A safe harbor where beliefs are respected and kindness prevails.

What are you assuming?

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Fotolia_55005268_Subscription_LSo often I hear a client say that someone in their life expects them to screw up, to fail, or to be a disappointment.  How discouraging is that?  Do you feel like no matter what you do someone who is important to you automatically assumes the worst?

What ensures however is even more enlightening.   As the conversation goes on it’s filled with the same “self talk.”  Negative and defeatist but even more telling is that they are also assuming the worst about the others in their own life.  It’s that vicious circle that undermines not only the person’s growth but also every relationship they have.

I understand what it feels like to be treated as less than.   Less capable, less valuable, less, less, less.  It just makes us feel like we can’t achieve our goals, find a loving relationship, the ideal job or be able to buy that home.  When we feel that miserable it is reflected in our thoughts and conversations with and about others.  In other words we’re paying our misery forward.

While ideally we’d like the other person to be more encouraging and supportive… they may be wishing we were.  As long as no one takes the initiative we stay stuck in this Catch 22.  We can’t control the behavior of anyone else but we can change our own.  We can also start with being more loving to ourselves.

Throughout the day pay attention to your thoughts.  Are you thinking the worst… or at least something less than the best?  When you catch yourself doing so, stop, then say to yourself, “That thought isn’t working for me.” Now shift to a more encouraging thought. Here are a couple of examples:

  • Shift “I’m always going to be overweight. I have no willpower” to “I’m not in the physical condition that I want to be however I can choose today to: (Fill in the blank)  drink more water, eat a salad, take a walk.”
  • Instead of saying “I’m never going to find my soul mate” choose to say “I will open my heart to attract the perfect partner for me.”
  • Take “I can’t afford to go out with all my friends” and turn it into “I am choosing to have friends over for a potluck or BYOB.”

Each shift makes you feel better about yourself and your life.  Resolve to shift your negative thoughts about yourself as often as you can.  Make a game out of it and start to laugh at your former negativity.  Notice how much better you feel.  Now that you’re practicing so well with your own life choose to do the same for your thoughts about others.  Before long you’ll notice how your energy rises and the change in those around you.  It all starts with you.

You Can Change Your Mind

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Fotolia_30758739_Subscription_XXLDo you hesitate to make a decision because you don’t want to make a mistake?  Have you decided that the next job, the next relationship or your next home is going to be the last one so you want it to be perfect?  When we place such high expectations on ourselves we end up being stuck… and that doesn’t make us happy, satisfied or remotely fulfilled.

You can take the pressure off yourself with one Simple Step … a shift in your perspective.  Rather than thinking in absolutes decide to make your choices based on where you are in life right now.  You don’t know where you’ll be a year from now let alone five or ten years down the line so why feel you have to make a decision now for what might happen in the future?

Think of it this way.  You wouldn’t make the same decisions now that you did when you were a teenager, right?  So why think you have to make a decision now that will work for the rest of your life? Instead think of your decision as making the best choice you can based on what you know or believe right now.  Allow yourself the freedom to make a different decision when it’s appropriate for you to do so.  And that feels so much better than setting an unrealistic expectation.

You May Be Hearing but Are You Listening?

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Fotolia_55310332_Subscription_XLIs the little voice inside your head getting your attention?  Or are you hearing it and ignoring it because you don’t like what it says?  Are your friends, family, the sales person, your boss or anyone else giving you advice that is drowning out your own voice?  When we believe that someone else knows more about what we should do than we do we undermine our own sense of security.

In my “downfall” years… the time when everything seemed to go wrong in my life I was taking the advice of gurus and well-intentioned friends who I thought were more experienced than me.  The entire time my inner voice was screaming at me but I chalked it up to stepping outside my comfort zone.  I second guessed every decision I made and ultimately followed a path that someone else had recommended.

Looking back even further into my life I have come to realize that I’ve been doing something similar ever since I can remember.  In some cases my parents were protecting me or setting me to up meet their definition of success.  At other times I just wanted to be liked or be part of a crowd.   In other words I had a long-standing history of doing what I was told by someone else.

The voice that comes from within is the voice of our soul… the part of us that is more than this physical existence. Call it the god within or our higher power speaking through us.  If you believe in that higher power than you also believe that god means love.  So why aren’t we listening?

I believe we can learn to trust our inner voice.  We do so asking a question and sitting quietly as listening for the answer.  Start with a small question and listen. For example ask what  you should have for lunch or perhaps who you should reach out to today.  Then do that.  Be sure to not engage in a debate about the answer.  Take it at face value and go with the flow… so to speak.  Do this for a few weeks and each time you listen to your voice take note of how it worked out for you.  You’ll soon discover that you can trust your voice and can take it up a notch my asking about something more important.  The key here is to proceed at your own pace and to take your own counsel.

Only you have your best interest in mind.  When you learn to listen and proceed on your own advice you’ll discover the ground beneath you is tera firma!

With love, Cheryl

Turning Panic into Progress

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CLmDo you find yourself wanting to just “do” something when everything seems to be falling apart?  When the panic sets in do you freeze up or, if you’re like me, do you find yourself in a frantic state doing everything that comes into your mind in hopes that you can gain control.  It took me a long time to realize that all that doing was my undoing.

When something in our life seems to be out of control… or at least out of our control… our need to be in control kicks into high gear.  There are just some things in life that we cannot control.  An “act of god,” another person’s actions or illness and the decisions of governments, businesses or organizations we aren’t actively involved in… are all examples that come to mind.  Still every one of these changes lives.

In the last five years I’ve dealt with sudden death of a my dad, Jack’s life threatening illness and my company being acquired.  I can’t even begin to tell you how helpless those events made me feel… and how my panic in each case resulted in my taking action that didn’t help. Yes, hindsight provides clarity about the event, however, why not use it to also provide new guiding principles for your life?

What worked?  What didn’t work?  What’s important to you?  These are all good questions to ponder after your panic subsides.  How did your action during these times pan out?  Some worked, some didn’t. If you can take just a few moments of your time to think about it you can set yourself up to have a bit more control when the next event triggers your panic mode.  When you realize what worked and didn’t say it out loud to yourself.  But don’t stop there, add the statement, “When I get into a panic mode again I’m going to stop and remind myself of what I learned from the last time.”

We can learn from absolutely everything we do in life.  Choosing to do so moves you onto solid ground. And from there you can do anything!

With love, Cheryl

Cheryl

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