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.
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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.
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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?
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Many of you have asked about the personal life coaching and mentoring that I do, and why I named this blog The Happiness Zone. (In January 2010, it’s now called BeHappyLifeCoach.com) The main reason is because I believe that the glory of life on earth is to expand our possibilities. I like to discover and share possibilities that may help us to be happier. In these economic times, it becomes even more evident that our source of happiness and peace comes from within. So, to stay in the ‘happiness zone’ will give us great support and ease.
We’ve come to a time in our lives, in the United States and other developed countries, that what we depended upon or took for granted, is no longer stable, like the banking system. I guess the trust was only an illusion anyway. As people are losing their jobs, facing foreclosures, and increased prices, it’s crucial that we not be taken down by pessimism or doom and gloom. Therefore, keeping my blog alive with tips and inspiration for happiness is my way of creatinge more joy in the world.
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Every Thursday I post a quote or thought for all of us to ponder.
I am a life coach who asks questions to individuals who come to me with questions. Each of us has the answers within ourselves and we are our own best expert, but we don’t always realize it. Have you ever found yourself asking others for advice, and then you sift through it, and decide whether or not to act on their ‘brilliant’ advice? Often, it’s just our doubts and fears that block our clarity and creativity. Those doubts and fears can be questioned. (more…)
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Thoughtful Thursday: Every Thursday I post a quote or thought for all of us to ponder.
Worry is a state of mind based on fear –Napoleon Hill
3 Steps to Take to Be Worry Free:
1.) Just do the highest action possible. I’ve inherited the worry gene from one of my Italian grandmothers. But just because we’re born with a tendency doesn’t mean we have to keep it. I’ve spent my adult life changing that genetic code by changing my thoughts/beliefs. The shift in beliefs in turn change my DNA or happiness set point. I try to follow the advise from my friend, Jonas who says. “If anything bad is going to happen, it’s going to happen without me aiding and abetting it with my attention.”
2.) Stay in the moment. Don’t try to control every little thing and everything a person says or does. Try planning less. Create more flexibility in our lives when we allow more spontaneity to find a place.
3.) Co-operate with the inevitable. Accept more. As Dale Carnegie said, “If you know a circumstance is beyond your power to change or revise, say to yourself: ‘It is so; it cannot be otherwise.’
Put a ’stop-less’ order on your worries. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth–and refuse to give it anymore.”
It takes small shifts. Do you have steps to share that help you to be worry free?
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“When a person’s desire outweighs his fear, success becomes inevitable” ~Unknown
Every Thursday is Thoughtful Thursday when I post a quote or thought for all of us to ponder.
10 Ways to Handle Fear:
1.) Create clarity by questioning your limiting beliefs and the fear. A limiting belief is based on fear not truth. Understanding and clarifying the fear is helpful. The ’snake’ you see may really be a rope. (more…)
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Each Thursday I’ll share a favorite quote or thought. Have one you’d like to share? Please do so in the comment section. Author Dr. Christiane Northrup has said: “The state of a woman’s health is indeed completely tied up with the culture in which she lives and her position within it, as well as the way she lives her life as an individual…healing cannot occur for women until we have critically examined and changed some of the beliefs and assumptions that we all unconsciously inherit and internalize in our culture.”
We get conditioned just like the kittens in the Nobel Prize-winning experiment who were raised by scientists in an environment that contained only horizontal lines on the walls of their cages and in the rooms where they were kept.
Once they grew into mature cats, they were placed in a normal environment and proceeded to run into anything with vertical lines. The cats literally didn’t “SEE” anything vertical. Many of us also cannot “see” options or choices outside of our past conditioning either, UNTIL WE CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE to change the patterns.
Question the validity of our conditioning. What thoughts do you have that limit you?
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Beliefs are perceptions of reality, a conclusion we’ve come to, or perhaps something we were told we had no reason to doubt at the time. However, unexamined beliefs tend to smolder like wet leaves on fire. But once we explore the belief, its seed and root cause can dissolve. The result is a feeling of lightness and peace. If something seems off or we feel ‘unhappy’, then we might be operating from thought patterns that stifle us which I call limting beliefs. Or, we may not feel ‘off’, but ‘our old way of life’ is being marginalized in some way. We have a choice. Do we resist the change or open our minds and hearts to look at the new possibilities? We don’t have to agree, and we don’t have to change, but are we willing to take a look?
I love tradition and having routines, but I don’t ever want to feel stuck or immovable. In fact, historical research often shows that traditions and immutable values, in fact, change more over time than most adherents recognize. I was just patting myself on the back because I’ve had my website for 5 years now, and felt really connected. Then realized I was behind the times when my daughter, Grace, social media extraordinaire, pushed me onto the new communication scene, and I am now twittering, maintaining two blogs, and reaching out on facebook and linkedin.
Just this morning, Saturday, Feb. 28. I heard Daniel Schorr on Scott Simon’s show on NPR. He’s a veteran journalist (92 years old) and he’s just started a twitter account! He said that what’s lost is the editing and discipline of writing a news article. But what is gained is that every person is his own reporter sending his or her own news. It’s not right or wrong, but just different.
What beliefs do you want to explore, examine, dissolve? Leave a comment here or on twitter!
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Obama signed the Fair Pay Bill on January 29. I don’t know why, but I’m always surprised when I hear about women’s rights still being an issue, especially in the United States. Of course, I personally feel lucky to have been born here because we have more rights and opportunities than in most other countries. However, I’m grateful for women like Lilly Ledbetter, who fought for her rights, that will benefit our daughters and granddaughters because Lilly actually won’t benefit from the Fair Pay Legislation. Her story is that she worked for Goodyear Tire for 19 years before she found out that she was getting paid less than her male co-workers who had similar experience and education in the same job. (more…)
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I love this video of friendship between two unlikely animals–a dog and elephant who truly are devoted to each other. What trust the dog, Bella, must have to allow a 14,000 pound ( that’s 7 tons!) elephant pet her belly.
Some people find it difficult to stay open to the differences that surround us every day, because our perceptions or beliefs become ingrained in the fibers of our mind and muscles. This begins a process that almost cements itself into our brains.
As President Obama expressed in his inaugural speech, “we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”
Perhaps a dog and elephant becoming friends is easier than enemies reaching out to understand each other. Let’s begin the journey by dissolving the limiting beliefs and notions that may be lodged in our own souls, and reach out to those around us who think differently than we do. I know there are those who think that President Obama is not anchored in reality, but just spouting rhetoric making up hope for the impossible. That can be a limiting belief that allows no room for other options. A belief in failure attracts that. Beliefs don’t work alone, but it’s the action that’s based on the beliefs that yield the results.
To hear more of the inaugural speech listen to NPR. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99590481
Do your limiting beliefs blind you from seeing all the options and possibilities for success and love? We all have the capability of dissolving those notions that block our dreams from manifesting.
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