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
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