How much attention do you pay to your emotional life? Do you actively tend to your emotional wellness, or are your feelings more of an inconvenient or inconsequential afterthought?
Emotional wellness truly does impact all areas of our lives - including our happiness, health and success. So in case you haven’t paid much attention to your feelings or learned much about them before now, here’s an intro to emotional wellness and why our feelings matter.
What is emotional wellness?
Having a healthy emotional life is a lifelong practice. It is noticing, feeling, understanding and honouring ALL of your feelings. So not just your “positive” feelings (which of course we prefer, and want to experience as often as possible), but also our “negative” feelings which are immensely important too. Together, all of our emotions help us effectively manage the inevitable ups and downs of life. They all serve a purpose in a healthy human experience.
Emotional health is one of the four essential aspects of whole wellness. It’s interconnected with the other aspects: physical, mental and spiritual health. And often, emotional health is the missing piece of the wellness puzzle that makes all the difference.
Why do feelings matter?
With the knowledge that feelings are an integral part of yourself, you may wonder why they’re worthy of your loving attention. For starters, their evolutionary purpose keeps us safe, smart and ensures our survival. Hooray for that! But you may be even more interested in how else feelings impact your modern daily life at a practical level.
In his book “Permission to Feel”, Marc Brackett, the director of Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence, offers these specific benefits of emotional wellness. Here are five areas in our everyday lives where feelings are most influential.
Our feelings matter most because . . .
And if all of that isn’t enough incentive, remember the secondary benefits that your emotional wellness have on all areas of your life. When you are well, you are well equipped to effectively navigate all the other areas in your life for the better. Let’s use business as an example.
When YOU are the greatest asset of your business, your emotional health is essential to your business’ success.
So which of these benefits is the most inspiring reason for you to nurture your emotional wellness? Let us know in the comments below.
And remember that you matter, so your feelings matter too. Follow your heart to the results that matter most to you!
Nicole Moorey coaches women entrepreneurs to consistently prioritize their own self-care needs and emotional wellness, so they can give their best to themselves and their businesses.
She’s pleased to lead HHW Thunder Bay as Branch Director: Facebook
Benefits of meditation are many: better concentration and mood management, relaxation leading to better sleep, improved mental health and immunity, lower blood pressure, and on and on the list goes.
Each one of these benefits is helpful in the life of any human, but what if you’re not quite like any other human? What if you want more? What if you’re an entrepreneur? Can you get more bang for your buck from meditation?
YES, yes you can!
Breath, mantra, mudra, and intention are all the elements of meditation. Let me explain each one, and how it can support a busy person who wishes prosperity and business success:
But guess what’s the most effective? If you combine all of these elements and extend the mudra to your entire body, you get a practice that is stunningly powerful! With that practice we can demolish the blocks (physical, mental, emotional) that are standing in our way to prosperity and abundance.
Last year, a few weeks after going into the first lockdown, I succumbed to the wave of panic and confusion, as many small business owners did. I recognized that I needed to pivot, but I wasn’t clear on how exactly, so I started doing this practice. Pretty shortly after that, a new way to serve in my business clarified, I was able to continue with a new sense of purpose, drive and optimism, and a new source of income.
Do you want in? Join me for a 40-day group practice of Param Karam Dharam kriya - a moving meditation that will help you align with the flow of prosperity. You will discover new openings for growth and abundance in places that were previously unavailable to you. You will make shifts effortlessly, as you practice with the flow of energy, and that flow will carry you through your life and business. Awaken to new possibilities!
Spring is in the air. Can you feel it? After a long winter, are you ready for a fresh new season? And are you just as ready for some fresh new self-care ideas?
If you struggle to consistently take good care of yourself and your wellness needs, you’re going to love this simple seasonal approach.
By tuning into the infinite wisdom of spring, you can then apply those insights in a practical way to your own daily self-care. Since we as humans are nature too, we thrive when we can work with and not against the natural energy and rhythms of the seasons. Here’s how . . .
1) Notice the season around you.
What do you sense and feel on a typical spring day where you live? I picture fresh starts and stepping out, cleansing rains, invigorating winds and warm sunshine, all leading to buds, sprouts and blossoms. It’s a season of action, attending and adventure.
Once you understand spring’s vibe, you can reflect on what this specifically means for you and your self-care:
How could I incorporate more of the parts of spring that I most enjoy into my self-care practice?
How could I consider the parts of spring that I least enjoy to adapt my self-care practice?
2) Notice the season within you.
Now that you know what spring energy means to you, do your inner thoughts and feelings match? Or are there areas in your life where you’re just not feeling the spring vibe? Perhaps you’d rather rest like winter, savour like summer or finalize details like fall. Just because it’s spring outside, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily up for new beginnings and blossoming in all areas of your life.
Awareness of your inner metaphorical season can help you have more compassion for yourself and customize your self-care to truly meet your needs:
In what one area of my life am I experiencing spring energy? How can I nurture that energy in my self-care?
In what one area of my life am I not experiencing spring energy? How can I nurture that alternate energy in my self-care?
3) Nurture your needs with ONE self-care practice.
Having reflected on your literal and metaphorical seasons, you’re now in an excellent place to choose ONE self-care practice to try. Don’t overthink it. Just go with the one that feels right, that energizes or soothes you, that feels like home.
And try it today! The best self-care is the self-care that actually happens, so by keeping it simple and starting right away you increase your chance of success.
By noticing the natural rhythm of the season around you and noting how that relates to the season within you, you have incredible insights on how to best nurture your unique needs. Your self-care will spring to life!
Nicole Moorey coaches women to consistently prioritize themselves and their own wellness needs, so they can give their best to themselves, their businesses and their loved ones: nicolemoorey.com
She’s pleased to lead HHW Thunder Bay as Branch Director: Facebook
The Great Mother Archetype holds one of the most powerful energies in the world - the power of feminine energy!
We see it when we look at Gaia the Greek Goddess who created the world out of void and mass and darkness.
We see it in Isis the Egyptian Goddess whose ability to heal could bring the dead back to life. We see it in Sophia the Goddess of Wisdom who showed people the best way of living by connecting them to their higher selves.
We see it in the Virgin Mary as she protects and nurtures the Son of God.
As human beings we all have a deep connection to the Great Mother Archetype and the incredible energy that she holds because we have all been the recipients of her great gifts.
We come into this world vulnerable, weak, and in need, and without the nurturing and life-sustaining energy that the Great Mother brings into the world none of us would have survived!
For some of us this energy came in the form of a traditional mother, but for others it came in the form of grandma's, aunties, sisters, nannies, babysitters, or even in some cases the men in our lives.
This life force offers us:
Nurture
Support
Intuition
Creativity
Wisdom
Persistence
The list goes on and on!
But there are four beautiful gifts that Great Archetype offers us that I think are really worth highlighting!
So many of us have been taught that competition is the only way to have success. That in order for one of us to win than others must lose - and this has created a world that is unkind, unforgiving, and in so many ways cruel.
But when we connect with the feminine energy that the Great Mother offers us we see that there is another way to live - That we can live in the spirit of collaboration and that it is the real 'secret' to success.
She offers us the idea that it is by working together that we move out of the mindset of scarcity and into the mindset of abundance - And from a mindset of abundance so much of what we thought was impossible becomes possible!
We live in a world that glorifies the mind and its ability to rationalize, analyze and justify. We all spend so much time living in our heads that we forget that our bodies are our first line of communication - that our bodies carry wisdom that goes beyond anything our minds can sort or understand.
Because we have all had the experience of walking into a room and getting a 'vibe' right? But so many of us, instead of listening to that vibe, begin the process of explaining that vibe away. And the results of that are often painful! We find ourselves in relationships that aren't good for us, partnerships that don't work, and in experiences that can take us years to process! But our Great Mother offers us another way to be - she encourages us to get in touch with our bodies, to listen to them, to use the sensations we feel as guides and as arrows that move us in the direction that is right for us!!
We are all giving birth to something - a family, a new friendship, a business, a technology, or an idea. And our Great Mother gives us the power to nurture and sustain these things.
One of the things that we are creating that we seldom think about is our inner voice! When we are not tapped into our feminine energy we tend to create a voice that is so critical and that focuses on tearing down not building up.
But when we connect to our feminine energy we create a voice that is kinder, that brings life, that tells us what is possible, and points out how very worthy we are.
It's a voice that heals us and when we share that voice with others it's a voice that can heal our communities and can heal the world we live in!
Taking a moment to reflect:
Now of course The Great Mother, in all her feminine glory has more than one side to her!
She is life-sustaining and nurturing and wise and creative.
But she also has another side.
We know that the Great Mother is best seen as Mother Nature and Mother Nature comes to us in seasons.
She brings us spring and summer - but she also brings us fall and winter.
And when she brings us fall and winter she comes to us as the Terrible Mother.
And even when she comes to us as the Terrible Mother she comes to us as a gift and baring gifts.
The Terrible Mother comes to us when things that we have held on to for too long need to die -when it is time to let go and to make room for what is new.
An amazing Goddess that exemplifies this is the Goddess Kali.
She is a fascinating Goddess with multiple arms and legs that wears a necklace of skulls and a skirt made of arms. And her whole purpose is simply to find things in the world whose time has come and to help them through the 'dying' process.
And we all have things in our life that need to die, don't we?
Old ideas
Old stories
Old belief systems
Relationships that harm us rather than serve us
Partnership and connections that are holding us back
And when we let these things go the seasons change again and the Terrible Mother transforms and becomes the Great Mother again bringing with her spring and summer, bringing with her new ideas to nurture, new relationships to enjoy, new adventures to embark on!
The power of the Great Mother/Terrible Mother and the incredible life-changing energy that she brings are available to us at any time and she is always ready to walk with you on your life journey!
If you are interested in learning more join us for an in-depth study of the book 'Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
https://www.meetup.com/Happy-Healthy-Women-SOUTH-SURREY-BC/events/wqtvcsyccfbhc/
Meg is a life coach, Hypnotherapist, blogger and event host that is passionate about walking with people who want more out of life than just the status quo!
She believes that life doesn’t have to work out exactly the way we think it “should” in order to be enjoyed and that people don’t have to be perfect in order to be loved.
She believes that we all have the voice of truth inside of us but sometimes it can be hard to hear. And most importantly that we must live between the tension of accepting the things we cannot change and taking massive action on the things we can!
Meg creates spaces where women can slow down and process all the things that are influencing and controlling their lives - their everyday thoughts, emotions, and the stories they have been telling themselves.
Spaces where they can look at their inner world, gain valuable insight and then reclaim their personal authority, and make conscious decisions that transform the way they experience their lives!
Through one on one coaching, group coaching and workshops Meg helps women show up in the world with more love, and less ego, more compassion, and less judgment, more vulnerability, and less shame, more emotional agility and less fear!
Meg is also the current Branch Director of South Surrey/White Rock for Happy Healthy women.
Meg lives in BC with her husband of 20 years, two teenage boys and their little dog Charlie.
To learn more about Meg and her business, visit her website www.megheppner.com
What if the most limiting belief you can have is the belief “I have limiting beliefs.” 😊
Isn’t it interesting how it’s unlikely that we go around thinking, “I have non-limiting or freeing or expanding beliefs?”
Right?
Pause to think about this question for a moment.
Does it serve you or anyone else to think “limiting beliefs” is true?
It's more useful to believe that there are just thoughts that will drive you in one direction over another.
The reason why the brain might think that labeling certain sentences as limiting beliefs might be useful, is because it gives your brain something else to do.
Instead of doing the thing that feels uncomfortable and actually moves you in the direction of the success you want, it's easier for the brain to do what is familiar.
The so-called limiting beliefs turns into a fix-it project.
Naturally, this is when you’ll look for a good TEDTalk, scroll through Instagram or listen to a podcast.
Ha! I have been there, so I know the cycle well.
The brain might think that it’s useful to cover up these thoughts with positive thinking or reducing the shame by “trying not to think about it,” but what ends up happening is this pressure to be a certain way in order to feel better about yourself.
So when that doesn’t work, It’s completely common for the brain to turn to the bag of chips or maybe even to start obsessing over rearranging your office.
Getting caught in a spiraling pattern of “I’m still not done yet” is not a fun way to move through the day.
You and I both know that those thoughts are not who you truly are.
Here’s what you need to shift you out of this mindset.
You can decide to be in partnership with your brain, acknowledge that all thoughts are neutral and surrender the label limiting beliefs.
That way, you can still send out that email, complete that video or finish that one thing that you said you were going to do even when you have beliefs that make you feel uncomfortable.
When you know how to recognize and redirect the thoughts that spiral you into doubt and defeat, making big decisions and taking the leap to do something different feels effortless.
When you know how to focus on what’s most important, distractions become white noise and you experience results you want at a faster rate.
It is always easier than you think.
All it takes is your willingness to be in partnership with your brain.
Are you ready and willing?
. . . . . .
About Vanessa Leung
From SELF-DOUBT to SELF-MASTERY.
Through 1-1 life coaching, Vanessa Leung is able to help her clients master their fear and self-doubt. They learn to lead powerfully as their whole-hearted self by letting go of the people-pleasing perfectionism in a way that is self-loving.
In every session, Vanessa’s clients uncover a deeper trust in themselves to follow-through on their goals with ease. They make life-shifting decisions to propel them forward with confidence.
Her clients get to level up and experience a deeper connection in their work and loved ones. They have more time, freedom and presence to enjoy their life and business without the mind games.
There's only one skill you need to move forward with confidence. Are you ready to live in SELF-MASTERY?
When she’s not deep in creating new belief in her clients, you’ll find her out in the forest with her fur-love, Barley, or in the kitchen with her partner cooking up a storm.
Her power statement is I AM IN IT NOW.
www.8020livingco.com
As Human Beings we are master storytellers! We have been telling stories since the dawn of civilization - sharing our own or listening to each others!
It's through storytelling, that we keep track of all the overwhelming amount of things that happen to us in our lifetime.
It's how we make sense of the world around us and give meaning to the things that are important to us.
It's how we build our identity and begin to feel secure that we have 'know who we are'.
Our stories give coherence to our lives - without them, the human experience would feel very disjointed and confusing!
And importantly stories are how we predict the future! Since each story follows a trajectory we can make an educated guess as to how the story will end and that gives us an amazing sense of comfort and security!
Storytelling is a massive part of the human experience!!
When I look back in time at the stories I tell of how I met my husband, how my children were born, or how I came to live in the city I love so much they all fill me with so much warmth and joy - and I am sure that you have those types of stories too!
And as I think about the stories that I am currently living I can see how they help me feel comfortable in my future as they give me the opportunity to predict what will happen in the come years!
"Because I am this type of person doing this type of thing my future will be full of (fill in the blank)"
I am sure you have those current stories too!
But what about those stories that we carry around that are not so beneficial? Those stories that keep us connected to our pain, and our limiting beliefs?
Is there something we can do when we feel burdened down by stories that harm us instead of help us?
Yes! There is!!
(Don't worry girlfriend I won't leave you hanging!!)
The good news is that our stories are malleable - they are not set in stone! The facts of our stories may be - but the way we tell our stores are not.
Some of us have been telling ourselves the same stories for so long that we no longer recognize that our stories are embused with opinion, assumptions, and gaps. We think our stories are fact - but they're not!
And that is really really good news!!
If you have a story that is painful or that limits you that story is not written in ink - it can be rewritten - and even making small story edits can have a huge impact and change the way you feel, what you think is possible and the direction that you are headed!
But before we jump into how to do that let's talk about how a story gets created in the first place!
A story starts in such a simple way...it starts with a feeling.
Something happens in our lives and it causes us to respond with a feeling and we could just let it pass over us (since FYI most feelings don't last more than 20 to 30 seconds) but instead of doing that we do something that starts us on the path of storytelling.
As soon as we have a feeling we attach a thought to it - which then almost immediately we begin to justify, analyze, or rationalize, and so the storytelling begins!
And before you know it we have these elaborate stories that may or may not be the best representation of the facts.
And I don't know about you but I have definitely found myself all wrapped up in a story that has trapped me in a life I didn't want!
Thankfully we can break those stories down and rewrite them in a way that doesn't deny the facts or the pain, but still opens us up to love, healing and a possibility!
Becoming Aware Of Your Story:
Sometimes we have a story that is controlling us but we don't really have a clear picture of what that story is because we tell it in bits and pieces or because the story was formed so long ago that we are no longer fully aware of it. So becoming clear on exactly what our story is, is an important first step!
Finding The Facts In Your Story:
It's important to remember that our stories are normally full of assumptions, gaps and opinions. Removing them from the story and taking a look at just the bare naked facts can be both eye-opening and give you some room to breathe and sets the stage for looking at the story in a new way.
Understanding Your Story:
What are some facts that your story has been missing? What parts of the circumstances do you need to learn more about? If you take the time to question some of your assumptions what else could be true? What do you see if you look at your story from the perspective of the other people involved? From the perspective of people who love and care for you?
Learning From Your Story:
Our experiences in life are opportunities to grow into our higher selves. With this focus asked yourself what has this story taught you? How have you grown because of this story? In what ways are you a better person because of this experience? What can you feel gratitude for? On this flip side, how has this story limited you in ways you refuse to accept anymore?
Transforming Your Story:
Knowing that you are in control of the story you tell what is your new story now? What wisdom does this new story bring into your life? How can you now contribute to the world in a way that you felt incapable of before? What actions does this new story open up for me? What new ending can you anticipate because of this new story?
Our stories can be our greatest gifts and they can be the legacy that we pass on to the world of what humanity is capable of - enjoy writing your story, I can't wait to hear it!!
XOXO
Meg
“Identity is this incredible invisible force that controls your whole life. It’s invisible like gravity is invisible, but it controls your whole life.”
- Tony Robbins
Have you ever done something or said something and then had to ask yourself "Why did I just do/say that? Where did that come from and what was I thinking?"
Or maybe you have struggled with something for a long time and you've asked yourself "Why is this something I still struggle with? Why can't I just get over it, or past it, or around it?"
I know I have - and it can be so frustrating!
To feel like you are in a situation that you have no control over, where you spoke or acted before you could think it through and at the end are just left wondering what the heck happened!
We so often don't realize that we are being controlled by our identity - by how we have chosen to see ourselves.
So what is this all-powerful identity that controls us?
Part of our identity are the facts of our life:
"I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a lawyer, an entrepreneur" etc.
But our identity also runs much deeper than that.
It runs into words like worthy and deserve and good and bad.
So one part of our identity might be "I am a mother" but a deeper level of our identity is "I am a good mother."
Things like 'mother,' 'daughter,' 'sister,' 'wife' 'entrepreneur', 'employee', are all parts of our identity that come and go.
For example: Although I am a wife and mother now, there was a time when I wasn't.
But what tends to stick around and cause us some grief is the deeper identities of 'good,' 'bad,' 'capable, 'unworthy,' etc.
And here's what happens:
If we have decided to see ourselves as not good enough, we will act not good enough.
If we have decided to see ourselves as bad, we will constantly be defending ourselves. If we have decided to see ourselves as incapable, we will constantly view ourselves as coming up short.
This part of our identity is a self-fulfilling prophecy that unless we acknowledge and uproot it we can not get past.
We may say we feel like we are capable, and we may read all the self-help possible, and we may talk a good game - but if in the back of our minds (subconsciously) we have attached ourselves to a negative deeper identity then that deeper negative identity is in control.
So how do you know if you have attached yourself to a deeper negative identity?
So how do we change things? How do we give ourselves a new deeper identity?
Well, one of the quickest ways is to give yourself new evidence of who you are and what you contribute to the world.
New evidence can always be found in a new perspective!
Our old identities are built on a certain way of looking at the world, and that way of looking at the world dismisses anything that doesn't agree with that specific world view.
So if your deeper identity is that you are 'unworthy' no matter how well you do something, or how much you succeed you will only allow into your consciousness the evidence that confirms your 'unworthiness.'
In order to change our identity, we must let in other evidence. Evidence of our goodness, of our worthiness, of our capabilities.
We must ask ourselves these questions:
By asking these questions we can find new evidence for who we are - which in turn affects our deeper identity - finally giving us what we actually need in order to make the changes we want to make, show up the way we want to show up, and simply just feel good about ourselves!
XOXO
Meg
Meg is a life coach, blogger and event host that is passionate about walking with people who want more out of life than just the status quo!
She believes that life doesn’t have to work out exactly the way we think it “should” in order to be enjoyed and that people don’t have to be perfect in order to be loved.
She believes that we all have the voice of truth inside of us but sometimes it can be hard to hear. And most importantly that we must live between the tension of accepting the things we cannot change and taking massive action on the things we can!
Meg creates spaces where women can slow down and process all the things that are influencing and controlling their lives - their everyday thoughts, emotions, and the stories they have been telling themselves.
Spaces where they can look at their inner world, gain valuable insight and then reclaim their personal authority, and make conscious decisions that transform the way they experience their lives!
Through one on one coaching, group coaching and workshops Meg helps women show up in the world with more love, and less ego, more compassion, and less judgment, more vulnerability, and less shame, more emotional agility and less fear!
Meg lives in BC with her husband of 20 years, two teenage boys and their little dog Charlie.
To learn more about Meg and her business, visit her website realexcellentliving.com
Ahhhhhhhhhhh, the brand-new year smell is in the air, can you sense it? The excitement, the shiny new hopes, resolutions and goals, and magical guiding focus words for the year... We’re so excited by the possibilities of manifesting something previously unreachable, that it’s making us giddy!
Is the new year really the best time to make such declarations? Hardly! Who knows, maybe it’s a part of the reason why the majority of new year resolutions and goals never come to fruition?
The new year is a man-made, artificial concept, which does not fit with the Universe’s cycles at all! There are plenty of better occasions to make new plans and set new goals, such as:
All of these natural occurrences will support you in making new goals and planting seeds for manifestation by adding a strong push of energy behind your intention, so you can create powerfully!
What happens if you fall off the wagon or if your path becomes convoluted due to circumstances beyond your control? When is the best time to get back on? Is it on Monday? On the next Full Moon? When the snow melts? Noooooooooo!
My friend, please understand (and I mean FEEL IT in your gut and in your bones, feel it until it hurts and imprints deeply on your psyche) that tomorrow is not promised to any of us! Your next breath might not come. None of us are entitled to “next week”.
Please understand that your every breath is a gift, the Universe breathes you full of exquisite lifeforce, which gets distributed to every single cell of your body. It’s a miracle!
In our illusion of “being in control” we think that we TAKE a breath, but in reality the breath enters our body passively! The exhalation requires work (the diaphragm muscle contracts, pushing the air out). When your diaphragm relaxes, the air rushes in into your body passively, due to the pressure gradient between the outside and the inside of your body.
Therefore, you receive the gift of breath, so accept it with grace and appreciation. Treasure it and use it with the deepest reverence. Treat it as the most sacred gift, because that’s what it is!
Coming back to my earlier question, when is the best time to pick up your goals, resolutions, intentions, if you still find them meaningful? Know this: your EVERY BREATH is a new opportunity! Your every inhale is a new beginning! Use that brand new opportunity every time, and never give up! Keep doing it until you succeed, because I know you will!
If you feel you need something different to gently jostle you out of your element and back towards your greatness with more vigour and energy, I want to offer you my 2021 Mind & Body Reset Bundle. It consists of 2 simple, tasty and powerful recipes, and 3 short Kundalini Yoga practices designed to keep you energised, balanced, and healthy.
Enjoy, and Happy New Breath!
With love and gratitude,
SevaRam Spronk
SevaRam serves Happy Healthy Women as the Kitchener branch director. She is a level 2 KRI-certified Kundalini Yoga teacher (RYT-500), and she shares the life-saving tools of this technology with her community through on-line classes and workshops. In her life-coaching business she helps entrepreneurial women to destroy their self-perceived limitations to reach the next level of success.
www.SRKKundaliniYoga.org
"Gratitude turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." - Melody Beattie
Nothing can change things as fast as gratitude can. We can be spinning in circles, feeling overwhelmed and out of control, thoughts bouncing from thing to thing faster than we can keep up with, and then, in walks gratitude!
All of a sudden you are opened, vast and expanded, you relax into a place of peace and contentment and best of all you are delivered to your highest self.
Gratitude is so powerful!
In fact, let's try it right now: bring into your mind someone or something that you feel grateful for. Maybe it is for your loved ones, your kiddos, or your life partner. Maybe it's the home you live in or the work that you do. Maybe you have recovered from an illness, or someone has really been there for you, or you've had an opportunity open up.
Whatever it is for you, hold it in the center of your awareness and acknowledge the gift it has been in your life. Place your hand on your chest and become aware of your heart and feel for a moment what you are experiencing when you feel grateful. Notice the openness that you feel, notice the expansive feeling, how you begin to relax, and begin to feel a sense of peace.
And notice what is most important about gratitude - that it is not the thoughts that you have, but instead it is a feeling, an explosion of sensations in your body and spirit. It is a state of consciousness, a way of showing up in the world.
So often we think of gratitude as an attitude to live by - that it's about thoughts and beliefs.
We think of gratitude as being positive, seeing the good in things, and using language that reflects that.
But gratitude is not an attitude - gratitude is a state of consciousness. It is a way of being in the world that comes from a soul level. After all, we don't experience gratitude in our heads (how often have you said "I know I should be grateful for this") we experience gratitude in our hearts.
All we have to do is bring to mind the face of a loved one and our hearts begin to sing, our bodies begin to vibrate with love, in fact sometimes when we add words our gratitude goes away (lol) as we being to think about something they said or did that didn't match the blueprint of what we wanted!
When we move from gratitude being about positivity and about our thoughts to an actual expanded consciousness that we live with we find something amazing happens: we find the quote from above actually becomes true in our lives.
We find that we move from conditional gratitude to gratitude beyond conditions!
For so many of us, we only allow ourselves to feel gratitude when things are going the way we want them to go, when people are treating us in a way that meets our needs and when our circumstances match what we want them to be. It's so easy to feel gratitude then!
But when we move from an attitude of gratitude to a gratitude consciousness we no longer need our life circumstances to match our needs to feel gratitude.
After all, sometimes the things that don't feel good are extremely good for us - and sometimes the things that feel good are not that good for us!
We are often so terrified of feeling discomfort, or unpleasantness, that the minute these feelings come up we have to do everything possible to get rid of the feeling! We have the unhelpful habit of measuring our success by if we feel good or not!
But when we instead pause with the feeling of uncomfortability we find out that these feelings are often doorways to awareness, enlightenment, and healing! What feels good and what feels bad is not always the best way to measure success! When we slip into black and white thinking or either/or thinking we believe that if we are uncomfortable then life is terrible, and if things are great then we allow ourselves to be happy.
But when we take on gratitude as a level of consciousness, as an expanded world view we can be uncomfortable and be dealing with hard emotions and still be grateful - you can acknowledge that you are unhappy and still allow your consciousness to notice and feel gratitude for the life you are experiencing!
So spend some time today in gratitude for everything - make a list that includes the beautiful things in your life and the not so beautiful! Hold each thing in your heart and allow yourself to feel grateful for it without slipping into thoughts or beliefs! At first, this may seem so difficult (trust me it was for me!) but with time and practice you will find yourself observing all the areas of your life without judgment or rational and you will find yourself being grateful for things that you thought you could never feel grateful for!
Today I am practicing the gratitude consciousness with you - today I have things on my plate that make me uncomfortable, that I dread, that cause me pain. But each time they come to mind I say to myself "I am so grateful that I get to experience life, and this is part of my life."
When my mind wants to slip into old thinking I repeat again "I am so grateful that I get to experience life, and this is part of my life." I hold each situation in my heart without judgment, I allow myself to feel whatever feelings come up and I say again "I am so grateful that I get to experience life, and this is part of my life."
And I am always surprised and delighted at how the tension in my body begins to fade, and how I can stay with the uncomfortability all enough to see it as a step on the path of lessons the universe has prepared for me.
May it be the same with you!
XO Meg
Meg is a life coach, blogger and event host that is passionate about walking with people who want more out of life than just the status quo!
She believes that life doesn’t have to work out exactly the way we think it “should” in order to be enjoyed and that people don’t have to be perfect in order to be loved.
She believes that we all have the voice of truth inside of us but sometimes it can be hard to hear. And most importantly that we must live between the tension of accepting the things we cannot change and taking massive action on the things we can!
Meg creates spaces where women can slow down and process all the things that are influencing and controlling their lives - their everyday thoughts, emotions, and the stories they have been telling themselves.
Spaces where they can look at their inner world, gain valuable insight and then reclaim their personal authority, and make conscious decisions that transform the way they experience their lives!
Through one on one coaching, group coaching and workshops Meg helps women show up in the world with more love, and less ego, more compassion, and less judgment, more vulnerability, and less shame, more emotional agility and less fear!
Meg lives in BC with her husband of 20 years, two teenage boys and their little dog Charlie.
To learn more about Meg and her business, visit her website:
There are so many of us that use food for more than just nourishment, or enjoyment, or as a way to connect with our community...there are so many of us that use food in a desperate way to fill some deep emotional hole that we have.
We use food to somehow make us happy, or calm, or just plain "feel better," whatever that means to us!
For the most part, we call this EMOTIONAL EATING (Check out the blog I wrote about emotional eating here https://www.realexcellentliving.com/post/emotional-eating-been-there-donethat)
But for some of us, the eating has reached a tipping point and it's more than just emotional eating, for some of us it's become something darker and seemingly harder to overcome.
Some of us have tipped over into Binge Eating.
So what is Binge Eating?
Binge eating is an aggravated form of emotional eating. Over time, an emotional eater moves from just eating in response to emotions to MASSIVELY overeating in response to emotions once you are no longer able to get the good feeling from food that you are used to. Often you tip from emotional eating to binge eating when you have a major life trauma or upset that you can't cope with or process.
So how do you know if you have tipped over from emotional eating to binge eating?
Well, if you are a binge eater you :
So maybe you've tried everything to gain some control over your eating and maybe you have always thought you were an emotional eater...but now you recognize yourself in the description above!
Maybe why all the advice you have heard and tried has never worked makes sense now!
Maybe you have done so much work on yourself, have walked the path of self-discovery and growth, have dived into self-care, and self-image and self-esteem work, but for some reason have not been able to let go of what you thought was emotional eating.
Binge eating might have a lot in common with emotional eating, but it requires a different strategy and mindset when trying to heal from it!
The first thing I had to realize as I went deeper into my relationship with food, was that binge eating was not something I was doing wrong, it was not a weakness or a lack of self-control, it was my brain actually doing what it was supposed to be doing!
I had to realize that it wasn't that I wasn't working properly, but rather that I was working properly!
See when we are emotional eaters we are using a different part of our brain then if we are binge eaters, when we are emotional eaters we are using our limbic brain that is responsible for our emotions, but when we are binge eating it is something much more primal, we are actually being controlled by our reptilian brain, where our amygdala is stored, which is where our fight, flight or freeze response comes from. The questions that our reptilian brain asks are "Can I mate with it? Is it safe? Can I eat it?"
If you are a binge eater it feels like you have no control, it feels like something else is taking over when you eat and that is because something is...you are being controlled by our most basic survival instincts. This is your mind trying to take care of you - not trying to harm you!
But so often we are trying to solve our binging by using our limbic or prefrontal cortex which we actually don’t have access to when our reptilian brain is in control.
Hence the reason that when we come to after binge eating it seems like we were someone or somewhere else, and why we promise ourselves it will never happen again (that's our prefrontal talking) but it always does.
For so many years, I was trying to fix my binging with my logic, reasoning, higher thinking, etc that my prefrontal cortex offers (focusing on self-love, etc), never realizing why I wasn’t making a dent. All that personal growth didn't help when I was faced with the temptation of food, or when the end of the day came. My brain was too busy trying to protect me!
So how do you deal with the reptilian brain?
Your work is to address the fear and create a space where you feel safe. When you create a space where you feel safe and you address that fear you can again access your higher mind. Without creating the feeling of safety, which is what the reptilian brain is trying to create with its overeating, you can not get past the instinct and begin to function from a higher level of thinking
Almost all advice on how to deal with emotional eating makes the assumption that you have access to your limbic or prefrontal cortex -which you don't have when you are in reptilian brain mode- which is why all that advice hasn't worked. All information that we receive first flows through our reptilian brain and then moves to the limbic and the prefrontal cortex.
So how do you create a feeling of safety for your brain so that the information can naturally flow into a part of your brain that allows you again to access things like reason, logic, self-love, disciple, etc?
Here are 6 things that worked for me:
So instead of consuming more food then my body could possibly ever need, I found myself learning how to make myself feel safe, accepting myself for who I was, and learning how to grow in areas that were long overdue!
Cheering you on as you journey,
XO Meg
Meg is a life coach, blogger and event host that is passionate about walking with people who want more out of life than just the status quo!
She believes that life doesn’t have to work out exactly the way we think it “should” in order to be enjoyed and that people don’t have to be perfect in order to be loved.
She believes that we all have the voice of truth inside of us but sometimes it can be hard to hear. And most importantly that we must live between the tension of accepting the things we cannot change and taking massive action on the things we can!
Meg creates spaces where women can slow down and process all the things that are influencing and controlling their lives - their everyday thoughts, emotions, and the stories they have been telling themselves.
Spaces where they can look at their inner world, gain valuable insight and then reclaim their personal authority, and make conscious decisions that transform the way they experience their lives!
Through one on one coaching, group coaching and workshops Meg helps women show up in the world with more love, and less ego, more compassion, and less judgment, more vulnerability, and less shame, more emotional agility and less fear!
Meg lives in BC with her husband of 20 years, two teenage boys and their little dog Charlie.
To learn more about Meg and her business, visit her website:
When sh** hits the fan, your go to is either to blame whatever’s happening at work or complain about your partner… which is just being human.
But why does this happen? Simple, the paradigm many of us are using is one where we see ourselves as something supported by our work and home… instead of life a cookie! Where our self is the cookie, with home, work and more as the chocolate chips!
Okay, backing up a bit – the problem paradigm.
When we use a diagram where everything is separated out, we create boxes in our lives, separating out parts of ourselves. You know this, because every time you say “Well, part of me feels like doing x, and part of me wants to do y…” we’re quite literally talking about different aspects of us. Even if we use a Venn diagram structure, there are still times when we try to be just one thing… just a worker be, just a wife / mother / daughter… and only a few times when we show up as all of who we are.
Instead, integrate all of the boxes to create your life cookie! In this model, you are the cookie dough - ever-present, encircling all of the bits that make you unique and delicious! Add as many ingredients you want, to make the perfect You Cookie – chocolate / raisins / nuts / etc.
As you move through life, yourself has access to all of the skills you have ever learned, able to draw on what you need moment to moment, easily and effortlessly.
The choice is your, keep up the strain of a life od boxes, or become a chocolate chip cookie and have access to all of your loves/skills/amazing all the time!
Want to make the switch seamlessly? Curious about how to do actually integrate your parts? Reach out!
From inner bondage to becoming a trailblazer in your own life, Shannon guides you through a compassionate process to become the Queen of Your World. Release the bonds holding your back and use the energy to accelerate you forward along the path you crave.
Contact Shannon now to connect with a tribe of empowered women, ruling their Queen-dom’s with grace and heart.
Shannon is also honoured to be the Branch Director for HHW Central Toronto, Ontario – join us Thursday mornings for Authentically Connecting – as all of who you are!
Oh, the ever elusive happiness.
Is it just a fleeting emotion? Is it something that we can reach and actually sustain?
Researchers have been studying happiness and wellbeing for a few decades now. And they have discovered some pretty fascinating things.
And although some of it has caught on in the mainstream media, (gratitude, yes, start a gratitude practice, gratitude boosts our well being and level of happiness) a lot of it hasn’t yet.
And a lot of what hasn’t really caught on yet is actually pretty transformative.
Here is an interesting fact that can shift your perspective a little bit and nudge you in a good direction, if you’re wondering why it’s so hard to just be happy.
Today’s Happiness Fact:
We’re not wired to be happy. We’re wired for survival
What does that mean? Well, it means that the “bad” is stronger and more attention-getting than the good. This is called the negativity bias. And we all have it.
You know how you can do a presentation or a project and you can receive a whole bunch of compliments and they feel, well, pretty good. But then you get that one little criticism and …OUCH!! Exactly. The bad is more attention-getting than the good. You feel the “bad” with a lot more intensity than you feel the “good.” Or you know how having something stuck in your teeth, or a tiny pebble in your shoe can practically ruin an otherwise perfectly good day?
Our minds are wired to notice and pay attention to what’s wrong around us. We evolved this way because it helped us to survive. Our ancient ancestors that noticed and tended to the potential dangers in our surroundings (what was wrong or what might be wrong) instead of just noticing what was good, were more likely to survive the tigers, the poison berries, and whatever else posed a risk in their environments.
But what does that mean for us now? Getting some negative feedback isn’t likely to affect our survival, but it definitely can affect our mood. And focusing our attention on every little thing that is wrong in our lives can leave us feeling pretty down. No wonder it’s so hard to feel happy, even when things are going well!
So what can we do about it?
A powerful thing we can do is to amp up the positive. This fits in with one of the other amazing things that scientists have learned about our brains pretty recently. Our brains are constantly changing. And we can wire and rewire our brains with our thoughts and behaviours. This is called neuroplasticity.
So focusing on what’s good around us, deliberately, and creating a habit out of it, actually changes our brain to see more of what’s good. You see, what we practice we get better at. And that includes where we put our attention. That’s a big reason why gratitude is so important and valuable for boosting our happiness and wellbeing. It counters the negativity bias and changes our brain to see more of what’s good.
What else? Savouring and mindfulness are also powerful tools you can use and actions you can take. And there are also strategies to challenge your negative thoughts head on. Learn about them on my future posts, or sign up to one of my online Flourishing Skills Groups where we do a deep dive into all of this cool stuff. And we do it while building a heart-centred community and connection, which is another key component of wellbeing and happiness.
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Lina Maria is a certified life coach and well-being educator with a background in Positive Psychology. Her drive has always been to find the most effective way to bring meaningful, positive social change to societies and the world. She combines her knowledge of the science of optimal human functioning and wellbeing with her experience in education and coaching to bring powerful and effective change to people’s lives through coaching, Flourishing Skills Groups, and workshops.
Through personal coaching, Lina Maria provides a safe and supportive space combined with powerful solution-focused questioning and reflection to support you to find clarity and direction for moving forward in the direction you want to go in your life. Schedule a free life goals assessment and coaching session. And stay up to date on my events and other cool wellbeing science-related stuff by Following me on Facebook.
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