• Take a swim in the ocean or a saltwater bath.
• See yourself surrounding by a purifying white light with a ring of ultraviolet fire around it keeping out all of the negativity.
• Stay hydrated, hold the thought of purification and drink lots of water.
• Sit out in the sun and ask Archangel Michael to clear your emotional body and etheric grid of all imbalance and disturbance.
• Burn Dragonsblood incense to clear your space, use a singing bowl or ring bells.

All of these methods are useful for clearing a lower energetic resonance and programming in new higher vibrational energy, be sure to hold the intent of what you would like to achieve before you begin a spiritual protection practice such as clarity or peace.

This model is very powerful for creating change in any area of life however I’m being urged to specifically illustrate how to use it to navigate job loss – as this is a subject that is of real concern to the collective consciousness at this time.

Job loss in particular challenges our sense of security which is a basic human need – however, you will learn through this model, where to place your sense of security so that it can not be threatened by losing your job.

Lets begin by laying out the model (which is a self assessment tool that you can you use to identify which level you are in and what you must release to get to the next level) and then we will talk about where most people in job loss will start and what the most powerful way for them to move through the situation will be.

The first level is Life is Happening to Me. In this stage you feel victimized and helpless…as if you have absolutely no power and that something else has to happen in your external environment in order to make a change. To move out of this stage you have to give up blame.

Life is Happening BY ME

The second level is Life is Happening By Me. In this stage you will feel that you have complete control over everything and that it will happen because you will make it happen. This is the highly driven personal action stage. In order to move out of this stage you have to relinquish control.

Life is Happening THROUGH ME

The third level is Life is Happening Through Me. In this stage you feel that you are here for a reason and that you have a purpose. You have gifts, you ‘re in touch with your Higher Power. You trust that you will get what you need, you don’t even have to try that hard to get it and know that worry just cuts you off from Source. In order to move out of this level you need to release separation.

Life is Happening AS ME

The fourth level of consciousness is Life is Happening As Me. In this stage you feel that there is no separation between you and Spirit and you and others. You show up without the beliefs that keep you separate so you are operating from a perspective of compassion in which you don’t necessarily feel that you need to change others or the environment because you see yourself as an extension of it.

When a person loses their job they are most likely going to start in the Life is Happening To Me, level of consciousness and they may feel like they were just dealt a physical blow.  It is the sense of being attacked by life on an unseen level which tends to create victims of us…in order to move beyond this stage we need to understand that it is not personal, we don’t need to hang the blame on someone or something, we are not really under attack – things are simply changing and we need to learn to flow along with -  instead of resisting that change.  People in general don’t appreciate change, especially change that threatens their sense of security, however all change carries within it opportunities for new growth and provides a path of opening within our lives that is ours to make of it – what we will.   If  we befriend change (no matter what it looks like on the outside) we can use the energy of it to take us where we want to go.

So with that in mind, the next best level of consciousness to move into is Life is Happening Through Me.  Once you are no longer taking it personally, you realize that you don’t need to engage in resistance as a bid for control over your situation.  Getting your old job back and putting everything back the way it was is simply not an available option for you at this time and you start to open to the idea that there might be a good reason for this shift to be taking place and you seek what you can learn from this experience.  Perhaps this was a pretty good position for you, most likely though, you could think of some things you would like to change, new areas of growth you’re interested in pursuing, or situations you’d like to avoid.  As you focus on extracting the learnings – you begin to get clear on what it is that you want to create in the space that vacating your old job has left you.  This space is a great gift – because space is what we need to grow something new.

As you step further and further into the idea of what it is that you really, really want in a job…you begin to see that your old position really wasn’t that great of a match and an excitement about finding something more fulfilling to all the different parts of your self emerges.  This excitement encourages a sense of gratitude to rise up within you toward the original loss as you fully embrace at very deep levels just what an opportunity this is to create a livelihood that allows you to be more authentically who you really are.

From this mental positioning you enter the Life is Happening As Me level of consciousness, fully accepting yourself as the creator and participant of circumstances all working toward your Highest Good.  From this place of ownership, you are able to harness the power of your consciousness into action.

With your knowing in place (like a map before you) you engage the Life is Happening By Me level of consciousness, channeling enormous amounts of energy and enthusiasm into the necessary action oriented steps it will take to get you there.  Confidently creating, your new way of working in the world

So is job loss a disastrous event or an opportunity to work out of your Highest Path and Purpose?  Are we empowered regardless of what is happening on the physical level of our lives?  My answer to this question is….YES, YES, YES!!!

I believe that it is our level of consciousness that determines the answers to these questions…not the actual circumstances that we are experiencing in our lives.  What we think and feel about what we encounter in our day is where we hold our power, when we get the inside to line up with the goals of our physical, outer world needs – we’re pretty unstoppable!!!

This is what I’ve lived in my life and I’ve seen countless clients living it as well.

All my love,

PK

How I Discovered Coaching

When I first became aware that I was on my Highest Path and Purpose it was very surreal.  I was enveloped in this energy that is securely anchored to Source and even though I had no idea where I was going – it was clear that Spirit was leading somewhere, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow.

One day while at my computer I distinctly heard a voice (from outside of my own head) say life coach as if someone or something had been leaning over my right shoulder.  Now this really impacted me because clairaudience is not my usual channel and so I immediately typed it in the search bar to see what this life coaching thing was all about – where was this guidance leading?

As I searched I found several definitions of coaching and what really struck me about the modality is that you see your client as whole, capable and having all the internal resources they need to achieve whatever goal they may have.

My Definition of a Coach

A coach deploys what I call “full-body listening” in which they hold intense focus on their client (with no mental background chatter) using listening and their bodies response system as a way of syncing with the energy system of the client.

This allows them access to all the choices available, to see the situation from the client’s point of view, but also from many other directions as well.  By the coach holding this expanded space around their client and asking questions that guide the client toward the things that are available that they haven’t noticed or been able to see, the client becomes aware of more empowered paths and choices.

The NLP and Coaching Institute of California

One school in particular literally jumped out at me and when I talked to co-founder Kris Hallbom I was so pulled toward the NLPCA’s Coaching Program that I just knew (right then and there that somehow I would attend).

This program was a 23 day intensive.  At the time, my two young children were ages 4 and 7.  The intensive ran in July when the kids were off from school and my husband did not have the vacation to cover taking that much time off.  My mind looked at this situation and began to run statistics on the likelihood of this all working out, however Spirit was in the driver’s seat and simply said to Speak My Truth and trust what manifested.

When I spoke to my husband about it he was immediately on board as he saw what a great match it was to my natural tendencies.  The training itself was not all that expensive but hotel and food would kick it up a notch, regardless – he was willing to dip into our savings to send me.  His parents who are often busy, just happened to be available and were extremely excited about the prospect of having their grand kids all to themselves for several weeks for camping and other fun summer activities.  I watched in awestruck wonder as every little piece of what seemed impossible fell effortlessly into place!

The program itself was amazing. It was set just outside San Fransisco (one of my favorite cities ever!) in nearby and less expensive Burlingame where a quick drive would deposit you on the BART and into the heart of everything there is to do.

Operating Principles

We had five instructors who were the very embodiment of the teachings (each offering a vast amount of experience and a different area of expertise) over the duration of the course.  Covering a wide range of skills deeply anchored in the empowering perspectives of the NLP Operatives:

• Communication is redundant.
  You are always communicating, in all 3 major representational systems – auditory, visual and kinesthetic. You signal this through tone and tempo of your voice, posture, breathing patterns and gestures, as well as your language patterns and eye accessing cues.
• The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.
  Communication is not about what you intend, or about saying the right words; it’s about creating an experience in, and getting a response from, the listener. The “bottom line” is the response you elicit.
• The map is not the territory.
  People respond to their map of reality, not reality itself. NLP is the science of changing these maps (which then changes the way a person perceives and interacts with reality).
• Requisite variety.
  The element with in the system with the most flexibility will be the controlling element.
• People work perfectly.
  No one is wrong or broken; it’s simply a matter of finding out how they function now, so that you can effectively change that to something more useful or desirable. People don’t need to be “fixed”.
• People always make the best choice available to them at the time.
  (but often there are lots of better ones that they haven’t yet learned to access)
• Every behavior is useful in some context.
• Choice is better than no choice.
• Just about anyone can learn to do anything.
• People already have all the resources they need.
  What they need is access to these resources at the appropriate times and places.
• There is no such thing as failure only feedback.
  Every response can be utilized.
• Chunking.
  Anything can be accomplished (by anyone) if you break the task down into small enough chunks.
• Behind every behavior is a positive intent.
  While a behavior may be harmful or seem “bad”, there is always a positive intention behind the behavior.
• Symptoms – pains, anxiety, depression, tumors, colds, etc., are communications about needed action.
• We are all responsible for creating our own experience.
  Even when challenging events that we cannot control happen, we are responsible for our responses to the events. Typically we have much more control than we think we have. Another way of stating this presupposition is that “We consistently create our own environment” through our beliefs, filters, capabilities and behaviors.
• Energy flows where attention goes. (from Huna)

Learning to Coach

In the training we learned how to create the coaching state, holding the client from the viewpoint of the NLP presuppositions in total respect, while cultivating within ourselves a curious, not knowing state that allows our clients to go deep and find their own answers.  We learned to build trust to directionalize the conversation toward the client’s goals, to hold space for their agenda with active listening and specific questions, planning and action skills and how to create a meaningful metaphor on closing our sessions that the client could easily access to help them stay on target.

Coaching Skills and Tools

We learned the following coaching skills:

Accountability, Acknowledgment, Asking Permission, Bottom Lining, Challenging, Championing, Forward the Action, Goal Setting and Planning, Holding the Client’s Agenda, Inquiry, Intrude, Powerful Questions and Requesting Structures.

Along with these NLP skills:

Meta-Programing, Perceptual Positions, Neurological Level Alignment, Well-formed Outcomes, Backtracking, Universal Cycles of Change, Vision to Action, Ecology, Open Questions, Voting with Time, Energy and Money, Working with and Changing Beliefs (Six Step Reframing), Resonance Patterning and much more.

In Retrospect

This course really changed me.  I learned more about myself in 23 days than I had in many, many years and had the opportunity to shift many of my less productive mind patterns while we learned and practiced the material.

It helped me to embody an awakened Highest Path and Purpose perspective and I still rely on the mindsets and tools for creating shifts in perspectives that I learned in coaching in my personal walk everyday.

I made some amazing spiritual friendships and experienced as well as received much healing over the duration of the course.  In, fact you could very well say that this course is what awakened me to my path as a healer…it was the first step that I took toward that direction and I have never regretted it!

Reminder

For those of you who missed the teleclass on intuition the audio is available here (I’m still working out the technology end – so please excuse the static – it doesn’t last long) 

Special Offer

For those of you who might want to take up coaching, NLPCA is offering (this year only) a special price of $3600.00 for their training.  Be sure to head over to www.nlpca.com and check them out if you’ve been considering coach training!

My next post in this series will cover NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner training

A Message From My Higher Self

During a recent meditation I received a beautiful message from my Higher Self that was the inspiration for writing this post that I had been playing with putting together for some time. I had been standing with her by the ocean, which is spiritually very sacred to me. We gazed out over the water together, breathing in the energy, sitting silently listening to the voice of the waves and the wind.

She turned to me suddenly at the height of this experience and said, “Do you know what it is about the ocean that you are connecting with?” I began to go inside and reflect when she directed my gaze by saying, “Look out onto the horizon and bring it all inside of you.” She paused for a moment and said softly, “It is not the water you love, it is the vastness…what would the water be without the horizon? What would this grandeur and beauty be without the space through which you can behold it? Understand that it is the space that you love and bring spaciousness into everything you do.”

The moment it was said, it rang true. The ocean which runs as far as the eye can see is vast, any object on it’s surface is clearly visible. Visually, it is a clean and clear landscape to behold and just by watching it, it begins to create similar properties within me. I organize myself internally to reflect its natural state…my thinking clears, my mind empties, oneness and spaciousness enter and I feel the separation melt away. I am consciousness, flowing, breathing, contracting and releasing without attachment.

Creating Spaciousness in Your Life

Creating space in life is a necessity. Especially when you consider that we can only successfully track 5-7 things, in our conscious awareness at a time. When we hold on to more than that the rest of the stuff gets pushed into our unconscious mind and this is how many of our unconscious patterns are born.

If you are on the path of personal development, you want to consciously control what is added to your unconscious mind. To do that you have to be mindful of your thoughts and maintain a level of spaciousness within your thinking. Here are some quick and easy ways of doing this that you can use throughout your day:

Focus on only one thing at a time.
Many of us run laundry lists of all the things we have to do on a continual loop within our minds. This takes up an enormous amount of space and energy to maintain! Write it down if you think you might forget and then allow you mind to only focus on the step that you can do right now. When that passes, move on to the next in the same order.

Breathe.
Pause every 15 minutes to half an hour and perform patterned breathing. The count can be anything you’d like, just make sure it follows an inhale, pause, exhale execution. Put your full concentration on what each part of the breath feels like. Perform the breathing patterns 3-5 times, and then continue on to the next thing.

Listen.
Stop and listen to your surroundings. Breathe deeply, while closing your eyes and listening with your full attention for about 2 minutes. Allow no censorship or thoughts about what you hear to come into your mind. Simply be with the sensations, texture and nuances of the sounds. Notice the vibrational quality to them and where in your body you can feel reverberations.

Practice putting your mind down.
This is one of my favorite little exercises in which I visualize giving my mind to something in my immediate environment (the airport is a great place for this). For some of you this may seem like a strange concept, but trust me. This is great fun once you get over the initial strange feeling and it’s a wonderful way to unload from the burden of non-stop thought for awhile!

Coaching and Space

In coaching, space is the foundation upon which all effective coaching techniques are built and when coaching isn’t working, it almost always comes down to the coaches mastery of this core skill. It works because it is one of the purest ways that we can interact with anyone or thing.

When I hold space for a client, I create a sacred field of connectedness and acceptance for them to work in. This is done by literally taking off my own views and filters of the world and entering a pure state of consciousness, where I am fully present and able to respond, where I am listening to what is said, and hearing what has not yet been uttered. From this place I can see very clearly what the client is attending to as well as what lies in the background outside of their vision. It is the quality of this attention, that provides insight and safety and makes coaching such an effective tool.

Holding space however, is not limited to coaching in it’s usefulness. It’s a way of being that can greatly enhance any aspect of life that it is applied to, since nearly all of life, is some form of relating

Generating the Coaching State (Holding Space)

Breathe. Start by breathing deeply and purposefully.
Visualize. See yourself and your environment bathed in white or golden light.
Feel. Place your attention in your body. Notice how the light fills you up, how each breath feels as it enters and exits your lungs, how your energy is revitalized and you are filled with peace.
Be. Now begin the get curious about the world around you, stretching your feeling senses into the environment around you. Notice how the air feels against your skin, enjoying an experience completely devoid of thought.
Explore. Like an explorer in new territory, interact with your surroundings in a way that lets you examine. Get curious about the paths and places before you and where they might lead. An adventure has found you and like a good story, you won’t know what it means until it is over…so simply allow yourself to get curious about and perhaps a little lost in, the experience!

How do I know when I’m holding space?
You are holding space when there are no distractions and the mind is quiet while the senses are awake. You’ll know you are there because you can be with a person or place without any planning about what you will do or say, or any trying to “figure things out”. There is a trust present as well as an observing curiosity. It is a safe, peaceful place…where anything can be looked at and transformed!

Practice holding space every day and you will be able to produce this state whenever you want to disconnect from looping thought patterns, limitation, dis-ease, resistance or anything else that is troubling you and tap into a new way of being with your problems and therefore discovering what is actually possible for you or anyone else at this given moment

Oh little girl
There are times when I feel
I’d rather not be
The one behind the wheel

~ Depeche Mode

The following outlines a common roadblock toward allowing your Higher-Self to guide your life and provides a process for moving through this resistance…

Do you want help or not?

Most of us think we want guidance…in fact, we ask for it repeatedly to be certain that our request is heard. When asking a service of our Spirit Team, we often hold on to it, out of fear that it won’t get done. By not letting go…we ensure that this is the case, and we are left to wonder why our Guides aren’t working for us.

Understanding Resistance

This bewildering phenomenon is one of the most common forms of self-sabotage that we encounter when working with Spirit. It is subtle and insidious and leaves us wondering why our situation hasn’t changed.

Well, let me ask you this. If you were riding with someone and they told you to take the wheel, but then stubbornly clung to it, continuing to steer the car…could you really drive for them? Wouldn’t your efforts to go this way or that be thrown off by their resistance toward letting go? Would you be confused? Perhaps, you would stop trying as you realize that they aren’t really ready for your help.

Recognizing when you’re holding on

We unconsciously do this to our Higher-Selves and Spirit Guides all of time and while they may stop trying to navigate in a moment like this, they remain by our sides, just waiting for us to release our troubles…and allow them to assist us.

If you have asked for spiritual assistance with something but don’t seem to be experiencing relief, do a quick internal search and notice if there is any part of you that is still holding on. Be with the idea and allow your awareness to scan your body for any tension areas.

The body speaks that which the mind refuses to acknowledge.

An easy way to find them is to start meditative breathing while contracting and relaxing all of your major muscle groups. Using this relaxation technique for contrast, you will be able to identify which areas in your body are not letting go…they will correspond with the part of yourself that does not want to release the issue into the hands of your Higher-Self and Guides.

Internal Explorations

When you are conscious of the part that is hanging on, notice the emotions that are present. Get curious about this operation within yourself, observe with a detached mindset, and allow yourself to accept what you find as simply part of the landscape. Now is not the time for meaning so give yourself the task of simply exploring.

Place your attention on the very center of the physical location of this part. Bring your consciousness into this area of your body and notice how it feels. It will likely make many changes while you give it your attention. Simply be with the changes, going more deeply into yourself with each iteration until you get a visual of yourself as this part. Notice how this you is holding onto your situation, are the hands clenched? Or is this holding on being represented in some other way?

Now notice your Higher-Self placing a reassuring hand upon the you that is holding on. This part of you looks up at your Higher Self and lets go. At the moment of release, step into this other you and experience the support of your Higher-Self and just how good it feels to let go.

Sweet surrender: the bliss of letting go

From this space of peace, observe the larger picture and notice what you’ve learned from experiencing this situation. Notice how grateful you are for this opportunity to receive support and see yourself entering into your current circumstances complete, whole and at peace…with your Higher-Self right beside you, ready and willing to take the wheel.

You decide to relax, and enjoy the ride while you let him/her navigate for a time…looking out the window, you notice that there is a lot to see as a passenger and wonder at what you would have missed, if you hadn’t decided to let go

The real paradox

In reality both you and your Higher-Self are in control…since you are one and the same. Your Higher-Self is simply your highly evolved, spiritual consciousness…but it is still, in essence, who you are. The paradox is, that until you recognize this unity, neither of you is really in control because you can counteract each other’s efforts like in the earlier scenario of two people trying to drive.

Life is a series of contraction and release. The trick is knowing which to do, when.

Navigating life with our Higher-Selves is a kind of dance. A common theme in dance is two partners becoming One and this is the great spiritual lesson of this practice that has evolved in nearly every culture on the planet.

In my coaching and NLP classes we practiced a technique called mirroring. You would find a partner and just move. One person would start and the other would mirror their movements. As you get in sync with your partner, they take over the lead and so it goes, back and forth until you can no longer tell who is leading and who is following…at this point it is simply flow.

I find that in my own relationship with my Higher-Self that this mirroring is how we started the dance. I desired to connect, and so I learned how to “mirror” my Higher-Self. I practiced and practiced until we achieved flow and the lines between us began to disappear.

If you are interested in learning how to “mirror” your Higher-Self, please sign up for my six week Dancing with Your Higher-Self Intuitive Coaching Course. In this program I will connect to your Higher-Self and Guides and download an agenda and homework assignments that are designed to bring you into your own connection with your Spiritual Resources.

As this work comes from your Higher-Self and Guide Team, it will be an act of discovery for us both to see just how your connection with them will unfold. The program consists of six weeks of coaching, one half hour call per week with homework. The price for the program is $150.00.

Understanding the Limitations and Expectations You Have Around Receiving Help

Sometimes we are in obvious need of help but are completely unable to articulate it even to ourselves…these are usually the times when we just wait for someone else to notice our predicament and offer a hand. I call this looking for a mind reader.

In situations when we find ourselves hoping for someone else to save us…we are usually doing so because within that moment we are actually not capable of seeking assistance ourselves and here is the reason why this often happens.

Option Lock

Option lock is a form of tunnel vision that keeps us from seeing or experiencing the various things around us that we could be paying attention to. A good way to visualize it is to imagine someone carrying an item that is too heavy for them down the stairs. It seemed manageable when they began, but pretty soon they are out of breath and it takes every ounce of their concentration just to maintain balance and hold themselves and the item up.

At this point, with all of their attention focused on maintaining their current position they are in an option lock. Unless they remove some of their attention away from maintaining this load…they will have no other course of action available and will literally allow the situation to play out in an unconscious way as they sit down, pinned underneath the items they are carrying until they can breath again.

The obvious course of action to the observing bystander would be to let go. This is not as easy as it may sound (as anyone who has learned to water ski and has been drug face first through 20 or so feet of water while relentlessly hanging on the handles will tell you ). It requires consciousness to make another choice.

So what happens to consciousness in situations like these? Where does it go?

Losing Consciousness

Anytime it takes so much of our concentration to just be with a situation it is difficult for us to direct our consciousness. If you think of your attention like the small beam of light that is produced by a flashlight, then consciousness would be the hand holding the light that ultimately illuminates our surroundings. When consciousness gets stuck, it’s no longer free to move and allow us to explore new options.

In situations that suck up all of our internal resources, we aren’t reserving enough energy to power our consciousness…or in other words to move the light. We are now in a mode that is similar to Star Trek’s many auxiliary power scenarios in which only the areas vital to survival are given any juice. This process is automatically switched on and controlled but just like in the science fiction version of this scene there is always a manual over ride. With our light stuck in the last place we left it…it can be difficult to remember that there is a way out of being on autopilot.

Regaining Consciousness

The first step toward regaining consciousness is always breath. If you breathe deeply for a few moments, you will have taken some of your attention back from whatever situation was absorbing it. This automatically releases us from autopilot and we are essentially once again free to move about the cabin!

Conscious Prayer: Making Well-Formed Requests

It is often at the times when we are in option lock and we loose consciousness that we need prayer the most. Spirit can’t answer unconscious prayers…it requires our consciousness to move the energy of our prayer requests throughout the spiritual realms. This is largely because of a little thing called free-will.

So as stated previously, step one is to breathe. The next step involves a high level of personal observation. Ask yourself, what do I want help with? What will having this help allow me to do or have or be that’s even more important (in other words, why does it matter or what are you trying to get for yourself by making this request)? How will I know when I’ve gotten what I have asked for?

Mind Reading: A Violation of Free Will

When I was a little girl, I had such a special connection with my mom that I was absolutely certain that she knew everything I was thinking. So certain was I of this, that I began to think I no longer needed to tell her anything about what I wanted. One day, through a great disappointment I discovered that she could not, in fact, read my mind. My wants and ideas had become too complicated for her to anticipate and I was going to have to learn to speak up and state what I wanted.

I think it works with spirit similarly. When we are in the beginning stages, what we want is usually connected to our basic needs and spirit always takes care of us in this way. As we grow beyond basic needs however…we’ve outgrown what spirit can automatically do for us and it is time for us to start directing the resources around us so that we get exactly what we want.

As much as we wish that spirit would sometimes just read our minds and take over our responsibility to govern ourselves within this universe, we must understand that spirit would never do anything to impede our gifts and/or power…that is why we have free-will.

We’ve been given consciousness for a reason…it is the power and responsibility inherited to us by our Creator Source…and it is our job, here in this earth experiment to learn to use this connection to create beauty, passion, purpose and joy within our lives

So if you catch yourself looking for a mind reader, realize quickly that the better way lies in empowering yourself instead…spirit is right there…ready, willing and waiting to fulfill your conscious requests!

Image Credit

Many clients have ideas about what they want in life and can’t figure out why they are not creating it.

What a client creates can be looked at as a reflection of the connection or lack of connection that they are currently experiencing with their values system. Within the dance of this system is a call to deeply and truly connect with and honor themselves.

For this reason, we have to get honest with ourselves about what is really important to us, and honor it, in order to get what we want in life. When we get clear about ourselves internally, we are ready to shift our external experience.

What Do You Value?

In order to find out what my clients value I have them do an exercise with index cards. I ask them to think about what is really really, important to them, and why it’s important. I then have them write these things on the front of the cards.

On the back of the cards I have them list all of the ways that they support these things with their time, money and energy.

Because much of what we do is unconscious, most people will find that there are areas in life that are really important to them that are not supported by their actions. I like to think of this in terms of voting.

Determining How You Vote

Because time and money equal energy, writing down how you support your values is a really clear way to see what level of alignment you currently have with the forces that drive you in life and where to make shifts that can bring you closer.

For example let’s say that you live in an artsy town and you just love the fact that you are surrounded by creative people because one of your values is to experience unique and beautiful things because this helps you be present to life.

If every time you buy something for your home, you find yourself in Ikea instead of the beautiful little artisan shops in your town, then you probably aren’t voting very consciously toward this value

At this point you can examine the energy behind the thoughts and impulses that led you to put your time and money into Ikea.

The Nature of the Thoughts Surrounding the Activity

In the above scenario we could imagine a thought of going to look for a few items for one’s living room, which then triggers an unconscious reaction which results with the idea of Ikea popping into your head and off you go without further examination. What happened to the value? Why did it never come into play?

Values take conscious awareness to implement and align with. In the above example, I used a value that is often brow-beaten by our unconscious alignment with our societies thought pattern of getting the best possible deal.

When I examine my own thought processes of getting a great deal, I notice a huge undertone of lack. Personally, that’s not the energy I want to put out in the world. This kind of unconscious motivation puts an invisible wall up between me and what I want to experience.

Using Body Wisdom to Determine What’s Most Important to Experience

For many people values are vague concepts floating around in their heads in a way that is disconnected from their experience. Often times they are not yet living their values because they haven’t learned to bring them into their bodies and therefore into their physical experience.

When you place your values inside of your body, you can access them environmentally, in this way you can feel where you are voting with your time and energy and whether or not you are honoring yourself with your actions.

When I place the energy of getting a good deal in my body as my primary motivation, I feel a bit sick in my stomach. When I place the energy of choosing to work with companies with an eye out for the whole as well as themselves, I feel a deep sense of rooted power.

My body will tell me which is the correct action for me. Now to clarify, I’m not saying to completely ignore price, I am only saying to examine the order in which you structure what is important, in other words, to determine which should come first.

Aligning Your Business with Your Values

When I first became aware of some of the unconscious processes that ran automatically in the background when I would search for products and services for my business, I was literally startled by what I found. I instantly made the decision to restructure my business to honor my values and I thought perhaps you might like to join me.

Here is what is on my list to do:

1. Find a hosting company that runs on solar energy
2. Use a credit card processor that gives 10% of their proceeds back to the environment
3. Produce business products, recordings and books on post consumer recycled paper and pop bottles
4. Use a financial institution who works with small companies that want to positively impact the world

Putting it in Action

When the main thrust of my energy enters the world from within my values, it makes a huge difference in how I honor myself and others.

If you would like to experiment similarly, and are searching for an easy way to find conscious businesses with which to partner, I suggest looking in the Co-Op America’s National Green Pages for the services you need.

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In this article I’d like to explore a very powerful technique for stimulating motion when we find ourselves stuck within our patterns and some of the most common patterns I encounter as a spiritual explorer and coach. I think by the end of the article you will agree that a little re-framing…really can make a world of difference .

Three Easy Ways to Get Stuck:

Having All the Answers. It’s easy in the personal development world to fall into the trap of thinking you have to have all of the answers. I am constantly reminding myself that I am a learner and that learning and exploring is what I am here to do. Acquiring experience is simply a consequence of this fact.

We can get used to knowing so much that we begin to expect that this will always be the case and can get quite flustered when we find ourselves in a situation in which we feel a little lost. It’s the expectation we have of ourselves and the meaning that we attach to it, that puts us in this unresourceful state.

If I feel like I should already know everything, than I’m likely not to seek new experiences or learnings and those situations are likely to cause me a great deal of discomfort.

To give myself a new way of being with or experiencing learning I might re-frame my expectation with the words, I’m not lost I’m exploring or a true master is an eternal student.

Putting too Much Emphasis on the End Result. When you make plans to achieve goals, are you only concerned with the end result? Is every step you take to get there simply a means toward that end? Are you concerned with the quality of what you do or with what you think doing it will get for you?

If everything I do is simply to get me to someplace else than I’m not actually living my current life but instead I’ve empowered a future one that is linked with a very specific chain of events as my key to happiness…and what happens to me if that outcome never comes about. What if I did a really good job, my absolute best and it doesn’t happen? Do I somehow feel I fell short and failed? What is failure and success and how would I want to ideally define it?

Something that my Spirit has really been adamant about lately is teaching me where to place my energy in life. In the view of Spirit the outcome doesn’t matter at all because the only thing that exists is the present. If you are focused ahead you are not in the place where you actually have any power which is right now.

The place from which you make your decisions and function in the present is where you have the most control over any outcome. Often when you get this right, the outer world just lines up behind it…but even if it doesn’t, you will not be affected in the same way because your emphasis was on the form of your approach and the state from which you took action, not in the action itself. This is the place where you can fully control your own success.

Re-frame: The “how” is more important that the “what”.

Rules for Victories. Do you have a lot of rules in your life? Do you have a lot of desires? Are you the kind of person that really gets a lot of what you want but will only be happy if you get what you want exactly how you wanted it? Are your rules getting in the way of the joy you experience in life?

When we surround ourselves with complex rules we ensure that we will never have a reason to celebrate. In fact, one could say that we design the joy right out of our existence by putting so much of our energy on our systems of rules and regulations that we don’t have any left for the happiness that we think these rules will buy us. By allowing ourselves some flexibility, we can awaken with gratitude to the abundance available to us within the life that we are already living.

Re-frame: I get what I want in new and surprising ways.

Re-Framing Life Experiences

I’m not lost…I’m exploring, is a classic re-frame of something that most of us would consider an uncomfortable if not unpleasant experience.

Some time ago many people referred to me as impatient because of my strong desire to immediately experience anything I was excited about. I took that to heart and began to view myself through the lens of this word as well, until one day a friend heard me describe myself in this way and said, “You’re not impatient…you’re just enthusiastic and excited.”

The minute I heard it I knew it was true. I was really enthusiastic and my energy would come through so strongly that I literally bounced and hummed with it. From that time on I never again called myself impatient and now no one else does either.

Truth is, once I started labeling myself differently, I developed very quickly a new way of being with my own excitement that was much more fulfilling.

We can easily program in the beliefs and habits of our fathers, mothers, peers, etc. and carry the voices of their world views around with us for all of our lives if we choose…or we can question those voices and take up the challenge to provide ourselves and others with a more compelling vocabulary through which to view and interpret the world around us.

What kind of world would it be if all that we judged as being wrong in ourselves and others was offered back to us with positive re-frame?

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While in NLP Practitioner Training this weekend I was fortunate once again to be re-united with Master Coach and trainer Helen Attridge Green as we studied Success Strategies. Helen is an extraordinarily successful coach, so it was a lot of fun taking apart her process to see what her goals are and how it is that she assesses who she wants to work with.

The first step of success lies in having an outcome, so the question was asked of Helen, what if you honestly don’t have any idea of what you want? What if all you know is that you’re not happy with the way things are?

This question spawned a number of things one can do to get the focus to shift toward a desired experience, one of the most powerful though was the Four Levels of Consciousness.

A Self-Assessment Tool

What I love about this model is how it can be quickly applied to just about any situation. It makes it really easy to identify what level you’re operating from, where you need to be and the single most valuable thing that will lead you to your desired place. For anyone well traveled on the personal development road…this is amazingly handy!

Life is Happening TO ME

The first level is Life is Happening to Me. In this stage you feel victimized and helpless…as if you have absolutely no power and that something else has to happen in your external environment in order to make a change. To move out of this stage you have to give up blame.

Life is Happening BY ME

The second level is Life is Happening By Me. In this stage you will feel that you have complete control over everything and that it will happen because you will make it happen. This is the highly driven personal action stage. In order to move out of this stage you have to relinquish control.

Life is Happening THROUGH ME

The third level is Life is Happening Through Me. In this stage you feel that you are here for a reason and that you have a purpose. You have gifts, you ‘re in touch with your Higher Power. You trust that you will get what you need, you don’t even have to try that hard to get it and know that worry just cuts you off from Source. In order to move out of this level you need to release separation.

Life is Happening AS ME

The fourth level of consciousness is Life is Happening As Me. In this stage you feel that there is no separation between you and Spirit and you and others. You show up without the beliefs that keep you separate so you are operating from a perspective of compassion in which you don’t necessarily feel that you need to change others or the environment because you see yourself as an extension of it.

Constantly Moving

In any context we are constantly moving back and forth between these different levels of operation all of the time. We often do this unconsciously in reaction to whatever is presenting itself to us within our life situations.

The Four Levels of Consciousness model allows us to purposefully assess where we are currently operating within our contexts and if that is the most appropriate and productive approach or if another level might serve us better within our experience?

It also provides a platform from which we can understand how it is that we participate in each level, how we create it and where to make the change in order to create something else.

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I’m back in San Francisco in an NLP Practitioner training. I am still amazed and somewhat surprised at how the universe opened up and manifested the way for me to be here. This course is broken out over several months, one intense weekend each month. Our day starts on Friday afternoon and pretty much ends on Sunday evening. For me it has been a reunion of friends as several people I knew from my coaching course are here. It is a large group that is very enjoyable.

The Assignment

Yesterday, we worked on a process called Change Personal History. In this process you are to find an unresourceful state, trace it back to your earliest memory of experiencing it, determine what resource would have been needed to turn it into a resourceful state and then jump back through your memories, pulling the resource up through time noticing and experiencing how differently you behave.

Confusion

I’ve challenged myself to really get out of my comfort zone during this training. Part of that is to work on areas that really are soft spots for me, the other part is to be more of an experiencer than an observer.

So I was the first to be guided through the process. I chose the subject of confusion because I have often experienced what seems like an over reaction to it, something inside of me yelling out that it is not o.k. to be confused and demanding that I resolve the situation immediately. Realizing not everyone has this same experience, I decided to explore this phenomena and see what was really going on.

The Memories

The memories that I traveled through were varied. The most recent in history being when I decided to step away from the music industry (promoting the voice of others) and move toward discovering my own voice…who I am and why I’m here in this life.

The next memory was when I was fourteen, a freshman in high school. A new town, new school and new chapter of life was upon me and I was absolutely clueless on how to integrate all of these changes.

The third memory was perhaps the most powerful and was what I would soon discover to be the root of my reaction toward confusion. I was about seven years old. I saw myself awaken in a car parked in a busy shopping mall lot. I had fallen asleep and was left there by myself as no one had wanted to wake me up. I awoke on my own in a panic, all alone.

I could not decide what to do. I was very confused. Part of me wanted to stay in the car, the other part shouted at me to go find my family. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear. Tears streamed down my face as the internal war raged on. Before I got the chance to make a decision, my family returned.

The memory caused me to distrust myself when feeling confused and that the experience of it was not safe. These reactions and feelings had become the meaning of confusion for me…henceforth my automatic response to it was to become extremely uncomfortable and to panic.

Pulling in the Resource

I chose a few resources to give to my seven-year old self. The first was patience, the second was love, and the third was safety. Accessing them all within myself I showered her with them, sending them all out of myself with a great intensity that flowed out of me like a wave. Stepping into her, I received them and experienced the situation very differently.

I awoke within the car to discover that I had a cord of light running from my body down deep into the surface of the earth. I knew in that moment I was connected with all of the nurturing forces of the universe, a mother of great power.

Energy washed over me, I was embraced by it. I felt calm, at peace, safe, loved and knew that I only had to sit and wait. My family would be back soon, I had nothing to worry about. I saw the seven-year old me relax, enjoying this connection, knowing that no matter what, she was never alone.

I pulled this connection up through all the other memories as well, and paced it out into the future circumstances in which I might experience confusion. Confusion for me now has a different image attached to it…that of a peaceful, grounded little girl, bathing in the light of the nurturing forces of the love