“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.
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Cinque Terre Women Travel
Check out my guest post entitled Five Reasons Why Women Need to Go on a Retreat on Smart Women Travelers blog.
As many of my readers know, I am passionate about Italy and all things Italian, especially since last fall when I received dual citizenship with Italy.
The deadline is fast approaching to register for my third annual transformational workshop in Italy which includes 2 days of creating the life you love, plus 5 days of traveling along the Italian Riviera.
You owe it to yourself to at least find out more about my Italy Retreat for Women to live la dolce vita (the sweet life), September 10-18, 2011. Of course, it’s all taught in English.
“Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvelous than the land.” ~~~ E.M Forster
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
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?
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
If you enjoyed reading “Eat Pray Love”, perhaps you’d like to create your own eat pray love experience with me on my Italy Retreat for Women to live la dolce vita, the sweet life. Even though the Italy Retreat this September is filled, I encourage you to make plans for the September 2011 Italy Retreat.
How can you prepare?
4 Steps:
1.) Start saving money for the trip. Have a special jar on your shelf or a travel savings account. Each week add more to your Italy jar.
2.) Create the trip in your imagination. Visualize yourself strolling along the Mediterranean, eating gelato or enjoying a spa on the Italian island of Ischia or Capri.
3.) Jump out of the duldrums and be courageous like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love. Check out her book if you haven’t already, and read other books about Italy throughout the year. Some of my favorite books to read about Italy can be found on my Italy Retreat blog. Just scroll to the bottom of the page.
4.) Even if you don’t create your own Eat Pray Love experience in Italy, find the moments in your life to go for more than you ever dreamed possible.
The book was a huge success and I’m sure the movie will be too (opening Friday August 13) because Elizabeth captures the joy of courageously following a dream, even though it may not be supported by others. She also reminds us that we will recover from sadness in our lives.
I love this section from the book about happiness:
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
Each day think of 3 aspects to experience happiness:
EAT: I’m not promoting eating your troubles away in order to find happiness. Far from that, but part of travel in Italy naturally includes indulging in the pleasure of eating delicious food. Again, if your eat pray love adventure does not include leaving your own town, know that eating is symbolic for experiencing life’s pleasures.
PRAY: is a daily experience whether or not you are in Italy visiting an ancient church, or enjoying art, architecture, and turquoise waters that take your breath away, you will be filled with tranquility. Even if not in Italy, daily spend time in prayer, meditation, and communing with nature. I’m visiting Boulder and walking in the mountains to connect with the beauty of creation. This can be deep prayer.
LOVE: Open heart, feel deeply. Think about self-love–you will fall in love with yourself, and the possibilities that the outer beauty of Italy offers. Self-love does not have to mean narcissism, but an appreciation of your beauty and qualities. Love yourself first to be able to love others in a more accepting way.
How do you manifest eating, praying, and loving in your life?
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
I just returned from two days at the Beyond Rubies 30th annual Women’s Conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It’s a conference for women of all generations and backgrounds to learn practical ideas on how to succeed. Each participant has the chance to network and attend 4 keynote speeches plus 6 of the 100 workshops. I presented one of the breakout sessions with my workshop called Beyond Belief.
5 Main Points Learned at the conference to improve our happiness and success.
1.) Start your day with humor (that’s why women are wearing the red noses in the photo). Keynote speaker, Jim Jewlinski, entertained us and gave us all noses, so we could be silly and laugh when we looked at each other. A day started with increased endorphins is a day set on the right course. (No, we didn’t wear them all day, only for a minute or two).
2.) Each day ask, “What can I do to be on purpose today?”
3.) Start your day with music and dancing.
4.) Insure networking readiness: Always have business cards with you. Keep cards in your glove box, and add business cards to the pockets of your clothes in your closet, so you have them when you go out.
5.) Improve communication: Ask: Is this what you mean? Are you saying? What do you mean?
How do you start your day off on the right foot? How do you network?
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Here I am with Jack Canfield, author of many books including the Chicken Soup for the Soul Series and Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.
I met my friend and member of my Monday Morning Telephone Vision Group, Marilyn Suttle, president of the Michigan Chapter of the National Speakers Association this weekend in Chicago. Several years ago, she organized for me to teach my Beyond Belief Workshop in the Detroit area, so when she said she was going to be an assistant at the Success Principles One Day in Chicago, I decided I’d drive the 5 hours there and join the support team for the course.
What I learned was that even though our economy is in trouble, we can find opportunity in everything. Not only look for opportunity, but it’s important that we don’t feed the negativity. It was powerful to focus on our goals and to be reminded to keep thinking big, and not allow the naysayers to bring us down. For many years, Jack taught self esteem courses, when I was teaching parenting classes, and much of his work was used because the creator of the Redirecting Childrens’ Behavior Course was a graduate of Jack’s seminars.
In my Beyond Belief Workshops, I focus on many of the principles he covered this weekend I’d like to share 4 of the many success principles we discussed over the full day course.
1.Take 100% responsibility for your life and your results. If you want a different outcome, you have to change your responses.
2. Believe in yourself. We think 50,000 thoughts a day and many of them are negative. Become conscious of your thoughts, question those that bring you down. (Try the Option Method). Focus on your desired outcomes, not on what you don’t want.
3.Believe it’s possible. This may take some practice. There is so much more in life than we recognize as possible. There was a time when people didn’t believe there were germs (that caused many deaths) because they couldn’t see them.
4.Unleash the Power of Goal-Setting. To achieve our visions, it’s helpful to turn every aspect of it into a measurable goal. How much…by when? I wanted to travel again to Italy. I started working on that goal 8 months ago, and what unfolded was the plan to take a group of women to Italy for a transformational retreat and adventurous day trips in paradise.
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
This September I’m combining my passion for Italy with my passion for helping women expand their possibilities to create a life they love. Even though I’ll be teaching in northern Italy, my roots are in southern Italy as shown in this video ad. My husband, two kids and I visited over 40 cousins in Calabria, Italy twice within the same year. That was two years ago, and I wanted to return.
I got tired of hearing myself whine about going back to Italy acting as though it was impossible. “Well, why not?” I asked myself over and over. “We still are paying college tuition, so travel has to be put on the back burner.” “Do you believe that?” I’d answer, “Yes”, until I thought of teaching there. But then the doubts set in. “I’ve never taught there before and not sure anyone would want to join me.” “Want to find out?” “Yes, I wanted to” and and I did. I focused on following a faint desire that grew into a possibility. Since I am an asker of questions in my life’s work as an Option Method teacher, I’m used to carrying on a dialogue with myself. I suggest you try it too! Or call me, and I’ll help you question and clarify your thoughts.
Michelle at Bleeding Expresso, an American living and blogging in Calabria, posted this beautiful ad featuring Gattuso Gennaro, a soccer player Calabria. He asks…”simu o no Calabrisi? Are we Calabrians or not?!”
The last line of the video is “Calabria has everything,” and then the closing line “we put our hearts into it.”
Maybe I’ll teach my next workshop in the foot of the boot of Italy, Calabria! It’s old Italy, full of mountainous raw beauty surrounded by the blue Ionian/Mediterranean Sea.
Whatever your dreams are, can you just keep them in your vision? Simultaneously, examine the thoughts or conclusions you have that block you from fulfilling them? Maybe one of your dreams is to visit Italy? I can help with that! I can help you with all of your dreams. LIKE THE AD SAYS, LET’S PUT OUR HEART INTO OUR DREAMS. Read more on my Italy Retreat Blog.
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
I love it when science discovers what we already intuitively know. Women are different than men! In this particular study, explained in an article by Ellen Michaud in Prevention Magazine and reprinted on Learning Place Online, it was found that women do not have the usual fight or flight response to stress. It’s not a surprise to me that they instead meet together to bond and communicate. (more…)
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
I just attended a Ladies Who Launch Event in Boulder at Common Threads with my daughter (@gracekboyle)whom I’m visiting this week. As a lone entrepreneur, I long for the opportunity to connect and network with other women in business and creative projects. I think it’s crucial. I do meet on the phone with a mastermind group of women from around the country, and I am so grateful for their support and inspiration.
The Ladies Who Launch group is so fantastic because you connect in person with a community of like-minded women who help give more exposure to their products or services, through marketing and distribution opportunities.
This group is about women helping women. At this event, there were four dynamic women who presented their expertise about marketing, branding and social media. (more…)
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Subscribe by RSS
