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Pause, Reflect And Set Intentions

12/22/2018

Have you taken the time to reflect on last year and set your intentions for this new year? Now that the holidays are over it's a great time to hit the pause button, spend some time in reflection, and set your intentions for 2019.

I think it's healthy to productively reflect. To productively look back for a bit before setting it aside and moving forward. Not getting stuck in the past, just looking at it to savor the positive and learn from the challenges. To reflect on what worked and what didn't and to bring closure. It can be easy to skip this step and jump forward into the next year with the proclamation of forget last year, this year will be better. By doing this it's easy to lose perspective, missing the the good stuff and the growth.

Here are some things that I recommend reflecting on:

1. What am I grateful for that transpired this past year? Big, small and everything in between. What are all of the things that come to mind that you are grateful for? I love to start off all of my prayers, meditations, planning sessions, etc. with a good dose of gratitude. This gives us some nice perspective as we are reflecting on the year.

2. What did I do, create, or experience this year that I'm really proud of? This can be in any area of your life. List out all of the accomplishments and experiences that you are proud of that happened this year. Work through month-by-month or pull out your calendar and take a look at the daily entries to help jog your memory. You may be surprised at how many you come up with.

3. What mistakes did I make and what did they teach me? What lessons did I learn that I can leverage from? What was the meaning in those mistakes and lessons? Maybe it's something that's not concrete, like patience, or compassion, or forgiveness.

4. What am I willing to let go of? What am I currently disciplined to that I desire to let go of? What habits, routines and disciplines are serving me and which ones are not? What old story do I want to rewrite and replace with a new story? An exercise I love that helps me to create the new story is to play the "imagine if" or "what if" game. When playing the "imagine if" and "what if" game there are no limitations, no rules, no restrictions, no logic. You get to freely create using your imagination what you would like the story to look like.

How are you feeling about the new year? I know a lot of us have mixed feelings as we are looking out at our world. We want to change, we desire change. How is that change going to happen for you? Are you willing to be the change that you want in the world? Are you willing to do your part to create the change in your own life, in order for that to ripple out into the world? Consider these items as you are closing out this year and looking toward the next.

Setting Your Intentions
If you don't set out your intentions for the year, then it's like getting in a car with no direction. As Jack Kornfield puts it, "Setting a long-term intention is like setting the compass of our heart. No matter how rough the storms, how difficult the terrain, our direction is clear." I set intentions that are both internal and external. My external intentions I keep a little more fluid and flexible. I surround them with a lot of space, space for the creativity of the Universe, space for my natural tendency to think too small, space for my highest and best good.

As the year comes to a close spend some time in reflection. Grab yourself a cup of hot tea or cocoa, sit by the fireplace, wrap up in a warm cozy blanket and reflect on the year as it is closing. Savor the year. You've been on this earth one more year in time, what did it mean to you?

Let your intentions be your compass, your guide that helps give you direction even in turbulent or challenging conditions.

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6 Ways To Get Along With Your Family During The Holidays

12/17/2018

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I was planning to write this week's post on suggestions for handling the stress and anxiety that can come from family gatherings during the holidays and then this blog post dropped into my email inbox from Gabby Bernstein. It's rich with tips for getting along during the holidays, so I decided to share it with you. Hope this helps your holiday to be full of grace, peace and joy.

Spending time with family can be wonderful and uplifting. It can also a big source of holiday stress, even for the most functional families! Being around family can dredge up resentments and send you back into old patterns.

I want to help you skip the drama (or handle it with grace if it comes up), so I updated this blog post with tips that I know will help a lot!

Why The Holidays Can Bring On Family Drama

During the holidays, there are lots of reasons why family drama can flare up.

For one, everyone walks in the door with their own issues and hangups. They may be feeling insecure about work or defensive about a relationship, or having a tough time in general. Plus, even the happiest family has old dynamics from childhood that can take over quickly.

Another factor is that everyone may feel pressured to get along. This pressure can actually put you on edge because you feel like you’re being inauthentic. It’s hard to have fun when your guard is up.

And finally, each person has their own expectations of how they want things to go. You might want a festive party while your sister wants a quiet dinner and your cousin wants to get into deep, personal conversations.

Some ways we get caught in family drama during the holidays

It’s easy to think that the drama is everyone else’s fault, but let’s take a moment to gently witness our own behavior. Ask yourself if any of these things apply to you when you’re with your family during the holidays…

Do you get into petty fights (regardless of who started them)?
Do you judge your relatives’ political views, the way they raise their kids, the food they eat, etc.?
Do you often feel like everyone is on your case and slip into a victim mentality?
Do you feel like you have to win debates, subtly one-up your siblings or get in the last word?

If you answered yes to any of these, you’re not alone! In fact, most of us do at least one of these things. And when we’re really honest about it, we can admit that this behavior doesn’t serve us.

Sometimes a Clash Seems Inevitable

Let’s get real: Many of us have family members who say or do things that enrage or devastate us. And even if it’s not that extreme, during the holidays you might be forced to sit around a dinner table with people you wouldn’t normally hang out with. You might have conflicting views and different ways of communicating.

In this post I’m giving you some tools you can use to avoid that moment when you lose your cool, forget all your spiritual principles and get yanked way out of alignment. And if that does happen, then these tips will help you come back fast.

6 Ways To Get Along With Your Family During The Holidays

These six tips will help you avoid drama, clear judgment and focus on the good stuff so you can have a beautiful time celebrating!

1. Silently bless everyone
Before you sit down at the dinner table (or even before you walk in the door), say a little prayer for everybody. Pray for them to all enjoy their meal. Send them prayers to have a beautiful new year, and give them your love and your light.

The action of offering up that prayer and giving them a little bit of love puts you into a different energetic vibration. It elevates your energy by redirecting your focus. Instead of focusing on judgment, you focus on what you desire and what you wish for others.

2. Shield yourself from negative energy
If you know you’ll be interacting with someone (or multiple people) who leave you feeling drained or depressed, then you can create an energetic boundary to keep their energy from affecting you too much.

Create these boundaries with love rather than judgment. Remember, we’re all doing the best we can. People who don’t have any energy awareness are not malicious; they’re just struggling to get by. So rather than blame them, simply become mindful of how you can support yourself. There are a couple of techniques I like to use:

Activate your shield of golden light
Before interacting with one of these people, you can envision a shield of golden light surrounding you and protecting you. Set an intention to activate your energetic shield before the encounter and trust that your energy field is being protected.

Pray to restore your energy
If the negativity hits you after spending time with someone, then you can recite this prayer: “I ask that any negative energy I picked up be removed, recycled and transmuted. I ask that any positive energy I may have lost be retrieved now.”

3. Practice EFT before the holiday get-together
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), also known as tapping, is a powerful tool that we practice in step 2 of Judgment Detox.

EFT is a psychological acupressure technique that supports your emotional and physical health. It combines the cognitive benefits of therapy with the physical benefits of acupuncture to restore your energy and heal your emotions. You just use your fingertips to tap on certain energy meridian points on your body while talking out loud about the issue at hand.

If you’re new to EFT or prefer to have a teacher, cool news: I made a guided video for tapping on judgment! It’s part of my free 3-part Judgment Detox Mini Course.

You can follow my guided tapping video to release judgment before a family get-together or after it — or both. Click here for instant access to my free mini course!

4. If you do get into drama, forgive yourself fast
It happens. Sometimes we get sucked into drama and do the thing we don’t want to do. We yell, we say something judgmental or we let someone else’s words wreck our good time. When this happens, the answer is to show yourself a lot of compassion and forgiveness.

Check out this lecture clip where I talk about how we can experience our screw-ups differently by forgiving ourselves right away.

Every moment offers us an opportunity to experience what A Course in Miracles calls the Holy Instant. The Holy Instant is the moment when you surrender your fear to the care of the Universe and accept the perspective of love.

If you’re having a hard time letting go or getting to that place of forgiveness, then check out this post. In it I give you three steps to go from anger to forgiveness when things boil over.

5. Focus on what you like (and love) about each person
This action takes the prayer practice from tip #1 even further. You can do this in the room, in the moment. Think about what you like about each person, even if it’s something small, like how your uncle always cracks a joke that makes you laugh or your sister-in-law DM’s you good recipes on Instagram.
Allow yourself to dwell in feelings of love for those family members you’re very close to. Think of all the things you appreciate about them and really feel that love and support.

There may be someone you have a really difficult relationship with and you can’t think of anything positive in the moment. That’s okay. In that case, think of a lesson you’ve learned because of that relationship and cultivate appreciation for that.

Seeing someone for the first time

This technique of focusing on what you like about everyone is a way of practicing Step 4 of Judgment Detox, which is to see someone for the first time. The experience of seeing someone for the first time is one of deep relief. You free the person from the stories you’ve placed upon them and you free yourself from the bondage of attack. You’ll feel relieved because you’ll be returning to your truth, which is love.

If even for an instant you let down your guard and choose to see through the lens of love rather than fear, you will be one step closer to freedom!

6. Keep your side of the street clean by getting honest about your own judgment
We can avoid a lot of family drama by taking responsibility for our judgment and doing the spiritual and personal work to heal it. The way out of judgment is to witness your judgment without more judgment.

Getting clear about all the ways you judge will help you see your part and understand the root of each judgment so that you can heal what you discover. It might sound scary at first. But let me reassure you that this is a very empowering and freeing process.

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The Comparison Trap

12/11/2018

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Do you ever get caught in the trap of comparing yourself to others? Comparing your body to others, your job to others, your story to others, what you have to others, your skills and talents to those of others, your kids or grandchildren to others, where you are in life to others, your generosity to others, your happiness to others, and on and on and on.

Especially at this time of the year we can fall into the comparison trap. Whether it's who is getting what for Christmas, or what other's holiday plans look like, what their family dynamic looks like, what someone else's Christmas decorations look like. Or maybe it's reflecting on the year as it's coming to an end and comparing the path that your life has taken in comparison to others. Or maybe it's looking toward the upcoming year and comparing what might lie ahead for you to others.

However you slice it comparison can steal your contentment, your happiness, your joy. Drawing a comparison between ourself, and our life, to that of others is a reflection of our dissatisfaction with ourself.

When comparing our life to someone else's we are drawing a comparison to what our perception is of that other person and their life, which may or may not reflect reality. Comparing is judging, making a determination of what appears to be better than the other. Comparing ourselves with someone else is an inaccurate and irrelevant measuring stick.

Anyway you cut it, comparison doesn't feel good. You either feel like you're on the short end which makes you feel negative about your situation, or you feel like you're on the uptick. Whenever we have to play the comparison game in order to make ourselves feel good, in order to fill a hole within us, by proving that we are somehow bigger and better we end up not filling that hole. It's a never-ending dark hole of dissatisfaction.

At its core judging, or righteousness, comes from a feeling of lack or not being enough. What I lack in myself, I seek to puff up through my judgment. It’s impossible for us to sustain happiness in our lives if we jump into the comparison game.

We all were born unique, different from everybody else in our own splendidly authentic variation. The only masterful creation we have to work with is ourself. It's more productive and useful for us to focus on being the best version of ourself that we can be. I love the saying that the only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.

I also remind myself regularly of the fourth agreement from the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, it states, "Always do your best. Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good."

I invite you to get out of the comparison mode. Instead work on being the best version of yourself that you can be. Instead remember how grateful you are for where you are in the present moment. Instead exercise self-compassion with who you are and where you are in your life. Enjoy the journey with the knowledge that it is your journey and your story, not anyone else's.

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Do You Struggle With Judging Yourself And Others?

12/4/2018

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Do you struggle with judging yourself and others? I've been working on judgment for a while now and I'm still amazed at how quickly my brain shifts into judgment. What I've come to realize is that it's one thing to have a judgmental thought, but the shift is to no longer believe them.

I recently read the book Judgment Detox by Gabrielle Bernstein. In the book, Gabby defines judgment as separation from love. She states, "The moment that we see ourselves as separate from anyone else, we detour into a false belief system that is out of alignment with our true nature, which is love." Gabby suggests that we all have the same problem, that we have separated from love and that the solution is to return to love.

Being judgmental comes from a place of ego. Our ego operates from a place of fear. It thinks it's helping us to survive and protecting us. The ego loves to judge, to cast blame and find fault.

Judgment causes us to get stuck in a cycle, an addictive habit-forming pattern. It temporarily makes us feel better about ourselves, but ultimately makes feel bad. Judgment lowers our vibration and our energy and it makes us feel alone. Gossip is a great example, it can give us a temporary high until we crash with a judgment hangover.

According to Gabby, "The way out of judgment begins when you witness the judgment without more judgment. When we look at our judgment with love, we can begin the healing process. We have to see clearly the ways in which we separate from love, and we have to get honest about the dark corners of our mind." We all have those dark corners of our mind don't we?

For me the beginning of my way out of judgment began with recognizing and understanding fear and through the practices of empathy and self-compassion. Bringing awareness to and being mindful of my judgments, not just blindly going about life without concern for them. Then moving into the practice of empathy with the understanding that everyone has their own lens through which they see the world based on their life experiences, it is their truth. When I become aware that I am judging myself, I exercise self-compassion.

Mindfulness, awareness, empathy and self-compassion are key tools that I've been using to release judgmental thoughts. It's also been helpful for me to relinquish the need to judge, the need to cast something as either right or wrong. Just relieving myself of the "responsibility" of judging and needing to blame or put someone or something in a column of either being right or being wrong.

We often misinterpret reality, we misinterpret another person, misinterpret a situation. We misinterpret things because we see them through the conditioning of our own mind. You see it through your beliefs, your experiences, your childhood, etc. The ego loves to make someone wrong, to judge them. The ego creates a narrative that strengthens the more your tell it. Fictitious narratives spinning around in our head as reality.

I am a work in progress. Everyday setting the intention to break the addictive cycle of judgment against myself and others. Life is happier and more peaceful when we can let go of the "responsibility" of judging.

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Pause, Reflect And Set Intentions

6 Ways To Get Along With Your Family During The Holidays

The Comparison Trap

Do You Struggle With Judging Yourself And Others?

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