So, I enjoyed this recently by Brene Brown - The Power of Vulnerability. It really gets you thinking about what [...]]]> If you haven’t checked out TED for some intelligent inspiration and entertainment I cannot recommend TED.com enough. TED is full of 5-20 minute informative talks on a huge range of subjects from many inspiring people of today.

So, I enjoyed this recently by Brene Brown - The Power of Vulnerability. It really gets you thinking about what being truly courageous is all about.

And it’s not about being strong and brave and controlling everything – it might just be about letting people see who you really are…

So, watch this awesome TED talk by Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability and let us know what you think by leaving a comment below!

Another word used to mean the same thing is surrender. People say we should surrender to what is, stop resisting reality, let go of trying to control everything. It’s about moving from [...]]]> Letting go is something that coaches and spiritual teachers often talk about – but what does it mean? How can we actually do it? 

Another word used to mean the same thing is surrender. People say we should surrender to what is, stop resisting reality, let go of trying to control everything. It’s about moving from a space of fear – to one of love. But in this masculine patriarchal world that many of us live in – love is not taken seriously. What can ‘love’ have to do with business – and most importantly – successful business?

Well, I think love is the KEY to successful business. If you love your customers, if you love your staff, if you love your shareholders – how could you be unsuccessful?

Holding this kind of contrary viewpoint takes courage – it goes against what we are taught. And I believe that by letting go – we learn to love ourselves, to love what is and to love others without trying to fix them or their problems for them.

So, if you are one of my many readers who are “Type A” personalities – and like myself you need to LET GO more – you may like this poem written by Louise Hay herself. I was inspired when I received it in my email this morning (I’m a member of the Hay House Wisdom Community) and I hope it helps and inspires you too. Thanks Louise!

Letting Go

To “let go” does not mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for someone else.

To “let go” is not to cut myself off, it’s the realization I can’t control another.

To “let go” is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To “let go” is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To “let go” is not to try to change or blame another, it is to make the most of myself.

To “let go” is not to care for, but to care about.

To “let go” is not to fix, but to be supportive.

To “let go” is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.

To “let go” is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To “let go” is not to be protective, it is to permit another to face reality.

To “let go” is not to deny, but to accept.

To “let go” is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.

To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.

To “let go” is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.

To “let go” is to fear less and love more.

Our second article on Courage from Christina Sestan follows beautifully from her previous post on Fear. Read on!

Courage is the currency of growth and change. If you want to pursue a new goal or stimulate more personal development in your life, you can always use more courage in your bank.

We won’t journey far without courage. [...]]]>

Our second article on Courage from Christina Sestan follows beautifully from her previous post on Fear. Read on!

Courage is the currency of growth and change. If you want to pursue a new goal or stimulate more personal development in your life, you can always use more courage in your bank.

We won’t journey far without courage. We need it to change, to stand up for what we believe in, to push through our fears and to go for our dreams. It takes courage to pursue the life we passionately want to be living. Why are so many of us standing on the riverbank gazing longingly across at the other side? Maybe it’s because we’re still trying to find the courage to jump in.

Remember the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz? He tearfully acknowledges his cowardice and shame to Dorothy and the others, “Wouldn’t you feel degraded to be seen in the company of a cowardly lion? My life has been simply unbearable.” Life would be fulfilled, he thinks, “If I only had the nerve!” He joins the group destined for Emerald City, hoping that the great and powerful Oz will give him what he’s looking for.

But rather than receiving courage, the lion learns that he has possessed courage all along—it was simply a matter of perception. “As for you my fine friend,” the wizard says to him, “you are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate delusion that simply because you run away from danger, you have no courage. You’re confusing courage with wisdom.”

What the lion had spent his life searching for was his all along. Are we holding on to a limiting belief about our own lack of courage?

Ask a Courage Expert

Q: What is courage? What builds it and what prevents it?
A: Courage is the capacity to both experience fear and to carry on in the face of that fear (see Mark Twain quotation). Our fears often seem unceasing and insurmountable; courage is essential if we don’t want to stay stuck.

The root of courage varies. It may be born from survival through extraordinary circumstances – like war or disaster. Or it may emerge when there’s no burning building in sight. Some people describe their courageous responses as instinctive; they don’t stop to think. Other people believe their courage comes from a non-negotiable commitment to a value or belief – like freedom, equality or truth.

What is clear is that in order to draw on courage, we need to practice it. We need to face the challenges and adversity of our lives and place ourselves in situations where we have responsibility, some fear, and a need to extend ourselves.

Nothing will undermine courage more effectively than someone else bulldozing all hazards out of our path. Parents take note. Adversity and mistakes are essential for developing courage.

Ordinary Acts of Courage

We easily recognize courage when it takes form as heroic action: firefighters rush into a burning building, a lone protester blocks a column of tanks, a black woman refuses to move to the back of the bus.

Extraordinary acts of courage like these may be difficult to imagine in your own lives. But what about the everyday courage needed to live an authentic life? If burning buildings aren’t your thing, try some of these on for size:

1. Take a stand against the dominant thinking of your friends and family when your heart-felt beliefs differ from theirs.
2. Dare to forgive even when everyone around you believes you were wronged and are justified in your anger.
3. Take a moment of “quiet time” to ground and reflect on what is important even when your phone is ringing off the hook and everyone needs something from you RIGHT NOW!
4. Risk becoming a target of criticism by speaking up against racist or sexist jokes around the water cooler.

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.” Mark Twain

Article courtesy of the awesome Christina Sestan. (c) Citrus Coaching Solutions 2010. Please do not duplicate this article without the author’s permission.

I received this article recently from Christina Sestan – a fellow life coach – and thought it was great! So I’m sharing it here for you guys to benefit from too.

Have you flown into the US lately? Notice anything different? Perhaps a flight attendant poked her head into the lavatory to see what was taking [...]]]>

I received this article recently from Christina Sestan – a fellow life coach – and thought it was great! So I’m sharing it here for you guys to benefit from too.

Have you flown into the US lately? Notice anything different? Perhaps a flight attendant poked her head into the lavatory to see what was taking you so long. Or maybe you missed a connecting flight because the additional security pat-down in the boarding lounge delayed your departure 2 hours. Its even possible that the in-flight entertainment system was not available if it included maps showing the plane’s location over the US.

In the world of air security, things have changed dramatically once again. This comes on the heels of the thwarted terrorist attack on Christmas day aboard Northwest F#253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. It has now become even more time-consuming for travelers to anticipate and plan around the extra security measures that involve everything from high-tech body scanning machines to individual carry-on bag searches.

The threat of terrorism is clearly something to be taken seriously, but how do we know when we are going too far in trying to protect ourselves from threats that are perhaps less likely to occur than we are led to believe? How do we attempt to live a “normal” life and retain some modicum of sanity amidst the dizzying array of frightening news reports that are fed to us daily?

When you see an ABC News story about an Islamic online forum where extremists discuss how to attack Western targets using deadly biological agents onboard planes, do you think to yourself, “maybe I should try to cut back on my business travel?”

When you read a New York Times story about how the CIA bungled the intelligence they had about Mr. Abdulmutallab a month before the attempted bombing incident, do you decide to put off the family vacation to Disneyland?

Generalized fears, the kind not resulting from an immediate survival threat, work on our psyche in a powerful way making it exceedingly difficult to separate fact from fiction or opinion. Remember the H1N1 epidemic a few months back? To immunize or not to immunize. That was the very confusing question. Then there was the recession when we all thought about stashing our cash under our mattress. Unfortunately the dominance of fear-inducing reporting doesn’t appear to be losing momentum.

And then there are all the micro level fears we face every day. What if my daughter doesn’t pass grade 11? What if my business fails? What if that pain in my guts is something more serious?

Continued exposure to fear creates a heightened state of agitation and anxiety that runs in the background of everything we do. When we’re afraid, many of us have a tendency to engage in repetitive threads of thought where we go round and round trying to figure out how we can avoid the thing we’re afraid of. Negative self-talk, such as “why does this always happen to me?” can amp up our emotions, further distracting the mind from focusing on solutions to the problem at hand. The resulting state of mind is often referred to as “analysis paralysis” because we become stuck and unable to take action.

In the extreme, unchecked fears lead to poor health and destructive behaviours like overeating and drug or alcohol abuse. Our capacities for joy, peace and fulfillment are seriously impeded.

Despite its significant impact on our lives, fear is actually a pretty insubstantial thing. It is simply a projection on the future of something we don’t want to happen. It’s the ultimate “what if” game. FEAR is: False Evidence Appearing Real. Feeling fear is just part of the human experience and to try to do away with it is futile. However, taking action when we’re afraid only seems to lead to more fear. The most empowering stance we can take when it comes to managing fear is to take a step back from whatever is going on and realize we are afraid. Conscious awareness creates the space to choose a different response.

The reality is that we live in a culture where praying on human insecurity is the primary marketing strategy for industries selling everything from home security systems to cosmetic products. Fear grabs our attention more forcefully than any other advertising tactic. Reporting stories about terrorist attacks, job losses and exaggerated death tolls from swine flu also sell more newspapers and pull in more viewers for the evening news.

In order to protect ourselves and our health, it’s essential to adopt a simple process for dissipating fears before they take hold and begin to compromise our peace and fulfillment.

Here are a few simple steps for managing fear:

• Get out of your head. When fears are left to fester, they tend to grow deep roots and hang around for a while. Don’t worry alone. Share your concerns with someone else and brainstorm creative solutions together.
• Lose the habit of worrying in the present moment. Whenever you feel plagued by fears, note them down on a worry sheet and make a deal with yourself to worry about it later. Whether you come back to it or not is irrelevant. The point is, you strengthen your practice of shrugging off fears.
• Get accurate information. In our age of information, just about anyone can pose as an “expert” and offer up their own particular spin on an issue. If you’re not comfortable with what you’re hearing, researching the issue from several other perspectives can be empowering.
• Don’t over-feed your analytical mind. With the world at our fingertips, it’s easy to spend hours surfing the internet on anything that scares us. This can seem like a good idea – we’re just keeping ourselves informed. But on the flip side, endless research can also lead to analysis-paralysis. A good rule of thumb, limit your surfing to an hour and give your worries a break.
• Get real about the payoffs. Chronic worriers often admit that worrying makes them feel connected and involved, as though they’re doing something important and worthwhile. On the surface, it might even look like caring and is often seen as an integral part of loyalty. By consciously considering our motives, we reveal the flaws in this logic, and are more able to let go. 
• Acknowledge your limitations and let go. Learning to discern the difference between what you do and don’t have power over, can mean the difference between peace and exhaustion. Many wellness experts agree that letting go and leaning on some form of faith builds a healthier peace of mind. 

“I’ve seen many troubles in my time. Only half of them came true.”  Mark Twain

Article courtesy of the awesome Christina Sestan. (c) Citrus Coaching Solutions 2010. Please do not duplicate this article without the author’s permission.

So, I found this recently by Eve Ensler - Embrace Your Inner Girl. It’s a great fit with what I would love to [...]]]> If you ever need some intelligent inspiration or entertainment on your lunchbreak I cannot recommend TED.com enough. Mostly 20 minute informative talks on a huge range of subjects from many inspiring people of today.

So, I found this recently by Eve Ensler - Embrace Your Inner Girl. It’s a great fit with what I would love to achieve with RebelWomen: Strong, powerful, sensitive women – who aren’t afraid to base decisions and their lives on intuition and feelings and take this energy into the world!

I think we need more feminine energy in government, corporations, society, the world. We need more compassion, more long-term/far-sighted thinking and more seeing options and shades of grey. Both men AND women have been taught that our feelings and compassion are weak, whereas it’s precisely these qualities that empower us to be PASSIONATE, STRONG and SUCCESSFUL…

So, watch this TED talk by Eve Ensler – famous for her Vagina Monologues Embrace Your Inner Girl and let us know what you think by leaving a comment below!

PS. I wonder what Ms Ensler would think of the “Muff Maintenance Products” I posted about recently…