“Meditation is like giving a hug to ourselves, getting in touch with that awesome reality in us. While meditating we feel a deep sense of intimacy with God, a love that is inexplicable.” ~Paramahansa Yogananda
Last week during our annual Gratitude Dinner, I led a guided meditation on gratitude. As I was thinking about what I wanted to write about, the idea came to me that instead of my normal written word style blog, it might be fun to record a meditation that you could save and use as part of a gratitude practice.
Yes, November is the month when we all seem to focus on thankfulness, but practicing gratitude works best when it is something you do regularly throughout the year. If you know me, you know that I am a very positive person, but there are times when I am “off” and the thing that helps me get back on track better than anything else is practicing gratitude.
So, if you could use a little more positivity in your life – and who couldn’t – then I invite you to sit back and enjoy this guided meditation. It will take you 12 minutes to complete and ideally you want to find a spot where you will be comfortable and undisturbed.
Today’s author: Laura Hall, CPC, CDWF: As a certified professional coach since 2009, Laura Hall, Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator has been helping people just like you make changes in. As a mother of 2 girls, Laura has a special interest in coaching parents, so if you still have children living at home, ask Laura about her Wholehearted Parenting programs. Laura can be reached via email at [email protected] or feel free to visit her website HallCoaching.com
A friend and I recently attended the “Know Your Value Conference” in NYC – it was hosted by Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and founder of Know Your Value. The conference is meant to enrich the lives of women and help them learn to own their power and grow their value – important stuff! The topics included Negotiation and Promotion, Financial Health, Emotional Health, Physical Health, and more.
I will admit, at first I thought the show was a little glitzy compared to other motivational conferences I have attended where the focus has been more on spirituality and inner healing. The presenter list included Martha Stewart, makeup artist Bobbi Brown, Jane Pauley, and Sarah Jessica Parker (love, love, love Sex & the City) just to name a few . . . remember, it was NYC!
BUT, the presenter that moved me the most was someone I had never heard of . . . Janine Driver, the author of You Say More Than You Think, which is a book about body language. If you knew me better, you would know that I am totally obsessed with books and learning. So when I was perusing the book table before the conference, Janine’s book spoke to me and I purchased it on the spot! Little did I know, a few hours later I would meet her in person, get my book signed, and compare notes about our 12-year-old complex boys – this all took place BEFORE I heard her talk.
Janine’s presentation was funny, powerful, energetic, and emotional. “Wow,” you must be thinking – “really, all that, and she was just talking about body language?” Well, by listening to her talk, I realized that my body language has been holding me back from owning my power.
Are you aware of your body language? Do you know how your body language affects the responses of others?
The good news is you can start implementing positive and effective body language techniques immediately. Challenge yourself to try out the different body language tips below and observe how people respond to you.
Power Poses
So there is the usual “Wonder Woman” hands-on-hips pose and the power steeple (you see this one on “Shark Tank”), but I am going to challenge you to look farther than the pose and notice how you respond when you see other people taking these poses. Notice the stances of women CEOs, politicians, and other powerful business women and entertainers. See mine above taken at the conference.
Homework: Have a friend take pictures of you in the various poses – see which one you like the best and start using it!
The Shimmy
This one became famous during one of the presidential debates when Hillary Clinton reacted by smiling, closing her eyes, and shimmy-shaking back and forth. But did you know that shaking your body is a simple yet powerful Qigong technique? Next time someone ruffles your feathers do what Taylor Swift says and, “Shake it off!”
Homework: Next time you are stressed or emotionally overwhelmed, find a private spot, ground your feet, and start moving your body from head to toe for 1-2 minutes.
Handshake
Be the first to reach out for the handshake (hands side to side). You can make a positive impression by facing the person – belly button facing the person you are shaking hands with, not just your face and upper body. Also, hand placement on the top portrays power while the hand on the bottom implies weakness. If someone does a power play on you and shakes with their hand on top, you can come back with a “hand hug,” meaning you cover the top hand with your hand.
Homework: Practice a variety of handshakes with people you meet – notice the response when you face and shake vs the shake that is not fully engaged.
The Shoulder Shrug
The Shoulder Shrug means I’m not sure of myself – DON’T SHRUG YOUR SHOULDERS!!! This is one body move women tend to do that totally takes their power away. Janine shared the story of her mother who was diagnosed with cancer and only a year to live. The video she showed was of her mother holding a rock over her head, saying “This is cancer,” and throwing it into the ocean. When Janine asked her mom to yell, “This year is all about me” . . . well, her mom threw the rock, looked into the camera, and said, “I guess this year is all about me,” then shrugged her shoulders. Janine had her say it over and over again until she said it like she meant it with NO shoulder shrug. She also had her mother practice a variety of positive body language techniques. Her mother outlived her diagnosis and was with her for three more years.
Homework: Catch yourself when you are getting ready to shrug your shoulders and STOP! If you have a hard time with this one, start by being more aware of the situations in which you shrug.
Start making positive changes to your body language today – it can help enhance your social life, relationships, and professional career. And, if all else fails, “Shake it off!”
Today’s author: Kim McClure, Holistic Health and Wellness Coach received her coaching education from MUIH, Laurel, MD. Kim is a certified Sanity School™ for Parents Trainer. Sanity School™ teaches a Coach Approach to parenting Complex Kids. Learn simple and clear strategies to motivate your child or teen to reach for success. If you need Sanity or want to learn more about the program, contact Kim at kim.mcclure@healthsanitylife.com or visit her website HealthSanityLife.com
What comes to mind first when you think of creativity? Art studio? Dance? Creativity as a talent? But there’s more to it, so let’s take a look at what creativity is.
When I Google creativity, many definitions come up, but I like to stay with: Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow asked, “Who is interested in creativity?” in his 1971 book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. His answer was: “Practically everybody is.” This interest is no longer confined to psychologists and psychiatrists, but has become a question of national and international policy as well. A 2012 Adobe study on creativity revealed 8 in 10 people felt that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth and nearly two-thirds felt creativity is valuable to society. However, a striking minority – only 1 in 4 people – believe they are living up to their own creative potential.
How can a concept be so important in human consciousness, so dearly valued by nearly everyone, yet be so elusive?
In The Creative Connection, Natalie Rogers, daughter of psychiatrist Carl Rogers, states that “we all need love and approval. Yet the key to unleashing our creative energy is finding the deepest sense of approval within ourselves.” And we have to find a way to quiet the inner critic. It seems the creative bud in each of us is very delicate. Although the urge to express ourselves is powerful, it seems to be easily squashed in childhood. Many people then feel afraid and reluctant to try again.
Creativity is not a talent. We are all born creative and in fact are taught to not be creative. Until the age of five, we are able to play and create without any inhibition. We are able to make beautiful paintings intuitively without any training. At the age of six, we start judging ourselves and listening to what others say about us and lose our freedom of expression. We start to cultivate the chatter in our heads, and start living according to the stories we tell ourselves, whether they are correct or not. One of the stories I often hear as an art instructor is: “I’m taking your class, because I like to paint, but I’m not creative at all.” If we were to treat learning to draw the same as learning to read, we would all be better draughtsmen.
Where could you use more creativity in your life?
Art professor Betty Edwards made it her lifelong quest to determine what creativity is and why we judge ourselves so harshly. Her original contributions to the art of drawing and creativity have reached far beyond the college classroom as she proved that everyone can learn to draw. In her book Drawing on the Artist Within, she related that at the beginning of the semester there are always students saying to her, “I have no talent and will never be able to learn.” “Well, wait and see,” she would answer, and sure enough a few weeks later they were happily drawing away. And even then they attributed their newly acquired skill to hidden talent.
Additionally, the students stated that learning to see by learning to draw had caused other changes in their perception of the life around them. The students said that they noticed there is so much out there that they had never seen before. They even mentioned being able to think differently.
Betty Edwards proposed that learning to see and draw is a very efficient way to train the visual system, just as learning to read and write can efficiently train the verbal system. When trained as equal partners, one mode of thinking enhances the other, and together the two modes can release human creativity and make thought visible. She described the creative process as follows:
First Insight | 2. Saturation | 3. Incubation | 4. Ah-Ha! moment | 5. Verification – engaging left and right brain at the different stages.
If creativity is not a talent, but a skill, then we can learn it and have more of it in our lives. I like to see myself as open-minded, creative, and resourceful. Creating is something I have to do. It’s a force from within. I love it, whether it’s painting, setting the table, arranging flowers, buying a new outfit, or coming up with a creative solution. I thrive on solving challenges, and I use my creativity to engage in creative problem solving.
3 simple ways to enhance creative problem solving:
Become an expert and teach or explain.
Teaching as well as coaching have given me the opportunity to further deepen my knowledge and practice getting it across. I don’t have all the answers, but my reservoir, and also my confidence, are growing. I tell my art students to know their creative habits; with that, I mean knowing what they need in order to stay in the zone while they are painting. If you have to look for a color, you go from right brain to left brain mode and out of the zone.
Be curious and open-minded.
Get curious about the problem you want to solve and be open-minded to new ideas. Fear is the enemy of creativity. Embrace the unknown and give yourself permission to explore.
Gather information by asking yourself questions.
Any idea you have comes out of your memory. That means you have pulled information from your memory and used it. When asked a question, we immediately go into answer mode – so does your memory and you can come up with some unexpected answers.
Today’s author: Elisabeth Vismans is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), an Award-Winning Artist, and founder of Quality Within, helping women in transition to find their life purpose. She developed a unique coaching program using the visual language as an extra modality. She is also an Art Instructor and conducts painting and coaching workshops. Learn more about Elisabeth at her website: www.qualitywithin.com, or from her Facebook page.
What do you do when you’re down-in-the-dumps and want to lift your spirits?
A proven way to shift energy from negative to positive is to focus on being grateful. When you do so, you change your perspective from a scarcity mentality to one of abundance. A tried-and- true remedy for the doldrums is to ask yourself, what am I grateful for?
There are other advantages to being grateful, as well. Literature has recognized the benefits of cultivating gratefulness as a virtue for thousands of years. More recently, through the study of positive psychology, mental health professionals are examining how virtues such as gratitude may benefit our health… and what they are finding is promising.
When it comes to health, grateful people (those who consistently incorporate gratitude into their lives) have an edge on those who are not-so-grateful, according to research on gratitude conducted by Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at the University of California Davis.
“Grateful people take better care of themselves and engage in more protective health behaviors like regular exercise, a healthy diet, and regular physical examinations,” says Emmons.
Gratitude can also help us manage stress better. It’s commonly known that stress can make us sick, especially when we have trouble coping with it. Stress has been linked to many illnesses, such as heart disease and cancer. “Gratitude research is beginning to suggest that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with daily problems, especially stress,” Emmons says.
In addition, grateful people tend to be more optimistic and researchers are seeing how that characteristic boosts the immune system. “There are some very interesting studies linking optimism to better immune function,” says Lisa Aspinwall, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Utah.
How do you become more grateful?
Some suggestions include:
Keeping a gratitude journal. Regularly list or describe what you are thankful for.
Offer thanks throughout the day, perhaps as a breath prayer. Expressing appreciation to others, or to God, as you receive anything from a parking space to a beautiful sunset creates a habit of gratitude. In time, this practice may allow you to find the good even in very difficult circumstances.
Surround yourself with people who are intentionally grateful. Their positive energy will be contagious and support you in your effort to be more appreciative.
As you incorporate any, or all, of these steps to become more grateful, I encourage you to take them beyond November and make it a practice that you do throughout the year. Gratitude is a powerful tool for your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.
Women who want to expand their focus on gratitude are invited to join the Wholistic Woman Community for our annual Gratitude Dinner onNov. 15th from 6-9 pm in Frederick, MD. This event is a highlight of the year and is designed to show appreciation for our members.
If you aren’t a member yet, you may join our community now and attend this year’s dinner. Learn details about the dinner and register by 11/13 to reserve your spot for this special occasion.
Today’s author: Carol deLaski, PCC, is an executive coach, speaker, and author of Lost and Found: Discovering Strength in Love and Faith. You may contact her at [email protected].
Can you remember what it felt like when you awoke this morning? The very moment you came back into consciousness? Was it an all at once moment or did many stages from unconsciousness to being fully awake occur? Let’s take a look at what the definition of awakening means:
A-wak-en-ing əˈwāk(ə)niNG/ noun
(formal) an act of waking from sleep.
an act or moment of becoming suddenly aware of something. “the war came as a rude awakening to the hardships of life”
adjective
coming into existence or awareness. “his awakening desire”
As an Energy Empowerment and Self Acceptance Coach, I have learned that there are many levels of consciousness. The level upon which we choose to operate is up to us, but we must first understand that numerous levels exist. Many of us suffer from internal energy blocks, such as the “nagging inner critic”, and we may be living our lives more from a place of fear than a place of love.
The goal of today’s blog is simply to ask you to wake up. It’s an invitation to help raise your consciousness and awareness of true self and look at how you’re showing up in your own life.
I once attended a workshop on energy where the instructor handed out small green round dot stickers. She asked us to stick them in places we frequented often, such as our bathroom mirror, car rear view mirror, workplace computer monitor, etc. Anywhere we may come across them in our average day. As we became visually aware of the green stickers, in that very moment, we were to imagine a loud thunderous clap of hands and someone saying in a firm voice, Wake UP!
As the days moved forward and I practiced noticing, I became aware I was not awake most of the time. So where was I? Where are you? Was I daydreaming, wrestling with worry, forecasting tomorrow’s events, reminiscing about the past, resting my mind, and who was driving the car if not me?
Some of us are sleeping unconsciously thru our lives, with weak personal identities and low self-worth and self-importance. We are not awake, not questioning, and seemingly unaware of all that is happening around
Some of us are beginning to awaken to the potential of our true essence by questioning who we are, why we are here, and what purpose our lives truly
Some individuals are Awakened, Aware, and Alive! They are choosing to live in the moment by shifting their thinking, their emotions, and their behaviors as needed. In doing this, they are placing themselves in an environment that is supportive as well as anabolic and open to possibility.
The ego is never quiet. It’s always comparing, arguing, or trying to control us. Whether it’s early in the morning, mid-day, or evening, I again invite you to WAKE UP, pay attention, and increase your awareness. From this very moment, begin to choose and notice that actions always create consequences. Shift your words, thoughts, and behaviors. Are they positive or negative? Are you lifting those around you or contributing to the noise pollution with negativity? Transform and learn to let go of the things that no longer serve you well. Challenge yourself by testing new ways. Set a goal to consciously vibrate at a higher energetic level.
Choose the positivity of peace and love. Most importantly, do no harm to yourself or others. Quiet your mind and hear the voice of your higher power. Become more aware of your surroundings and environment. Let your senses engage and come alive. Learn, Grow, Love, and Believe in your TRUE SELF so that you can increase your satisfaction and truly enjoy each and every moment of your unique and wonderful life.
How can you be more awake? Take a look at my suggestions in the lists below:
Take a simple “Wake Up Your Senses” walk
What do you see?
What sounds do you hear?
What is the feel of things around you? Smooth or rough?
Is the temperature hot or cold?
What are the smells in the air? What’s out there that you could taste?
Aids to increase your wakefulness
Adequate sleep and rest
Eating nutritiously
Proper hydration
Exercise and movement
Deep breathing
Sunshine for Vitamin D
Meditation
Reading
Aromatherapy and the use of essential oils
Soothing Music
Proper posture
Comedy and laughter
Gardening activities
(And I’m sure you could add-on to this list…)
Benefits to being Awake
Overall better health
Connectedness to all things
Living with purpose
Reduction of stress, worry, judgment, and conflict
Improved interpersonal relationships
Increased emotional expression
Increased smiling and appreciation
Authenticity of self
Keen awareness of living in the moment
Being a beacon of positivity
Contributing to the greater good of humanity
Acceptance of responsibility for one’s energy level and its contribution to the universe
To learn more about waking up, consciousness, energetic levels, and internal blocks . . . contact me! It’s not a quick fix but rather an education that facilitates a process and practice of change, thus eliminating fear and increasing love. I offer a free 30-minute session to anyone interested.
Through my iPEC training as an Energy Leadership Index Master, I help COURAGEOUS SOULS dissolve their barriers, eliminate blocks, uproot old stories and plant new internal messages. Together we work to clear out the clutter.
Today’s author: Kat Middleton is a professional certified coach and the founder and CEO of Wholehearted Concepts, LLC. Kat is a Professional Energy Empowerment and Self-Acceptance Coach who specializes in helping clients personally and professionally that struggle with inner doubt, perfectionism and being way too hard on themselves. She is available for private one-on-one coaching as well as group workshops, seminars, and speaking events. Learn more about her at her website: www.wholeheartedconcepts.com
