It's my birthday... My Top 3 Intentions for my 35th Year (Read Time: 3 min.)

It's my birthday today.  35 and feeling stronger than I did at 25.  Not exactly where I wanted to be at this point but working on it.  So I'm setting my top 3 intentions for my 35th year.  And here they are:

1) ..........................
2) ..........................
3) ..........................

As with any dream or goal, the best way to conceive and deliver it is to keep it to yourself.  When you've had the baby, send out announcements to the entire world.  Until then, nurture the conception, allow for the growth, and let the miracle speak for itself.

Happy birthday to me!

3 Ways to Transform Your Current Life Circumstances (Read Time: 4 min.)

Ever have a day when you look at the circumstances of your life and wonder:
How did I get HERE? 

And not because everything's wonderful or peachy keen but because life, at this moment, just isn't going the way you expected it to.  Things aren't working as smoothly or as quickly as you thought they would.  Despite your best efforts to be "good", "nice", "fair", or "responsible", when you look at your life, in this moment, things just don't seem to be working out.

Ever been there?

It's in that moment when the temptation to throw a massive pity party is SUPER HIGH... and I've thrown them.  But, after a while, the pity parties do nothing more than make you feel worse about where you are.  So you shift into detective mode and start asking the big WHYs:

1) Why me?
2) Why now?
3) Why this?

And, again, a total waste of time because, at the end of the day, even when the WHYs get answered, it still happened... and it still happened to you. 

When your current life circumstances are not what you planned and you wonder if your life is ever going to take the shape you always dreamt it would, the work you have in front of you is not to judge the outcome but to more consciously invest in the creation process.

What do I mean?

In a book called "As a Man Thinketh", James Allen states:

 "We do not attract that which we want but that which we are." 

As harsh of a truth as that is, it is true.  The circumstances in front of us have arrived to serve as a mirror of what we REALLY believe is possible for us.  I can hear people already balking at this idea: "But I didn't ask to get sick... I didn't ask for my spouse to leave me... I didn't intend for the company to lay me off..."  Dig in with me here.  That's not what I'm saying.

We can only create in our lives what we truly believe we CAN and WILL be able to receive.  If you don't believe that you're worthy of a loving, lasting relationship, if, somewhere, deep inside of you, what you really believe is that you can get a partner but you can't keep a partner, guess what's going to happen at some point down the line? 

If you look at your job and you believe that all corporations are sinister and vile and that managers exist to bring you down, that companies will lay you off at the drop of a hat and devastate you financially, guess what's awaiting you at some point along your work journey?  You got it: a downsizing.

Now, your thoughts won't be what caused the downsizing or the partner leaving or you carrying around those extra 20 pounds you've been wanting to lose for 20 years.  But your thoughts will have orchestrated you believing that this is how your life is meant to go.  More than that, those thoughts will have you living in fear that these are the things that WILL happen to you... and you won't have the strength or the resourcefulness with which to handle them.

Bad things happen to good people.  "Nice" is no immune system to pain or loss or devastation.  But when you live believing that these are the kinds of things that happen to you, you attract them more readily, not because your thoughts draw them in but because your fear brings them to you.  The moment you release the hold that life's uncertainty has on you, the moment you say to yourself, "I can handle WHATEVER comes" and believe it is the same moment that you no longer live by the whims of change. 

Life's going to happen.  Things won't go according to plan.  But the person who knows what he or she deserves embraces uncertainty with one single claim: EVERY experience happens FOR me, not TO me. 

 

So how do you get there? 

 

If you don't like what's going on in your current life circumstances, how do you flip the switch on your life?

Here are 3 ways to transform your current life circumstances:

1) Think differently about every negative experience that happens.  I could've said think differently about EVERY experience, positive or negative (yes, that too) but what gets people is how they interpret negative circumstances.  Let me give you an example.  For about a week now, I've been waiting for a FedEx package to arrive at my door.  I paid for next day service and it's a week later.  Nuff said.  Now, the first day they missed delivering the package, I was PISSED.  I called FedEx on the phone, was snarky and rude to the people on the line and demanded the shipment be to me by the next day.  Do you think I was thinking, in that moment, that life was happening FOR me or TO me?  You got it: TO me... and it showed.  I was attacking, angry, and guess what the result was?  The package didn't get delivered the next day OR the day after that.  Then I got tired.  Attacking others is a tiring business and I didn't bother calling on Saturday.  Why?  Because my belief was "They won't deliver it today either, those twits!" and guess what?  It didn't get delivered on Saturday either.  So Sunday rolls around and I'm so tired of attacking and so sick of non-sense that I simply accepted it for what it was and decided to be peaceful about the whole thing and call again.  This time, with a FOR me approach, I spoke nicely to the representative who put in notes to have the person call me about my package before arriving at my location.  It was awesome service and I fully expect to get my package today.  Now, it was a process from getting from where I was to where I am right now.  What was the process?  I had to think differently about the delay of the FedEx package and until I thought differently, I was seeing the same results.  We have to do the same thing for EVERY area of our lives.

2) Do differently.  I can't tell you the number of people who go in action merry-go-rounds, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Enough already!  At some point, if you don't like the way life is, you need to get up and try a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT approach.  You read correctly.  I love it when someone who eats vanilla ice cream every day considers a radical change ordering chocolate ice cream tomorrow.  No, no, no, no no.  When your life is SERIOUSLY not working, you need to SERIOUSLY change it.  It's more than changing your hair color or going a different route to work.  I'm talking about going back to school to get a degree in a totally different field so you can change careers.  I'm talking about breaking up with the zero who hasn't been a hero for 5 years and maybe just maybe enjoying being with yourself for six months or so.  I'm talking about picking up your bags and with 3 months of living expenses moving out of the hell hole you've been complaining about for 3 years and moving to a location that you can afford in an area where jobs are plentiful but in a NEW place that has been calling you for a LONG time.  Yes, if you want something different, you've got to do something different and do it CONSISTENTLY and PERSISTENTLY for as long as it takes.

3) When obstacles show up (and they will), ask one question: How do I use this to my advantage?  This takes practice.  Your mind is going to want to pity party it away.  There's going to be the inclination to do the blame/shame/guilt game.  Don't give into that.  A total waste of energy.  No, when something comes and throws you off track, make yourself stop and consider the answer to that question: How do I use this to my advantage?  In five minutes, you'll know exactly how.  Don't let up until you do.

Ok, so 3 ways to transform your current life circumstances.  Start using all three today.

 

Here's my final thought:

In life, you're going to have good times and bad and when the bad times come, you're going to wonder what you did to deserve them.  Shift your mind from seeing bad experiences as punishment to viewing them as challenges you were born to overcome.  At the end of the day, pain is a part of life but suffering is optional.

 

"You do not have to suffer to grow."

- Denise Linn

When to Tell Your Feelings to SDASU (Read Time: 3 min.)

I was languishing in self-pity yesterday.  That's right.  I threw a HUGE pity party... all in my honor.  I went through the gamut of emotions from anger to irritation to stress to sadness to the pouty 11 year old saying "This is SO UNFAIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 

And then I took a nap... And then I got up... And then I looked in the mirror and said to myself, "Now what?"

So I did what I'd tell any of my coaching clients to do.  I looked myself in the eye, stood up straight, and said to how I was feeling (silently, clearly and forcefully):

SDASU

In other words,

Sit Down And Shut Up!

Don't get me wrong.  Feelings are important but they aren't everything.  Everybody says (including me), "You have to feel your feelings to heal them."  But once you've felt them once, do you need several encore performances?  No you don't.  In fact, that can be more of a hindrance to you getting to where you want to go than anything else.

At the end of the day, there are moments where you're going to throw a pity party.  My rule of thumb about pity parties is this: If you're going to throw one, go all out.  Give yourself 24 hours to cry and then get up.  That's what I did yesterday and here's what I'm doing today:

I'm taking a 'whatever it takes' attitude.

Which boils down believing 3 things and doing 3 other things:

BELIEFS:
1) It CAN be done.
2) I CAN do it.
3) There are AT LEAST a thousand ways to get this done.  I only need the first one that works.

ACTIONS:
1) Put my WHOLE mind into the PRESENT action.
2) Give ALL that I have to ALL that I do.
3) Stay focused on the end as I work towards it (in other words, ignore the temporary, current circumstances; they will change and you'll still be standing).

How's that for giving my feelings a boost?  Now I feel energized, strong, and I'm no longer in pity party mode.  Try it.  It works...