Tag: healing

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Tips to Relax & Regroup

Hello Beautiful Soul.

Are you one of those people who can’t seem to stop “doing?”

I have yet to meet anyone who hasn’t felt overwhelmed from time to time. Since it tends to feel uncomfortable, if not downright unpleasant, we tend to view it as negative and as a weakness. We don’t dare to admit we are overwhelmed or dare to talk about it, which can leave us feeling isolated and alone, further exacerbating the feeling. We often deny we are overwhelmed because we do not know how to stop the frenetic behavior that leads to this feeling. So we do nothing. Our employers, colleagues or friends often do not help support us to stop overworking.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Primarily, this syndrome occurs in our work life but it can carry over to our personal and family life, and it frequently does. Focusing on projects often begins with good intentions but we can quickly and easily be overwhelmed if we do not have a plan to minimize and balance our work. Getting the project finalized for your team, writing the copy for your website, designing the new sales brochure or completing the 90-day marketing plan are extremely important – but having a balanced, healthy life is equally important.

This stressful pattern is telling you to change your life! Once you get this message, it is easier to identify the steps you need to take to shift out of the behavior quickly.

Following are helpful strategies gleaned from my personal experience and from my work with co-workers and clients who are burned out, growing cranky, frustrated and even depressed. These strategies immediately diminish feelings of being overwhelmed so you can refocus and make some work/life balance decisions.

  1. Stop what you are doing for a few minutes and take a break. Go for a short walk, sit outside under a tree, meditate, breathe deeply, go to a movie, call a friend to have coffee and share what is going on.
  1. Get a piece of paper and make two columns. In one column, list urgent things you need to do this week. In the other column, list those projects that you can delegate, hire or barter to be done.
  1. Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. Unsubscribe to unnecessary e-mail, organize your desk and office to decrease clutter, stop attending meetings, get off committees and decrease volunteering at fundraisers unless you have a total passion for the organization and the cause.
  2. Do not spend time with people whom you do not like. Assess your friends and business colleagues. Do they support and honor who you are? If they are negative and don’t share your vision for your dreams, don’t spend another minute with them. In a scenario where you can’t avoid the person (school, work) you must keep your interactions with the person to a minimum and practice stellar communication. Be cordial and focus on the task that needs to be completed, rather than the quarrel with your peer.
  1. Decide what is most important in your life. If you want a balanced life, you will have to make changes in your life to allow this to happen. That takes some time and planning but it will be well worth the improvement in your life!
  1. Take an action step today to make change in your life! Call a friend who will support you, take a class to get organized, or work with a coach who will support and motivate you to have a more balanced life.

Beautiful souls, that’s all I have for now. I hope this helped you. Let me know what you think. What was your key takeaway? Leave a Comment and let me know!

Until Next Time Beautiful Souls, keep Glowing…

Creating the Best Year of Your Life!

Self-Reflect Your Way to a Glow-Up

Hello Beautiful Souls!

I am so excited about this blog! This is something that I stumbled upon in my archives. (Oh yeah, I have loads of content for all my readers and followers, so hold on to your hats!!) And be sure to check out my website www.glowwithmimi.com for ebooks on financial and life coaching topics.

Oh! Where was I? Yes, Creating the best year of your life!

At the end of each year, and on their birthdays, many people take time to reflect and look ahead. If you’re one of these people, or if you would like to start getting the benefits from a little self-reflection, I have some great questions for you.

These questions can be looked at once a year, once a month or whenever you’re looking for some direction in your life. I invite you to take a good hard look at your life more than once a year. You’ll get a lot more out of your life if you’re more conscious about what you’re creating.

These questions have been designed to help you to take time to complete the year and to formulate the new year from a clean slate. By working on the following questions, you will complete this year powerfully so you can have the room to build a new “me” for the new year.

Looking at this past year:

1. What do I want to be acknowledged for?

2. What did I accomplish?

3. What did I want to accomplish that I did not accomplish? (Do I still want to do this?)

4. What did I say I would do that I didn’t do? (Do I still want to do this?)

5. Who do I need to be in communication with? 5a. Who do I need to cease communication with?

6. What were my biggest disappointments? 6a. Can those disappointments be avoided moving forward?

7. What did I learn? – List 3 lessons which will make the most difference if you remember them this year?

(See them as guidelines for next year).

Changing patterns:

1. How do you limit yourself and how can you transform these actions to be powerful?

2. What do you say to yourself to explain your failures? (These false beliefs are your limiting paradigm).

3. List your limiting paradigm.

4. List your new paradigm which must be personal, positive, present tense, powerfully and simply stated, pointing to an exciting future.

5. Read your new paradigm out loud when you awake and before going to sleep each day. Teach your subconscious that this is your paradigm.

Looking ahead:

1. What are your personal values? What is most important to you in your life? What drives you?

2. What roles do you play in your life? Rate each role on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most important.

3. Where is your life out of balance? If you could put one problem behind you, once and for all, what would it be?

4. Which role is your major focus for next year? (In what role do you want a breakthrough performance? If you could put a check mark by one of these roles at the end of next year showing, showing that you felt good about how you are playing that role, which one would it be?)

5. What are your goals for each role?

The way that this works is that for at least a week or two you ask yourself the above questions. I write them down and do it in writing several different times. Then after doing that for all of the above questions you answer one final question:

What do I want to accomplish and who do I want to be in the coming year?

Wow! Awesome right? Write these questions down and answer them honestly. Not for anyone else, but for you. If you do this exercise and apply what you’ve written, you are well on your way to Creating the Best Year of Your Life!

Until Next Time Beautiful Souls, keep Glowing…

Coaching Blog: Creating Goals with an Action Plan!

Hello Beautiful Souls!

We all know how important goal setting is, but if we set goals without an action plan our efforts are futile and nothing more than elaborate hopes. If you have ever set goals before, but failed to achieve them, it may have been because you did not create a specific plan of action to accomplish those goals.

Taking the time to set goals is only part of the process of goal setting, and many people often overlook the other part, creating a plan!

Without a plan your goals remain incomplete. It’s like having a destination without having a map. Your goals tell you where you want to go in life, and your plan tells you how to get there.

A goal plan is simply a list of scheduled activities that you will do sometime in the future. These may include activities done over a series of days, weeks, months or even years depending on the type of goal you set for yourself.

Your plan does not have to be completed perfectly the first time. Usually, you will find that your first attempt at creating a goal plan will be vague and incomplete. Don’t worry this is ok. Plans should be flexible and so are likely to be constantly updated as you move towards completing your primary goal.

In your plan you should create a series of steps that you think you need in order to accomplish that goal. Think of it like baking a cake. Your ultimate goal is to make a cake (and eat it!), but the ingredients and the things you do with those ingredients are your plan. Once you complete the plan, you complete your goal.

Creating a goal plan is frequently overlooked, and many people discipline themselves to write their goals every day but create no plan! So, make sure you take the time to decide where you want to go (your goals) and then create a plan (your map) that will tell you how to get there!

In addition to your goal plan, it is also a good idea to use visualization to help clarify in your mind exactly what you want to achieve. This can simply involve thinking about your goals and imaging them as completed when you go to bed. You can do this for about 10 minutes (or longer if you want) before you fall to sleep, and you will be surprised at what a difference it makes in achieving your goals. One of the main reasons visualization before sleep is so effective, is that it provides easy access to the subconscious mind. Thereby allowing you to program your goals into your mind, increasing the likelihood you will accomplish them.

Know that your dreams aren’t just silly hopes. They are possible, your goals are attainable or else you wouldn’t have the desire for them. You are absolutely capable of living the life you’ve always dreamed of. All you have to do is everything you can to make it happen. Believe, set goals, create a plan or action, believe some more, try and fail, believe some more, and there you are.

You’ve got this!

Until Next Time, Beautiful Souls

Mimi Loves You!

Coaching Blog:

Out of The Quicksand

Hello Beautiful Souls!

I wanted to talk to you a bit about some things that I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ve been really busy over the last few weeks. I’ve been making it a point to work hard, maximize my time, and ‘apply pressure’ and sometimes, quite frankly I feel like the only one feeling the pressure is me. I get locked in. I become overly focused, and so intense that I wear myself down. Sometimes I feel stuck. Almost as if I’m caught in quicksand. If you sometimes feel as though you’re caught in life’s quicksand, you have a lot of company. We work, we struggle, we try to do everything we possibly can to move on to a higher level of well-being but it seems like the harder we work, the more stuck we get. If you’re approaching a Category 5 frustration level, you might want to give this a try…

Switch your focus from that really nice – but frustrated – person in the mirror to another beautiful soul who inhabits this good earth.

Self-love and self-care is a must, and focus is absolutely necessary. We need to set goals, lay out plans and then take action on those plans to make progress toward our goals. We need to demonstrate personal financial responsibility, plan for retirement and frequently cover our backsides so that they don’t get chewed off by one or more of life’s rodents.

However, what frequently happens is that we become so over-focused on ourselves and our own personal well-being that we wind up building huge walls. We lose the ability – or even desire – to see the bigger picture and the possibilities that life presents to us. We become so focused on “me” that we sometimes begin scrutinizing even the most insignificant events to determine their potential impact on our personal lives. We become victims to ourselves. And to be real honest about it, we sometimes just become so busy being busy that we lose track of where we thought we wanted our lives to wind up in the first place.

One possible solution as I mentioned earlier is to change our focus from “me” to “we”. From being the receiver to being the giver. And no, I’m not even implying that this requires any major change in the things we do every day. It may eventually lead to that but it’s not a critical part of the initial process.

Here’s what I mean. No matter what you do to earn a living or keep the household moving in a logical direction, somewhere down the line a real person will probably benefit from what you do. Think about it. The work we do is not just to stuff computer systems full of information or help machines work better. It’s not just to take people’s money so we’ll have a paycheck at the end of the week. It’s not just filling out forms, nailing pieces of boards together, assembling electronic devices, hauling packages, going to meetings, etc. Somewhere, sometime (and maybe immediately) another human being will likely be positively affected by what you do.

And yes, if you’re paying attention, you’ve noticed that I’ve used a couple of cop-out words in the preceding paragraph – “likely” and “probably”. I had to do that because in the real world there are some individuals whose money-making efforts are focused mainly on “non-beneficial” activities. That’s just the way the world is.

For the rest of us however, our activities and work generally reflect a more positive endeavor. That leads us back to the original suggestion. If you are caught in the quicksand, take a few minutes to really think about the people – the individuals who will be better off, healthier or happier because of what you do, and because of who you are. Think about how you are giving of your time and talents so that others will profit in some way from your efforts.

Do you see what can happen here? When we change our focus from “me” to “we”, our work – the things we do every day – starts taking on a new significance. We become givers. Our life is beautiful and meaningful. We know that what we do is truly important to someone else. That’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?

If you’re having to really stretch your imagination to see at least one other person benefiting from the things you do and it’s really not fitting together, you might consider looking into a different occupation – or at least a different way to spend your free time. There are a bunch of people who could really benefit from your talents. Think about what you do well – what you enjoy doing that could help others have a better life. Then go do it. You’ll be out of the quicksand before you know it.

Until Next Time, Beautiful Souls

Breaking Agreements

Hello Beautiful Souls!

I was saying my affirmations early one morning (I couldn’t sleep) and I came across one of the affirmations that I’d created based on the book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It is a great book. If you haven’t read it, I think you should.

The affirmation that I was referring to is ‘I break all agreements that do not resonate with my calling or soul purpose.’ An agreement is a limiting belief that you have accepted as the truth. These agreements in many cases, prevent us from accomplishing our dreams and deepest desires. (For Example: I really want to be a singer, but I only have a one in a billion chance.)

An agreement can be made by accepting negative thoughts or statements as the truth. They could be your own negative thoughts based on unpleasurable experiences, or statements made by others. When these agreements are made, they continue to work against us subconsciously until they are broken. And as we go through life we pick up more and more agreements. All of these agreements that we collect as we go through life- from parents, teachers, coaches, classmates, relatives, churches, etc. The culmination of agreements over time can be quite paralyzing. If you’d like to break these agreements, follow these steps now!

Identify The Agreement

Whether the agreement is ‘I’ve always been clumsy’ because you remember falling down when you were four, or ‘you’ve never been as smart as the other kids’ from teachers or parents, this agreement can be broken. Ask yourself what limiting beliefs or agreements have your made that limit your success or hinder your happiness.

Once you’ve identified the agreement (or agreements) that you’ve accepted, go back in your mind to the route of it all. Get as close as you can to the origin of this feeling or agreement. Once you’ve found the earliest memory of this agreement, go to the next step.

Break it Down

When breaking down an agreement, be as thorough and as honest as you can.

Ask yourself questions like:

*Is there any truth to this agreement? (Per our example) Are you really clumsy? Or were you distracted by something that caused you to lose your balance and fall?

*Is this agreement still relevant? Sometimes we carry complexes and agreements that we created during childhood. (For example: developing a fear of public speaking because you had a lisp when you were eight years old.)

In most cases, the agreement is untrue. In the cases where there is truth to the agreement, there is surely a solution to it. Break down the situation in your mind and realize that there is always room for growth and you are not bound by your past or by the beliefs of others.

If you asked yourself the above questions, and feel that there may be some validity to the agreements that you wish to break, ask yourself this question:

Can the situation be remedied?

Is it possible that you could be more careful in the future and thus, ‘not be clumsy’ anymore? Look to see if there are classes that you can take, or research that you could do to educate yourself about the limiting belief/agreement that you’ve made.

Journal and Affirm

Once you’ve identified the agreement and applied the applicable steps, journal about it. Write as much as you need to about the agreement. What it is, how it makes you feel, whether or not it’s valid, and the steps that you are taking to improve yourself.

Break the Agreement by saying aloud: “I break the agreement of____________________________ . This no longer has any influence over my life.” Say the affirmation as often as you need, so that you believe it and program your mind to release that harmful belief.

You can also research or create affirmations to encourage new agreements that you’d like to place in your life instead.

Never underestimate the power of your mind! You can do anything you set your mind to do!

Until Next Time, Beautiful Souls

Steps To Self Healing

Hello Beautiful Souls!

I have made some new strides and discoveries on my healing journey recently and wanted to share them with you. So, let’s cut through the fluff and get right to it, shall we?

Forgive Yourself

The first step on the healing journey is to forgive yourself. Realize that the things that you didn’t know or couldn’t control are not your fault and it’s unfair to you to continue to carry that emotional weight. Do not wait for others to apologize. Waiting for an apology only hinders the healing process, and they may never do so. You must move forward with or without an apology. Bad energy and emotional distress, when held long enough can manifest into physical ailments or psychological disorders. This, of course makes the healing process longer and more arduous.

Ask Yourself

Take a moment to focus on what exactly you want out of life moving forward. What will you do to make future situations more to your liking? Is the situation that caused you pain something that you can prevent or avoid moving forward? If not, is there a different way to handle the situation so that it isn’t damaging to you if it reoccurs? Another important question to ask yourself is: Is there a lesson that can be learned from the painful situation? Learning experiences often soften the blow of trauma and it would be beneficial to turn the pain into purpose.

Attention to Yourself

The only person that you can control in a situation is you. Pay attention to the way people, environments, and situations make you feel. If you feel like something is off- it probably is. No one else has to agree with you or feel what you feel. Pay attention to yourself, obey your intuition and remove yourself from the situation if that’s what you need to do. Monitoring your emotions is also a good way to self-heal because it places you in the position to do damage control early on and process negative emotions as they happen. This makes self-healing much easier and more efficient.

Mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness can improve our thinking and raise our level of understanding. There are several ways to do this, by focusing on your breathing in a quiet place. This method most definitely works. I have done it at work many times when I didn’t have time to stop and meditate. Stop for a moment and take three deep breaths. I find that a five count works well. (Inhale: one, two, three, four, five. Exhale: one, two, three, four, five. Repeat)

My favorite way to practice mindfulness is meditation. I am personally a huge fan of meditation because it gives me a sense of calm when I feel sad, hurt, frustrated, or any other negative feelings and energies. Meditation clears the noise out of my head and I am able to think from a more elevated point of view.

In the near future, I will be posting guided meditations to assist with stress and anxiety, pain management, sleep, and a host of other topics. This will be available to my Patrons only, so subscribe if you’d like access to that!

Alone Time

Spending some time alone can bring joy and healing. Do something that you enjoy. It will ease your mind and raise your vibration considerably. My self-healing process involves writing, painting, listening to music, and/or dancing. Whatever takes you to a positive place- do that!

What are your methods of self-healing? I’d really like to know!

Until Next Time, Beautiful Souls

Confidence Boost Part 2

Hello Beautiful Souls!

I know that I already did a blog on confidence, but since confidence is one of the pillars of self-love (and an area that I struggled in immensely) I thought I’d share a few more tips with you. These tips, along with the tips from the previous confidence boosting blog have helped me rebuild my confidence after my experience with narcissistic abuse and codependency. For best results, implement as many of these tips as you can into your everyday life.

Don’t Worry about what Others Think

This step is often over complicated by societal norms, expectations, and agreements that we’ve made- whether knowingly or unknowingly- throughout our lives. But we must get out of our heads, get out of our own way, remove those constructs and do what’s best for us no matter what people think of our actions.

Always Consider:

That a person’s opinions are solely based on their own perceptions and understanding.

That you are valid with or without the positive opinions or support of others.

That this is your life, so:

Be Fearless

You are a unique being and this is a unique experience. You will only do this once. Each person on earth, whether they are aware of it or not, is on a mission for personal happiness and fulfillment. You are absolutely deserving of happiness; in fact, it is your right to be happy in this life. True happiness can only be achieved when you do the things that bring you joy. You become fearless when you do the things that please you without fear of judgment and open up to change and opportunities that help you grow and elevate.

Be Yourself

What better way to be confident is there than being yourself? A lot of discontent is caused and further exacerbated by people being who other people want them to be rather than who they really are. When you free yourself from the expectations of others and be yourself your happiness will skyrocket! But who are you really? To discover your true self, you will need to do some honest self-evaluation and reflection. Spend some time alone, get to know yourself inside and out. This is a sure way to know, understand, and love yourself authentically. Once you find the real you- you wouldn’t want to be anyone else!

Monitor Your Progress

Take the process one day at a time and be gentle with yourself when you fall short of your expectations. Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Years of programming is not likely to fall away in a week or two. This process is not to be rushed. It takes time and consistent effort. Be aware of your emotions, energy shifts that you may feel, and things that trigger you. Trust yourself and do not ignore your intuition. These feelings work as a signal light to let you know that something needs to be fixed or adjusted. And don’t be afraid to call in reinforcements! Statistically, people are much more likely to complete a task when they create a plan or have an accountability partner.

I really help that these tips do you some good. I apply them to my life and they are doing great things for my confidence.

Until Next Time Beautiful Souls!

9 Ways to Fight Fear!

Does Fear get in your way?

Hello Beautiful Souls! Today, I’d like to talk about fear.

Fear gets to the best of us, whether it is fear of failure, fear of success or even fear of fear. All of us have experienced fear at some point in our lives and it can be a real stumbling block that holds us back from being truly successful.

A beautiful life is on the other side of our fears. So, let’s step out of our comfort zone, face our fears and thrive! There are several ways to overcome fear, here are my top 9:

1. Separate Reality from Perception

Ask yourself what is really going on, locate the facts and place them over your feelings. Sometimes we form an unfavorable point of view in our minds based on past events and accept them as facts. Remember that just because something happened before, doesn’t mean that it will happen that same way again.

2. Identify the Trigger

Figure out what it is in a situation that triggers you. Learning to identify it will help you learn to combat it. (This is where self-evaluation is key.)

3. Know where Fear lives in your Body

A lot of times, fear takes over physically. It affects different people different ways. Identify if/how it affects your physical body and do the work to take care of your body. Ex: if you hold stress in your back, you can learn stretches, foam rolling, etc. to avoid the pain.

4. Practice Gratitude

Everyday, list out 1-3 things you are thankful for. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is, gratitude helps shift the mind into a positive light, which overtime, overcomes fear.

5. Listen to Your Inner Voice

Monitor your inner conversations. If you wouldn’t say it to a friend, don’t say it to yourself. Speak positively to yourself and remind yourself of your strengths.

6. Create a New Association

Remind yourself that the feeling and the moment will pass. Focus on the positive outcome of the situation, rather than the scary inbetween.

7. Look at the Glass as Half Full

Perception is a very powerful thing, and how you feel about your situation dictates how you respond. So think positively and you’ll give yourself a much better chance of success. This won’t happen overnight; practice with just one thought. What is one recurring negative/fearful thought you have? Work on reversing this one thought. Overtime, this will become a habit.

8. Practice Breathing Techniques

Breathing helps center your body. You can do a grounding exercise, or even just take 5 deep, long breaths at any point to calm and center yourself. It is best to start your  day with this, but feel free to practice all day long.

9. Create a Safe Space

When you feel safe and secure, there is no room for fear. Find somewhere safe you can retreat to when ill feelings begin- whether this is a real place such as your bedroom, or a place in your mind such as the beach. This sense of comfort will soothe you and allow you to face your fear.

Please keep in mind, these are just 9 strategies, not everything works for everyone. But this is a place to start. Start implementing these techniques into your life and don’t let fear hold you back from reaching your goals and your highest potential this year!

Until Next Time, Beautiful Souls