Author Archive
Your BEST SELF!
Posted by: | CommentsOnce a week, I talk with my co-coach in England and today, as often, we asked each other, “What can you do to actualize YOUR BEST SELF?”
Catalyzing Your BEST SELF!
We knew it’s not through getting busier! In fact, we both felt that what we wanted was to be more aligned with our sense of being. For me, I want to be less harried and more spacious in my energy field.
As I talked about this, I imagined that if I committed 10 minutes first thing in the morning and last thing at night to modulating my energy and setting my course for the day, I could ramp up the actualization potential of this goal. In that 10 minutes, I’ll do a specific visualization and use EFT at the same time to ‘install’ the images and feelings more deeply.
How To Consistently be Your BEST SELF!
The thing is, I do these techniques some days, but not consistently. But I know they’re powerful and want to do them more, so for the next 21 days, I’m going to be applying these practices to specific outcomes I want to create in my energy field. My co-coach is going to support me and I’m going to support her by email to make sure we stick to our intention!
Would you like to take some new actions to attain more of YOUR Best Self?
Your BEST SELF 21 Day Experiment!
If so, pick something you’d like to do for 21 days. Make it small and attainable, like: “For the next 21 days, I’m going to leave bread out of my diet”, or “not talk about how much I dislike my job”, or “appreciate myself” or “meditate for ten minutes every day” or “do some stretching”. Whatever it is that you know will contribute to actualizing YOUR BEST SELF!
Ask someone if you can be accountable to them. (It’s amazing how much success skyrockets the moment you add in the accountability piece.) Ask your spouse, partner, friend, coach if you can simply report to them. Tell them you don’t need any comments other than “Well done!” if you report success and NO comment if you don’t report success.
So often when we think about trying to change, we think too long term and get intimidated or exhausted at the thought. But this is only for 21 days! Why not? Your BEST SELF will be glad you did!
Your Many Talents!
Posted by: | CommentsMy guess is that you’ve got several talents. Right? One or two might be latent or underdeveloped, but nonetheless, one might be sitting like a seed in the dark fecund soil of your soul, waiting for you to water it.
I think for us to be fully happy we need to develop all our talents.
New Book!
For me, although most of you know me as a coach, I’m also a writer. In the last few weeks, I’ve been engrossed in doing the final edits for a young adult fiction book that’s being published by Dundurn Press this November. (My fifth book!)
What an incredible amount of work it’s been! (That’s why I’ve been remiss at writing newsletters, but more will come now.)
Meanwhile, here’s a delightful video that speaks to the beauty of complexity and commitment! Enjoy!
PS: If YOU want to talk about how to develop a passion/talent you have sitting inside you, give me a call & we’ll chat about it.
Brain Fitness
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Think Smarter!
Recent science is showing that most of our thinking travels along well-worn pathways in the brain. It’s much easier to keep thinking in the old ways than to go off-road, so to speak, and go in new directions.
The problem with old ways of thinking is that since action follows thought, if we don’t change the way we think, we’re going to get to the same old places. But, how to change the nay-saying that goes on in our minds and stops us?
Brain Exercises!
Today I have some ‘brain’ exercises to help you. Start by choosing something that you usually think of as difficult. Don’t choose something that’s hugely difficult, just something that’s moderately difficult. Also choose something you can do soon, so you can test out the effects of the exercise I’m about to give you. I’m going to choose making dinner because I’m tired and it’s feeling hard to think about going down to the kitchen to make something.)
7 Steps to Brain Fitness:
Step 1: Create a picture of you doing this something easily.
Step 2: Freeze frame an image of that coming true.
Step 3: Make the picture hugely brighter. Imagine you have a dial and that you can turn up the brightness big time. Do that.
Step 4: Imagine the size of the picture you have in your brain and make it 5 times bigger so the image is right in your face.
Step 5: Imagine the feelings of satisfaction in your body being huge, swelling through your entire body.
Step 6: Step into that picture in your mind. Let it be a ‘live’ picture now and hear what you would be hearing, feel what you would be feeling, see what you would be seeing.
Step 7: Test this out as soon as you can.
As for me, I just did this exercise on my ‘making dinner’ difficulty. I’m noticing that I feel a LOT more positive and energetic about making dinner and am going to do this right now!
Before I go, just let me say that this exercise is like a lot of the exercises in the 40-day online course, ‘Change Your Energy, Change Your Life’. If you want to try the first 10 days at no charge, click HERE!
Change Your ENERGY!
Posted by: | CommentsENERGY!
Changing Your Energy!
Being able to change your energy at will is a HUGE skill. It changes everything because it frees you from being dependent on circumstances outside yourself for how you feel!
Last week I talked about a course I’ve developed that will help you do that. In case you missed it, the course, ‘Change Your Energy, Change Your Life’, is a 40-day online course that delivers a short ‘lesson’ to your Inbox daily, bringing you videos, audios, inspirations, bits of humour, EFT tapping procedures and always a specific skill to augment your ability to modulate your energy at will.
Try The ‘Change Your Energy, Change Your Life!’ course
To try out the course for 10 days at no cost (and no obligation), click HERE! This is the last week I’ll be talking about it! Honest!
Here are some of the comments people who are taking the course are saying:
“The course reminds me that being happy is something that’s determined by me and not events. Now if I notice a mood change, I notice it earlier and stop and return to equilibrium. I love the stories and the videos too.” Evelyn Wolff, MD Wellness Educator and Artist.
Judy, another participant says, “The course is helping me stop my usual business and take a few minutes to breath and reset my perspective.”
Last Week for ‘Change Your Energy, Change Your Life course!
This is the last week I’ll be talking about the course so if you haven’t taken advantage of this offer and want to, go HERE
ENERGY!
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Energy is EVERYTHING!
Energy is what we build our lives with. It’s what attracts people and situations to us. When our energy is zinging with positivity and aliveness, we feel as if we can do anything. And we probably can.
When we feel ‘down’ (negative) and low in energy, even the smallest tasks feel like too much. Furthermore, because the world tends to mirror us, negative energy has a way of pulling in other negative energy, taking us down further into the mire.
Taking Charge of Your Energy!
Taking charge of our energy is probably THE most vital thing you can do for your self-creation. Unfortunately, most of the time, we feel like pinball machines, reacting to what happens around us with our energy responding accordingly. But there are new techniques and understanding of brain function now that can show you HOW to modulate your energy AT WILL!
I’ve described these tools and techniques in a new course I’ve just created called, ‘Change Your Energy, Change Your Life’. It’s a 40-day online course that includes a daily bit of coaching or ‘lesson’ (5-10 minutes long) and an audio or video with a specific technique to help you change your energy right away. Some of the lessons are pithy, some funny, all are inspiring. They represent the BEST of all I’ve learned in my 30 years of coaching!
Change Your Energy, Change Your Life!
I’m gifting the first week for F*R*E*E so you try it and see if it’s for you. If you don’t opt-in at the end of the fist week, nothing more will come to you. If you do opt-in the price is $29 for the full 40 day course.
Check it out HERE. Learn to create the energy YOU want. I’ll show you how.
Helping Others
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Today I want to illustrate my point about ‘helping others’ through a powerful story. I know you’re going to be moved by it, just as I was. Before reading it, please accept my apologies for not posting an article in so long. I was getting a book off to the publisher~! Here’s the story!
A Powerful Story About Helping Others:
It was 1942 and Sussi Penzias, a young Jewish woman who’d fled Nazi Germany, was traveling alone, hoping to remain unnoticed. Since she’d arrived in Italy three years earlier, she’d been moving from place to place, hiding from the authorities. Now she was on her way to yet another safe house in a new town.
Suddenly, the door at the end of the train car swung open and two police officers came in. Sussi’s heart beat wildly. They were wearing the black uniform of the Fascisti, the government police. To Sussi’s horror, the policemen began making their way down the aisle, stopping at every row to examine the papers of each passenger.
Sussi knew that as soon as the policemen discovered she had no papers, she would be arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where she would face unimaginable suffering and almost certain death.
The officers were getting closer, just a few rows away. There was no escape. It was only a matter of minutes before they would reach her seat. Sussi began to tremble uncontrollably, and tears slid down her cheeks.
The man sitting next to her noticed her distress and politely asked her why she was crying.
“I’m Jewish and I have no papers,” she whispered, hardly able to speak.
To her surprise, a few seconds later the man began shouting at her, “You idiot! I can’t believe how stupid you are! What an imbecile!”
The police officers, hearing the commotion, stopped what they were doing and came over. “What’s going on here?” one of them asked. Sussi began crying even harder.
The man turned a disgusted face to the policemen and said, “Officers, take this woman away! I have my papers, but my wife has forgotten hers! She always forgets everything. I’m so sick of her. I don’t ever want to see her again!”
The officers laughed, shaking their heads at the couple’s marital spat, and moved on.
With a selfless act of caring, the stranger on the train had saved Sussi’s life. Sussi never saw the man again. She never even knew his name.
Helping Others IS Helping Ourselves:
Sometimes we, as small business owners or just as people, can be so focused on getting our own goals met, that we forget the bigger purpose of our lives and our work.
I have fallen into this trap many times by fashioning my goals in terms of how much money I want to make or how many clients I want to have. I notice, however, that when I switch my focus to helping others, the questions change.
Questions That Reflect Helping Others:
If I turn my focus to helping others, I start asking, ‘How many people can I help this week?” or to “How Can I Serve My Clients Better”. I have noticed time and time again that really good things start to happen in my work and in my personal life when I move my focus from what I want to ‘get’ to what I want to ‘give’. Others notice and trust me more and that’s vital for ALL my relationships, personal Or professional.
Try it yourself. Focus on helping others for a while by concentrating on what you can GIVE!
BEING Your Best in 2011!
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To BE or Not To BE!
With so many of us caught up in continual ‘Doing’, I want to encourage people to focus on how they are ‘BEING’ instead of just focusing on how they are ‘Doing’ in 2011!
Why?
First of all, when we focus on the qualities of ‘being’ (like being caring or generous or loving or more sensitive) it just feels good. That’s because we’re honouring our inner natures rather than just looking at possible outer accomplishments. When we do that, we feel good no matter what the outcome of a situation is too, which means our well-being is independent of results and that’s always freeing.
Who You Want to BE is Your Choice!
One of the best parts about focusing on ‘being’ is that it’s something you can do yourself, in each moment and doesn’t rely on anything or anyone ‘Out There’. It’s something you can choose in every moment, in every situation and is completely in your control.
Overall, focusing on ‘being’ is simply a more elegant and rewarding way of living and creating your life!
BEING Your Best is 2011.
So, who do you want to BE in 2011? Choose 1 (or 2) ‘beingness’ qualities and start vibrating as if you already exemplified this way of being. Notice how good it feels to even do this.
When I coach people, I always encourage them to choose and cultivate inner being qualities to guide them because I know that once they do, they’ll become very attractive in their energy field and as a result, attractive people and situations will be drawn to them like metal filings to a magnet. It just happens. And it happens without struggle, that’s the best part! And I love hearing my clients say, “Gosh, Karen, since I started coaching with you, so many good things keep happening.” This always makes me grin!
So, as you view the year ahead, consider some ‘being’ goals. Mine is to relax more into the nourishment of my spiritual essence.
As New Year’s gift to you, my wonderful faithful readers, I’m offering to the first 5 people who contact me, a complimentary Idea Session (lasting about a half hour) on how you can BE more of who you want to be. In this session, I’ll lead you in a process to help you choose the ‘being’ qualities that are truest for Who You Are and then give you lots of ideas about how to live them more fully and not get sideswiped by old patterns.
Contact me: karen@personalbest.org or give me a call. I’m on Eastern Standard time. 705-645-8371. This offer is open to anyone not currently working with me. (For those who are working with me, I have some other goodies in store for you soon!)
LOVE ANYWAY THIS HOLIDAY!
Posted by: | CommentsThis poem says all I could ever say to you this holiday season. It’s by Mother Teresa and offers the best of the holiday spirit!
Every blessing to you!!! ‘See’ you in 2011.Your devoted coach, Karen!
ANYWAY
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.Z
Making A Difference!
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Making a Difference!
This is an eyewitness account that happened in the City of New York, on a cold day in December some time ago…
A little boy about 10 years old was standing before a shoe store on Broadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold.
A lady approached the boy and said, “My little fellow, why are you looking so earnestly in that window?”
“I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,” was the boys reply.
The lady took him by the hand and went into the store, and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel, and he replied: “Certainly,” and quickly brought them to her. The lady took the boy to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet and dried them with a towel.
By this time the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy’s feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes, and tying up the remaining pairs of socks, gave them to him.
She patted him on the head and as she turned to go, the astonished boy caught her by the hand, and looking up in her face, with tears in his eyes, answered the question with these words,
“Are you God’s Wife?”
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You, too, can be God (or an Angel or Fairygodmother/father)
This story shows how any of us can be “god” or an “angel” or “fairy godmother/father” to another. The truth is that you CAN make a difference if you decide to.
To me, that’s the gift of this time of year. To realize the incredible power you have in any moment to be godlike, loving, generous and BIG!
I hope you take every opportunity you can to be BIG this holiday season. The gift will be as wonderful if not MORE wonderful for you than for anyone else.
Boosting Your Self-Confidence!
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Here is a quick, but wonderful exercise to help you boost your Self-Confidence:
Step #1: Boost Your Self-Confidence:
Vision Yourself: Imagine that you’re dreaming and you can look at yourself how you are right now-where you’re sitting, what you’re wearing, how you’re holding yourself, what you’re thinking and feeling. Be as honest as possible with yourself, visualizing every detail. Rate your current level of self-confidence between 1 and 10, 1 being low and 10 being high.
Step #2: Upgrade Your Vision:
Now, start removing any negative aspects of your self-image, brightening it up with positive images. Make yourself look more powerful, stronger, more confident, more sure of yourself. You may only make a few small changes, but create an image of yourself in your mind that accentuates all the positive traits you know you have. If you feel your smile is good, focus on that in your self-image. Rate your level of confidence in this vision.
Step 3: Super-Size Your Self Confidence:
We all know what it’s like to focus on all the small negative things–our big teeth perhaps, or some personality trait we don’t like. But, do the exact opposite here. Blow up those positive traits to super-size proportions and hold this image in your mind.
Step 4: Compare the Images:
Now put your two images next to each other, placing the person you reflexively see against the person you want to see. In the next few weeks, just keep focusing on the second image, not the first. Take actions to actualize this new self into the world–for example, wear the clothes this new self-confident you would wear, take the stance, use the language and take the actions your expanded self would take. Let the vision of this new self show you the way!
If you wanted to be stronger physically, you’d do some strength training. You wouldn’t expect new physical strength to just happen. It’s the same with self-confidence. This exercise is like a bench press for self-confidence. Use it over and over again and watch your self-confidence grow.
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SPECIAL REQUEST:
I have just started a fan page for Personal Best Coaching in Facebook. If you like this article, would you go to http://www.personalbest.org and click the ‘Thumbs Up’ thing in the box that says “Find us on Facebook’? THANKS! K.
