Stop putting limitations on your life

There is this sneaky game we play with the Universe called manifesting. And believe it or not, like it or not, you are a powerful manifestor! Everything you believe, think, say and do is manifesting something in your life. Are you paying attention to what you are creating?

If your life is filled with things you don't like or don't want, it's time to pay attention. Because that means you are inadvertently creating things that work against you rather than for you. You will know this is true for you if it feels like no matter what you do, you just can't get a break. Things just don't seem to go your way.

It's an easy trap to fall into because we don't do it consciously. So it feels like it just happens. But this is untrue. We know from science that what we think becomes our reality. And we can change reality by changing our thoughts.

When we change our thoughts, we change our focus. When we change our focus, we change what we feed with our energy. When we change what we feed with our energy, we change what we create. Sound simple?

It really is simple...but it's not so easy to do because so much of our lives are run on "auto pilot." We have billions of thoughts stashed in our sub- and un- conscious minds that drive our thoughts, words and actions without us ever knowing it. All we see are their consequences. And not all of them are pleasant.

COST VS. INVESTMENT

Here is a simple example of imposing limitation in your life. It's something I hear often: "How much does it cost?" "I can't afford that." "I don't have the money." "I'm broke." etc.

First of all, there is a big difference between a cost and an investment. Calling something a cost when there is a huge return for you personally is wrong. I do not see an investment in something that serves you in amazing ways as a cost and neither should you; it is a gain! An investment in your wholeness, happiness and fulfillment, in something that serves your life in  powerful and positive ways is always a gain.

THE INFINITE ABUNDANCE OF THE UNIVERSE

Second, it is limiting. As soon as you say things like It costs too much or I can't afford that or I don't have the money, you set limits to your level of abundance. You are acting as though there is a limit when there is not. This Universe is infinitely abundant. There is no scarcity here and no one is excluded from the abundance available. But you must stop putting limitations on your connection to it; and that starts at the level of your thoughts and words. Otherwise, all you will continue to see reflected back to you in reality is the lack and scarcity held in your thoughts, words and actions.

BUILDING PROSPERITY

Third, this is not to say you should be careless or thoughtless with your resources. No, quite the opposite. Of course it is important to hold high awareness around how you use the resources you have. But it serves best to put as much focus on building your resources as you do on not being careless with the ones you have. To build your prosperity, you must open to receive more than you can imagine and from sources you can't imagine. Otherwise, the picture will never change. Opening to the infinite possibilities of the Universe is what creates true resourcefulness.

MONEY AS ENERGY

Fourth, what is really happening when you invest in yourself? Money is nothing more than energy. And beyond that, it is a symbol of love. When clients sign up for my After A Breakup BOOTCAMP, for instance, they exchange their money for my guidance to help them reclaim their happiness and wholeness. They show themselves love by investing money in themselves, and I show them love with my guidance. So money becomes an exchange of love energy for their empowerment. 

ASK AND THE UNIVERSE ANSWERS

Fifth, this exchange of love energy is very important and here is why. It gives the Universe a clear message of what you want. When you exchange money (love energy) for something that serves your highest good, you tell the Universe, Yes! This is what I want! There is no guessing, no hesitation, no confusion; you've put your focus on it and your energy into it so the Universe goes, Ah, that is what she wants! And then it conspires with you to make it happen to your empowerment. But if you go into a dance of I can't afford that, it's too much, I don't have it, I can't... the Universe goes, Hmmm, does she really want it? Maybe not. And nothing aligns to help you get it.

SYNERGY OF A GROUP

Sixth, the energy that flows between two or more people working toward a goal is powerful! It's the old spiritual teaching, when two or more are gathered in my name. There is a synergistic flow that happens, like an upward spiraling of the energy that amplifies and elevates the experience for everyone. And having a mentor or guide on your side helps you reach your goal more easily and successfully. In the case of my BOOTCAMP, for example, I become your personal trainer to inspire you when you feel frustrated, encourage you when you want to give up, guide you when you don't know how, steady you when you wobble, and get you back on track should you stumble.

So all this is to say again, pay attention to what you are creating in your life. Stop imposing limiting beliefs! And get help if you feel unable to create what you want. Because it is there for you; you just have to learn how to access and connect with it.

Love Your Self Enough To Walk Away

If you have never had someone you love turn on you, consider yourself lucky. And quite rare. Unfortunately, the people we trust to love us the most are often the ones who hurt us the most. That is because we have the most to lose in relation to them.

When we love someone and they love us too, we want to believe we are safe with them because we all need a safe haven to rest into. Life can be tough and dangerous. If we can't trust the people we love and who love us, who can we trust?

LEARNING ABOUT LOVE

Our families give us our first experiences of loving. By virtue of being family, we love them and they love us. We can trust them; or we'd like to think so, anyway. We're blood. They would never turn their backs on us...right? We want to believe they will stand behind us no matter what, and especially through the challenges of our lives.

But family dynamics are a powerful thing. Over the course of a lifetime, we form unconscious roles and patterns with them that are deeply entrenched in our relationships. And without even realizing it, we work hard to keep those roles in place so we know how and where we fit in to the picture.

In fact, we are so invested in fitting in that many will turn on each other to ensure they still do. I have witnessed family members hurting each other over things like attention, acceptance, power, love and money. I have seen them lie, steal, manipulate, stab each other in the back, gossip about each other, call each other despicable names, hit, and even sue each other. Perhaps you have experienced one or more of these in your own family.

THE WOUND OF BEING DENIED

But there is one thing a family can do that shakes us to our core, and that is to not believe us when we tell the truth. There is something deeply wounding about that - the act of being denied our truth by our own family. It is natural to feel betrayed, rejected, or dismissed any time this happens, but especially when it happens with family. We feel unseen, unheard, disrespected, and disempowered. We get defensive because our authenticity and truth - who we are - is rejected. 

Ultimately, people believe what they want to believe, and they have personal (often sub or unconscious) reasons for doing so. But when it is our own family who rejects us - our blood, our safe haven - it can seem as though we have nowhere to go and no one in the world we can trust. This can leave us with a deep emotional wound, feeling alone, hurt, uncertain, anxious, betrayed, and afraid to trust our selves and others.

WHY WE STAY

Sometimes we stay in dysfunctional or toxic relationships well past the point of them being anything close to healthy or safe for us - especially with family and if our earlier relationships with them were loving - because we cling to the hope that it will change. We see the potential of its restoration and we get hooked by that potential. We want to believe it can and will change back to being supportive, respectful, and loving. And we may spend years in suffering waiting for that change to happen.

Other times we stay because the situation feels familiar, even if the relationship is dysfunctional or toxic. We grew up with it; we have enough experience to anticipate its rhythms and know what to do. If we walk away, we have no idea what will be there for us; but if we stay, we do. And some part of us feels safer with the familiar than the unknown.

Still other times we stay because we do not believe we deserve anything more; we do not feel worthy of authentic love. Most of us do not even know what authentic love is. Our culture is riddled with examples of inauthentic love and toxic relating. In my women's facebook group, After A Breakup: Finding Peace and Power, I hear story after story of women dealing with the aftermath of an abusive relationship. Many women struggle to leave it behind even when their life is in danger!

This struggle within intimate relationships points to a lack of self-worth that comes from a deep inner wound. And that wound typically starts in our family and then gets played out in future relationships. If we do not learn to accept, respect or value our selves, we do not own self-worth. And without self-worth, we do not authentically love ourselves. And if we do not authentically love ourselves, we cannot give and receive authentic love with anyone else.

WHEN TO LEAVE

Sometimes our family's behavior becomes so toxic that we must walk away from them in order to preserve ourselves. It is never an easy decision to leave those we love, and want so badly to love us in return. We want to believe that our family would never turn their backs on us. Yet if we do not walk away from a toxic situation, we are turning our backs on ourselves. And that is never a good idea! We must love ourselves best, before we can truly experience authentic loving with anyone else.

It breaks my heart, how those we love the most are the ones capable of hurting us the most. Unfortunately, it happens more often than any of us want to believe. And when it happens, it can be a challenge to get the clarity needed to know what to do about it...especially when it is our own family - our safe haven.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

You cannot make others believe you or even see things your way. But you can maintain your integrity despite your family's behavior. You can take the high road and disengage from their power games. And you can stand solidly in your truth, knowing it inside, no matter what anyone else says. Ultimately, your truth is between you and a Higher Power anyway. And true redemption comes from within.

As a child you have little, if any, influence over the dynamics of your family. But as an adult, you can empower your self around them. There are many ways to do so, and it is important to find one that feels best for you. This might include:

• having a difficult, straight-forward conversation with a family member; 
• calling a family meeting with everyone involved; 
• continuing to observe in silence for clarification; 
• reaching out to several family members for perspective; 
• writing letters to one or more family members;
• setting clear boundaries with one or more family members; or 
• letting one or more family members go from your life

If you do nothing to free your self from dysfunctional or toxic family relating, you walk a long and painful plank to desolation. Your body, mind and spirit suffer. You become diminished in your sense of self-worth and value. Your capacity to trust your self and others fades. And your heart closes, putting authentic love out of reach. 

There is no good reason to tolerate relationships that disregard and hurt you, especially within your own family. 

• It is not healthy. 
• It does not provide security. 
• It is not all you deserve. 
• You cannot change or fix it alone. 
• They are not the only ones who will "love" or be there for you.
• And it does not serve you to stay. 

To believe otherwise is error thinking.

If your family or someone you love has rejected your truth, if they are disrespecting and disregarding you, or otherwise hurting you, find the courage to take action on your behalf. It may resolve more easily than you imagine. Or you may find that walking away from them is necessary to preserve your self and your integrity. 

Distancing your self from your family or other hurtful people in your life does not have to mean you no longer love them; and it does not have to be forever. But if your relationship with them is unhealthy, dysfunctional, abusive or toxic, it may serve you to leave them for now. Because staying in such a relationship will only continue to diminish you. And nothing loving ever comes of that. ❤

How to Make 2018 an Amazing Year for Yourself (and the rest of us!)

Listen to your heart. What does it tell you?

Are you happy inside? Loving the life you have? So full that you overflow with joy? Living low-stress day to day?

If your answer is "Yes," congratulations! You are on a powerful path of keeping your courage high and your heart open. And by doing so, you serve the vibration of the planet in a positive way. Thank you!

And if your answer is "No," why not? What stops you? So many things can. Is it depression? Scarcity? Fear? Doubt? I can promise you that whatever it is lies deep within your psyche; you may not even know it's there. Because if you did, why wouldn't you change it?

I don't know anyone who wants to live out their lives in depression, scarcity, fear, doubt, or whatever else plagues them. But something stops them from taking steps to change their lives and break free of their pain. Usually, at the root of being stuck is fear. 

I speak to many people who are on a path of evolution right now. There seems to be a massive awakening taking place, meaning that many people are gaining a deep understanding of their place in this reality, and they feel inspired to elevate the vibration we share. These folks are ready to do whatever it takes to change their experiences from painful to powerful because they recognize the value of themselves and their lives. And they recognize that by raising their personal frequency, they participate in raising the frequency of the entire planet, which benefits everyone. This is BIG! 

I also talk to many people who are stuck in a low frequency, a low vibration. Rather than choosing to uplift and evolve their lives, they are stuck in stories of depression, scarcity, fear, doubt, or whatever else their mind concocts. When I speak to these folks, they are angry, closed, resistive, and in attack mode. Who wouldn't be? 

Believing we live in a Universe that diminishes us puts us on a hampster wheel of feeling defensive, forcing us to live in a constant mode of "fight, flight, freeze, or join." We either attack, leave, numb, or find others to commiserate with, none of which serves us in breaking free of our pain. And it certainly does nothing to elevate the Planetary frequency we all share.

The deal is - we get more of what we focus on, meaning that what we give our attention to, we feed our energy to and it grows in our lives. It doesn't matter if we want it or not, or if it's positive or negative. It's what our attention is on and our energy is feeding, so it grows. The Universe doesn't sense dualities like positive or negative, want or don't want. It senses what we are feeding with our attention and energy, and assumes we want more of that.

If our attention and energy are focused on everything we don't like or want, our life sucks because we get trapped in a low frequency. We spin in useless patterns that consume our energy. We never seem to get what we want. And we certainly can't catch a break or get ahead. Instead, we seem to get more and more of what we don't want. 

Stuck in this low frequency, we can spend our entire lives feeling miserable and looking for our next persecutor, because of course we believe there is one. There is always someone to blame for our pain either instead of or in addition to ourselves. Or we turn someone into our hero who doesn't need to be. Or we judge and torment others to try and feel better ourselves. 

But mostly, we default into a pattern of neglecting or rejecting our true selves, and we end up miserable and suffering inside. Which then shows outside in the content of our lives.

The more stuck we feel, the more stuck we get, until pretty soon we don't know any other way to be except stuck. And we can't imagine being anything else. Even when we encounter people who broke free,  who offer us something different or model for us a higher vibration, we ignore the offer or excuse away their happiness as luck or privilege or even pillage...something unavailable to us for whatever our reasons.

Pity. It doesn't have to be that way. We can raise our frequency and shift our vibration to transform the content of our lives. It really is quite simple. But we imagine it is going to be too difficult or painful or terrible or impossible, so many of us don't even try. Ever. 

We convince ourselves that we are special but not in a good way; in a way that says we cannot have what we want for whatever our reasons. And we believe that happiness is out of our reach. So we spend our time dragging down everyone else's frequency to match ours instead of lifting ours up to match theirs.

Notice that I described the transformation process as simple rather than easy. It is simple; it is not necessarily easy. But I guarantee it is easier than spending your entire life in misery! And a heck of a lot less scary than we imagine it might be. The process of transforming our lives comes down to making a commitment to ourselves to do so, mustering the courage to face the unknown, and then taking a step at a time through whatever we encounter until we reach the other side. Simple, right? But not necessarily easy.

So how do we jump off that hampster wheel of low frequency? To answer that question, we must understand how we get stuck on it in the first place.

For one, we each develop an unconscious - or hidden - inner guidance system during childhood that we never notice. Like a secret GPS that directs our thoughts and choices. But this hidden guidance system tends to be based on information that is faulty and misleading. Following it, we end up where we never meant to go, feeling alone, hurt, and confused, having little idea what happened or how we got there.

For another, if we don't value ourselves enough, we will most likely not be willing to invest in ourselves to change our frequency. Because we won't feel we are worth it. I have clients who come to me feeling broken, unlovable, alone, and afraid but they won't invest in themselves to transform their lives because they don't feel they are worth whatever it takes to do so. It is so very sad to me that they cannot feel their inherent worth and value. It breaks my heart, every time. 

Even more sad is that many people are willing to invest more into external things like A/C units, cars, or their looks than they are willing to invest in themselves - their inner Selves. They get caught in traps of unworthiness, or they develop a distorted notion of what self-worth actually is, so they prioritize everything but themselves. 

Don't get me wrong; we have responsibilities to tend to in our lives. I'm not talking about blowing off our necessities. I'm talking about what we prioritize in our lives. We all have access to the abundance of this Universe; there is no question about that. Everything we need is available to us, but we have to be open to receiving it in order for it to enter our lives. 

If we are internally, energetically closed down by unworthiness or self-pity or anger or doubt or fear or any number of other low frequencies, there is no room for the abundance of the Universe to enter our lives. At its core, this is about our sense of self-worth and value, yet it is entangled with scarcity and lack, abundance and prosperity. But I will reserve that topic for another blog!

Lastly, changing our lives is a process that takes commitment. There is not a pill to fix it. Or a book. Or an event. Or a person.  Ultimately it is up to ourselves. We must love ourselves enough to seek the support we need to update our faulty inner guidance system and grow. It is not a fleeting experience; it is a journey. 

Generally, we start the journey by feeling uncomfortable with something in our lives. And our inner struggle begins. Maybe we get sick. Or have an accident. Or someone we love dies. Or our job sucks or we lose it altogether. Or our partnership ends. Or we discover a betrayal. Or we finally acknowledge that we are unhappy.

When the pressure builds enough and we decide we can't live this way any longer, something shifts. It's as if we break open from the inside out and burst to the surface, gasping for air. We know we will drown if we don't change something. 

Why does it take us so long? Why do we suffer so long in the struggle? Because without an anchor, change is too hard to hold onto in the context of the familiar, unless or until it reaches critical mass. With critical mass, we feel we have no choice: change something or continue to be miserable until we die. Then we feel lost and confused, thrust out of our familiar comfort zone into the wild unknown.

It's easier for us to stay in our comfort zone - even if it's not all that comfortable - because at least it's familiar. We know how to do our lives the way they are. But we don't know how to do something different. So we don't invest enough of our energy into making something different happen because we are not sure how, or what it will look like. The unknown is a scary thing for many people.

The tricky part is that until we invest at least 51% of our energy into making something different happen, it won't happen. Well it might, but when energies are left unattended, things tend to change in ways we don't want. Think of it this way: if we have 50% of our energy invested in staying the same and 50% of our energy invested in changing, what do you think will happen? Nothing. Nothing significant will happen because it's a toss-up and it's more comfortable for us to stay in what we know, even if it's not exactly what we want.

All it takes to break free of this low-frequency trap is to invest at least as much energy in our selves as we do in everything else. Because until we do, nothing significant will change in our lives or in the world we share. And in order to do that, we must value, respect, and love ourselves. This is not selfishness; this is self-awareness. This is how we evolve.

Every challenge in our lives is an opportunity to grow and evolve. Challenges cause tension inside of us. That tension is our invitation to do something different, to change something. Without it, we would not grow; because why bother if there is nothing disturbing or upsetting us...enough?

We change because we either have what we don't want, or we don't have what we want. And eventually, if the tension increases enough, we get fed up with it. Or we change because we reach a threshold of discomfort we can't tolerate any longer within ourselves from something outside of ourselves. Or we change because we don't have a choice. Or we change because we encounter a crisis.

Changing is not the enemy here! We are our own worst enemy by not valuing and loving ourselves enough to take a stand for ourselves. Or by tolerating what we don't deserve. Or by rejecting the possibilities that are awaiting us. Or by not honoring our truth. 

Well I say no more! If there was ever a time to become self-aware, this is it. I say it is time to take that stand for yourself, to stop tolerating the shit-show you find yourself in, to stop rejecting the amazing things that await you in the field of infinite possibility, and to honor your truth. Because you are worth it!

2018 is the year, Baby. In ancient Numerology, it is a number 11 - the highest, most evolved frequency. It is about awakening, and about a perfectly powerful balance of masculine and feminine energies. According to the Chinese calendar, it is also the year of the Earth Dog, promising to be productive and tiring yet refreshing and regenerating at the same time. 

Get ready...Get set...GO! Go! for your self and Go! for all the rest of us! Change your life. Raise your frequency. And do your part in elevating this reality to a higher vibration. You can do it! We all can do it! Because we are all worth it and so is this reality we share. One step, one day, one change at a time. Before you know it, you will wonder why on Earth you waited so long...

Blessings to you, my friend.

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[NOTE: If you are a woman struggling to recover from a breakup or divorce, consider joining my women's only, closed Facebook Group, After A Breakup: Going From Heartache To Happy. This group offers support, guidance, new perspectives, and wisdom; and gives you and your experience a place to be held and heard.]