February 5, 2012

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Getting Clear On What You Want: Seven Actions You Can Take To Improve Your Clarity

February 1, 2012 By Lena 47 Comments

get clarity on what you wantA common theme between myself and my friends this year has been getting clear on what we want to achieve. It’s been a hard slog over the last couple of months to really define goals and get absolutely clear and focused on what the priorities for this year are. At least, it has been for me, because I’m a good one at wanting the whole pie, not just a slice of it. Gaining a clear idea of exactly what I’m meant to be doing has been a lot of hard work, but it’s also been fun because when the light bulb goes on it’s a beautiful site. It’s like one of those scenes from a movie where the fog lifts and before your eyes is the most beautiful site you’ve ever seen.

Now that I have a clear sense of purpose and at least a vague idea of what to do about it, it seems the proper thing to do to share how I got there. So if you’re feeling even half as unclear about things as I was a couple of months ago, here are seven action steps you can take to get you closer to being in the clear.

1. Visit your archives.

Okay, so my inner historian wants to be heard this morning. What I mean by visiting your archives is to take a trip back into your memories and find the times where everything appeared to be a little clearer than it is right now. Discover what you were doing at the time that made things flow a little smoother, where you seemed to be on track and absolutely clear about what you were doing. You may surprise yourself by finding patterns of thought and behaviors that you’d forgotten about.

Here’s an example from my own experience:

Much of my life until I moved to where I am now was centered around music. I pretty much learned to read music before I learned to read words, and could often be found in front of the piano. Sometimes I’d play, sometimes I’d just let my fingers wander over the keys. Just being in the same room with a piano brings out all sorts of clarity and creativity in me. Once I realized this I went out and bought a couple of books of old jazz standards and started making time to play the piano every day. For me the clarity that comes from sitting at the piano was something that I had forgotten about.

2. Write everything down.

And I do mean everything. Goals, dreams, thoughts, and feelings will all play a role in helping you get clear. Using a journal is an amazing tool for getting clear on what you want and, more importantly, why you want it. You’ll be able to see the patterns as they happen, and you will start seeing things in a different light once they are down on paper.

Another example: I am currently reading The Writing Diet by Julia Cameron. In my previous attempts at using a food journal it was a really clinical process. I’d record what I ate and when, how much I exercised, and what my blood glucose levels were before and after. No thoughts, no emotions, just numbers.

I’m only about halfway through the book, but already my journaling has changed and I’m seeing patterns and beliefs around food that I’d never realized before. In only a few days since I’ve been reading, I’m a lot more clear on why I eat the way I do, and what needs to happen to change that so I can really lose weight this year.

3. Read what you write.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at the number of people I know who write in their journals and never go back to reflect on what they’ve written. They treat it like a brain dump … and literally dump out the thoughts and feelings without ever stopping long enough to wonder why they felt that way.

When you really get “in the zone” while you’re journaling, you may find that you don’t consciously know what you’re writing. In essence it really is a brain dump because you’re just letting the words flow without stopping to think about them or edit them. You may surprise yourself with what shows up on the page after one of these sessions. Especially if you’ve gone into it asking for clarity.

4. Visualize what you want.

I’ll admit, I have a hard time with this one. I’ve never been very good at visualizing but for people who can do it, it pays amazing results.

When you can see and feel what it’s like to have the end result already, you can gain a real sense of clarity about what steps you need to take next to make the vision a reality.

5. Focus on one thing at a time.

One of my biggest obstacles to clarity was lack of focus. Makes sense doesn’t it. It took me a long time (years, if we’re being really honest here) to realize that by trying to focus on several things at once and thinking I could do all of them, I was unable to get clear about even one.

So how did I decide what to focus on? For me, I got clear through journaling. I did a lot of writing, meditating, and writing out what came through in the meditations. I asked for clarity and prioritized all my projects and business plans and then went with what felt right in my heart. What I learned when it comes to focusing is to trust your intuition. That little niggling feeling in your core really does know a thing or two about what’s best for you.

If that doesn’t work, you can always go for Step 6….

6. Pick a goal, any goal.

Most people have a lot of goals they want to accomplish. Personally, my goal list covers about three pages, and that’s just for this year!

If you have several things you want to accomplish, just pick one and get started. Your starting point doesn’t have to be perfect, you just have to start somewhere.

The words of Les Brown come to mind here: “You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.”

7. Take responsibility for your action (or inaction).

When you get right down to it, how much clarity you have is something that is one-hundred percent in your control. You can either do the work to get clear, or not. The choice, and therefore the control, is yours.

If you are willing to do the work to get clear, I can tell you that having that clarity and focus around your purpose is a wonderful thing. Your life flows more smoothly, and opportunities and experiences that you never saw coming will appear on your doorstep.

Finally, say a big thank you to your friends when they urge you to get clear on what you really want. You may have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the idea of being clear and focused, but once you get there you’ll wonder why you waited so long!

Filed Under: Mindset Tagged With: , , , ,

Expect More From Yourself: Five Ways Raising Your Expectations Improves Your Self Esteem

January 26, 2012 By Lena 1 Comment

Improve Self Esteem with Outdoor ActivitiesThere’s a line in the movie “Something To Talk About” where Julia Roberts’ character says something about women are bred to keep their expectations low. Whenever I think about myself and my own self esteem that line always comes to mind. Yes, I like to watch cheesy movies, but that statement as always resonated with me because I think there are a lot of people who are conditioned to keep their expectations low. It’s like always settling for second place because you don’t have enough belief in yourself to go for the win.

It’s a pretty daunting challenge now to realize that I don’t have to settle for anything less than the best that life has to offer, and that I can be more, do more, and have more than I ever allowed myself to believe. I have to say, I’ve come a long way from the days when my mother told me I’d better marry the first guy who asked, because it would likely be the only offer I’d ever get. But that, as we like to say, is a story for another day (or an acorn from another tree, if you’d like).

So, what can you do to raise your own expectations for yourself, and how does that affect your self esteem? Here are five ideas for you to ponder.

1. Learn Something New

This is an easy place to start raising your expectations and your self-esteem. You can learn something as big or as small as you want to begin with. You could learn a new style of cooking. You could learn how to dance. You could go really big and learn how to fly a plane. The sky is your limit, literally! Regardless of what you decided to learn, making that decision to expand your knowledge and then taking action to actually do it will go a long way to boosting your self-esteem. And when you succeed in this, you will also come to expect that you’ll succeed at the next new thing you try too.

2. Dare Yourself To Do Something

How many times did you do something on a dare when you were younger? When was the last time you accepted a dare?

Personally I can’t remember the last time… oh wait a minute, someone dared me to share a post on Facebook the other day, and I did it! Not a very big challenge, I’ll admit, but it felt pretty darn good. Other than that, I’m a pretty tame person. I don’t do challenges, and I sure don’t do dares on a regular basis. But there are days when it’s good to challenge yourself. To dare yourself to take just one more step, to believe for just one more minute that you can do more than you did in the minute before. When you challenge yourself and complete that challenge, you will also find that your sense of self-worth grows too.

3. Spend Some Time Outdoors

When I say spend some time outdoors, I don’t mean reading a book in the garden, or lounging by the pool. I mean really get out there and challenge yourself to do something big. Learn to rock climb, hike a trail you’ve never done before, learn to canoe, even go camping for the first time. There’s nothing like Mother Nature for challenging you to accomplish things you’ve never even dreamed you could do. And I can tell you from experience, when you do, you will feel like there’s nothing you can’t handle, no challenge too tough for you. Your self-esteem will soar and you will know that you can do more than you’ve ever let yourself believe before.

4. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

Raising your expectations and your self-esteem is all about moving outside your comfort zone. It’s not always fun, and it’s pretty much guaranteed to be hard work when you move beyond the safe zone that you’ve set for yourself. But here’s the thing … the more you move beyond your comfort zone, the more your comfort zone expands. It moves in relation to you and your willingness to grow and take the risk to try something new. You will grow and you will grow stronger in your self-belief just by pushing that boundary back even a little.

5. Do Things You Never Believed You Could

When you suffer from low self-esteem, there are a lot of things you don’t think you can do. When you commit to yourself, expecting more of yourself becomes the norm and you will find yourself trying and achieving things you never believed you could. Your self-esteem will continue to grow, and you will continue to try new thing, and you will find that it is a self-propelling circle of growth. And even if you experience failures along the way, it will be so much easier to bounce back now because you know you can do whatever you set out to do.

It’s All About Moving the Boundary Line

When it comes right down to it, raising your expectations is all about moving the boundary lines of where you are comfortable. You can’t experience growth without at least a few growing pains, and I’m not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you it’s all easy. It can be scary — I know this because I’m doing it all right along with you — but I have faith in you, and I know that you can do it if you really want to.

There’s a popular quote attributed to Henry Ford that says “If you think you can, or think you can’t, you are right.” Raising your expectations puts you squarely in the “think you can” camp. Belief in yourself is an amazing thing, and as you continue to move beyond your boundaries, your self-belief can only grow, right along with your self-esteem. Those low expectations will be a thing of the past!

Filed Under: Self-Confidence Tagged With: , , ,

You ARE Worthy: Five Ways To Boost Your Self Esteem and Start Believing In Yourself Again

January 23, 2012 By Lena 11 Comments

believe in yourselfWhen your self-esteem is at a healthy level, everything seems to flow so much more smoothly in your life. You are happier, healthier, and more able to live life to the full potential you were meant to. But so many people don’t live up to their full potential because they don’t believe they are worthy of success, happiness and even love.

When you don’t believe in yourself, and your self esteem is in the gutter, it’s really hard to see just how you could be worthy of love, happiness, or success. After all, who can love you when you can’t even love yourself.

I know it’s hard to change the belief that you are not worthy. Especially if you’ve been in a relationship where there was emotional or physical abuse. It’s hard to believe in yourself when the person who was supposed to love, cherish and protect instead spent their time breaking you down and destroying your self esteem. It took me over ten years to recover to the point where I wanted to even try to go out and face the world. Writing an article like this to tell you about it would have been unthinkable before now.

Fortunately there are ways to overcome low self esteem — ones that won’t turn you into a hermit like me. Here are five ways you can boost your self esteem and start believing in yourself again.

1. Learn to say thank you.

One of the hardest things to do when you have low self esteem is to accept a compliment. Since you have this ingrained belief that you are ugly, stupid, unlovable or whatever you’ve been told is the reason you’re unworthy of love and success, it’s almost impossible to believe that there are still people out there who will see through all that and tell you how beautiful you are, inside and out.

Learning to say thank you and just accept the compliment instead of trying to explain why someone is wrong about you is one of the best things you can do to boost your self esteem. While it may be hard at first to accept a compliment at face value, it does get easier the more often it happens.

Knowing that there are people out there who do see the good in you is an incredible boost to your self-esteem. The more you smile and say thank you, the more you start to believe it for yourself and the stronger your own self-confidence becomes. Before you know it, you will be accepting compliments like a pro.

2. Accept Yourself and Your Uniqueness

It’s easy to compare yourself to others and find yourself lacking when you suffer from low self-esteem. There’s always someone who is prettier than you, smarter than you, richer than you.

In order to break this habit, remember that you are your own unique person, and you have qualities and strengths that no one else has. Focusing on your strengths and what makes you unique will go a long way toward improving your self-esteem.

3. Affirm your uniqueness.

It’s not enough to just say that you are unique. It’s believing it in the very heart of your being that makes the difference. Using affirmations to remind yourself that you are unique and worthy of love, happiness, and success is a good way to build up your self esteem. The more you tell yourself you are worthy, the more you being to believe it.

Affirmations are great because they belong totally in the present moment. The instant you say “I AM worthy” you ARE worthy. Even if it’s only for that moment, and you go back to thinking you’re not in the next … that one moment is enough to get you started on the way to improving your view of yourself. The more moments you can string together where you affirm and believe in your own self worth, the stronger your self-esteem becomes.

4. Avoid negative people as if they were the plague.

Really, negative people and negative energy ARE a plague on your self esteem. Do not let other people steal your dreams or make you feel bad for following your heart just because they are too afraid to follow their own.

If you can, avoid them at all costs. Sometimes it’s the people who are closest to you who do the most damage because they think they are helping. If you can’t avoid them do your best to limit your exposure and don’t share your goals and dreams with them.

5. Get professional help if you need to.

There are times when our self-esteem has taken such a beating that the only way we can get it back is with professional help. If you can afford it, a life coach is an excellent option to help you see that you are worthy and give you the tools you need to start believing in yourself again.

If hiring a coach is out of your budget range, you can find excellent books and online programs that can help you boost your self-esteem and start living up to your full potential.

Knowing you are worthy of all the good things life has to offer is an important part of being able to live your life to the fullest potential. Yes, it may take some work to get your self-esteem back up to the healthy levels you want, but the results are well worth it.

You can do anything you put your mind to, as long as you believe you can do it. Improving your self-esteem gives you that belief and the ability to achieve!

Filed Under: Ezine Issues, Self-Confidence Tagged With: , , ,

Change Through Addiction Recovery, Available, Right Now!

January 18, 2012 By Lena 3 Comments

(This is a guest post by Anita Fiander of AnitaFiander.com)

Inside this very short article I am going to explain to you how I have created massive change through addiction recovery in my life and how you can do it too.

How do I know this stuff works and will continue to work?

Because I have invested almost 25 years researching and then taking action to change my life, from a huge career change, tackling alcohol and nicotine addiction and learning to use my dysfunctional past to help other women.

In order to live a full and complete life, we must learn how to let go of past failures and disappointments and not carry them with us into our future.

Hanging on to pain, bitterness and disappointment from our past is a heavy burden. It affects your moods, attitudes, relationships, job and all aspects of your life. Negativity eats away at your self-esteem and destroys any possibility of a life free from pain.

Fortunately, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! Your future doesn’t have to be a repetition of your past. You don’t need to be destined to a life of pain, regardless of what you’ve already been through. You can lay down your burdens. It’s okay for you to be free. In fact, you deserve it!

These four steps will help you move forward and find the freedom you need to begin living a fuller, more enjoyable life, through addiction recovery.

  1. Talk about it. Discuss your past pain, fear, disappointment or trauma with a trusted friend or family member. Fully express the feelings associated with the situation: cry, scream, or do whatever you need to do to release the bottled up emotions in a safe way.
  • Until you really talk about the feelings connected to your past, you may not be able to move past them.Once you’ve spoken the words, release them from your mind forever. As hard as it may be, it’s the only way to free yourself from your past.
  1. Use a journal. Writing in a journal is an excellent way to pour out your pain. A journal offers the safety of knowing your words are just for you and won’t be read by anyone else. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or even if the words follow a logical progression, simply write from the heart.
  • Physically writing your thoughts and feelings can release your emotions so you can move past them.
  1. Seek forgiveness.Many people misunderstand the meaning of forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean what happened to you is unimportant or you’re saying it’s “okay.” In fact, forgiveness isn’t about the other person at all.Forgiveness simply means that you’ve made the choice to let go of the desire to exact revenge and punishment, and you’ve found closure within your heart and soul.
  •  Forgiveness releases you from the burden of carrying the pain any longer. By choosing to forgive, you can stop thinking about the past so it won’t control your future.
  1. Seek professional guidance. You can choose to get help from a life coach or therapist.The people closest to us aren’t always the best choice to help us work through our pain.

    It may be difficult for us to fully open up about our deepest pain or it may be hard for them to step back far enough to help us through it.

  • Seeking guidance from a professional gives us the safety of relative anonymity, which can make it easier to share our problems, through addiction recovery. Often a coach or counselor can help us see a new point of view, which can help us move forward.

 

About Anita

Anita Fiander is an Addiction Specialist, Speaker, Author & Recovery Coach, Lifelong Psychology Student, and a Thought Leader in Addiction.

…And her passion is to empower women through addiction recovery.

We invite you to find out more about Anita Fiander and her programs. Let us see if what she has can help you.

Find her here: http://www.anitafiander.com/contact

 

Filed Under: Change Tagged With: ,

Need a Little Inspiration? Five Ways Affirmations Can Help

January 17, 2012 By Lena 2 Comments

It’s not something that most people like to admit, but there are days when inspiration is hard to come by. You wonder why you bother getting up in the morning, and that big idea you were so passionate about a few days ago seems to have gone on vacation without you. When that happens, it’s no wonder that it seems like your inspiration, along with your motivation, your creativity, and your energy jumped in the suitcase and went along for the ride.

There are ways to end your inspiration’s vacation early. Journaling is one of them. Writing gratitude lists is another. Other times, it’s an inspirational quote or photo that really helps to fire up the creativity engine. But when nothing else works, sometimes all it takes is an affirmation to wake me up and get me inspired again.

1. Affirmations are yours and yours alone. You choose them or create them based only on how they feel to you.

One of the reasons that affirmations seem to do the trick when nothing else does is because they come from you. When you think about it, inspiration that comes from within really is the best form.

Sure it’s nice when others say things that get you thinking and moving in the right direction again, and that card or photo that you received might have touched the right chord inside. But when you can motivate yourself and remind yourself why you are passionate about your purpose and why it used to excite you to jump out of bed first thing on a cold winter morning, you will be that much more inclined to believe it. It doesn’t matter how much others tell you that you’re smart, funny, beautiful, or worthwhile if you don’t believe it yourself.

2. Affirmations get you creating again.

You may be asking yourself how this works. Affirmations work best when you either write them out, or read them to yourself. When you start writing your affirmations down every day, just the act of writing daily unlocks something inside of you. I’m no expert on exactly what happens here but I know it works. Writing affirmations has jump-started more than one article or blog post for me when nothing else worked to break my lack of motivation.

3. Affirmations encourage you to keep going.

Since affirmations are, by their very nature, positive thoughts — after all, who would want to affirm something negative — they encourage you to keep going when the journey gets a little rough. And isn’t that what inspiration is all about … taking that extra step when you really didn’t think you could go any further?

4. Affirmations can change your life.

Some of the best affirmations I have ever used have ended up having life-changing results for me. In the last article I talked about living in the moment and you you get to choose how you live each moment. Affirmations are a great tool for helping you make that choice. Simple statements like:

I AM happy
I AM at peace
I AM full of energy
I AM healthy

repeated over and over again can change how you feel in the moment. String enough of those moments of being happy, healthy, energetic or peaceful together and you may find that there is no room for negativity at all because you are choosing only positive thoughts.

5. There’s an affirmation for every situation.

It doesn’t matter if you are feeling totally uninspired, unmotivated or just downright unhappy you can create an affirmation that helps you to move beyond those negative feelings.

How To Use Affirmations

Once you’ve decided that affirmations are a tool you can use, there are several ways you can use them.

1. You can write them out or say them out loud first thing in the morning to start your day. Some people (me included) do both.

2. You can make a screen-saver for your computer out of them.

3. You can write them on pieces of paper and tack them up in places where you’ll see them all day long.

4. You can write them on pieces of paper and carry them in your pockets or in your wallet, so if you need them during the day you can pull them out and read them quickly.

Affirmations are one of those tools that everyone can use, are completely personal and based only on your needs. They can be used in a moment and can change the energy of that moment and the ones that follow forever. You can write your own, or use ones that others have created if they resonate with you. Regardless of how you do it, using affirmations will help to re-ignite your inspiration and your creativity.

If you’d like to writing your own affirmations, here’s an article to get you started: How To Write Affirmations.

Filed Under: Affirmations Tagged With: , , ,

Choosing to Live in the Moment – 5 Reasons Why It’s Good For You

January 13, 2012 By Lena 2 Comments

William Feather quote about enjoying todays sunshineIt’s the beginning of the new year and everyone that I know is either in planning mode, or was more organized than I and has already started to execute their plans for the year. Not me. I have the plan, but somewhere along the way I got sidetracked during the implementation process. But I’m okay with that because for me this year, it’s all about getting healthy and re-learning how to live outside of my office.

Before you start thinking I’ve lost my mind, let me just say that doesn’t mean I don’t have goals and plans for the year. I have a list as long as my right arm of places I’d like to go and things I’d like to do this year and some of them even involve work! More importantly though, it means that instead of focusing one hundred percent on business this year, I’m leaving time to live in the moment and explore all the opportunities that come my way through unexpected doors and windows.

Here are five reasons why I’m doing this, and why you should too.

1. Life is too darn short to live anywhere else.

It’s probably not politically correct to say, but I’m not getting any younger, and neither are you. Each day only comes once, and what you make of it is up to you. If you spend it all focused on the future it’s just too easy to let the opportunities that lie right in front of you go past without even recognizing them for what they are.

How many doors have you passed by that might have led to awesome experiences because you were too focused on either the past or the future to notice the now?

2. You get to be spontaneous and open some of those doorways.

You know that saying, “you’re only young once”? Well, it’s true. As I alluded to in the point above, life really is too short to have every minute planned and scheduled. I can honestly say that I think that’s why I’m having such a hard time getting focused on work this year — I forgot to build play time into my schedule.

If you’ve been around here for any length of time at all, you’ll know that my inner child lives pretty close to the surface. I like to play and when I can’t I get very grumpy. Living in the moment allows me to work when the work needs to be done, but also leaves room to set it aside and go out to play when the opportunity presents itself. Whether it’s coffee with a friend, or just a walk in the park and a swing on the swings I much prefer allowing myself the freedom to do that than worrying about whether or not I should be doing it. I guess when it comes right down to it, I’d much rather make memories than money.

Which brings me to my third reason for living in the moment…

3. You learn a lot about the person in the mirror.

The best thing you can do for yourself is really get to know yourself … what you want, what you need, what’s important to you … not what other people tell you that you should want, need and care about.

Living in the moment allows you the freedom to pay attention to what you really want your life to be like. It may surprise you to see that what you really want is not always what you have planned for.

4. You can let go of your worries just for the moment.

Have you ever noticed that when you spend most of your time planning for the future, you are worrying about things that haven’t even happened yet?

Worrying about the future can lead to stress, which leads to all kinds of nasty things – heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes included. When you live for the moment instead, you can choose to let go of your worries and your stress, just for that moment! Even if you only stop worrying for a minute and then go right back to it, at least you will have had one minute’s contentment and peace.

Try it now. Stop and take a deep breath and feel the stillness when you do. Breathe in all the calm, peaceful energy you can conjure up and don’t let any worries spoil your minute.

When you live in the moment, you can choose peace or stress every sixty seconds. Which will you choose?

5. There’s actually room for family and friends here.

When you’re stressed and stuck worrying about what has happened in the past, or what will happen in the future, there’s really no room for the people in your life now. You might have a life but you sure don’t get to live it.

Making the choice to live more fully in the moment allows room for your partner, your children, your family and your friends to be a part of your life. Not only do you get to have a life, you get to live that life, to spend time with the people that are important to you. Whether that means going on vacation, or just going for a walk in the park together is your choice.

Learning to live in the moment is one of the nicest things we can do for ourselves. Regardless of your reason, you won’t be sorry that you made the choice. Your friends, family, and most importantly your inner self will thank you.

Filed Under: Change, Ezine Issues Tagged With:
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