On Letting Go

Do you ever find yourself going along thinking you know something or that you’ve resolved something, letting go and all of a sudden there’s more to learn or you discover you just resolved it a bit more?

Sometimes I think an issue is resolve and then I discover there’s even more to be uncovered and resolved.

My ex-husband is in my life. We share four children and four grandchildren. We live a few miles apart. It’s taken a lot of work on my part to be in a state of forgiveness. A lot of letting go. We had a very difficult marriage. We were too young and too unsuited to each other to have anything but a contentious relationship for a good deal of the four years we dated and the 15 years we were married.

I’ve been going along thinking I had forgiven him for the hurt I felt but wouldn’t you know it, I learned just how much internal protection I was holding onto when it came to him. And I am sure he could feel that. I wasn’t letting go. I kept seeing him as ‘weird’ until it I clearly saw, “Your four kids are half his? Are they weird? Are they part you and part him which makes them somehow defective.” Of course not! So another letting go.

Maybe some people who grow up being abused never learn how to fully relax and fully trust others. Or maybe it happens in degrees over the years. I’m not sure but what I’m sure of is that I sat next to my ex at a holiday performance at our grandson’s school on Friday and I felt completely open to him for the first time – probably since we met in 1961! And then again this past couple of weeks, another unfolding and another awareness and another letting go. We had the best conversation about a difficult family issue. It was the best conversation we’ve had in 50 years!

Life is a wonderful teacher and I feel lighter and better about myself with this burden dropped – or maybe they’ll be more to drop someday in the future.

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Self Esteem – Where’s Yours?

Are you spending your life feeling ordinary? Do you feel like you are just a “normal” person like everyone else and that life is no big deal – particularly your life? That is what’s wrong with your thinking and your self esteem. Every single person on earth is completely unique and not exactly like anyone else. Think of the miracle it takes for two people to come together and actually have all the conditions exactly right to create another human being! Think of the miracle that it takes for that little tiny creation to properly grow and develop into the unique individual that you are today!

That is beyond ordinary. Remember that there is nothing ordinary about you.

• Focus on what you really want in life and you will begin to receive all the things that you have always wanted.

• If you love and accept yourself first, you will treat other people the same way that you want to be treated and your relationships, your work and your overall happiness will change and you will realize that you are way more than ordinary and begin to prove it to yourself  and your self esteem every day.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Everybody’s talking about it.

Wikipedia says: Coaching is a method of directing, instructing and training a person or group of people, with the aim to achieve some goal or develop specific skills. There are many ways to coach, types of coaching and methods to coaching. Direction may include motivational speaking. Training may include seminars, workshops, and supervised practice. Craig Miller, a former counselor turned business coach, says he thinks of therapy as taking a person in the present backwards to learn what has been holding them back and then helping them back to neutral. While he sees life coaching as helping people go from neutral on into their future.

I see life coaching as very individual to each every coach. It is an alliance – a partnership whereby the life coach acts as guide, support, objective observer, listener between the lines of their client in order to help that client achieve what they want to achieve in their life.

They may want to boost self esteem or build self confidence. They may be looking for a career coach or support while changing jobs or starting a business. They may want to deal with their procrastination problems that keep them from building their business. They may have relationship issues where they want to work on a relationship, leave a relationship, get back into a dating life after a divorce. They may want support as a new parent or help in parenting a teen. They may want support for blended family or step-parenting issues. They may want a kind of adult re-parenting themselves. They may want to lose weight or improve their body image. And the list goes one.

From my perspective everything a person wants to do in their life can be accomplished once they uncover what is blocking them. What is most often blocking them started when they were children and two things happened:

• for some reason their feelings were not heard and honored
• as a result, they formulated mistaken ideas and beliefs about who and what they are and their worthiness

Our solution is to have people attend YOU University which is best done with a coach.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

The Lonely Issue of Self Esteem

If you think you are the only one with self esteem issues, you are not alone. Most people think that they are the only ones that have low self esteem while the truth of the matter is that most people at some time in their life suffer from self esteem issues. I mean really, who wants to walk around all victimy these days and say, “Poor me. I have self esteem issues?” Anyway, self esteem issues are a pretty good subject for our old friend denial to pop right in and cover up the whole thing from our conscious mind.

So if you want to check it out, ask yourself the following to uncover self esteem issues:

• Do you settle for way less than you want in a relationship?

• Do you absolutely never let anyone see you dressed less than perfectly?

• Or do you go the other way and dress pretty sloppily quite often?

• Do you work at jobs that are way beneath your talent ability or allow yourself to be way underpaid?

• Do you tell yourself that those kinds of jobs are all that’s available or that you’re only doing them temporarily but find that you’ve actually done them for years?

• Do you let your personal environment go to the point of severe clutter and either clean up only for visitors or keep people out of your home?

• Do you secretly feel your aren’t very talented?

• Do you sacrifice your wants and desires for others all or most of the time?

I’m sure many people could add to this list of questions but these are ones I can think back to from my own severe self esteem issue days.

The good news is you can change this. You can learn how to have higher self esteem. If you look around on the internet, you might run into statements like:

•    You just need to learn to love yourself and your life.
•    Let go of any anger or fear you are holding onto and be grateful for all that you have already been blessed with.
•    Forget about the past and the mistakes that you have made along the way. You can’t change them now and it will not accomplish anything by making yourself feel worse.

They sound nice and maybe even easy. But how do you accomplish those ends?

Look around this site at some of the tools. They might help you. Also, consider hiring a life coach or a therapist if your self esteem seem too severe for the help of a coach.

But I can tell you from personal experience and experiences of my clients, that the opposite it is true. Believe that you can be the person that you have always wanted to be and find the ways to begin to reconstruct your life. If you increase your self esteem you can move on and begin to construct the life that you really want and deserve to have.

Develop your strengths and use them to gain any knowledge that can help you in the direction that you would like your life to go in. High self esteem is not a luxury it is a necessity and the only thing that will allow you to accomplish all of your goals. Since self-esteem affects every facet of life, having a healthy, realistic view of yourself is important. You also deserve to like and respect yourself and to be happy with your life and who you are. And remember, high self esteem doesn’t mean that you’ve gotten too big for your britches — it means you value yourself.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free! Meet the The-Woman-Who-Was-the-Girl-Who-Was-the-Light and her Wise Fairy God Mother and learn Three Magic Secrets that will make your life better.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

I’ve always been big on giving my clients journal prompts because there is something inside themselves that wants to come out. As their guide on this part of their personal growth journey, sometimes I can see what the correct journal prompts would be for them to help them uncover what’s wanting to come to their awareness. Following is an example of one of those journal prompts I assigned to a client:

Maia,

Thanks for the little journal prompts exercise on yes/no.  I have done this one before, but your twist to fold the page in half, do the “no” side first, and then the “yes” side, without seeing the “no” side, was a little different.  When I did it, I had the page open and allowed myself to “respond” to each negative or positive statement as I was writing.  The value of the way you suggest is that you don’t make excuses, you write down the negatives as a total list, and then you go to the positives, which may or may not be about each point on the other list.  Of course, with both versions of the yes/no exercise, one writes down immediately “what I know right now” because it is usually quite clear, and sometimes even while only beginning the (first) negative list, what the outcome will be.

Here are mine:

On being a minister - “The road to hell is paved with good intentions!”  I have paved a path which has taken me somewhere I don’t want to be.  I could use [my husband] as an excuse, but the bottom line is if I really wanted to do it, his wants would not be a factor – I would respect him and also do what I wanted.  Instead, I feel pulled, and want to put the “blame” on him – I don’t want to do it, either, but feel obligated.  This is not what I thought it would be like.  I don’t want to do it, and need a way to exit gracefully.

On being a life coach – What I know right now is that I have a few fears around coaching which don’t “hold water”.  I’m not getting paid as a minister, so why do I worry about getting clients? They come, or not.  They see the value, or not.  We’re all free here.   If they want to be coached, they pay.  It doesn’t have to be a long-term relationship.  What are their goals?  Let’s get in and get it done.  I mean that – sounds like Dave Buck!  I know more than I am usually willing to admit.  I’m not perfect – I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve come through them to the happy, sane, pleasant, fulfilling life I’m living now.  I will always be a learner and a seeker, and I am willing and ready to engage in coaching in order to share this with others.

Again, Maia, I am eternally grateful.  Thank you!

Anita Marbois

Isn’t it lovely to have a job where a few journal prompts brings such awareness and such lovely gratitude?

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Life Coach & Listening

This blog is turning out to also be a bit of a forum for life coaches – not just people who might be interested in hiring a coach. One of my favorite client experiences has been helping a newbie client take off into her coaching practice and responding to questions like these from a reader of this blog:

Thanks so much Maia for your response to my question about coaching clients who can tend to be looking for someone to listen to them rather than in taking action. Yes, I have indeed been asking lot of questions to get my client to be more specific about what he wishes to get from the coaching, but it’s proving hard to pin him down (especially as it’s coaching via email). As you say, it’s important to confirm exactly what someone wants to achieve from the coaching so that I’m clear on what they expect from me – and to ensure we are a good fit.

Tamsin Butters, nudgeme (http://nudgeme.co.uk)

Part of the role I play with many clients is partly listening but I always find out early on what I’m listening for. What I mean by that is: if I know where a client is headed, then I can hear if their account of what’s happening with them sounds like its heading in the direction they want to go. I am good at listening between the lines so no problem. But I don’t think I’d want to work with a client who was email only. I definitely exchange email with clients in between sessions but email is a funny and tricky thing and easily misinterpreted.

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Three Magic Secrets

to Emotional Healing

It is our job to change our own lives.  It cannot be left to other people or to the world around us. We cannot push our lives back until we have money, or feel secure in relationships. We have to start our emotional healing now.

Three Magic Secrets necessary to change your life:

1. Magic Secret #1 – Life Is a School – Every newspaper and TV station and internet news are all freaking out about the economy, the environment, the politicians, etc. Well, that is their job as they see it. But our job is to ignore all that and remember Life Is a School. Why do we want to ignore it or at least not get too focused on it? Because our predominant state of being creates our reality and if our predominant state of being is some sort of freak out, then that’s what we will create in our lives. Not only is Life Is a School on the individual level but the level of state, country, planet, Universe. We are here to learn. If everyone is freaking out, then we create more to be freaked out about. Like attracts like. And from that perspective we’ve done quite a good job of it. What I want to learn and I am suggesting you learn too, is how to be as authentically me as possible and how to change my attitude as quickly as possible which leads me to say that on both an individual and global level we all create a better world which is why I endorsed Obama . He seems to supply hope to many people. It’s a much happier attractor than fear will ever be – or at least we’ll like the results more.

2. Magic Secret #2 – Friend In-Deed – Don’t underestimate the impact of who you keep close to you  in your life on your attitude. If the people you hang out with are into positive change, it’ll make it easier for you to be into it too.  If the people you hang out with are critical and complaining, guess what? That’s the direction you will likely find yourself going in. If they focus on negativity and on the past and all that was wrong with it, remind them and yourself now is the time for change!

3. Magic Secret #3 – My Cup Runneth Over – Yup. Gratitude. The easiest way to activate the Law of Attraction in your direction, The easiest way to change your attitude and easily focus on now . Gratitude can open the door to your own emotional healing, let go of anger, and allow wonderful things to transpire in your life.

As my book says, “And with those Magic Secrets you too will discover how to find the sparkle, the light, the joy, find who you were when you were very first born.” (page 35, Once Upon a Time There Was You: Three Magic Secrets for Finding Your Real Self .

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!