The Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland
‘There’s no use trying,’ Alice said. ’One can’t believe impossible things.’
“‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ’When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
What ‘impossible’ things do you want to believe? I don’t know the scientific terms for this, but our minds DO get stretched with practice. Open-minded means you’ve broken open the narrow thinking of negativity and fear.
I’ve been working with beliefs for over 20 years now. During one of Oprah’s Life Lessons shows, she emphasized one of the themes I live by, ”You Become What You Believe”. Knowing this one pearl of wisdom will be helpful to people feeling blocked. Glad she’s getting it out there in a bigger way.
The time is NOW. During this season of renewal, let’s join hands and practice believing what we used to think was “impossible”.
What are you waiting for?
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“When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wrote down “happy.” They told me that I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them that they didn’t understand life.”
–John Lennon
I love this quote, and after I posted it on Facebook recently, one friend commented about being graded poorly in first grade because he didn’t color in the picture of a chicken. My friend figured that the teacher had missed the white crayon covering the chicken. He actually showed it to her and she gave him a better grade. He did understand the assignment!
Sometimes, we go through life wondering if we have missed the assignment for OUR lives. I hear it all the time during my workshops and coaching sessions. I am always amazed, though, at how we emerge from divorce, loss, or betrayal with wisdom and hope for the future. Even a small dose of optimism immunizes us from fear. Optimism is like a tincture for courage.
The world is quite a mess these days. How do we stay optimistic about the future when we are blasted with news of doom and gloom from all sectors of the globe? What I have noticed is that human beings, since the beginning of time, have moved beyond their pain to reach new heights, in spite of the seeming evidence at hand.
As I prepare to leave for Italy to lead my Third Annual Italy Retreat for Women to Live La Dolce Vita, I am thinking about optimism because recently I read an eye-opening article about optimism in Time Magazine.
The premise of the article is that we are, by nature, optimists. Surprised at first, I immediately realized from my life’s work with individuals that this is so true. The article proves that, “The scientific evidence points to the conclusion that optimism may be hardwired by evolution into the human brain.” The researchers believe that our brains are not just imprinted by the past, but are being shaped for the future.
Without optimism, my Italian born grandparents, and millions of other immigrants, would never have left behind their families behind to sail to America, without knowing what lay ahead.
If you’d like a deeper understanding of the workings of
our brains, check out the article in Time Magazine. In the meantime, know that our brains are part of our support team in life. Let’s use it, and continue to believe that life is a precious gift that we will mold into something fantastic, in spite of all odds.
Let’s give ourselves the gift of self-discovery and journey together toward optimism beyond our wildest imagination.
Years ago, I optimistically decided to teach my Option Method Workshops and travel with the course participants in Italy. And now, I am on my ay for the 3rd Annual Italy Retreat for women.
I will write my next post from Italy. Hope you can join me on my Italy Retreat to LIVE LA DOLCE VITA next year!
What has the gift of optimism brought into your life? Would love to hear from you.
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Since my last newsletter, I have spent a wonderful month in Italy. I spent the first week teaching my annual transformational Italy Retreat for women to live la dolce vita (the sweet life) to a wonderful group of ladies! We laughed, we hiked, we ate and we created memories that will last a lifetime.
I’m now planning the September 10-18, 2011 Retreat on the Italian Riviera. You can read Three Things I Learned on My Italy Retreat” on my Italy Retreat Blog.
In this post, I’m including my thoughts from my ezine,
Are You In A War Zone?
Recently, I watched a 2007 documentary called WarDance with a friend who is from South Africa. The award-winning film was filled with vivid accounts of the kids from the Acholi tribe affected by the two-decade rebel war in northern Uganda.
I was struck with the words of wisdom from the children, which was part of their grace. In addition to the inspirational quote of the month from Hafiz, I’m including quotes from the children.
Their gift to me was a clearer insight into seeing that so many of us create war zones in our own minds and hearts.
I am not trivializing the horrors of war that these kids live through. I cannot even write the details of the atrocities they have endured, but I was still struck by the idea that those who live in peace, often have the habits of fighting wars within their own minds and hearts.
Three lessons I learned from WarDance, which as Hafiz has stated, can help all of us “come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom and light!”
1.) Remember to sing, dance and laugh. “Music is our tradition. Even war cannot take it from us.” Singing and dancing is just part of African life, on buses, in the homes and on the street. Even in the face of devastation and loss of parents and stable home life, they danced and sang. In the midst of hopelessness arrives two music and dance teachers who dared to journey across the dangerous remote war zone to reach Patonga elementary school.
Their sole purpose was to help the kids prepare to compete against over 5000 students from all of Uganda in the National Music/Dance Competition over 200 miles away in Kampala, Uganda.
2.) Believe in ourselves. “In my heart, I am more than a child of war. I am the future of our tribe.” We all belong to the tribe of the human race. “We’ve lost our sisters, mothers, fathers, but our story does not end here.”
I was in awe of their divine courage, freedom and strength of the human spirit– the power of a made up mind. One of the teachers actually had the kids practice pronouncing and repeating the word,“champion” in English. Then during the intense competition, she said one word: “mood”, “mood”, meaning ‘check your attitudes, kids!’
Besides all the obvious handicaps they had to overcome, many of the other performers at first called the Patonga Primary School kids rebels and murderers. The kids were merely victims of their circumstances but misunderstood and looked down upon.
3.) Practice and don’t give up. One child said, “I am excited to see what peace looks like.” “Even if we live in a war zone, we can do great things.” “We are still able to be the best.”
The power of a made up mind and believing they had something to offer. The WarDance that they performed will be etched into my heart forever–like the phoenix rising out of the ashes of the war zone.
During this season of transformation and holy days, may your war zones be shifted into grace zones. May you whisper, “champion” to yourself and offer your best to the awaiting world.
Have you been persistent and met with success?
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Question Your Limiting Beliefs
Limiting Belief Exercise:
Dissolving Limiting Beliefs Exercise using The Option Method. The following questions are part of the series of questions used in The Option Method.
Step 1: Write down a negative judgment, or limiting belief that you know keeps you stuck or makes you unhappy. A belief is a perception of reality or a conclusion that you’ve come to based on past conditioning. Some examples are “I’m not good enough.” “I can’t do it.”
Write the following questions on paper. After you ask the question, notice your first thoughts, body sensations, images, then write your responses without editing.
Step 2: Ask the first question: Do you believe that? If you believe it sometimes, then it is still affecting every decision you make in your life.
Step 3: Why do you believe that? You have some reasons or proof that you’ve used in the past to build your case, trying to prove the belief to be factual. Explore it here.
Step 4: Do you know if it’s true? (Why might you believe something that you don’t know is true?)
Step 5: What might concern you if that belief were gone? This is a crucial question to answer. In other words, “what might happen that you would not like?” There is a concern about the belief being eliminated, otherwise it would not be there. It’s serving you in some way. Let this question sink into your heart and it will awaken you.
Simply questioning your limiting beliefs—and the reasons you may have been holding on to them—allows those limiting beliefs to start dissolving automatically. When you realize the limiting belief is no longer true, you feel freer, happier and more open to love.
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This is an exploration of limiting beliefs, not an exercise to choose a better belief. If another limiting belief is uncovered during this process, then begin with Step 1 again and question a new belief. Just explore the limiting ones, and our perceptions will change. When our perceptions change, new possibilities open like fresh air and sunshine.
Ask these questions for any limiting belief that limits you or hurts you in some way.
The dissolution of limiting beliefs works because once you realize that the belief is no longer true, it starts to dissolve, along with the conflicting feelings attached to the belief.
In addition to unraveling limiting beliefs that we know we have, there are also unconscious limiting beliefs that can be uncovered with other Option Method questions. For more information, visit http://www.ChangeLimitingBeliefs.com.
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Italy has a way of soothing our souls. Sallee, one of the women who attended my Italy Retreat last year, calls it Italy Shakti.
I know Italy is not perfect, but I think George Clooney summed it up perfectly. In this article he simply said that moving to Italy has changed his life. Working hard in Hollywood, he didn’t care how his personal life was going.
When he purchased a villa in Laglio on Lake Como in northern Italy, he thought he’d be there a couple weeks a year. He soon realized how beautiful life was in Italy and it helped calm him.
I think the result of spending a week on my retreat in Italy does just that. The course participants will all agree that it ‘calmed their lives.’
Usually, the hiking trails I choose in the Cinque Terre are the tame ones. By taking a steep climb up the paths or steps you are instantly rewarded with jaw dropping beautiful scenery.
On the day we visited Riomaggiore, the southern most village of the Cinque Terre, the young women at the Tourist Information Center suggested we walk through the botanical gardens because it was a 25 minute walk and we’d end up back at the center of town, where we’d take a gelato break, and then do another 20 minutes walk on the famous Via Dell’Amore (path of love) to arrive for dinner in Manarola to watch the sunset over the Mediterranean. (Photo of the seven of us at Ristorante Marina Piccola.)
However, I forgot that when someone says something, especially in a different culture, it might have a completely different meaning to me. I love gardens and I had waited since last year to visit this botanical garden, but this was no ‘walk in the garden’. I did notice some signs describing cacti and trees by their Latin names on the concrete walking path.
However, none of us knew how difficult the trail was going to become, and then we discovered why no one else was walking it. It turned into a rocky uneven narrow trail, many times on the edge of a sheer mountainside, lots of stairs, and it was raining for part of the hike. There was a railing but it jutted out at a 30-degree angle sometimes or it was so loose you didn’t feel safe holding onto it.
One of the women in our retreat group was afraid of heights and I myself, felt a bit woozy if looked down all of the time at the sea below. Sometimes, we could see through the path to the sea below. In order to make it to the end, she had to walk sideways, face the mountainside, her back to the sea, and manage her panic.
It was breathtaking but it felt more like taking our breath away. *The top photo is taken from the height of the rocky path as we began our ascent to the center of the town toward the beach, and the last photo is near the end, so it’s much closer to sea level!
My courageous student later said that no one in her family would ever believe her when she tells them what she did. It was an epiphany for her to face her fears and her belief that she could never do this. That mountain is her metaphor for life now and her life will never be the same. For the rest of the workshop her victory was our symbol for change.
I did not plan this hike to force the course participants to face her fears. I thought it was a walk in the garden to add to our experience to live la dolce vita near the Mediterranean. My idea of facing fears is usually done in the Option Method Dialogue work that we do in the meeting room during the retreat– it’s gentle and you’re comfortably sitting in a chair! But, sometimes life gets organized for us, and we enjoy the ride.
Here’s to calming our lives and living la dolce vita (the sweet life) wherever we are!
Have you hiked the Cinque Terre trails? What is your favorite one? Want to join me next year in Italy for my Italy Retreat for women to live la dolce vita?
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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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