People who seem content and happy aren’t necessarily blessed with success, love, or abundance. I used to travel to Mexico for business and something I recognized there was that a lot of the people in Mexico didn’t have a lot of materialistic things and yet they seemed so happy. When I look at people here in the states their joy seems to come from the things that they have or the relationships they have.
The way we view life has to do with what’s going on, on the inside not what’s happening on the outside. So there are many people that seem to have it all and can’t find happiness and there are others that seem to find peace no matter what their life holds for them.
I find that suffering comes from resisting life as it is instead of accepting the life we have. This doesn’t mean that we are passive in our approach to life that we don’t create the things that we would like in our life; it just means were not attached to the outcome.
The world is a very unpredictable and chaotic place and we usually focus on all the negative things going on while the positive gets overlooked. This is where surrendering comes in to life being what it is. This doesn’t mean that we don’t take action and say “oh well” it just means that were not attached or expecting it to be different than it is.
If you are working in a job that you dislike there are a few things you can do, one would be stop focusing on the things you don’t like and focus on the things you do like about it or get a different job. Look at the things that you love about this job and be in gratitude for it. This excludes if there is abuse going on then you may have to decide to leave the job
We can make a conscious decision every day to see the beauty in everything even a job we don’t like. Maybe we would focus on our higher learning in the job realizing that this is exactly what we are supposed to be doing.
In my personal retreats we uncover what your perception of your life is and why you may be suffering in some areas and happy in others. Life is going to have many ups and downs and we have to learn to be with all of it.
It’s amazing to me how many calls I get regarding the mother-daughter relationship. It’s either a struggling mother with her teenage daughter or an adult daughter or mother wanting to get their relationship straight. It‘s interesting that I don’t get calls from father regarding their relationship with their daughter or son.
I was thinking about why this might be. First of all, mothers for the most part are more involved with issues regarding their kids, especially their daughters. This is purely a generalization. Not all moms are more involved, sometimes the father is. I believe another reason why I get more calls from mothers is as women we may be more emotionally attached.
When you look at how girls grow up playing with baby dolls, Barbie dolls and playing house, we start at an early age developing our emotional body. Boys on the other hand play with dump trucks with no one in them, moving dirt from one side to the next, or war games killing each other without any emotional attachment at all. Again remember this is a generalization.
There are a lot of emotions with the mother daughter relationship because both the mother-daughter is more connected to their emotional side then say a father-son. The work that we do in the mother-daughter retreat is looking at where these emotions come from and how they get acted out. If both parties can shift the beliefs that keep them reeling in their emotions then they can come into a more adult relationship.
I love working with mothers and daughters because both of them are so open and willing to look at their own behaviors and shift them to have a better relationship together.
The heartache that goes along with a strained mother-daughter relationship is so painful for both the mother and the daughter. It is a beautiful thing to see the mother-daughter relationship heal.
Are you in this phase of life with your aging parents?
Life gets pretty real when parents start aging and need assistance. This process can be both a challenge and a blessing. I have seen many clients go through this cycle with their parents. For me both of my parents died relatively young, my mother at 56 and my father at 61. So this wasn’t something I personally had to confront.
One of my clients has been caretaking both her mother and father for quite a few years. Her mother just passed and right on the heels of that her father started to decline. Even though her mother had dementia and didn’t know she was there, my client stayed by her mother’s bedside till the very end.
My client spoke of what a gift it was for her to be there as her mother transitioned even though the years of caring for her weren’t easy. As her fathers health is declining she is faced with this deep loneliness that she has always had but now feels it bigger than ever. This is part of the gift, realizing that it is just the body that leaves us not their spirit. Working through this fear of losing them and feeling alone can be an opportunity for us to heal.
I think when people pass it’s a great time to examine how we feel about the way we are living our lives. Knowing that our life in this body is not permanent. I remember a five-day course I did when I was 32 where there was an exercise where life was taken from us. We got the chance to look at all the words unspoken and a life lived that didn’t serve us.
When our parents start to get older and we know they are going to transition its common to look at how they lived their life. My mother seemed fairly unhappy throughout my life and I completely believe she was happy to die. She was so tethered to fear that it was virtually impossible to let go and enjoy any part of her life.
Growing up in that environment gave me the opportunity to really look at how I wanted to live my own life. Even though it might have been more natural for me to be unhappy and negative, I chose differently in my life.
If you have aging parents use this time wisely to spend quality time with them and to take note of how you live your life.
There is always going to be situations and people in our lives that trigger us that we can’t control. It’s more about how we respond to these people or situations that determine how we feel in our lives. The amount of suffering we do is in reference to how much we take things personally and try to control our environment.
We mostly try to avoid people that don’t behave the way we want them to so that we don’t get bugged. But is this possible, to avoid all situations and people that annoy us? Wouldn’t it be better to utilize the situation to grow spiritually, to actually realize that is what it’s here for. From a spiritual point of view our annoyances are our biggest teachers. These annoyances show us where we are with our personal growth.
Life isn’t just going to be a bed of roses. Life is uncomfortable circumstances such as, illness, money contractions, relationship drama and a lot of other annoyances. If we try to control the things that trigger us, we are in the wrong place for our spiritual development.
It is about how we respond to our triggers that is important, not changing the situation so it doesn’t trigger us. If that were the case we would be trying to change everything in our life so that we could not suffer. The goal of our spiritual awakening is to use all of our situations to evolve and wake up more and more each day. We know when we are evolving when we really act out less to outside stimulation and we bring our learning inside of us.
The more we put our attention outside of ourselves the further away we get from growing spiritually. It is always the presence of annoying people and experiences that provide us with our ultimate opportunity to develop. The great thing about this lifetime is that there is going to be plenty of opportunities to practice.
How difficult is it to maintain a state of inner calm when the world seems to be falling apart?
We live in a world of high stimuli, both physically and emotionally. It isn’t easy to find the calm within. This has been one of my biggest learning’s, to let go, and surrender so that I can feel my inner calm. Life is going to be life, and what life looks like is many highs and many lows. It isn’t going to be relaxing and blissful all the time and hopefully isn’t chaotic all the time. We usually get a mix of both. The biggest challenge that we have is to allow an acceptance for the lows in our life and be able to remain calm during them.
When I am around people that have the ability to be calm during chaos, I notice that it helps my energetic field be calm. The worst part about not being able to maintain this place of peace when life isn’t peaceful, is that I make poor decisions from this state of nervousness. I make much better decisions when I am unruffled without adrenaline pumping through my body.
When we get knocked off balance by disturbing things that happen in our world, it will be hard for us to lean into a higher place being. Our thoughts are not reliable when we aren’t in our higher mind. When we are buying into that our safety is out there, it pushes fear inside of us. When we are in a state of fear, we will be making all of our decisions from a fear-based place, not a love based place.
When we can come into a composed state and locate that stillness within, we will live in our hearts more, thereby making our decisions from a totally different place. When we are able to do this it makes it so much simpler to show up for people when they are having difficulties in their life. If we are in a state of confusion and chaos, and someone comes to us for assistance, we will project all of our fear on to them therefore pushing them away. If someone comes to us in an emotional state and we cannot be with our own emotions, they will know energetically that we would not be able to show up for theirs.
I think it helps to just know that life is going to happen and that there are going to be struggles and to surrender to life being life. When we can surrender to whatever life is, it allows us to stay in a more serene place of being. If we realize that life isn’t always going to be sweet and cuddly, then we won’t get upset when it’s not.
Do you have love in your life? Is it the love you want? Do you feel like it’s not enough? I hear from my married clients that their partners are not fulfilling them; they aren’t affectionate enough or present. When I hear this I usually ask them “are you fulfilling yourself, are you giving yourself all the love you deserve and are you present with yourself and other people?”
If we aren’t showing up for ourselves we will not bring in partner that we fulfill us. We must be sure that the qualities we want in a partner we have as well. If we don’t have specific qualities that we demand our partner to have, we will only bring in a relationship that is vibrating at the same level as we are.
I have a lot of single friends and I myself am single as well. Most of my friends are in pursuit of a partner. I know what it’s like to have a deep yearning to be in relationship. My practice today has been to surrender to how my life is now, no matter what it is, relationship or not!
A part of being ready for love is being okay if you’re not in partnership and look at your deep yearning for one. If you are yearning desperately for a relationship you may settle for someone that isn’t right for you. The biggest thing I have realized is that the love is already here, it’s the love I have for myself. If a partner isn’t in my life, then I’m not ready for the one I want.
I always find that it’s important to list the qualities you want in your partner and make sure you have those qualities. Also it’s important to ask yourself what could be keeping love away. Do you feel worthy of love, are you so picky that the perfect partner will never show up, or maybe you are scared of closeness. Do you have a core belief that you are unlovable?
Look deeply at yourself and how you love yourself and others. If you have old beliefs in the way, start to shift them. If your standards are over the top to high, analyze that. You must prepare the ground to bring in the love you so deserve and want. Without the preparation it will be tough to be open and receptive.
Let’s look at our actions, whether active or passive.
Everything in our life that comes to fruition is because of an action we either take or an action we don’t take. The thoughts we think, the words we speak and of course the actions we take contributes to how our life unfolds. All of our actions whether taken or not, affect not just our lives but also the lives of the people on the planet and the planet.
When you look at your life as it is now, it is because of some action or inaction that you have taken? Even when we decide not to take action our life unfolds a certain way because of that inaction. It’s important to be aware of the decisions that we do make in our life and how they may affect the end results.
You may be in a 25-year relationship that hasn’t been serving either one of you and yet you stayed. This is a perfect example of how inaction can create a negative outcome in our life. If we were always looking at what the outcome of our actions could be, we may decide to take a different path with her decision. It’s easy to do this when were thinking about actually taking a specific action in her life to get a certain outcome; the difficult part is the inaction. We tend to be in a more passive role with inaction.
An example would be the long-term relationship that wasn’t working out but you just stayed in it year after year. Inaction can be every bit as damaging as taking an action that isn’t in your best interest. Another example is possibly not voting this is considered inaction and we all know that when we don’t vote the outcome can still be very powerful and damaging. What about recycling, you are contributing if you don’t recycle to the negative effects that recycling has on the planet
So don’t fool yourself into believing that just because you didn’t participate that you didn’t contribute to the outcome. Take a look at your life and how you’re participating either actively or passively and see what changes you can make.
Why are we so afraid of being honest with our self?
When we look at our life truthfully rather than sticking our head in the sand we keep things circulating. When things are moving forward we create a flow that keeps things moving in a more positive direction.
Most of us have experienced a time where we are withholding the truth either from others or ourselves. We often don’t share our truth with others because of how it may be received. They possibly will take it personally and get triggered instead of just allowing it to be our truth.
There are also many situations where we had a hard time confronting ourselves about the truth. This could be something as small as ignoring a home repair, or something more extreme like ignoring our bills. We may also not be able to face the truth in a relationship when someone close to us is pushing us away and we pretend that they’re not.
Usually the truth is staring us in the face, we just choose not to look at it.
Most of the time we avoid these truths because they’re very uncomfortable for us and they scare us. A lot of times we may not know what to do with the situation so we can pretend it’s not there.
One of the biggest parts of my personal retreats is all uncovering the sides of our self that are very uncomfortable, that we would prefer to not see. The hard part about ignoring these circumstances is that they are always there hanging out in an uncomfortable manner. They never go away until we face them head on and take care of business. It takes a strong person to face things and not run away.
Ultimately you cannot avoid the truth, no matter how difficult it is; so the sooner we jump in, the better. When we have an understanding for the truth we just accept it and do the best we can with the situation. This relieves so much stress in our lives. Staying awake and shining a light on areas we need to see in her life will help keep us stay in the flow of things instead of being blocked.
How easy is it for us to be totally excited and having a good time, when BOOM something happens to trigger us and we go sour. We know how fast our mood changes when something happens that rubs up against us the wrong way. So why can’t we change our mood back just as fast?
It seems that once we get triggered it takes us a while to return back to a peaceful place, when we were totally excited. Let’s take a look at some of the things we might be able to do to shift our attitude back to being blissful, a lot more quickly.
The first thing I do is pause and realize that I’ve been triggered and it’s not about the situation or person, it is coming from me. I make sure that I do not react in any way, which means I don’t say or take any action whatsoever. Even if I feel like a going to explode I do nothing. Because I know if I react in any way it’s not going to be pretty.
The next thing I do is give thanks for this opportunity to go deeper into knowing and healing myself. So instead of blaming the other person for whatever action they took, I immediately know is for my higher learning. This helps me put things into perspective and keeps me out of the blame game.
Then if I have a moment to go to a quieter place and explore what’s going on, I do. If I don’t have that luxury I make sure I tend to it when I get home. Which means I look at what old belief I am buying into that triggered me and then I do the work around it to do my healing. In my personal retreats you will learn how to shift from being triggered to being love. After learning and practicing this method you will notice that it becomes a more organic process and it is much more easy to shift from a triggered state to a loving state.
Okay maybe it’s not in a blink of an eye but it is certainly better than suffering in a triggered state for days. It does take practice and awareness. If you want to stop reacting and learn how to shift from fear to love, check out my personal retreats.
How many times do we enter into a relationship with the idea that we are going to change the behavior or fix the person we are with? I don’t believe we do it consciously, most of the time we do it unconsciously. When we go into relationship, we have this idea of what we want and then we proceed to try to fit them into our ideal.
This is a frustrating experience because people want to be who they are. People don’t want to be molded into something they aren’t, that somebody someone thinks is better. Who are we to judge how someone else should be? If someone doesn’t ask for our opinion or guidance, then what right do we have to give them direction on their life.
If we want to create an authentic relationship with people, we have to except them the way they are. If we have expectations of whom they should be and that person doesn’t meet those expectations we will be disappointed. An honest relationship is when we accept each other as the individuals that we are and find a way to share our life together.
When we try to change someone we are saying that we don’t accept them for who they are, that something is wrong with them. How do you think that might feel to your partner? When we accept people the way they are, things we like about them and things we don’t like about them, energetically the relationship feels lighter, and more loving pray.
Don’t let your fear ruin a relationship!
Something that I notice is when we accept people the way they are they have a tendency to be better equipped to look at their shadow side instead of defending it.
I find that people who are trying to change their partners do it because they’re afraid they won’t be able to stay in the relationship the way it is. So instead of picking the right partner or accepting the partner they have, they try to change them.
I believe that if something is bothering you about another person it’s an opportunity to go inside yourself and explore your triggers instead of projecting them outward. This is something we explore intensely in my couples retreat. Realizing part of your work is looking at your judgments and your shadow side.
Disappointment is such a part of life. We usually feel disappointment because we have an expectation of how things need to turn out and they don’t. When things don’t go as planned we may feel an entire range of emotions from being sad from the let down to even angry.
Whether we are feeling disappointed with ourselves, others or a situation that happens in life, it isn’t always easy to deal with. Knowing that we will be disappointed, that disappointment is just a part of life and that we have choices on how we can handle it, may help.
With all of our feelings, including disappointment it always comes to us to help us grow and learn more about ourselves. The more we are able to accept our feelings around this the faster we can process through it and move into a better place of being. When we are having any feelings, it is always good to sit with them and explore why they are coming up. I notice that when I do not process through my feelings I may project them onto others. And when I project them onto others, there is no learning and no healing.
I think writing how we felt about the situation not turning out the way we wanted it to and what did actually happen, helps us get back into alignment. I believe one of the biggest gifts from being disappointment is to realize that life doesn’t always play out the way we want it to. In many cases, if we really look at the situation, the outcome may be better for us than what are expectations were.
I know for me disappointment often leaves me feeling hopeless and for me to turn it around I have to accept the reality of life and let go of any expectations I might have. When I am facilitating my personal retreats I notice what people get hung up on most is expectations. The expectations of someone behaving the way they need them to, life to play out the way they need it to or bad things not to ever happen. This just isn’t reality. In my personal retreat we explore what disappointment looks like, whatever fears are and how to look at our self through the reality of life.
Is this year going to be a year where you renew and reset or is it a year to keep going in circles?
Here we are at the start of a new year and asking ourselves once again what our resolutions are, what our intentions are or how we want to show up in the year to come.
Starting the year with a personal retreat can set the stage for powerful new beginnings or it can be a time of renewal. Either way it can be a complete reset. In my personal retreats we look at old patterns, old beliefs that are creating the life we are living. If we are not able to recognize how we are living through old childhood wounds, our life will keep showing up in nonproductive ways. When we are able to shift old patterns that have a grip on us, our life starts unfolding differently. We are able to start co-creating with the universe by healing old wounds, shifting beliefs and living a more blissful life.
The universe keeps setting up situations to allow us to heal, so if we don’t get it the first time around there will be many opportunities to do our work. I don’t know about you but I would like to be aware enough to at least work on it when it comes. If I’m not even sure what my old beliefs are then I will not be able to work through them and therefore will not be able to shift them.
I am not one for setting intentions for the year; I am more about doing a reset to see if I’m on the right track. My intentions are always to continue to stay awake so I can go deeper into my knowing of who I truly am, which is pure love, pure consciousness. I don’t need to set this intention at the beginning of the year because I bring it to the light in my practice every morning.
Each day offers an opportunity to renew and create with the universe for change. It’s so difficult to be in situations that you feel stuck in that you can’t seem to change but you really want to. Maybe you are exhausted trying to shift the situation and haven’t figured out how to. Even looking back it is tough to understand how the choices that we have made have created our current situation.
I find it impossible to change our behaviors without knowing what our old beliefs or old stories are. Knowing this information gives us the tools we need to be able to not buy into the old belief so we can start shifting patterns and behaviors.
