I rarely use the words ‘letting go’ even though I know it is a popular expression that seems to help us move forward with some semblance of happiness.Letting go is allowing happiness in. On the other hand, letting go can be painful. Like an exercise though, it is not a one time event. Nope, it is an every-morning-when-you-put-your-feet-on-the-cold- floor-to-start-another-day-kind-of-practice.
I aim toward letting go with less pain. That may require using the big C word–CHANGE. Change the belief that letting go will hurt you. Change even the idea that letting go has to be painful. When you want to control each moment, each person, take a deep breath, stop grasping or clinging so tightly.
Peace activist and Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, says that ‘letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything like anger, anxiety, or possessions, we cannot be free.’
There is a popular thought that ‘pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.’ Let’s just throw in that happiness is always an option too.
One of the reasons to even talk about letting go is to expand your happiness.We sabotage that happiness by making it dependent on things outside ourselves. We get unhappy about losing those things, people, habits or situations. Thus, we feel the pain.
If it feels scary to let go, just do it afraid. Just do it. Lifting that foot off the floor, may feel like wet cement stuck on the soles of your feet. It’s just a step, not the end of your world, even though it may feel like it though sometimes.
A step implies forward motion, a sort of good bye to something old. It’s like a cigarette butt stomped into the alley, like a step into the cold ocean waters, deep and unknown life floating below. But it is a movement toward.
Do it afraid.
Let go of pain. Let go of being angry or resentful. The result? Welcome new beginnings into your life.
Let go of attachments to always being right. And then what? Suddenly your mind and heart are more open.
When we finally lighten our load, we can move on.
FIVE simple metaphorical steps off the ledge of letting go.
1.) Write out what you want to let go of onto a piece of paper. One item to let go of per piece. Do you want to let go of anger or bitterness toward an ex-partner? Write it, scrunch it, scrap it, right into the garbage can.
2.) Visulaize lifting a boulder off your shoulders. This metaphorical act of letting go allows you to finally move forward, with the lightness of a hummingbird.
3.) Practice letting things be as they are. This simply means to be at peace in this present moment. Operate from non-judgement. You can still work to manifest a better future.
4.) Change your beliefs. Find a way to do it. As a coach I can help you step through the debris of the past, even if it’s old ways of thinking about money, or parenting or any places you feel small, stuck or limited.
5.) Re-tell your old story with a different ending.
Here’s to letting go starting in the freshness of a new Spring Day.
I’ll leave you with a Zen Proverb:
Knowledge is learning something everyday. Wisdom is letting go of something everyday.
What have you let go of lately?
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It’s Valentine’s Day once again! Celebrate love in all forms. Love yourself, your partners, your mother, father, children, friends, strangers.
Ti voglio bene -– I like you, I love you, I want the very best for you.
I love this hugging video that I posted a couple years ago on my Italy Retreat For Women Blog. The Free Hugs Campaign was started in Australia in 2004 by a man with the pseudonym of Juan Mann. Around the world, he traveled holding up a sign that announced, “Free Hugs”. Abracci gratis (free hugs) were being given away in Sondrio, Italy in this video. At first people seemed suspicious, but once the ice was broken, there was real joy and connection.
Today is a Rumi kind of day!
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi
“And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.”
― Rumi
“But listen to me. For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.”
― Rumi
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Dan Pink on TED shows us innovative ways to motivate. Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. According to Dan Pink, the normal role of giving us rewards narrows our focus. According to Dan Pink:
Three Building Blocks to Motivate:
1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purposeful yearning to do what we do for service
Always thought that if someone could MAKE another person motivated, they would have the secret to success. In psychology, motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. Some people hire coaches to push them, support them to get in shape, lose weight, dissolve their limiting beliefs. But, in the end, motivation falls into our hands
(and heart).
Some thoughtful thursday quotes for your motivation!
Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger… for the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs we endure help us in our marching onward. ~~Henry Ford
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down. ~~ Charles F. Kettering
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there. ~~ Lewis Carroll
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Gratitude is the fruit of great cultivation
–Samuel Johnson
Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgiving, turn routine jobs into joy and change ordinary opportunities into blessings
–William Arthur Ward
If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.
–Meister Eckhart
When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed. –Maya Angelou
Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity….it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow–Melanie Beattie
Wise men count their blessings; fools, their problems…Anonymous
A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues – Cicero
When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears–Anthony Robbins
To be upset over what you don’t have…is to waste what you do have…Ken Keyes, Jr.
For each new morning with its light, for rest and shelter of the night
For health and food, for love and friends, for everything thy goodness sends.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
This week, in my hometown, I attended an inspiring talk given by 2011 CNN hero of the year, Robin Lim. She is a true humanitarian, and hero for all women, working tirelessly for every mother, baby and family ensuring healthy childbirth for women everywhere.
In this season of Thanksgiving, may you remember, and write down all that you are grateful for. If you are so inspired, check out Robin Lim and support her efforts to bring peace to the world.
Photo: Harvest from my summer garden
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Changing our beliefs, habits, our past conditioning, getting out of our comfort zone, is not always the easiest thing to do.
I mean we are creatures of habit, as they say! But changing anything can be as natural as the change of season, the dropping of leaves in autumn, the temperatures cooling for the winter months.
Today’s quotes are about change and beliefs!
According to an article in AARP , your brain likes to be challenged. This improves the plasticity of your brain, which is a good thing, and it has been found to delay age-related neurological decline.
“Breaking habits opens up millions of neurological synapses. Take a new route to work. Get out of bed on a different side. Brush your teeth with a different hand. It stimulates your brain.” –Rick Foster, author of Happiness & Health
We feel like victims to our emotions because we don’t realize that our emotions are determined by our beliefs. We can question those beliefs and then either affirm or change them. We no longer need to feel like victims. We can understand our choices. The truth is that nothing MAKES you unhappy. Your belief that something does is what causes unhappiness. What you are unhappy about does not make you unhappy; your belief that it can make you unhappy, makes your unhappy. — Bruce Di Marsico, author of The Principles and Philosophy of The Option Method
When we think of changing our beliefs, or changing anything in our lives, start with small bites, not a whole meal. Questioning our limiting beliefs can be done with a coach or by yourself. It’s nice to have someone else to guide you or hold the space for you, but just start.
True life is lived when tiny changes occur. –Leo Tolstoy
If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news? –W. Somerset Maugham
What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are. –Tony Robbins
I honor you for your courage in making changes, no matter how small. I’m always available to help you in dissolving limiting beliefs and enhancing happiness.
Have a great week!
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These are some of my favorite quotes.
When Janey sent me a quote from mountain climber, W.H. Murray and said it had helped her decide to join my September 2012 Italy Retreat for Women, I felt her excitement. She said that after she bought a book of poems, and read this particular quote in the front of the book, her vision became crystal clear. She had been debating her decision.
Many of us can relate to the hesitancy and doubting of our dreams, right? The final puzzle piece snapped into place for her.
I knew what she meant because W. H. Murray’s words have been close to my heart for the past 30 years. Whenever any of my dreams or visions have seemed unreachable, I would read his quote. As a mountain climber and prisoner of war, he had experienced a huge amount of visions and obstacles to climb. But commitment is like a magnet, and gathers the resources, like iron filings, toward us giving us the clarity and support of our visions.
Quotes from James Allen’s book, As A Man Thinketh and Wallace Wattles from The Science of Getting Rich, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s complete the Thoughtful Thursday quotes.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back…Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
–W.H. Murray, Scottish mountaineer and writerA vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.
–Rosabeth Moss Kanter, American business speaker and consultantCherish your visions, cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes our purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
– James Allen, As A Man ThinkethNever get afraid that you will lose what you want because some other person “beats you to it.” That cannot possibly happen; you are not seeking anything that is possessed by anybody else; you are causing what you want to be created from Formless Substance, and the supply is without limits.
–Wallace Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich
Cherish your visions! Follow them. Like a magnet, gather around you support, inner and outer.
Happy Visions! Let me know how you make your visions come alive.
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Now You Can Awaken Your Dreams
Whenever I think of awakening dreams, I tell the story of my 4th annual Italy Retreat for Women. Whether or not you would even consider joining me in Italy this coming September 13-22, my hope is to inspire you to have a dream and then take action to awaken it.
Following our heart’s desire is like using a compass that activates a small light switch, from which we are able to chart our course. As our heart’s desires become more familiar and stronger, the light is brighter. So bright that the roadblocks are hardly seen.
Carl Jung states that you look outside and dream, then inside to awaken. He goes on to say that your vision becomes clear when you look into your heart. What that means is to be conscious of what YOU want. What is dear to your heart?
Awaken your dreams in 3 steps to make it as simple as possible:
Find a special 3 ring notebook with 3 dividers so the sections are separate. Keep it beside your bed to help you remember to use it at least weekly. Date the pages each time you make entries.1) Write a Blue Sky List. These are your ‘dreams’. Ask yourself: “If I could have it out of the clear blue sky, what would I welcome in my life?” This is not intense goal setting and precise action planning. It is simple brainstorming without editing, and without judging the possibility or viability of success. Free write to your heart’s content.
2) Gratitude Journal: You’ve heard this before, but do you actually do it at least weekly, or more often? Most people tell me that they give thanks quietly every day. However, according to research (yes, there actually is research on gratitude), the more details you write and the more frequently you write it, the greater the results, such as more happiness, energy and peace.
3) Log in your Successes, Synchronicities, Support you have noticed. If you skip this part, you may not have proof of your accomplishments. All the small successes noticed and recorded lift you up. Synchronities: did you run into someone today who gave you the missing link to the challenge you were facing? Each small win adds up to huge fulfillment. Otherwise, we tend to think not much is happening, because it’s not one grand explosion.
Find your heart’s desire and follow it, even with baby steps. “Take the first step in faith,” as Martin Luther King said, even though it may not be supported by others right away. It’s really a matter of self-respect to do what you love.
What is your heart telling you? Have you spent time dreaming and now it’s time to put it into action?
My “put into action dream” was to bring a group of women to Italy every year for part transformational workshop and part travel. We laugh, eat very well, live the sweet life (la dolce vita), and move past our limiting beliefs. The vision has been a reality for four years now.
I would love to hear about your dreams manifesting. If the roadblocks or limiting beliefs are still there, I am available for personal sessions to dissolve those pesky thoughts. And if you have any desire to come to the Italy Retreat, click to read about the Italy Retreat and write it in your notebook!
Enjoy the short Italy video below.
Happy Notebooking! Happy Awakening to Your Dreams!
QUOTES:
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart. Who looks outside; dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
–Dr. Carl JungLenora
Italy Retreat for Women 2012 with Lenora Boyle
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But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads.
– Albert Camus
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, And the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
–Buddha
Just as someone hires a coach to teach them to play tennis, basketball, gymnastics, golf, or to get in shape, it is very helpful to hire a life coach, so someone has your back! So there’s someone in your life to give you a boost up. Someone to help you gain more happiness.
I like to think I shine a flashlight along the path helping my clients to navigate through the barriers that have blocked them in the past.
The end result of life coaching is that you can create more happiness in your life and create the life you have dreamed
The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.
– Martha Washington.
Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
– John Lubbock
The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.
–Thucydides
Happiness is contagious…when you reflect happiness, then all others around you catch the happy bug and are happy, too.
— Jennifer Leese
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
— Hugh Downs
Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.
– Mildred Barthel.
How have you managed to create more happiness and joy into your life? When you find your method(s), repeat often, like putting a beautiful puzzle together.
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1. Stay with your exercise routine: Or at least do not quit altogether. If you usually exercise four times a week, at the very least, exercise twice a week during the holidays. This will actually give you more energy to accomplish all the extra work, like buying and wrapping presents, decorating, giving and attending holiday parties, and probably cooking more.
I really did not have time to go to my yoga class, but after I went, I was so much more at peace in body and mind, so all the additional items on my to do list were more enjoyable. When your heart is pumping, you deliver more nutrients and oxygen to your brain! The result will be a stress-free holiday.
2. Take your vitamin D: As many of you probably know, I am a strong advocate of Vitamin D and have written four blog posts about it. As winter is upon us, we do not have 40% of our skin exposed to sunshine 20 minutes every day. Vitamin D supports a healthy immune system and uplifted mood. Vitamin D affects 200 genes, helps diabetes, heart, prevents some cancers, and helps improve your moods.
3. Give to others: To help keep everyting in perspective, reach out and help those less fortunate than yourself. Some possible choices are to give a gift that keeps on giving to Kiva. You are actually investing in a micro loan of $25 that will “help someone to fish for a lifetime,” instead of just “giving them a fish for a day.” Once they pay the loan back, it can be borrowed by another entrepreneur.
Another possibility for giving back is to donate to the rebuilding of Monterosso and Vernazza, Italy, two of the beautiful Cinque Terre villages where I teach my Italy Retreats each September. Any, and I do mean, any small amount will be appreciated. 100% of your donations will go directly to rebuilding these two towns that were devastated by mudslides and floods. Travel expert, Rick Steves, said that Vernazza had the most idyllic piazza(town square) in Europe. I agree. However, all that is changed. The people of Vernazza were forced to evacuate on October 25.
I am feeling quite overwhelmed with my “to do” list this season because I leave in three days, to visit extended family 12 hours away. So, the last thing I wanted to add was a community service project. Not now, some other time, yes. But, some friends and I decided to volunteer at a local organization that provides clothing and toys for 200 families. In the fulfillment of that, the items on my “to do list” somehow became more enjoyable and gratifying. This leads me to my fourth step for having happy holidays.
4. Practice the art of gratitude. If you’ve read some of my other articles, you know I encourage you to have a journal by your bed, so that each day you can jot down what you are grateful for. Writing it down is more powerful than thinking it, but if you can only stop and reflect on what you’re grateful for, then go for it.
5. Eat healthy foods. I would include this in any list for feeling happier. Last weekend, I actually went to four holiday parties. I only ate dessert at one of them, even though I love sweets. Of course, I’m eating holiday sweets, but much smaller amounts than usual. Try eating more fruit instead. The extra desserts can weaken your immune system, add pounds to your belly, and bring you down. I managed to bake only one batch of cookies. Even though they are the thin and delicious Florentine Lace, I have resisted eating many of them.
I hope this helps! May your holiday season bring you laughter, warmth, and peace in your heart. If it does not come to you, bring it to another.
Wishing you an enriched life!
What do you do to create Happy Holidays?
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“I gave up addictive foods, and the shadows started to wail.”
The shadows, I call limiting beliefs, your ego, or stress. They act like they are friends who resent that you are asking them to leave.
They exist to help you stay safe in your cocoon life, away from the saber tooth tigers, but I’d say those belief guys and girls just want to be in control of you, similar to the movie, The Adjustment Bureau. It was a simple movie but I thought fascinating that some bureau controlled humanity, and made adjustments to people’s minds, so they could see things more according to the BIG PLAN from the BIG GUY. Not god but the main agent, whoever that was. I say it was a metaphor for the ego, or the old belief.
| ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ Trailer |
According to the Adjustment Bureau, if anyone veered off plan, they had to be ‘adjusted’. They said that humans could not have choices because humanity has screwed up so much when they had free will, such as creating World War I and WWII, that we couldn’t be trusted.
What the movie allows us to see is the importance of choosing our lives. I say, “Let the shadows wail their tonsils out!” We have been strangled by their scrawny, dirty hands for a long time.
I invite myself, and anyone who will listen, to gently yet firmly take each finger from around your neck, and pry them away. You can breathe so much better. Your laughter takes on a new lilt. Why wouldn’t it, free of unwelcomed strangled hands. Find your OWN voice.
We can be our own Adjustment Bureau. The shadow will stop wailing, the crying will stop, the sobbing turning to silent stares.
We may just have to write a new diary of our lives, a different story line with fresh characters, those that we interviewed and chose to be on our life’s pages. They have served their time, and now death to the shadow friends! Be off with thee,arrivederci, ciao, get lost, take a hike, a presto, good riddance!
Ask yourself: “How would my life be different if I did not listen to the shadows?” ” Would I find MY voice?”
Be your own adjustment bureau. You choose. You find YOUR Truth.
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