“Want to bring out the best in people? Ask them how they want to feel”

~Truthbomb/Danielle LaPorte

The word “fearless” can conjure images of bungee jumping, extreme biking or snow boarding off impossible mountains. Sounds scary and fun but that’s not where I’m going with this wonderful word.

Let me show you how I see the word fearless, fear+less=less fear.

As one of my core desire feelings (or CDFs), having less fear in my life means less worry. Worry for me is a revolving hamster wheel and I’m the hamster. I want to get off that damn wheel but my ever cycling thoughts keep me glued to it until FEAR shows up.

Fear then delivers his famous, hated monologue, “what if or you can’t or think of what will happen if you do that?”

This monologue is what will stop me in my tracks causing me to question everything that I know to be right and dead on. Then fear sits and waits, oh so patiently, for me to circle back around and question everything again.

Fear is a very tricky fellow indeed!

Fearless lives at the top of my CDFs. Asking myself everyday what I can do to feel fearless keeps me off the hamster wheel of thoughts and even if I get there I can quickly find my way back off.

Here are some of the ways I feel fearless every day:

• I write it out every day, my worry or fear, putting it down on paper. My journal is The Desire Map Day Planner which helps me focus on gratitude, how to live out my CDFs in all areas of my life, what’s working and what’s not. At the end of every week I evaluate how it has stacked up based on how I want to feel.
• Redirecting my thoughts is how I get back off the hamster wheel, a mantra of “I want to feel fearless” may sound simple but it works.
• Pushing through the worry or fear by going ahead and doing whatever it is that is causing the issue. If I’m thinking too much about making a decision or phone call or whatever I’m blocking, just pushing through and doing it works every time.

Feeling fearless allows me to push that worry away, makes me really focus on why I’m feeling that fear. Then I can make a decision based on my intuition instead of the fear itself.

Fear does have a purpose from time to time but when it blocks things that you want to do or keeps you going down the rabbit hole of worry then fear+less comes into play.

Finding out how to feel fearless every day has helped me to break some old cycles and habits. It has opened up different ways of thinking and ways to be indifferent about things that don’t need my attention.

My core desire feelings are my guideposts, my trail markers to how I want to live my life based on how I want to feel every day.

What are my other core desire feelings you may wonder?

They are, light, soul joy, playful and freedom.

Ready to find your core desire feelings and change the way you feel in your life? Join me for The Desire Map Workshop (click here) and together we will discover how you want to feel in your life everyday.

photo credit: First Tattoo via photopin (license)

“Jump into the middle of things, get your hands dirty, fall flat on your face,

and then reach for the stars”~Ben Stein

You are sitting in front of your computer logged into Facebook looking at your friends’ updates.

“Oh look, this one is going on this great trip, this one has the perfect home life (hubby with 2 kids) and this one owns her own business and works at home in her PJs.”

*Sigh*

“And another friend is in a perfect relationship where they don’t ever have a disagreement.” Seriously?

It looks like everyone except you is truly living their perfect lives where things are always rainbows and unicorns. (*sigh*)

WAKE UP!!

Life and that’s a life that is truly lived, involves getting dirty and sometimes it’s hip deep dirt, the sort of muck that requires waders.

Getting dirty means you will know true happiness by experiencing true sadness and true forgiveness by experiencing over the top anger. You will know the highest of the highs and the darkest lows. You will know true peace by facing total upheaval. Pure joy in the smallest things and quiet calm in the sound of your breath.  

You have to be willing to get down, get dirty and deal with what life offers to truly LIVE your life. 

We crave the calm, the easy, the flow of life that is drifting along. We set sail and revel in that control of our destiny, enjoying a few rapids along the way. But when we come upon some “dangerous waters ahead” signs, we start looking at everyone else’s lives and only see what we want to see which is peaceful and perfect.

When you see that perfect life lived out by someone close to you, what you don’t see is the struggle it may take to keep that “perfect show” going. In other words, what is going on behind the scenes may be so intense that even the Great Oz couldn’t keep it going.

Life is suppose to be dirty, messy, sad, intense and all of the things that you wish sometimes you didn’t have to deal with but you do. And to truly live it, to get the very best out of it, you have to stick your hand in Pandora’s box and grabble with some snakes.

Digging a little deeper to find and live the true meaning of your life is so much better than skimming the surface and living it superficially.

Life is suppose to be dirty, so buy yourself a nice pair of waders and quit spending your time looking at everyone’s lives on Facebook. Pull on those waders, dig your heels in the muck and reach for the stars!

 

photo credit: rogerwshaw via photopin cc

You have decided to:

• carve out time for yourself
• eat healthier and exercise more
• quit your job
• write a book
• start your own business and the list goes on….

Your friends and family think your new changes are a great idea so you are met with a resounding “Good for you!” cheer.

Until you actually start to make those changes………

Then the sabotage and questions start with a relentless force.“Why do you want to do this?” “Have you lost your mind, this is not a good idea?” or “Isn’t that a little selfish of you?”

“What the hell?” you think, “what happened to all of the cheerleaders that thought this was a wonderful idea?” “Why can’t they just be happy for me?”

This can be the point in your pursuit where your journey toward success can come to a screeching halt all because of what other people think.

But wait, it doesn’t have to be this way!

It’s hard when you feel like all of the people around you are not as happy about your changes and you begin to feel that maybe you have decided to do the wrong thing or that it was a bad idea.

Change regardless of how positive it is in our minds is viewed as a death of sorts.

Stay the same = good for them.

Make a change = viewed as a death of the familiar and comfortable. 

When you look at your changes from other peoples’ perspective, you see why they are trying to get you to stop doing something different. It may scare you but it really scares the hell out of them.

Here’s why; you will move forward in your life and they fear that you will leave them behind. Or you will be doing exactly what they wish they could do but their fear of failure is greater than yours.

Either way to your friends and family, staying the same is safe and it keeps you in their “tribe.” But ask yourself truthfully, do you want to stay the same?

Whether your change is a small one like taking more time for yourself or something really big like starting your own business, you will always be faced with the naysayers and those naysayers are going to be some of the people closest to you.

When I announced to my family that I was going to quit my comfortable corporate job and start my own massage business with two kids still at home and a husband who had started his own business 2 months earlier, I got the “Have you lost your mind?” reply.

Did that stop me? No way, it made me more determined to pursue my dream and not look back. I had to believe in myself, my abilities and I found a different support system, the “tribe” that would cheer me on.

That doesn’t mean that you turn your back on your family or your friends but what it does mean is you will start to attract different people into your life, people who can see what you are trying to do because they are making similar changes in their lives.

These people are your new “tribe”, both of you recognize that common drive and share a similar spirit. These are the people that you draw strength from and who keep you going when you feel that you have nothing left to give.

So really does it matter what the others think? Yes it will matter a little but in the bliss of your success what they think will truly become “none of your business.“

Whether they come back to being your cheerleader or not (most will), you my friend were brave enough and strong enough to make some wonderful changes in your life! Good for you!!

I would love to hear from you about a situation in your life where you were faced with the naysayers and how you handled it.

And as always, share the love of this post with someone in your life who may feel no one will support them when they make some changes. Let them know you’ve got their back.

 

photo credit: Nick Kenrick . via photopin

We live in a world where instant gratification is the name of the game. Set a goal, make a big change, start a business and *POOF* it should happen! We follow the steps, put in the time and wait for the completion, getting frustrated when things go slowly or don’t appear to be happening at all.

You know what I mean, you get on the scales after a week or two of serious workouts and “WHAT?”, not one stinkin pound has found its way out the door. Or you decide to start a new business, doing your research on your market and putting in the extra work but things are moving at a snail’s pace.

Yep, I’ve been there and know the disappointment of not getting to your goal fast enough. But what if we started embracing the small victories in our everyday life along the way to our final goals? This was the question I was pondering and the answer came to me on my morning walk.

I had started adding a little jogging (read: little) to my daily fast paced walk when I realized as I slowly jogged up the hill that I wasn’t as winded as I had been before. Then that night in my yoga class as I sat in half lotus pose I noticed that my right hip wasn’t as tight as it had been. Huh? (picture here a V-8 moment, hand hits forehead)

This is when I understood that so often we get caught up in reaching the end, the goal, the big thing we were hoping to achieve, that we lose sight of our small victories that appear in our everyday lives.

When I take the time to truly acknowledge these small victories that happen each and every day it reinforces my desire to see the project through and stay on course. But more than that it makes my inner critic shut up a lot quicker and move along a lot faster, leaving me to bask in my progress toward my goal!

These small everyday victories are the stuff that life itself is made of and what keeps us reaching for the moon and stars.

Starting today, let’s all start looking for and celebrating the small everyday victories in our lives.

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Every day start noticing:

• The step(s) that you achieved during the day that moved you closer to your goal, even if it’s just a thought process.
• Pat yourself on the back more for these small victories instead of waiting for the final product to celebrate.
• Re-evaluate your final goal every day to make sure that it is the truth for you. You may find that each day you start tweaking what your final goal really is and adjusting it accordingly.
• Enjoy the journey!

Be gentle with yourself, trusting your process instead of trying to fit yours into someone else’s.

I hope that you will start embracing the small victories in your life and we would all love to cheer you on. Share those small victories in the comment section below and share this post with someone in your life that may need a reminder to start celebrating their small everyday victories.

 

photo credit: Etolane via photopin cc

“When you make a choice, you change the future.” ~ Deepak Chopra

The words that will suck the life out of your life are some of the few words that will both anger and sadden me when I hear someone or even myself saying them. (which I try not to do!)

“I guess I have no choice.”

I was having an email conversation the other day when the other person felt like they were not getting what they wanted so the response was “Well I guess I have no choice.” Picture Eeyore here, head and ears drooped, telling Pooh that life is so depressing and there’s nothing he can do about it. Now in true Pooh wisdom, which is what I channeled, I said “You do have a choice” and I went about listing options, adding honey to my email voice.

Two different views, Eeyore (btw, I love Eeyore) playing the victim, handing over his power to Pooh and Pooh giving Eeyore his power back and adding honey. That’s making a choice.

Choosing not to make a choice is still a choice, it’s a choice that says, “I don’t care how my life goes so you decide” or it says, “I’m trying to get my way or make you bend to my rules so I’m pretending to hand you my power.” (read:choice)

“I discovered I always have choices and sometimes it’s only a choice of attitude.”~Judith M. Knowlton

Good, bad or indifferent, choices define our lives and when you don’t make them you miss out on living your life fully. Even bad choices are lessons we need to learn and when we turn away from them we never lean into the whole of that lesson.

But what about the big choices? The change your job, start a business, move to a new place, sell everything and travel kind of choices, what stops us from making those?

There’s lots of excuses, bills to pay, family to take care of, too close to retirement or any other reasons that society will pat you on the back and tell you “it’s okay.” Now you are off the hook, choice made for you and lots of people will agree with that choice because they have made it too.  (read:safety in numbers)

I believe that most of the time we see the big choices as an all or nothing option so we try to quickly hand them off. But at some point in your life will you look back and say “what if I had made a different choice?”

Here’s a different approach, what if you took those big choices, the ones that really tug at your heart and speak to you constantly and turned them into bite size choices. Smaller choices that get you to the bigger one in small steps. Wouldn’t that make the choice easier?

Any choice is a big deal for you and your life, even the ones that feel very benign.

You never know where a simple choice might lead you someday so step into your power, not away from it and choose your life, your attitude and how you want to feel. And when you feel the words “I guess I don’t have a choice” coming into your head, stop, breathe and choose. Making a choice will keep the life in your life!

Tell me how you feel about making choices and what choices you have made that really changed your life.

Share the love of this post with someone in your life that might need more choices in theirs. 

photo credit: Kratka Photography via photopin cc