by Debra | Mar 7, 2016
Have you ever been around someone who is constantly complaining about something? What about people who spread negative gossip, act mean or display hypocritical behavior?
Most people aren’t very tolerant of negative behavior in others. Why should they be? Being around a negative person will make you feel drained and upset. However, a lot of people are willing to tolerate their own negative mind chatter. In some cases, they don’t even realize it’s happening.
Negative Mental Chatter: Are Your Thoughts a Downer?
If you’ve never stopped to listen to your thoughts, you’re likely pretty detached from what’s going on in your inner world. You might be surprised at how negative a lot of your thought patterns are. It’s natural to experience negative thoughts when you’re dealing with a troubling problem, but subconscious negativity that goes on day in and day out can have an unpleasant effect on your health, both mental and physical.
Changing Negative Thoughts: How Can You Initiate Inner Positivity?
A lot can be gained by simply paying attention to your thoughts as you go throughout your day. What are you thinking about right now? What do you think about as you head to work? If you groan when the alarm goes off in the morning and brace yourself for another rough day, you’re setting yourself up for defeat. Most people think of this reaction as normal, and that’s part of the problem! Negative thinking is an epidemic, especially in America.
The good news is that once you realize what you’re thinking about, it’s fairly easy to change the script. Practices like meditation and journaling can help you connect to the things you think and worry about on a daily basis. Also try “listening” to your thoughts for an entire day and seeing what you notice. When you experience a negative thought, try immediately countering it with a positive one. For example:
- “I hate my job” can become “I’m so blessed to have a source of income.”
- “My health problems are so difficult” turns into “I’m glad I still have potential to heal.”
- “My partner frustrates me” morphs into “I’m glad my partner and I always survive our fights.”
As you practice this, it will gradually become more automatic. You’ll not only learn to control your thoughts, but you’ll also be able to turn around a bad mood. This will help you remain focused and avoid getting caught up in negativity when handling problems.
by Debra | Feb 29, 2016
Do you have guilt when you take time for yourself?
What does it look like to take care of yourself first, then attend to others? Most women think putting yourself first is selfish. They might even be called selfish, self absorbed, or narcissistic. Many men can go to work, go to the gym afterwards, come home and relax and it’s perfectly normal, encouraged even. I hear my women clients say, “He deserves to relax”, while they are running themselves ragged. Stay at home moms especially feel that they have to do everything. They have to take care of the entire household, the kids with chores, homework, discipline, any family emergency and still find time to take a shower.
When I am mentoring women, one of the biggest things we work on is being okay with putting your needs before others. It is important to take care of yourself in order to show up for others without resentment.
What does taking care of yourself actually look like?
- Realizing your needs are as important as others
- Processing through the guilt of taking care of yourself
- Doing things that you are passionate about
- Taking the time to eat right, exercise and get proper amounts of sleep
- Asking for help when you need it
- Setting good boundaries
- Doing things to pamper yourself like massages, pedicures, etc.
- Spending time with people outside your family
- Going to lunch with friends regularly
These are a few of the things you can do to take care of yourself. But the biggest and most important lesson to learn is that it is healthy for you to have a life filled with the things you want as much as anyone else. And it is important to understand that you are the only one who can make that happen. Learn how to meet your needs first in a women’s retreat. If you are ready to start loving yourself, call now to set up a consult.
by Debra | Feb 22, 2016
Do all the events in our life have a purpose for our higher learning?
I was just talking to a client this morning and she was thinking about getting a job. She is a mother of four and her husband works full time. She wanted a job to bring in some extra money while she completes courses to become a coach. She has a lot on her plate with the kids and keeping up with the house and family. She put in an application at a few places and even went in to talk to them, but they don’t seem interested.
Now, there are a couple of ways she could think about this situation. She could decide that she has no worth and that something is wrong with her, or she could realize she is co-creating with the universe and this job isn’t for her higher good at this moment. The first way of thinking is disempowering, while the second is very empowering.
We have the choice everyday to live through our wounded lower self or to live through our higher self knowing that everything is meant to be. It’s important to slow down, pay attention and see which part of our self is in operation, especially if we are triggered. When we do this, we can make a choice to take the right action. This is a part of being present to our life, to be the observer and then to move forward with consciousness.
This is our choice and our choice alone.
If we look at every situation as a learning experience, we are on the right path. If we are angry, frustrated and complaining about things that trigger us, we are expanding our lower self and not shifting our beliefs. The personal retreats I teach are spiritual journeys where I show that there is a purpose to this life we are living and how to start living it with more awareness. If we keep expanding our old beliefs, they keep coming back to us in order to teach us. As we diminish our Ego, old beliefs, life starts showing up differently. The heat actually starts to dwindle out of our triggers and can completely dissolve.
We all want to live in our higher self and suffer less from situations that trigger us. The only way to do this is to learn from our experiences and make a conscious choice to take the action that grows this part of us.
by Debra | Feb 15, 2016
What does it look like to co-create with the Universe by surrendering to spiritual guidance?
Surrendering to the natural process of co-creating with the universe is easier said than done. This surrendering thing puts us control freaks on edge, right? Who are we surrendering to? It seems, at times, that it is easier to give it up to a real person and hope for the best.
It is helpful for me to remember that I am a spiritual being having a human experience in a physical body, rather than a physical being having a spiritual experience. If I am a physical being, I will look in the physical world around me to create my life. But if I realize I am first a spiritual being, I will go inside and connect to my higher self for my answers.
Many of us have been taught from a very young age that our safety lies in a physical being, such as our parents. If we have been raised with any type of religion, we may have learned to have faith in God or another spiritual being, I, personally, was not raised with any religion or spirituality, and therefore, connecting to a source greater than myself or others has been difficult for me.
In my daily practice, I connect to the universe, my spirit guides, and my higher self to bond with my knowing. The process that I use and teach brings everything back into myself and my higher knowing, away from the physical outside world. I practice working on not projecting my feelings and emotions onto others, and knowing that all experiences help my higher learning evolve.
It takes a great deal of surrendering to either the universe or my higher knowing to stop trying to control things and people to get the outcome that I believe is the best one for myself. When I surrender to something greater than my physical self and allow things to unfold with grace, it’s always for my higher learning.
Although things might not always work out the way I think they should, it’s in my best interest to be in the flow instead of constantly pushing up against life with resistance. My inner child doesn’t like this way of being at all. She actually believes she has total control over everyone and everything. When I say this out loud, I hear a little chuckle from my higher self.
It’s our job to make sure that our spiritual guidance is coming from our higher self and not from our wounded little child. If you haven’t had training in this area, this could be pretty tough. We all need mentors to see our blind spots.
If you want to live in your higher self and have your spiritual guidance come from a greater place of surrender, it may take the help of a spiritual mentor.
by Debra | Feb 8, 2016
How do we learn how to surrender to our life, just as it is?
Here I am in 2016 looking at what I would like to create for myself this year. I have done a few vision boards in the attempt to explore what I want in my life, while trying to surrender to what it is. This hasn’t been a particularly easy exercise for me, asking the universe for what I want, while being really content with what IS.
I think that most of our suffering comes from wanting things in our life that we don’t have or wanting the people in our lives to show up differently than they are. Let’s first look at people showing up in ways that we don’t like and want to change.
How can we surrender to people being exactly the way they are, keeping an open heart to them, while still setting boundaries?
An example of this might be having a friend that is consistently late. One way to deal with this is to surrender to the fact that this is her behavior and she can choose to work on it or not, rather than attempting to make her change, and at the same time, effectively creating a boundary around it. A good boundary might look like letting her know that being late triggers you and explain to her why that is. Then let her know that you will do one of two things regarding the situation. Either she must be on time or you will stop going out with her. Or, you can accept her lateness so long as you do not become resentful. That’s pretty tough!
The part of us that is looking at surrendering to people’s behavior doesn’t mean we let people walk all over us. It means we don’t take it personally or we set a boundary. How about wanting things in our life that we don’t have, such as more money, a relationship or a closer relationship, a new car, or perhaps a different job? How do we let the universe know that these are things we would like in our life and still surrender to our life just as it is?
The suffering comes when we want something so badly that, without it, we are miserable. However, we can be open to creating the things we want in our lives while still being totally content with the life we have created up until this point.
This is the key, opening up to co-create with the universe and loving life as it is!
A good morning practice might be:
“I surrender to everything in my life being exactly the way it is.
I am grateful for everything in my life”
At night, check in with yourself to see if you were suffering about something you didn’t have or wanting someone to be some way they weren’t. Life is about acceptance of what is, while still co-creating with the universe.
by Debra | Feb 1, 2016
I think it’s humorous when people find out I’m single and act as though it’s a bad thing. They say things like, “Oh, you’ll find that special person some day!”
Being single and being in a relationship each have their own ups and downs.
Life is about being with the highs and the lows, whether you are in a primary relationship or not. We learn while being alone as much as when we are in partnership. Our personal growth is what it’s all about.
Here are various ways we can view our situation:
- I love sleeping alone. I also love sleeping with a partner, as long as our energy is authentic.
- While single, I can do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. Oh, yeah, I can do that in a relationship as well.
- When I’m single, I don’t have the security of knowing I have someone to be with on the weekends. But I stretch myself to meet new and interesting people.
- As a single person, I am on my own financially. I also get to develop the part of me that thinks my safety is in money or a partner.
- Without a stable partnership, I have no consistent sexual relations. However, I can learn that my life is about more than my desires.
I think it’s wonderful to be in relationship as long as we are both doing our own work and able to grow through our partnership. Most of the couples I have seen are together because they don’t want to be single. They are afraid of being alone, not having enough money or maybe how the kids will be affected.
Personally, these are not good enough reasons for me to be in partnership!
I am learning about the freedom that comes with being single, the freedom from my lower self/inner child fears. I do not want to be in a relationship because I am afraid.
I think walking away from a relationship is one of the hardest things a person can do. But I also think that being in a relationship that isn’t right for you is one of the most painful experiences as well.
Life in general is about being with the highs and lows, whether you are with someone or not. Some of the women I mentor believe that if they could just be in a relationship, their suffering would end. Our suffering is in our minds and life is about dealing with the good things that happen as well as the not-so-good things.
If you would like to learn either how to be single or in a partnership with grace, let’s connect.
by Debra | Jan 25, 2016
There are many myths concerning relationships. Being in partnership isn’t easy and most of us would benefit from some added help in this area.
Myth #1. Never go to bed angry.
Personally, I think this is based on fear. If we go to bed in a fight, what if one of us dies? A better solution might be to postpone the argument until the next day, kiss, say I love you and go to sleep. When you are in a better place to process together, continue your discussion.
Myth #2. Your partner must be your soul mate.
What if you can have several soul mates in your life? Is there just one? I think women in our society have been trained to believe that we are princesses and our knight in shining armor will come and we will live happily ever after. However, this is not necessarily the case. My best girlfriend feels like a soul mate to me. She knows me, she gets me, she busts me when I’m not being authentic, and we process together. Does that mean that no one else can be a soul mate for me? I found this definition of soul mate that I really like. A soul mate is:
“Someone who is aligned with your soul and is sent to challenge, awaken and stir different parts of you in order for your soul to transcend to a higher level of consciousness and awareness. Once the lesson has been learned, physical separation usually occurs.”
Interesting! I have always believed that there are some people that come into your life for your learning and that they may only be there for a while.
Myth #3. If you get married, you must stay married until death do you part.
Wow, that’s heavy. What if your partner is abusive? What if he/she is simply not doing his/her own work and projecting onto you with punishing and snappy behaviors and won’t admit it? There are a few reasons I wouldn’t stay in a relationship, that being one. Most of the people I know in relationships are staying together out of fear, not love.
Myth #4. A good relationship is easy.
I believe that when any two people come together, their woundedness is going to surface at some point. This presents an opportunity for healing. When we are triggered, there is nothing that screams easy about it. It’s challenging to process your triggers and then be vulnerable with your partner. This is where a couple’s retreat is helpful.
Myth #5. Your partner should know what you need and what you are feeling.
I don’t even know what I need or what I’m feeling sometimes. How is my partner going to know? Is he/she psychic? This is such a trap that partners place on each other. It’s your responsibility to tell people what you need and to express your feelings with them. This is what adults should do.
Myth #6. You should be able to stay in the romance phase forever.
This would be exhausting. First of all, I don’t think it’s possible for the dopamine to sustain itself that long. And if it did, it could do damage to your body. Secondly, a healthy relationship goes through three stages. The first is romance, the second is conflict, and the third, after successfully processing the conflict, is resolution.
Myth #7. Relationships between opposites are more successful.
Initially, you might get a charge out of someone being really different from you, but having things in common and having similar beliefs and outlooks on life generally makes a better relationship. If you are too different, you may start doing things apart. This could do more damage than good.
Myth #8. Sex dwindles after you get married.
In a connected relationship, your intimacy grows and so does your sexual desire for each other. If sex fades, it is usually because a couple is not resolving issues and resentment sets in.
These are just a few of the myths regarding relationships that I found interesting. I am a total believer that if both partners are successful in their personal growth, their relationship with each other will also continue to grow .
by Debra | Jan 18, 2016
How Does Being Alone Feel to You?
I am talking again about being alone because as the holidays were upon us, many of my clients expressed deep feelings of sadness around
not having family or friends and how they were feeling utterly alone.
This “alone” thing seems to be a big one for many.
Being alone isn’t difficult for everyone. In fact, for some, it’s actually enjoyable. For others, being alone feels horrible. It can be empty, scary, dark and disconnected. When my teacher asked me what “Alone” was saying to me, I said those exact words: empty, scary, dark and disconnected. But, when I sat in Alone’s seat and asked Alone what it was, it said it was peaceful, calm, connected and independent.
So, it was interesting how I saw being alone. We all have a skewed view of some things. My view of being alone, among other skewed views I have, came from my childhood experiences. If an experience we’ve had as a child isn’t positive, we will see things through that negative lens.
It’s so important to really look at our feelings and explore why we have them and what lens we are seeing these feelings through. Is it the lens of a scared little girl or the lens of our trusting higher self? If we will sit and reflect, we will see who we are seeing things through. Most of us don’t take the time or energy to be with our feelings long enough to go deeper into the actual sensations of anything to get clarity on
it.
I am encouraging you to go into how you feel, and check out who is feeling the darkness, emptiness, etc. and see if it’s skewed because of something that happened a long time ago that isn’t really the truth in the present moment as an adult. With the spiritual guidance in a personal retreat, you will learn about your skewed beliefs and how to shift them. We will uncover the blind spots that keep you stuck in a life that isn’t working for you.
If you are feeling alone or have other debilitating feelings, a personal retreat may help you see yourself more clearly and give you the spiritual guidance you need.
by Debra | Jan 11, 2016
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.
Is empathy something that some people are born with and some aren’t? Is it a learned trait? Can we teach our children how to have empathy?
There is a significant amount of research indicating that the prefrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to develop and doesn’t become fully formed until a person is in their mid-twenties. These studies say that due to an immature prefrontal cortex, teenagers tend to make irrational decisions and have a poor sense of empathy. I agree that teens seem to feel more invincible and have a lower fear factor than adults. But I do not agree that brain development or the lack thereof is the only factor involved.
In my mentoring practice with teens, I see a number of teens that naturally care about others, including their parents. And then I see the other side of the spectrum where some teens care only about themselves. I have seen situations where parents give their children everything and those children act entitled. However, I have also seen the opposite, where the teens in similar situations are quite grateful. I know adults that have zero empathy and I’m pretty sure their prefrontal cortex is completely developed.
Either way, I believe as parents and elders, we can influence our youth to have empathy for others. We do this by talking with them about situations that come up in real life, such as at school or in the news. We ask questions like, “What would it feel like if you had a learning disability and the kids at school were making fun of you and you were eating lunch alone everyday?” Ask them to really think about it. Walk them through their day as if those actions were happening to them. It’s hard to feel empathetic when you have never been in the shoes of someone in that situation.
You can also use the news to help them look outside their safe little insulated bubble. Ask them questions about things that are happening in the world, and not just what is happening, but how the people feel in those situations. Then try and bring them to a place of gratitude.
So, why is it tougher for teens to really feel how others feel? Let’s take a look at a few reasons this may be so.
- Teens often do not think about the consequences of their own actions, let alone the consequences of someone else’s actions.
- Teens are “me-centric”. We have trained them to be this way because our world usually revolves around them from the moment they are born.
- Teens are often driven by their emotions and are caught up in how they feel in the moment. These types of impulsive emotions are not easily transfered onto someone else.
- Teens do not stop and reflect. They quickly move on to their next thing. This is why they seem to repeat the same mistakes over and over. It just doesn’t occur to them to do anything else.
- Most teens do not know how they feel or how to express their feelings, so they may not be able to feel how others are feeling either.
- Teens often haven’t developed the maturity level to consider others, nor have some adults. .
This does not reflect all teens, and, quite frankly, this behavior does not necessarily change when they become adults. So, I personally think we could be talking about people in general. Pausing and thinking about how our actions might affect others or how others may be feeling would be a good place to start to understand and learn about empathy. And being able to empathize is one of the best ways to learn how to be grateful.
“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other”
-Meryl Streep
by Debra | Jan 4, 2016
I often talk to parents who have put their relationship with each other on the back burner to care for their kids. I wonder if this is doing more damage than good. It’s tough enough to raise kids that aren’t “me-centric” without making them the top priority in our life. I see this often when I am mentoring families. The parent’s lives revolve around the kids 100%. When I ask if they ever do any adult activities alone or with friends, they usually say they do not. So who comes first in your marriage?
It isn’t a healthy set up in a primary relationship to not have alone time with each other.
When I tell parents to go out once a week and that they are not allowed to talk about their kids, they find themselves at a loss for words. They admit that it is impossible to have an evening out like they use to before having children.
This is one of the reasons it is so important to always maintain your relationship with each other first, then take your relationship together to the kids. If you lose your relationship together, it isn’t as easy or fun to parent your kids. It also isn’t good for the kids to have all of your attention on them. They are also learning to have a healthy relationship by watching you and your relationships. If you aren’t giving each other the attention needed to nurture the relationship, your children might learn to do the same in their relationships.
Relationships are tough when given the attention needed. When you lose touch with each other, the relationship becomes even more disconnected. When it is disconnected and a problem arises, it is harder to come to resolution because of the separation. When you are connected to each other and something comes up, it will be easier to talk about the issue and move through it.
When I have couples come in for a retreat, most of them have children and are looking for a way to get back to each other. I find that if they can connect with themselves first, then take that into their primary relationship, they will become better parents.
by Debra | Dec 28, 2015
Do you and your partner communicate?
Does your partner listen to you?
Do you feel like you and your partner are drifting further and further apart?
Do you long for a closer, more connected relationship?
Relationships are not easy. They bring up our childhood wounding and actually make us behave more like a child. If communication, hearing each other, and getting closer are important to you in a relationship, then you need to learn how to live in your higher self and stop acting out of your inner child. You can learn how to do this through a couples’ retreat.
Both partners have to be wiling to step up and participate at a huge level. They both have to learn how to look at their own woundedness and reaction through that place and stop projecting onto their partner.
A client was talking to me about how triggered she gets when her partner continues to leave trash next to the trash bin instead of inside and then forgets to take the trash out completely. She has asked him over and over and for whatever reason, he isn’t hearing her and continues his behavior. I have suggested that instead of telling him what to do, that she do her own trigger work around his behavior and work on shifting her old beliefs instead of shifting his behavior. She could let him know that it triggers her and that the belief her little girl is buying into is that she doesn’t have a voice and she’s not important and that the feelings around the trigger are frustration and anger, but mostly sadness. The action her little girl wants to take is to keep nagging to get him to listen so she won’t be so agitated about the situation. His action is just his action. It’s not about her not having a voice or not being important.
In partnership, we need to work on our own beliefs and not work on getting our partners to shift their behaviors to make us feel better. Try exploring the feelings that come up when you get triggered and try not to medicate them away. When we look to our partner to change his or her behavior, it is a form of medicating because we don’t want to feel the feelings we have. Sit with the feelings and then explore what beliefs you are having around the behavior and don’t be so quick to talk to your partner about his or her behavior. When working with couples in a retreat, they learn what triggers them and why and the tools to take action inside of themselves instead of outside.
by Debra | Dec 21, 2015
Beautiful Sedona Arizona during sunset
The holidays are upon us again and being with family can be quite challenging. How do we stay in a place of love and have a good time during the holiday season?
Is it even possible?
It is so funny how excited we get to spend time with family only to come unglued when we are together because they do such annoying things. So, our families are going to trigger us, they’re our family! If we can just realize that their behavior has nothing to do with us.
If you get triggered just know that it is for your learning. If we don’t take our families behavior personally we take stay in a place of love instead of fear and really enjoy our holidays.
I usually go to Ashland to see both of my girls and grandson and we all get to explore our triggers with each other. If we can all own our own triggers and not project them onto each other, we can have a great time together.
This has been such an amazing year of growth for me. I have had so many changes and so many shifts. I am very grateful for all the people in my life who have triggered me and given me the opportunity to look at myself authentically. I am also so grateful for all of my clients ranging from ages of 13 to 68 years old. You all have been an incredible gift to me. Just being in the presence of your growth has been such an honor.
I look forward to another year of shifts and growth. See you in 2016!
Warmly, Debra
