Are you an excessive worrier?  Do you second-guess decisions and worry over potential outcomes?  Most often this is learned behavior from interpretations you made during interactions with one or both of our parents when you were a kid.  You don’t have to live with this fearfulness about bad things happening.  It is something you can change.

Most of my clients have some level of anxiety over their current situation, whether it’s about their personal or business relationships, career uncertainty or finances, etc.  (Rarely do upsetting situations present long term, or they would be better served through therapy).  They find a solution first and then fine-tune it with me during coaching or they gain that clarity and take new actions during our coaching time.

Again, the origin of their habit of deep seated or ongoing concern is at home with their parents as a child.  So it’ll pop up with another challenge or problem they face unless they permanently change the way they view life.

A quick and sure method to remove this fear and create an opening for choices without conditions is with the Positive Thinking Way program. Originated through the Lefkoe Institute, training through them has led me to do my work in this area with clients worldwide.

A starter method of self-coaching you can use with yourself ongoingly whenever you feel worried or upset, is to ask yourself these two questions: (more…)

Last night I had a rich conversation with my husband.  We discussed things we want to change with ourselves and how we want to communicate more effectively with each other.  (We also talked about how extraordinary it is that we were talking about it at all and how awesome our marriage is).  Afterwards I felt satisfied, as if we’d reached another new level in our relationship and a new level of freedom within it. 

When we went to sleep, I dreamt I was flying.   I was not having difficulty lifting off or staying airborne, I wasn’t even flying low to the ground.  It was effortless.  I view this dream as an indication that I had released myself from some concerns I’d had and it lightened my load – literally allowing me to fly freer.  Whether you experience flying dreams or not, your psyche and your soul knows when you’ve let go.  To experience your own sense of freedom with communicating troubles in personal or working relationships include these practices:

1.  Appropriately time your conversations, so you are both receptive.  
2.  Talk after any period of upsets has passed and you’ve both cooled down.
3.  Caringly express your concerns or listen from that place when another is talking, with an intention to resolve matters.
4.  Avoid angry words or accusatory positioning, especially any known ”hot buttons” to strengthen your points.
5.  Be a good listener and not just a talker.  It’s okay to have quiet time during the discussion to process the information.

Keep your focus on the workability of your relationships which will prevent you from letting little issues bother you.  But when they do and you can’t seem to let them go or brush them off, find a suitable time to share about them and be caring in how you do it.  Always acknowledge each other afterwards for the gift of your mutual sharing and receptivity.

Today I go and get my breasts individually squeezed between two, cold metal, vise-style clamps. I typically walk away pink and tender. Yet, this is the best devised machine for early detection of breast cancer – go figure. Okay, I’m grateful for a procedure that can alert me to a possible health problem.  So suffice it to say this is a necessary evil.

Sometimes you have to face less pleasant experiences, where avoiding them might lead to more serious problems.  You could face a whole host of problems you could have more quickly dealt with if you hadn’t procrastinated.  It’s also commmon to find after something you dreaded doing, that your effort output and the experience itself wasn’t as big of a deal as you thought it would be.

I also find that if I don’t use regular health maintenance and get sick, not only do I suffer, but those around me who have to pick up my work load and responsibilties do too.  It’s typically caused by my not taking precautionary steps to care for myself.  Now when I get a cold, I look at how I didn’t slow down when I felt beat and didn’t say no to things that overspent my energy and ran down my immune system. 

The trick is to not only be aware of your behaviors, but change them before sickness occurs.  Men tend to be less present to their need for regular self care and push through, while women are generally better at this, yet still caretake others first, even when they’re aware they are tapped out. 

Rest is a necessary evil,  because it can re-energize you, though you have to give up something in your busy schedule to make room for it.  Or, in my case, stop to go have a mammogram which displaces other things I’d rather do with my time.  I’ve decided it’s important to take this action and go through this minor inconvenience for its beneficial results.  And when it’s not immediately apparent that taking actions will result in a positive benefit, it is character building and strengthens your muscle to self motivate.

What actions are you not taking, but are a “necessary evil?”

It’s hard to even give words to your upset, and you’re not sure you want to.  It’s so private and yet the weight of your concerns is so present for you that it feels as if everyone can see something is going on with you anyway.  You get good at answering, “oh, everything’s fine,” when you know it’s not.

I have a younger sister dealing with cancer right now.  I go about my life and it’s like a wave crashing against my brain that this horrible disease has hit so close to home. 

My family, all ten of us, are having emails fly between us.  We all believe she’ll come out of it well - we do.  Yet there are periodic reports that things are worse than we feared and our calm exteriors waver.  We’ll know more in a few weeks after her surgery.

I know many folks deal with crisis that are happening or have happened, and you have to continue to work or carry on with daily activities.  

Yesterday, another sister and I talked about hope and how much easier it is to have it when things are going well.  There’s evidence all around you in the world that things don’t always turn out the best for folks.  Our lives seem precarious and unexpected occurrences make us feel as if we’re not in control.  But here are a few things I know are helping me to stay focused and optimistic:

1.  Pray.  Even if you don’t believe in God, something put you here on Earth, and there is a powerful universal force at work that can alter the course of your circumstances at any moment. 

2.  Believe.  Have faith in a balance of nature beyond your imagination that is just and loving.  All is right in this mindset and heartset that gives you the strength to face any obstacle.

3.  Renew.  Look for ways to cry, laugh, dance, do what you love and be grateful for it.  Releasing pent-up emotions and tapping into joy, has a healing power.

4.  Share Modestly.  You need to share with others, but share with those you can trust.  Folks can’t tell what is going on with you even though you think they can.  So unless you’re prepared to answer lots of questions, talk with those you feel closest with and ask for them to listen without giving advice, or ask for words of support if you need them.  This opening with a few can help you stay focused and present when you’re with others.

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As I let go of another business project that I decided is not a valuable use of my time and other resources, I reflect on the process itself of “letting go.” There are those things, people, projects, places, to-do’s that we consciously choose to eliminate…this project is one of them. It’s wise to let those things go before you expend too much more energy on them. Then there are those minor things that fall away on their own because you really weren’t that interested in them and didn’t focus your energy on them to begin with. But what about those larger matters that are important that you don’t give your due attention to out of past fears or disappointment?

One of my husband’s aunts was married for 50 years and deeply in love with her partner. A woman in her early 70′s, she had been fun to be with and lively.  For the last four years she’s lived in a senior home with severe loss of memory and physical deterioration. Before she went into the home we used to talk with her about doing some of the things she’d loved to do so much with him and she had no interest in doing it on her own. It was sad for all the family to see her so dependent on what she had had that she was unwilling to live fully for herself.

I can’t help feeling that my dear aunt-in-law gave up on living for herself, gave up on living her own dreams. I don’t want to judge her in any way; I don’t know what she’s been thinking and feeling since her husband passed, but I do know that she began to fade when she became inactive and disinterested.  It causes me to question my own disappointments, what I may harbor as sad or hurt feelings, and to see if there is anything that I really wanted that I’ve given up on or am unwilling to try out.

The question you may ask yourself is, Are you complete with your life as it is and as it is not? In other words, are there hopes or dreams you had that didn’t manifest and have you moved on from those? What about people you longed to connect with but didn’t get to, or people or circumstances you want to disconnect from, but don’t? Are you resigned in having to relate to certain people or be in certain circumstances that are unhealthy, or are you dwelling on thoughts of missing out?

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