Let’s start our days out like four year old Jessica and stand on your sinks, in front of the mirror, and give ourselves a pep talk. We can all do a little self life coaching to lift us over the rough spots in our days.
Gotta love this kid!
Tags: be happy, beliefs, brain power
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
The Pulse of Commitment
Commitment is tangible, like the beat of your heart felt in your pulse. Have you ever had the experience of being so committed to a goal that no matter how many roadblocks you encountered, you would not give up? How do you know when to continue in the same vein or take another path? Are the roadblocks a sign that you should quit?
I can’t answer that for anyone else, but I’d advise you if you want to re-examine your commitment, to do 3 things first: First, be quiet for awhile, secondly, ask yourself questions, and lastly, listen for your answer deep in your soul.
I do know that once I was committed to applying for Italian citizenship for me and my children, I jumped through all the hoops. More than four years ago, I requested information from the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. It was two years before they even looked at my request. I was told that, every day, they get 96,000 requests.
In order for me to apply for Italian citizenship, I had to prove that my paternal grandfather was still an Italian citizen when my father was born in the United States. If he had denounced his Italian citizenship, then I could not apply.
These last four years have been an emotional roller coaster while I was researching, waiting, gathering documents, having them translated into Italian, getting gold apostilles on each document from State agencies, and waiting some more. I wanted to quit so many times.
Twelve months ago, after driving five hours to the Italian Consulate in the US, to apply, I hit another major roadblock. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Commitment, Italian Citizenship
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Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers in the world! This is a fun video, but just so you know, the women break dancing are NOT really pregnant, just the women watching. I was a little worried when I first watched it wondering how one could be pregnant and break dancing!
Here’s to having fun on our special day!
My brother sent me an email about job titles for moms:
A woman, renewing her driver’s license at the County Clerk ’s office,
Was asked by the woman recorder to state her occupation. She hesitated, uncertain how to classify herself.
‘What I mean is, ‘ explained the recorder,
‘do you have a job or are you just a …?’
‘Of course I have a job,’ snapped the woman. ’I'm a Mom.’
‘We don’t list ‘Mom’ as an occupation,
‘housewife’ covers it,’ Said the recorder emphatically.
I forgot all about her story until one day I found myself
In the same situation, this time at our own Town Hall.
The Clerk was obviously a career woman, poised,
Efficient, and possessed of a high sounding title like,
‘Official Interrogator’ or ‘Town Registrar.’
‘What is your occupation?’ she probed.
What made me say it? I do not know.
The words simply popped out.
‘I’m a Research Associate in the field of
Child Development and Human Relations.’
The clerk paused, ball-point pen frozen in midair and
Looked up as though she had not heard right.
I repeated the title slowly emphasizing the most significant words..
Then I stared with wonder as my pronouncement was written,
In bold, black ink on the official questionnaire.
‘Might I ask,’ said the clerk with new interest,
‘just what you do in your field?’
Coolly, without any trace of fluster in my voice,
I heard myself reply,
‘I have a continuing program of research,
(what mother doesn’t)
In the laboratory and in the field,
(normally I would have said indoors and out).
I’m working for my Masters, (first the Lord and then the whole family)
And already have four credits (all daughters)
Of course, the job is one of the most demanding in the humanities,
(any mother care to disagree?)
And I often work 14 hours a day, (24 is more like it).
But the job is more challenging than most run-of-the-mill careers
And the rewards are more of a satisfaction rather than just money.’
There was an increasing note of respect in the clerk’s voice as she
Completed the form, stood up, and personally ushered me to the door.
As I drove into our driveway, buoyed up by my glamorous new career,
I was greeted by my lab assistants — ages 13, 7, and 3.
Upstairs I could hear our new experimental model,
(a 6 month old baby) in the child development program,
Testing out a new vocal pattern.
I felt I had scored a beat on bureaucracy!
And I had gone on the official records as someone more
Distinguished and indispensable to mankind than ‘just another Mom.’
Motherhood!
What a glorious career!
Especially when there’s a title on the door.
Tags: break dancing, happiness, Mothers Day, women's issues
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Earth Day
Earth Day is my birthday and I received a great gift from the Italian Consulate in the US yesterday. I have been working diligently for four years gathering documents for application for dual citizenship for myself and my 2 kids (my husband can apply once I have a passport). Yesterday, my application was finally accepted after 3 different rejections! This was the greatest gift I could’ve received. As you know if you’ve read my Italy Retreat Blog, I am passionate about all things Italian.
I’ll write more about this tomorrow, but wanted to celebrate Earth Day too by sharing this wonderful video by Aqualise that my daughter, Grace, sent to me.
May we take care of planet Earth on this day and always. Please watch the beautiful video. What do you do to preserve our planet?
Tags: Aqualise Earth Day video, earth day, Italy Retreat Blog, travel
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Letting Go . . Again
Some years ago, I accompanied my husband on a business trip to The Cayman Islands, which are known for some of the best snorkeling in the world. He decided to teach me to snorkel by having me jump from a low wall into rough water wearing my snorkel gear. I began thrashing and almost drowned the two of us. We made it out of the water alive, and then noticed a group of beginner snorkelers swimming in a barrier reef that looked like a shallow pool.
That’s where I finally learned to breathe through that ridiculously narrow tube. I don’t do well when I am thrown in over my head. I like to wade in with my feet touching the bottom, if needed, at least at first. This makes it easier for me to let go of my fears.
Once I got the hang of it, my husband would wake up in the mornings, startled to see me standing beside his side of the bed with my snorkel gear ready to go. I had surrendered to the ocean.
That’s what I felt like when I was thrown into India last week. I again traveled with my husband for this adventure. This time for ayurvedic health purification treatments.
Even though this was my fourth trip to India, the accommodations were more third world than I expected. My room was without windows and had a broken air conditioner with no one available to fix it. The electricity went out every day at noon for a couple hours without any regard for the 100+ degree temperatures. And did I mention the roaches in my room, including one climbing out of my toothbrush?
I know it sounds strange to many people that I would even go to India for rejuvenation treatments,but it is the home of an ancient health treatment called panchakarma.
.
In the same breath, I might add that India is not for wimps, but it is a great place to burn off karma, stretch your boundaries and let go of limiting beliefs. In my clearer moments, I watched preconceived perceptions wash down the drain.
It’s a country of opposites — beggars, poverty, deeply spiritual citizens and holy people in the Himalayan mountains are quite common.
The scene outsidewas interesting — an empty lot filled with trash, that was burned on a daily basis, filling the air with choking smoke. Right next to the lot, was a small country club with a beautiful swimming pool filled with water, but no swimmers. Indian chants were blasting over a loudspeaker in the lovely park on the other side of the trash lot. The clinic is in a nice neighborhood, so there were no beggars on the streets, nor smoke from cow dung burning at night.
Their standards of cleanliness, however, are different than mine. I won’t even go into detail. Each day I would let go of my notions of what I needed to feel comfortable.
In each moment I had to die to my beliefs of cleanliness, of fine customer service, of being in control of my environment.
India was a gift that gave me practice allowing the death of my ego, the surrender of how things SHOULD be. The little deaths we go through when we fail, or find ourselves in deep water outside our comfort zone, create a more open-hearted, compassionate, enriching life.
For me, I find that coming up for air to find solid familiar space under my feet every once in awhile, supports the practice of letting go.
LETTING GO is a fast track to experiencing strength, growth and freedom. When we choose to try something different, we learn to stay flexible.
Grab change by the hand, maybe get a lifejacket, and swim.
What is your ‘India’? How have you learned to let go? I’d love to hear from you.
Tags: acceptance, beliefs, fears, India, panchakarma, travel
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
A recent Gallup Poll, called the Healthways Well-Being Index, has rated Boulder, Colorado, the #1 healthiest and happiest city in the country. It was based on an analysis of 353,000 Americans in 2009. The interviewers asked individuals to assess their jobs, finances, physical health, emotional state and communities.
Having just visited my daughter, Grace Boyle, who lives in Boulder, I was not surprised. The restaurants are excellent, the town is surrounded by boulders, mountains, and forests with Boulder Creek flowing through the center of the town. Boulder is surrounded by a wonderful greenbelt with 120 miles of trails and there are 9 bookstores between 9th and 18th streets. Does reading books make us happier? I’m pretty happy when I spend time in bookstores!
I think the 300 days of sunshine per year in Boulder contributes to feeling happy. In Iowa, I think we have almost 300 days of gray skies. Okay, this isn’t official data but it seems true. I think the sunshine alone adds to their happiness level as I’ve written about in many posts about how 20 minutes/day of skin exposure to sunshine is needed to manufacture Vitamin D in our bodies.
Tags: be happy, boulder, grace boyle, green living, happiness research, Vitamin D
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Happy and Healthy Heart
In 1995 researchers started following 1,739 healthy adults living in Nova Scotia, Canada, for 10 years to determine whether attitudes affected their health.
Known heart disease risk factors were calculated, and still researchers found that the happiest people were 22% less likely to develop heart disease over the 10 years of follow-up than people who were in the middle of the negative-positive emotion scale. This study involved 14,916 person-years of observation.
People with the most negative emotions had the highest risk for heart disease and people who scored highest for happiness had the lowest risk.
On a NONscientific note, when we’re happy, we tend to use expressions describing our heart–such as ‘my heart is full of love’, ‘I’m open-hearted’, or she’s a ‘big-hearted’ person, or my ‘heart is overflowing’. It makes sense to me that the heart is closely linked to happiness.
The researchers are theorizing that if they could make people happier (‘increase positive affect‘), they could decrease cardiac risk in a larger part of the population. My personal experience over 18 years of helping people to be happier, shows that when we decrease the number of limiting beliefs we live by, we are free of the pain they create in our lives. The result is that we feel happier …and often healthier.
Additional research is needed, to prove (not just to suggest) that heart disease prevention may be helped by experiencing positive feelings as well as reducing symptoms of depression. The findings also do not prove that happiness protects the heart. This will require rigorous clinical trials. I don’t usually wait for scientists to tell me what I already suspect is true! One way that happiness may protect the heart is because many happy people eat and sleep better.
Do you have a healthy heart because you have more positive emotions? What do you think?
Tags: coronary heart disease(CHD), happiness research, heart research, Nova Scotia, positive affect
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
VITAMIN D, the SUNSHINE VITAMIN: It’s that time of year in the northern hemisphere when there is cloud cover about 70% of the time, and many people begin to feel dreary.
I started taking 5000 international units of vitamin D3 every day exactly one year ago in January 2009. I wrote the first of 4 posts about the amazing healing properties of Vitamin D3. My main purpose was to offset this feeling of gloom that I feel in the depth of winter.
After only one week, my mind became clearer and that clarity has lasted. I didn’t expect that result, nor did I figure I’d notice any changes that quickly. It was as though a light had been turned on. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Dr. Mercoloa, msnbc.com, sunshine vitamin, Vitamin D
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” my friend Jana asked me over a year ago. (She actually recorded a song with that same title and performs many other wonderful motivational songs). I answered, “I’d have fun in Italy and teach a women’s retreat there, but…. how would I do that?” When I asked one of my client’s the same question, he said, “I’d take more risks in my business, but… I might fail.”
Listen to the words that follow your ‘but’. They reveal your doubts and limiting beliefs. This is the pivotal point from which you take courage to leap, or at least walk through the flame of fear.
Over the years, I’ve asked people about their courage. They seemed so confident and together. Usually they say that they’re afraid but they just make themselves take the baby steps needed to do the task.
That’s why I’m inspired by what Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear…”
I started skiing when I was 43 years old and I’ve never really lost the fear of speed or of getting hurt. I just do it to be social and to hang out with my friends, kids and husband. When I told my husband I was too afraid to really enjoy it, he said ‘that fear is part of the excitement and fun.’ Being afraid is not my idea of fun, but I kind of know what he means. Courage can be fragile. It does not mean being fearless.
I’m more like a reluctant adventurer in life. I ease out of my comfort zone, but contract for longer times than I expand, like a turtle who tucks her head neatly inside her shell, then sticks her neck out and moves out of the water, slowly crawling through the sand, knowing that her destiny is to lay eggs every 30 days, only to return to the sea for a month of frolicking in the warm Costa Rican waters.
I think change requires courage, maybe fragile courage. Otherwise, how could we leave our security to try something different? Like the turtle, we don’t know exactly how or if our actions will be rewarded.
The turtle doesn’t know if the eggs she lays will be taken by the locals for their dinner, or by animals on the beach, but she sees the moon beams and knows that change is calling out like a wounded friend who needs her. The strings of change pull our hearts and we swim, walk, drag our limp legs, and claw our way toward hope, waiting, wanting more and carrying the fear on our hardened shells that cover our tender hearts.
When we conjure up the notion of courage, the slow moving turtle may not be the power animal that comes to mind, but I think she’s very brave to stick her neck out and move.
What would you do this year if YOU weren’t afraid? Can you do something every week that you’re scared to do?
May your new year be filled with all possibilities as you walk through your fears!
Tags: courage, fears, Italy Retreat, Jana Stanfield, Martin Luther King
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
A very simple way to be happy is to join a group of like-minded people. If you are a member of a church, it’s usually easy to find fellowship. If not, you may have to search for the group that you feel a kinship with. You could join Rotary Club in your town–a group comprised of people from all walks of life whose purpose is to support each other, and give service to the community. If you’d like to build self-esteem and meet interesting people, join Toastmasters International, a club that teaches you to how to lead and speak more confidently.
Or if you like to dance or ride bicycles, join a dance class or bike club. I have fun with my walking group, becausee we walk several miles together while engaged in great conversation, and then share light food and chat afterward. There are people who get together to write, cook, knit, discuss investments, or read books. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: relationships, rotary, support groups, toastmasters, writing
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
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