A safe harbor where beliefs are respected and kindness prevails.

The Experiement

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IMG_1041I am not a scientist but I am conducting an experiment.

I have been living with a limited sense of myself for most of my life. I am not sure where the deep sense of insecurity and self doubt came from but I am exhausted by it.

Yogic philosophy, Enneagram and Astrology, all tell me that my deep sense of personal growth is contingent on me letting go of my control issues and deep seeded insecurities.

I keep reading about it and playing with the idea but I think its time to do the experiment 100%.

If I let go, really let go, I am told that I will be able to channel the energy of the Universe and I will Know Truth. I will be more relaxed and I will feel a deeper connection with everything- the Universe, with humanity.

Sounds like bliss right? So why am I not doing it? This is a very good question.

One student said to me last night, “I think I am afraid to ask for what I really want because once I start that process there is no going back.”

Right on !!

My friend, teacher and fellow yogi, Sianna Sherman calls it “the magnetic point of radiance”, when we dare to follow our truth, when we dial in, listen deeply, go for it and then surrender. Let go of any clinging to the outcome and just go for it!

Once we move away from the Known to the Unknown or into the area of possibilities, we open up to an energy we may never have experienced. Maybe we feel like we won’t be able to handle it or that we are not worthy.

But you know what? We won’t know until we try.

What stops most of us is not a lack of desire to be free and liberated but rather the anxiety and self doubt that resides in the deepest corners of our being. We all have that nervousness that holds us back.

Isabel Hickey says,
“Nervous tension is the person in the body, giving the body a hard time”

Amen Isabel!!

Sound familiar? The reason it is said that happiness is an inside job, is because we have to give it to ourselves. No matter what our outside circumstances may be—- we have to let go of that inner control of the self with the small “s” and let the S-elf with the BIG “S” teach us to fly.

So the experiment starts today. I am looking for my core values and what it is I truly want to do in my life and I am going to go for it 100%.—- not 90 or 95% but full on.

Join me!

We inspire each other the most when we live our lives and our purpose at 100%.

I will let you know how it goes. Share your experiences with me.

Come on! Let’s go!!

 

How to Embrace Your Personal Declaration of Independence

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In the spirit of July as we celebrate American independence, I think about personal independence and what it entailed for me. Sure, it is a big subject because the idea of personal independence is just that — personal. It means something different to each of us.

In my case, I yearned for acknowledgment, approval and acceptance. Also, I felt that I needed to be something other than who I was to get it. Therefore, I created very specific ideas of how I should act, what I should look like and what I needed to achieve to be deemed worthy of other people’s acceptance.

Talk about struggle! I was like a pinball, bouncing from persona to persona based upon who I was trying to please at the time. Actually, I had no way to win. My notion to act saintly (in order to be acceptable to others) was impossible to achieve. My standard of what was beautiful wasn’t my own, and was impossible for me to achieve. My sense of what it meant to be accomplished wasn’t my own, and was impossible for me to achieve.

Depression: aligning with non-preferred situations and feeling helpless to change them. – Author Unknown

Depression and I were really good friends. I felt trapped inside my head and heart because of my unrealistic expectations. After decades of spinning my wheels, being stubborn and trying to be someone and something I was not, I had a total breakdown.

Breakdowns get a bad rap, in my opinion. To me, having a breakdown means that what I have been doing — over and over again to receive what I think I want — isn’t working. When I get to the point where I’ve had enough, that is when I am willing to consider new ideas. Open. Receptive. Willing. That is when a breakthrough becomes possible. Breakdowns create breakthroughs.

In breaking through, I stopped focusing on other people’s definitions of beauty, success and acceptability and turned within to explore my own definitions of them. I explored what I appreciated about myself, exactly as I was. I started acknowledging what I do well, and spoke kindly to myself.

In time, I found that I was lighter in my head and heart. In time, I found an inner peace and joy emerging softly. And in time, by clearing myself of unrealistic expectations I found my freedom. I embraced and enjoyed my personal declaration of independence, and I’ve been dancing and singing ever since!

My heartfelt wish is for you to determine what personal independence means for you. My heartfelt wish is for you to be acceptable to yourself. My heartfelt wish is for you to break free from the chains of others’ expectations that you have adopted for yourself. My heartfelt wish is for you to be able to look in the mirror and know that a strong, amazing and magnificent person cheerfully gazes back at you.

To assist you in getting there, I have some suggestions:

  1. Honor what you did to survive: If you know that the underlying intention for all you have done was to receive acknowledgement and acceptance, know that to be true and give yourself a break. You were doing the best you could at the time.
  1. Accept your thoughts: Understand that you think up to 60,000 thoughts every day, and they are like clouds in the sky. Don’t get too hung up on how you should The truth is, you think how you think, and whatever you are thinking is going to shift momentarily anyway.
  1. Celebrate your uniqueness: Comparing yourself to others is like comparing a tulip and a rose. Stay in your own body and mind and know that you are divine in origin and expression.

If none of these suggestions resonate with you, that’s fine! Be willing to receive clarity on what tools can help you break free from unrealistic expectations, and you will find them.

As you greet the second half of the calendar year, wake up each day and commit to being a good friend to yourself. As you do this just a bit each day, your clarity will increase and your personal declaration of independence is right around the corner. Get your dancing shoes ready!

Falling Off The Healthy Wagon

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IMG_0041 I’ve always been a thin guy. I’ve never really had any issues with food (except maybe peas, ugh!), and for the most part I’ve been very active, but skinny. My partner, Rob, on the other hand will tell you that he was a fat kid. He ate anything he could get a hold of and was never much into being active. Becoming an adult changed that for both of us and we can now say, eating right and working out have been an important part of our lives for more than 35 years.

For the past three years, Rob and I have been working for ourselves. We are both Licensed Massage Therapist and Personal Trainers.   Rob is a Registered Yoga Teacher who also teaches Meditation and I have a ‘Certificate in Nutrition’ from The American Council on Exercise. We work out with a trainer three times a week and try hard to get in two if not three sessions of cardio each week. Our diets are clean, with no red meat. We buy and eat as much organic foods as possible and we drink a fresh fruit & vegetable juice each day.   With us being advocates for “Healthy Living”, we feel it’s necessary for us to walk the walk so as to inspire our clients to incorporate our “talk” into their lives. By being healthy and active people we feel we help our clients be the same.IMG_0053

A little more than two months ago, something shifted.   We found ourselves at the gym only twice a week with an occasional visit to the fat-burning cardio machines.   While our diet at home remained pretty much the same, we found ourselves skipping meals and eating out more than usual.   Snacking on hummus and crackers was almost an everyday thing and we began to ‘treat’ ourselves with a glass of wine or a beer almost every night.

Enabling each other in our “treats” and irregular habits became easy. A typical rational was – “Ok, its 7:30 pm and we’re just finishing up a massage client, I don’t feel like cooking so let’s just go out and grab something. And since we’re out, let’s have a beer with dinner.”   One beer easily turns into two, and after a couple of beers and getting home around 10:00 pm – well, now it’s too late to set the alarm for 6:30am to make it to the trainer, so let’s cancel. And the cycle continued.

It’s easy to fall into a cycle that feels good in the moment but is not supporting your overall plan for your life. That is exactly where we found ourselves.

We work mostly from home with our massage clients coming to us.  Originally, we were good at keeping up with our meals and our workouts, but as we got busier, scheduling clients started to become a problem. Not a problem in the sense that they were not welcomed and we didn’t appreciate the business (we welcomed all the business) but the problem was in blending the client’s needs and timing with our established healthy habits. Some days, one or two clients would book mid-afternoon and we found ourselves missing lunch or grabbing a handful of nuts. Then, a yoga teacher would call needing a sub for their 5:45pm class. So we’d end up in a restaurant having dinner……and the cycle continued.   We began to teach from one side of our mouth while we were eating a grilled turkey sandwich and having a cold beer with the other side. And the pounds started to accumulate.

UGH, did we ever fall off the healthy wagon!

The weight gain was noticeable – especially to us. We knew that something was up but we just didn’t see or feel it at first and then couldn’t stop it.   We talked about our lack of attention to our lifestyle and knew that something had to change…but nothing did. We had less energy and doing the things we wanted to do become harder and harder to do. Then one day while preparing for an upcoming retreat that we were hosting, called Personal Training for the Body & Soul – we stopped and said, wait a minute, this is exactly what we need! It made us stop and say; “What in the hell are we doing?” And more than What are we doing, Why are we doing this?

We both knew we were medicating ourselves. There had to be something deeper going on within us. But what? And–where do we go from here?

With our notes for our Retreat in hand we began asking ourselves a few questions. “What is really important to us? What do we value?” We made a list. Then came: “Are we acting in accordance to what we value and deem important?” The answer this time was a resounding, No! Then to bring it back around, we asked ourselves, “What do we need to do to get back on track and get back to our core values?” With new dedication and determination we began the process of getting back on our own wagon – we know what it takes.

We never did come up with a particular “ WHY” we fell from the Healthy Wagon. It is usually a combination of life situations that hit at once. In our case we let ourselves get overwhelmed about our life. Sound familiar?

Life is a spiral and we keep coming back to the same place. The trick is to see this place with new eyes, with a clearer vision because of our past experiences. It is never exactly the same. As with all things in life there is ebb and flow, a crest then a wake. This back and forth, is our True Self seeking balance – a natural process from moving away from center than back again, like walking a tight-rope, or staying grounded and balanced while doing Warrior II in a yoga class. It’s like knowing when to work hard and knowing when you need a vacation. We come and we go, we move this way and that – all in an effort to find our midpoint or quite spot. Falling off the Healthy Wagon and getting back on was part of our evolution. It made us more aware of what is important to us and therefore a little easier this time to climb back up and get back on.

“It is not so much about changing the pace of our life as it is about changing the pace of our mind”, Rob said to me one day!

The mind is a wonderful tool but it can also be a force that pushes you fast and furious off the wagon of your life. Take a little time each day to step back from yourself and take a look at what you are doing. Do you feel good or do you need to make some alterations? Take a look at your daily routine. Are you living according to your values and what is important to you? This self- check in can become a healthy habit which makes staying on track easier.

It’s your life. Be Happy. Be Healthy. Be in love with you!

Steve Bolia & Rob Dorgan

Persistent Thoughts

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Have you ever had a thought, a conversation or an experience that you can’t get out of your mind?  Usually they are negative thoughts that persist despite all the other good in life that really should be taking precedence for us.  Why is it that that one negative overshadows all that is good?

The short answer is… because we let it.

Why do we let it?  Because there is some part of us that believes it  – might – be true.  It doesn’t matter if it is true or not we second guess what we think, feel or believe and usually because someone else said it out loud.  Now it’s stuck playing in our heads.  How do we stop the negative thoughts that someone else imprints on us?

First, don’t resist it.  I don’t know about you but if I tell myself not to think about it that is exactly what I do think about.  Instead take a few minutes and do nothing but think about it.   Give yourself the time to acknowledge its existence.  For some people that may be enough to release the grip the thought has.

Next, if the thought persists then take the time to analyze what it is about it that bothers you the most.  Is it because of who said it, how it was said or what was said?  Is it the last straw on top of a string of negative thoughts you’ve been having lately?  In your heart do you believe it or because you’re in a place of transition in your life you’re not yet strong enough in your beliefs to dismiss it easily?  Don’t try and resolve the thought at this point.  This is merely the time to understand if fully.

Now, distract yourself.  Do something you can lose yourself in.  Play with your children, watch a fast-paced movie, or perhaps work on a project that requires you to concentrate.  Choose something that doesn’t give you time to think about anything else.  The point of this step is to force yourself out of your own head and to broaden your perspective.  This step enables you to see that you can move on from it.

Anything you resist, persists.  And… Anything you try and bury will surface when you need it least. If instead you acknowledge it and make the effort to understand it you can move on from it.  Sure you may have to make a conscious effort to think differently but when you choose to think, feel and act differently you develop a strength that serves you well.  The negative thought, did not.

With love, Cheryl

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