from your to-do list (whether you did the task or not), will help you feel lighter. It’s the to-do list equivalent of cleaning out your closet (or garage). Even if you don’t have a sense of accomplishment from having completed the task, you’ll have a sense of relief from not having to worry about it anymore. And as you discovered, it wasn’t really important anyhow. At least, not compared to other things vying for your energy and attention.
  • When you take action, you’ll get a double benefit: (1) you’ll feel good about yourself for responsibly handling something that needs attention, and (2) you’ll feel good because making progress itself always makes us feel good. It’s the difference between walking out of a meeting feeling as though nothing was accomplished compared to leaving a meeting in which decisions were made and next steps were clear.

Now on to the next item on your to-do list!

Here’s hoping you avoid busy-ness and stay focus on the most important things!

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Laws of Success

Book on the beach

Napoleon Hill’s work and his book, Think and Grow Rich, have influenced many people within the personal development field. The basic premise is that our focus needs to be on being the type of person to whom whatever it is we are seeking naturally flows. To be successful, we must be willing to dream and pursue our dreams, with a burning desire and unwavering commitment, even in the face of adversity and failure.
What is even more compelling than Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich, though, is his book, The Laws of Success, in which he outlines Fifteen Laws of Success. These are:

  1. A Definite Chief Aim — a clearly defined thing you want with burning desire to accomplish or achieve or bring to the world. Hill writes, “There is some one thing that you can do better than anyone else in the world could do it. Search until you find out what this particular line of endeavor is, make it the object of your definite chief aim and them organize all your forces and attack it with the belief that you are going to win.”
  2. Self-Confidence — In its most simple form, this is seeing the best in yourself and believing in yourself.
  3. The Habit of Saving — Develop the habit of saving 20% of everything you earn
  4. Initiative and Leadership — Do that which out to be done without being told to do it, develop the habit of initiative by taking some definite action each day that will carry you nearer your definite chief aim. Leadership is based on knowing your employees, knowing your business, and knowing yourself.
  5. Imagination — Imagination is necessary to create a vision of something not yet created or present.
  6. Enthusiasm — An enthusiastic state of mind will bring energy and momentum to what you are doing. “It is the vital force that impels action.” For more, see video 8 below.
  7. Self-Control — Self-control is what “directs your action so that it will build up and not tear down.” Self-control is the result of thought-control, of deliberately and persistently directing your thoughts and energy in productive, supportive directions. See video 6 below for more on this.
  8. Habit of Doing More Than Paid For — This is the habit of performing more service and better service that that for which you are paid. Think Zappos! here. As Tony Hsieh and the gang at Zappos! found, by doing more than what you are paid for, you are planting seeds that will eventually bear fruit. See video 3 below.
  9. Pleasing Personality — This is described in detail in video 5 below.
  10. Accurate Thought — This is the principle of seeing things as they are, and investigating rather than categorically believing all your thoughts. It requires the ability to distinguish facts from interpretation. See video 12 below.
  11. Concentration — “The act of focusing the mind upon a given desire until ways and means for its realization have been worked out and successfully put into operation.”
  12. Co-operation — Cooperation is what drives organized effort.
  13. Failure — Hill says that what we term “failure” is often more accurately described as “temporary defeat”. He goes on to say that “sound character is usually the handiwork of reverses, and setbacks, and temporary defeat.” So embrace it rather than fearing it!
  14. Tolerance — Tolerance is the path to developing positive and effective relationships with others, building bridges and furthering our world toward a state of peace.
  15. The Golden Rule — This is the “guiding star” of the Laws of Success. Because you reap what you sow, treat others as you wish they would treat you, were the situation reversed.

Here are the Success Principles, as delivered directly by Napoleon Hill:

1. Definiteness of Purpose

2. The Mastermind Principle

3. Going the Extra Mile

4. Applied Faith

5. A Pleasing Personality

6. Self Discipline

7. Positive Mental Attitude

8. Enthusiasm

9. Personal Initiative

10. Overcoming Adversity and Defeat

11. Creative Vision

12. Accurate Thinking

13. Cosmic Habit Force

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Stop Should-ing On Yourself

I have been amazed by how much of the stress in my life has been caused by “shoulds”.

My “shoulds” show up as beliefs about what I should have achieved by this stage of my life, and ideas about what I should be doing right now. I should be more organized, spend more time with my aging mother, be a better friend, accomplish more each day. The list goes on and on.

Some of the “shoulds” are voices of others that, over the years, I have internalized. Others are ideas that I have grasped onto about what I want my life to be, or what I think is best for me.

How much do “shoulds” affect your life? Do they impact how you feel about yourself and what is happening in this very moment? As you sit there reading this, is there a part of you that is already saying that you should be working instead?

Notice when “shoulds” show up for you, and when they do, begin to ask yourself the following questions:

  • What is the “should” doing to me?
  • Is believing it helping me to be happy in this moment?
  • Is it allowing me to be open to what life brings?
  • Is the “should” really true anyhow?

Years ago, I read a book called Loving What Is, by Byron Katie. I find Katie’s insights and strategies for dealing with unsupportive thoughts helpful. If “shoulds” show up in your life, I recommend giving it a read.

May you find the space in your life to let go of “shoulds” and find the beauty in this moment, just as it is.

I began coaching back in 2002, after letting go of all the shoulds in my life and reflecting on questions such as:

  • What really really matters to me?
  • What inspires and excites me?
  • How do I want to live my life?
  • What do I want to see more of  in the world?
  • What would it take for me to be more of what I want to see more of?

Here’s a poem that I wrote when I was engaged in that process of reflection, inquiry and personal development:

TRAVELS THROUGH LIFE

How strange it is, this journey through life
Decisions we make, affect the path our lives take
Where to live, work, play,
Places we go, people we meet
Lives we touch, intended or not
For the better we hope, at least for our sake.

I have heeded wanderlust,
Set off alone, traveled afar of late
Seen sun set and rise over distant lands
Watched in wonder, the beauty of Mother Earth
Heard stories told by those with lives
Vastly different yet somehow the same as mine
All of us looking, longing, aching to be
Acknowledged, appreciated, accepted
Simply and exactly as we are.

When my travels came to an end,
I finally stopped, for the first time in my life
To really make time for the journey inside
What is it that matters most to me?
Once “shoulds” fall silent, who am I?
How do I want to live my life?
I learned to trust books, trust what others say
The voice from within grew timid over time
Long forgotten the need to be gentle and loving with me.

Understanding … remembering …
Being human means making mistakes
I’m enough just as I am; it’s okay to have needs
Sensitive isn’t weak, rather strong enough to expose my cracks
What is it, really, that I need?
Be true to me, the only one I truly know how to be.

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