Why is it so difficult for women to put themselves first? It is also very difficult for us to say no even when it’s good for us. It is so important for us to learn when to say no to take care of ourselves. We don’t know the instructions when we fly, if are flying with a child if something happens we are supposed to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first and then the child. But in our day-to-day life we are always meeting others needs before our own. It is so easy to put off our self-care until we get overwhelmed or exhausted and then we don’t have the energy to take care of others who count on us. This is when we actually realize that we haven’t been caring for our self properly.
Will we be able to see that caring for ourselves isn’t selfish, it just makes sense? It makes more sense for me to put myself first so that I can show up for others in a more effective way. Putting yourself first means that you may have to say no to other people in order to say yes to you. Oddly enough if you take care of yourself and deny care to someone else you may feel very guilty. It’s important to let that part of us know that caring for ourselves is being loving to ourselves and to others.
Learning to say no when you know it doesn’t serve you is such a great learning. Most women who come to my spiritual retreats are in the process of learning to take care of themselves. Other ways that you can care for yourself besides just saying no are you small daily rituals like meditating, journaling, taking a bath at night, or just getting into bed early and reading. Just remembering how important it is for self-care, and knowing that if we are not taking care of ourselves that we are not showing up wholly or holy in our lives.
At one point in my life I thought I wanted a Guru to help me with my spiritual guidance. Even though I have a teacher that holds me accountable, I have come to realize that life experiences are my true teachers and guru.
If I treat life experiences like the opportunities that they are to grow and expand my development, my growth could literally be constant. I’m always amazed at how life shows up for me perfectly to learn what I need to learn for my evolution. Every situation that occurs could be a chance to for me to shift my awareness and learn. There are many opportunities throughout the day where I am given the opportunity to explore my mind. I just have to pay attention.
Something as simple as getting triggered because someone pulled out in front of me while driving is a perfect opportunity for me to look at my behaviors and shift them. Any time you get triggered you can pull your energy from the outside and go inward for growth. I think having a teacher/mentor is important because they can hold you accountable and help you see things that you can’t see from the inside. Unless a Guru is doing one-on-one work with you, he will just be feeding you with enlightening words that you will have to process through anyway.
If we look at one given day and look at the many ways we may contract during situations, we have plenty of data to do our work. Whether it is something simple like your husband ignoring you, your kids sassing you, your boss not recognizing you for the work you’ve done or your mother criticizing you, these are all great situations to check in with how your mind is seeing things. We have everything we need to do our work and grow, it’s just a matter of paying attention to how our mind is seeing things and shifting its perspective.
How do we live our life in alignment with a partner?
What does it look like to be in relationship and stay in alignment with yourself? I used to go into relationships without looking at a few key points that might play a part in the relationship working. I think that for the most part people go into relationship because they have an outer attraction to someone or an need to not be alone. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all people do this but I would say a fair amount.
I think it’s hard to go into a partnership with someone if we do not know ourselves well and at least have a fair amount of love for ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves totally at least we know the areas where we don’t and we are working on them.
Through my own experiences with men I have noticed that my lack of knowledge and love for myself has always put me into a relationship that does not serve me. Usually what I am lacking in myself they will also be lacking as well.
So the question is can I live in alignment with a partner if I’m out of alignment with myself? The way I see this is if I am aware of where I am out of alignment and I am actively working on those areas and my partner is also aware and actively working on them, we may be able to have a relationship that is in alignment. Alignment doesn’t mean that we’ve arrived, that we are enlightened. For me being aligned is simply moving forward in my personal growth and only being in partnership with those who are doing the same.
I went on a date with this man that was telling me that instead of processing through my woundedness to heal maybe I could just be love and light. Here is where the being out of alignment comes in. For me I need to observe areas where I am triggered and have an understanding of them before I can move into love and compassion for others or myself. For me it’s not as simple as “Oh, I’ll just be love and light.” So if I were to be in relationship with this man that thought this way, he might be trying to move me into love and light before I was ready. It’s simply just a difference in the way we process. No wrong no right just different.
This is why my couple’s retreat is so powerful. By both people coming in and learning about themselves and each other you can get on the same page. So many times I have seen women that are on completely different page than their partners, most of time it’s a different book.
Many of us believe that to get relaxation we need to leave our homes. What ends up happening is that we are always working and saving for a vacation so we can go and relax. What if your home was a place you could come home to and rejuvenate and relax. How do we experience the state of relaxation that we have on vacations in the comforts of our own home?
It seems like we give ourselves permission to let go when were on vacation. Why can’t we give ourselves the same permission while we are at home, even with our schedules and routines? What makes relaxing challenging is all of our routine tasks that need to be addressed. So how do we create an environment to help us relax in the midst of our crazy lives?
The first thing is to realize that everything does not need to be done now, like the cleaning of a mess and other tasks. We need to realize that relaxing is as important as our physical nourishment. Just like eating, relaxing is every bit as important.
I think that creating an environment in your home that feels calming is the most important. So even putting aside one hour and night for everyone to just chill. If you have kids they can be chilling while they’re doing their homework in their rooms while you and your husband put on a little easy music and exchange shoulder massages, maybe have a different beverage that doesn’t have to be wine, in a wineglass.
Allowing yourself to get out of the rut of your schedules and tasks to just do something completely pleasurable. Your responsibilities will be there when you’re ready to pick them up again. This may be hard to do for some of you, and it might be a good idea to pay attention to the anxiety that you are feeling while trying to relax in your home when there’s things to be done. There is always going to be something that needs to be done. This is one of the reasons why I offer the remote retreat in the comforts of your own home so that you can do your personal work and still be at home.
It’s very important to pencil in on your to do list time to nurture yourself. If you don’t put it in your schedule it will probably never happen because life gets the best of us and we go into autopilot. Make it a point to try this even if it’s for 30 minutes every night. It can be meditating, sitting and talking with each other, exchanging backrubs or anything else that you find relaxing.
How do we stay centered incomplete chaos? When things are upside down in our life it’s tough to hear that inner voice that has all the wisdom. This is my meditation is so important, to be able to sit in silence, breathing, allowing that higher place in us to show up.
We know that our ego minds will keep us in the shadow side and that it is pretty constant. It’s our practice to move from our ego mind into that higher mind that knows the truth.
A practice that works for me is when my ego mind is talking I simply say “Thank you for sharing that that’s not how I see things.” By speaking these words I’m able to move out of my limiting beliefs into a new way of seeing things. The quicker I catch myself in my ego thinking, the better able I am to move into my higher mind. Once my ego mind gets on a roll it gains momentum and it is tougher for me to move out of it.
When I’m coming from a place of fear, which my ego mind is all about. The decisions that I make are not heart centered with compassion and love. My true self is love-based not fear. The retreats that I do with individuals, adult daughters and mothers, teen daughters and mothers and couples, teaches you how to be in our hearts with love not fear. You will leave the retreat with total understanding of how your ego mind works and how you operate from it, creating more fear in your life instead of more love.
All of us feel better when were coming from our heart space not fear. When we are coming from fear we may have anxiety sadness hopelessness or anger. It is okay to experience these because it’s a natural part of our life, but to live through these emotions keeps us in a suffering state.
How hard is it for you to trust your feeling? Is it easy for you to stay open-minded?
Being open-minded means that you’re willing to look at everything, including the things that you have discomfort with. This means challenging your beliefs and values at any given moment. Then after you really examine your feelings about a situation, then and only then can you make a good decision for yourself.
If I’m reading a book where I am exploring new ideas if I don’t allow my mind the open space to see if I resonate with it, I may either accept this book as truth or discarded without knowing. The key to this is to be able to really examine what’s being said and if it resonates with us.
The problem with this is that sometimes if we do not understand the different parts of our mind; ego mind versus higher mind we may not know what part of our mind we are making our decisions from. If we know the distinction between these two parts of our minds then it will be easier for us to decipher what resonates with us and what doesn’t.
Know who you are and it is easier to trust yourself!
This can also happens with our feelings. If there is a situation and I get a feeling in my body, I need to know if that feeling is coming from a trigger or a true warning. Sometimes I will get an intuitive hit that will let me know when a situation is off. But I can also get that same discomfort when my ego/little girl is activated. It is important for me to know which part of myself is coming up. An intuitive hit and a trigger can feel very similar. It can be nervousness in my stomach or tightness in my chest, to let me know something is off or my ego has hijacked me.
In my personal retreat I teach people how to recognize the difference so they are not acting out of their ego mind. It is so important to know the difference so that if a situation does come up or you are exposed to a new idea, you can accept it through your higher self.
It’s important to pause and just hold space for what we are feeling, sink into it and decipher if this is something we want to be open to and it’s right for us. These opportunities come many times throughout the day where we can choose to buy into a new idea, a different way of being, or a chance to shift and a limiting belief.
How powerful is it to experience an adult mother-daughter retreat?
I have been getting so many requests for mother-daughter retreats with adult daughters. I work with women to help them go deeper into themselves, to notice their patterns, and to shift limiting beliefs and to hopefully live a more joyous life. The work that I do with mother-daughter retreats is working separately with the mother and the daughter to look at their own wounding and how they are acting out of that wounded place in them.
It’s very similar to doing couples retreats because we are not working on the relationship; we are working individually on their old beliefs and how it shows up in the relationship. So it is the same with the mother daughter retreat. Both people get to know themselves really well and how they are reacting to their triggers, so they organically start showing up differently in the relationship.
I have seen shifts many times in the family dynamic while working with just one person in the family. I worked with a woman who had six children and a husband thank goodness, that shifted her entire family by recognizing her own patterns and shifting them. I have seen this in my own life as well as with my clients time after time.
I work with mothers and teenage daughters where the biggest shift is with the mother doing her work. Most of the time when moms call me telling me they want me to work with their daughter because their daughter is acting out, I would much prefer to work with the mother. I notice in the work that I do with adult daughters with their mothers is also very similar. We as mothers feel like we have to control and fix our kids, instead of allowing them the freedom to explore their life and own their own consequences.
By controlling and fixing people in general they feel like they can’t come to us and share so they shut down to us. I see it happening with teenagers and adult daughters all the time. It would look totally different if we were just allowing them to experience their own life and suffer their own consequences. We might be able to listen to their experience, have compassion and be detached from the emotions of their situation.
This takes practice and having an understanding of where your triggers come from so you cannot react from them.
When you are reacting in this present moment can you connect it to your past?
Our experiences from our past can influence our behavior in our present life. If we have unhealed wounds from our childhood they will show up in our adult life in a messy way. Our past experiences also have a profound effect on how we view the world and our lives now. Each of us responds to certain situations based on our past.
Have you noticed how after you’ve been triggered and you have reacted, when you reflect on your behavior you might be a bit shocked? When in reflection after a behavior that you’re not proud of, you might feel as if you behaved like child. This isn’t a coincidence, because when you are triggered, it is from your past experiences when you were actually a child.
You may have certain behaviors when you’re triggered like
Pouting
Throwing a tantrum
Screaming
Throwing things
Being a victim
Blaming
Arguing
Sarcasm
Reflect on your behaviors when you are triggered and see if you can track it back to childhood.
It’s important to know your wounding as a child so that you can understand your triggers and shift your beliefs around them. This is the work I do in personal retreats to uncover limiting beliefs so that you’re able to shift them. Our limiting beliefs can play havoc in our present life. If we continue to react from past experiences this will affect all of the relationships in our life including the one with our self and our connection to our higher power.
If you have an understanding of why you get triggered you will be able to modify your thought process, start thinking through your higher mind instead of your little girl, ego mind. It is not easy to break these patterns and start responding differently. In my personal retreat you will learn what your wounds are, the old beliefs attached to them, how you get triggered and how to shift your behavior.
It’s important for our sense of self to learn how to behave from a higher place of being. When we act out of our woundedness, we usually have a lot of guilt and shame about our behavior. When we beat ourselves up about our behavior it damages our self-esteem. So the more we act from a higher way of being the better we feel about ourselves.
Are we responsible for others? Or are we responsible for ourself?
Let’s talk about the responsibility that our ego mind has us acting out of and how it affects our life. I have done a fair amount of research by talking to mental health practitioners, doctors, psychotherapists, and read many books on this subject. This is one of the main topics in my personal retreat.
With my clients we look at their wounds and the old beliefs that stem from those wounds. Probably 98% of the people I have worked with have an old belief that they are responsible for others and everything. If our ego minds believe that we are responsible for everything and others, how do you think we will show up in other people’s lives? Usually when people have the old belief of a responsible for everyone and everything, it is coupled with the old belief of I’m not in control of my life. So when a difficult time in their life arises that’s being caused by another person’s behavior, if you are not aware of what your ego is saying you will try to fix the situation.
The problem is that we can’t fix anybody and that it isn’t our responsibility it the first place. I see this happening when clients come from a family with addiction. My client will have the need to control the situation to make them selves feel better which means they will try to fix the other person.
So the question, how responsible are we for others? The answer is always NOT AT ALL! The real question is, is the person acting in a way that is responsible for them selves? should be based on if the other person is acting responsible for themselves? If the person we are trying to help isn’t helping himself or herself and we are working harder at their recovery than them, it’s time to let go. It’s important to turn your attention toward yourself, not them.
I am personally going to a situation in my life where my ego wants me to take responsibility for someone else’s life. This is been one of the hardest learning I have ever experienced. I have been battling my ego mind for quite bit. I have not been acting out of my ego mind but it certainly has been talking loudly.
I got the opportunity to talk with this amazing poet and she asked if she could recite a poem for me. This poem had such an impact on my conversation with my ego. I hope it helps anyone that is in a situation with a loved one that is activating the old belief that you are responsible for everyone or I need to control to be safe.
Madness Speaks From A Hole
If I fall into a deep hole, leave me until I succumb. Lowering the rope on which I can climb out, would only save an unready soul. You say, that’s heartless, uncaring. And I say… Nay. In time may run out before I turn around.
Before you dear face me, fortify yourself with the knowledge of who you are before telling me who I am.
My goal is to wedge the wound inside you more hurtful than a tanto that gores me. To test the bonds of loyalty, even if it’s my life I lay down.
Don’t waste effort battling addiction, thinking you can wrestle the life out of it, freeing me. We both know that doesn’t work. His purpose is distraction, employing deception. Proliferates confusion with no intention to release its parasitic grip.
I am smart, very smart. Systematic and ways of getting what I want. Clever enough to make you think I care about you. Don’t want to burden you, I’ll say. When your back is turned, will still whatever grows a buck for another fix I know waits down the street within the next block.
Later, I will accuse you of being selfish, for not caring. It’s only a dime I’m asking for, I’ll say, though this is just the beginning. You won’t recognize yourself after time spent with me. So eloquent the addiction to persuade. And so week MRI, sequestered, that I allow it to speak through me with a rueful smile on my face, convincing you, I have no better friend. All the rest have given up. You’re the only one left. What a liar I am.
When you do offer sustenance because you see my body wasting away in your conscious gives you no rest, I will question your motive. Suspect it will come with the hook. Do this, don’t do that. I will drink for shallow rebound, just enough to keep me afloat till I find nearest hole to drop into, pull you along. Cajole all the way down fathomless shaft, carrying out your fate, be it worse or better than mine.
Whether you assist or decline, I will take you down. Two ends of the same spiral, you and I. A slinky toy going down the stairwell. Off the edge I go, over the top of me you come. Landing on the lower level, you flip me to fall to greater depth. How many times can we do this and call it fun?
Don’t try to direct my life. I’m tired of hearing words of exasperation… How can I help you when you won’t let me help you! It’s my choice, don’t you see. My choice no one can make for me.
I want you to say, I hate you. Services victory, makes you the bad guy. You turn to where suit of clothes I have worn thin with holes.
When you process by saying, I care about, though all feeling his dispersed, only resolve pushing words fourth, I will since human weekend, ready to give up. Yet I will know it took all the strength lifting you to get those words out… That love gave them the lash up.
This grand effort from you, affects me but I hide that. As well as the truth that love can never be persuaded to add I know this. Some part of me knows this. It is this knowing that drives desire to free the slip, I persistently deny. Desire that rattles the bars of the cage in which I have love imprisoned.
What you say does not matter. I hate you, I love you. Alone, the words mean nothing. It is emotional nuance I lean in close to glean, searching for clarity of love’s calling. to hear the slightest ding that it’s alive with in you for me. For if I can sense loving you, then there is hope it lives inside me.
If you must walk away, then do so. I will feel the strength in this. Though my words accuse you of desertion, they merely mimic your own cries of self accusal that you have failed.
It is now, after you turned your back to my demon that I whisper, unheard by you… Continue to love. Not just me. Most of all, yourself. For that is what I’m lacking, how to love myself. Show me how this is done. How does one level and self, unconditionally?
We live in a very hectic, stimulating world where we have schedules and routines for everything. We have a work schedule mixed in with our personal schedule, which can be anything from our workouts, doctor’s appointments and any other obligations. We are always trying to be as productive as possible so scheduling the events of our life helps with this.
The one event that I notice that doesn’t usually get put in our schedule is our spiritual practice. We are conscious about making sure we meet all of the other obligations in our scheduler to stay on track. The only problem I see is that we haven’t scheduled our spiritual practice so it takes a backseat. I notice for myself if I don’t put it in my calendar something will always come up and override my practice. So I have my daily practice in my calendar every morning and daily reminders throughout my schedule to connect me with my higher self. If I don’t put it in my schedule I will go on autopilot and that’s when I get out of alignment.
I feel so much better in my day when I started it with my spiritual practice. It gives me the grounding and energy I need and allows me to do my day more consciously. Our spiritual practice seems like it is the most important item to put in our calendar and yet many of us fail to do so. In my personal retreats we talk about the importance of a daily spiritual practice.
How we choose to take care of ourselves is of course a personal choice. For some people they may need a daily meditation practice to help them stay in alignment with themselves. Just allowing that time to quiet the mind always brings me back in the balance. Another great practice is journaling, writing down your thoughts and processes. This is something I do after spending time meditating, praying and maybe reading, Journaling always helps me connect to my feelings.
You can see how not scheduling this, your day may take off without you and leave little or no time for your spiritual practice. Scheduling time to nurture your soul each day will allow you to stay more balanced so that if something difficult comes up in your life you may be in a better place to handle it.
My spiritual practice and my personal growth are extremely important to me so setting time aside is something that is a priority for me.
WOW! I have been on this planet 60 years and my learning has been exponential.
I turned 60 years old Sunday, June 25, wow! This is what 60 plus looks like. I never thought it would. When I look at my learning, it has been such a progression and feels like it’s in hyper drive. Not just this lifetime but also many lifetimes before that have led to this moment.
My mother passed away when she was 56 years old and my father when he was 62. For a long time I believed that my lifespan would be short. Then a Buddhist friend of mine talked to me about why I might want to live longer in this lifetime. She explained to me that I was on a roll with my learning and that I want to keep the momentum going. To actually get as close to enlightenment each life time as possible. It made a lot of sense to me actually.
It’s interesting to me how I have been doing this work for such a long time and the universe still throws me fireballs for my like higher learning. I have been doing intensive spiritual work since I was 30. Even though it started when my mother died when I was 26 I didn’t dive in deep until I was 32 years old.
I am still learning to love myself. I think it will be a lifelong journey!
One of my biggest lessons turning 60 years old was that it truly is a celebration not something that I should be upset or sad about. I am so excited that I’ve been in my body for 60 years and I can still get up and hike whenever I want to, laugh hard at myself, and accept this 60-year-old body totally. The last one is something I work on every day. Learning to have an understanding for this body and compassion for this body, even though I am not of this body. This body of mine seems so real to me and with age is getting realer with every year. Although with my learning I become less of my body and more of who I truly am, Spirit.
So even though with age I seem to feel my body more, with age I let go of my body identification more. That is what my journey is here to realize I am not this body that I’m spirit.
Why do we think we are really in control, when clearly we aren’t?
What does it mean to trust in the universe and surrender and I think this is an easy statement let go? To say “oh I trust in the universe.” but what does it really mean?
I have been dealing with the personal situation that has been really testing my ability to surrender to source, the universe. What I have found is that it is really coming up against my need to control everything. Some things are pretty easy to let go of, let’s say a situation dealing with some friends, but this situation with my family is really tested me to see how willing I really am to let go of the need to control and really surrender. I must admit this was a doozy!
Trusting that things are exactly the way they’re supposed to be for our higher learning can be extremely challenging. What I have come to know is that the more I resist surrendering, the more it settles in my body. It is interesting how I can meditate and pray and say I am surrendering but my body is saying that I haven’t. I am observing my body, knowing that it will tell me the truth about my real surrender. I also notice that it takes a few days for it to follow.
I know that I am here to really connect to whom I truly am and that every situation is pointing me in the direction of this truth. It is only my ego mind that keeps me from knowing this truth. The weird thing about it is that I know this and yet still the battle between my ego mind and my higher self persists. So I know who’s winning out by how I’m feeling. When my ego has the upper hand I am usually suffering on some level.
My job is to step outside of myself and pay attention to who is running the show and make sure I adjust accordingly. To sink into this place of knowing and trusting that everything is the way it is for a particular reason and I can’t change or fix the outcome. That I need to just simply let go and surrender.
