I’m Not Perfect

You may read my blog and think I have it all together, but I assure you that I am a work in progress just like everyone else! This also reminds me to point out that there is no one out there who is perfect, so don’t be tempted to put anyone on a pedestal. It may not seem like it, but we’re on level playing ground with everyone else on Earth. We’re all on the journey of joyous expansion, and we all have good, really good, bad, and really bad moments! Without this contrast we would become complacent; we would lose our drive if things were good all the time. Don’t worry if you’ve had a particularly bad past, because you can use it as leverage to propel yourself into the future you desire. The past does not predict the future.

turnonthelight

I set a daily intention to see through the eyes of Source, to see the love in all people and the lessons I need to learn. I ask that my will be God’s will and that I be guided to be loving in all situations. Most days are amazing, while some days I seem to get stuck. Yesterday was particularly challenging. I decided to go down memory lane and got stuck there, stuck in a place where I couldn’t see the love in a person. I knew that nothing good could come from it, but I did it anyway. But something good did come of it. I saw the contrast between my denial state and my awakened state once again, and once again I was grateful for the awakening. The vision I have for my future wouldn’t be the same without my past.

I let go of the past and set myself free. Again. For the last time. Again. I doubt it really was the last time, but each time I am able to come out of it faster and with gratitude. What I find really interesting is this last dance with the past occurred on a full moon during mercury retrograde, which explains a lot!  I had an energy appointment the next day, and apparently I wasn’t the only one having issues, as they had THREE emergency phone calls that day from people having personal crises!

When I find myself in a funk and not being my usual chipper self, I first focus on grounding myself, which for me usually looks like a walk or run in the forest, and as I walk or run I focus on all of the really great lessons I have learned. This time it went something like this:

  1. I am strong, loving, courageous, and worthy of my dreams.
  2. I reclaimed my power and set boundaries for how I expect to be treated.
  3. True love comes from my own heart connection, which I can feel whenever I wish. Yay!
  4. I found a connection to spirit, my inner being, and Source.
  5. Things happen for me and not to me.
  6. I have the power to be, do, and have everything I can imagine for myself.
  7. I love to write. I must write. It feeds my spirit.
  8. I must exercise daily, it grounds me and makes me feel safe and secure.
  9. I found my life’s mission: to help others take their power back.
  10. I wouldn’t be who I am today without the challenges I’ve encountered.
  11. All is well, and it always will be!

success

I want you to know that you have the power to overcome great adversity. If you don’t willingly change what you know you must, the Universe will conspire to change things for you. Whatever happens, stay conscious, strong, confident and listen to your heart; follow your inner guidance. The more you listen to your inner guidance and do what makes you happy, the more you will raise your self-esteem and the more confident you will become.

Know you are worthy of great things, and listen to that voice in your head that pushes you to change the status quo. Stay calm throughout the storm so that you can better see the lessons. Take your power back from outside forces and stand up for your beliefs. Know that everything is working out in the best interest of everyone involved. Nothing can go wrong when you follow your heart. You’ll either encounter pain now, when you make the tough decisions you have to make, or pain later, when you are holding yourself prisoner in an unhappy life.

What feels like a horrible situation can actually be your greatest blessing. You won’t find the blessings if you are concentrating on the despair. If you are asking “Why did this happen?” you are never going to find the answer. Something that wasn’t working in your highest interest had to come to an end, and the sooner you can find the lessons, the easier it will be for you to accept it and move forward with your life.

Most likely, like me, it doesn’t mean that you won’t return to those dark feelings occasionally, but it is your choice to visit them, and it is also your choice to let those feelings go. Letting go means that you choose not to live there. You choose to use past hurts merely as a contrasting feeling to the joy that you seek. I choose to feel good because it feels good! Is there any other way to live your life? I don’t think so!

Whenever the darkness creeps in, turn on the light. Go to the best feeling thoughts and visualizations that you can come up with. Think about all the things you are grateful for and the lessons you’ve learned from your struggles. Where are you now that you wouldn’t be if you hadn’t struggled? What amazing new life has come out of the ashes? What would be the best thing that could ever happen in your life? The light always beats the dark.

How to Intuitively Stop Procrastination

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Are you steadily moving toward your goals, or do you find yourself stuck, avoiding further forward motion like the plague? Even though all of the pieces may be in place, self-sabotage can prevent us from taking that final step toward realizing our dreams.

Writing down your goals can really help zero in on what is important to you, and it really is the first action step you must take. The simple act of writing creates new neural pathways in your brain by getting your body involved in making your thoughts become tangible reality. It’s the first step to commitment.

Thinking about what you want to create in your life is a good starting point, and visualizing the end products of your intention and hard work is terrific – I encourage you to do it daily. However, writing the visualizations down prompts you to connect your intuition with your intention and brings your emotions and necessary actions to light. Writing leaves evidence that visualization does not. Writing is physical, emotional, and mental therapy wrapped up into one.

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Writing to Stop Procrastination:

Start with a fresh notebook. Any will do, but you may want to treat your inner self to a beautiful notebook in your favourite colour. Use one that inspires you.

The purpose of this exercise is to open your eyes to your own excellence. You have everything you need within you right now to create anything you desire to be, do, create, or have! Start by acknowledging the power within.

Write down everything you love about yourself. Focus on anything and everything that is going well in your life. Compliment yourself. Smile. Be proud of all that you are and all that you have done. Realize your awesomeness.

When you have finished writing, start listing the things that you want to do, be, create, and have. Get specific and don’t hold back. You don’t have to know how you want to create these things. A burning desire to create these things is good enough. Write down how it feels to reach these goals. What experiences will you have when you realize these feats? How will your relationships blossom? How will you be doing financially, spiritually, emotionally, and physically?

This journal is dedicated to taking your power back. It focuses on love, strengths, solutions, and optimal outcomes. But in order to keep the focus on these wonderful things, it is necessary to visit the alternative for a moment and create some leverage over that part of us that relishes in the immediate gratification of procrastination.

Next, write about what will happen if you keep up this current level of procrastination. What will happen if you keep wasting your time and none of these dreams come true? How will you feel? What will your relationships be like? What will happen to you financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually if you don’t follow the dreams you have written about?

What are the stories you tell yourself that keep you small? What is holding you back? What are your excuses? What will happen if you keep making these excuses? Staying small isn’t doing you any favours. It imprisons your inner being. It’s time to change your limiting thoughts and behaviours. Set your inner being free and see the magic happen!

I’ll bet you have had enough right now and that you’re ready to continue in the direction of your dreams! Start brainstorming about the next logical steps you can take toward making your dreams a reality. Rewrite your excuses into empowering action steps. Change your negative stories of lack into positive stories of abundance.

What must you do to keep moving forward? Do you need to network more? Put down your phone and play with your children? Give your lover a hug and tell them you love them? Be more active on social media to get your name out there? Be less active on social media and focus on your work or family? Go to the gym? Eat healthier?

Write down everything you can think of. You may have thought about taking these actions before, but seeing them on paper brings them into your awareness. In order to breathe life into your dreams, something that was once a should/could has become a MUST.

You know you’re on the right path when you are really excited about what you are creating. It doesn’t mean that there will be no fear. There will be fear any time you step out of your comfort zone and into the unknown, but the more authentic you are with yourself and the more you feed your inner spirit, the more your excitement will drown out the cries of your fears. New possibilities will enter your experience due to this change in energy!

Keep the focus on your goals. Any time your fears start to creep in and say “Yeah, but…” stop them right there in their tracks and focus on any good feeling thought you can grasp in the direction of your dreams. Change the way you talk about yourself and you will change. Think in terms of having already achieved your goal, that coveted position at work, getting a few new clients, or becoming that artist you’ve always wanted to be.

Act as if your dreams are a reality. Walk the walk. Talk the talk. It doesn’t help your cause when you are pining away at your dream from a scarcity viewpoint. Own every single aspect of your dream that you can right now. If you are an aspiring artist, don’t tell your friends that you hope to be an artist some day, tell them “I am an artist!” If you want to be the creative director of your office, tell your friends “I am a creative director!” Don’t stop with your friends – tell anyone who will listen to you! Be the person you want to be, and do what the person you want to be would do. There is no need to wait when you can start right now!

Take these action steps into your visualizations and see yourself executing them.  See yourself in the role you wish to play. Feel your inner being light up as you finally step into your power – as you step into your authentic self. Feel the excitement as it rises up from your heart and into your entire being. Feel how whole and complete you feel in this moment. Feel the inspiration and the knowingness that you can do this. You are doing this. This is the real you. Now take action!

Is Your Inner Child Running Your Life?

innerchild

Whether we realize it or not, we carry a lot of baggage from the past. The abandonment we felt as children when our parents wouldn’t play with us, the betrayal we felt when our best friend chose to sleep over at someone else’s house instead of ours, and the sadness we felt when our beloved pet suddenly died – all reside deep within our subconscious mind.

Our inner child learns that we need to perform spectacularly if we want more attention. We become perfectionists. We learn that negative attention is better than no attention at all. We lash out in anger. We internalize the external, (I guess I’m not good enough to have Daddy’s attention), take things far too personally, and begin to talk badly to ourselves.

That inner child stays with us, yearning for the love, connection, and safety that eluded it over the years. When we lash out in anger at the smallest of details, it is a red flag that we have neglected our inner being for far too long. When we berate others for their shortcomings it is simply because we can’t stand to look at our own. We deflect. It’s much easier to point out what others are doing wrong than own up to our own failures. The funny thing is, others mirror our faults back to us. Whatever bothers us about someone is something that we need to work on!

Our actions are a direct representation of the way we feel about ourselves. The way we hold ourselves in public reflects the emotional terrain of our inner world. When we feel poorly about ourselves we tend to lash out at anyone near us – especially the ones we love. They have a front row seat to our baggage show. Our flipping out has nothing to do with the empty toilet paper roll, and everything to do with our need for love, connection, and fulfillment. 

Denial of our problems is not a long term solution. Problems get bigger the longer we let them fester, not smaller. The fastest, easiest, and least painless way to deal with our inner unrest is to simply listen to it and begin to take care of the inner child that is begging to be heard, that inner being – the real you – that needs love and attention.  Your inner being doesn’t need love and attention from just anyone, it needs it from YOU.

Now that you’re an adult, it is your responsibility to meet your inner being’s deepest emotional needs. If you don’t take responsibility for fulfilling these needs, the unrest will only worsen until there is a complete blowout (divorce, mid-life crisis, job termination, etc.) and you have no choice but to comply.

You are the only one who can give you what you need. When you take your power back from others and realize that you are fully capable of nurturing your inner being, your whole life will change. As you start to listen to your inner being you will build awareness around what it needs to feel happy, safe, and fulfilled. Take some time to reflect on where you are and where you want to be, and when you are the most you – what makes you really light up? Get silent sit in meditation, and let the answers come.

As you begin to act on this new awareness and the information it provides, you will feel whole, complete, safe, secure, and loved all on your own. You won’t feel the need to lash out at others because you will be following your heart, giving your inner being the love and attention it so desires. You won’t need to point out what everyone else is doing wrong because you won’t even notice it. In time, rather than focusing on everything that is going wrong, you will be excited about everything that is going right!

When you provide your inner being with unconditional love, you create a space within you to freely love others, flaws and all.  When you love yourself, you don’t need to take power from others, for you will have all of the power you need already within.  As you sit in the seat of awareness, always listening to your inner being, you are able to thwart or deal with perceived attacks on your inner being as they arise. Though the inner work never ends, neither do the soul-fulfilling payoffs, authentically beautiful relationships, love and peace it provides your inner being.

Whenever your inner being is feeling insecure, unloved, unfulfilled, or uneasy, you can acknowledge the feeling, knowing that you are a limitless being full of love and creative power. Focus on your strengths. Focus on the solutions to the problems and the best possible outcomes.  Focus on the inner being and follow your heart.  It will never steer you wrong. Take a deep breath, push through your fears and remind yourself that “All is well. There is nothing to fear. I’ve got this.”

Material Objects as Life Purpose Replacements

Symptoms of detachment from spirit can feel like anxiety, fear, sadness, discontent, failure, and discomfort, among others. This happens when we get sidetracked from our right and perfect path and take a detour through procrastination and other behaviours that don’t serve us.  The discontent will simply keep growing until you answer the call to get back on track and serve your life’s purpose.

If you feel a deep longing to do something fulfilling with your life but let your fears talk you out of taking action, you can get stuck for a very long time between the fear of moving forward and the fear of staying the same.  Your discomfort is caused by not keeping up with your soul’s lessons.

As you learn in this lifetime, you are constantly outgrowing your old circumstances and gearing up to change, to grow, to learn, and to master each new level you encounter.  Your guides and angels leave little clues and synchronistic events along the way to make life fun and exciting, and even extremely hard if you must learn a difficult lesson.  It is all for your greatest good.

Though you may not consciously know what you are longing for, taking courageous action toward what feels good each and every day can illuminate the path ahead.  One day, when you look back to where your journey began, you will do so in awe of the cascade of fortunate encounters and events that guided you right to where you wanted to be!

If you know what you desire, yet aren’t taking action, the discomfort will only grow until you listen to your authentic self and start making changes in your life.  No matter how hard some decisions may initially seem, the pain you will endure from not taking action will eventually become so extreme that you have to change.

File 2015-05-15, 11 20 49 AMThe Universe will support you always. 

We all have a little voice in our head that cheers us on.  This inner voice tells us when something needs to change and when we need to take action. It always has our best interest at heart. We also have a little voice that tells us we are not good enough – this is the voice of fear and anxiety, and the more attention you give it, the stronger it will get.  Take your power back from this voice and take action in the direction of your bliss. You are and always have been worthy.

There is a lot of fear entwined with change, but there doesn’t have to be. Fear and anxiety can’t survive the light.  They will disappear the second you acknowledge your worthiness and take action toward your dreams. Use them to guide you out of your comfort zone – you really have nothing to lose but your discomfort, and you have a lifetime of happiness to gain!

It all comes down to this:

You can either listen to the unrest and question it, asking yourself what kind of life you must live in order to feed your spirit and live with passion, or you can continue to live in denial and room with anxiety, fear, and discontent.  If you choose the latter, you will certainly feel the pain of disconnection and try to remedy the pain by acquiring material objects.

Material Objects as Life Purpose Replacements

  • Do you have a lot of stuff?
  • Do you have a need to shop?
  • Do you feel fulfilled in your life?
  • Are you constantly fearful and anxious?
  • How are your relationships?
  • Do you think about why you are buying something before you complete the purchase?
  • Do you need to buy something to be happy?
  • Are you feeling inspired or blocked in your life?
  • Do you have a lot of energy or is your body tired and stagnant?
  • What do your closets look like?
  • Is your house clean?

Are you numbing yourself by acquiring material objects?  Do you try to cover up your pain, fear, and anxiety by purchasing items to gain happiness?  Until you listen to your spirit and pursue your life’s purpose, the high you get from buying things will come and go hundreds of times until you wake up to the truth that nothing outside of you can make you happy. Happiness has been and will always be an inside job. Listen to your spirit.

Not only will objects not make you happy in the long run, but the more stuff you have, the more energy if takes from you. The more electronics you have, the more responsibility you have in making sure they run properly. The more cars you have, the more insurance you must buy and the more upkeep you must perform or delegate.

The more pets you have, the more you must feed them, walk them, and seek veterinary care. The more clothing you have, the more clothing you must wash/dry/fold/dry clean/repair. The more stuff you have laying around your house, the more stuff you have to dust, and the harder it is to find anything anywhere!

Material accumulation is a symptom of spiritual disconnection – a symptom of not fulfilling your life’s purpose.

When I am feeling stuck and anxious, it is almost always because I have been hanging out with my fears and not pursuing my life’s purpose. The only thing that truly makes me feel better is listening to my inner guidance and taking action on it. For instance, I may be procrastinating by cleaning the house instead of writing. This little voice in my head tells me that I need to write. About a minute after I sit down at my computer and begin to type, all fear and anxiety disappear and I feel completely connected to my spirit and my life’s purpose once again. I know I am following my life’s purpose because it makes me happy.

Maybe you have a habit of numbing out in front of the television, and while you needed to relax the first night, the second night your spirit may pipe up and start making you feel uneasy. Our spirit selves remind us that we didn’t go through the trouble of being born on Earth to sit on a couch night after night after night. If you watch television every night would put money on the table that you feel you were meant for something more, because you are.

There is nothing wrong with watching television sometimes!  I know there is nothing better for my spirit some nights than to snuggle up with my husband and watch a good movie, but some nights my spirit would rather read a book, play with watercolours, spend quality time with my significant other or kids, make love, go for a walk, post an inspirational quote on instagram, or sit in the back yard and eat a popsicle!

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When you are feeling fearful or anxious it is important that you question the unrest.  Ask yourself what your spirit needs to thrive, and listen to the guidance, feelings, and images that come to mind.  Spend some time in meditation and quietly reflect.

The next time you want to buy something, ask yourself why. This simple question can make you dig deep and figure out what you are really trying to achieve by acquiring something else.

We recently cleaned out our entire house, from the depths of the closets to the cupboards, drawers, and crawlspaces.  We simply asked ourself this one question about everything: Does this give me energy or deplete it?  If something didn’t feel good to, it got thrown in the donation pile and left the house a few hours later.  Make sure your donation pile doesn’t stick around for months.  Take it away immediately and feel the energy in your house soar!

Getting rid of the old creates space for the new without your energy getting lost. There is flow. Life. Beauty. Peace. It opens the door to possibilities you’ve never even considered.  Take your power back from the material objects in your life and start visualizing a life of purpose and happiness.  How can you serve? How can you bring joy to yourself and others? What do you love to do so much that you would do for free?

Feel the anxiety and fear melt away into excitement as soon as you commit to taking action in the direction of your dreams!

Fast Fat Burning Meals

fbm_03I’m a bit late to the party but I am super excited to share this awesome video and cookbook with you! Yuri and I set out to prove that not only is it healthier to make your meals at home, but it is also faster, and WAY more delicious!

This video comes at a time when we are ready to share our Fast Fat Burning Meals cookbook and cookbook club with the world.  No longer will you have to ask yourself “what should I make for dinner?” Because, the answer to your nightly dinnertime nightmare is here.  The healthiest, quickest, and most delicious meals you can make for your family!

I wish I could share the burger in the video with everyone because it is melt in your mouth better than any other burger you’ve ever tasted – and it’s super easy to make! Seriously, make these burgers for dinner tonight.  You will LOVE them.

So, is fast food really faster?  Watch the video:

We’ve gotten some backlash for “wasting” that food, but in all honesty, McDonald’s is not food in my opinion. I would rather put it in the garbage any day than put that stuff in my body. If you are bothered by us throwing it away, you may want to ask yourself why it bothers you so much. If I had eaten it, the outcome would be the same.  No one else would have gotten to eat it!

File 2015-05-13, 11 22 16 AMBest Burger Ever 

  • 1/3 lb ground sirloin
  • tomato
  • pickle
  • red onion
  • ketchup
  • mustard
  • greens as a base (not pictured)

To prepare the burger, simply turn on your frying pan to medium, salt and pepper both sides of your patty, and throw it in the pan!  Cook just like a pancake, flipping when the burger is half way done, after just 2-3 minutes.  Cook until your desired level of doneness is reached, and top that puppy with anything you wish!

Avocado/Tomato Salad

  • 2 tomatoes
  • 1 avocado
  • olive oil
  • lemon juice
  • sea salt and pepper

Place chopped tomatoes and avocado in a medium bowl, and season with olive oil, a dash of lemon juice, sea salt and pepper.  Done!

 

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Do you ever think about how many masks we wear on a daily basis?  We tend to change our behaviours based on the situation, the environment, and the people around us.  We do things to be cool, fit in, and to make other people like us.  We may realize we’re doing it, or we may not have a clue that we’re not being our true selves.  We wear masks so often that some of us don’t even know who we really are or what we like!

Our minds chatter 24/7, but it’s not our true selves talking.  We’re the consciousness behind the voice.  The voice keeps us small and doesn’t want us to take risks because it wants to protect us. We believe everything the voice tells us, and tend not to question ourselves because they’re OUR thoughts.  We’ve invested a lot of time and energy amassing them and we just go with the flow. Until now.

It’s time to challenge your beliefs

I had the time of my life this past weekend in New Jersey with Tony Robbins and 7000 other people.  Life will never be the same again.  It really is a life changing experience.  We danced, we laughed, we cried, and we fell in love with ourselves and each other.  The love created in that room was palpable.  No one wanted to go home.  Do yourself a favour and sign up for the next Unleash the Power Within seminar right this second!  Bring your significant other, bring your kids, and bring all of the bullshit you’re ready to put down.

To give you a little itty bitty taste of the experience, below is the incantation that Tony is known for.  Say each line with power, and repeat the mantra several times to get into a peak state.  If you’re familiar with this particular mantra (pointing to my fellow firewalkers) don’t be afraid to get out of your seat, make your power move, and tell the voice who is in charge!

Photo 2015-03-10, 1 17 30 PMWe all have a set of beliefs that we carry around that we think are absolute truths.  They are intimately tied to our identity, and along with our values, they run the show.  However, these beliefs carry consequences and they hold us back.  If you’re optimistic, then you’re really in trouble because you think things will get better, but they won’t, not until you get the root of those limiting beliefs and pull them out of your body forever.

What are your limiting beliefs? Maybe the voice in your head sounds like this: “I’ll never lose weight.  I don’t like speaking in public.  I’m scared to be alone.  I’m not smart enough.  I don’t have the education.  No one with hire me.  I’m too young.  I’m too old.  I’m…fill in the blank.”  Do yourself a favour and start paying attention to your mental chatter.  What excuses do you use on a regular basis?  What complaints would your friends recognize that you say all. the. time.?  Now ask yourself this:

What have these thoughts prevented you from doing or becoming?  What have you missed out on?  

Think back 5 or 10 years.  What haven’t you done because of your fears?  What beliefs have kept you small?  Until last year, I used the excuse “Having young kids is hard.” Having given birth to 3 kids in 3 years I wholeheartedly believed that my kids were holding me back, and my story is pretty valid, so I REALLY believed it.  Then one day I decided that enough was enough and I was done with my excuses and that I going to make things happen in my life!

Change happens in an instant. 

One second I was a victim of 3 little kids and the next second I was successful with 3 little kids. What happened?  I raised my standards.   I went from putting my kids first and being unhappy and stressed to making time for myself and ensuring that I do things that make me happy on a daily basis, if not all day long!  I took back my power from the situation, changed my thoughts, and became the voice!

If there is something in your life right now that you can’t change, think again.  What are the limiting beliefs at the forefront of your excuse?  Realize that you’re telling yourself a story.  The second you realize your thoughts are holding you back is the instant you can take back your voice and regain control of your life.

Rewrite your story.

Write down 3 limiting beliefs.  Below them, write the truth.  For instance, if your story is that you can’t lose weight, cross it out and write “I live in Divine health.” “I have a beautiful, sexy body.” or “My body is finding its ideal weight effortlessly.”

If you’re struggling with confidence and you think “life is hard,” cross it out and write “I love how easy life is,” “I wake up each day knowing that something amazing is going to happen”, or go all in with “I am the creator of my reality!”

The stories we sell ourselves matter.  They shape our experience in every single moment.  If you believe people are assholes, then that is what you will experience.  If you believe people with money are ungrateful trust fund babies, then you’re going to get that experience as well.  But, if you rewrite your stories to include “strangers are nice,” “I’m so lucky,” or “this is the best day yet,” then that will be your experience.

Every thought we have is a prayer sent into the Universe.  When we think happy thoughts, happiness is what we perceive.   When we’re negative and lashing out, we get that back as well. The silent saboteur behind all of these feelings are the beliefs that we carry about the world. What energy will you be sharing the universe today?  Be outstanding!!

Everything is a Gift

We tend to think things happen to us when we’re powerless and suffering.  We take things personally and we feel angry and defeated.  We think things are out of our control or that we’re being punished.  But things never happen to us – they happen FOR us.  Each and every moment is an opportunity to create a new reality for ourselves.  There is a huge difference in reality between thinking things are happening to us vs. for us.  Each moment is an opportunity to grow.

“The world is only in the mind of its maker.”

– A COURSE IN MIRACLES

We are constantly being guided.  When we haven’t been listening to the soft little nudges to change that the Universe gives us, it throws something big at us to get our attention.  It’s not because we’re being punished.  We’re being helped.  The energy on the planet is shifting.  Mediocrity is no longer being accepted.  The status quo will no longer suffice.  It’s time to get off our asses and change things, or things will change for us.

A year ago, I never imagined that I would be the person I’ve become.  I wanted to be here very badly, but it wasn’t a possibility in my mind.  I thought about how I wasn’t living the life I wanted.  I was unhappy and I knew it.  I felt powerless to change my relationship, myself, and where my life was headed.  Then one day, it happened for me.  My relationship imploded and a new beginning was thrust upon me.  But as hard as it was, it was my chance to reinvent myself for the better, and that’s what I set out to do.  I stepped into my power and knew that something amazing was going to happen.  The Universe was happening for me.  Intense growth occurs in times of intense strife.  After all, what have we learned when things went well?

Blowups in relationships are blessings.  They tear down falsities and beg us to show our true selves.  Anything that is not true will fall away and we’ll be standing there bare anyway, so we may as well take control and be true to ourselves.  I didn’t know I had the power to change it all back then.  I wasn’t listening to the little nudges to be a writer or become a life coach, and I wasn’t happy.  My spirit was suffering and I thought I had to follow through with my commitment to be a stay at home mom.  I focused on everything that was wrong and that got me nowhere.  Now I think to myself, “What is going right? How is my life really awesome?”  Better questions, better answers.

If something terrible has happened to you recently, take it from me that the earlier you can see the blessing in the situation the better.  Everything is a gift.  The good and the bad.  It’s all awesome.  No matter what it is, a year from now, you’re going to have an entirely new vantage point.  The sooner you can see the blessings, the sooner you can get to the other side.

Is the Universe nudging you to change something in your life?  Do you have a nagging feeling that something is off, something that you need to face?  I encourage you to think about your daily life and ask yourself if this were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you’re going to do today?  What would you rather do?  What really gets you excited?

Today I believe my life is about to change again.  I’m in the driver’s seat and I’m at another tipping point and I cannot wait to see what the future has in store!  Now that I am completely aware of my power to create the life of my dreams, I can’t wait to use it every single day to manifest the life that I have imagined for so long.  Today I will Unleash The Power Within some more.  Only 2 hours until we see Tony Robbins and I cannot wait!!!

How to Succeed

Today has been a stellar day, but it didn’t start out that way!  I was wide awake half of the night, finally falling asleep around 3am, and up again before 7am with the 3 little clones.  I gave Arlo a bottle, made the big kids oatmeal, and finished making enough snacks for 33 kids since I had double snack day duty, and somehow managed to get the big guys to school on time for the first time in awhile!

Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Kid-Friendly Snack: Roasted Garlic Hummus and Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Since I’ve been battling insomnia for a couple of weeks I came home and laid down to take a well deserved nap.  An hour and no sandman later, I got up and drove to the forest for some well needed clarity.  I walked for 2 hours while listening to an audiobook, while walking amongst the raining leaves.  Why sit at home and read when you can enjoy this?:IMG_8693.JPG

My fitness goal is set.  I’m just as persistent now as when I initially set the intention.  I take daily action, eat well, and my success is written in the stars.  However, I have yet to set a concrete goal with respect to my career.  I’ve found myself floating in an ocean of possibilities, slowly moving along.  So I started narrowing down my goals today while walking in the fresh misty air.  I’m already getting really excited about working toward them each and every day.  I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow and start learning, writing, and plugging away at a book that I’ve officially taken out of the “someday” pile and placed on the top of my goal list. The audiobook I listened to was called “How to completely change your life in 30 seconds” by Earl Nightingale, and it was the perfect walking companion.  I had heard it all before, but this time it really got my attention.IMG_8688.JPG

One of my favourite lessons is this: as long as you keep working toward your goals, you cannot fail.  You may fall – that’s ok.  Falling isn’t failing.  As long as you get up, you’re still in the game.  You’re successful.  Momentary setbacks cannot harm you.  Even if you’re in the lowest possible place you have ever been, a year from now, it will be just a distant memory, and you will be one year closer to your goals!  If you set a clear goal and work toward its fruition every single day, the universe has no choice but to grow the seeds into future success.  Our minds are extremely fertile, and whatever we plant in our minds will grow.  Positive or negative the mind cannot discern the difference.  It’s up to you to plant the seeds you want to cultivate.  It’s easier to be negative.  But know that your returns will be in direct proportion to what you focus on.  Replace any fearful thoughts with a positive goal worthy of your time.

There is no need to worry about how something will come about.  Worry is one of the lowest vibrations that we can find ourselves in.  There is no sense worrying about something you cannot control, nor is there any sense in worrying about something that happened in the past, or things that most likely won’t come to pass.  There is very little that we need to really worry about.  Most worries are situations that we create in our own minds.  It’s been said that 92% of things we worry about are in the aforementioned categories.  Only 8% of our worries are legitimate.

I know I was always afraid of failing.  What I really should have been worried about was my inaction.  My fears that held me back.  You cannot fail if you don’t give up, but you certainly can fail if you never do anything to shape the life you want.  Most people are caught in a stage of quiet mediocrity.  They want success, but they don’t want to work for it.  They get distracted by 1000s of things and never really get anywhere.  What do you want?

Don’t let events hold you back.  Don’t give away your power by making excuses.  It’s not what happens in life, but how you react to events that determine the result.  A famous psychiatrist interviewed the sons of an alcoholic man, and when asked how they came to be on their current paths, they both answered something like this:  “What would you expect having had an alcoholic father?”  One of the men was what you would call a success.  The other, an alcoholic like his father.

How to Love Yourself

How are you?  What’s new?

How would you answer these questions?  I used to answer them with responses like “fine, well, ok, not much, same old… etc.” but I’m aiming higher these days.  I refuse to let “good” get the best of me.  I’m in it for great.  Revolutionary.  I want to wake up every single day and have to pinch myself because surely I must be dreaming.  I want to stay up late and wake up early because I get to be me.

Life is in a constant state of change.  We’re always moving from A to B to C to wherever.  There are about a zillion ways to get from A to B but I want to get there in a flying car doing 150 at least.  I’m fully in it for the ride, wherever I go and whatever I do, I do it with joy.  I try to find acceptance in everything.  While cleaning up the kitchen for the 50 millionth time isn’t my favourite thing to do, I accept that it must be done, and I look for the joy.  It gives me an opportunity to check in with myself in a sort of moving meditation kind of way where I get to hang out with one of my favourite people: Me.

I wasn’t always this way.  There was a time when I was completely unsuccessful at loving myself.  I didn’t think I could do anything right and I disliked myself for not being smarter, thinner, and more outgoing.  I was withholding love from myself, and I was suffering for it.

I don’t know what happened in my childhood to make me think I didn’t deserve love.  Maybe I’ve been holding onto this indoctrination from a past life.  I’m actually certain of it.  Wherever I picked it up from, I am incredibly glad that I have come to know that I deserve an epic love story.  My Aha moment came during a soul shattering breakup in which I finally learned my lesson: Love yourself.  I kept ignoring the signs that told me to put myself first, but my angels were persistent with this lessen.  I couldn’t ignore them anymore.  My oxygen mask was finally on and my sole focus became making myself happy.

Your Ideal Best Friend: What Qualities do They Have?

What qualities do you look for in a best friend?  Write them down.  Here is my list: Supportive, communicative, authentic, honest, keeps in touch, inspiring, passionate, appreciative, funny, easy to talk to, good listener, not too serious, kind, loving, generous, trustworthy, adventurous, driven, joyful, understanding.  Now, look at your list and ask yourself if you’re being a good friend to your friends.  Now ask if you’re being a good friend to YOURSELF.  What areas do you need to put a little more work into?  What areas are you doing a good job in?  Journal about your successes and what you can do to improve in certain areas.  I certainly had a lot to write about after I did this exercise.

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Words of Affirmation to Love Yourself

Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself: “You are worthy of great love.  You are loving.  You are loved.  Thank you, body, for being an amazing place to live.  I give you nourishing food and plenty of water so that you may keep me healthy and energetic.  I love you.”  Feel free to change this and add some personal touches.  Make it perfectly and authentically yours, and make it full of love.

Support yourself every single day.  Every time you see yourself in the mirror, give yourself love.  If you ever start getting negative toward yourself, remind yourself that you have always done the best you could do.  But now your best is better, so you can do better!

Live, Die, Repeat

I had a moment of epiphany that struck me last night while watching “Live, Die, Repeat.”  It was such an unexpected, magical healing moment and I instantly knew that all of my relationships would improve because of it.  I realized that we have this same gift of waking up every single day with awareness.  We can wake up knowing that our actions impact the world, and we can use this awareness to show up in our lives wholeheartedly and be present in each moment.

How can we impact the world, you ask? The secret is love, and the secret to love is in opening our hearts.  In each moment we have the ability to open our hearts and act out of love.  It’s a choice.  We choose our path in every single moment. Every situation can be handled with grace or with difficulty, and we can choose to ease into love or we can choose to resist loving and resist being loved. We can hate, judge, break each other down, but we’re doing it to ourselves as well.  When we choose love we have the power to heal not only ourselves, but everyone we interact with. How amazing would this world be everyone acted out of love? If we treated each other as the best of friends rather than “the other”, sharing kindness and a positive outlook?

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We are all energy and we are all connected; your vibration, high or low, interacts with the vibrations around you.  A person feeling and acting from love and happiness will vibrate at a high frequency, whereas someone feeling and acting from jealousy, resentment, or judgement will vibrate at a lower frequency.  Since our energies interact, we can pull people up or bring them down.  I’m sure you can bring someone to mind who is usually negative, a downer, and someone you don’t want to spend a lot of time around.  You can understand why it’s wise to choose friends that carry high vibrational energy.

In each moment we are either healing humanity with our outpouring of love or destroying it with a lack of love. We can choose to open our hearts or close them. When we choose to open our hearts we are promoting love, happiness, and joy. We are telling the universe “more of this, please.” When we close our hearts we are giving in to fear and cutting off the love energy that our world truly needs to heal itself. When we close our hearts, we hurt.

Open up. Choose love. Let go of fear.

Each day when you awake, take a moment to be grateful for all that has been given to you: your life, your breathe, your body, friends, family, lovers, etc. Even take a moment of gratitude for the hurdles that have catapulted your growth. Be grateful for the things that didn’t work out as planned, for those failures likely created the possibility for something even better than you imagined. If you happen to find yourself in a moment of darkness and change, find comfort in knowing that the light is just around the corner. Open your heart to send and to receive. Smile. Be happy.

If you start your day in this way you are choosing love. You are opening your heart to receive all of the good the universe has in store for you.

Affirmation: “I open my heart to love and to receive all of the good the universe has for me now. I release all fears to the Universe and take great comfort in knowing that I am loved. I am loving. It feels so good to know that I am worthy of giving and receiving great love.”