“You cannot change anything in your life with intention alone, which can become a watered-down, occasional hope that you’ll get to tomorrow.  Intention without action is useless.”  Caroline Myss

Think back to yesterday.  What was your intention to do with that day that would never come again?  Did you take action on your plans – even if that was to take time out to do something restful, relaxing and charging of the batteries?

Yes I know it can be overwhelming when we look at our to-do list even on a Sunday, so keep the intentions to a list that could be achieved in a day.  Then celebrate your achievements.

As well as intention of what we want to do, have you thought about how you want to ‘be’ in the day you have ahead of you?  And if so, do the 2 lists match up.  Are you happy, grateful and compassionate or are you so busy ‘doing’ that you don’t have time to smile or say hello to a stranger.

Enjoy living with intention and action!

Caroline Myss is a medical intuitive, prolific writer and international speaker with work that really makes you think.

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”  Nelson Mandela

This is where my journey into Life Coaching started. Feeling fear for pretty much the first time. Yes I have felt fear before an exam or before stepping out on to the balance pole several metres above the ground – even though I had a harness on, but this was different. I was with a group of people who were feeling excited about the situation we were in. I asked if anyone else was feeling fear and they looked at me as though I was a bit strange. We are told that both excitement and fear produce the same hormones or chemicals in our body. But it is our perception of that feeling that links the word with it. I would wake with it each morning, have it hang around as a low-grade anxiety all day and then when I finally fell asleep I was no longer aware of it.

As I went through the process of learning to coach, I found some different tools and techniques to change my perception. The problem was, my Mum, bless her, didn’t want us to get disappointed about things that could be coming up, so she frequently said to us, “don’t get too excited it might never happen.” So I suppose I forgot how to feel excited. I can now, all beit a little more watered down than some. I’m still working on exercising the courage and excited muscles, and it feels so good when I am able to really feel that nervous energy with a sense that it is feels good not something to be fearful of. Real fear is there to keep us safe from danger. But often our brains think they are keeping us safe when really all that has happened is, we have had a thought about a situation that drags out past experiences and makes up wonderful stories that send us down the slippery slope of fear.

Enjoy feeling the courage to move through the fear!

“Almost every successful person begins with 2 beliefs: the future can be better than the present, & I have the power to make it so.”   Anon

So working on the assumption that this is true, do you think you are heading for success? Maybe you already are successful but hadn’t identified these beliefs as being part of the reason why. However what I term successful may be completely different from your definition. Earl Nightingale once said that: “Success is really nothing more than the progressive realization of a worthy goal” So if you have some goals and you are working towards them, then you would be considered successful. Most of us however are striving for more than that. Maybe that’s why we’re not as happy as we would like. But that is another topic.

With 2020 just around the corner have you even started writing out your goals or dreams for the new decade? Research shows that just the act of writing them down makes it more likely for them to manifest. For some, the visualisation process is the boost they need to keep moving forward towards their desires. For others, using a vision board is very powerful in a metaphysical sense. Whatever we choose, engaging the senses and emotions is helping us to “advance confidently in the direction of our dreams. And if we endeavour to live the life which we have imagined,” as Henry David Thoreau adds in his quote, “we will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Enjoy planning your success for 2020!

“Business is an art, which you can master if you work from the heart and work with love.”  Venus

Back in the ‘80s the mind was recognised as having a huge part to play in our physical and emotional lives.  The connection between body, mind and spirit became the catch word.  The conscious mind is what we need on a daily basis to make decisions and work us through the reasoning process.  However the more subconscious part is operating on automatic in the background, having remembered everything you have done or had done to you.  When these messages have been repeated enough times we become conditioned to believing the ‘lies’ we have been told over the years and we often operate from its instructions.

The heart is a powerful connection between our physical bodies and the universal mind or spirit with a much bigger body of knowledge to operate from.  If we listen to its directions, we may make different decisions than those based on what has happened in the past.  It is important for us, in both our personal lives and our careers, to let the heart lead the way.  If we are truly loving what we do, and follow our hearts, we will find that we don’t have to push so hard for things to happen.  Just like an artist or a musician, who is working at their passion ‘in the zone,’ life will flow in a direction that our conditioned minds may have never thought of.

Enjoy getting out of your heads and into your hearts!

“The art of being wise, is knowing what to overlook.”   William James

At the end of the day the question we have to ask ourselves is, “Will this matter in a year or even 6 months from now?”  The art of overlooking is never tested as sorely as when we have children.  Tidy bedrooms, beds made, dyed hair, studs in the tongue.  Our beliefs can affect these thought processes. At the end of the day we have to make a judgement call.   Aah the word judgement.  I was having a conversation with a friend recently because judgement has been tied to criticism and we were discussing how we still need judgement. Some may call it discernment, but being able to discern or judge with a clear mind can keep us safe, can help us to keep our relationships intact or feel comfortable with the decisions we have made.

Recently I was reading a series of blogs and one was about judgement.  Rachael Jayne Groover was saying that judgement can help us choose, even down to which groceries we want; it can help us let go of situations that are causing anxiety, when we judge what is real or imagined; judgement helps us see red flags to sense what situation is or isn’t right for you.  Understanding what is going on in the brain when we immediately react or jump to conclusions can help us to learn that we can do it differently if we choose to. At the start it may seem impossible to change our reactions. Being aware of your automatic brain reaction after it has happened is the first step, then noticing when you are in the midst of it, then finally bringing it back to priming yourself to be prepared and choose how you want to behave BEFORE an event. It is then so much easier to stay calm under apparent attack. That other person may be triggered by something very innocent and is smarting from their own judgements. Connecting regularly with that part of you that is wise, will help you judge and know what to overlook.

Enjoy overlooking minor things!

“Your competition isn’t other people. Your competition is your procrastination. Your ego. The unhealthy food you’re consuming. The knowledge you neglect. The negative behaviour you’re nurturing and your lack of creativity. Compete against that.” – Jade Jackson.

Have you thought of what is going on in your life in this way? Our inner being, our inner critic, can really put the brakes on, when we put out some goals that we want to achieve. I’m in an exercise group at the moment that has a very strong face book group who all support one another. This is so good when people fall off their eating plan, or they don’t exercise every day as they had planned. I haven’t seen any judgement, which I think is fantastic, as we can do a lot of that judging & criticising of ourselves which doesn’t get us anywhere. I have been in trainings where they suggest we have an accountability buddy who not only helps to keep us from procrastinating or neglecting the actions we said we planned to do, but also props us up as the inner critic tries to do a hatchet job.

When the ego decides to let us know we’re not achieving as we should, or we’ve had a bad day eating food we know really should be off limit, the brain creates the stress response by pumping out chemicals or hormones that shut down the part of the brain that is able to think clearly and help us to think positively again. This is an inbuilt reaction, a stress reaction exactly the same as when we are faced with a physical stress. If you don’t have an accountability buddy or a group of people who are cheering you on, it can be easy to let the negative voices in the head take over. The voices that tell you you’re not good enough, that you can’t achieve what you have said you want to do, or that, “other people can do that, but I can’t.” As this quote says, this is what we are all competing against. Recognising that is a start. Then setting up systems or better conversations in our head will help you work with those voices rather than against them, because those voices won’t stop.

Enjoy taking on this competition from a new perspective!

“The truth is we can learn to condition our minds, bodies & emotions, to link pain & pleasure to whatever we choose.  By changing what we link pain & pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviours.”  Tony Robbins.

While will power can take us down a path we want to go, there are easier ways to create what we want in our lives. For example, most of us associate dieting and exercising with feelings of deprivation, which makes a goal like losing weight seem like an endless uphill battle. If through hypnotherapy we reprogram the mind to associate positive feelings with the behaviours we want to maintain, it
becomes natural and even easy to fulfill our goals. Whenever we make choices and say ‘no’ to one thing, we are then available to say yes to something else – something that may be more in line with what you want, or that excites you. In other words it is linked to more pleasure. And the more we are seeing from neuroscientific research, the more we understand how much the mind has to do with repeating the old patterns or choosing some new ones.

Sometimes we are so busy listening to the negative messages in the brain, that have been going around & around, ‘like a cracked record,’ we don’t stop to listen to the messages coming from our body for example the heart and gut. The messages that say, stop being so unkind to yourself, the messages that tell us when we are feeling good instead of focusing on the ones that tell us we are feeling bad and the messages that help us focus on the pleasures of life rather than focusing on the pain. When we connect with the pleasure, the good feelings, we change the vibration that others are feeling from us. Here in New Zealand we have public holiday today to recognize those who fought to have our working week reduced and better treatment by our employers. Sounds like focusing on pleasure to me.

Enjoy pushing the pain into the shadow and focus on what feels good!

“I have never thought of writing for the reputation and honour.  What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.”  Ludwig Van Beethoven

Beethoven started going deaf when he was 30 and lived until he was 57.  In his last decade of life he was completely deaf & although he stopped conducting and performing he continued to write some amazing music.  Imagine writing the wonderful music he did completely deaf, just putting down on paper what was inside him.  These days we would describe his connection to that inner drive as, “being in the zone.”

We hear of artists who learnt the Silva method of meditation so they could connect with the work that was inside them.  People like Wayne Dyer, who wrote some great books, say they have no conscious awareness of what they have written, that their message comes from inside to be expressed on the paper.  In fact there is a ‘coach’ from Hawaii who takes groups of people to teach them to write the books that they feel called to write. Some express themselves with their bodies.  I enjoy watching things like good gymnastics, ballroom dancing or ice dancing.  We all have that ability to make a connection with our inner knowing and then express that in a way that is of benefit to others.  There is a quote about not dying with the music still inside.  How do you like to express the ‘music’ inside you?

Enjoy expressing your passion!

“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.”  Eckhart Tolle

Most of my work is about emotions, in some form or other, that are causing us to feel discord in our body. Liza Palmer wrote another quote with similar sentiments that I have on my website homepage. “Angry is just sad’s body guard.” Whatever way it is put, the stronger emotions are usually stepping up to protect us in some way, perhaps trying to tell us something about not only what is going on right now, but where we may have experienced a similar situation in our life before, and this has created a pattern of how we react each time. Some people will say they don’t experience anger, but if they are really able to look at some of the things in their life that are upsetting, they may find they have learnt to swallow, or push down that reaction because society tells us that it is inappropriate to show anger.

Sometimes the anger is covering up for a fear that we feel, fear that we’re going to be cheated, that we’re going to fail, that we are not going to have the love we all need in our lives. If something wasn’t provided for us as children, we may fear our adult relationships are going to treat us the same way. So when a precious relationship looks like faltering, we immediately fear the loss we had as a child. As a child we may feel overwhelming powerlessness, helplessness or hopelessness at the hands of an adult and those feelings can stay stuck in our nervous system. The list is endless. Once we understand what is behind the anger we can learn how to deal with it by addressing those long held beliefs and fears.

Because the anger can be about these unmet needs, we could ask, “What is my anger telling me that I need?” Or we could ask, “Why am I angry? How can I deal with this differently, how can I respond differently?” Having that understanding can help us deal better with a behaviour that society condemns. We can then add shame and blame into the cauldron of negative emotions. This is not helpful, it does not take account of the fact that we are all human with emotions from both ends of the spectrum, with a history of experiences that have been less than empowering, but if we want to move forward we need to learn how to deal with them now as an adult, start taking responsibility to change our old patterns.

Enjoy loving the anger for what it is doing for you!

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”   Henry David Thoreau

If we all took notice of this quote we may think twice about some of the things we do with our lives. I know sometimes I can spend too long on face book as I see what others are up to & support others in the groups that I’m in. But it is very easy to let time slip by and suddenly I don’t feel so good about having let this activity to go beyond a short time of social interaction. And then I do feel that the price I have paid is more than I wanted, especially when I consider that I now no longer have that time every again, to do some of the things that are actually more meaningful to me. However I need to know what those meaningful things are, and how important they are to me – my Big WHY. Only then will I see whether the price I am paying is okay, is too much or I am prepared to spend more on.

I have just spent some time doing a Sleep course. I have learnt a lot about myself and my habits – not just sleep. This information that was new to me, encompassed the circadian rhythms and this excited me because for years I had felt I was out of step with society in general, because I didn’t feel the need to go to bed when everyone else did, or get up when the majority do, for that matter. I have learnt that I am in one of 4 different groups as found in my circadian rhythm. I learnt how this affects also when I should eat and exercise, and if I live according to that rhythm I will feel more energetic and it will support better health. Do you think that the price of my life to hear this is worth the time I spent? Because I am always trying to live a healthy life, I felt it was! What are the things you do, that are important to you, that are well worth the price you are paying with your life?

Enjoy doing those things most important to you!