From Chores to Choices: Building Responsibility in Your Child 8 Jan 2024, 9:21 pm

One of the key goals as a parent is to nurture independence and responsibility in our children. Teaching them to self-initiate age-appropriate tasks not only fosters a sense of autonomy but also equips them with essential life skills. Here are some strategies to encourage your child to take on responsibilities that align with their age and developmental stage.

1. Start Early with Simple Tasks: Begin by introducing small, manageable tasks early on. Even toddlers can participate in activities like putting away toys, sorting laundry, or tidying up their play area. These early responsibilities set the foundation for a sense of accomplishment and contribute to the development of important motor skills.
   
   
2. Foster a Sense of Ownership: Encourage your child to take ownership of their tasks. This can be achieved by allowing them to choose which responsibilities they’d like to take on. When children feel a sense of control and autonomy, they are more likely to engage willingly in the tasks they’ve chosen. 
   
   
3. Create a Routine: Establishing a routine provides structure and predictability, making it easier for children to understand and engage in their responsibilities. Consistency helps them internalize tasks as part of their daily life, promoting self-initiation.
   
   
4. Be Patient and Provide Guidance: Children may need guidance and demonstrations to understand how to perform certain tasks. Instead of doing everything for them, show them the steps and provide support as needed. Patience is key as they learn and master new skills.
   
   
5. Reinforce Positive Behavior: Positive reinforcement is a powerful motivator. Praise and acknowledge your child’s efforts and achievements in completing their responsibilities. This positive feedback reinforces the connection between taking initiative and a sense of accomplishment.
   
   
6. Set Realistic Expectations: Consider your child’s age, abilities, and developmental stage when assigning responsibilities. Setting realistic expectations ensures that tasks are achievable and helps build confidence. Gradually increase the complexity of responsibilities as your child grows and acquires new skills.
   
   
7. Encourage Problem-Solving: Empower your child to think critically and solve problems related to their responsibilities. If they encounter difficulties, guide them in finding solutions rather than immediately stepping in to fix the issue. This helps develop problem-solving skills and resilience.
   
   
8. Be a Positive Role Model: Children learn by observing their parents. Demonstrate a positive attitude toward responsibilities. Let them see that tasks are a natural part of daily life and contribute to the well-being of the family.
   
   
9. Involve Them in Decision-Making: Include your child in discussions about family responsibilities. Allow them to voice their opinions and ideas, fostering a sense of responsibility for the overall well-being of the household. This involvement helps them understand the importance of contributing to the family unit.
   
   
10. Celebrate Milestones: Celebrate your child’s milestones and achievements in taking on responsibilities. Whether it’s successfully making their bed or helping with dinner preparation, acknowledge their efforts to reinforce the value of their contributions.

Encouraging your child to self-initiate when it comes to responsibilities is a gradual process that requires patience, positive reinforcement, and a supportive environment. By instilling a sense of ownership and autonomy from an early age, you equip your child with the skills and mindset necessary for a responsible and independent future.

WANT TO UP YOUR PARENTING GAME? Check out my Parenting by Personality Online Masterclass!

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Emotional Resistance: The Paradox That Keeps You Wanting 7 May 2023, 6:32 pm

Do you often feel like your emotions are all over the place? Or does it seem like your emotions control you, rather than the other way around? One of the foundational principles I have taught over the past 17 years is the subject of emotional resistance. What I’ve found is that for many, it is a challenging concept to grasp and even more challenging to apply. Why? Because it is a concept that comes in the form of a paradox: Let go of pushing to get what you want, and you’ll get it. 

Emotional resistance is a common phenomenon where you may consciously or unconsciously avoid or resist facing your emotions. It can manifest as denial, projection, avoidance, or suppression of feelings, and can prevent you from fully processing and resolving emotional experiences.

This paradoxical knowledge has been taught for thousands of years and today in 2023 emotional resistance is more prevalent than ever. There is more dissatisfaction, division, fear, and anger, than many people have seen in their lifetimes. We have become a society of force instead of flow, pushing instead of allowing, and demanding instead of earning.

The end result is you don’t get what you want, you actually push it away. You become a repellent to the very things you desperately seek. We all have authentic needs to be met in order to live a healthy life; needs like love, belonging, and acceptance. And for those whose needs are met, they aren’t trying and pushing to get those things. They aren’t as attached to other people’s show of love, being included, or how much or little someone accepts them.

However, for those who don’t have those needs met, they’re coming from a place of lack, which can be a painful and sometimes devastating experience. They’re trying so hard to get those needs met through others because they simply are trying to end the pain. You are hard-wired to seek out pleasure in order to avoid pain. Yet, the more you try to avoid pain, the greater the pain becomes.

As Buddha taught, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” He also taught, “Resistance to what is, creates our suffering.” So if pain is inevitable, and that is “what is”, and you are resisting your pain, you move into suffering. In essence, you are doubling up on your pain, and adding more and more the longer you stay in a state of resistance to it. When coming from a place of lack, the more you have a need for love the more you push it away. The more you have a need for belonging, the more you feel left out. The more you have a need for acceptance, the more you feel rejected. And the list goes on and on.

The way out is through, the only way to overcome any obstacle is to face it head-on, rather than trying to go around or avoid it. That includes your emotional pain, your challenges in life, and that which lives within you that you have denied or been too afraid to face. Yet when you learn and apply the process of letting go of resistance, you experience more freedom, more ease, more joy, more love, and all those things you’ve been trying so hard to have in your life.

Here are some strategies that can help:

1. Practice mindfulness: Mindfulness involves bringing non-judgmental awareness to your emotions as they arise, without trying to push them away or hold on to them. By simply acknowledging and accepting your emotions as they are, you can reduce resistance and allow yourself to fully experience and process them.

2. Validate your emotions: It’s important to recognize that all emotions, even the uncomfortable ones, are valid and natural human experiences. Avoid judging or criticizing yourself for feeling a certain way. Instead, practice self-compassion and validate your emotions without trying to change or suppress them.

3. Identify underlying beliefs or fears: Explore any underlying beliefs or fears that may be contributing to emotional resistance. Sometimes, you may resist emotions because you fear they will overwhelm you or because you hold certain beliefs about them being unacceptable or unworthy of attention. Identifying and challenging these beliefs can help reduce resistance.

4. Create a safe space: Create a safe and supportive environment for yourself where you feel comfortable expressing and processing your emotions. This could be with a trusted friend, family member, or life coach. Having a safe space to share and process emotions can help reduce resistance and facilitate healing.

5. Practice self-care: Taking care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally can help reduce emotional resistance. Engage in regular self-care activities such as exercise, meditation, healthy eating, and getting enough rest. When you take care of yourself, you are better equipped to face and process emotions.

6. Use healthy coping strategies: Instead of avoiding or suppressing emotions, develop healthy coping strategies to process them. This can include journaling, talking to a trusted person, engaging in creative outlets, or practicing relaxation techniques. Find healthy ways to express and process your emotions that work best for you.

7. Seek life coaching: If you find that emotional resistance is persistent and impacting your daily life, consider seeking life coaching. Coaching provides the guidance, tools, and techniques to help you overcome emotional resistance and navigate challenging emotions in a healthy and effective way. It can be challenging to even see your resistance because it has become so automated in your daily life. But when you have someone who can help you to see what you cannot see with objectivity, compassion, and understanding, the path becomes more clear and you can then make your way to the other side.

Overcoming emotional resistance takes time and effort, but it is an important step towards emotional well-being and growth. By implementing these strategies, you can overcome emotional resistance and develop a healthier relationship with your emotions. Remember that it’s okay to feel and process emotions, and taking steps towards addressing emotional resistance can lead to greater emotional resilience and well-being.

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Have you been caught in someone else’s mist? 7 May 2022, 7:08 pm

I first heard this concept of being in the “mist” from an interview with Jamie Foxx. Basically, he was referring to how much more attractive you are to women when you are famous, like you are in a mist that makes you look better, sound better, feel better, like you can do no wrong. Then once the fame fades away, so does the mist.

This concept can be used in a multitude of ways. I have certainly been in someone else’s mist and it can be a very disempowering place to be. It equates to putting someone on a pedestal or seeing someone as “better” than you.

Clearly the mist shows up in our obsessive interest with fame and famous people. It can also show up with many people in our lives, starting when we are young with our parents.

Here are some common places where you may find people who carry the mist quality: 

• Actors
• TV & Radio personalities
• Teachers & Mentors
• Speakers, Authors & Experts
• Doctors
• Religious leaders
• Political figures
• Authority figures
• Relationship in the honeymoon phase
• Anyone who is in a leadership role

What can become disempowering and even abusive in this scenario is when the person in the mist takes advantage of knowing that you are in their mist and wants to keep you in their mist. It can get to the point where it can become dangerous when the person in the mist is a narcissist and uses certain manipulation techniques to purposefully disempower you and influence you to need them for your so called own good.

The latter is what I would like to discuss today. Being an empowerment coach, teacher, author and speaker whose mission is to empower people, I’ve always been very careful to make sure that those I work with are feeling more empowered over time, not more dependent upon me. However, there are some teachers, mentors, coaches, etc. that do not operate from that same belief. If you have found yourself in this type of mist, it can be a very tricky situation and here’s why.

Whenever you seek help, especially in your most vulnerable and darkest of times, and you find someone who genuinely helps you out of that darkness, you feel a sense of deep gratitude. That is normal and natural. When the help you find is on a professional level, you may find yourself spending a fair amount of time with that person depending on what your circumstances are. In my experience, the majority of clients I work with are clearing issues that have been present their entire lives, so it takes some time. I have found that a minimum of 9 months is usually necessary to not only change the trajectory of their life, but to keep them firmly planted on that new trajectory so they don’t go back to their old automatic ways. I’ve also worked with clients longer than that and also had clients return due to new challenges that have come up for them.

My goal is not to keep someone in coaching so I have a steady flow of income, that would not be in line with my values and integrity. My goal is to assist as long as I’m needed and progress is being made. Let me reemphasize the latter, that progress is being made.

Now here’s the catch… if you are in someone else’s mist, they will continue to emphasize how important it is to keep seeking their help, and you believe them because you have made progress in the past. After all, they brought you out of your darkness, they’ve got your trust and you believe they have your best interest at heart. Yet, your progress seems to have slowed down and you find yourself stuck on the same issues and not getting past them.

There are many tactics that can be used to keep you in someone else’s mist. Here are just a few of those tactics that are often used in the world of personal development. 

1. 1. You start to question whoever you hold in the mist. You might even think to yourself, “What if they aren’t who I think they are?”
   2. You start to feel taken advantage of and even used as you are asked to do things outside of your own healing, but are not fairly compensated, if at all, for your time and effort. They may even ask to borrow money or try to partner up with you if they see a financial opportunity.
   3. They are great at finding talented people and then reigning them in with stories of past life connections and soul contracts so you feel special. Now helping them becomes your soul purpose.
   4. They put off an air of having other-wordly wisdom. They may grin like a cheshire cat with a sense of, “I know something you don’t know.”
   5. You feel you are obligated or expected to show up for any and all events offered.
   6. The one in the mist might spend a whole lot of time edifying themselves and how great they are.
   7. They may tend to move around and create new “followers” because eventually the old ones see through the mist.
   8. You notice they embellish a lot or just downright lie.
   9. They tell tall tales of outrageous experiences they’ve had. Yet, you never see any proof or meet anyone who can collaborate their stories.
   10. You start to question yourself, “Is it me or is it them?”
   11. They act as if they have all the answers for you.
   12. They act as if they hold the magic, that they are special and have powers you don’t have, which is why they need you.
   13. You feel inferior, that the person in the mist is superior to you.
   14. They seem above reproach.
   15. They talk negatively about other spiritual teachers.
   16. They are always looking for others to go on and on about them to build them up.
   17. They act as if they have some sort of secret information that they keep to themselves.
   18. If you confront them, they are masters at manipulation, and you walk away feeling like everything just got turned around on you. You may even think to yourself, “What just happened?”
   19. You feel like you are being scolded from the front of the room.
   20. If YOU are challenged with something in your life, it’s because there is something you are to be looking at about yourself or learning from. If THEY, the one in the mist is challenged, they say it’s because some mystical thing is happening to them, they deflect and find other reasons why it’s happening other than themselves.
   21. You are guided to seek some state of perfection, which means you always have so much further to go. 

Everything just seems to be about them, and for good reason, you’ve gotten caught in the mist of a narcissistic mentor. The real conflict comes when the mist starts to clear. You were genuinely helped – in the beginning. But at some point, the tables turned, and now you are feeling less empowered and more reliant on always needing more help. You don’t want to feel this way about them because of all they’ve done for you, yet you feel betrayed. The further you move out of the mist, the more betrayed you feel. Now not only do you need to continue to work on yourself and whatever issues you got stuck in that were yours, but now you need to clear the betrayal and pain of the experience created by being in this web with this person that had all been covered by the mist.

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If you find yourself in hell, keep walking. Don’t stop and build a campfire! 11 Dec 2019, 6:05 am

Life is full of challenges and often those challenges can come from the most intimate relationships in our life called family. When those relationships have become so dysfunctional that it feels like you are living in a deep forest of hellish-like experiences, you keep walking. You don’t stop and build a campfire. 

My client Laura came from a family that was so dysfunctional that she thought the dysfunction was just part of life. In other words, her family’s way of life was the campfire they had been sitting around for years in the middle of this hellish-like existence. 

Once Laura became proactive instead of reactive, she started to do her due diligence and found coaching to help her illuminate what was actually going on. She learned that by making different choices, and often difficult ones, she could change how she experienced her life. She realized that she had spent years gathering buckets of water, setting them by the campfire so her family could put it out. But her family just ignored the buckets of water. Even if she threw the water on herself, they would just rebuild the campfire. 

Laura decided that for her own sake, and the sake of her husband and son, she needed to leave. She made the hard choice of walking away as she progressively made her way further and further from the campfire. Although her family, still sitting around the campfire, kept calling for her back. She didn’t know what laid ahead of her, but she knew that if she went back, she would be stuck sitting around that same old campfire that she had been trying to put out for so many years.

Even though she was still in the dense and dark part of the forest, she courageously kept walking. She had to keep overcoming the temptation to go back because of her guilt and fear of what might happen if she wasn’t there with another bucket of water. She kept renewing her courage and strengthening her commitment and trust as she found the trees becoming more sparse and more and more light shined through. The further away she got from the campfire, the more the light came in.

For the first time in her life, she was able to see things more clearly as she made her way to the edge of the forest. As she took those last steps out, she could finally look back and see what she had been through from the outside in. And even though she could still see the smoke coming from the middle as it made its way to the top of the trees, she knew that everyone is at choice, and her choice was to keep walking.

What choices have you been making? Are your choices moving you toward more clarity and a richer quality of life, or are they keeping you stuck as you throw more logs on the campfire?

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Why Creating Healthy Boundaries is so Challenging 15 Oct 2018, 5:42 am

Clear boundaries lead to healthy relationships and greater emotional well-being. Clear boundaries allow the relationships that are important in your life to grow and flourish while allowing those that would be better to let go of, graciously leave.

Here are some examples of what clear and healthy boundaries look like in a relationship:

• Each feels like they are their own person
• Each feels responsible for their own happiness
• Togetherness and separateness are balanced
• Friendships exist outside of your primary relationship
• Each focuses on the best qualities of each other
• A strong commitment exists in the relationship
• You have open, honest, and proactive instead of reactive communication
• Each respects the differences in the other
• Each asks honestly for what is authentically needed

There are 3 causes that might have led you to having unhealthy boundaries:

First is your family background. You might have grown up with unhealthy boundaries within the family. For instance, you might have grown up where the boundaries were too rigid or strict. The focus was on correcting misbehavior while disregarding the feelings that were underlying or causing the behavior. The focus was on having a compliant and obedient child instead of raising a healthy adult.

Or there may have not been enough boundaries. Of the two, this is the one I see most with the people that I work with, there isn’t enough discipline or structure in the household, or it is inconsistent. Structure for children creates a sense of stability and security, so when that isn’t in place, the child doesn’t learn about consequences until later in life when they can be much more painful. In some cases, the child might even feel like the parent doesn’t care.

Second is having ego-identity. As a child you had to develop an identity that was acceptable to those around you. The ego quickly formed at a young age to create the person you thought you were supposed to be as a survival strategy. As you grow older, you can end up feeling ashamed of the person you believe yourself to be, weakening your sense of self. The ego becomes like a facade that you must uphold at any cost, adjusting it according to what you think the expectations are of those around you. Without your own understanding of self, it is difficult to maintain an intimate relationship that is deep and lasting. Intimacy, or seeing someone for who they really are, becomes challenging because your ego is trying to protect you from being seen. You need a healthy sense of self in order to clearly communicate your needs and desires to your partner. By appreciating and loving your own positive qualities, and accepting and/or shifting your negative qualities, you can do the same for another.

And the third cause is to not address your feelings. There are three crucial mistakes that either your parents have made with you growing up, or you have made as a parent:

The first one is dismissing the child’s emotions. This can happen when the parent considers emotions as unimportant, so they can end up ignoring, or worse yet trivializing how the child feels. The child can grow up disconnected from their feelings, numbing themselves out, and emotionally unavailable in their relationships. They can also end up not trusting their own feelings or experiences which leads to self-doubt and lack of discernment.

The second is disapproving of the child’s emotions. If a parent points at a child in anger with the words, “Don’t you dare get angry with me!” The child learns to suppress their emotions, but also receives a very conflicting message that it’s okay for the parent to be angry but not them. It’s as though they don’t have the right to feel that way, that they are wrong to feel that way and end up feeling that something is wrong with them. Instead you are taught how you “should” feel and made to feel wrong for how you actually “do” feel.

The third is to acknowledge the child’s emotion, but not offer any guidance. They might offer up a distraction, like going to get an ice cream cone if the child is feeling sad. This only teaches the child to cope with their emotions with food, and we all know where that leads to as adults.

Over time these causes create tension in your relationships and stress in your life. You teach people how to treat you. Healthy relationships are mutually respectful and honoring of the boundaries you set. By addressing your feelings and expressing yourself openly and honestly, you are on your way to creating healthier boundaries and more fulfilling relationships.

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Live Without Regret – Fox News Segment 3 Dec 2017, 7:00 am

Guest appearance on Fox5 MORE Show with Monica Jackson talking about Living without Regret. August 4, 2015.

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Becoming a Spirit-Driven Entrepreneur 30 Nov 2017, 3:48 pm

“Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.” – Oprah Winfrey

When it comes to being a successful entrepreneur, personal transformation has been illuminated as a key element for over a century with the works of Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, and Earl Nightingale, just to name a few. Our understanding of these transformational principles has continued to grow; enriching our lives and creating depth of purpose in business and in life.

Having knowledge of basic business principles, engaging in more effective time-management techniques and having healthy habits are all necessities in creating a successful business. To create a business that is fulfilling, rooted in depth of purpose and meaning, takes an exploration into you. You are to be evolving as an entrepreneur, because you are destined to evolve as a human being. You can take your business to a level beyond your own human capacity as you take the inner journey to connect to your spirit. When your business becomes the vehicle for your personal evolution, you ride upon the strength of your spiritual purpose. You will never feel more on course and supported by the universe than when you are connected and aligned with your spirit.

In order to fully align with your spiritual purpose, discovering and clearing what is keeping you misaligned is imperative. Your business is one way you can find those misalignments. You can start by looking at what you believe about success. Do you believe that successful people are greedy? That it isn’t spiritual to charge higher prices? That success only happens for other people and not you? That you are too old, too young, or not educated enough? There can be hundreds of beliefs systems, BS for short, that you are conscious of roaming around in your mind.

From early childhood, you’ve been conditioned with beliefs by your family, society, culture and humanity. You don’t see them because you grew up in them and they are all that you know. You think that is reality, and it is, but it’s not the only reality in which you can live. You can create the reality you want when you have the awareness that a different reality can exist for you.

Has anyone ever told you, you don’t have what it takes? I worked with an 86-year old man who would always apologize when he spoke up in my workshops. He would say he was stupid and didn’t have a lot to offer, all of which wasn’t true. I asked him why he would think that about himself. He answered that his dad always told him growing up that he was stupid because he was dyslexic.

It is important to have a strong filter when other people’s beliefs are coming your way, often times they are actually projections of how they feel about themselves. Pay attention to whom you allow into your space. Especially as women, we often have an open door policy and allow too many unhealthy opinions and people into our lives. Healthy boundaries keep healthy relationships intact, and unhealthy relationships out.

In my 11 years of working with entrepreneurs, it’s not their business acumen that holds them back, it’s their mindset. What holds you back from fully stepping into your potential? Fear of failure? Fear of being judged? Fear that you will make other people feel less about themselves? It does not serve anyone for you to play small, you will only hurt yourself by doing so and end up being filled with regret later on.

Not all of your misaligned beliefs are in your conscious awareness, some of those beliefs are hiding out in the dark regions of your subconscious and are the types of obstacles that can keep you from achieving what your spirit set out to achieve. When you discover and dismantle those beliefs you will align with those beliefs that liberate you and align you with your spirit and your purpose.

Years ago, I was engaged in a written exercise when I discovered a belief I had no idea was inside me. After listing out several of my beliefs on paper, came my subconscious belief, “I’ll die early if I’m successful.” You see my dad was a very successful businessman. Over time, his health issues increased and he died of a heart attack at the young age of 58. I was thirty when he passed and throughout my thirties I struggled financially. Somewhere along the line, on a subconscious level, I had connected my dad’s success with his death and didn’t even know it. My subconscious was computing it as, “I don’t want to die, so I better not be successful.” That was a huge discovery for me. That awareness started me on the right track to dismantle that belief so I could create the success that would eventually change my life, and in turn, change the lives of so many others.

Discovering your subconscious beliefs is much like being a detective in pursuit of solving a mystery. You first need to search for clues. Your business is filled with clues. Your results, like them or not, are valuable feedback providing you with all sorts of clues. Your beliefs eventually manifest in your outer world. Your belief system is the dominant force creating your success, or lack of it. A belief holds your creative energy, which magnetizes its like to itself, therefore your results are a vibrational match to your beliefs.

For example, if your results show up as “not enough”, whether it’s clients, money, or time, check and see if that is what you believe about you, that YOU are not enough? It doesn’t mean it’s true, it’s just what you believe and feel. It’s time to stop buying into these beliefs as if they are true; they are thoughts, they are feelings, they are energy. If you keep resisting them, you will continue to strengthen them and trap them inside which will then become a stronger magnet to the “not enough” results you attract in your business.

Clues are also found by paying attention to what you complain about. Put your detective to work and pay attention to what comes out of your mouth. You might find you say things like, life isn’t fair, people are hard to work with, or no matter what I do, I can’t get ahead. How about a disempowering statement like, I’m so stupid. Is that what you want to continue to affirm? If so, then keep saying it. If not, then quit saying it. How about having a standby answer of, I don’t know. Common amongst teenagers and adults alike, it can be used as a fallback answer. What if you stretch yourself and act as if you do know, because some part of you DOES know. Every time you say you don’t know, you disconnect from the part of you that knows. Pay attention to these clues to discover what’s going on inside you and what it is that you are continuing to affirm and strengthen in your life.

Once you have uncovered your misaligned beliefs, you can now move toward real solutions. How have you gone about solving your problems in the past? Have you been more outer-directed by trying to change things in your outer world? For example, if you procrastinate, you may have taken time-management classes or downloaded the latest app to solve your procrastination problem, just to find you put that off too. The real problem is not procrastination, that is just the clue. The real problem may lie in the belief that if you were to stop procrastinating and pursue your dreams – you will fail. This is what is keeping you from moving forward and realizing your dreams and your greatness.

You don’t just believe something because you think it, you believe something because you have an emotional investment in it – positive or negative. Beliefs are nothing more than thoughts and feelings that marry together. Think of your thoughts as seeds, and your emotions as the soil where those seeds are being planted. Your negative thoughts will find their way into negative, sometimes toxic, emotions. Over a period of time, this becomes your own personal self-sabotaging belief. Positive beliefs, on the other hand, are positive thoughts that live in positive emotions. Are you ready to become a conscious gardener when it comes to your beliefs?

There is work involved in aligning with your spirit, and here’s why. Your brain is wired to go toward pleasure to avoid pain. In doing so, on the other side of the pleasure is pain. When you go into the pain to process it, on the other side is pleasure. As Rumi said, “The cure for pain is in the pain.” You are up against a lot of things that are hard-wired biologically and conditioned environmentally within you. Hence, this is why you are to be evolving; growing beyond the part of you that is driven by fear and survival. Say hello to your ego. By identifying and negotiating with your ego, you can start edging your way out of your comfort zone so you can grow and evolve as a spirit-driven entrepreneur.

To come back into alignment with your spirit, you can first make the distinction that you are not your feelings. Too often you identify with your feelings as if that’s who you are, when nothing could be further from the truth. You can feel like a failure and you can fail, that does not mean you ARE a failure. You are a spiritual being having a human experience, therefore, you are so much greater than any feelings you can have.

Believe it or not, your negative beliefs and emotions are the gateway to your spirit. By going into your negative emotions and processing them, you release them and make your way to the other side where your beautiful spirit is waiting. As you consistently go through the emotional clearing process, it weakens those beliefs that keep you misaligned with your spirit. You weaken the power your ego has had over you and you strengthen your connection to the power your spirit has had all along. You achieve more powerful results because you are evolving into the spirit-driven entrepreneur you were always meant to be.

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The Freedom of Forgiveness 24 Oct 2017, 4:15 pm

“Holding a grudge doesn’t make you strong; it makes you bitter. Forgiving doesn’t make you weak; it sets you free.” – Dave Willis

In life you have many teachers that are part of your journey. Some you will recognize and welcome, and some you will adamantly reject seeing them as your teacher because they have caused you pain in some way. Those who fall into that category are not aware that they are your teacher. They are most likely just acting from their ego. As Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Well, most people are walking around not knowing what they are doing, not only doing to others, but also doing to themselves.

You may remove these people from your life, but are they really gone? Not if you are holding on to anger, resentment, or hatred. Not if you didn’t learn what they were there to teach you. They can live on in your emotions, your thoughts, and even in your dream space. They can also re-emerge in your life through another person. Not really the same person physically, but energetically. Your lesson will come back around with someone who brings up the same issue that came up with the person you thought you removed from your life.

Everyone has had someone in their life that has left a scar, and some are still walking around with an open wound. These are your life teachers, the ones that can cut right into the center of your heart and if you allow it, continue to eat away at you until your life seizes up with bitterness and resentment. Buddha said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” There is also a modified version with the same penetrating message, “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

So why would you consider someone who has hurt you in some way as a teacher? Because, while you were still in spirit form you chose your life path, including your greatest challenges because those are your life lessons. It is while you are still in your spirit form that you can also agree to soul contracts with others while they are in spirit form too, sometimes to balance your karma and sometimes to learn new lessons. And even though you may be buddies in the spirit world, you can agree to be enemies in the physical world. Those are usually the ones that cut the deepest.

Having your life lessons come through a soul contract is not always the case. If you are here to learn certain lessons, then you are destined to learn the lesson regardless of who is teaching you. Often times it will come through multiple people. So when someone has caused you pain, if it wouldn’t have been them, it would have just been somebody else because you were meant to learn the lesson that they had to teach you. When you hold on to the past or don’t learn from the past, you will continue to repeat it. This keeps you from fully moving forward in your life. As you hold on to it – it holds on to you! Forgiveness is a choice to let go; to let go of something that caused you pain in your past. You cannot change the past, but you can change how you feel about the past.

Then there is self-forgiveness, perhaps pain you have caused others or acts you committed that keep you in shame or guilt. Maybe you haven’t forgiven yourself for having let your fears keep you from realizing your potential, or for staying in a relationship where you were mistreated. Whatever your reasons, it’s time to choose to forgive yourself and to forgive others. By holding yourself or others in judgment through refusing to forgive, you create your own self-abuse, keeping you in victim consciousness.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the effects of not choosing forgiveness can be:

• Bringing anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience
• Becoming so wrapped up in the wrong that you can’t enjoy the present
• Becoming depressed or anxious
• Feeling that your life lacks meaning or purpose, or that you are at odds with your spiritual beliefs
• And, losing valuable and enriching connectedness with others

Whereas, choosing forgiveness can lead to:

• Healthier relationships
• Greater spiritual and psychological well-being
• Less anxiety, stress and hostility
• Lower blood pressure
• Fewer symptoms of depression
• A stronger immune system
• Improved heart health
• And, higher self-esteem

Forgiveness is something you choose. It’s not going to be something that just happens to you. When you trust that the universe is a self-correcting system and you don’t have to make sure that someone pays, including you, you step out of the way and let the universe do its thing. Too often you may want retribution and end up creating blocks for yourself bringing more hardship into your life. Your spirit continues to move you toward forgiveness because forgiveness will remove those negative blocks in your life.

Back in early 2005, I had my first experience in understanding this concept. At that time, I was still very much in my own self-sabotaging pattern of giving myself away. I opened up my home to someone who asked me to work with her in starting a business. Shortly after she moved in, I went away for about two weeks on a retreat. Even though she had her own bedroom and bath, without asking me, she slept in my bed, used my bathroom, wore my clothes, ate my food, and damaged my home decorations she used for an event she was putting on. Just recalling this story helps to remind me how far I’ve come, because back then, wow, my boundaries were a mess!

After several months, she held a team meeting with me and four other people regarding the business. I could no longer deal with the situation. There were so many things happening that I didn’t agree with, yet I had done so much to help her build this company. I had basically allowed her to turn my home into its headquarters. I knew I couldn’t go on but I was struggling with walking away. I felt as though the business would take off and I would miss out on all the fruits of my labor. My mentor at the time was also at the meeting, and I remember sitting outside with him and doing my best to work through the internal struggle.

This is when I first learned that the universe has its own way of keeping track, and that my efforts would not go unrewarded, they just may not come through this business. After working through the struggle of deciding, I walked away and she moved out. I was never paid the $3,000 in commissions that I had earned that month, and she even attempted to take my leather jacket with her when she left.

She was one of my biggest teachers, not one I consciously chose, but one that the universe brought to me. I was still in my early years of my own transformational journey. I had to learn to set healthier boundaries, speak up for myself, and let go. Even though I understood that on an intellectual level, my blood would boil anytime I would think of her. But as I continued to heal, and continued to let go, I came to a place of forgiveness. Eventually, all that anger was replaced with compassion. Her company ended up going out of business, the people who remained with her lost large amounts of money, and I escaped having to experience all of that. I also made triple the amount of what I didn’t get paid shortly after leaving through another project. I was the lucky one.

I remember when I came to the realization that I no longer had any anger toward her, and even though it took some time, it was so freeing once all that anger made its way through. It’s like there was nothing left inside me, nothing, the anger was completely gone – neutralized. And when you get to that place, it’s amazing.

So the universe keeps track, it’s called karma. If you step aside and let it do its thing, the sooner you can move on to what is important for you. When you let go, forgive and learn from the painful experiences of your past, you just may be clearing your own karmic debt.

Karma really is the lessons you learn. What goes around comes around. If you have sent something negative out to the universe, it will be on its way back to you. Yet an interesting thing can happen if you learn the lesson before it comes back, you just may experience the spiritual law of grace. Grace can dissolve your negative karma and create miracles in your life. Karma works in the positive and negative. Through learning the lessons of your past experiences and by giving grace to others, it opens up grace to come into your life – that is positive karma. The more grace you give, the more you get. When you wish ill-will upon others, you bring it upon yourself through negative karma. The more compassion, empathy, and forgiveness you give to others, the more you receive. These all lead to more healing and grace in your life. Forgiveness is a process, so be patient with yourself and really honor your process of forgiveness. The wiser you become the more you forgive, because you know the price you are paying for not forgiving.

Below are exercises to help you to forgive and release those that you have held in anger and judgment.

You can write a letter to the person you are forgiving. This letter is not to send them, it is where you will release your anger, judgment and whatever else might come up for you. This may take one sitting to write, or several sittings. Once you feel complete, take the letter and burn it or tear it up. And as you do, say, “I now forgive you and release you, as I free me and forgive myself.” You can also write yourself a letter, if it’s you that needs forgiving.

There is an ancient Hawaiian practice of forgiveness called Hoʻoponopono. It is a mantra that you repeat, and even though there is no set time for how long you repeat it, try it for 30 days and see what happens. The mantra goes like this, “I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”

The Hawaiians believe by taking responsibility for your actions, thoughts and feelings, you can now choose what you want to create in your life, dissolve your karma, allow yourself to heal, and move on with a better life through Hoʻoponopono. Below this article you will find a beautifully sung version of the Hoʻoponopono mantra.

Marianne Williamson teaches a great deal about forgiveness and she encourages people to pray for the other person’s happiness 5 minutes a day for 30 days.

Are you ready to free yourself through forgiveness? Your spirit will always be guiding you to do so. Choose whichever technique you are more drawn to and see how free you feel after doing so.

The post The Freedom of Forgiveness appeared first on Lisa Ulshafer | Empowered Living | Empowerment Life Coach.

The Magic of Divine Flow 3 Jun 2017, 6:43 am

“Magic is what happens when you have encountered the Divine. It is the life-altering experiences of connecting to the divinity that dwells within yourself and in the world.” – Phyllis Curott

Amazing stuff happens when you’re living in divine flow. I’ve experienced being both in and out of divine flow and it can be absolutely magical when you’re in it. In fact, it was pouring through my life while writing my book, Journey with an Angel. So much so that much of the book became about what was happening while writing the book. So how do you get in divine flow and what does it look like once you’re there?

Divine flow is around you at all times, the key is allowing yourself to ride along it’s magical stream. One of the signs you’re in it, is when synchronicity shows up at every turn. Famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity after having many seemingly coincidental experiences with his patients. He described synchronicity as the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced as occurring together in a meaningful manner.

Synchronicities may catch your attention here and there at first, but over time, they may derive more meaning as they show up more consistently. Experiencing greater synchronicity in your life is indicative of reaching higher levels of awareness and being more connected to your spirit. When you move beyond critical thinking, a shift occurs and synchronicities often lead the way. They may validate something you have been thinking about, confirm a direction, or sometimes just drive home a point.

Not only can you experience synchronicities, but you can also receive messages in other ways. They may come to you because you are getting the information you need when you need it most. These messages often come as a result of asking for guidance through prayer or intention. Other people can relay messages to you knowingly or unknowingly in conversation, or in passing. So, where are these messages coming from? Many of your messages come from angels. After all, the word angel is derived from the ancient Greek word angelos, which means messenger.

Another indicator that you are opening up and connecting more is through the recurring presence of numbers and their sequences in your life. The angels communicate to people a great deal through the use of numbers. Perhaps it’s easier to get our attention that way because we are continuously surrounded by numbers. One of the greatest gifts I’ve received from connecting with my angels is how much I treasure seeing the numbers that are significant to me. I’ve been seeing the numbers 722 and 227 consistently and in the most precarious ways since 2008. When I see them I always smile and recognize that my angels are present.

Intuition is a major gateway to divine flow. It’s how your spirit brings you information as a way to guide you in your life journey. Following my intuition is what has served me the most in my coaching practice. The more you follow it, the stronger it gets, and to this day has never failed me.

So how can you move into more divine flow in your life? By asking! One way is to ask your angels to assist you. They are always at the ready. Asking for their assistance will let them know you’re ready to receive their support.

Heartfelt prayers can also move things along. Whenever you pray, it is important to recognize that the most important part of the prayer is the feelings. Many are praying for the same thing all the time—maybe for more financial security, or guidance in some area of their lives, or help with their relationships with their spouses or children. Prayer is received more through our vibration than anything else, and our feelings are what create the strength of vibration. If you are just thinking a prayer, it doesn’t have the same effectiveness as when your prayers are heartfelt.

Being aware and consciously pursuing your transformational pathway accelerates everything. You’re a multi-dimensional complex being on a physical, psychological and spiritual level. Understanding who you are and how you work while applying what you learn, raises your vibration and opens the doorway to divine flow.

Meditation is another way to relax and calm your body and mind while allowing more connection to occur with your spirit and angels. Meditation has multitudes of benefits, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Higher vibrational music activates your spirit. Its harmony is soothing, and its inspiration comes from the soul. Music has a therapeutic effect on the human psyche and has a powerful effect on the mind. In the words of Ludwig van Beethoven, “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks, and invents.”

Taking walks and getting out in nature can be a wonderful way to lift your spirit. Stopping to smell the roses is more than a cliché saying. Nature has its own magical way about it and is always in divine flow.

I believe that we all want to experience magic in our lives. We want to feel fulfillment and meaning and that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. That’s how you feel when you are in divine flow. Are you ready to make amazing stuff happen by finding your flow?

The post The Magic of Divine Flow appeared first on Lisa Ulshafer | Empowered Living | Empowerment Life Coach.

Luckygirl Podcast for Solopreneurs 25 Apr 2017, 5:51 am

Interview II

The post Luckygirl Podcast for Solopreneurs appeared first on Lisa Ulshafer | Empowered Living | Empowerment Life Coach.