Empowered For Life

"I have a Dream..." was a recurring theme in many of Martin Luther Kings speeches. Is it a theme in your life? Do you have a dream? Something you want to be, to do, or have. Is it changing? Are you in touch with it? Are you looking for a new one?

One definition, by John C. Maxwell...." A dream is an inspiring picture of the future that energizes your mind, will and emotions, empowering you to do everything you can to achieve it."

"Dreams come a size too big so that we can grow into them". Josie Bissett.

Today I encourage you to look inside with a loving heart to dreams that may be waiting to be discovered. Allow yourself to drop the discouraging voice, to open the door to your imagination, to visualize an inspiring picture of the future. Simply put, play with it. Maybe give yourself 1 minute each hour to see what comes up for you. By the end of the day you should have a good list to explore.

To your dreams.......

I love that we honor the New Year in so many ways. At the same time it is just like every other day. We have 24 hours. With the national holiday behind us, I'd like to propose you integrate the idea of every day being new years, a time for release, a time for growth and setting intentions. But how do these intentions actually materialize? Through your actions. I'm offering four easy ways to support you in your growth and fulfillment of your 2012 vision this month.

On January 11th, "This 24 hours, Loving Today While Creating Tomorrow", I'll be sharing my experience, my experiment, recent research, and tips on creating powerful change, and loving the process, at the Boulder Women's Leadership Group. Click here

On January 19th, "The Electric Connection: Experience the Art of Networking with Three Powerful Coaches" join me and two other coaches, and you'll learn how to create more energy, more business and more meaning in your life. Click here.

On January 20th, Massage Moment is hosting "Three Ways to Love This New Year". Join me, with Hostess Tamara Quezaire, in this free evening conversation with women. Get your girlfriends, join us from 6-7:30, then go out for more fun! (Limited to 15-18 people, evite coming.)

On January 21st, you're guaranteed more focus, clarity and direction in your life as the result of attending "The Passion Test: The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose." I served over one hundred clients last year with this three-hour event, based on the NYT bestseller (And it is the starting point for all my private clients).  Click here
 

Wishing you growth and fulfillment in 2012, In appreciation, Susan

So many hours these days are spent in front of the computer. Designed as a tool to make us more efficient, the tool is only as good as the user is trained to use it. While the reach of our networks is now far and wide, so are the distractions. 

This week I'm playing with a new tool to help me reinforce where I want to go . It is a free software program that will at regular intervals (think every 15 or 30 minutes) will give you a message of your choice. Developed to send as many as 15 different affirmations (which you input), I'm adding this to my experimental resources to support keeping reinforcing the messages I want.

 If you'd like to play along, you can download your own free affirmation program from www.downloadsforchange.com. (You could also put in your passion test results!) Have some fun and let me know what shows up for you. 

I love this dual concept discussed in Joan Borsenkyo's " It's Not The End of the World." She's speaking of resilience, and the need to both take action, and reflect. While she's speaking to physical activity, and mediation, I'd like to suggest this applies to other areas of your life as well. 

This time of year I plan for the next. It is a time for reflection, revisiting, and realignment with what is important to me. This is where I take a look at what I want, and realign my behaviors and habits that I think will take me to where I want to go. As in music, it is actually the space between the notes that give the melody it's unique flow. You need the notes, and the breaks. This time of year I put on some new strings, and tune them up. Not too tight, not too loose, that is how I will play my best. And of course, I will practice, practice, and practice. 

Could you use more focus, clarity and direction in your life? Are you engaging in the right behaviors and habits that will take you where you want to go? Do you want to learn how to accelerate powerful change? January talks and workshops I offer will tell you how. For individual support, and to accelerate your unique aspirations, contact me directly for a one on one consultation. (Yes, take action. Not taking action? Stop and consider why...what's this costing you?)

"Dear Susan, 

Congratulation...you'll make Italy the trip you've wanted, an exploration, an adventure, full of memories you'll cherish for years to come.

How interesting you chose to take it right in the midst of your move. You'll come back to new beginnings, again. But these will be more joyous than you ever could have planned....."

It went on from there, this letter I wrote to myself one year and three days before I read it again last week. It was put away in a folder that included my Passion Test Results from last year, a description of features of a future home that I'd want, and a few other items. I'd forgotten I'd even written it. 

Yet that is exactly what had just happened when I read it again last week. I had just returned home from my trip to England and Italy. And yes, I moved nine days before I left, and just finished unpacking yesterday. There were other very specific events and descriptions I had written that have come to pass. I wrote it originally with a specific belief at the time, that we all have access to other parts of us that can help us through challenging and uncertain times. I wrote it using my imagination from my future self, what advice would I give to the person I was at the time I wrote it. It isn't that things always happen the way we project they will, but amazingly, they DO happen. 

Today is Halloween, but there's no trick here, simply sharing what truly is possible, that we have more available to us right now than we can even imagine. By the way, I'm reworking my passion test, as I try to do at least every six months to a year. Anyone else ready to join me in that process?

One of the most amazing joys of moving to Colorado over twenty years ago was the opportunity to savor the sensory overload of Rocky Mountain National Park. Last week, a new hike, and incredible new views of familiar terrain, still induced awe. The air was crisp, a preview to the fall certain to arrive on our calendars this week. Yet the wildflowers were still abundant, in yellow, white, blue, gold and purple, and unlike the leaves in Boulder, which are beginning to turn, the leaves were still fresh and green. 

Yes, it's been an unusual year, with snow packing trails as late as July that are usually clear by the end of May or early June. The late winter storms give us the gorgeous late wildflower blooms. The elk are bugling, so that part is still on schedule. But something was different about this day.

The clarity of the shades of green (and brown where the pine beetle has left it's mark) was distinct. They popped like a numbered drawing, where one shade abuts another in a predetermined outlined picture. The clouds seemed to move faster that day, slipping quickly over the jagged crest of Long's peak. The lighting brought out first the green, then the red and black streaks, then overlain with a shade of gold. The entire landscape was alive and breathing.

There are certain moments when you begin to see things differently. It's like the first time you reread a book, an article, or see a movie, and it appears to be a different one than you first read or saw. Noticing different elements than I might have the first time in the Park, I have developed a deep appreciation of looking at the same old thing anew. Revisiting a landscape, or a thought, or idea, I know now this is true in other arenas as well. The more familiar I become with a topic, the easier it is to grow my expertise. It takes less thinking. You can see what is different and new more easily. My brain already has a paradigm it has been working with, and knowing and growing from that place is a joy.

This week, I hope you revisit the familiar, and look at ways to see and appreciate what you find in a new way. This is how we learn, by absorbing knowledge, and then gaining experience to see how the paradigms actually resonate with us. Developing and learning in any arena can ultimately bring more ease and joy into your life. How has this worked in your life? Are there areas you can look back on and see this has been true? I'd love to hear from you. 

Annually for a decade now, I've reviewed how I want to grow:  intellectually, spiritually, physically, emotionally, financially, in relationship, career and health. Just like with a business plan, I then set about creating the strategies and implementing the actions to support that growth.

One of the areas I hadn't had on my radar before that time was developing a meditation practice. Recognized for health and spiritual benefits, there are many forms and types of practices available. Neuroscience shows that meditation leads to positive changes in brain chemistry and function, and that this contributes to positive moods and behaviors. As my understanding of the benefits grew, and I recognized the incredibly powerful untamed mind that I was living with, I took a more committed path to working with meditation, particularly mind training. I do this by going on a retreat.


Retreat is a time for extensive and intensive study and meditation.  Retreat means to extract oneself from the distractions of daily life and focus only on the mind training and taming.  Retreat is not a vacation or a time to flop and space out.  Retreat involves a strict schedule of practice and study, time to engage without phones, computers, social engagements, and worry about making/spending money.  Retreat offers time to focus on what really matters.

I write about this in the hopes that you are consciously looking at where you want to grow, and are setting aside time, energy and the means, to make it happen. And you might consider trying mediation, it is recognized as a key component/skill in developing resilience, and was invaluable to me in times of uninvited change.

“See"  you in September. Cheers.

It's monday morning. You're bright eyed and bushy tailed. (Oh, no, that's the squirrel outside my window.) You're barely mobile, slowing shuffling every square inch of the sole of your shoes evenly on the ground...(extreme cooperation with gravity.) Monday...Monday....(think Mamas and Papas)..catchy tune, or Munday, Munday...( still 1/2 in Sunday, if you know what I mean). What's a person to do? 

Wherever you are, take note. Are you sporting a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset? Are things already predetermined, or are you willing to look at them in a fresh way, to grow and learn from whatever is coming up? This is a key component of living up to your potential. In her research, Carol Dwecke examines the fixed mindset and the growth mindsets, and looks at how they create different paradigms for creating success.

The fixed mindset is focused on proving the self. Situations are judged, will I succeed or fail? Efforts on focused on succeeding (and also avoiding failure.) The growth mindset shifts the idea of failures to learning opportunities. The basic belief is that through application and experience, you can cultivate qualities. 

It may sound simple and obvious to you, common sense so to speak. But when examined in everyday life, how many things are we held back from by our predetermined beliefs?  So as you go into this monday morning are you willing to experiment with the belief that your true potential is unknown, and a willingness to explore it? Pay attention today to how many judgments come up for you, about both yourself and others? Observe this week, and you may unexpectedly find some learning opportunities just waiting for you. 

Houdini lives in my house. More precisely, it might be an entire tribe of Houdinis. This creature (these creatures) has shown more brain and brawn than I have given them credit for in the past. And they have helped me cultivate persistence, a trait I have focused on developing. This isn’t the application I intended it to be applied to. Such is life.

Houdini is a mouse. Aptly named, by me of course, for its remarkable ability to elude capture in most types of live mousetraps. I had a tried and true brand I’d used for years. Last time it didn’t work, Houdini escaped by pushing out the cap in the back, and then took the cap with it so it couldn’t be used again. I resorted to another type of trap I had on hand. I know it would not be possible to escape this contraption. Unfortunately, so have all the mice in the history of my house. It looks like Alcatraz, without the good views. No mouse has ever entered it. Four years old, I finally tossed it out last week.

I found a new type of trap at the hardware store. Cute as a mouse, so to speak. The mice entered and left the trap several times leaving it shut to look like it had a captive. Alas, the mouse gets the cheese, but I didn’t get the mouse.

Finally, I’m back to the original trap. I’ve been feeding my mouse (mice) good cheese; in chunks that get them to the place the trap usually securely captures them. I’ve been able to relocate six back to nature, with only a few obvious escapes. I know I may be eluding myself, that I may be recycling the same family and feeding them well along the way. But today I feel good about following my values of live and let live, and I’m learning about persistence from an unlikely source. With the approach to the Houdini’s seemingly under control, I’ll work on persistence in the intended arena….back to my writing. Like Houdini, I've consistently eluded putting words on paper. Now, it's time to capture them.

A pause is time well spent. A breath brings you into the moment, a few more to step back and reflect on what has been and where you’re going. We’d like to think the path is well defined. When you look back at the past, it’s a time to acknowledge where you’ve been, what you’ve learned and appreciate what will never be again. As you look forward, no matter how well chartered, you know there will be surprises and unknowns. Still, you prepare for where you’d like to go and step into the actions that will move you forward, on a path that will only be traveled once by the unique you that you are.

As you pause, I suggest the following; look behind with an eye for what you did well, and for what you learned. Look forward with eyes wide open, and a sillliness (I meant willingness, but think I’ll leave it as is) to embrace whatever comes along. Find the smile on your face as you look at right where you are. Take a minute to connect with the inner joy your life is bringing you. Ah, the presents of presence! Now you’re in a good position to take the next step, (maybe a slightly different one than you would have otherwise) consciously appreciating todays gifts, with a eye to the future.