“Happiness is not an accident, it’s an art. You don’t hope for happiness, you plan for happiness. You have to weave happiness like a tapestry.”  Jim Rohn 

Being happy is a choice.  If we wait for outside circumstances to make us happy we may be waiting for a long time.  If we choose to be happy no matter what, we will attract people to us who will appreciate being around a positive happy person. Think about who you would rather be with – a grumpy judgmental person or a happy person, full of possibilities?

Have you heard of being mindful?  This is being 100% in the moment of what you are doing.  Not nodding at your child as they tell you about their school adventures, while your mind is thinking about other things.  Not going for a lovely walk along the beach or other nature habitats, but completely oblivious to the screech of the gulls or the cheep of the fantail, because other things are occupying your mind.  Choose to be happy in this very moment regardless of circumstances.

We can’t be happy in the past, it’s been and gone (we can remember an event that brings a smile to our lips.)  We can’t be happy in the future because it’s not here yet (we can visualize happiness at some time ahead of us.)  But why not try being happy for no reason, right now & now & now!

Put a smile on your face and others will start wondering what you are up to, or want what you’ve got.  It’s hard not to smile when someone else smiles at you.  It uses less muscles and research shows that feel good chemicals are released, which can only be good for your health.

Enjoy smiling and choosing to be HAPPY!

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”   Ralph Waldo Emmerson

Have you ever taken on a job that really was a bit of a stretch at the time & you felt out of your depth but didn’t dare tell anyone? Have you ever been voted into the president’s job of the local PTA because no one else would take it on and you really had no idea of what you were doing in the role? But you looked back in a years’ time and saw how far you had come! It is like the stretching we do at the gym to get our muscles more flexible, we become more flexible and more resilient in the work place if we have to keep stretching to fulfil our obligations in our new job or voluntary role. My husband was a reasonably easy going guy and we shifted around to follow his promotions up the teaching ladder. He never showed how nervous he felt on that first morning but he did confide that he definitely wasn’t going along without the odd butterfly.

Because he was prepared to put himself out there to meet the challenges head on, he grew in leaps and bounds and this is why we continued to move to the new jobs that would challenge his nervous system each time. But there would come a time when he would start to get the call inside of himself to have another growth spurt and take on a new school to lead, a new challenge with new skills to learn. Once he had reached the biggest school he wanted to be in, he decided to take those business skills he had learnt, and take them out into our own business. Were there some more lessons to be learnt? You betcha! And he wouldn’t have learnt them from a book – he had to live them to learn from them. What are you doing, or what could you do to stretch into the new lesson you need to learn?

Enjoy living the lessons!

“It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.”  Muhammad Ali

I’ve talked before about how we grow up being taught certain things that are not necessarily the truth. Our parents mostly did their best but they were operating from what their parents said was the truth. They may have also been concerned for our welfare and if we climbed on to a piece of playground equipment they may have said, “Be careful!” This could have instilled in us a fear of going beyond our comfort zone or trying something new. Maybe one or two family members kept telling you that your dreams would never happen. That doesn’t have to happen too many times before we get the impression that there is no point in dreaming, because it “aint gonna happen.” As we believe these significant people in our lives we believe these messages about ourselves and unless we are aware, we let them stop us from meeting the challenges head on.

There is a growing body of evidence that we can create our reality through our beliefs. You may not want to step into the boxing ring, but we are talking about the things you do want to do but have a fear around. What is that for you? We’re beginning to understand that brain cells act as communities. They link up and work together as networks. The more we think a particular thought, the more its networks build themselves and strengthen. In an hour, the links between the cells by which they communicate, can double. So an hour focusing on a particular negative thought is just constantly building its neural strength. But the good news is, when we don’t use a network, it withers away. Billions of neurons get busy tearing apart the network that doesn’t seem to be needed any more. We rewire ourselves constantly on the basis of what we pay attention to. What are you going to start paying attention to now that you know this information?

Enjoy believing in yourself!

“Your vision becomes clear when you look inside your heart.  Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens.”  Carl Jung1875 – 1961 Psychiatrist

I chose this quote because I have been asked what was different about the style of coaching I do and this quote explains it.  We have been trained to come from our heads. Our minds race around all day trying to find the answers to our problems.  We look out at our circumstances, we look out to other people’s views and suggestions and we look back to past results to come up with our solutions. The limbic part of the brain stores all our memories and when something comes up that looks like a past experience it alerts the oldest part of the brain that sets off the stress response and suddenly we find we can’t reason properly any more, we don’t relate as well to other people and we’re not as trusting

IN-sight is found IN-side!  According to the Institute of Heart Maths, there are more messages going from the heart to the brain than the other way. The heart helps the brain feel what we want to do and can create a coherent pattern that gets in sync with the brain and helps it to settle down. If you have a problem or a question, you can connect with your heart and ask your higher self for an answer.  Of course we have to listen for the answer which may not come immediately.  It may come in a passing comment of a friend in general conversation, it may come from a coach – like putting a question into the google search box, the specificity of your question will narrow the search for the answer you are looking for.

Enjoy being guided by your heart!

“Those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything.”

Our minds have a powerful role to play – come up with the things we want, connect with that the desire and emotion we feel and the belief that we can achieve our dream. It doesn’t matter what it is if the mind is engaged and really believes it can happen it will. Unfortunately our minds have been conditioned, read brainwashed, since day dot by everyone around us. A lot of this conditioning is really helpful and necessary but all those significant people in our lives have been brought up with beliefs that have been conditioned into their minds. If we are not aware that these beliefs are not truths we continue blindly on not trying to change anything. And this is not necessarily our fault.

But once we know this stuff we and only we are the ones responsible to make the changes we know in our deepest being need to be made. If we don’t we will continue to do, be and have exactly the same experiences and results year after year. Sometimes this isn’t as easy as it sounds because we may not actually see the full story, the messages we have received may be very hurtful and damaging and for some would deserve the title ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.’ But if you’re one who really wants to change don’t be a victim by letting go of the dreams because you can’t be bothered doing the work. It all starts with how you are feeling about yourself and life and if you’re not happy, what are you going to direct yourself to do about it? The mind needs to know how committed you are and it will get in behind you.

Enjoy the feeling you get when you make the decision to make the changes you want!

“Successful people pay more attention to their visions & goals than to history & the opinion of others.”  Alan Cohen

History is useful because it has brought us to where we are today.  It has given us all our experiences in life & has made us who we are.  It can be helpful to use as a guide as to whether we should be continuing to do what we are currently doing or whether we should make some changes.  What is not helpful is using that history as an excuse for reasons why we aren’t achieving what we would desire.  We’ve all probably heard the statement, “that it is madness to continue doing what we’ve always done expecting a different result.”  Every moment is the beginning of the rest of our lives & whatever we are doing or thinking now influences the results we get in the future!

Another quote I like that I’ve heard from the great motivator, Les Brown – “Don’t let someone else’s judgement become your reality!”  We all have access to our own inner guidance system which has more truth than the comments well-meaning friends & family make.  Start listening to that ‘gut feeling’ as a guidance system for the direction you should be taking in life.  Yes it may be scary when we are being asked to step up into something new, especially if we use our history as a guide as to our potential.  If we focus on our visions & goals, as Alan Cohen suggests the successful people do, we may surprise even ourselves with the opportunities that open up, to help us reach a potential we hadn’t realized was in us!

Enjoy focusing on your visions & goals!

“Forgiveness is not always easy.  At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it.  And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.”  Marianne Williamson

Will you forgive me? I forgot to send you a weekly thought last Monday. Things like this are usually easy to forgive, but it’s the wounds that go deep, that may have been there for years in some cases, that we have trouble forgiving. We may have already had filters in place that caused the situation in the first place, but if not they are more than likely creating the view point now. The pain may initially have been too strong to even consider forgiving the person you feel has wronged you but the sooner you can start the process of changing how you feel about the situation, the sooner you can start to let go of the blockages to your own physiology.

This process is not about the other person! This is about allowing yourself to heal. Why should we let them off the hook? Because, while we hang on to the feelings of ‘having been done wrong,’ this creates a blockage to a good healthy physiology. Yes I know, you feel healthy now but who knows what is going on under the surface if left unchecked. If you can’t do this, I suggest you look at what you have got to gain from hanging on to the feelings and the pain that you feel, when you think about that person or the incident that took place. What are the thoughts or the words that you are talking in your head? One really good technique that helps is to do ‘Emotional Freedom Technique’ or EFT for short. Also known as Meridian Tapping. Yes it’s that crazy technique where you tap on your face & upper body. If you on to Youtube you will find a ton of people who have video clips about all sorts of things.

Enjoy tapping as you vent your feelings about this other person and in doing so calm your system down. Sounds contradictory but it works so give it a go!

“You have no guarantee of tomorrow.  If you want to express love, you had better do it now.”  Rick Warren

Do you like being told you are loved?  By your ‘other half,’ your parents, your children?  Do you tell your loved ones how much you love & appreciate them? How grateful you are for them just being them?  Does it feel awkward to do that?  Perhaps you think they already know, that you don’t have to tell them. Have they done something that you are having trouble to forgive them for. This may need to be your first step. This is not about trying to forget, it is about letting go so that you can move on.

Are you aware that there are different ways to show your love for someone & that we are not all the same.  Some people go to a lot of trouble to find the right gift, others like to do physical jobs or make things for those they love & yet others just like to cuddle & hug.  Have you noticed the different ways those around you like to show their love & in turn have you love them?

As the quote says, none of us knows what tomorrow brings so get your own psychic income by showing your loved ones how much you love & appreciate them.

Enjoy showing your love TODAY!

“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this you haven’t.”  Thomas Edison

Having apparently tried 2000 times before he sorted out a light bulb for us, I’m thinking he has the right to make this comment. We will never know how many times we have to try at something before we get the right solution to our problem, if we give up. Henry Ford also had this approach where he had the belief that he could get the type of engine he wanted as long as he was prepared to continue paying the engineers until they designed what he wanted.  Has this happened to you? Sometimes we need a break while we do something else that doesn’t take a lot of brain power. Wash the dishes, mow the lawn while you let your brain go into neutral, and bingo the answer arrives.

Edison used to sit in a rocking chair as he meditated and went to the “Land of Solutions.” This was something he thought was very important and something we all could do. He felt most of us didn’t stay with our problems for long enough to get the answers we wanted. Those who design or discover things obviously stay with the problem long enough to go beyond what others thought was possible. Are you aware of sorting problems out like this? Do you have some quiet time each day where you ask the questions you want answers for? Remember the answers may not come immediately, if you ask before you go to sleep your subconscious will go to work overnight to come up with an answer that you can work on next day.

Enjoy finding your answers from the universal mind!

“I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.”   Wayne Dyer

Although Wayne says this with conviction, I know a lot of us don’t feel we have the ability to control what goes on inside much either. The subconscious mind remembers everything that has happened to us over the years and it seems to have the upper hand even when we are really trying hard in a conscious way to be different, do things differently and feel differently about the world around us and about ourselves. Often when we are under stress for any number of reasons, the old tried and true patterns rear their ugly heads no matter how hard we try. Right at the moment I am going through a stressful situation with my dad’s health, and it is interesting to see how we all revert to patterns that were there when we were children.

As Wayne says though, we can control what goes on inside if we have the will to do so. It just may not be as easy as he makes it sound. Having an awareness of what we are doing is a start. If we are not aware, how will we know what we want to change? It’s a matter of tracking our behaviour, being present in the moment, on a regular basis. Notice what we are happy with and what we are not. What are we feeling physically and emotionally and what changes we would like to make right here and now! At the very least we can vow to do better next time and even put some strategies in place of how we might be better next time. It’s only by going through regular mindfulness as the day progresses that we can turn the tide of behaviours that no longer serve us. Probably never have! We do not have to sit like a yogi to be mindful. Being able to incorporate the reflection or mindfulness as we go through life is more likely to bring the results we want when busy and stressed.

Enjoy tracking what you are feeling regularly throughout the day!