Is it just semantics, or is there really a difference between intentions, and decisions? Intentions are great. I highly recommend setting intentions for everything you do. In fact, I love the idea of writing what you want to have happen in great detail, then reverse engineering it – in other words, you create the steps you need in order to make that happen, with the assumption that it IS happening.

Here’s the problem with intentions, though. You have to make sure they’re not flimsy.  Meaning, they’re not simply wishes, but rather, you have no doubt this intention will come to fruition. In other words, you have made The Decision that this will happen. And you’re backing it up with your heart, mind and soul (or, mind, body and spirit.). To reverse engineer your intention, visualize what you want to have happen, even write it out, in great detail, engaging all of your senses. Wallow in that vision and let it wash all over you. Do this as often as you can, while still being able to get your work done during the day! It’s especially fun to go to bed fantasizingabout your visua

by erik johansson

lizations in great detail, and this will be the last thing you think about as you’re moving into sleep.

The visualization, decision and commitment are all telling your brain it needs to get in line to create this, and it’s putting the Universe on notice that you are very serious, and it should start shifting things around to make it happen. And your job is to KNOW it is happening. Know it, then move your feet, aka, ACT as if it’s happening.

Generally, it all comes into play in a certain order. First, you decide what you want to achieve, and you set the intention.  Then, you go into your full-blown visualization. THEN, you reverse engineer it by putting into play, all the necessary steps to have it happen!

I can’t wait to hear about all the glorious decisions you all come up with!

Let me know if I can be of any help!

Defining consciousness can be pretty elusive. However, I commonly define consciousness as who we think we are – given all the experiences, thoughts, and observations we have acquired until now. How else could we explain our awareness but with a frame of reference, namely, what we have been exposed to.  Consciousness is the awareness of self by the mind.  It is also the awareness of the world as we know it, and includes the idea of intuition.

All of this is subjective, of course. Meaning, we interpret what we see through our experiences, thoughts and observations. These are the lenses through which we decide whether or not to pay attention to something, whether something is “good” or “bad”, “safe” or “dangerous”. These are tools of the brain that evolution has given us to keep us alive.  We learn quickly to sort and categorize experiences in order to make sense of them. As we get older, we have more and more experience, have been exposed to more, and therefore, our consciousness is expanded.

But what does that mean?

These experiences have also brought a fair amount of baggage along with them. For example we often make assumptions that because something happened in the past, it will happen again. This helps if we are in the wild and assessing a potential predator or threat. However, this instinct-based skill hinders our ability to see the world in a more positive, beautiful and unlimited way: the way of spirit.

I believe there are three components to raising consciousness from a mental level to the level of spirit. In order of magnitude, they are: awareness, understanding and knowing – and I do not mean just by the brain. The brain is the tool (the lens and filter) to make sense of it all, to describe it to our world.

However, there is an inner knowing which is the divine that defies the brain’s ability to explain.  That is where real knowing resides…knowing we are the divine source of all the awareness and understanding. Know we are the source of all. And when we get there, it’s like lying on the most comfortable bed, with the finest linens and the most heavenly pillows after a very long journey. We simply sink into the release and know that we are spirit.

In a somewhat mechanistic view of consciousness, I feel we must find a place for spirit to participate in consciousness-raising, and it is through these three components that we can do this.  The first two, awareness and understanding, are the building blocks to knowing, which first comes through higher and more evolved experience, and then from deep inside our truest selves.

The more we expose ourselves to things that will help us to grow in awareness, the wider our breadth and reach of information and understanding to draw on. For example, becoming cognizant that our thoughts create the way we feel, and the way we feel makes us act a certain way, is a highly conscious awareness. Applying that awareness creates an understanding of why we behave in a particular way.

Therefore, changing the way we think changes the way we feel, and therefore, our behavior. Our lives can change, simply by understanding the fact that once we are aware of our thoughts, we can use our consciousness to re-frame them, and live in a more successful and fulfilled way.

As we become more versed in moving our awareness into a less limited, more spirit based understanding, we move into knowing.  At first, knowing comes from being tuned in to (or conscious of) the first two building blocks.  As we become more adept at these skills, they feel like second nature. They are acted on without consciously focusing on them. THAT is part of knowing.

Taking it further, we learn that our intuition, our “divine knowing,” has something to say! When we get quiet and less trapped in the noise of our minds, for example in meditation, spirit gives us a deeper grasp of life beyond the mind. The more we tap into spirit, the more we find mastery over the mind, and therefore, expand our consciousness to include the divine.

Spend 15 minutes a day, repeating and meditating on the following affirmation. Feel free to journal about it, as well, for a higher consciousness understanding. By really contemplating the nature of spirit through awareness, learning and knowing, we begin to see how it permeates our lives in every way, that we are the creator of the thought, the emotion, the action. We are source and substance. And lie down in the comfort of that knowing.

“I elevate my thoughts to become aware of all experience as spirit. I learn I am the source (creator) of substance (thoughts). I know spirit is both the creator of the thought, and the substance that flows from the thought, the action. I know I am spirit.”

When there is a disconnect between your brain and your heart – if  your wishes or goals don’t match up with your deepest beliefs that you are not worthy, you create a chaotic vibration that is sent out into the world.  And what you receive is really what you are asking for, deep in your heart.  This post is simple today. Simple, but not easy.

Know that you are creating your future by what you believe about yourself. Each day IS always, the first day of the rest of your life, for you are creating your future RIGHT NOW.

Find ways to inspire yourself, believe in your dreams – so that what you create is what you ultimately want, what you deserve and not what your inner critic says it is worthy of. In other words, tell your inner critic to take a hike, and take charge.

If necessary, bite off smaller chunks of your goals and intentions so that that little part of you that feels not good enough can actually believe it will happen.  Because really, we are all just waiting for you to shine. And quite honestly, we will always applaud you.  Don’t keep us waiting for too long, please. We want your brilliance.

And that’s the Truth.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson, Return to Love

Three very strong words ~ but really, what do they mean? To me, true power is the strength to live with purpose and conviction, and in alignment with our true values. Power comes when we no longer (really) care that someone doesn’t like us or we feel rejected. This allows us to be ok with who we are. Power is inner strength.

Sure, there are times we doubt ourselves, feel insecure or less than. That is when choice comes in. If we are operating from our power base, or inner strength, we acknowledge that the “negative” or “threatened” thoughts and feelings we are having are not actually reality. (They are just thoughts and feelings!) They may be something to learn from, or, stretch beyond in order to grow. Owning our power means looking at issues with some distance, and not getting as personally involved. It’s having some objectivity.

Too often, women give their power away. When someone hurts us, we feel it, sure. But, too often we allow our minds to perseverate on the hurt to the point where it’s occupying way too much of our psychic energy. That gives our power away to the other person. We can choose to acknowledge the pain, create some distance and let go. (Remember last week’s post on letting go?)

Here’s the biggest change you can make to step into your power: Know your thoughts and feelings are under your control; they do not control you. Change your thoughts and you can literally change your brain and it becomes your default not to take things personally. Your emotions will follow.

It’s really about gaining a bit more objectivity and loving where you are. Forgiving yourself and others doesn’t hurt either. It’s a powerful release of negative energy that allows us to propel into living more in positive realms.

To summarize:

What power is:

• Being connected to a true sense of purpose in your life
• Capitalizing on your strengths
• Knowing you are in control of your thoughts and emotions
• Forgiving
• Taking care of yourself
• Taking responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings and behaviors
• Realizing that everything in life is an experience to live and learn from
• Non-judgment
•  Sharing your divine gifts with the world
• Inner peace
• Being present
• Letting go

This is what power is not:

• Force
• Winning so someone else can lose
• Caring what everyone thinks of you
• Being ruled by your thoughts and feelings
• Judging others (because it means you also judge yourself pretty harshly)
• Keeping tallies in relationships as to who does what more (or less.)
• Wanting others to feel sorry for you.
• Feeling sorry for yourself
• Taking things personally
• Obsessively thinking of the goal, and not the process
• Acting as if you have no control over your life
• Living with guilt
• Taking on too many “shoulds” or “need to’s”
• Blaming others or the world for your situation or feelings

This is a lifelong journey, of course. I write this because once we shine a light on our less helpful behaviors, it diminishes their hold on us. Different people will demonstrate their power in different ways, but, as Rumi says, “”Outside ideas of right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

(photo source: theberry.com)

In order to grow into true self love, at first we must have enormous compassion for ourselves. As women, we tend to use guilt as a self saboteur. When we realize that even our “mistakes” were there for our learning – we did the best we could, with the tools we had and emotions we felt – Put simply, we made the best decisions we could at the time. Our intent was good. And then we learned. It takes a while to learn that what used to serve us quite well, perhaps as a child, no longer does. So thanking ourselves for learning coping mechanisms, (and then creating the awareness to let them go, and grow,) is part of compassion. Negative, self sabotaging, guilty, blaming behaviors act as weights on our divine selves.

It is difficult, for sure, to both recognize and let go of old patterns of behavior, but when we do, we catapult ourselves into a profound, deep knowing of our true selves and divine nature. Letting go of thinking we have to do everything perfectly is one of the greatest gifts of self love.

The reality is that we are hard wired to look for obstacles, negatives, things to worry about – in order to survive. Blaming ourselves for “knowing better” or “making mistakes” makes us into a victim. It is simply taking one small step after another that allows us to turn toward the light, the positive, the fulfillment that is our divine inheritance. We have to first overcome our biology intended for survival and to realize, just like the fight or flight response, it has an infinitely smaller purpose in our lives at this stage of our evolution, but it is still imprinted on us.

Self love means creating new imprints for yourself. Literally, you create new neurological pathways of default responses. Self love also mean knowing we are more than our biology. Having the emotional and psychological discipline to recognize when we are caving in to an old habit that no longer serves us is a big step toward facing our divine selves, and loving ourselves.

The best way to get past that monkey mind of ours is finding quiet, contemplative, meditative time. Ritual. Exposing ourselves to as much positive reinforcement as possible. Give yourself time to really get in touch with your divine self – and fall in love. Use compassion to bridge the gap between guilt and giving yourself that gift of self love – because it is then that you are celebrating life to the fullest. Loving yourself is the greatest gift you can give both yourself, and the world.

(photo from theloveyourselfchallenge.tumblr.com)

I had to write about love at Valentine’s day ~ But here’s the thing. My approach these days is that you can’t compartmentalize anything in your life…and so it is with love. So, here are 9 ways to bring love into all aspects of your life.  Some are pretty easy, some not so much. But give each a whirl and you’ll be surprised how good it feels at the end of the day (or month, or year). All of this is designed to help you and the person you are interacting with just experience more love. The more love you feel, the more love you attract. It’s just physics.

1.  Love a stranger.  What I mean by that is literally send love to a stranger. It could be the person sitting across from you on the train, or someone who walks by. Just have the thought that you want to send them some love, and see how good it feels. We ARE all connected, after all.
2. Walk into your next business meeting, networking or business event with the intention of giving. Have the first thing you say to someone be, “What can I do to help YOU?”  When you go with the intention of helping others, you find people a bit dazzled by your generosity. It feels good, and then maybe they’ll pay it forward.
3. Kiss your lover like it was your first kiss. Remember what it felt like to kiss your loved one for the first time. Hold their face in your hands, close your eyes and really feel the kiss.  Feel your bodies dissolve and your souls connect. Pretty yummy.
4. Lovingly look in the mirror. Yup. Take off all your clothes, stand in front of the mirror and only focus on the parts of you that you love – NOT the parts you think “need work.” Love all of you, but focus on what you believe, at this moment, to be perfect. Eventually, you will see that this body is just a vehicle for carrying around our perfect souls, and criticizing yourself only leads to lower self esteem. That broadcasts out into the world. When you put your clothes back on, walk outside and broadcast all the parts of you that you love. Eventually, that will be all of you.
5. Spend a few moments focusing on your heart chakra (the space in the middle of your chest) and breathe in and out love for someone. Really let that love wash over you. Send that person love. Spend a few moments really wallowing in that. Then, for a challenge, try sending some love to someone you’re angry at or have a grudge against. You might be surprised to find some of that melting. (Have I mentioned that we’re all connected?)
6. Pay it forward. Share someone’s stuff on social media (without thinking they are competition), hold open a door, pick up a friend’s kid from school, tip the waitress a little extra. Find ways to be of service.
7. Brag. I know we’re always taught to be humble, but how about if every day for the next week or two, you write down two or three things about yourself that you did that day that you feel really good about. Accumulate them and read them when you’re having a tough moment. Heck, read ‘em every day!
8. Wake up in gratitude. Just spend a few moments every morning before you get out of bed, imagining a field of gratitude surrounding you. Each time you think of something to be grateful for, the field gets bigger and bigger. This field is also something you broadcast out into the world. What you think, you get.
9. Love yourself first. And, as Byron Katie says, “love what is.” Be happy in this moment, in this life, for you are learning what you need to learn.

“Seeking love keeps you from the awareness that you already have it—that you are it.” Byron Katie

photo from brightboldblogspot.com

It has been a somewhat epic couple of months for me. Personal evolution – not always an easy thing – can come somewhat piecemeal. Growth can sneak in in stages, or via epiphanies and “aha moments”.  All the while we’re putting one magnificent shoe in front of the other (see last week’s blog), and one day, it all comes together. Often what people call “an overnight success” has really been a pretty long road of hard work. It is this moment when everything “clicks”, and the influences that get you there, that I want to write about.

My very wise actress daughter said to me yesterday that her acting teachers called this phenomenon the moment when opportunity and hard work meet – I think that’s the sweet spot of success beginning (however you define success).  I’m stepping into that moment, in a personal way, in my business.

As I was starting out on my new incarnation of healthybeing, I struggled to put together all the pieces of “who I am” as a business and what my divine gifts are. I have so much unusual, yet in-depth experience that I was a bit monkey-minded as to how to do that. One can have an explosion of ideas, like me, but as they say, “ideas are like opinions; everyone has them”. It’s the implementation of these ideas that makes the difference between something that stays in your head, and something that lands – and touches the lives of those you were supposed to touch.

Here are the women who recently touched my life to bring my divine purpose, ideas and unflinching desire to help and succeed – together.

Yesterday was the culmination of the influences I speak of. As it’s still vibrating around me, I thought I’d start there. One of my business mentors, Fabienne Fredrickson, of Client Attraction, chose me out of our group of 135 to have a business makeover, on stage, in front of the group. Working together, she guided me in clearing the gunk out of my thinking and zeroed in on next steps, clarifying my vision and helping me move forward – in order to do the business I was divinely put here to do.
Having business mentors who act with integrity, have an abundant mindset and walk their talk of doing business with honor and in alignment with their values, is paramount not just to success, but success with joy. All of those I surrounded myself are such people.

It was a profoundly abundant experience that I know will change me, and my business, forever. After all was said and done, with tears in her eyes, Fabienne held me by the hands, with tears in her eyes, and said, “A lot of women are counting on you to get out there. They need your help.” And in that moment, I realized everything had changed.

I also have to shout out Julie Steelman, whose classes have driven home the knowing that money is simply an exchange of energy. It is our divine birthright, as well, and asking for what one deserves is not only divine and holy, but appropriate. It is when we fail to shine our light that those we are divinely contracted to work with, can’t find us. It is with success that one can give back, and giving back is imperative, in my book. It is one of my big “whys.”

Lisa Steadman taught me to connect to my “woohoo” – aka, a fun way of finding my authentic business self. It’s all about being genuine, not being afraid of getting out there, and loving yourself with all of your magnificent quirks and unique abilities. What fun business can be!

Then there’s Tanya Ezekiel, who is a career coach with whom I went to coaching school. Tanya and I had a session together that put my old issues of “being worthy” into a new light. (see, we all have our gremlins, my friends! It is how we work with them that is important!) She made me realize that I can’t compartmentalize areas of my life and think they don’t bleed into each other. As they say, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” A motto I thought I was living by, but just as you can’t give yourself a good haircut, you need others to sometimes point out the obvious. I learned an invaluable lesson from just one session with Tanya that I am eternally grateful for.

Valia Glytsis, Leadership Development Coach and mentor, has been my compadre going down this road of conducting business with integrity, authenticity and responsibility. She has been a beacon of hope, inspiration, and wisdom.  She is the epitome of The Real Deal, with generosity and humility.  She, too, has opened my eyes to see things in a fresh light that allowed me to move more into who I truly am.

Carla Goddard, Shaman Medicine Woman and Iva Peele, Road to Q’eros – This is perhaps what started the big shift for me. Recently invited into this small Sacred Lodge of “We the Women” – a mostly virtual gathering of shamans, healers and priestesses, was Spirit’s way of pushing me into really owning my divine gifts and knowing how important the generosity model is. Sharing with other women like this, watching Carla encourage and help them to grow their businesses with Spirit in a way that will change the world, and then having the We the Women Community page open up to such wide acceptance and inspiration, was a most amazing experience. The women in this Lodge are some of the most quietly powerful, life changing, generous and loving women I have ever encountered, and I am humbled to share seats with them here.

Fabienne recently altered the dalai lama’s sentiment that the world will be changed by the western woman. She feels the world will be changed by the woman entrepreneur – and that is because doing business by the feminine model of combining strength, authenticity, truly caring about your clients, and being “generous” really may change the world!
She, along with Carla Goddard, Julie Steelman, Lisa Steadman, Tanya Ezekial, Valia Glytsis and all the other amazing women in my life helped me not just realize, but own, that doing business is a spiritual endeavor, and one that requires us to be in alignment with our core values…and with joy. I am indebted to these women I was clearly spiritually contracted to work with. With open, humble and grateful arms, I welcome those women whose spiritual contracts include working with me.

And so the ripple effect goes.

PS: I’ve included links to these fabulous women’s pages so that if you’re interested or inclined, you can check these life-changers out!

Ok, did I get your attention? What I mean is, have you ever considered that we might better succeed by NOT getting what we think we want?  That sounds counter intuitive to all the counsel I give about thinking positively, dreaming our dreams and writing affirmations – ALL of which are hugely important. But, I believe there’s another lesson to be learned by all of us. And, it’s not just that Spirit works in mysterious ways (which is true). It’s that sometimes we don’t listen to our intuition, our inner knowing. We block it out because we think our minds know better, when in reality, Spirit has a much bigger idea for us. Like BIG. REALLY big. And we think too small to be able to see it.

Sometimes the things that DON’T work out for us turn out to be the most serendipitous things! – not just for our personal growth, but for our true life’s destiny. A perfect personal example is my divorce. Don’t get me wrong. It was horrible at the time. I described it as being vulnerable to the point of feeling as if I had no skin. I experienced an internal heart pain the likes of which I thought I’d never recover from. My world was shattered.

It took awhile, but eventually I picked up the shattered pieces, and put my puzzle back together in a way that fit me more authentically, more comfortably. A comfier pair of shoes. More me…less me being what everyone else wanted, stuffing my feet into shoes that were too small.

I’d thought the part of me I’d previously caught mere flickers of was a bad thing, until I was forced out of my security blanket and into the raw world of reality: finding myself again. Bare-footed.

Spirit knew. I’d been chicken. Those flickers were the me who was shining her light and wanting out in a big way. And she wanted some big girl shoes!

And what a gift I got!

I have reinvented myself in a way that makes me proud, in a way that makes my daughters proud. I have discovered parts of myself I didn’t know existed (well, I pretended I didn’t know existed) and rediscovered the stuff I had buried deep down inside.  I now help other women rekindle, rediscover, and newly discover their wildly wonderful juicy way of living. I help them learn how to walk in their big girl shoes.  Whether they prefer red high heels or combat boots, it doesn’t matter. It’s whatever makes HER happy.

And, I am truly happier than I have ever been in my life. No kidding. The shoes are fitting quite nicely, thank you.

What I realized is that reinvention is really just taking the parts of yourself that are shattered or confused, and putting them in a different order, doctoring some up, then adding some spices you’ve never tried, and marinating until finding the perfect blend of the Divine You. It’s a recipe for exciting explorations of opportunities.  And it doesn’t hurt to be wearing shoes that fit YOU.  It’s somewhat on its own agenda. This one, you have to watch for.

Changing is a scary proposition…our sense of security is the most important thing in the world to us – even above love. So, jumping – and assuming the net will appear – can be terrifying. But, if you surround yourself with the best support, advice and coaching you can find, trust your knowing, and keep putting one magnificent shoe in front of the other, you really may end up in a wildly successful, delicious place – one you’d never imagined.
Trust me.

And, trust the flickering part of you…and Trust Spirit…Then, keep your eyes open for the perfect pair of shoes that fit you just right.