Author: Guest Author

Tame Your Pregnant Mind

Many of the clients I coach reach out to me because they are overwhelmed with runaway train schedules, insane mental chatter and too many commitments. We share our time uncovering what a new more peaceful reality can look like. You can tame your pregnant mind and reduce anxiety by using the following check list.

  • Prioritize.  Line up realistic actionable tasks for your dream project within a specific time frame.  Monitor you performance by creating a critical path time-line. Incremental progress toward your dream IS PROGRESS. Celebrate each victory, no matter how insignificant they feel at the time.

  • Get real. Perfectionism is an unhealthy expectation. Trying to be perfect all the time will paralyze you and halt your performance. Instead of setting your site on perfection, focus on excellence and get moving.

  • Be gentle with yourself. You must not berate yourself with negative self-talk and mental rubbish. Your best weapon to clobber the schoolyard bully in your head is positive self-talk.  What happens when you catch your evil twin being mean and nasty? What if you stopped those thoughts immediately upon their arrival?

  • Ask for help.  Seeking an ear or advice from others will help you move along your chosen path with much less stress and anxiety. Chances are there are droves of people who have been where you are and would be willing to help you.  How can I support you?

  • Play.  Make time for family and friends and do the activities you enjoy. You deserve to enjoy yourself. Create some regular play time and have a blast!  What kind of activities do you enjoy? When was the last time you enjoyed goofing around?

  • Check in with how you feel mentally and physically. Pay attention to when you feel your well is dry and find a way to fill up again.  A change of scenery or a few deep cleansing breaths may be all you need to keep your energy flowing.  I like to take mini breaks by stepping outside and soaking up the beauty of a natural setting.

  • Clobber your fear.  Most people on the planet are dealing with fear in all shapes and sizes. From the annoying little monsters under your bed, to the giant panther ready to pounce on you in the middle of the jungle, fear is something we create in our minds.  I have learned that when I take action on something daunting the fear falls away.  How do you address your fears?

I trust you will find some of these simple stress reducing ideas useful.  I would love to hear about how you tame your pregnant mind.  If you have an interest in getting some additional support for stress and anxiety, you are welcome to visit Anxiety Slayer .

By Shann Vander Leek

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Create More Peace in Your Life

The sankalpa I choose during Yoga Nidra meditation is “I am Peace” or “I am Peaceful.”  Sankalpa is defined as the resolve, determination and good intention that resonates and aligns sublimely with your essence.  Cultivating and sharing teachings to create a more peaceful love filled existence means everything to me as a woman, wife, mother, author and life coach.

7  Steps to Create More Peace in Your Life:

Positive Thinking

  • Attitude is everything … Why not start by choosing happiness?  The next time you are cranky, think about how funny you are all puckered up and pissed off. Angry? Get over it!

Breathe

  • Breathe deeply for 5 or 6 rounds of your breath every hour. When you pay attention to your breath your world will settle down.

Emotional Energy

  • Let go of any excess baggage and learn how to tap into your happy place. Everyone has a crappy day … Learn to let it go.  Say so long, bon voyage, later days to that big ugly sack of sticky darkness.

Self Love

  • Love yourself as you are – in this moment. You are an amazing critter. You matter.  Embrace your quirks, strengths, deficiencies and human kindness. There is nobody in the Universe quite like you!

Gratitude Power

  • Begin and end each day thinking about what you are thankful for. Consider writing letters of gratitude to the people you love in your life. Let them know you think they are all kinds of alright. Share your Love!

Meditation

  • Get centered by creating time for guided or silent meditation.  As little as two minutes counting your breath daily will make a difference. Do it … No excuses.

Knowing

  • Your life is more important than you know. You are the author of your life’s story. What kind of life do you want to create? Begin …

Consciously embrace each step and become aware of how much internal peace you can create.  Peace begins within you and radiates out to everyone you encounter.

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
– John Lennon

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Turning Fear Into Fuel

Back in April, I had the great pleasure of presenting at the TEDx conference at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. And, maybe the only thing that made it cooler was that I got to be there with a really good friend, Chris Guillebeau, who was also taking the stage.

I have mixed feelings about speaking. I’m terrified before I go on. But, once I find my groove, I absolutely love it. And, I plan to grow the public speaking aspect of my “renegade biz-plan” fairly aggressively over the next year and a half (conference bookers, call me, lol).

The theme of TEDxCMU was “fearless.”

That was it. Just one word. And, that was all the guidance we got. Create a compelling talk having something to do with being fearless and deliver it in precisely 18 minutes, not a second longer. Those are the rules.

The venue was a beautiful 500 person lecture hall. The late CMU professor, Randy Pausch, gave his famed Last Lecture entitled Achieving Your Childhood Dreams in the very same hall. That presentation blew me away (as it did millions of others). So I felt an even deeper sense of responsibility to those who’d shown up. I was the lead-off speaker, which meant I was done first, but I also had the job of warming up the audience, made up predominantly of 500 college students…at 9am…on a Sunday morning.

The video was just posted, so, for those who’ve been asking (mom, sis and the guy at the deli)…

The video was just posted, so, for those who’ve been asking (mom, sis and the guy at the deli)…

 

 

Whenever I look at footage of me speaking now, I tend to go immediately into critique mode and look at how much I did wrong or how many opportunities to connect I missed. At first I wondered if this was healthy, but my sense is that if you really want to become great at something, you’ve got to be willing to examine where you are now, deconstruct it, learn from it, then integrate what you’ve learned into future opportunities.

Interestingly, too, in the short months since I gave this talk, my ideas about fear and how to not only work with, but harness it have evolved in a number of ways. More to come on that.

Chris followed a bit later in the day. His talk was framed around the idea of fear and permission. And he shared some amazing stories that brought his ideas to life through his travels and volunteer work all over the world.

 

 

All in all, it was a wonderful day filled with many other great people and presenters. Special thanks to the volunteer team who organized the event and congrats to those who graduated! Be sure to check out the other sessions as they’re posted.

And, as always, I’d love to know your thoughts on the exploration of being fearless…

By Jonathan Fields, Awake @ the Wheel

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Choices choices choices

By Tracey Rissik

The Universe is guiding me to read/listen to Jim Rohn – I received yet another email with a very interesting quotation from him, this morning:

“What we ponder and what we think about sets the course of our
life. Any day we wish; we can discipline ourselves to change it
all. Any day we wish, we can open the book that will open our mind
to new knowledge. Any day we wish, we can start a new activity. Any
day we wish, we can start the process of life change. We can do it
immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.

“We can also do nothing. We can pretend rather than perform. And if
the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we
can remain as we are. We can choose rest over labour, entertainment
over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence. The
choices are ours to make. But while we curse the effect, we
continue to nourish the cause. As Shakespeare uniquely observed,
“The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves.” We created our
circumstances by our past choices. We have both the ability and the
responsibility to make better choices beginning today.

I’m going through a time of re-thinking my business strategy, finding ways of reaching people en masse, not 1-to-1 as then the limits are on my time – today I choose to spend 2 hours planning around that!

“It’s the cut of your sail not the blowing of the wind that determines your success” Jim Rohn

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